Part 69
(Alex's POV)
The city felt too still.
At first, Alex thought it was a glitch — the absence of new photos, the sudden stop in fan chatter, the empty tag feeds that had once pulsed with his name every hour.
But the silence lasted.
One day. Then two. Then five.
She refreshed every platform, every forum, every familiar corner of the web.
Nothing.
No interviews. No sightings. No candid photos.
Not even a mention from the staff who usually trailed him.
He wouldn't just disappear, she told herself. He always leaves traces.
Alex sat at her desk, the city's hum seeping through the thin glass.
The coffee beside her had gone cold hours ago.
She clicked through old videos, old images — places she knew, streets she'd walked. Trying to find something she missed.
But it wasn't there.
The pattern had broken.
She minimized the screen, stood, and went to the window.
Below, life moved as usual — buses, lights, people. Everything but him.
A strange ache settled behind her ribs.
She wasn't angry. Not yet.
She was… unmoored.
Where did you go?
She turned the question over and over, the way one studies a puzzle missing a single piece.
He couldn't have gone far.
People like him didn't vanish — they were too visible, too watched.
Unless he'd learned from her.
The thought made her chest tighten. A faint, involuntary smile crossed her lips — admiration tangled with something darker.
You finally learned how to hide.
But the silence wouldn't last. It never did.
Patterns broke only to reform somewhere else.
The world was immense, yet she held on to the belief that he existed somewhere inside it.And she had time.
You can run, Adrian, she whispered to the empty room. But I've always been better at finding.