Chapter Two: Reality Has No Such Frame

In frame eight, part of the cape was gone. In frame nine, Radiant had vanished. The truck simply floated above the river. The online videos changed too. Their owners insisted a woman in silver armor had been visible when they uploaded them, yet after a refresh the truck appeared to return to the road by itself. Commenters mocked the collective hoax. Others remembered seeing someone but could no longer recall her face. Lin opened her camera roll. Her selfies from the previous night were fading one by one: first the chest emblem, then the mask, then her entire figure, leaving a human-shaped blank against the mall. “Someone is deleting her,” Shen said. “Deleting who?”