Chapter Text
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An illness had befallen his city.
It wasn’t an invisible one either. Hell, it wasn’t even particularly silent nor subtle. But it did like to hide.
It liked to hide in shadows, or under the dim twinkle of starlight. He’d seen it lurking in empty shops or alleys, watched it bleed slowly into the daily life of his people, as though it belonged there. It sat in silent corners and under the skins of innocent old ladies. It kept quiet, gave no sign it was even there at all, until one day…
Like a snake slithering through the cracks of a forgotten house, this parasite wrapped itself around the very bones of New York. The symptoms, at first, were so harmless—an odd cough, a slight weight in the chest, a missing family member, an odd shape in the dark—that no one thought twice of it. It was easy to ignore. Easy to dismiss as just another passing season, yet another crime, like a chill wind or the fog that crept through the streets at dawn. But like any ailment, it had its own rhythm, its own way of spreading, and it knew just how to work in silence.
It bloomed when the sun set, when the world dimmed into the hues of twilight. In the quiet, it had a way of whispering into the ear of the vulnerable, coaxing them into surrender. People could feel its weight, but they didn’t know what it was. They didn't know it was growing inside them, like an itch spreading beneath the skin. Soon, it was everywhere, moving from the alleyways to the main streets, from shopfronts to homes, until no one was left untouched. The city itself had become a host, a perfect vessel for an infection that had no need for an introduction.
His office was swallowed by darkness, the silence thick and oppressive. It was long past midnight—too early for the facility’s occupants to stir. But not for him. He hadn’t been able to sleep all night.
Somewhere down the hall, a distant air conditioner hummed the lonely night away. The space was large, abandoned at this time of night, save for a single figure standing motionless in the center. His silhouette was barely discernible, a man obscured by the absence of light.
Above him, the cold glow of a large digital map flickered on the wall, its shifting patterns of data casting an eerie blue light that outlined the edges of his form. The map pulsed intermittently, almost alive, as if it held secrets only it could decipher. His face remained hidden in the darkness, but his presence was undeniable, like a quiet force pressing against the stillness of the room and all that lay beyond it.
From this map, a hundred tiny red pin pricks gleamed in his eyes, their eerie glow slicing through the darkness; the only light in the room. They cast a long, unnatural shadow behind him. Each of them signified the last known hideout of one of *them*— ‘Strange and unexplainable disappearances’, the media called them.
But he knew the truth.
He’d seen it happen all too often; a celebrity goes missing one day, and in the next week, another one of those horrible creatures showed up in his streets. And yet no one out there had made the connection.
No one, except for him.
But he wasn’t going to sit back and watch this plague rot his home away, like everyone else. No, he would find it, wherever it was hiding now. He would trace it all the way back to the root, and tear it out. One infected cell at a time, if he had to.
The sound of faint rhythmic footsteps echoed softly through the hall behind him, but he didn’t bother to turn. He had no need to. He could feel the tension in the air, the quick, nervous clatter of shoes on frigid, spotless tiles. That could be only one person, and it could mean only one thing. Good news, he thought, was near. And sure enough;
“Specimen P is in position, sir.”
A crooked smirk tugged at his lips, revealing a set of perfectly straight, if not slightly yellowing teeth.
Excellent.
Soon, this city—his city—would be free of infestation.
Soon, there would be nothing left to fear.
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