Ghost Roads
We stood frozen at the corner, staring at the impossible.
Charlie’s neighborhood—the tree-lined streets, the tidy houses with their manicured lawns—had vanished. In their place stretched a row of concrete-block offices and strip malls, all sun-bleached and faded like something out of 1975.
In my timeline, I’d been here just days ago with Raven, planting surveillance equipment in Charlie and Rune’s house. We’d hidden in their closet, vaulted their fence, memorized every corner of their home while they were at dinner.
“What the hell—” I started.
A car screeched around the corner—sleek, low, and definitely not from this decade. The engine roared as it skidded to a halt in front of us.
Raven grabbed my hand.
Adrenaline flooded my system as I registered the vehicle—some kind of modified vintage Corvette with a gleaming matte finish that seemed to absorb rather than reflect light. Not government issue, not civilian standard. Something custom, dangerous.
I barely had time to blink before the passenger window rolled down and Emry leaned over, shouting, “Get in!”
There was no back seat. More like an extension of the passenger seat that curved behind the driver’s position.
“Now!” she barked, her voice tight with urgency. Above us, the whine of drones intensified, a mechanical shriek that set my teeth on edge. A beam of harsh light swept across the pavement inches from our feet.
I grabbed Raven’s sleeve and pulled him forward. “Come on!”
I scrambled in first and ended up half in Raven’s lap, my knees jammed awkwardly under the dashboard. The interior was cramped, all sleek angles and hard surfaces. Raven slid in after me, fumbling for the door handle as the car began moving before he was fully inside. He tugged the door shut just as a low whine in the distance built to a crescendo overhead. Drones.
The engine roared to life, vibrating through the floorboards as Emry slammed her foot down. The car fishtailed, tires fighting for traction, before rocketing forward. My shoulder crashed into Raven’s chest as we accelerated, the G-force pressing us deeper into the seat.
“Where did you get this car?” I gasped, bracing myself against the dashboard. “What happened to your old Subaru with the hand controls?”
Emry didn’t answer, her eyes locked on the road as she executed a perfect drift around a corner that should have sent us spinning.
In the cabin, the air smelled like ozone and leather. The console was clean—too clean. Precision-cut buttons, military-style switches, a flip-down visor with unfamiliar tracking overlays. Not a standard issue vehicle.
Not Emry’s usual vehicle.
Confusion swept through me as I tried to reconcile this sleek, high-performance machine with the modest, adapted car Emry had driven ever since her accident. The Emry I knew drove carefully, methodically—never like this.
I swallowed, trying to get my bearings, but something felt wrong. Emry’s driving was flawless. Too flawless. Not just skilled—inhumanly smooth. Her eyes flicked to the gearshift.
Emry was working the clutch with her left leg and the accelerator with the right.
I stared, unable to process what I was seeing. A memory surfaced—Emry when we’d first met, telling me about the accident that took her leg. The only survivor of a head-on collision, left with a below-knee amputation that her grandmother’s insurance barely covered. The months of physical therapy. The prosthetic she’d worn ever since.
Yet here she was, working the clutch with a flesh-and-blood leg that shouldn’t exist.
My breath caught in my throat.
“Your leg…” I murmured, voice barely audible over the engine. I shifted my weight subtly, letting Raven see what I was seeing.
His face paled. His hand clenched against the door panel, knuckles whitening. The look we exchanged was electric with understanding—this wasn’t our Emry. Not completely.
His brow furrowed.
But before either of us could speak, Emry snapped, “What were you thinking, breaking curfew like that? I’ve been trying to ping your phones for hours!”
I flinched at the sharpness in her tone. I hadn’t expected Emry—my Emry—to sound like this.
But something’s clearly changed.
“We thought you went to the library,” I said, my voice still quiet.
Emry barked a laugh. “The library’s been closed for two days. All of them. You didn’t get the alert?”
“No,” Raven said, glancing at me. “We’ve been… off-grid.”
“Well, no kidding,” Emry muttered, taking a hard turn. “Everything’s locked down. Borders, cities, transit. No one goes anywhere except medics and certified food delivery. Aoife is making her final selections.”
I frowned. “Final… selections?”
“For the 144,000. You know—the ‘Chosen.’” Emry’s voice was bitter now. “Her precious doomsday lottery. And the rest of us? We keep our heads down and pray we’re still useful.”
“That’s not policy—that’s prophecy,” Raven said, his voice tight. “The Book of Revelation. She’s actually implementing biblical apocalypse protocol?”
“Started six months ago,” Emry replied grimly. “First came the biometric scans. Then lineage assessments. Now it’s magical aptitude testing. They’re scoring everyone on a scale of one to twelve. You need a ten or higher to make the cut.”
“And if you don’t?” I asked.
Emry’s jaw clenched. “Best case? Labor camps. Worst case?” Her voice dropped. “People disappear. Whole families. No warning, no trace.”
We passed a stark black billboard, its message clear against a white background: “SEE SOMETHING? SAY SOMETHING! Safety Through Vigilance.”
A wave of smoke drifted over the road, thick and sour. Emry cursed and yanked the wheel left, cutting down a narrow ramp.
We glided beneath a crumbling overpass choked with ivy and half-collapsed scaffolding. Above us, the drone sounds grew louder—then started to fade.
Emry pulled a folded sheet from the rear compartment behind her seat and threw it across the roof of the car in one fluid motion. The material unfolded like a silver-black skin and stuck to the frame with soft magnetic clicks.
Almost immediately, the temperature inside dropped a few degrees.
“What is that?” Raven asked, peering upward.
“Thermal suppression blanket,” Emry replied. “Delivery crews use them to keep bots hidden from thieves. Works on drones too, if you don’t move and don’t overheat the engine.”
The three of us sat in tense silence as another drone passed overhead.
The humming grew closer, vibrating through the metal roof. A chill spread across my skin as the drone hovered directly above us. I imagined its sensors probing, searching, hunting. Raven’s arm slipped protectively around my waist, drawing me closer against him in the cramped space.
“Don’t move,” Emry whispered, her knuckles tight on the steering wheel.
Seconds crawled by like hours. Then, finally, the drone moved on.
Then silence.
Just the jangle of far-off alarms. The distant echo of sirens.
I exhaled slowly.
In the dark, I watched Emry’s hands flex around the steering wheel—steady, sharp. Her dark hair was smoothed back in a neat swirl at the base of her neck, so different from the loose waves I remembered. Raven hadn’t said a word since we got in. I could feel the tension in his body under mine as we both remained crammed into the seat.
This close, there was nowhere to hide.
I shifted uncomfortably in Raven’s lap, the silence between us taut. Then Emry’s eyes snapped to the center console.
Her tone turned sharp again. “Are your phones still on?”
Raven and I both stilled.
“I—mine’s in my jacket,” I said.
“Pocket,” Raven muttered, reaching down.
“Turn them off. Now.” We scrambled to obey, but Emry was already yanking open the glove box. She pulled out a soft, dull-gray pouch and tossed it over her shoulder toward us. It landed in my lap.
“Drop them in that. It’s a Faraday wrap. Keeps the signals quiet—phones can still be tracked even when they’re powered down.”
I slipped my phone into the cloth, Raven doing the same behind me. The fabric crinkled softly as I folded the edges closed.
Emry watched in the mirror, her expression grim. “It’s not just about being tracked. This entire sector is dark. No unauthorized signals. You show up on a drone scan without a government-issued device pinging nearby, you’re marked. Two of you side by side?” She exhaled hard. “That’s a flag, a beacon, a big fat red target.”
I clutched the pouch tighter. “You didn’t say that before.”
“I didn’t think I needed to.”
“How are you tracking us, then?” Raven asked. “If our phones are such a liability?”
“Through the think tank,” Emry replied, as if it were obvious. “Your work badges still ping the system even when your phones are dark. Jakin made sure I kept access to the employee tracking grid.”
I frowned. “Employee tracking?”
Emry shot me a baffled look. “Are you feeling okay? You’ve been complaining about the new monitoring protocols for weeks.”
Studying us both in the mirror, Emry squinted at us. After a long moment, she reached for a secured device clipped near the dash—sleek, matte black with a cracked corner. She tapped through a minimalist interface, checking a message board only accessible through a courier login. Her fingers flew across the screen, then she straightened. “Drones have moved east. Toward the university. Riot kicked off again near the old library quad.”
Raven let out a breath. “So we’re clear?”
“For now.”
She reached through the open window on the driver’s side and tugged at the blanket over the car.
I glanced at the side mirror. What I saw made my chest tighten.
I saw my reflection and Raven’s behind me—two strangers.
The face looking back wasn’t entirely mine. It was me, but not me. My features were harder, sharper. My eyes colder.
My long, loose hair was gone, replaced by a neat bob clipped back with barrettes. Raven’s hair was short, cropped close at the sides. Both of us were dressed in black T-shirts we weren’t wearing before.
Raven’s hand moved to the back of his neck, brushing against hair that should have been there but wasn’t. His expression in the reflection was haunted, lost.
I lifted a hand to my hair.
It’s still long. Still loose.
I tugged at a strand, feeling its weight, its reality. But not in the mirror.
“My earrings are different,” I whispered. “And there’s makeup on my face I’m not wearing.”
“The mirror’s showing this reality’s version of us,” Raven murmured. “But we’re still us.”
A cold panic seized me. “What if someone removes a page before the three days are up? What if we lose our protection?”
Raven caught my gaze in the mirror. His mouth was tight, but his eyes held mine steadily. “We have to trust the spell will hold.”
Emry didn’t notice. She pulled the car out from under the overpass, taking the backstreets fast and low. Burnt-out buildings flickered past the windows. The streets were empty except for scattered trash and drifting smoke. She didn’t speak again until we were close to her neighborhood. When she did, her voice was tight. “We’ll talk when we’re home.”
I leaned forward slightly, still clutching the now-silent pouch in my lap.
“Where did you learn all this?” I asked. “Thermal blankets? Faraday wraps? Courier boards?”
Emry kept her eyes on the road. “Professor Jakin Crutchfield set it up. Don’t you remember?”
Raven stiffened slightly. I blinked.
“Jakin?” I echoed.
The name conjured an immediate flash of memory—Jakin’s hand on my back, his breath hot against my ear as he whispered sweet manipulations. The way he’d used me, seduced me, tried to sacrifice me for power. The smirk that never quite left his mouth, even in moments of supposed tenderness.
Emry glanced at me in the mirror. “Yeah. He’s the Last Priest of Daegan. Without him and Sam, the three of us would probably already be dead.”
“Last Priest?” Raven repeated, voice strained. “Not possible. Jakin never cared about anyone but himself. He enjoyed watching others burn.”
“Are we talking about the same man?” Emry asked. “Intense eyes, that scar on his arm where lightning struck him as a teen, always quotes ancient texts at inappropriate moments?”
“Sounds like him,” I said grimly.
“Then you’re remembering wrong,” Emry insisted. “Jakin’s been our lifeline since the lockdowns started. He saved our entire operation when the library raids began.”
I let out a breathy laugh, but there was no humor in it. “Jakin’s always been out for himself. I don’t trust him.”
Emry’s tone sharpened. “Well, maybe you should start. He’s the one who got you your position at the think tank. You and Raven both. Without that access, we’d have no way to monitor what Aoife is really planning.”
Neither of us responded right away.
In the reflection of the side mirror, Raven lifted his arm just enough to glance at his inner wrist.
The bind rune—his mark of priesthood—wasn’t there. Not in the mirror.
His eyes widened, fingers tracing the unmarked skin where the Walking Lightning rune should have been. The symbol that had defined his identity, his purpose, his place in the world—gone.
Erased.
His mouth tightened. I saw it too. I looked away, quickly.
In this reality… he was never initiated.
We sat in stunned silence as Emry rounded a corner onto a wider street. The world outside the windshield was bleak—boarded storefronts, charred cars, streets slick with ash.
“What happens now?” I whispered to him, too low for Emry to hear.
“I don’t know,” he replied, equally soft. “But we stick together. No matter what.”
Then, the road ahead erupted.
A bomb exploded half a block in front of us—blinding white flash, then a deep roar as black smoke mushroomed into the sky. Emry slammed on the brakes, one arm instinctively thrown across me.
Heat blasted through the windshield. The sound seemed to vanish for a moment, replaced by a high-pitched ringing as my eardrums protested the concussive force. Debris rained against the hood and roof—concrete chunks, metal shards, burning paper. The shockwave rocked the car, pushing it back several feet.
Through the chaos, I saw a sedan tossed into the air like a child’s toy, spinning once before crashing upside down onto a storefront awning.
Raven’s body curled protectively around mine, shielding my head as the windshield cracked but held.
Another explosion followed, farther off but no less violent. Sirens wailed in the distance.
A swarm of drones cut overhead, their silver wings glinting in the smoke-dimmed sun.
Emry’s hands trembled for a single breath before steadying. Her face, illuminated by the orange glow of flames, was set in grim determination.
“Hold on,” Emry muttered, throwing the car into reverse. “We are not getting caught in that.”
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