✅ Younger Than You Think?

"8: Incident Coordination Room"

This chapter is dedicated to Rheabin. Thank you so much for supporting me; it means so much to me.

There were whiteboards all around the room, some of which already had maps and photographs stuck to them. Half a dozen people, most of them men, filtered into the room. In among the detectives and specialists, there was a single uniformed cop. Here to report that searches of the local area had found next to nothing.

At the front of the room, with all eyes on him, Detective Weisz stood up and cleared his throat. It was the first time he had been in charge of an investigation that might attract press attention, and it was already clear that he was nervous. He'd been filing reports away for months, but this was the first time he had been able to justify the case to his bosses.

"Alright people!" He called, with a sense of enthusiasm that was only slightly dampened by the lack of clues. "The Titansville Kidnappings. That's what we're calling this one now. Over the last two years, we believe that thirteen people have been abducted while travelling to or from the town of Titansville. Six of those have been aged sixteen or seventeen, and suffered from growth or developmental disorders that make them look younger. These cases were considered of a higher priority as they were minors at the time; but various police divisions have decided after a cursory investigation that they are likely teen runaways. We put photos up at bus depots, circulate them to neighbouring divisions, and accept that there's no real proof of foul play. Thousands of kids run away every day. These ones are considered more at risk than most, because the subconscious effect of their appearance often leads their parents to treat them as if they are younger than their peers."

He clicked the pointer in his hand, and photographs of the previous victims appeared on the screens behind him. Six minors and six young adults, according to the big red numbers superimposed below each photograph to indicate their age. But from the pictures, it would have been hard to believe that any of them were in high school, never mind college.

"The colloquial term is dwarfism, although technically it doesn't apply in every case. But what we have been dealing with here, what I have been cataloguing for two years, seems to be someone abducting dwarfs. Maybe a child trafficking ring, who figured that people who look like children but are legally adults would be an easier target. Like Maurice Carter here. Architect. Constantly mocked in his office, people asking if he should be in daycare. Even his friends treated him like a little kid. So when he went on a day trip to somewhere he could be accepted, a town where people like him are the norm, and didn't come home... had he been kidnapped, or just decided to walk out on a society that didn't respect him? There was no proof either way. He could have just gone off the grid. The same is true for any of the others. And the concentration around Titansville makes sense too. If you don't know, this is a planned community run by and for dwarfs and people of alternative stature. Like a bar where the furniture is the right size for these people, cafés with a five-foot ceiling. A place where they can fit in might trigger an identity crisis, and make someone realise that they don't want to go home."

He turned and looked at one of the assistants, who had been twitching and raising a hand every time he used the word 'dwarf' incorrectly.

"Look, I know the words I'm using aren't politically correct. I just want to get the situation across to my team without getting bogged down in arguments about language. Right? I'm calling them dwarfs. Make sure we get it right in the press statements, and if we're actually talking to some of them. But for the purposes of this investigation, we don't care about the difference between a dwarf, a midget, and a little person. Right?"

He clicked the pointer again, and another set of pictures appeared. This time it showed a young girl who could have fit right in with the others. But the age displayed beside the image, and circled, was a single lonely digit.