The precinct felt colder than usual.
Not physically. But like something sacred had been broken, and the building knew it.
The buzz of overhead fluorescents, the clack of keyboards, the distant chatter of nightshift officers it was all there. But it felt far away, like it belonged to another world. Not the one Williams Stones had come back from.
He sat hunched at his desk, the same one he'd barely had for six months, and already it felt like it remembered too much. His jacket still dripped rain. His wrists were raw and red, circled by angry welts from the zip ties. He hadn't said a word since they pulled him from that underground hell.
Monroe didn't ask questions.
Not yet.
She sat across from him, her posture tight, her eyes darting between printouts and the flickering computer screen. One hand gripped a neon highlighter; the other, a paper cup of cold, untouched coffee.
"They wiped her," she said finally.
Stones looked up. His voice was sandpaper. "Evelyn?"
Monroe nodded. "No trace after April. Bank accounts frozen. Email dead. Phone burned. And R.O.S.? It's not a consulting firm. Hell, it's not anything. No registration. No licenses. No tax records. It's a sinkhole for ghosts."
"Not just vanishing people," Stones murmured. "Choosing who stays vanished."
Monroe didn't reply. She didn't have to.
They both knew how that story ended.
Stones leaned forward and tapped a page from the growing stack between them. "This one. Sanbridge Fire. 2021. Woman in her 40s. Labeled Jane Doe. Body found near an abandoned safehouse two blocks from the site the storage unit map pointed to."
Monroe flipped the sheet, eyes narrowing. "'Autopsy: cause of death gas explosion. Notes: cicatrix marks on wrists. Subdermal scarring around scapulae.'" She paused. "Bindings."
"Same kind I had," Stones said, voice low. "Same burn patterns. Same neighborhood."
"They were testing her," Monroe whispered. "Just like they tested you."
"She didn't pass."
Stones stared at the corkboard pinned above his desk. Evelyn Trent's photo sat at the center, flanked now by coroner's notes, fire reports, security camera stills each with something out of place. An odd angle. A missing timestamp. A smear of ash. But always always that strange mark tucked somewhere in the margins.
The broken flame.
"It's not just about making people disappear," Stones said. "It's about who they let come back."
Monroe circled something with her pen. "Here. Another fire—two years ago. Victim: Jonah Kasper. Private investigator. Ex-corporate fraud. And guess who his last client was?"
Stones didn't hesitate. "Evelyn Trent."
Monroe's eyes met his. Cold. Certain. "Exactly."
Stones exhaled slowly. The walls felt like they were listening now.
"She tried to leave The Circle," he murmured. "And hired him to find a way out."
"And he burned for it."
Another thread. Another noose tightening around the truth.
Monroe reached into the drawer and pulled a thick manila folder. She slid it across the desk.
"Kasper kept backups. Offline. Paranoid. His daughter, Allie claims he mailed them to her before he died. She never opened them. Said she was scared."
"She still in the city?"
"Moved back last fall. I called her this morning. She agreed to meet. Four o'clock."
Stones stood without a word. Grabbed his coat. Checked his sidearm.
"Then we go."
---
West Briar looked like a forgotten scar on the city's body.
The rain hadn't let up. The sky hung low and bruised, leaking cold drizzle over a row of tired brick buildings near the industrial edge. Stones parked half a block from the address. Just in case.
The street was too quiet, No kids, No pets, No traffic.
Just the whisper of wind through a broken fence and the buzz of a streetlight that blinked like it had seen too much.
Apartment 3B.
Third floor. Curtains drawn.
Monroe knocked first, voice calm. "Allie Kasper? Detective Monroe. We spoke earlier"
No reply.
Stones tried next. His knock was firmer. "Allie, it's important. We need to talk about your father."
Still nothing.
They shared a look. Stones backed up, braced his shoulder.
Bang.
No give.
Bang. Bang.
The lock cracked. The door swung inward.
They stepped into a silence too deep to be natural.
The apartment wasn't trashed.
It was... empty. Clean. Sterile.
Too clean.
Bookshelves bare. A plate drying in the sink. Couch cushions perfectly placed. The kind of stillness that didn't come from tidying up—but from someone scrubbing a life away.
Stones looked closer.
No dust. Not a speck.
"Like it was prepped," he muttered. "Sanitized."
Monroe moved cautiously toward the hall. "Allie?"
No answer.
Bedroom empty. Bathroom empty.
Then a sound.
A soft beep.
Stones turned. The microwave.
Not on. Not plugged in.
But beside it, wedged behind a cereal box, blinked a red light.
A tracker.
His stomach dropped.
"No…" he whispered. "They knew we'd come."
He grabbed Monroe just as the kitchen light exploded with a pop of sparks. Smoke hissed from the ceiling. The power died. Darkness crashed in around them.
Then a thud.
Above them.
Stones didn't wait.
He sprinted for the stairwell, Monroe on his heels. Two steps at a time. The door to the roof slammed against the wind as he burst through.
Rain and thunder swallowed them.
And there—near the edge—
A woman. Young. Soaked to the bone. Arms wrapped around herself, shaking.
"Allie?" Stones called out.
She turned, eyes wide and full of panic. "They said you'd come."
"Who?"
"The Circle," she choked. "They said if I gave you the files… they'd take my brother. He's six. He doesn't even know what this is."
"Allie," he said gently, raising both hands. "We can protect him. But I need the files. Do you have them?"
She hesitated.
Then reached into her coat.
A flash drive. Small. Blue. Wrapped in electrical tape.
"I never let it out of my sight," she whispered. "Didn't trust anywhere else."
Stones took a step forward. Rain needled his face. "You did the right thing. Now come away from the edge."
Then—a sound behind them.
Click.
Monroe turned, gun already half-raised.
A man stepped from the stairwell. Clean-cut, broad-shouldered. Late forties. Military posture. Silencer on his pistol.
"Get down!" Monroe shouted.
But Allie screamed—and threw the drive.
Stones lunged.
The shot rang out. Muffled but deadly.
The flash drive hit his chest. He clutched it as the bullet missed and chipped stone behind him.
Monroe fired. The man ducked, fled down the stairs.
"Allie!" Stones turned back
Gone.
Not fallen.
Gone.
He rushed to the edge. Looked down.
She was halfway down the fire escape. Disappearing into the night like smoke.
He stared at the flash drive in his hand.
Proof.
A pulse
A spark in the dark.
---
The precinct lights flickered like they might die again.
Stones sat beside Monroe, hunched over a secure terminal as the flash drive booted up.
Folders opened like a wound. Photo after photo. Names. Numbers. Surveillance logs. Burner accounts. Ghosts with credit scores
People who had paid to vanish.
People who'd been forced to.
Near the bottom one last file.
HOLLOW
Encrypted.
Stones leaned back, heart pounding like war drums in his ears.
"We found the fire," he said, barely above a whisper.
Monroe nodded, face pale in the glow of the screen.
"But now," she said, "we need to walk through it."
---