At 6:46 p.m., the shooter did not fire.
Not yet.
The Bugatti was visible for less than two seconds before the forest closed around it again. Rain crossed the scope in silver lines. The windshield reflected the sky, concealing the driver's face.
He waited for the second opening.
Below him, I followed the road toward NeverMore.
The palace windows appeared and disappeared between the trees. Every glimpse lasted long enough to prove the distance was real and short enough to make it seem invented.
The navigation system spoke with its calm mechanical voice.
"Continue for six kilometers."
Six kilometers.
I had crossed countries for less.
At the Lovers Statue, June remained standing in the rain.
She had taken off her wedding shoes and placed them beside the bench. Barefoot, she stepped onto the wet path so she could see farther beyond the garden wall. The train of her dress gathered rainwater behind her.
HS watched from the terrace.
He wanted to tell her to sit down.
He wanted to carry the umbrella back to her.
Instead, he respected the small territory she had claimed for herself.
The palace clock moved toward the next minute.
At 6:47, the Bugatti entered the second opening.
The shooter saw the registration plate.
He saw one man behind the wheel.
He saw the speed of the car and the damaged section of barrier waiting beyond the curve.
The rifle shifted less than the width of a finger.
Inside the car, June's recorded voice reached its final sentence again.
"If you still want to come toward me, come."
The side window became a white star.
For one impossible moment, I was not surprised.
I had seen it before.
In the petrol-station canopy.
In the hospital corridor.
In every broken memory that showed me glass before there was glass to break.
The sound arrived after the light.
A flat crack.
The driver's window burst inward.
Something struck below my left collarbone with enough force to turn my body away from the wheel. Heat passed through me. My left hand opened without instruction.
The Bugatti crossed the center line.
An approaching truck sounded its horn.
I pulled right with one hand.
Too hard.
The rear tires found water.
The car began to rotate.
The palace vanished from the windshield.
Trees replaced it.
Then the road.
Then the barrier.
My foot pressed the brake, but the pedal shuddered beneath it. The steering wheel turned through my weakened grip. The Bugatti struck the barrier sideways.
Metal folded.
The repaired section held.
The weakened section did not.
It opened toward the drop as though someone had built a door into the mountain.
The car left the road.
During the first rotation, the world became silent.
June stood beneath the Golden Lovers wearing a student uniform.
During the second, she wore a wedding dress.
During the third, Kitty sat beside the Grand Fountain and turned at the sound of an engine.
The roof struck earth.
Glass became rain.
The hood struck a tree and turned the car again.
NS stood beneath a garden arch holding a ring.
A.V. sat alone beneath another arch holding one he would never place on June's hand.
My mother called my childhood name.
JP laughed from the back seat.
HS said, Come home.
The Bugatti overturned once more and stopped against two cedar trunks thirty meters below the road.
Its wheels continued spinning toward the sky.
At 6:48, the forest recovered its sound.
Rain struck the underbody.
The engine clicked.
Somewhere behind me, a warning alarm repeated one note.
I opened my eyes upside down.
The seat belt held my body against the seat. My left arm hung toward the roof but would not move when I told it to. Blood traveled along my neck and entered my hair.
For several seconds, I could not remember which direction breathing required.
I inhaled.
Pain closed around my chest.
I tried again.
Half a breath entered.
"June."
Her name came out quieter than the rain.
The center display had cracked but remained illuminated.
ROUTE RECALCULATING
The words rotated above me.
Then:
GPS SIGNAL LOST
The car's emergency system attempted a call.
One tone.
Silence.
Another tone.
CONNECTION FAILED. RETRYING.
The telephone had fallen somewhere near the passenger door. Its screen illuminated the broken glass, too far for my hand.
June's voice message was still playing through one damaged speaker.
The recording had returned to the beginning.
"XH, I remembered the jacket."
Above the embankment, the truck driver slowed after passing the broken barrier.
He saw twisted metal leaning over the edge but no car on the road. Rain concealed the tire marks almost as quickly as they had been made.
Another vehicle sounded its horn behind him.
He continued forward, intending to report the damaged barrier when he reached the toll station.
He did not know a red car lay beneath the trees.
The shooter did.
Through a smaller scope, he located the overturned Bugatti below the road. Heat remained inside the driver's seat. Movement appeared once near the center console.
He did not fire again.
A second wound would invite a second question.
He photographed the broken barrier, the tire marks, and the car's final position. None of the images showed the rifle or the ridge from which they had been taken.
At 6:49, he sent two words through the private relay.
ACCIDENT CONFIRMED.
In the room without windows, VT received the message.
He moved the gold-masked piece across the chessboard until it stood before the black king.
He did not say checkmate.
Not while the king was still moving.
At NeverMore, the palace gates opened for a red vehicle.
June took two steps into the road before HS called her name.
The car passed beneath the gate lights.
It was a guest's sedan.
The driver lowered his window, confused by the barefoot woman in the wedding dress.
June stepped aside.
"Sorry," she said.
The sedan continued toward the courtyard.
She returned to the statue but did not sit.
The mistake had not embarrassed her.
Hope had already survived worse things than being seen.
At Utopia's Grand Fountain, Kitty made the same mistake.
Headlights crossed the south gate. She stood, lifted one hand, and smiled before the vehicle turned toward the dormitories.
Her hand remained raised after it disappeared.
NS looked away.
My message continued waiting inside the campus server.
Pending delivery.
At 6:50, I reached for the telephone.
The movement pulled the seat belt across my chest. Darkness closed around the edges of the car.
I stopped.
Waited.
The darkness withdrew.
My right fingertips touched the center console.
Beyond it, the telephone lay beneath scattered safety glass.
Too far.
I remembered being younger and stretching one hand across the distance beneath the Lovers Statue.
June had laughed.
"You cannot touch both," she said.
"Then the statue is badly designed."
"Maybe you are supposed to choose one."
"No."
I had placed one hand against the golden boy's fingers and reached my other toward the girl's.
"You are supposed to bring them closer."
The memory had no rain in it.
When it ended, rain entered through the broken window and touched my face.
I reached again.
My fingertips brushed the telephone and pushed it farther away.
"No."
The word became a cough.
Warm liquid entered my mouth.
The emergency system tried its call for the fourth time.
This time, one fragment of signal crossed the valley.
A data packet reached the regional dispatch network at 6:51.
SEVERE IMPACT DETECTED.
VEHICLE ORIENTATION: INVERTED.
LOCATION CONFIDENCE: LOW.
The coordinates placed the car somewhere along a nine-kilometer section of forest road.
The nearest ambulance was responding to a flood injury in the lower valley.
The second was twenty-seven minutes away.
Dispatch sent a patrol unit from NeverMore's eastern district and attempted to call the vehicle.
Inside the Bugatti, the speakers rang.
I heard it.
I could not reach the control.
The call ended.
At 6:52, A.V. left the ceremony arch.
He had remained beneath it because moving felt too much like accepting that the wedding was over. Now he crossed the palace hall and stopped beside HS on the terrace.
Neither man spoke at first.
June stood below them with the closed umbrella in one hand.
"When did he say he would arrive?" A.V. asked.
"His message said seventeen minutes."
"Sent when?"
"Six thirty-six."
A.V. checked the road.
"Then he should be near."
HS called me.
My telephone illuminated beneath the passenger door.
The vibration moved it half an inch across the glass.
HS CALLING
I reached until my shoulder burned white.
The telephone continued vibrating.
Closer.
Closer.
Then it struck the overturned door and stopped.
The call became a missed call.
HS tried again.
At Utopia, my undelivered recording remained beside Kitty's unanswered messages.
At NeverMore, HS's call rang inside a car no one could see from the road.
At the crash site, I stretched my hand into the narrow space between the seats.
Three places asked me to answer.
My fingers found the telephone at last.
The screen was fractured from corner to corner. Blood from my hand made the names difficult to read.
HS's call ended before I could accept it.
I pressed June's name.
The telephone displayed one bar.
Then none.
CALL FAILED.
I pressed again.
CALL FAILED.
The clock changed to 6:54.
I opened the message field beneath June's recording.
The keyboard would not remain still.
I typed three words.
I AM CLOSE
The message showed no mark beneath it.
Not sent.
"I am close," I said, as though the forest could carry it for me.
The palace was less than six kilometers away.
The distance might have been another country.
At 6:55, the patrol unit entered the western forest road from NeverMore.
It traveled slowly because rain had covered the lane markings and water crossed the sharp turns. The officers searched for brake lights, damaged trees, smoke, or a vehicle stopped on the shoulder.
They did not know to look thirty meters below them.
The shooter folded the rifle and left the ridge by a path that did not meet the road.
VT's relay erased the transmission record after confirming receipt.
At 6:56, June opened the umbrella.
Not because of the rain.
She held it above the empty place beside her.
The gesture belonged to another day, another storm, another version of us beneath the statue. She shifted it farther toward the space where I should have been and allowed her own shoulder to become wet.
"You came back for me," she whispered. "I can wait for you."
At Utopia, Kitty checked the time.
Four minutes remained until seven.
NS closed his hand around the ring box but did not move.
Inside the overturned Bugatti, I heard June say she remembered the jacket again.
The damaged recording repeated itself because the player could no longer advance beyond the same minute.
"You did not stop reaching."
I held the telephone against my chest.
The pressure hurt less than breathing without it.
Fragments passed through me without doors between them.
The Grand Fountain.
The rooftop.
June asleep beside an Atlas.
Kitty turning back at an airport gate.
NS placing his coat over someone else's shoulders.
A.V. opening his hand and allowing a ring to remain unused.
My mother beside a window.
The two golden lovers reaching through rain.
They were no longer separate memories.
They were one life seen all at once.
The phone screen dimmed.
I touched it awake.
6:57.
One minute remained before the number that had followed me for years.
Above the trees, a faint gold light marked NeverMore's highest window.
I could see it through the overturned windshield if I turned my head far enough.
I smiled because the palace was real.
Because June was there.
Because for once, I had chosen the road toward her before it was too late.
Then the final minute began.