She ran the script.

It was a joke, really. Airdrop was Apple’s magic. Windows had Nearby Sharing, but that required infrastructure—bluetooth handshakes, network discovery. Her program was cruder. It listened not for files, but for absence .

Tonight, the battery icon blinked orange.

Her heart thumped. 0.3 meant three-tenths of a degree off magnetic north. That was the old subway entrance, two blocks east. She’d searched there before. Nothing but mildew and the smell of old iron.