Chapter Four: My Shadow Boarded Before Me

He emerged at security, caught the case, and shoved it into hard sunlight beneath a skylight. The “battery” screamed and shrank into a human-shaped stain. Isabel's disk pinned it to the white tile. Across the crowd, Rin severed her own shadow. The conveyor swallowed the detached darkness, while she folded like weightless paper between two travelers and vanished. The coin granted Lu no power. [BRANCH FUTURE PREVENTED. LUMEN VALUE REFUND FAILED.] His mother's voice did not return. As boarding began, Lu found 17A printed on his paper pass and 17B on his phone. Someone had already boarded as 17B. On a security monitor, another Lu sat by the window, expertly adjusting his drone controller.