Tessa Cole followed the red door because the grocery store clip had left her with no clean place to stand.
She had filmed him dragging people through smoke while blue fire tore at his stolen wrist. She had filmed Ty's face tell strangers he wanted back what had been taken.
The video had uploaded after the route swallowed them.
Tessa had never pressed send.
That was the part her hands kept returning to while she came out inside a subway station with no trains. Her phone sat warm against her palm, cracked, half charged, live counter climbing under the saved clip as if strangers waited to believe the wrong thing.
The station looked copied from Earth by someone who remembered shapes better than dirt. Open turnstiles. White tile. Stairs toward dirty yellow streetlight. Blank ad panels above the tracks. No trash. No oil. No damp paper smell.
The man wearing Ty's face walked ahead with a limp he had not let the camera see.
Tessa noticed the limp and hated herself for noticing.
