Great. Below you'll find **Story 2 of 4** – a complete, long, multi-layered crime story.This installment is darker, more urban, with a complex plot and serious twists.--# **Story 2: "The Night the Silence Fell"****Genre:** Police Crime • Psychological Thriller • Mystery • Full Story

## **PROLOGUE**

In the center of a big city, where neon lights mingle with the smell of rain, a crime occurred that shocked the entire police force.

The body of city councilor Elise Marlowe – one of the most influential people in the city – was found in an abandoned subway tunnel.

The killer left with her an old telephone receiver and a note with a single word:

**"SILENCE"**

There was no blood.

There were no signs of a struggle.

There was no weapon.

And yet, the councilor was dead.

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## **CHAPTER 1 – DETECTIVE KAI ROTH**

Kai Roth wasn't your typical cop. Quiet, observant, with a reputation for seeing details others didn't.

He was also a man of few words.

And perhaps that's why the entire city was in a frenzy when he took on this case.

The subway tunnel had been offline for years. The entrance was secure. Yet someone had led the councilwoman in—and left without a single trace of violence.

Roth felt the first clue lay in the word "silence."

--

## **CHAPTER 2 – WOMEN IN HER LIFE**

Councilor Marlowe was a strong woman. And she had equally strong enemies.

### **1. Her sister, Veronica**

They had broken off contact years ago. Veronica, however, claimed that Elise was "prepared for something."

“She was afraid of words that never came,” she said. “It had to do with her campaign.”

Roth wrote this down, but noticed something else: When Veronica spoke of Elise, her hand shook. Not with sadness—with anger.

### **2. Her advisor, Anika Lowe**

Anika was loyal. Or she was good at pretending.

“Elise received threats,” she said. “Most of them were something like, ‘You will be overwhelmed by silence.’”

But she didn’t report any of them to the police.

Why?

### **3. Her opponent, businesswoman Lucinda Dare**

Lucinda was direct:

“Elise trespassed on my property. She wanted to close down one of my investments. But I don’t kill people. I don’t have to.”

She spoke calmly, but her eyes were cold as glass.

She added something else:

“Elise was afraid of… the sound. Yes, the sound.” The night before her death, she said that "words can bleed."

Roth noted this as well.

--

## **CHAPTER 3 – BODY EXAMINATION**

It turned out that Elise **died of fright**.

Details: extreme nervous shock, cardiac arrest.

No poison.

No physical violence.

However, under a microscope, they found **strange microtraces** on her eardrums – a thin coating of particles, as if… remnants of an **acoustic pulse**.

Someone had used **sound as a murder weapon**.

But how?

--

## **CHAPTER 4 – TUNNEL OF SILENCE**

Roth returned to the crime scene.

The tunnel was vast, dark, and so quiet it made his ears ring.

After a long reconnaissance, he found something no one had noticed before:

**an old surveillance camera, hidden high in the plumbing pipes**.

The equipment was recording but not transmitting. The killer knew the police wouldn't find the storage device immediately.

After securing and playing the recording, Roth saw:

Elise enters the tunnel alone.

She's holding a phone.

She's talking to someone.

She suddenly stops talking.

She drops the phone.

She looks around.

She stares into the darkness.

And begins to panic.

She falls to the ground.

No one else is visible in the frame.

But in the background, something terrifying can be seen:

**the shadow of a figure who doesn't move like a human**.

--

## **CHAPTER 5 – THE MYSTERY OF THE PHONE**

The councilwoman's phone was modern. But the call history indicated that the last call was from… a facility for deaf children.

The facility had been unused for years.

Closed.

Abandoned.

Roth went there immediately.

Inside – the smell of dust. Traces of old sound therapies. A room where children were trained to respond to vibrations. And something more:

**a room so perfectly soundproofed that there was no natural echo.**

And on one of the walls was a sign:

**“Words don’t always need a voice.”**

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## **CHAPTER 6 – WHO PLAYED ON HER FEARS?**

Roth put all the pieces together:

* Elise was afraid of sound.

* She received threats about “flooding silence.”

* An acoustic pulse could cause a terrified person to stop their heart.

* Someone knew her fears.

Only one person knew Elise's childhood secret:

**her sister Veronica.**

It turned out that as a child, Elise had been temporarily placed in a facility for hearing-impaired children, where they experimented with noise and silence therapy.

The same facility the phone call led to.

Veronica admitted that their mother wanted to "fix" Elise, and she was only a witness—and couldn't help.

Elise was then afraid of the **dark room where sound suddenly disappeared**.

This was her greatest trauma.

--

## **CHAPTER 7 – ANIKA LOWE REVEALS THE TRUTH**

Elise's counselor, Anika,She was hiding one thing:

The councilor had ordered a private investigation.

She suspected that someone was trying to exploit her trauma to break her—politically, psychologically, and perhaps even physically.

Roth discovered that private investigator Elise had disappeared three days earlier.

In his apartment, they found:

* audio recordings of a threat,

* fragments of sounds with strange frequencies,

* photos from a subway tunnel.

Someone was playing with sound, manipulating it, creating the illusion of presence.

Roth began to connect the dots.

--

## **CHAPTER 8 – THE PERPETRATOR IS...**

All clues led to one conclusion:

The killer must have been familiar with advanced acoustics, knew how to reproduce directional sound, how to create false echoes, and how to manipulate frequencies capable of inducing panic and hallucinations.

There was only one person in the city with such skills:

**Lucinda Dare.**

The businesswoman employed acoustic experts in her exclusive clubs, where they tested directional sound, subsonic frequencies, and acoustic illusions.

Lucinda didn't murder Elise up close.

**She created a soundscape for her that resembled her worst trauma.**

She induced auditory hallucinations.

She used an old tunnel to amplify the effect.

And the shadow figure in the recording was merely a projection created by sound and light—an illusion.

Lucinda wanted Elise to retire from politics—or die.

She achieved the latter.

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## **EPILOGUE**

Lucinda was detained, but showed no remorse.

She only said:

"Fear is the most powerful sound. Sometimes louder than a scream."

It took months for the city to recover.

And Kai Roth?

He was asked to participate in a study on fear and sound perception.

But he refused.

Since then, he's hated silence.

He always needs something humming in the background.

Even a radio, even the wind.

Because when there's complete silence, he sometimes hears something that shouldn't be there:

**Elise's scream echoes in the tunnel.**

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If you want, I'll send it right away:

### **Story 3: "The City That Forgot Itself"**

— the most complex, multi-threaded, with a huge twist.

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