Vanished

Jessica paced the length of her office, phone clutched in her hand. The same unanswered call, the same empty voicemail greeting.

"Sam, it’s me. Call me back. Now."

She ended the call and tossed the phone onto her desk with more force than necessary. Leanna and Olivia sat nearby, their expressions mirroring the concern Jessica refused to voice.

"It’s been twelve hours," Olivia finally said. "Are we calling this a disappearance yet?"

Jessica sighed forcefully, running a hand through her hair. "He wouldn’t just vanish. He was supposed to meet me last night, and then… nothing. No calls, no messages. His place was empty when I checked this morning."

Leanna leaned forward, her gaze sharp. "And you think this is Vanguard?"

Jessica hesitated. A part of her wanted to believe it was anything else—an unexpected assignment, a family emergency, even Sam getting cold feet. But the pit in her stomach told her otherwise.

"I don’t believe in coincidences," Jessica muttered. "Not with everything happening around this case."

Olivia tapped away at her laptop. "I’ll see if I can find any activity on his badge—if he’s been anywhere official in the last 24 hours, I’ll know."

Leanna glanced at Jessica. "And us?"

Jessica grabbed her jacket. "We start looking."

---

The police station was unusually quiet when Jessica arrived. The fluorescent lights gave the room a sterile, detached feel. She approached the front desk, her expression unreadable.

"Detective Holden?" she asked, keeping her voice even.

The officer behind the desk frowned, tapping at his computer. "Haven’t seen him since yesterday afternoon. He was supposed to check in for the night shift, but never showed. Didn’t call in sick either."

Jessica nodded, suppressing the growing unease creeping up her spine. "Did anyone look into it?"

The officer shrugged. "Happens sometimes. Cops need a break too."

Jessica clenched her jaw. Sam was many things, but unreliable wasn’t one of them.

---

By midday, Jessica and Leanna had retraced Sam’s last known movements. His car was still in the station parking lot, untouched. His apartment was exactly as Jessica had left it earlier that morning. There were no signs of struggle, no signs of packing for a sudden trip. It was as if he had stepped out into the night and simply ceased to exist.

Back at the office, Olivia met them with grim news.

"No badge activity. No credit card use. No phone signal. It’s like he was wiped off the map."

Jessica exhaled, hands on her hips. "That’s not possible."

"Unless someone wanted it to be," Leanna said darkly.

The three women exchanged looks. They had seen this before. This wasn’t someone running away. This was someone being taken.

And Jessica knew exactly who would do it.

---

Night fell over Belize, but Jessica didn’t sleep. She sat at the edge of her bed, staring at the whiskey in her hand. The taste was sharp and bitter, a distraction from the gnawing worry she refused to name.

Leanna appeared in the doorway, arms crossed. "You’re spiraling."

Jessica chuckled humorlessly. "Maybe. But tell me I’m wrong."

Leanna sighed, stepping inside. "You’re not. But drowning yourself in this isn’t going to bring him back."

Jessica ran a hand over her face. "I should have seen this coming. Every time I think I can have something good, Vanguard takes it away."

Leanna sat beside her, quiet for a long moment. "We’re going to find him, Jess."

Jessica turned, finally meeting Leanna’s gaze. "And if we don’t?"

Leanna didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

Jessica downed the rest of her drink and stood. "Then we burn them to the ground."

---

As Jessica and the team dove deeper into the search for Sam, she continued to wrestle with the fundamental question of her own existence. Every step closer to the facility of living ghosts pulls her further into the labyrinth of Vanguard’s designs. The realization creeped into her mind, how much of her choices are truly hers? How much of her past was dictated by forces she barely understood?

She found comfort in the works of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Sartre, clinging to the idea that she must define herself rather than be dictated by an unknown architect. Still, there is no escaping the underlying fear: Is she real? Or merely another iteration of an experiment repeated countless times?

But amid the chaos, there is one thing she knows is hers. Her love for her friends. And her love for Sam.

As the weight of Vanguard’s shadow presses down on her, Jessica finally accepts a hard truth—she may never know the full story of her past. But the person she is now? That, at least, belongs to her alone.