The rain over Karvonia did not fall so much as it clung to the air, a perpetual mist that blurred the line between sky and the stained concrete towers of Novistrana. Elena Pearson stepped out of the central train station and into a city that seemed to exhale diesel fumes and resignation in equal measure. She had been traveling for thirty-one hours, her body aching from the narrow seat of a second-class carriage, but the exhaustion was a distant throb compared to the cold knot that had taken up residence in her chest six days ago, when Leo's messages stopped.
The last text still glowed in her memory. *Wish you could see this place. It's like the world forgot it existed. I'll call tomorrow.*
Tomorrow had come and gone six times.
She adjusted the strap of her bag and scanned the square. An old Soviet-era tram groaned along rusted tracks. Vendors huddled under plastic sheeting, selling cigarettes and baked dough. The faces around her were drawn, closed, accustomed to looking past strangers rather than at them. Elena felt the weight of their indifference settle on her shoulders like the rain.
The police headquarters sat at the end of a wide boulevard, a brutalist slab of concrete that had probably looked oppressive even on the day it was built. Inside, the fluorescent lights hummed and flickered, casting a jaundiced pallor over the waiting area. A woman behind a glass partition barely glanced up when Elena approached.
"I need to report a missing person," Elena said. "My brother. He's American. His name is Leo Pearson."
The woman's expression did not change. She slid a clipboard through a slot in the glass. "Form 37-B. Fill all sections. Use black ink."
"Is there someone I can speak with directly?"
"Form 37-B."
Elena took the clipboard and sat on a plastic chair bolted to the floor. The form was in Karvonian, a Slavic tongue she could not read beyond basic greetings. She filled in what she could, guessing at the fields, and returned it to the window. Ten minutes passed. Twenty. Eventually, a man emerged from a side door. He was thick through the shoulders, with hair cropped close to the skull and eyes that had seen too much and cared too little.
"I am Commander Dragovic," he said. His English was functional, accented heavily. "You are the sister."
"Yes. Elena Pearson. My brother—"
"I have read the form." He gestured for her to follow. They walked down a corridor lined with peeling paint and bulletin boards pinned with faded notices. His office was small, crowded with filing cabinets. A single photograph sat on his desk: a younger Dragovic in a military uniform, standing beside men she did not recognize.
Dragovic sat and motioned for her to do the same. "Karvonia is a safe country," he said. "Tourists do not simply vanish here."
"Then where is he?"
"Tourists sometimes extend their stays without notifying relatives. They meet someone. They go to the mountains. The Black Lake region is popular with hikers. No signal there." He spread his hands as if this explained everything. "It has only been six days."
"Leo calls me every three days," Elena said. "He's never missed a check-in. Not once in five years of traveling."
Dragovic studied her for a long moment. Then he opened a drawer, pulled out a thin folder, and wrote something on a form inside. "I will open a file. If there is any development, we will contact you. Leave your local address with the desk."
"That's it?"
"That is the procedure."
"What about his hostel? His last known location? Have you checked any of that?"
"Ms. Pearson." Dragovic leaned forward, his voice dropping to something that might have been sympathy in another context but here sounded like weariness. "In Novistrana, we have limited resources. Our priority is crimes against Karvonian citizens. Your brother is an adult. He has the right to go where he wishes. If he has chosen not to contact you, that is not a police matter."
Elena felt the knot in her chest tighten. She rose from her chair. "Then I'll find him myself."
Dragovic did not try to stop her. As she reached the door, he said, "A piece of advice. Do not ask too many questions. People here do not like questions."
She left without answering.
The hostel Leo had booked was in the Old Quarter, a warren of cobblestone streets and buildings that predated the Soviet era by several centuries. The woman at the front desk was young, with bleached hair and dark roots showing at the part. She remembered Leo.
"Yes, the American. Quiet. He paid for one week but stayed only two nights." She pulled up the reservation on a cracked tablet. "He left his backpack. I kept it in storage, thinking he might return."
That small act of preservation nearly broke Elena. Someone had expected him to come back. She retrieved the backpack and sat in the hostel's cramped common room, unzipping it with trembling fingers. Clothes. A toiletries bag. A paperback novel with the spine cracked halfway through. A travel journal.
She opened the journal and read Leo's last entry.
*Met a guy at the bar last night. Works for a moving company called TransEuro Logistics. Said they ship everything—furniture, electronics, anything you can pack. When I mentioned I was writing about the migrant routes through Eastern Europe, he got weird. Nervous. Told me not to go to certain places. Made me curious. Going to check out their warehouse tomorrow. Probably nothing, but there's something about this country that gets under your skin.*
Beneath the text, he had drawn a rough map. A street. An intersection. A building marked with an X.
Elena memorized the map and closed the journal.
The TransEuro Logistics facility occupied a grim industrial lot on the southern edge of the city. Chain-link fences topped with razor wire surrounded a cluster of prefabricated buildings and a loading yard where semi-trailers idled, their exhaust plumes merging with the ever-present mist. A faded sign above the gate read *TransEuro—We Move the World* in five languages.
Elena approached the security booth. A guard in a blue uniform looked her up and down, his expression unreadable.
"I need to ship some things home," she said, forcing her voice into a casual register. "Family heirlooms. Fragile stuff. A friend recommended this place."
"Who recommended?"
"I don't remember his name. Met him at a bar. Said you handle international shipments."
The guard held her gaze for what felt like too long. Then he picked up a phone, spoke in rapid Karvonian, and pointed toward a glass door. "Office B. Ask for Mister Radek."
The office smelled of stale coffee and printer toner. A middle-aged man with thinning hair and a practiced smile greeted her with a handshake that lasted a moment too long. Mister Radek. His desk was cluttered with invoices and shipping manifests, and on the wall behind him hung a map of Europe threaded with colored pins.
"A pleasure to assist," he said. "What are you looking to transport?"
Elena gave him a story about inheriting furniture from a distant relative in Novistrana, wanting to ship it back to the United States. Radek nodded along, offering options and price tiers, his sales pitch smooth and practiced. But as he spoke, Elena noticed the details that did not fit.
The security cameras in the hallways, more than a moving company would need.
The heavy padlocks on the doors leading from the office to the warehouse floor.
The way Radek's eyes flicked toward the clock on the wall every few seconds, as if waiting for something.
"Can I see the facility?" she asked. "I want to make sure it's secure. These are antiques."
Radek's smile tightened. "Of course. I will give you the tour myself."
The warehouse was cavernous, filled with stacked crates and furniture wrapped in plastic sheeting. Forklifts hummed through the aisles, their operators wearing identical blue jumpsuits. Radek led her through the storage areas, pointing out security features and climate control systems, but his narration felt rehearsed, hollow. Elena hung back, pretending to examine a grandfather clock wrapped in bubble wrap, and watched.
At the far end of the warehouse, three trucks were parked in a row. Unlike the other vehicles, these had internal panels along their sides, secured by thick padlocks. Regular moving vans did not have those. She had helped enough friends relocate to know that.
"What's in those trucks?" she asked.
Radek's expression flickered. "Special orders. Client privacy, you understand."
"Of course."
As they walked back to the office, Elena spotted a small break room near the loading dock. The door was propped open, and inside, a young man in a grease-stained jumpsuit was nursing a cup of coffee. He looked up as she passed, and for a fraction of a second, his eyes met hers. There was something there—fear, or warning, or perhaps just exhaustion. Then he looked away, and the moment was gone.
She did not get his name that day, but she would learn it later. Gergi.
That evening, Elena sat in her rented room and spread Leo's journal open beside a city map. She marked TransEuro's location with a red pen, then traced the route Leo would have taken from the hostel. The industrial district gave way to a sparse residential area, then open countryside. If Leo had gone to the warehouse and found something, what had happened next? Where had he gone?
Her phone buzzed. A local number.
"Ms. Pearson?" The voice was low, heavily accented. "You came to the moving company today. You asked many questions."
Elena's pulse quickened. "Who is this?"
"Someone who knew your brother." A pause. "Someone who can help. But you must come alone. Do not tell the police. Do not tell anyone."
"Where?"
"The Riverfront Market. Tomorrow. Noon." The line went dead.
Elena stared at the phone. Knew your brother. Past tense. The knot in her chest twisted into something sharper, colder. She did not sleep that night.
The Riverfront Market sprawled along the banks of the Vorna River, a chaotic maze of stalls selling everything from fresh fish to counterfeit electronics. Elena arrived early and positioned herself near a coffee vendor, watching the crowd. The mist had lifted slightly, but the sky remained a flat, oppressive gray.
At noon, a figure approached. It was the young mechanic from the break room, the one with the tired eyes. He wore civilian clothes now, a worn jacket and a cap pulled low. He did not introduce himself, only gestured for her to follow.
They walked to a quiet stretch of the riverfront, away from the market's noise. The man glanced around nervously before speaking.
"My name is Gergi," he said. "I work in the garage at TransEuro. I saw you yesterday. I saw you asking about the trucks."
"What do you know about my brother?"
Gergi's jaw tightened. "Your brother came to the warehouse eight days ago. He said he was a journalist. He wanted to see the special cargo bays. Radek threw him out, but Leo came back at night. He climbed the fence."
Elena's hands clenched at her sides. "And?"
"He found a truck being loaded. Not with furniture. With people. Migrants, mostly. Some of them looked drugged. He took photos with his phone."
A cold wave washed over Elena. The video. The missing phone. "What happened to him?"
"Security caught him. They took his phone. But he managed to run." Gergi paused, his voice dropping to barely a whisper. "I do not know where he went after that. But I know he is still alive. Or at least, he was."
"How do you know?"
"Because they are still looking for him." Gergi pulled a folded piece of paper from his jacket. "These are the shipment schedules for the next week. The trucks with the locked panels—they go to the border every three days. If your brother is still in Novistrana, he will try to stop another shipment. He seemed like that kind of man."
Elena took the paper, her fingers numb. "Why are you helping me?"
Gergi looked at her, and for the first time, she saw the fear clearly in his eyes. "Because I have a daughter. She is eight. And every night, I go home and look at her and think about the people in those trucks. I cannot live with it anymore. But I cannot stop it alone."
"If you want to help, come to the police with me. We can report this."
Gergi laughed, a bitter, hollow sound. "The police? Commander Dragovic is on their payroll. Half the precinct receives envelopes from TransEuro every month. There is no one to report to."
The words landed like a physical blow. Dragovic's indifference. The form 37-B. The warning not to ask questions. It all rearranged itself in her mind into a coherent, horrifying picture.
"Then what do we do?" she asked.
"First, you find your brother's phone," Gergi said. "It has the photos. The video. If you have proof, you can take it to the American embassy. Make it an international incident. That is the only thing they fear."
"How do I get the phone?"
"I know the clerk who works in the evidence room at the precinct. He is a greedy man. A few hundred euros, and he will give you anything you want." Gergi scribbled an address on a scrap of paper. "Go tonight. Tell him I sent you. His name is Vladan."
Elena took the address. "What about you?"
Gergi's expression hardened into something like resolve. "I will keep working. Keep listening. When you have the proof, contact me. We will take it to the embassy together."
He turned and walked away before she could ask anything else, disappearing into the market crowd like a shadow retreating from the sun.
The address led her to a cramped apartment building in the industrial quarter, where the hallways smelled of boiled cabbage and damp plaster. Vladan was a thin, nervous man with nicotine-stained fingers and eyes that darted toward every sound. The transaction took less than five minutes. Elena handed over four hundred euros. Vladan handed over a sealed evidence bag containing Leo's phone.
She did not open it until she was back in her rented room, the door locked, the curtains drawn. The phone's screen was cracked, but it powered on. Leo's lock screen appeared: a photo of the two of them at her college graduation, his arm slung around her shoulders, both of them grinning.
She entered his passcode—their mother's birthday—and the home screen loaded.
The gallery was empty. The messages were deleted. But the cloud backup had not been wiped. Elena navigated to the saved files and found a single video, timestamped at 11:43 PM, eight days ago.
She pressed play.
The footage was dark, grainy, shot from behind what appeared to be a stack of pallets. Leo's breathing was audible, rapid and shallow. In the background, a truck's rear door stood open, and figures moved in the dim light. One of them stumbled, and she saw the glint of handcuffs on their wrists. Another figure—a guard in a blue uniform—shoved someone forward, and a woman's muffled cry cut through the static.
Then Leo's voice, barely a whisper: *They're loading them into the hidden compartments. This isn't a moving company. They're traffickers. I need to get closer.*
The camera shifted, and for a moment, the image stabilized on a face. A man in a suit, standing near the truck, directing the operation. Elena's blood ran cold. She recognized the shape of those shoulders, the cropped hair, the impassive expression.
Commander Dragovic.
The video cut to black as a shout rang out. Leo's footsteps, running. A crash. Then nothing.
Elena sat in the silence of her room, the phone clutched in her hands, her reflection ghostly on the dark screen. Outside, the mist had thickened into a proper rain, drumming against the window like impatient fingers. She thought of Gergi's words. *There is no one to report to.* She thought of Dragovic's warning. *Do not ask too many questions.*
And she thought of Leo, somewhere out there in this gray, indifferent city, running from men who wore badges and carried guns.
She opened her bag and removed the travel journal, flipping to the back page. Leo had written one final line, scrawled in the margin as if added in haste.
*If something happens, trust no one. Burn it down if you have to.*
Elena closed the journal. She looked at the phone. She looked at the rain-streaked window, at the lights of Novistrana flickering in the distance like dying stars.
Then she reached for her coat.
The fire had not yet started. But the spark had been struck.
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