The sirens grew louder.
At first, they were distant echoes bouncing through the hills, but soon they became sharp and real — slicing through the smoke and silence that had settled around us.
Lucian didn't move.
Neither did I.
We just stood there, staring at the car as if something might still change if we waited long enough.
It didn't.
The engine noise faded into a quiet hiss. Smoke continued curling upward, turning the air hazy and unreal. My chest felt tight, like the world had suddenly lost oxygen.
Lucian took a slow step forward again.
Not toward the door this time.
Toward the front of the car.
Toward the place he had been looking earlier.
"Lucian," I said.
He crouched low.
Ignoring me.
His fingers reached beneath the wreck again, brushing the twisted underside. I saw him tracing something — the broken line that had snapped loose.
But there was something else there too.
Something that didn't belong.
A faint smear of dark grease near a cut that looked too clean.
Lucian's brow furrowed.
"What is it?" I asked.
He didn't answer.
Instead, he leaned closer.
Then—
Headlights flashed across the trees above us.
The first emergency vehicle had arrived at the road.
Voices followed.
Shouting.
People running toward the broken guardrail.
Lucian quickly pulled his hand away and stood up.
His expression had changed again — but this time I couldn't read it.
Confusion was still there.
But something else had joined it.
A thought he hadn't finished yet.
Boots crunched down the slope as paramedics and firefighters rushed toward us.
"Are you boys hurt?" one of them shouted.
I shook my head automatically.
"No."
Lucian didn't respond.
He was still staring at the car.
The rescuers reached the wreck within seconds, immediately assessing the situation. One of them pulled us farther back up the slope while others moved toward the doors with tools.
The sound of cutting equipment filled the air.
Metal grinding.
Hydraulics straining.
Lucian resisted being moved at first.
"I need to—"
"You need to step back," the firefighter said firmly, guiding him away from the wreck.
Lucian finally allowed it.
But he didn't look away.
Not even once.
We stood halfway up the hill now, watching as they worked to pry open the car.
The scene blurred around the edges of my vision.
Too many sounds.
Too many voices.
Everything felt unreal.
Then I noticed something strange.
Lucian's hands.
They were trembling.
Not from fear.
From anger.
I frowned slightly.
"Lucian…"
He still didn't answer.
His eyes were locked on the wreckage below.
In the car.
On the place beneath it.
Where he had seen something.
Where he had touched something.
The tools finally forced the driver's door open.
A paramedic leaned inside.
Silence fell for just a second.
Then I saw the look on the man's face.
And I understood before he even spoke.
Lucian saw it too.
Something inside him snapped in that moment — not loudly, not visibly — but deeply enough that I felt it beside me like a shift in the air.
The paramedics continued working, moving with careful urgency now.
But it was already too late.
One of the responders gently guided us farther up the hill toward the road.
"You boys shouldn't see this," she said softly.
But the damage was done.
Lucian finally blinked.
Just once.
And when he did, the confusion that had been in his eyes earlier changed into something else entirely.
Something darker.
He looked at me slowly.
And for the first time since the crash, I saw suspicion flicker in his gaze.
A thought forming.
A question neither of us knew how to ask.
Behind us, the wreck of the car crackled softly in the cooling air.
And somewhere far away, the small gray kitten we had saved was already gone — disappearing into a world that hadn't just been torn apart.