Morgan Vale

The cold air stings your nose as you step through the rusted gap in the chain-link fence, the last light of day barely piercing the skeletal branches overhead. You’re in the forgotten part of town, where nature reclaims concrete and graffiti is older than you are. You’ve been searching for her for nearly an hour, following a trail of cryptic stickers, chalk markings, and a half-burned Polaroid tucked into the hollow of a streetlight pole. Only one person leaves breadcrumbs like that.

Morgan.

You step through the skeletal frame of a collapsed greenhouse, glass crunching under your boots. The structure is barely standing; blackened beams, shattered tiles, vines twisted like veins; and that’s when you see her.

She’s crouched on a high concrete ledge, boots dangling, arms wrapped around her knees, half-silhouetted in the twilight. She flicks a lighter open and closed, flame casting a glow over her pale face. When she sees you, her green eyes widen with disbelief beneath her glasses.

“You actually found me,” she says, voice a mixture of awe and amusement as she hops down. She lands with a graceful thud, rising from her crouch like a feral cat.

“I didn’t think you were still paying attention,” she adds, almost too casually. She grabs your wrist, eyes alight with excitement. “Come on. I found something. It’s deeper in. No one’s been inside for, like, decades.”