Saknad

Elena

The night swallowed the city in a deep, inky chill, and the streets of Stockholm were hushed under a blanket of quiet. Elena a young girl, no older than eighteen, descended the cracked stone steps into the Slussen train station, eyes glued to the glow of her phone. The blue light illuminated her face, casting sharp shadows across her high cheekbones and brushing over the strands of her dark hair. She didn't notice the echo of her footsteps bouncing off the tiled walls or the way the fluorescent lights flickered, struggling against their age.

The platform was empty, a cavern of silence broken only by the soft drip of a leaking pipe. She sat on a splintered wooden bench, shifting her weight without looking up. Her fingers moved in quick swipes, her eyes locked on a social feed filled with snapshots of other people's lives. The sound of an approaching train hummed through the walls, a deep vibration that swelled and pulsed until a sleek, silver metro pulled in, its polished body catching the dim light like liquid mercury.

The doors slid open soundlessly. Without glancing away from her phone, she stepped inside, the soles of her sneakers tapping lightly against the metallic floor. The doors closed behind her with a quiet finality. She didn't notice that the seats were all empty or that the silence felt deeper now, more suffocating. The train slid away from the platform and into the dark.