The pain arrives before the world does.
It's a slow, grinding throb behind Kayden's eyes, like someone is turning a rusty screw deeper into each socket with every heartbeat.
He surfaces through layers of chemical cotton.
First the smell: bleach fighting old blood, the sour ghost of vomit somewhere down the hall.
Then the sound: the heart monitor's lazy beep… beep… beep… counting a rhythm that feels borrowed.
Then the light: pale institutional green smeared across his lids.
He opens his eyes.
The ceiling tile above him has a brown water stain shaped exactly like a screaming mouth.
A clear IV line snakes into the crook of his left arm.
The tape pulls when he flexes his fingers.
His right hand finds the bed rail—cold metal, flecks of old paint flaking under his thumb.
He's wearing one of those paper-thin hospital gowns the colour of nicotine stains.
His hoodie, his jeans, his cracked glasses—gone.
Replaced with a plastic wristband that reads HARLAN, KAYDEN – 11/18 – M.
He tries to remember the street, the car, the red sphere.
There's only static and a single frozen image: a licence plate reading 7KX-429 filling his vision like a white-hot sun.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
The door eases open.
First the doctor: mid-forties, beard going grey at the edges, eyes red-rimmed like he's been awake since yesterday.
Then a nurse with a ponytail so tight it stretches the skin at her temples.
Then Sheriff Good.
The sheriff fills the doorway the way winter fills a window.
Long tobacco-coloured coat, leather cracked at the elbows.
Black hat tilted low, brim shadowing everything except the glint of a silver badge and the flat grey of his eyes.
He smells of wintergreen tobacco and something metallic underneath.
His gloves creak when he flexes his fingers.
"Afternoon, son," Good says.
The words are soft, almost kind, but they land like stones in still water.
The doctor clears his throat. "Kayden, this is Sheriff Good. He just has a few questions."
Kayden's mouth tastes like he licked a battery.
He nods. The motion makes the screw behind his eyes twist harder.
Good drags the plastic chair closer.
The legs screech across linoleum.
He sits, elbows on knees, hat still on.
"Mind walking me through it?" he asks.
"I… don't remember much," Kayden says. His voice sounds small, like it belongs to someone else.
Good nods slow. "Start with what you do remember."
Kayden swallows. "I was crossing the street. The light changed. Then… pressure. Like the air turned solid."
He stops. The monitor beeps a little faster.
Good waits.
The nurse scribbles.
"Witnesses say the sedan never slowed," Good continues. "Seventy miles an hour, easy. Then the impact. Blood everywhere. Car ends up twenty feet back, upside-down. And you're standing in the middle without a scratch."
He leans in just a fraction. "You recall anything about the blood? The way it moved?"
Kayden's stomach flips.
He sees it again: the perfect sphere, collapsing inward, rushing toward his chest like iron filings to a magnet.
"I—" His voice cracks. "I don't know."
Good studies him the way a butcher studies meat.
"Alright," he says finally. "Anything comes back, you call me direct."
He places a cream-coloured card on the rolling tray.
Simple black lettering. No first name.
The doctor steps forward. "We're discharging you soon as your mom signs. Mild concussion, some bruising. Frankly, you shouldn't be breathing."
The nurse unhooks the IV.
The sheriff stands, coat rustling like dry leaves.
He pauses at the door. "Take care of yourself, son."
The door clicks shut.
Silence rushes in.
Kayden stares at the ceiling mouth.
He needs to pee.
He swings his legs over the edge.
The floor is ice under bare feet.
His knees hold.
He shuffles to the tiny bathroom, pushes the door.
The mirror is a rectangle of harsh fluorescent truth.
He looks like a ghost that lost a fight: skin the colour of notebook paper, dark circles under radioactive green eyes, hair sticking up like he stuck his finger in a socket.
He leans over the sink, turns the cold tap.
Water drums loud in the porcelain.
The fluorescent tube overhead flickers once.
In that stutter of darkness his reflection doesn't move.
He freezes.
The light steadies.
The reflection is still leaning over the sink—but in the mirror, the hospital bed behind him is occupied.
A body under a white sheet.
Tubes running into motionless arms.
Monitors flatlined.
The reflection's head turns slowly toward the bed.
Its lips part in a smile that is not Kayden's.
The light steadies again.
The bed behind him is empty.
Just rumpled sheets and the indent where he was lying thirty seconds ago.
Kayden stumbles backward, slams the door, heart jackhammering so hard the monitor in the other room skips beats.
When he opens the door again, the bathroom is empty except for him.
He doesn't look in the mirror a second time.
Back in the room he sits on the bed, knees to chest, until the door flies open.
Jake fills the frame first—six-foot-four of pure panic wearing a varsity jacket.
Emily right behind, cheeks streaked with dried tears, clutching a stuffed bear from the gift shop like a riot shield.
Jake's voice breaks on the first syllable. "Jesus fucking Christ, Kay."
He crosses the room in two strides, stops short like he's scared touching Kayden will make him dissolve.
"I saw it, man. From Domino's window. I opened my mouth to scream your name and—" He swallows hard. "Sound just… died. Like someone hit mute on the world. Then the blast. Blood everywhere. I thought that was it. I thought I watched you die."
Emily drops the bear, climbs onto the bed, wraps her arms around Kayden's shoulders.
She smells like strawberry shampoo and terror.
"We ran outside," she whispers against his neck. "There was so much red we couldn't even see the lines on the road. Then the crowd parted and there you were. Just standing there like nothing happened."
Kayden manages a cracked smile. "Takes more than a car to kill me, apparently."
Jake laughs, but it turns into something that sounds too much like crying.
The nurse returns with discharge papers.
Mom is parking.
An hour later Kayden is in the passenger seat of the Corolla, seat belt cutting across bruises he can't see.
Mom keeps one hand on the wheel, the other reaching over every thirty seconds to touch his knee like he might vanish.
Home smells of lemon polish and the lavender candle she only lights when the world feels too sharp.
She settles him on the couch with three blankets and more pillows than physics allows.
"You rest. I'm making soup. No arguments."
"I'm really okay, Ma."
She kisses his forehead the way she did when he was five and the monsters were only under the bed.
The TV clicks on.
Every channel is the intersection.
Drone footage.
Yellow tape flapping in wind.
The sedan on a flatbed, roof crumpled like a crushed soda can.
A reporter with perfect hair stands exactly where Kayden almost became paint.
"—authorities remain baffled. No sign of the driver. Blood volume consistent with fatal trauma, yet no body has been recovered—"
Kayden mutes it.
In the black screen his reflection smiles half a second too late.
Night.
Across town, floodlights turn the intersection into a crime-scene stage.
A black Mercedes glides beneath the tape.
Door opens.
Sheriff Good steps out, long coat flaring, hat brim low.
Moonlight slides off his badge like oil.
The officer in charge jogs over.
"Sheriff. We've got nothing that adds up. Seatbelt was buckled, then unbuckled itself. Blood on the windshield, but no tissue, no bone fragments. It's like the driver was liquefied and then… vacuumed out."
Good crouches beside the wreck.
He runs a gloved finger through a dark streak on the door, brings it to his tongue.
Copper.
And something older.
He reaches into the driver footwell, comes up with a single human tooth—perfect, rootless, wet.
He pockets it without a word.
"Rush every sample," he says. "Tell the lab to burn midnight oil."
"Sir?"
Good stands.
His shadow stretches too long under the floodlights, edges flickering like bad film.
"This isn't a hit-and-run," he murmurs.
"This is a vacancy."
He walks back to the Mercedes.
The tooth leaves a faint red smear on the leather seat that refuses to wipe away.
As the car pulls into the dark, the sheriff's silhouette in the window no longer quite lines up with the headrest.
Something else is riding shotgun tonight.
And it's humming a tune only the dead know the words to.