Christine dropped her backpack by the door, the thud echoing in the empty hallway. Another day of sympathetic glances from teachers, of whispers stopping abruptly when she entered the cafeteria, of her boyfriend, Damian, texting her generic reassurances about "being there for her."

She flopped onto her bed, burying her face in the duvet. She missed Lauren. She missed the noise, the chaos, even the arguments. Lauren had always talked about running away, but Christine never thought she’d actually do it. Not without a text and goodbye, at least. She opened the last message that her sister had sent.

8:23PM >I love you lil sis, take care of urself. Don't worry about me.

She sighed. They were sisters, but they were closer than that; they shared clothes, secrets, and a room until last year. The silence from Maya’s end was a void that was slowly eating Christine alive.

Her phone buzzed. Damian again. "Just checking in. Love you."

She swiped the notification away with a groan of exhaustion.

Then, a new notification pinged on her laptop, which was sitting open on her desk. A solitary email in her personal inbox.

Subject: found your sister

There was no sender name, just a string of random characters. Christine sat up. It looked like spam, perhaps a cruel hoax, but the curiosity clawing at her was stronger than her logic. It couldn't hurt to check. She pulled the laptop onto her lap, opened an incognito tab, and clicked the long, garbled link.

The screen flickered black, then loaded a crude, minimalist webpage, dominated by a black background and a video player in the middle. Above it, in blood-red serif font: Snuff Sluts Chapter 4: Asian Nymph. The thumbnail was unmistakably her sister, sitting on a decrepit leather couch.

With trembling fingers, she hit play.