Rise of us

Prologue: Missing Faces

It just didn't make proper sense to anyone.

Why- or better yet how- the hell did two teenagers just...

Disappear? Without a trace?

They didn't even bring their phones.

The search parties found nothing. Not a damn thing.

Harlee Vance. Female. Hazel eyes, long dark brown hair, athletic hourglass build. 15 years old. Sophomore in the local high school. Very popular amongst the boys and girls.

Keirsten Miller. Non Binary AFAB. Blue eyes, glasses, shaved head, light tan hair, slim build. 15 years old. Sophomore in the local high school. Considered a nerd amongst the students there.

The whole town was in a frenzy, throwing up half baked stories of murderers or human-eating forest creatures and even one story of a satanic cult that sacrificed the two in the middle of the night.

Still, if any of those stories were true then surely, surely, there would've been at least 1 piece of evidence other than their camp, which seems mostly undisturbed, save for the messy sleeping bags.

There would've been blood or bodies or something if this were a murder. There would've been bones or hair if something really did eat them. And there would've been a ritual site if the satanic cult story was real.

The fact that two people, human beings with lives and families and friends, could just...disappear like that made everyone terrified. Or at least uneasy.

Detective Jones, the main investigator for their case, was just stumped. Maybe it was a murder and the murderer was inhumanly good at hiding bodies? Maybe...

"Jones!" Snapped Shelby, the secretary. "You have another call, it's from the Miller's."

"Again?"

"You're the chief detective assigned to solve the case of their missing child, Jones! Do you really blame them for having questions?"

"Fine, put them through."

The whole town was in a frenzy. Everyone has chills and everyone is wary of everyone. Jones felt the weight of the world on his chest. Or at least the weight of the town and the two families whose lives have been turned upside down in just one day.

Just one day. One day is all it took for everything for the Miller's and Vance's lives to change, for everyone to be wary of every bump in the night, for him to have this migraine trying to figure out what the hell was happening.

It just didn't make sense.