The City’s Midnight Apology

At exactly 2:47 a.m., every phone in the city vibrated. No ringtone.

No notification sound. Just a soft buzz that felt… deliberate. The message was

the same for everyone: “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to end this way.” People laughed it

off at first. A glitch. A prank. Someone testing a system they shouldn’t

have access to. Until the power went out. Streetlights died in rows.

Elevators froze. Traffic lights blinked once—then nothing. The city exhaled into darkness.

I stared at my phone, my heart pounding. I recognized the sentence. It was the last

text my brother had sent me, two years ago. He vanished the next morning.