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.

They sit on the shoulder, hearts pounding. Elias tells her everything: the machine, the nine months, her funeral. Mara listens, then opens her phone and shows him the date. It's not three years ago. It's three years from now. The machine sent him forward, into a Mara who was never supposed to exist. 'I died,' she says softly. 'I remember dying.'

Mara takes his hand. 'Maybe I'm not meant to stay. But we have right now.' They drive to the coast and watch the sea together for one full day. At sunset her hand starts to fade, going cold and faint in his. The timeline is correcting itself, quietly erasing the woman who was never supposed to live.

Elias holds her fading hand and makes a choice: he won't let the machine take her quietly. He carries her back to the lab and offers himself in trade. The timeline accepts. Mara solidifies, gasping, alive and whole, while Elias begins to thin and grey. 'Live a long life,' he tells her, already going see-through.