The desert night was no longer a sanctuary; it was a vast, indifferent witness to our collapse. The station wagon rattled over the washboard road, the headlights cutting weak, trembling paths through a world that felt like it was being erased by the static on the dashboard. Inside, the air was thick with the copper tang of Ethan’s blood and the acrid, lingering scent of burnt wool.
Ethan lay across the middle bench, his head lolled against the door. His breathing was a ragged, mechanical hitch—the sound of a machine trying to remember how to be a man while its internal wiring was being systematically shredded. The white light in his temple hadn't stayed dead; it was now a faint, rhythmic pulse of sickly violet, a visual echo of the Bio-Sync’s dying scream.
Julian drove with a feral inten
