The machine in Elias's basement smells like hot copper and Mara's perfume. That's impossible. She's been dead nine months. He keys in the date: three years ago, the morning of the crash on Route 9. He has practiced this a thousand times. Stop the car. Stop the truck. The coil screams and white light swallows the room. When he opens his eyes, he's in the passenger seat of their old sedan, and Mara is alive, humming, hands on the wheel.

Elias grabs the wheel and yanks the car off Route 9 before the bridge. Mara slams the brakes, furious and scared. 'What is wrong with you?' The truck that should have hit them roars past in the rain, horn blaring. They're alive. Both of them. He's laughing and crying at once. She just stares at him like he's a stranger.

Mara recovers fast and floors it home, demanding answers. But the town outside the windows is wrong. Half the houses are dark and boarded up. A checkpoint blocks Main Street, soldiers waving them back. 'This isn't our town,' she whispers. By saving her, Elias changed something much bigger. The world traded her death for something worse.