The Vanishing always happens at midnight.

Everyone knows this. It’s taught in schools alongside multiplication tables and state capitals. If you are Taken, your family has until sunrise to find you. After that, you’re gone forever. No body. No trace. Just… gone.

I used to think it wouldn’t happen to me. Statistically, the odds were in my favor—only one in every few thousand people gets Taken in their lifetime. My parents had a plan, of course. Everyone does. We’d practiced the protocols since I was six: Dad would search the industrial district, Mom would take the parks and waterfront, my older brother Marcus would coordinate from home with the neighborhood watch network.

But you never really believe it will be you.

Until it is.

One moment I’m walking home from Jade’s house at 11:47 PM—stupid, I know, but her place is only four blocks away and I’d stayed late studying for our chemistry exam. The next moment, the world lurches sideways like reality hiccupped, and I’m somewhere else entirely.

Somewhere dark.

My phone is gone. My backpack, too. I’m standing in what feels like a warehouse—concrete floor, metal walls that echo when I shout. No windows. One door, locked from the outside.

“Hello?” My voice cracks. “Is anyone there?”

Silence answers. Then, from speakers I can’t see, a mechanical voice:

“You have been Taken. Your family has until sunrise to locate you. Current time: 12:01 AM. Sunrise: 6:47 AM. Good luck.”

Six hours and forty-six minutes.

My heart is hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat. I run to the door and pound on it until my fists hurt. Nothing. I search every inch of the space—maybe thirty feet by thirty feet, completely empty except for a drain in the center of the floor and a single overhead light that flickers occasionally.

No clues. No hints. That’s the terrible beauty of the Vanishing—it’s designed to be almost impossible. You could be anywhere in the city. Anywhere in the county. Some people theorize the Taken are moved to different dimensions entirely, but that’s never been proven.

I sink to the floor, trying to think. Trying not to panic.

Mom and Dad know I’m missing by now. The moment someone is Taken, their loved ones feel it—a sudden, hollow ache in their chest, an instinctive knowledge that something is wrong. Within minutes, they’ll have mobilized. Dad will be driving through every street we’ve ever discussed. Mom will be calling every contact, every friend, every person who might have seen me.

But the city has ten thousand warehouses. A hundred thousand hiding places.

I close my eyes and try to remember everything from the Vanishing preparation courses. Stay calm. Conserve energy. Look for patterns. The Taken are never placed randomly—there’s always logic to it, even if we can’t see it.

The warehouse. What do I know about it? The air smells like rust and something chemical—maybe paint thinner? The concrete floor has tire tracks, old ones, faded. The walls are corrugated metal. When I knocked, the sound suggested this building is detached, not connected to others.

Industrial district. It has to be. That’s Dad’s zone.

But there are hundreds of warehouses in the industrial district.

I stand up and start examining the walls more carefully, running my hands along the seams. There has to be something. Some Taken leave messages—scratch marks in paint, SOS signals tapped on pipes. But this place is clean. Suspiciously clean.

Current time: 1:33 AM. Sunrise: 6:47 AM.

The mechanical voice again, updating me like a countdown to my own erasure.

Five hours and fourteen minutes.

I think about Marcus, probably sitting at his computer right now, coordinating search parties. He’s good at this—organized, methodical. Last year when Mrs. Chen from three houses down was Taken, Marcus helped triangulate her location based on ambient sounds her family could hear over her phone before it was confiscated. They found her with twenty minutes to spare.

But I don’t have my phone. No ambient sounds for them to track.

I pace the perimeter again, looking up this time. The ceiling is high—maybe fifteen feet. The light fixture is a simple industrial bulb in a wire cage. And there—

There’s a number stenciled on one of the ceiling beams. Faded, barely visible: 1847.

A building number? A lot number? I memorize it, though I have no way to communicate it.

Current time: 2:15 AM.

Four hours and thirty-two minutes.

I’m trying not to think about the ones who aren’t found. About Sarah Lim, who vanished when I was in eighth grade and never came back. About Mr. Peterson, the math teacher who was Taken five years ago. About the memorial wall downtown with thousands of names etched in black granite.

Missing Forever.

The drain in the floor catches my attention. I crouch beside it, peering down. It’s dry, but when I put my ear to it, I can hear something—distant traffic? Water moving through pipes?

I shout down into it: “HELLO! CAN ANYONE HEAR ME? I’M IN WAREHOUSE 1847!”

My voice echoes back up at me, mocking.

But maybe—maybe if there are pipes, maybe if someone passes close enough—

I keep shouting until my voice goes hoarse.

Current time: 3:42 AM.

Three hours and five minutes.

My legs are shaking. I’ve been standing for hours, afraid that if I sit down I’ll give up hope. The flickering light is starting to make me dizzy, or maybe that’s exhaustion.

I think about Mom, who probably hasn’t stopped moving since midnight. Mom, who made us practice the protocols every month without fail. Who kept detailed maps of the city marked with zones and sectors. Who once told me, “If you’re ever Taken, remember: we will never stop looking. Not until sunrise. Not ever.”

I think about Dad, driving through the dark, checking every abandoned building, every locked door. He’ll be systematic about it, the way he is about everything. Starting from where I was last seen and spiraling outward.

I think about Marcus, who taught me Morse code when I was ten “just in case.” Who made me memorize landmarks and building numbers and the layout of the industrial district.

The industrial district.

Warehouse 1847.

I look up at that number again, and suddenly I’m remembering a conversation from three months ago. Marcus showing me his updated maps, pointing out new construction in the eastern industrial zone. “They’re renovating the old paint factory district,” he’d said. “Buildings 1800 through 1900. Old warehouses being converted to lofts.”

Eastern industrial zone. Near the river.

If they’re searching systematically, if Marcus remembered to check his own maps—

I run to the door and start pounding again, screaming. “I’M IN 1847! EASTERN INDUSTRIAL! NEAR THE PAINT FACTORY!”

Nothing. Just my own voice bouncing back.

Current time: 4:58 AM.

One hour and forty-nine minutes.

The light flickers more urgently now, or maybe that’s my imagination. My hands are bleeding from pounding on the door. I’ve shouted myself hoarse. I’ve searched every inch of this place three times over.

I sit down in the center of the floor, next to the drain, and I let myself cry.

One hour and forty-nine minutes.

Then I hear it—faint, so faint I think I’m hallucinating—an engine. A car door slamming.

I scramble to my feet. “HERE! I’M HERE! WAREHOUSE 1847!”

Footsteps. Running. Multiple people.

“EMMA!” That’s Dad’s voice, muffled but definitely Dad. “EMMA, ARE YOU IN THERE?”

“YES! DAD, I’M HERE!”

The sound of tools on metal. Cutting. Prying. Voices shouting coordinates into radios. More footsteps.

The door shudders. Groans. Then—

Light. Real light, not the sickly fluorescent. Dawn light, gray and beautiful.

Dad bursts through, and I’m in his arms, and Mom is right behind him, and Marcus is there too, holding bolt cutters and breathing hard.

“We got you,” Dad keeps saying. “We got you, baby girl. We got you.”

Behind them, the sky is brightening—purple fading to pink at the edges.

Current time: 6:31 AM. Sunrise: 6:47 AM.

Sixteen minutes to spare.

In the car, wrapped in emergency blankets, I ask how they found me.

“Marcus,” Mom says, her hand gripping mine so tight it hurts. “He remembered the building numbers from his maps. We’d already searched forty warehouses when he realized—”

“The Takings follow patterns,” Marcus interrupts, his voice shaky with adrenaline and relief. “They usually put people somewhere connected to their daily routine. You walk past the eastern industrial zone every day on your way to school. You just don’t notice it because you’re on the bus.”

“Warehouse 1847 was the last one we had time to check,” Dad adds quietly. “If you hadn’t been there—”

But I was there. And they found me.

We drive home as the sun breaks over the horizon, flooding the city with gold. Another Vanishing survived. Another family intact.

But as we pass the memorial wall downtown, I see them adding a new name. Someone else, somewhere else, whose family ran out of time.

The Vanishing doesn’t stop just because I was lucky.

It never stops.

And somewhere out there, right now, someone else is standing in the dark, counting down to sunrise, hoping their family knows them well enough to find them.

Hoping their sixteen minutes don’t run out.