The night cracked open like a wound.
Snow hissed against my windshield as I carved through the city, the December storm turning every streetlight into a blurred halo. My engine snarled beneath me — my other heartbeat — as I pushed past limits I’d engineered myself. The temperature dropped in violent gusts, frosting the cracked edges of my visor. I didn’t feel a goddamn thing except the burn in my ribs and the single pulse detonating behind my sternum:
Find her.
The last five minutes replayed in a loop — the feed, her scream, the van door slamming, the man’s hand gripping her wrist.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t breathe.
Every time I blinked I saw that moment where she disappeared into the dark, and something primal in me ripped wide open. Humanity stripped down to wires and instinct
