I woke up at the crossroads.
The exact moment. The exact place. Olivia's mouth already opening to say those words—"Take that one. It's shorter. My boss uses this route—"
"NO!"
I didn't think. Didn't hesitate. Didn't waste a single second.
My foot slammed down on the accelerator and I yanked the wheel hard left—not toward the offroad path, not toward the main highway, but directly at the metal guardrail that separated the two directions of traffic.
"CLYDE, WHAT—"
The impact was deafening. Metal screamed against metal as we hit the barrier at sixty kilometers per hour. The car shuddered violently, the hood crumpling, but our momentum carried us forward. The guardrail bent, buckled, and finally broke, the support posts tearing free from the concrete with sounds like gunshots.
We crashed through onto the opposite lane—the return path, heading back the way we'd come. Back toward Alaska. Back toward anywhere that wasn't here.
Warning lights exploded across the dashboard. The front end was damaged, making horrible grinding noises, but the engine was still running and that was all that mattered.
I straightened the wheel and floored it.
The speedometer climbed: 80... 100... 120 kilometers per hour.
"CLYDE! STOP THE CAR!" Olivia was screaming, her hands braced against the dashboard. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
I didn't answer. Couldn't answer. My eyes were locked on the road ahead, on the distance growing between us and that cursed spot. My hands gripped the wheel so tightly my knuckles had gone white.
I checked the clock: 6:28 PM.
Nine minutes. I had nine minutes to get as far away as possible.
140... 160... 180 kilometers per hour.
The damaged car protested every second of it. Something was dragging underneath, throwing sparks. The steering pulled hard to the left from the collision damage. But I fought it, kept the accelerator pinned to the floor, pushed the screaming engine beyond any reasonable limit.
"Clyde, please!" Olivia grabbed my arm, shaking it. "You're scaring me! Talk to me! What's happening?!"
But I couldn't talk. If I opened my mouth, I'd start screaming about daffodils and razor wire and her heart falling out and the gun and the officer and four deaths in four different ways. She'd think I was insane.
Maybe I was insane.
But the memories felt too real. The pain felt too real. Her death—her deaths—felt too real.
"CLYDE!" She was sobbing now, tears streaming down her face. "Please, just tell me what's wrong! Whatever it is, we can—"
"Shut up!" The words exploded from me, harsh and desperate. "Just shut up and let me drive!"
She recoiled as if I'd slapped her, pressing herself against the passenger door. The hurt in her eyes—the fear—would have destroyed me under any other circumstances.
But right now, I didn't care. Right now, all that mattered was distance.
190... 195... 200 kilometers per hour.
The car felt like it was going to shake apart. Every bolt and panel rattled. The engine's scream had reached a fever pitch. Smoke was starting to seep from under the hood—something was overheating, probably multiple somethings.
Olivia had stopped shouting. She was just crying now, quiet and terrified, her hands clutching the door handle as if she might throw herself out at any moment.
Part of me—the part that was still a cop, still a husband, still human—wanted to stop. Wanted to comfort her. Wanted to explain.
But the larger part—the part that had watched her die four times, that had felt her blood on my hands and her heart beating in the dirt and the bullet through her brain—that part would not let me slow down.
Not for one second.
Not until—
I glanced at the clock: 6:36 PM.
One minute.
The landscape blurred past us, unrecognizable at this speed. Trees, rocks, empty tundra—all just streaks of color in my peripheral vision. The road ahead was the only thing in focus, that gray ribbon stretching toward a horizon I might never reach.
"Clyde..." Olivia's voice was small now, broken. "I don't understand what's happening. Please... I'm so scared..."
Her words were knives in my chest, but I couldn't respond. My eyes flicked between the road and the clock.
6:37 PM.
The explosion came.
Even from this distance—we must have been fifteen, maybe twenty kilometers away by now—I felt it. A tremor through the ground that made the car skip and shudder. A flash of light in the rearview mirror, brilliant and terrible, turning the twilight into false noon for just a moment.
"Oh my God," Olivia whispered, turning to look back through the rear window. "What was that? Clyde, what was—"
The shockwave hit us like the fist of an angry god.
Even at this distance, even with all the space I'd put between us and ground zero, it was massive. The pressure wave lifted the back end of the car off the road, sending us into a spin.
I fought the wheel, trying to regain control, but at 200 kilometers per hour with a damaged front end, there was no control to be had.
We spun once, twice, three times. The world became a kaleidoscope of road and sky and Olivia's screaming and the horrible certainty that I'd failed again.
The car left the road. We were airborne for a moment—just a moment—and then we hit.
The impact was catastrophic. The car tumbled end over end, metal shrieking, glass shattering. I felt my body slam against the seatbelt, the force of it knocking the wind from my lungs.
But worse than anything I was experiencing was watching Olivia.
The passenger door—weakened by her weight pressing against it, by the stress of the spin—tore open. She was thrown from the vehicle like a rag doll, her seatbelt somehow unlatching or breaking in the chaos.
I watched her tumble through the air, limbs flailing, mouth open in a scream I couldn't hear over the screaming metal.
She hit the ground hard. Too hard. At a speed no human body was meant to endure.
The car finally came to rest on its roof, the world upside down and wrong. I hung from my seatbelt, somehow miraculously uninjured except for the bruising across my chest from the belt itself.
Through the shattered windshield, I could see her.
Olivia lay thirty meters away, twisted at angles that bodies shouldn't twist. Her neck was bent wrong. So wrong. Her eyes were open, staring at the darkening sky, and even from this distance I could see they weren't seeing anything anymore.
"No," I whispered, fumbling with the seatbelt release. "No, no, no..."
The belt released and I dropped onto the roof of the car. I scrambled toward the windshield, crawling through the shattered glass on my hands and knees.
"Olivia! OLIVIA!"
I pulled myself free of the wreckage and ran toward her, my legs working perfectly despite the horror of what had just happened, despite the impossibility of walking away from a crash like that without a scratch.
When I reached her, I fell to my knees beside her body.
Her neck was broken. I could see that immediately. Could see the unnatural angle, the way her head sat wrong on her shoulders. Blood trickled from her nose and ears—internal bleeding, brain damage, all the terrible things that happened when a human body experienced that kind of trauma.
But she was still breathing. Shallow, rattling breaths that bubbled with blood.
"Olivia," I sobbed, afraid to touch her, afraid moving her would make it worse. "Olivia, please, stay with me..."
Her eyes found mine. For just a moment, there was recognition there. Confusion. Pain. And something that looked almost like pity.
"Clyde..." she whispered, blood bubbling from her lips. "Why..."
Then the light went out.
I watched it happen. Watched the moment her eyes went from seeing to empty. Watched the last breath rattle out of her lungs and not return.
"I'm sorry," I sobbed, reaching for her hand. Her fingers were still warm. "I'm sorry, I tried to save you, I tried to get us away, I thought if I just drove fast enough, far enough..."
But it hadn't been enough. It was never enough. The universe—God, fate, whatever cruel force was doing this—wouldn't let her live. Wouldn't let us escape.
I sat there, uninjured and whole, cradling my wife's broken body as the mushroom cloud rose in the distance, painted orange and red by the setting sun.
And for the first time across all these loops, I realized the cruelty of it.
I never got hurt. Not really. Not permanently.
Only she did.
Only she paid the price for my failures.
I threw my head back and screamed at the darkening sky, a sound of pure anguish and rage that echoed across the empty wasteland.
Then darkness came for me anyway.
Not from injury.
Just from the loop resetting.
Then nothing.
My mind was blank in all senses.
Then the second explosion came on a mere five minutes later.
Then once again a light came over me.
As i went into the light i saw a colorless void for just a split second before-