Daylight Index

The service tunnel opened beneath a fractured concrete overpass. For nine minutes each morning, sunlight reached the floor in a hard diagonal band before the surrounding ruins swallowed it again.

The Luminary support team used the band to relay distance from the inner observation bay. The Shadebound route reader used the retreating darkness to locate the only safe way back. Neither side of the survey could have completed it alone.

At minute seven, the light exposed thousands of small handprints on the underside of the overpass. They were too high above the ground to be ordinary graffiti and too weathered to date.

MOTHER's image record contains only the road. The Shadebound reader's private sketch contains the handprints. The Luminary observer signed both copies.