The Silence of the City

Easton was a city built on silence. Beneath its sleek exterior, there were whispers—whispers that traveled faster than the speed of light, whispered by those who knew how to listen. Emma had always known this. It was why she was so good at what she did—because she knew how to listen, how to hear what wasn't being said.

But Anna's disappearance was different. There was an eerie quietness to it, a stillness that felt wrong. In a city like Easton, where every movement, every whisper could be amplified by a hundred voices, a disappearance should have created a ripple—a wave of speculation, a chorus of theories. But there was none. It was as if Anna had simply evaporated, leaving no trace, no sign, not even a whisper of her absence.

Emma couldn't shake the feeling that there was something off about the way Anna's disappearance was being handled. It wasn't just the lack of coverage or the absence of the usual media frenzy. It was the way the people around her seemed to be closing ranks, almost as if they were afraid to ask the questions Emma was asking. She had seen it before—the way people in power could control the flow of information, shutting down anything that might disrupt the status quo.

She sat in her office that night, staring at the city skyline, the lights flickering like a thousand tiny stars, each one representing a different story—stories of ambition, of success, of failure. And in the midst of all of it, Anna Pierce had vanished. Gone, without a trace. As Emma's mind raced through the possibilities, she began to feel a growing unease. There was something hiding beneath the surface of Easton, something far more dangerous than anyone had anticipated. And she was beginning to realize that Anna's disappearance was only the beginning.