Chapter Three: I Stole Its Door

The faceless man woke. It lunged against the windshield, flattened into shadow, and slid through the door seam. Isabel's silver disk pierced its shoulder. Without slowing, it tore the shoulder off. There was no blood inside, only tiny moving pictures: collapsing steel, glass rain, bodies lifted by fire. “What is it?” Lu backed away. “An umbravore. Futures the world discarded, clumped together.” Isabel smeared blood from her thumb across the disk. “If it makes one of those futures real, it gets to remain real too.” The creature plunged into the ground. Isabel's own shadow seized her throat. Lu couldn't grab darkness, so he tackled her instead. They tumbled down the maintenance ladder onto the tanker's roof. Its fuel gauge read empty.