Prelude
Heavy clouds hung low in the sky above a small town, casting a sense of doom over the area. The sound of helicopter blades cut through the air like vultures circling their prey. A flock of reporters gathered at the outskirts of the town, scribbling furiously on their notepads and setting up cameras and microphones. Driven by curiosity, they battled to uncover the truth behind the sudden government quarantine of the town. Meanwhile, officials scoured each building for evidence before emerging with empty hands. Onlookers crowded around the barricaded perimeter, exchanging theories about what could have caused such drastic action. Nearby, a group of gnomes were struggling to repair their damaged news camera, grumbling about an unexplained surge of power that fried it.
As he walked through the deserted town, a F.I.B Agent takes meticulous notes and photographs, trying to make sense of what happened here. He notices strange claw marks on the buildings as if something had tried to break in. Further observations reveal similar markings on the pavement as if something heavy was dragged across it. Did the missing people leave on their own or were they forcefully taken? As he peers through a window, he notices the floor of a car is missing, but there are no signs of disturbance on the ground. All the cars seem to be missing their floors. The lead investigator looks uneasy and deeply worried about the fate of the townspeople who have disappeared without a trace. Some scenes show blood and gore, while others simply show remnants of human presence.
The Lead Detective was known for his elven heritage, evident in his pointed ears and the ring he wore made from a rare moonstone found only in the forests of his homeland. The powers of the ring were said to aid him in locating missing objects or individuals. The Agent couldn’t help but notice the badge made of enchanted wood, most likely passed down through generations of detectives in his family. In response, the Agent pulled out a small leather pouch from their suit pocket and retrieved a card with the name “Jake Wolfe, C.I.A.” printed on it. As they handed it to the Detective, with piercing blue-gray eyes and brown hair, they spoke up.
”Jake.” The agent extended a hand, his eyes still moving over the wreckage behind the detective’s shoulder. “Under any other circumstances I’d say it was a pleasure.” He let his hand drop and finally looked the detective in the face. “Tell me you have something. A theory. Anything.”
”Thirty-one years on the job.” Jake crouched down and picked up a child’s shoe from the gutter, turning it over in his hands. “You think you’ve seen everything.” He set it back down carefully, exactly where he’d found it, as if it mattered. He straightened up and looked at the detective. “My sister lives on Pembrook. Two kids.” He glanced back at the shoe. “I shouldn’t even be here.”
Jake turned slowly, taking in the hollow windows and the front door of a house hanging open on one hinge. A child’s bicycle lay on its side in the yard, one wheel still spinning faintly in the wind. “Thirty-one years,” he said again, almost to himself. He pulled out his phone, turned back to the detective. “My brother-in-law coaches little league. His kids sleep with the light on.” He held up the phone. “You mind if I record this? I want to make sure I don’t miss anything.”
The detective nodded slowly, his gaze drifting somewhere past Jake’s shoulder. “Every house we’ve checked so far,” he said. “Empty. All of them.” He said it like he was still trying to believe it.
“Okay.” Jake clicked the recorder on his phone and held it up between them. “Let’s go over everything again from the top. Walk me through it.” He kept his voice even, deliberate. Somewhere down the block, a door swung on its hinges in the wind.
Jake inquired, “How did you come to know about this town?”
”We received a report of an earthquake,” the detective said. “So they sent me to check it out.” He paused, watching an officer approach from across the street. “As soon as I reported back to dispatch, they mobilized.” The officer reached into his coat and produced a small stack of Polaroids, fanning them out. Jake took them one by one. Each photo showed a different room—a kitchen, a hallway, a child’s bedroom—and in each one, the word RAGCOM had been written on the walls or floors in something dark and dried. No bodies. No sign of struggle. Just the word, and the absence of everyone who had lived there. Jake handed them back without a word. The detective’s moonstone ring pulsed once with a faint blue light, and the detective’s eyes swept the street. Nothing moved. At the far end of the block, the rest of the search party materialized slowly out of the haze, their flashlight beams swinging low across the pavement.
A small team followed behind them, flashlight beams swinging low across the pavement. They picked their way through the debris in silence, broken only by the occasional crunch of glass underfoot and the distant creak of a settling structure. Then something gave way above them—a low, resonant groan from deep inside the building, the kind of sound a thing makes just before it stops holding on. The crack that followed was enormous, a single sharp report that rolled down the empty street like a gunshot. Then the wall came down: first a cascade of loose brick, then whole sections of facade peeling away in slow, massive slabs, the dust blooming outward in a white curtain that swallowed the beam of every flashlight at once.
The officers moved through the rubble in silence, flashlight beams sweeping low across broken concrete and twisted rebar. Dust still billowed in slow curtains through the air, settling on their shoulders and coating the backs of their throats with something chalky and bitter. Then one of them stopped. His light had caught something—a color that didn’t belong, pale against the grey. He called out and the others converged, holstering their lights and pulling at the debris with their hands, tossing chunks of plaster and splintered wood aside until the shape underneath became unmistakable: a boy, knees drawn to his chest, one arm folded under his head as if he had simply lain down to sleep there.
He was a teenager, sixteen at most, with a face so caked in grey dust and dried blood that it was hard to read his features at first. One of the officers got a hand under his shoulders and another took his legs, and they moved carefully, calling out to each other in low voices. His breathing was there—shallow, with a faint catch at the top of each inhale, but there. Someone said “he’s breathing” and the words passed down the line, and one of the officers turned away for a moment, pressing the back of his wrist to his mouth.
Jake crouched beside the boy, pressing two fingers to the side of his neck. The pulse was there—thin, reedy, but there. He pulled back the boy’s eyelid with his thumb and checked the other. “We need to move him now.” He looked up at the detective. “My car’s half a block up. I can have him at the hospital in ten minutes. You got a better option?”
The detective scanned the street in both directions—no ambulances, no medics, nothing. He looked back at Jake and then bent down without another word, working his arms under the boy and lifting him against his chest. “You drive,” he said. He was already moving, the boy’s head lolling against his shoulder, one arm hanging loose. His boots crunched through the grit and broken glass as he broke into a run. “Go,” he called back. “Go.”
Detective Bilodeau stood there a moment, jaw working like he had more to say and couldn’t find it. He looked down at the boy, then back at Jake. “Go,” he said finally. “We’ve got it here.” He turned away before Jake had even reached the car, already raising a hand to flag down the nearest officer. “Keep looking,” he called out, his voice carrying flat and even down the empty street. “Every house. Every room.”
Jake got in and pulled the door shut. The boy’s breathing was audible from the backseat—that same shallow catch at the top of each inhale. On the passenger seat sat a manila folder, its edges soft with handling. Jake flipped it open against the steering wheel. A photograph. The boy, younger, cleaner, but unmistakably the same face—same jaw, same brow. Jake looked at it for a long moment, then at the rearview mirror, then back at the road. “I got him, Nate,” he said quietly, to no one in the car. He turned away from the hospital at the intersection without slowing down.
