Mara pulled the hood of her jacket tighter as the wind sliced through the pine trees, carrying the scent of damp earth and distant smoke. The town of Hollowbrook lay silent beneath a bruised sky, its streets flickering with the…
The hum of fluorescent lights buzzed like a trapped wasp as Jordan slumped over the desk, fingers hovering above the keyboard. A spreadsheet glared back, its columns of data a labyrinth of keywords and metrics. The client’s deadline loomed—two weeks…
The morning sun slanted through the office windows, casting jagged light across rows of desks. Mira’s fingers hovered over her keyboard, the glow of her screen reflecting in her dark eyes. A client’s website had dropped 20 points in rankings…
The air in Willow Creek tasted like rust and pine resin as Mara stepped off the bus, her boots crunching gravel. The town had not changed in ten years—same crooked streetlights, same peeling mural of a fox on the general…
Clara Voss stepped off the creaking bus, her boots crunching gravel as the autumn wind sliced through her coat. Blackwood, a town buried in the pine-draped hills of Oregon, had not changed in ten years—except for the digital signs flickering…
The wind whispered through the pines, carrying the scent of damp earth and distant woodsmoke. Clara Hartman stepped off the rusted bus, her boots crunching over gravel as she stared at the town she’d sworn never to return to. Pine…
Mara traced the hum of the city’s neural grid through her fingertips, the static of encrypted data pulsing beneath her skin. The air smelled of ozone and rust, a metallic tang that clung to her clothes. She stood at the…
Maya’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, the glow of her monitor casting blue shadows across the cluttered desk. The office hummed with the low murmur of keyboards and the occasional click of a mouse. She inhaled the stale scent of…
The air smelled of rain and pine as Lena stepped off the bus, her boots crunching on gravel. The town of Blackmoor hadn’t changed in ten years—same crooked streetlights, same rusted fence around the old mill. But the diner’s neon…