The darkness didn't just sit there; it pulsed. Jay stood perfectly still, his thumb tracing the edge of the leather notebook.
He could hear his own heartbeat, a slow, steady rhythm that felt out of place in the sudden silence of the View District.
The metallic scent grew cloying, like pennies dissolving in acid. Then, a voice drifted through the air. It wasn't a human voice—it sounded like two stones grinding together, layered over a wet whistle.
"Jay..."
He didn't jump. He didn't even draw his gun. "Using my name is a bit cliché, don't you think? We haven't even been introduced."
A figure bled out of the shadows. It was taller than a man, its limbs elongated and jointed in ways that defied anatomy. It wore a tattered coat that looked less like fabric and more like molted skin. Where a face should have been, there was only a smooth, pale surface for a vertical slit that ran from the forehead to the chin.
The slit twitched. "You... are different. The others are full of noise. You are... quiet."
"I get that a lot," Jay said, his voice terrifyingly nonchalant. He took a step forward, his eyes tracking the way the creature's 'skin' rippled.
"Is that why you opened Jake up? Looking for noise? You're going to be disappointed. He was mostly made of caffeine and bad jokes."
The entity lunged. It moved with a sickening, liquid speed.
Jay dropped low, rolling across the damp asphalt as a pale limb slammed into the brick wall behind him, shattering the masonry.
Jay scrambled up, pulling a heavy, custom-made flare gun from his belt—not VPD issue.
He fired.
The phosphorus round ignited, bathing the alley in a violent, blinding white light. The creature shrieked, a sound that bypassed the ears and vibrated directly in the marrow of Jay's bones.
It dissolved back into the shadows, the light seemingly burning its very edges.
Jay stood in the fading glow of the flare, breathing hard.
He looked down at his hand; it was shaking, but not from fear. It was adrenaline, a chemical high he'd been suppressing for years.
The next morning, the VPD bullpen was a hive of nervous energy. Rumors of the "Alleyway Flash" were already spreading. Jay strolled in three hours late, his shirt untucked and his hair a bird's nest.
"You look like hell, Jay," Sarah said, intercepting him near the coffee machine. She was holding a file, her knuckles white.
"The moon was bright. Couldn't sleep," Jay muttered, reaching for a sugar packet.
Sarah stepped closer, her voice a sharp whisper. "The Sergeant is looking for you. He found out you were at the scene last night after the cleaners left. And Jay... I ran the scrap of metal you 'forgot' to turn in. The one I saw you pick up at Jake's scene."
Jay froze, the sugar packet halfway torn. He looked at her, his suspicious eyes narrowing. "And?"
"It's not metal," she whispered, looking around to ensure no one was listening. "It's bone. But the mineral density is off the charts. It's like it was grown in a vacuum. What are you involved in?"
Jay leaned in, his face inches from hers. He could see the faint tremor in her eyelashes. He knew he was supposed to be the "ugly" one of the department—the weirdo in the corner—but the way Sarah's breath hitched told a different story.
"I'm involved in a murder investigation, Sarah. One that's going to get a lot bloodier if people keep asking the wrong questions."
"I'm not people," she snapped. "I'm the one who can prove what killed Jake wasn't a man."
Jay's nonchalant mask slipped for a fraction of a second, revealing a predator underneath. "Then keep that file locked. If the Sarge sees it, you won't just lose your job. You'll end up like Jake."
He turned and walked toward the Sergeant's office, leaving the coffee untouched. He needed to find Silas again. If the entity was "harvesting," it had a larder somewhere.
And Jay had a feeling that Jake's stomach wasn't the only thing it had emptied.
As he walked, he felt the weight of the leather notebook in his pocket. He hadn't told anyone the truth: the sketches inside weren't just observations. They were memories.
The Sergeant's office smelled of stale cigars and failure. He didn't look up as Jay slumped into the chair opposite him.
"You're a ghost, Jay," the Sergeant said, staring at a stack of mounting cold case files. "You show up when you want, you don't file reports, and now you're tampering with crime scenes. I should have your badge on my desk by noon."
Jay kicked his feet up on the edge of the mahogany table, ignoring the Sergeant's growl. "If you take the badge, I stop being a cop. If I stop being a cop, I stop caring about the rules. Trust me, Sarge, you want me on the side that at least pretends to have a leash."
The Sergeant looked at him, truly looked at him, and for the first time, he saw the hollow depth in Jay's eyes.
It wasn't laziness; it was the look of someone who had seen the bottom of the world and decided to move in. "Get out. Find whoever did that to Jake, or don't bother coming back."
Jay didn't need to be told twice.
He headed for the View District's industrial sector—a graveyard of rusted warehouses and forgotten shipping containers. This was where Silas usually hid when the world got too loud. Jay found him tucked inside a hollowed-out boiler behind an old textile mill.
"It's getting hungry again, isn't it?" Silas croaked, his eyes darting to the shadows behind Jay.
"It spoke to me, Silas," Jay said, leaning against the cold iron of the boiler. "It said I was 'quiet.' What does that mean?"
Silas began to rock back and forth. "It feeds on the noise. The soul-noise. Fear, regret, anger... it drinks it. But you... you're empty, aren't you? You're a hollow man, Detective. It doesn't want to kill you; it wants to use you as a vessel. A straw to drink the rest of us."
Jay reached out and grabbed Silas by the collar, pulling him close. "Where is it staying? I saw the way it moved. It doesn't like the light, but it needs a place to store what it takes."
"The old subway junction," Silas whimpered. "The one they walled up in the seventies. Underneath the cathedral. It's damp, dark, and the echoes never leave."
Jay dropped him and turned to go.
"Detective!" Silas called out. "Why do you do it? Why do you act like you don't care when you're the only one hunting it?"
Jay paused, his silhouette framed by the dying evening light. "Because if I admit I care, I have to admit I'm afraid. And I promised myself a long time ago I'd never be afraid of the dark again."
He spent the next few hours prepping. He didn't go back to the VPD. He went to his apartment—a minimalist, sterile box that looked like no one lived there. He pulled a floorboard up near his bed, revealing a stash of equipment the department didn't know existed.
He caught his reflection in the hallway mirror. He looked haggard. His skin was pale, his hair a mess, and his eyes were rimmed with red. He looked exactly like the kind of person a woman would cross the street to avoid.
He didn't know that Sarah was currently sitting at her desk, staring at his personnel file, wondering why a man so objectively striking looked so much like a car crash.
He arrived at the cathedral at midnight. The basement was a labyrinth of stone and dripping pipes. He found the bricked-up wall Silas had mentioned. It wasn't just broken; it looked like it had melted.
Jay stepped into the darkness of the old junction. The smell of copper was overwhelming here. He clicked on his flashlight.
The beam hit the ceiling.
Dozens of "shards" hung from the rafters by translucent threads. They weren't shards of metal. They were human organs, preserved in some kind of shimmering fluid, pulsing with a faint, rhythmic light. Each one was a "noise" the entity had harvested.
And in the center of the room, a heart was suspended in a glass-like orb, still twitching as if it were trying to beat its way back to a body.
"I told you," the grinding voice echoed from the corners of the room. "You are quiet. Help me fill the silence, Jay."
Jay didn't reach for his gun. He reached for the jagged blade. "I think I'll just make you scream instead. That's plenty of noise, right?"
The shadows began to rise.