Title: Shadows of Mosaique

The bass thrummed up through the floorboards, rattling the inside of every glass in the downstairs lounge. Lente Carrow leaned on the lacquered wood of the club’s oldest bar, cutting her gaze through blue haze and heady perfume toward the man propped on the next stool. He was clean—but not the sort of clean that spoke of wealth. More the freshly-scrubbed desperation you catch on someone who’s run out of places to hide, and knows they’re out of time.

“Listen,” Lente said, swirling gin in her glass, “I know what you’re after.”

The man tensed, eyes a little too wide. “You don’t—”

“If you’re prepared to swallow your pride—really swallow it—,” she cut in, her voice silk over steel, “you should come up to the booth. Talk to me there. I don’t deal at the bar.”

She didn’t stay for his answer. He could follow her, or stew in his regrets—Lente wasn’t paid enough to care unless he was worth her curiosity. She slid from the barstool, heels barely clicking as she navigated Mosaique’s lower floor: every shade of leather, haze, whispered deals behind gold curtain partitions.

Upstairs, the music changed. It wasn’t louder, just closer, every note throbbing in her chest. The air was thicker with sweat and heat and the electric fear of being seen. She wound her way through a tidal riptide of hips and hands, bodies writhing under red glass, rooftop windows bleeding in the city’s neon from above.

In her booth, she made herself another drink—tonic this time, clear and bitter. She left the door half-ajar behind her. Let him decide.

It was six minutes before he came upstairs.

“Most people can’t tell a minute from an hour in Mosaique,” she called out, not looking up as he faltered in the entry. “I set a timer to see which you’d choose.”

He lingered in the doorway, lips thin and white. “You didn’t tell me your name.”

“You already know it. Or you wouldn’t be here.” She tilted her glass at him. “I’m the owner. You know what that means here?”

His brow furrowed, creasing an old scar between his eyes. “It means people can’t touch you without earning your attention.”

Lente grinned. “Smart. Now… sit.”

He obeyed, perching at the edge of the boothed leather seat as if he expected it to bite. She watched, weighing silence, until he blurred into the background pulse of music—the way men do when you leave them with nothing but their conscience.

“What’s your name?” she asked at last.

“Jord.”

“You got another one? Papers? Anything?”

He shook his head. “Not anymore.”

Not anymore. She studied him anew: haunted, in the way most men weren’t until after midnight. His fingernails were short but clean. He kept fidgeting with something in his sleeve—nervous, maybe, or hiding something thin and sharp.

He took a breath. “I heard you could find things. People, sometimes.”

She smiled wryly. “I can. For a price.”

“It’s not for me.” The words spilled out, eager and rotten. “My sister Orla. She disappeared three weeks ago. I’ve tried the police, but they… They said she’s probably gone voluntarily. But she wouldn’t run away. Not from me.” His voice shuddered, but didn’t break.

“This isn’t a charity, Jord,” Lente said. She held his gaze, reading the shadows layered there. “And Mosaique isn’t a wishing well. Especially not now.”

He started to protest, but she held up a hand. “Hear me out. Missing people—sometimes they come through here, looking for things. Escape. Favors. Sometimes they’re running from the kind of trouble that’ll drag me down with them. If I put your story before my own—”

He reached into his jacket, slow, careful. “I have some money. Not much. But I can work. You must need people. Or—there’s this.” He slid something onto the table: a photograph, crumpled and stained, of a dark-haired girl smiling at the edge of a ferris wheel. “That’s all I have left, Lente. I need your help.”

The look in his eyes was raw, an old wound split open. Lente was no stranger to desperation—it worked across her life like a scar, never quite healing. She could throw him out. But instead, she took the photograph, fingering the glossy edge.

Three weeks. Dark hair, a small tattoo by her wrist. Wearing a lanyard that read "Mosaique Summer Carnival."

She picked up her phone, thumbed through her private logs. She saw many faces here, traded for names, drinks, quick favors and secrets. Not all left unscathed.

“You say she’s not a runaway,” she said. “Convince me.”

Jord leaned in, voice thick. “Orla is stubborn, too honest for her own good. She takes care of everyone. Her work—late shifts, always walking home alone. She had a fight with her boss, something about a missing set of keys. The last time anyone saw her, she was here, in this club.”

Lente’s eyes narrowed. She remembered vaguely—a girl, slim, avoiding hands in the crowd, looking for exits. “What did she do, when she was here?”

“She… she met a man, I think. Said she was just ‘running an errand.’ But she left her shift early. After that, nothing. I’ve checked hospitals, the moorings, the clubs. She’s vanished.”

Lente considered. There were screams sometimes, late at night; girls gone, stories spun into rumor. But this one had teeth.

“I’ll make you a deal.” She leaned closer, voice as cool as gin. “I’ll search for her. But you work for me—three weeks, no questions, no complaints. After that, we renegotiate.”

Jord exhaled, shoulders sagging. “Deal.”

**

Mosaique was a club built for shadows: hidden stairways, back corridors curling from the dancefloor. Lente put Jord to work scrubbing down tables, running errands, watching the doors. Meanwhile, she started asking questions—quietly, subtly, the way a hunter circles old tracks.

It wasn’t until the second week that a trace of Orla appeared: an older bartender, Rosa, mentioned seeing her with a regular, a man named Eli Stokes. A man no one really liked—a collector of favors, debts, and secrets.

Lente sent Jord home early that night. She paid Eli a visit. He lounged in the back-room booth, surrounded by men too nervous to meet her eyes. She slid in beside him, let the tension draw tight.

“I heard you knew a girl. Orla, younger one—came asking for help?” she said evenly.

Eli smirked. “Lots of girls need help around here.”

Lente drummed her nails on the table. “You’re not stupid, Eli. Don’t make me spell it out.”

He shrugged. “Oh, I remember her. Came asking about a passage—said someone was gunning for her boss. She had something she shouldn’t. A key, maybe? Didn’t seem worth the trouble. I pointed her toward the dockside.”

“What kind of key?” Lente pressed.

Eli grinned, teeth sharp. “Not my business. I keep her secrets, I keep my skin.”

That night, Lente turned over the facts: Orla presented a threat to someone. She’d taken a key—real, or metaphorical?—and sought Mosaique for a way out. She'd vanished after speaking to Eli. She was last seen near the dockside.

She tracked down the boss Orla’d fought with: a man with a police record, moonlighting as a courier for the city’s dirtier trades. He denied everything—too smooth, too quick.

Finally, in the hush before dawn that filled every mirror in Mosaique with a hint of shame, Lente called Jord. “I have a lead,” she said. “The docks. I want you with me. Bring gloves, and don’t ask questions.”

They crept through the hush of sleeping city, alleys slick and fogged with the last spores of night. The warehouse at the dock was locked, but the fire stairs still worked. Inside, Lente spotted a shipping crate marked with Orla’s name, buried beneath crates of liquor.

They pried it open. Inside—coiled like a secret—was Orla herself: alive, shivering, wide-eyed but breathing. She lifted her head, blinking at the light.

“They’re coming back,” she rasped. “He locked me in. He knew—”

“We’re getting you out,” Lente said. “Stick to me.”

The three slipped out as dawn smeared gold over grey water. Lente, knowing she’d burned too many favors, called in one last debt—sheltering Orla, hiding all three until the boss vanished from the city on a midnight ship.

Later, back at Mosaique, Lente poured herself another gin. Jord and Orla stood at the door, clutching each other.

“You kept your word,” Jord said.

“I keep them when they matter,” Lente replied. “And now, so do you.”

“You want me to stay and work?” he asked.

She considered, then smiled. “Pride’s a bitter thing, Jord. But trust is more useful, and harder to find.” She raised her glass. “Here’s to your next deal. And try not to make it desperate.”

They left Mosaique as the first wave of revelers trickled in for night’s next round—repairing, perhaps, their own broken promises. Lente watched the door close, feeling the pulse of secrets settle back into the bones of her ancient club. In Mosaique, the shadows never really left—but every so often, someone slipped free.

Tonight, that was enough.

This story was generated by user live.finezja with assistance by one of OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model; prompts used to help generate the story are shown below.

Images were generated with OpenAI's AI system, DALL·E 2, or uploaded by the user.

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