The next two days were... uneventful, in the strangest way possible.
We had entered an anomaly, but it turned out to be a greedy goblin who demanded payment for playing hide and seek. You might argue that's a good thing — and maybe it was. Compared to what we usually face, that was practically a vacation.
But I swear, I hadn't felt this gloomy in a while. Not even during the maze anomaly.
Something about that joint operation briefing — The Pale Shore — had left a pit in my stomach that refused to fade. Maybe it was just nerves, but it didn't feel like that. It felt like… a countdown I couldn't see ticking.
I don't know if I was the only one who felt it.
Theo and Mira acted perfectly normal — playing cards in the lounge, arguing about who cheated first. Silva, on the other hand...well, Silva's harder to read.
Actually, scratch that — impossible to read.
——
It was after the goblin anomaly, when the others had gone to grab lunch. I stayed behind, flipping through the book I'd borrowed from the Fox Library. The room was quiet except for the low hum of monitors. Silva stood by the window with a cup of coffee, staring out into the gray drizzle outside. She didn't move. Didn't blink. Just... stood there, bathed in the cold glow of the screens.
"So, uh," I began, because silence was starting to feel like pressure, "what'd you think about the goblin case?"
She turned her head slightly, but her face remained unreadable.
"I uh... think he's... economically gifted... I think."
I blinked. "You mean greedy?"
She nodded slowly, her eyes still fixed on her coffee. "Yes. Greedy like the sun."
'What does that even mean??'
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. There was really no safe way to follow up on that.
A few minutes passed in silence before I tried again. "So… I guess you're not much of a talker?"
Silva turned to me with sudden precision, expression sharpening as if we'd just entered combat.
"Talking," she said, voice calm but firm, "is like a task. I complete tasks."
'Huh???'
"Right… apologies," I said quietly, returning to my book.
——
Then there was that other time — two hours before we clocked out.
I was standing by the window again, watching rain streak across the glass, when she approached me out of nowhere.
"Yuwon."
Her tone, as always, was neutral. Not cold, not warm. Just… perfectly flat.
"Yes, ma'am?"
She tilted her head slightly, as if trying to remember why she'd walked over. After a long pause:
"Your handwriting," she said finally, "is… unusually aggressive."
"Huh?" I blinked, glancing down at my notes. "Aggressive?"
"Yes." She leaned closer, examining the page with the intensity of a bomb technician. "Each letter looks like it's angry at the next one. Like the sun."
There it was again. The sun.
"I… guess that's just how I write, ma'am."
"Hm." She straightened, gave a single thoughtful blink. "I see. Please continue being consistent."
And with that, she walked off. Not a smile. Not even a nod. Just gone.
——
There were levels to this, though. When I came back from lunch breaks, I'd be greeted with lines like:
"You've made it back alive. You have keen survival instincts."
Or, "Congratulations on passing the lunch break. Please continue being consistent."
I didn't know if she was serious or trying to be funny, which somehow made it even funnier.
Back in the present, I sighed, sipping my lukewarm coffee.
"Please continue being consistent," I muttered under my breath, perfectly imitating her tone.
Theo looked up from his phone. "What was that?"
"Nothing," I said, leaning back in my chair. "Just… thinking about our dear team leader."
"Ah," Mira said with a smirk. "Did she compliment you?"
"Not exactly."
Mira chuckled. "Then yeah, that sounds like Silva."
Still… despite her complete lack of expressions — or maybe because of it — there was something strangely grounding about her. No matter how weird things got, Silva always acted like everything was under control.
Like the world could fall apart, and she'd just sigh, fix her hair, and tell us all to "please remain consistent."
The thought almost made me smile.
The office was quiet, save for the low hum of the fluorescent lights. Theo scrolled lazily through his phone while Mira leaned back in her chair, tossing a pen between her fingers. Outside, rain tapped against the window — steady, rhythmic, and faintly soothing.
That's when the door opened.
Chief Silva stepped in, balancing three manila folders in her hands like fragile glass. Her hair was slightly disheveled, as if she'd walked through a wind tunnel, but her posture was as rigid as ever.
"Our conference room is… uhh…"
She paused mid-sentence, staring into the middle distance, searching for the right word.
"…getting tailored by the janitor. So… we're having the team briefing here. Now."
Theo mouthed "tailored?" at me. I shrugged.
Silva placed a folder on each of our desks with mechanical precision. The paper inside was neatly clipped, the cover labeled in her sharp, overly tidy handwriting:
Anomaly #211-4: Signal Nine
My eyes drifted to the summary.
An abandoned rural broadcast station located on the outskirts of a foggy valley. Officially decommissioned in 1994. Recently, amateur radio operators have detected a signal on Channel 9.1 — a frequency that should not exist. The transmission appears to 'predict' future events concerning the listener in chilling detail, often ending in fatal outcomes.
The anomaly does not manifest as a ghost, entity, or subdimension. It is believed to be a temporal feedback loop — a resonance phenomenon that captures echoes of possible futures. Listeners inadvertently reinforce these futures by acknowledging them, solidifying them into inevitability.
Casualties to date: 58 civilians. Activity cycle begins nightly at 9:00 PM.
Theo whistled under his breath. "A haunted radio, huh. That's new."
Mira leaned closer, frowning. "So what, it tells people their future and makes it happen?"
Silva nodded stiffly. "Yes. The act of listening… anchors what should not be anchored. It is… difficult to describe."
There was a brief silence.
Theo flipped through his folder again, brow furrowed. "Uh, Chief? There's no manual in here."
Silva blinked once. "Because there is no manual," she said matter-of-factly. "No existing record of successful containment or interruption."
"Right." He exhaled. "That's… comforting."
Her eyes lingered on him for half a second too long before she continued.
"The anomaly activates precisely at 9 PM. We will depart one hour prior. I will personally collect each of you."
"Understood," Mira said.
"Good," Silva replied, her tone as flat as the monitors' hum. "You are dismissed. Rest… adequately."
She turned to leave — then stopped at the doorway, as if remembering something.
"Oh. Please… remain consistent."
And then she was gone.
Theo dropped his head onto his desk. "Every time she says that, I feel like I'm part of a malfunctioning experiment."
Mira snorted. "You kinda are."
I didn't say anything. My gaze wandered to the small radio on the shelf near our desks — old, dusty, and unplugged.
For a split second, I could've sworn I saw its tiny red light flicker on.
——
The clock read 8:03 PM when I finally shut my notebook. The apartment was quiet, save for the muffled hum of the city outside — cars, rain, distant neon buzzing through the mist. I'd gone over the briefing at least six times, but the words refused to stick. Temporal feedback loop. Predictive signal. 58 civilians.
All it did was make my stomach twist.
I slipped on my BAA Jacket, checked my tie twice, and glanced at my reflection in the window. My face looked about as tired as I felt. Not just scared — but caught somewhere between anticipation and resignation. Maybe Silva's "remain consistent" thing was starting to rub off on me.
A soft honk pulled me out of my thoughts. The white fox i had learned to call my roommate sat in front of the door, as if attempting to stop me from leaving.
"Are you uh... worried?" I rained an eyebrow while putting my shoes on. The golden and blue eye stared at me blankly before it gave me two high pitched barks.
"Yeah yeah, go. Bed is all yours for tonight"
Through the rain-blurred glass, I spotted Silva's black sedan idling under the streetlight — clean, precise, almost military in its neatness. The headlights cut through the fog like twin blades. I locked up and jogged down the stairs.
Silva was in the driver's seat, hands positioned perfectly at ten and two, posture rigid as ever. Theo sat behind her, munching on some kind of protein bar, while Mira scrolled through her tablet in the passenger seat.
"Investigator Weaver," Silva greeted as I opened the back door. "You have… arrived."
"Yeah," I said, sliding in beside Theo. "Didn't want to risk being inconsistent."
Her head tilted just slightly, as if parsing whether I was joking. "Good. Humor increases mission morale by… twelve percent, approximately."
Theo snorted. "You actually calculated that?"
Silva didn't answer — she just signaled left and pulled onto the slick road, the car moving with the precision of a metronome. The windshield wipers kept a steady rhythm, and outside, the fog grew thicker with every passing kilometer.
Mira broke the silence. "So, boss. Any last-minute advice before we face the psychic radio?"
Silva's eyes stayed fixed on the road. "Do not listen for too long. Do not answer if it speaks directly to you. Do not follow any future it predicts. And most importantly…" she hesitated, voice dipping just slightly, "…please remain consistent."
Theo groaned. "You just had to end with that."
But as the road ahead vanished into pale, whispering fog and the faint static of their comms hissed to life, I couldn't help but think she was right.
Consistency might be the only thing keeping us from unraveling tonight.