It was a long dark stormy night. The station hasn’t had a phone call within the past few hours that have passed by. It was quite strange for it being a friday night, normally it was one of the stations busiest days as people were out on the town and activity was known to happen. Though this night felt off, strange and quiet. Operator Marv was scheduled for the overnight shift, as the only ones in the building were her and the other two new operators who were still getting used to how things worked. Marv took this quiet time to help the new employees to gain more knowledge on the equipment to use and what to do in certain scenarios.

The phone rang, Marv didn’t think anything about it. ‘Maybe it was just another call about some noisy kids doing weird activities within the middle of the night.’ But something seemed different as one of the new girls Jill answered the phone. A female's shaken voice came through the line, you could hear the broken tone in her voice as it sounded like she has been crying for hours.

“Hello, this is Jill with Skullbrooks operation station. Is everything alright ma’am?” Jill was putting her training to use. Introducing herself, staying calm and asking questions.

“Hi, my name is Ophelia and my two children have gone missing. I have been looking for them for the past hour and they are nowhere to be found. Their names are Sage and Soren. Can you please help me?” The female’s voice was getting shakier with every word she spoke. Breaking and stuttering as she said her children's name.

“Ophelia, I am so sorry that you are going through this. We will do our best to help you find your children. I am going to ask you a few questions to help us be able to start looking. When and where did you last see Sage and Soren?” Jill started to ask questions, waiting for Ophelia's responses. Though she seemed to take awfully slow with her answers. I noticed Jill starting to look

impatient as she wanted to do her best to get someone on the route the children were last seen.

“I saw them last about two hours ago after they got ready for bed. I just helped them out of their baths and put them into their pajamas so I could tuck them into bed. I left their bedroom to go rest on my own, an hour later I decided to go check on them and they were gone.” Something about ophelia's story felt off to me. She states she had to help her children get out of their bath and put their pajamas on. This must have meant that they were still young and needed her help on certain aspects. I glanced over at the clock on my desk that shines a bright red ‘3:00AM’ in bright letters. Why would someone just start getting their young kids ready for bed at 1AM. I decided to keep that though in the back of my head as anything could be the case. I looked over at Jill, confusion planting on her own face. Wondering if she was thinking the same thing I was.

“Okay ma’am we will have a dispatcher on a route to your house to take a deep search to see if hopefully they are just hiding in the house. While that dispatcher is doing a house search I will put out an alert for all officers in that location to keep an eye out for two missing children.” Jill typed in the alert to allow all officers within the area about the call that has just gone through.

Fifteen long minutes passed and we got a report that an officer had safely made it to the address that we sent them. They knocked on the door, waiting for an answer from Ophelia. A few minutes went by and the door didn’t open. Another knock was left, waiting patiently yet nothing. The officer tried the door knob, the door slowly creaking open.

“Ophelia! My name is Officer Ryle, I want to announce that I am coming in!” Officer Ryle shouted, hoping to hear a voice back. The house was strangely quiet yet the smell of burnt toast filled the air, though not as if it was caught on fire. Ryle walked deeper in, peeking around corners as he made his way into a hallway. Wanting to make sure there was no one hiding within the small house, definitely as he couldn’t even hear a pinch of sound. He made his way to the kitchen. Calling out her name again, freezing with his hand on his weapon on his waist band. She came into view.

“Ophelia, my name is officer Ryle. I am here to help with the search for your children.” She slowly turned to face him, a small toothy unsettling grin plastered across her wrinkled face.

“Oh hello dear, may I offer you some toast?” The older female asked, though Ryle shook his head no as he wasn't interested. He sat down with her, asking a few questions before taking a deeper look throughout the house. There were no signs of extra bedrooms that screamed out that there were children living within the house. No sign of anything childish such as stuffed animals, cozy blankets or even a toy. It seemed as if the only person living in the house was her. Officer Ryle decided to sit back down with Ophelia, asking a bit more questions to really help their new case. Waking a detective to type the children's information into the system so we could get a better look on who they are. Though nothing came up. The detective couldn’t find anyone under the name of Sage and Soren Laws, especially with the age that Ophelia gave them. There were no school records, no hospital records, not even social security which they could look at. What became even stranger was looking up Ophelia. It stated she didn’t even have children. Officer Ryle did their best to explain this information to her, wanting to keep her as calm as he possibly could. But it was now officer Ryles turn to stay calm once a few words escaped out of Ophelia's mouth.

“Then who are they?” She asked, pointing towards the direction behind officer Ryle.