[Caden's POV]
The emergency briefing room at Zenith Tower was a pressure cooker of gilded fear. The air, usually cool and sterile, was thick with the stench of panic—not for the missing children, but for their own tarnished reputations.
I stood in the back, a silent observer in my Cipher uniform, and watched the so-called pillars of our society crumble.
The holographic display showed the face of the latest missing child, a little girl with wide, innocent eyes.
But the heroes weren't looking at her. They were looking at the plummeting public approval ratings displayed beside the photo.
"Our polling numbers have dropped twelve points in the last twenty-four hours," Sunstone fumed, his hands glowing with a faint, anxious heat.
"Twelve points! The public thinks we're incompetent! They think we let this 'Villainess' run circles around us while someone snatches kids from their beds!"
