The Civic lurched like it didn't believe in itself.
Rafael's hands stayed welded to the wheel while the engine rattled through the steering column, rough and uneven, like a cough that refused to become a breath. The headlights threw a pale cone across the back lot, catching weeds and puddles.
"Go," Lina said.
"I am," Rafael snapped, then immediately sounded sorry for it.
Kael braced behind Jae's seat. The car smelled like old fast food and sweat. Mara sat behind the driver, knees tight to her chest, eyes half-lidded like she was trying to crawl out of her own skin. Marta crammed herself into the middle of the back with Nina tucked into her side; Nina's face stayed turned to the window. Al slumped in the passenger seat, the kind of exhausted that looked like sickness. Trev squeezed into the rear corner, leg bouncing hard enough to shake the bench.
Rafael eased them out of the lot. Tires whispered onto the service street.
Kael sent Echo outward—careful, shallow. The sensation came back as pressure and direction, like listening with a bruise. The main road was loud with human noise. Under it, steadier, patient footsteps kept time.
Not close.
But not gone.
"Left," Lina said. "Not toward the avenue."
Rafael's eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. "Why?"
"Because everyone goes to the avenue," Lina said. "And crowds do stupid things together."
Kael kept his eyes on the side mirror instead, watching shuttered stores scroll by. A figure stood under a streetlamp with both hands raised like surrender, palms faintly lit. When the Civic passed, the figure's head turned and Kael felt the micro-shift in his sternum—attention landing, snagging.
His phone buzzed once in his pocket. Not a call. A vibration like a hiccup.
He didn't pull it out.
They rolled through a stop sign without stopping. No cross traffic. The city had become a set with too few actors.
"Where are we going?" Marta asked, voice low.
Lina stared ahead. "Somewhere with power. Somewhere people aren't panicking in a circle."
"That's everywhere," Jae muttered.
"Then we find the place it's least true," Lina said.
Trev snorted. "You mean you're improvising."
Lina didn't look back. "Yes."
A minute later, the dash lights flickered.
Rafael's breath caught. "No—"
The engine stuttered. Every body in the car tensed at once.
Rafael pumped the gas. "Come on. Come on."
The Civic shuddered, then smoothed out again. The lights steadied. Whatever loose connection the engine had made, it held.
Rafael let out a broken laugh.
They dipped under the elevated tracks. Columns loomed like ribs. An ambulance sat angled across two lanes, doors open, no one inside. A body lay on the sidewalk beside it, coat spread wrong.
Rafael slowed, throat working.
"Don't stop," Lina said.
"I'm not," Rafael said, but his foot hesitated on the brake anyway.
As they passed, Kael caught the body's hand—unburned, untorn, just… unfinished, like the person had been erased and whatever was left behind had been forced to pretend it belonged. A thin shimmer pulsed above the pavement.
Not bright like the street Fragment. Smaller. Residue.
Kael's mouth went dry. The residue tugged at him—weak but eager—like it recognized the shape of what he was and wanted to be taken home.
Infinite space stirred behind his sternum, gravity more than temptation.
Kael gripped the seat harder. He didn't move.
The shimmer faded behind them.
Trev leaned forward, voice tight. "That was one."
Jae snapped, "Stop talking."
Trev ignored him. "That's how people are getting strong. Pieces. That's why he wants you."
"He wants him because he wants him," Lina said, cold. "Not because of your theories."
Kael stared out the window. The calm man's words kept threading themselves into his skull.
Names make systems behave.
"Stop saying my name," Kael said quietly.
The car went still for a beat.
Nina's eyes snapped to him. Marta tightened her hold. Trev's mouth twisted. "Fine."
They turned deeper into a neighborhood of rowhouses and dead bodegas. Kael's Echo brushed the buildings as they passed. Some felt empty. Some felt… weighted, the same dull heaviness as the candle shrine, but weaker, like a smell that lingered after someone left.
Rafael muttered, almost to himself, "Churches. There's one on every other block."
Lina's head turned slightly. "What?"
Rafael swallowed. "My mom used to drag me. When you're losing it, you go in and you sit and you… you don't lose it as fast."
He sounded embarrassed the moment he said it.
Lina didn't comment. She just nodded once.
At the next intersection, headlights cut across the far end of the street—another car, moving fast.
Rafael stopped.
The other car's windows were down. A woman leaned out, screaming something that fell apart into noise. In the back seat, something glowed bright green.
A Fragment.
Kael felt it immediately. Every hair on his arms lifted. The infinite space inside him responded like a lung trying to inhale.
The other car swerved toward them.
"Back up!" Lina barked.
Rafael slammed the Civic into reverse. The engine protested but moved.
The other car fishtailed, corrected, and aimed straight for them like a decision.
Faces in that car—three, maybe four—eyes wide, not with fear but with desperation already committed. The green glow pulsed like a heart in a jar.
"Open the door," Trev whispered.
"No," Marta hissed.
"We can take it," Trev said, voice shaking. "We can—"
"We can die," Jae snapped.
The other car slammed into the Civic's rear quarter panel.
Metal shrieked. The Civic spun half a turn, tires skidding. Nina screamed. Marta threw her arm across Nina's chest like a seatbelt. Kael's head hit the window hard enough to spark white behind his eyes.
Rafael fought the wheel, panicking. "I can't—"
"Straight!" Lina shouted.
Kael blinked hard, saw the other car grinding against them, trying to pin them to the curb. The glow in that car's back seat pulsed brighter, as if excited.
Kael's sternum hum roared. The infinite space unfurled inside him like a mouth opening.
Do it.
Amplify.
His hands clenched. Echo surged up instinctively—messy, unshaped, like static.
The other car's front tires blew.
Not popped. Blew. Rubber shredded in an instant as if reality had decided those tires had always been weak. The car lurched, skidded, and slammed into a lamppost. Glass sprayed. Someone inside screamed high and thin.
Kael stared, breathing hard. He hadn't meant to do that. He hadn't aimed anything. He'd just wanted it to stop.
Lina's eyes cut to him. A flicker crossed her face—fear, calculation—then she looked away like staring too long was dangerous.
Rafael's voice cracked. "That was you."
Kael swallowed. "I don't know."
He did. He just didn't trust what it meant.
"Go," Lina said again, rough.
Rafael hit the gas. The Civic lurched forward, groaning, but moved.
Behind them, the other car's back door flew open. A man stumbled out, bleeding. He reached into the back seat with both hands toward the green glow.
Kael felt the Fragment's instability flare. That man didn't know what he was touching.
He was going to dissolve.
Kael gripped the seat and forced himself to look away.
Then Nina whispered, barely audible, "Help him."
Marta hissed, "No."
The corner swallowed the wreck. The screaming faded.
Rafael didn't slow until they were three turns away from the intersection, deep in a warren of side streets that all looked like they'd forgotten what they connected to. He yanked the Civic to the curb beside a row of trash bins and killed the headlights, leaving them in the dim orange spill of a streetlamp that flickered like it was thinking about quitting.
"We said we weren't stopping," Jae said, voice tight.
"We're not," Rafael said. "We're—" He swallowed, then admitted the truth. "I needed a second."
Kael's heart still hammered. His skull throbbed where it had met glass. The inside of his mouth tasted metallic, and when he ran his tongue over his gums he found a split, small but real.
Lina leaned forward between the seats, eyes on the mirrors. "Thirty seconds."
Rafael popped the trunk with a shaking finger. Cold air rushed in. He climbed out first, shoulders hunched like he expected the night to swing at him. Jae followed, then Kael, keeping his body between the open trunk and the street out of habit.
The rear quarter panel was crumpled where the other car had hit them. Paint scraped to bare metal. The right rear tire sagged visibly, a slow, wounded lean. When Kael crouched close, he heard it: a thin hiss, steady, like someone whispering secrets into the dark.
Rafael stared at it, face slack. "We're not making it far."
"Spare?" Marta asked from the back seat. Her voice was controlled, but her knuckles were white around Nina's shoulder.
Rafael lifted the trunk liner and dug like panic could turn into tools. A grocery bag, a broken umbrella, a small jack with rust on the handle. No spare. Just an empty wheel well, like the car had never expected to need anything.
Rafael let out a sound that wasn't quite a sob. "Somebody stole it last month. I kept saying I'd buy another."
Lina's jaw flexed. She didn't waste time blaming him. "We don't fix it. We nurse it."
"How?" Jae demanded.
"We take weight off that corner," Lina said, thinking aloud. "Al in the middle. Everyone else forward."
Al blinked at his name like it took effort to recognize it. Jae grabbed his shoulder and shifted him awkwardly toward the center, settling him half on the console, half across the seat. Al grunted, then sagged, too drained to argue.
Mara's hands glowed suddenly, bright under her sleeves. She stared down like she'd just noticed she was holding a lit match.
"I can't—" she whispered.
Kael felt Echo twitch toward her without permission, the way a reflex reaches for a railing. He didn't touch her. He just spoke, low, steady. "Breathe with me."
Mara's eyes darted to his. Suspicion, fear, a flash of wanting to believe. Then she inhaled, shallow, and did it again. The glow dimmed by degrees, like a dial turning down.
Lina watched all of it in the reflection of the Civic's window. She didn't comment. She just said, "Back in. Now."
Kael slid into the rear again and the seat springs complained. Trev's leg bounced like it wanted to jump out and run on its own.
"You did that," Trev said, barely above a whisper.
Kael didn't look at him. "Stop."
"You didn't mean to," Trev pressed, voice hungry. "But you did. You made their tires—"
"Stop," Kael repeated, sharper.
Trev's smile showed in the dark, thin as wire. "You can't pretend it didn't happen."
Kael felt the hum behind his sternum lift, answering attention. He forced it down like a hand on a lid.
Rafael restarted the engine. It coughed, then caught. The Civic pulled away from the curb, tire hiss swallowed by motion.
For a few blocks, the city held its distance. Empty windows. Dark storefronts. A stray dog trotting alone, ribs showing.
Then Kael felt it again—pressure at his back, not footsteps this time, but a sense of being followed by something that didn't need streets. Like a fingertip resting lightly between his shoulder blades.
He swallowed hard and kept his face blank.
No one spoke for a full block.
Jae's breathing was ragged. Al's eyes were open now, wide and glazed. Mara stared at her sleeves like she was afraid her hands would start glowing again.
Trev broke the silence. "We should go back."
Lina's head turned slowly. "No."
"There's a Fragment," Trev insisted. "That's—"
"That's a trap," Lina said, and for once she sounded like she was guessing and praying at the same time. "Or it's a mess we don't survive."
"We can't keep running empty," Trev shot back.
Rafael's voice came thin. "They hit us on purpose."
"Yes," Lina said.
"Why?" Rafael asked, as if the word could reassemble the world.
Lina looked straight ahead. "Because they saw something that looked like a way out."
Trev's laugh came sharp. "And you don't think it is?"
"Not that way," Lina said.
The Civic's steering felt wrong now—pulling slightly. A hiss rose from the right rear tire, slow and constant.
Rafael heard it. His eyes flicked down. "We're losing air."
"Not stopping," Lina said.
"We can't drive on a rim."
"We stop once," Lina said. "Somewhere we choose."
Kael sent Echo outward again and found a pocket of dull heaviness ahead—stronger than the others, like a hand laid flat against the world.
A building with a peaked roof sat on the next block. Its windows were dark. A sign out front read SAINT BRIGID.
Kael didn't know saints. He just felt the air.
He swallowed. "There."
Lina's gaze snapped to him. "Why?"
Kael chose honesty over confidence. "I don't know. It feels… quieter."
Rafael looked skeptical. "A church?"
Lina watched the street for movement, then nodded once. "Fine. In and out. We do not stay long."
They rolled the Civic to the curb and let the engine idle, trembling. Wind pushed a plastic bag down the sidewalk like a ghost.
Kael stepped onto the pavement and felt it immediately: the pressure inside his sternum didn't vanish, but it stopped trying to rise. Relief hit like water.
Locked.
Lina tried the side door. Nothing.
Rafael swore softly. "Of course."
Kael stared at the lock and remembered Kira's Latch—metal deciding it wanted to open.
His sternum hummed.
He reached out with Echo, not to force, just to listen. The lock was old and simple. The tumblers sat like teeth.
He could feel the pattern. He could nudge it.
Kael hesitated, then shifted one pin's "belief" about where it belonged.
Click.
The door gave.
Lina's eyes widened a fraction. "How—"
Kael shook his head. "I don't know."
They slipped inside.
The sanctuary smelled like dust and stale incense. Pews sat empty. A single emergency light glowed over the altar, casting everything in sickly green.
Mara exhaled like she'd been holding her breath for hours. Nina whispered, "It's pretty," and Marta squeezed her shoulder hard enough to make her stop.
Lina didn't say the calm man's word this time. She just watched the air like she wanted to memorize the way stillness felt.
"We check the back," she whispered to Jae. "Battery. Cables. Anything."
They moved through a side hall into a small office: desk, filing cabinet, a calendar still on last month. A corkboard held flyers for a food pantry and a handwritten prayer list.
Jae yanked open a drawer and found a flashlight, spare batteries, and a ring of keys labeled in Sharpie.
Rafael made a strangled sound of relief. "Yes."
Lina pointed. "Back door."
The third key turned. The back door led to a tiny lot with two dead cars under a tree.
"Trunk," Lina said.
The minivan's trunk gave them bottled water, a cheap first-aid kit, and—miracle—jumper cables.
Rafael laughed, too close to crying. "Okay. Okay."
A soft sound came from inside the church.
Not a footstep.
A tap.
Three times.
Metal on wood, patient.
Lina froze.
Kael's blood cooled.
It wasn't at the front door. It was closer—like someone had tapped the side entrance they'd used.
The calm man's voice drifted faintly through the building. "You should lock doors behind you, Kael."
Kael's stomach dropped. "How did he—"
Lina's eyes were hard. "He followed the feeling. Not the route."
Kael's vision tunneled. He could almost feel the path the man used—not footsteps, but a tug along every glance that had lingered on him tonight, like wet paint that never dried. Echo tried to blur it and found nothing to smear; the mark was inside him.
Trev whispered, almost admiring, "Receipts."
Kael's sternum hummed like a beacon and he wanted to tear it out of himself.
"Back fence," Lina said. "Now."
They moved—fast but controlled. Jae hauled Al. Marta dragged Nina. Rafael clutched the jumper cables like a weapon.
Kael followed last, Echo pushing outward, smearing the edges of their movement, trying to make their exit feel less certain.
The tap came again, closer.
A latch clicked somewhere.
Kael's eyes snapped to the side door.
It swung inward slowly, like a polite invitation.
And in the gap, a shadow waited with patient shoes and a calm smile.
"Hello," the man said, stepping inside.