Carlos stood alone in a narrow back alley washed in muted evening light. Nearby, the smell of old food drifted out from a partially open back door somewhere farther down the alley, mixing faintly with the cool air.

For a while, he simply waited.

He wasn’t entirely sure who he was supposed to meet.

Only that whoever it was felt important.

That certainty sat quietly in the back of his mind.

Carlos shifted slightly and glanced farther down the alley again.

Still no one.

Time passed slowly.

After a while, he began wondering if maybe they were not coming at all.

Or worse, maybe something happened to them.

The thought made him uneasy.

Finally, after standing there long enough that the silence itself began to feel strange, Carlos considered reaching out telepathically to someone from the organization.

The idea now felt oddly natural to him.

The problem was that he didn’t know who to contact.

He wasn’t even sure who among them would know who he was supposed to be meeting in the first place.

For a moment, Carlos stood there quietly debating it with himself while the distant sounds of traffic echoed faintly somewhere beyond the alley.