Embers of Discontent

Liora’s POV

The city’s silence was never real. It was padded—designed. Engineered by noise dampeners, soft lights, filtered speech, and protocols disguised as etiquette. But Liora had long ago trained her ear to hear underneath it. That’s where the real noise lived.

She sat alone in the soundproofed booth of the Channel Eight sub-basement, headphones clamped over her ears. On the console in front of her, the feed pulsed in jagged bursts. Not live coverage. Not a press briefing. Not even pirated satellite news.

This was a tapped frequency. One the station didn’t know she still had access to.

“…confirmed asset rerouted to South Loop. Copy, status green. Over.”

Click. Pause. Click again.

“—not on record. He has no digital signature, not since extraction. I repeat—he’s ghosted.”

Another pause.

Then static.

Liora leaned back, fingers steepled beneath her chin. Someone was moving below the radar, and that someone had the officials whispering like scared children around a campfire.

The last time she’d heard that tone was six months ago—right before the Northside riots were chalked up to a ‘routine zoning miscommunication.’ No journalist dared to follow that thread. But Liora didn’t write to be read anymore.

She wrote to reveal.

Her terminal blinked. A secured message. No sender ID. No subject line.

She hesitated for a breath, then opened it.

Liora, if you’re still listening—check for the voice in Sector Eleven. He’s carrying something louder than words.

No signature. But she knew who it was from. Only one person used riddles as warnings.

Seraphine. The message meant someone was leaking from inside the walls again.

She minimized the window, heart beginning to quicken—not in fear, but anticipation. Her source had gone quiet for weeks. Now she was dropping coordinates like breadcrumbs through a forest of wires.

Liora grabbed her notepad—actual paper—and jotted down:

• Sector Eleven

• Voice = transmission or person?

• Carrying “something louder than words” = evidence? Weapon? Name?

She didn’t know who the voice was yet. But she would. And if the Council was already calling him a ghost, it meant they were scared.

Good.

She rose, shrugging on her coat, shoving the notebook deep into the inside lining where she’d sewn a hidden pocket last year. A relic from her more dangerous days.

Or maybe those days had just come back around.

Before leaving the booth, she reached under the desk and flipped a small switch she’d installed herself. It would start recording the moment she closed the door. Not for the network.

For her.

Just in case.

The hallway outside was quiet—too quiet for a building full of professional talkers. As she passed the main office, she noticed something odd: one of the terminals was still on. Glowing. Open to a surveillance dash she shouldn’t have been able to see.

On the screen, there was a paused frame.

Grainy. Zoomed in.

But the face was clear.

A young man, eyes caught mid-blink. Blurry shoulder. Slight build.

Below the image: Potential courier. Tag incomplete.

Liora didn’t recognize the face.

But something in her gut told her she would.

And when she did… she’d know what the Council wanted buried.