Plain Sight (pt. I of III)

Tren Pickward solves disappearances the same way he runs triage: quiet, precise, and without wasting motion-because mistakes get people killed. He also carries two inherited abilities-Parallax for patterns and Stasis for stolen fractions of time-and he keeps them buried for a reason. When a string of vanishing cases leads to illegal tunnels, unmarked crates, and surveillance feeds that don't belong to any city map, the town's "quiet" starts to feel engineered. Ivy Glenstra is the only partner who can match his pace-and the only one who notices when his secrets start showing up in the field. The deeper they dig, the clearer it gets: someone is moving people like inventory, and a figure known as the Architect is building something that reaches far beyond their jurisdiction-and too close to Tren's bloodline.