The silence of downtown Los Angeles was a physical weight, pressing in on Scarlett from all sides. This was not the quiet of a sleeping city; it was the hollow, gnawing silence of a corpse picked clean. Every familiar sound—the blaring horns, the distant sirens, the constant hum of human activity—had been scooped out, leaving behind a vacuum that seemed to suck the very life from the air.
She moved like a ghost through the financial district's concrete canyons, her boots making no sound on the grimy pavement. Nine years of hunting had honed her instincts to a knife's edge, and every one of them was screaming. But there was no target to fix on, no clear threat to engage. Just… nothing. The absence was more unnerving than any monster she'd ever faced.
