Elena Rivera learned early how to disappear without leaving a room.
It started long before Lumina Media, before Ravenport, before the island that swallowed sound. It started with small disappearances—not correcting people when they mispronounced her name, not taking up space on buses, not asking for help even when her chest felt like it might cave in.
By the time Victor Hale noticed her, she was already practiced.
That was why he chose her.
Elena remembered the first invitation clearly.
Not the words—those blurred together now—but the feeling. The way the room had seemed to tilt toward her when Hale spoke. The way everyone else faded, just slightly, as if she had stepped into a brighter light.
"You have potential," he had said, smiling in that careful way. "You just need guidance."
Guidance felt like safety.
At first.
Lydia sat cross-legged on her apartment floor, Elena's voice playing softly from a recorder she hadn't remembered turning on. The audio crackled, uneven, like it had been captured accidentally.
"I didn't think it was wrong," Elena's voice said. "That's the part people don't understand. It didn't feel violent. It felt… inevitable."
Lydia closed her eyes.
Elena had agreed to meet only once, briefly, in a café near the docks. She'd sat with her back to the wall, hands wrapped tightly around a chipped mug, eyes darting every time the bell over the door rang.
"I thought if I did everything right," Elena had whispered, "I'd be safe."
The memories came in fragments.
Havenwood first.
A mansion perched above the sea, all glass and stone and endless white corridors. Elena remembered the way sound disappeared there, swallowed by thick carpets and high ceilings. How laughter never echoed.
Victor Hale had walked her through the house himself.
"You're protected here," he told her. "From distractions. From mistakes."
She had believed him.
The rules came slowly. Softly.
Who she could talk to. When she could leave. What she could wear. What she could remember.
"You're special," he would say whenever she hesitated. "Not everyone gets this opportunity."
And when she cried—quietly, apologetically—he would sigh, disappointed.
"I thought you were stronger."
Lydia paused the recording, nausea rolling through her.
She'd seen that room on Seabreeze. The mirror. The chair.
Elena's voice continued when Lydia pressed play again.
"They make you look at yourself," Elena said. "Until you stop recognizing who you were before."
The sessions weren't always physical. That was the cruelty of it. Sometimes they were conversations that went on too long, questions that circled endlessly until Elena answered the way he wanted. Sometimes they were silence—hours of it—until guilt filled the space completely.
Power didn't need to shout.
It waited.
Seabreeze came later.
"They said it was a retreat," Elena murmured. "A place to reset."
The island felt wrong the moment she arrived. Too quiet. Too isolated. The forest pressed in, the air heavy with something she couldn't name.
The lodge rooms were small. Identical.
"No mirrors," she remembered thinking at first.
Then she found the one room that had nothing but mirrors.
"They wanted to see when I broke," Elena said. "Not loudly. Just… inside."
She stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. Stopped resisting.
And when she finally begged to leave, Hale only tilted his head.
"You're confusing fear with clarity," he said. "This is growth."
Lydia's hands shook as she set the recorder down.
Her phone buzzed.
A notification from Lumina's internal system.
Mandatory meeting scheduled. Compliance review.
She stared at the screen.
They were closing in.
That night, Lydia dreamed of the mirror room.
She sat in the chair, unable to move, her reflection staring back at her with Elena's eyes. The glass began to crack—not shatter, just fracture slowly, lines spreading like veins.
From behind the mirror, something knocked.
Once.
Twice.
She woke gasping, her apartment dark and silent.
Her phone lit up again.
A text from Sera.
They're erasing names. Elena's file is gone. So are three others.
Lydia typed back with trembling fingers.
Where is Elena now?
The reply came after a long pause.
Nowhere safe.
The next morning, Lydia returned to Lumina with a new understanding.
This wasn't about exposing a man.
It was about rescuing voices before they vanished completely.
As she passed the portrait in the lobby again, she noticed something new.
A faint crack in the glass.
Barely visible.
But spreading.