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 doesn't touch the wheel. He just talks, calm and steady, like he rehearsed it. 'Mara, pull over. Right here. Trust me, please.' Something in his voice reaches her. She eases onto the shoulder. The truck thunders by a second later, missing them by inches. She's pale. 'How did you know?' He can't answer that yet.

Elias decides to tell her the truth at the diner that night. He shows her the burn scars on his hands from the coil. She believes him. Together they drive back to his basement to study the machine. But the basement door is already open, and another Elias, older, gaunt, and bleeding, is waiting inside. 'You shouldn't have saved her,' the older man rasps.

The older Elias explains: every time you save her, the machine demands a life to balance it. 'I gave it strangers. I gave it whole towns. It's never enough.' He presses a detonator into young Elias's hand. 'Blow the machine. Lose her forever. It's the only way to stop the bleeding.' Mara watches from the stairs, hearing all of it.

Elias takes the detonator and looks at Mara on the stairs. She nods, tears running, and mouths, 'Do it.' He presses the button. The machine erupts in fire and light, and the copper smell vanishes for good. The loops end. He stands alone in the smoking basement, finally grieving the wife he was never meant to keep.