IshanSIngh333
"Absence became his normal. Until the world forgot to load."Seventeen-year-old Samuel Cole has spent his entire life feeling invisible to the people of Chicago. Twelve years ago, his parents vanished into a "classified government assignment," leaving behind nothing but an old, broken digital watch frozen at exactly 3:14.Samuel thought his invisibility was a curse. He was wrong. It was his shield.On a routine Tuesday CTA Red Line train commute, Samuel catches a glitch in reality: a passenger reading a completely blank, textless newspaper that bleeds into ink only when folded. By looking directly at the seam of an unrendered world, Samuel shatters his cloaking shield and pings a global shadow network.Now, the grid is tracking him. The faceless organization that erased his parents is closing in to harvest a world-altering decryption key-one that isn't hidden on a hard drive, but coded directly into his own DNA.Assisted by a tight-knit circle of high school friends who think they are just looking for missing parents, Samuel must run through a city where every camera, traffic light, and automated network is a trap. Because the clock is ticking toward midnight, and the system is ready to file them all away.