They drove again in silence. The recorder sat between them, quiet now, like something sleeping or pretending to.
The rain had stopped hours ago, but the air still smelled of it: that faint metal scent that clings to roadways after a storm. The windshield wipers were still ticking occasionally, out of habit more than needed, like a heartbeat that hadn't realized the danger was over.
Maya watched the lines of the road smear under the headlights, the world a corridor of gray and gold. The silence stretched between them until it became a shape of its own.
"You should destroy it," she said finally, her voice quieter than she meant it to be.
Rowan's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "I can't."
"Because you still think it's her?"
He glanced at her, then back to the road. "Because it's part of you now."
She scoffed softly. "You're mixing guilt with logic."
He almost smiled, not the real kind, but the tired imitation of one. "That's what humans do."
The mist outside thickened as the car climbed higher, curling around the headlights like breath on glass. Trees loomed on either side, their shapes soft, spectral.
Maya turned her face toward the window. Her reflection looked like someone else's pale, drawn, watching herself from the other side of the glass. "Why does it feel like she's inside my head?"
Rowan's reply came slow, deliberate. "Because she learned your voice. You listened too long."
She laughed once, a brittle sound. "Then teach me how to un-listen."
He didn't answer. The road wound upward, the hum of the engine the only rhythm between them. She could hear the faint rasp of his breathing steady, but not calm.
After a while, he said, "Do you trust me?"
She turned toward him. "No."
"Good." He smiled without joy. "Means you're still thinking."
She studied his profile, the tension in his jaw, the pulse in his throat. "Why did you come for me that night?"
He didn't look away from the road. "Because the file was activated under your name. Because when I heard the voice, I thought it was her. Until it said your name."
Maya's stomach tightened. "You thought I was Amelia."
"For a second," he admitted. "And for a second, I wanted it to be true."
The words sat between them like something alive. She stared out the window again, the world blurring by. "You really are terrible at comfort."
"I wasn't trying to comfort you."
"Then what were you trying to do?"
"Tell the truth before it becomes another echo."
Something flickered in her not anger, not quite forgiveness, but something sharp that trembled deep inside. She wanted to hate him for saying Amelia's name so easily, and yet part of her needed to hear it. Needed to know he remembered it the same way she did: softly, like something dangerous.
The recorder clicked by itself.
A tiny red light blinked.
A voice, thin as wind: "Soon."
Maya's breath caught. "She's still with us."
Rowan didn't slow the car. His knuckles whitened on the wheel. "She never left."
They didn't speak for a long time after that. The sound of the tires over wet gravel filled the car, a low hum like static beneath a heartbeat.
When the road curved, Maya saw something through the mist, a flash of white ahead. For a moment she thought it was a fog bank catching light. Then it didn't move.
"Rowan," she whispered. "Do you see that?"
He squinted. The white glare expanded, sharpening into shape. Headlights.
Bright. Still. Blocking the road.
He eased his foot off the accelerator. "Not Voss."
"Then who?"
He didn't answer. The radio hissed, crackled and then, through the static, a voice she recognized:
"You can't run from your own voice."
Her hand went to the recorder. Its light was glowing now, pulsing faintly in rhythm with the words.
"Rowan"
The headlights ahead flared, dazzling white. The mist lit up around them. The recorder began to vibrate on the dashboard, small and violent.
Rowan swore under his breath and slammed the brakes.
The tires screamed against the wet asphalt. The car spun. Maya saw the world dissolve into streaks of light and shadow, the trees becoming smears, the horizon turning over itself.
"Rowan!"
He reached across instinctively, arm over her chest, trying to shield her from whatever came next.
For a split second, she thought she heard laughter faint, distant, not human.
Then a shattering sound glass, metal, the world breaking apart.
Her body jerked forward, the seatbelt cutting into her shoulder. A flash her own reflection in the rearview mirror, her mouth open but no sound coming out.
And then darkness.
Just before everything went black, she thought she saw something in the blur, a figure at the edge of the road, standing perfectly still.
Female. Familiar.
Amelia?
Her last thought wasn't fear. It was the shape of Rowan's name forming on her tongue then nothing.