As the world began to fade, I was the only one who could see the traces left behind by death.
Before my younger sister disappeared, she carved a final warning into my wrist:
"Big Brother, don't come looking for me unless you can see 'color.'"
Seven days later, my world lost all its color.
The sky was the gray-brown of a medical record, blood was the dry yellow of dirt, and neon lights were a bleak gray-white.
And on the inside of my wrist, a countdown began to appear: 168:00:00.
I entered the "Between the Fading":
a bizarre world where color was currency and time was fuel.
To slow their own fading, people here began hunting the colors of others' emotions:
plundering the golden yellow of joy, stealing the scarlet of anger, harvesting the deep purple of fear.
And I awakened an ability that should not have existed:
I could retrace every trace.
Touch a bloodstain, and I could see the direction the killer fled;
brush a hand over a wall, and I could read the betrayal that had taken place a week earlier;
even in a pitch-black sealed room, I could "see" the desperate scratches left by the last person trapped inside.
They called me a "cleaner," hoping I would erase their evidence for them.
They called me a "gravedigger," hoping I would help them unearth secrets.
