Prologue
A man fell out of the sky and hit the windshield.
The impact was violent and wrong — metal groaning, glass bowing inward instead of breaking, the car jerking sideways as if it had struck a wall.
Five seconds earlier, they had been driving under an overbridge.
Rain-slick concrete. Sodium lights. The empty span above them passing without thought.
Now the man was on the road.
Cassian hit the brakes too late. The car skidded and stopped at an angle, engine ticking, rain filling the space where sound should've been.
The man moved.
Not crawling. Not flailing.
He pushed himself up on one arm, breath sharp and controlled, like pain was something to be managed later. Blood spread thin across the asphalt beneath him, diluted by rain.
"911"
The man looked past them, not at them — eyes tracking the road, the bridge, the dark space behind the car.
"Don't take me there," he said.
His voice wasn't weak. It wasn't rushed.
"If you take me there," he continued, "they'll finish it."
Then his legs gave out.
He collapsed where he stood, head striking the pavement with a sound that didn't echo.
Rain kept falling.Cassian was driving down the road with his buddy Junior , an overbridge came into their view and before