Chapter Five: Seat Thirteen

Every pair of shoes turned toward seat thirteen. A man slowly sat in the empty chair. Round glasses. Missing finger. His mouth was hidden by the row ahead. Then the fire doors closed somewhere beyond the frame, the red safety lights died, and in the final image a hand beneath seat thirteen held a lighter. Premiere: tomorrow, midnight. Location: Spark Community Cinema. “He wants to burn the theater,” Lin said. “No.” Shen watched the shoes. “He wants to burn the audience.” Spark was a community cinema built for families displaced after the archive fire. The following night it would screen a memorial short. Its twenty-seven attendees all had ties to Echo: investors, volunteers, even the firefighter who wrote the original report.