Disappearances

Book 1: Disappearances

In a city built on stability, people don't vanish.

The Virtue Index governs nearly every aspect of civic life. Citizens wear bands that track participation, compliance, and reliability. The system rewards cooperation, encourages order, and promises a society free from chaos. With record-high trust and record-low disruption, most people believe the system is working exactly as intended.

Timok Varin has never had reason to doubt it.

As an emergency medical responder, he moves through the city's hidden corners-apartments, transit corridors, hospitals, and quiet neighborhoods where the system's policies become real consequences. His job is simple: answer the call, stabilize the patient, transport, and close the report.

Until the reports begin to show something impossible.

A patient record that never existed.
Case files that close themselves.
Dispatch logs that contain identical administrative phrases across unrelated incidents.
And a pattern that suggests some calls are being resolved long before responders arrive.

At first, the discrepancies seem like minor system delays-nothing unusual in a massive civic network. But the deeper Timok searches, the clearer the pattern becomes.

Certain cases disappear from the system.

As Timok quietly begins documenting the irregularities, he realizes something far more troubling than a technical malfunction. The Virtue Index may not simply be measuring behavior-it may be deciding which lives are worth stabilizing and which ones can quietly fall outside the system.

The official records say the city has never been safer.

But Timok is starting to see the gaps where people used to be.

And someone-or something-is making sure no one notices.