Arcana

January 27, 2026

It’s been three weeks since the incident at Irina’s office, and I still can’t process how I escaped. My ribs ache—sometimes when I simply draw a breath. And to think that I nearly shot those people... Locking them in that closet to starve wasn't much better. I pray that hulking man was able to break them free, but I am loath to encounter them again. 

Irina hasn’t contacted me since. No hints. No messages. I only have the folder she left me, locked in that closet. 

May is studying nonstop, practically living in the pages of my old physics textbooks. She barely eats. She’s so much like her mother—stubborn, relentless, and brilliant. I may have been mistaken in letting her help, but I won't go back on it now. Alice, at least, seems to be coping by immersing herself in anime…

Some of the world has started to accept more and more the reality of the situation. Some deny it. Gangs and organized crime organizations have gained more traction, becoming more brazen, and demand for drugs has radically increased. That, combined with mass layoffs, and the abandonment of jobs like police, medics, and so forth... 

At this rate, society will collapse long before next year begins. 

And that's without even mentioning the damned extirpations themselves. 

Incidents in the U.S. have been ramping up, but they are mostly concentrated on the east coast. The capital has been hit quite a few times. The most significant was last week, when an entire car, along with the two people inside, was extirpated.

More confirmed kills by extirpation. The fourth and fifth, I think. 

Another one died the week before—the third kill. He was a gang member, supposedly. His disembodied feet, sliced off in a perfectly clean arc just above the ankles, were left behind. Some poor girl found them. 

More personally, I haven't begun properly looking at the folder Irina left me. Seeing it makes my ribs ache. I've tried almost every day to break into it: I've tried the first page, starting at the back, and even just picking random pages. No matter the configuration, the writing and terminology are so dense and arcane that it feels impossible to parse. Within a few words, I have lost all hope of understanding.

It truly feels like some kind of forbidden necromantic tome. The graphs are its only saving grace, but they are few and far between. And without the context surrounding them, being given in heavy, arcane language... I don't see myself being able to understand without an unbelievable amount of work. Alone, it may take me a few months, or even right up until the calamity, to properly understand it. 

Every page has what I can only assume to be clarifying notes in Russian down the margins. 

I don't know Russian. 

I will keep trying, of course. There is no recourse. Not until Irina reaches out again. 

I must keep trying.

Ken tapped the pen on the journal page a few times, leaving random dots scattered around the last few words of this entry. 

He glanced over at the makeshift research setup he'd stood up in his office: a folding table, his laptop, a desk lamp, two notebooks, and the folder he'd found in Irina's inexplicable secret office. It lay there on the desk, turned to a random indecipherable page, taunting him. 

He'd spent the past four hours, since the minute he'd stepped back from his work, trying to break into it—looking for something he could cling to for understanding. But between the jargon ridden language and the notes scrawled all over the page, it felt hopeless. 

"But I have to keep trying," he muttered, wheeling himself over to it. He couldn't help but feel like a mage, poring over a tome of reality-bending arcana. Except he knew frustratingly little about the information it encoded, and so he could hardly call himself that mage.

But as he continued trying to skim his current page, he happened upon a section on a subject he had knowledge about, at least somewhat: it featured graphs from his time as a member of Irina's project. They illustrated results that he had simulated and extrapolated, and then put to form in these graphs. Finally, something, he thought. 

The text surrounding it, though arcane like the rest, contained concepts and topics he was familiar with due in part to his doctorate in physics and in part to his time spent working with Irina. But now, it rested in the deep, dusty corners of his mind, waiting for use that had never come. He cursed himself for not paying better attention during Irina's droning tirades, and for letting slip the information he'd gained through his doctorate some 20 years before. 

But Ken had faith he could restore that knowledge, and that this would serve as his foundation. 

He pulled a notebook on his research table over, flipping it to a new page and opening a pen. He had to recall those memories somehow. But the more he strained, the few fragments he had only became clearer and clearer; no new ones revealed themselves. 

He closed his eyes, pressing his hands to his temples. 

I have to remember, he thought. So he began to dig through a fragmental memory of a conversation. 

———

"Irina, I don't really know what any of that means," Ken had said. He sat on a lab stool, he recalled, his back aching from having sat on it for so long. 

"No?" she shook her head and clicked her tongue. "I thought you were better."

He pressed his lips together hard and flared his nostrils in exasperation. "Please," he responded with a wave of his hand, "enlighten me."

She sighed. "We want to prove that dark matter is... real. That it exists outside of theory and simulation."

"And that's why you need me to make you simulations," Ken mocked, still annoyed at her condescension. 

Irina shot him a glare before turning back to her work. "You asked for an explanation, yes?" 

Ken gave a reluctant nod and leaned back against the lab bench behind him, waving for her to continue. 

Irina nodded, affirming her victory. "As I was saying, there are a number of theories on dark matter." She closed the laptop she'd been writing on and folded her hands on it. "I have a few theories, but interaction with dark matter is vital to prove or disprove any one of them. And that's why I brought you in." 

Ken raised his eyebrows expectantly. 

"Your goal is to simulate the effects of the gravitational field produced by dark matter on an electron beam. To see the refractory effect as it passes by."

"I thought dark matter didn't interact with electromagnetic waves," Ken said, a question clear in his voice. 

"It doesn't interact magnetically. But the gravitational lensing affects them."

Gravitational lensing... Ken thought. The effect whereby massive objects bending spacetime cause perturbations in the light passing through their zones of influence. "But if you know that already..." he muttered.

"But we don't know anything about them."

His eyebrows furrowed. "It sounds like you know they interact through gravity, though."

Irina shook her head. "You won't get it." She stared at him blankly. "I have to go align the equipment. You can go home." And before he could reply or fit in even a gesture, she stood sharply, grabbing her laptop and walking through the door behind her. 

But just before the door shut, she paused. For a split second, she turned—just enough for him to catch the briefest, almost guilty glance. 

And then she was gone.

———

Not the most pleasant memory, Ken thought, rubbing his forehead with this fingertips. But at least a place to start. He wrote what he recalled Irina saying. 

He looked back down at the open part of Irina's paper in front of him. It was about a very similar topic—very similar wording to the way he remembered hers back then, in fact. The paragraph he read mentioned gravitational lensing, and featured a figure of an equation that prescribed the amount of lensing that would occur. 

He scribbled the equation and some notes into the notebook when he heard the door behind him open.  

"Dad, check this out. I was looking at optics, and—" 

"May, sorry, can it wait until later?" he asked, cutting her off. "You caught me in the middle of this." He turned his eyes to her for a second. 

She held a notebook in one hand by the top, her other hand pointing to an annotated diagram she drew of a circle. Her mouth still hung open, thought cut off partway. 

"Well... can I tell you tomorrow?" Her brows were furrowed. 

"Maybe." Ken shrugged. "But this is hard physics, here, and I have to work on this as much as I can."

May's eyes were slits as she stared at him. "Are you serious?"

"Well, yeah, May. I mean, I've barely been able to make any headway, here, and I don't have time to—"

He was interrupted by the sound of pages flipping and tearing as May threw shut her notebook.

"Oh, no, no. You go ahead, Dad." She scoffed. She sputtered on a handful of thoughts, all pouring out at once. But after moment failing to express even one, she simply threw her hands down to her side, and stormed out. "I'm sure it's so hard for you!" she finally called from the stairs, followed by a cascade of curses he wasn't aware that she knew. 

Ken opened his mouth to call after her… but didn’t. He couldn’t afford to lose this rhythm—not when he’d finally found a crack in the wall. 

"Dad?" Alice called from the hallway.

Shit, he thought. She heard all that. 

"Yes, honey?"

"I'm... gonna go to bed."

"Okay! Love you!"

She stomped loudly up the stairs and, he thought, for a second, he caught the sound of May's voice and hers, talking. 

He shook his head as if the extra thoughts fell out in doing so, blinking a few times and turning back to the page. He had to press on. He had to keep moving. To protect her. To protect Alice. 

Someday she'd understand, he told himself. But for now, he just had to keep working.