Welcome To The Northcrest.

Northcrest, November 3rd, 1962

6:12 PM

The wind rolled low through the city like it was dragging chains.

Northcrest was gray that evening—gray sky, gray concrete, gray breath spilling from mouths too tired to complain. The sun hadn’t gone down yet, but nobody looked up. Streetlamps blinked to life early, flickering like nerves on edge. The city didn’t feel alive. It felt haunted.

On paper, Northcrest was thriving.

The mayor—a tall, always-smiling man named Walter Penbrook—had said as much on the radio just hours earlier. His voice was bright. Rehearsed. “This is a city of innovation,” he said. “Of structure. Of hope.”

But the people on Grayson Boulevard weren’t listening. Not anymore.

Grayson used to be the jewel of downtown—clean storefronts, curved balconies, jazz from open doors. Now it was a street of ghosts. Pawn shops. Boarded cafés. Posters peeling off walls. A woman coughed into her sleeve and kept walking, past a flickering lamppost and the chalk outline still etched faintly on the sidewalk.

Across town, things looked better—on the surface.

Glenmere Heights glimmered behind glass and brushed metal. W.H.O. banners hung from government buildings in proud navy and silver. Drones floated lazily above intersections, tracking movement, measuring silence. In Ellison Green Park, a family posed by the fountain while officials in pressed uniforms stood just out of frame.

They didn’t see the man sleeping on a bench behind the bushes. Or maybe they did—and just moved the shot.

Every corner of Northcrest had its place. Its illusion.

The west side still stank of factory soot and wet rust—Marrow Row, where the steel never stopped screaming. Smog blackened the windows. Even the stray dogs looked tired. But deeper into the city, Stonebridge South buzzed with smugglers and late-night deliveries. Nobody asked questions there. Nobody liked the answers.

And then there was Fallow End—a name spoken like a curse.

Fallow was the graveyard of old projects: shattered apartments, cracked roads, and whispers in the stairwells. Kids vanished there. Gangs ruled the rooftops. Even cops walked faster through it. And yet, candles still burned in some windows. People still fought to live, even in a place already condemned.

W.H.O. claimed they were fixing it all.

Billboards said so: STRENGTH THROUGH STRUCTURE.

The mayor said it on repeat: “We are not afraid of the future.”

But the alleys said otherwise. So did the missing posters. The empty phone booths. The news that never made it past the editorial desk.

It was the year of silence.

Three assassinations in eleven months. Eight disappearances tied to “unrest.” One police precinct locked down from the inside—and never reopened. The official report said power failure. People knew better.

At 6:17 PM, in the heart of Charter Hill, a girl in a yellow coat stood alone at a bus stop. The bus didn’t come. It hadn’t for three nights.

Above her, the sky began to darken. Streetlights buzzed faintly. Far off, somewhere behind the clouds, the low hum of a distant engine whispered across the rooftops—too slow to be a plane, too steady to be wind.

She didn’t notice it. Nobody did.

But someone else did.

Not the mayor. Not W.H.O.

Someone off the record. Off the system. Off the grid.

The kind of person who only shows up when the plan breaks.

He wasn’t in the light yet.

But he was already here.

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