The terminal glass slides open and Halcyon salt punches the back of Ethan Moreno's throat before he can even remember to breathe properly. It's the smell he thought he'd left behind when the plane lifted off over Heathrow — sea and diesel and a sweetness of sun on concrete — only sharper, younger, like a city that still thinks it's a secret. Jet lag turns the world into a watercolor; faces smear, luggage blurs into one long, rolling island. He tugs his camera bag higher on one shoulder and looks for Aunt Wren's sign. No sign. Of course. She'd promised a "splashy welcome" and probably misremembered the terminal. Or she'd been detained by a gala or one of her "friends" who need rescuing. Ethan checks his phone. Dead. The battery indicator is a flat, defiant black. He pats his pockets anyway. Wallet. Passport. The tiny, old headphone dongle he refuses to replace. He pops his earbuds in and the world rearranges. Laughter, loud and bright, floods his left ear. StreamHub. A live feed. Sterling Cole—SterlingEats—filling the terminal with his voice. Ethan looks up, breath catching. Sterling's face appears on a phone screen propped against a travel mug, streaming into a crowd that had gathered like gulls. "We got a mystery cousin, lads," Sterling says into the camera with that practiced, teasing tilt that makes a million people click follow. He speaks fast, local slang curling around every sentence like confetti. "Let's