Disappearances are easier to manage.

Badges can be logged when they belong to people with files.

Credentials archived.

Timelines compressed into bullet points.

Mara Kline and Alan Rourke did not vanish loudly.

They were processed... Recorded... and teleported...

The static breathes, like air moving through a large space.

Something sinister has arrive.

The signal lab was never meant for comfort.

It sat below the city’s surface,

beneath offices and storage rooms,

past the maintenance corridors where sound softened

and the air lost its warmth.

The room was narrow, concrete on all sides,

lined with equipment older than its schematics—

metal racks humming steadily,

screens glowing in colors meant only for trained eyes,

cables layered along the walls like exposed veins.

There were no windows.

There was no clock.

Time was measured here by repetition—

by waveforms rising and falling,

by patterns that either resolved…

or refused to.