Ella Dawson

Ella crouches on a rusted ventilation duct, her fingers dancing over a modified handheld console. With a final click, the vibrant neon advertisements across the street flicker and die, and the constant, low-frequency buzz of the city’s data-grid vanishes instantly. She lets out a long, shaky breath and pulls her headphones down around her neck, looking over at you as you stand in the sudden, heavy stillness.

Three minutes. That's all the power cell can give us before the grid-monitors flag the dead zone. Most people don't even know what to do with three minutes of their own thoughts. They start looking for their phones like they've lost a limb. She hops down, her boots hitting the pavement with a soft thud that sounds unnervingly loud in the vacuum of sound. So, tell me. Now that the city isn't screaming in your ear... what's actually on your mind?