The first thing they heard was the hiss.
Soft at first—like breath drawn through a narrow aperture—then sharper, faster. The sound crawled across the walls of the operations room, an invisible metronome counting toward something irreversible.
Inside Crestwood PD's nerve center, blue light from a dozen monitors washed every face in cold illumination. The room held its breath.
Anthony Stroud leaned forward on the main table, sleeves rolled up, jaw tensing and releasing like a muscle searching for release. Nia sat to his right, eyes wide but controlled, her nails pressing crescents into the chair's arms. Across the room, Frank stood near the wall, muttering beneath his breath as if words could somehow negotiate with time.
Then the broadcast shifted.
The blur sharpened into a warehouse—concrete walls weeping condensation, shadows clinging to steel beams like something alive. Two women sat bound to chairs at the center, their wrists so tightly cinched that their hands had drained of color entirely. Above them, a metal drum hung suspended by chains, its corroded bottom edge tilting, and inside it a faint green shimmer caught the harsh light.
"Acid," Anthony murmured, the word barely reaching the air. He didn't need confirmation. The rust-stained concrete below told its own story.
Captain Lily Marquez. Rhea Desai.
Both gagged. Both staring upward at the slow, pendulum swing of dissolution.
And between them—motionless as a monument—stood the masked figure.
The mask felt like it could see back.
Triangular, bone-white, its three hollow eyes carved deep—two positioned where human eyes belonged, one gouged into the forehead. Black streaks bled downward from each cavity like drying tar. An inverted spiral wound inward from the edges, drawing the eye toward a smooth, dark center that reflected nothing. Across its surface lay a six-fingered handprint, faint and burned, like evidence of something that had seized it and never released.
Nia's pulse quickened. "We need to—"
"Wait," Anthony said, voice taut as wire. "Let it unfold."
On the side monitor, the darkweb feed scrolled in real time, comments rushing past too quickly to fully parse.
---
[HollowStream // Public Channel]**
@BleakMuse: this is art, you idiots. performance terror.
@NullEcho:** nah man this is real, look at the acid burn marks—no fx can fake that.
@CryptSaint:** same mark as Azaqor killings. same pattern.
@SpiralCultist: the handprint is their sigil. read the Book of Hollows, pg 93.
@LaughingAshes:** DROP THE BATH already
@WatcherZero:Crestwood deserves this. Let it rot.
---
Frank's words came out bitter. "Sick bastards. Treating this like spectacle."
Anthony struck the table. "Where are our responses? We've been sending for fifteen minutes!"
The young officer at the terminal flinched. "Sir, they're not appearing. The feed won't accept uploads."
"Then what is this?" Anthony's voice carried an edge that suggested he already knew the answer.
A quiet voice broke through from the corner.
"I don't think it's live."
All heads turned toward a young woman at a side desk, gray hoodie pulled tight, thick glasses catching the monitor light. Her nameplate read S. Kwon, Cybercrime Division.
"I've been tracing the signal," she said quickly, fingers still moving across her keyboard. "It's pre-rendered. Most of the chat isn't authentic—AI loops cycling through keywords designed to simulate chaos."
Nia frowned. "We've been arguing with machines."
Sofia nodded, not looking up. "Yes. This is theatrical architecture. Whoever built it isn't just a hacker. They're someone who understands narrative, timing, the mechanics of keeping an audience hypnotized."
Anthony exhaled slowly. "Digital theater."
"Exactly. A performance designed so nobody can turn away."
---
The door creaked open. Owen walked in carrying a cardboard tray of coffee, the cups balanced precariously on his palm.
"Caffeine delivery. Thought we could use—"
The tray tilted.
Four cups fell. Coffee splashed across Sofia's setup with the hiss of something dying. Sparks jumped from the wiring. Monitors flickered. Then everything went dark.
Sofia lunged for her keyboard, a sound of raw frustration escaping her. "No, no, no—"
Anthony turned, gripping Owen by the front of his vest. The movement was sharp, controlled violence barely restrained. "You have got to be—"
"It slipped! I'm sorry—" Owen stammered, his face draining of color.
"That was our only trace feed!" Anthony shoved him against the wall. The impact echoed through the room like punctuation.
He released him, breathing hard. For a long moment, no one moved.
Then a groan came from the speakers.
The hourglass on-screen began to pulse crimson. The last grains of sand fell through the narrow neck, a final surrender.
Above the hostages, the chains rattled.
Lily's eyes widened. She screamed into her gag, her body thrashing against the restraints, her chair scraping concrete with a sound like something being dragged toward an edge. Rhea tried to twist away, her chest heaving, tears cutting through the grime on her face.
The masked figure tilted its head slightly, as if listening to something only it could hear.
And then the container tipped.
A torrent of liquid poured downward—not fast, but thorough, inexorable. The sound it made when it met flesh was something worse than any scream—wet, chemical, final. Lily's muffled cries shredded through the speakers. Rhea twisted violently, her voice raw and breaking behind the gag. Smoke rose from where the acid burned through fabric and skin, their bodies convulsing, the chairs rattling against the floor.
In the control room, people turned away.
Nia's hand covered her mouth. Her body shook with something beyond fear.
Frank whispered a prayer that barely left his lips, the words fragmenting before they became sound.
Sofia's hands trembled over the ruined keyboard, her fingers no longer moving, just hovering above the keys like a pianist who'd forgotten the song.
Anthony didn't look away. His eyes remained locked on the screen, his jaw trembling as if the sound was being imprinted into his bones.
When the screams stopped, the silence became a living thing.
---
[Public Stream Chat]
@streamjunkie: this can't be real… right?
@angelcry: I heard them die. Oh God.
@burnitclean:justice served. let it all burn.
@teacherrose:my students saw this live in class. they're crying.
@darkmarketdealer: Azaqor merch dropping soon SpiralMask
---
Across Crestwood, the city shuddered.
Phones dropped from hands. Bars fell silent as though the world had collectively stopped breathing. In the ER, a nurse sank against a wall and began to weep quietly. A diner cook swung his elbow through a mounted screen. A teenage girl locked herself in her room, repeating like a mantra: turn it off, turn it off, turn it off.
But the world didn't turn it off.
The feed lingered on the aftermath—two chairs, two still figures, the space between them empty except for the masked man's shadow. Then the image dissolved into static, that white noise that filled everything.
Out of the black, a new symbol emerged.
A triangle enclosing a spiral of three eyes, each dripping black, a six-fingered hand stretched beneath like something drowning.
Red text formed beneath it, the letters appearing as if carved:
The game ends here. But the rot beneath your walls remains.
Scrape the paint, and you'll find the blood that built your city.
Then it, too, vanished, leaving only darkness.
---
Anthony leaned against the table, his voice stripped raw. "That riddle. I gave that answer. I said the chain leads to what holds the beast down—the corruption underneath. He just… didn't acknowledge it."
Sofia stared at the blank screen, her voice hollow. "Because it didn't matter. It was never a puzzle. It was a sentence."
The room filled with the hum of burnt wires and lingering static.
Then, as if the broadcast itself refused to end, one final flicker came through.
A new video materialized—grainy, handheld, captured from somewhere it shouldn't have been. A paneled office resolved into focus, all dark wood and expensive shadows. On the desk: a golden badge, several framed commendations, and a folder stamped in red: CLASSIFIED – HALVERN OPERATIONS.
Behind the desk sat Chief Slate.
Across from him, in the chair meant for suspects—Mayor Blackwell.
Every head in the room turned toward the screen as if pulled by an invisible thread.
Frank's voice dropped to a whisper. "What are we looking at?"
Nia's response came barely above breath. "Proof. Or bait."
Owen swallowed hard, his adam's apple moving visibly. "Do we… tell the Chief?"
Anthony didn't answer immediately. His gaze remained fixed on the frozen frame, on the faint reflection of that same spiral carved into the surface of the classified folder, that symbol repeating, insisting, embedding itself into every layer of this city.
"No," he said finally, his voice like something breaking. "Not yet."
He straightened, the red light from the screen cutting sharp across his face, leaving half of him in shadow.
"We watch."
The broadcast ended on that still image—the mask gone, but its message hanging in the air like a curse nobody could name, only feel pressing down, waiting to see what breaks first: the city, or the people sworn to protect it.