The camera's red light stared back at her like an accusation.
Vanessa Park tugged her blazer straight and positioned herself so the wind wouldn't make her look like an idiot on the evening broadcast. Behind her, the gate hung in the air like someone had ripped a hole in the world and walked off without fixing it. Fifty feet of void. Completely black.
Not the standard purple that showed up in FGRA field manuals. Not midnight blue. Black. The kind of black that made you question if you were actually seeing anything or if your brain was just lying to you about the empty space. Like reality had developed a blind spot and forgotten to fill it back in.
Three military floodlights aimed straight at the tear. Every watt hit the threshold and stopped. The light didn't fade. It didn't dim. It just ended. Reached the edge and died like something on the other side had swallowed it whole.
