Chapter 1: Blood on the Highway
The rain came down in sheets, turning the highway shoulder into a slick black mirror that reflected nothing but ruin.
I don't remember the impact. I remember the sound—a sound that wasn't a sound at all but a tearing, a ripping of the world into before and after. I remember the car folding around us like wet paper. I remember the smell of gasoline and copper and something else, something burnt that I would later learn was flesh.
I remember waking up upside down.
The seatbelt cut into my chest like a fist holding me over a cliff. Blood rushed to my head, thick and hot, and the world swam in and out of focus. The windshield was a spiderweb of cracks, and through it, the dying streetlamp cast everything in a sickly yellow glow that made the scene look like an old photograph left in the sun.
My first coherent thought was: I'm alive.
My second was: Where is everyone else?
I fumbled for the buckle, my fingers slick with something I didn't want to identify. The latch clicked. I hit the roof of the car—now the floor—with a grunt, my shoulder screaming in protest. Glass bit into my palms as I crawled through the shattered window, dragging myself out onto the wet asphalt.
The rain hit my face like needles. It washed the blood from my eyes, and for a moment, I could see clearly.
The car was a crushed aluminum can, resting on its roof like a dead animal. The hood was crumpled against the guardrail, steam hissing from the engine. The hazard lights blinked on and off, on and off, painting the scene in intermittent red.
And then I heard it.
A groan. Low and guttural. Coming from inside the wreckage.
"Uncle Shetty?" My voice came out cracked, barely audible over the rain. I scrambled back toward the car, slipping on the wet asphalt, my knees hitting the ground hard enough to send pain shooting up my thighs.
Through the twisted frame, I could see him. My uncle. His body was bent at an angle that made my stomach lurch, his face pressed against what used to be the passenger window. Blood matted his gray hair, and his eyes were closed.
"Uncle Shetty!" I screamed it this time, reaching through the gap where the rear window used to be. My fingers brushed his neck, searching for a pulse. There. Faint. Threadbare. But there.
"Rahul..."
The voice was small. So small.
I turned my head so fast my neck cracked.
Ashwitha was in the back seat, her body wedged between the crushed door and the upside-down console. Her saree was torn, the blue silk dark with rain and blood. Her long black hair clung to her face like seaweed, and her eyes—those enormous, dark eyes that had haunted my dreams for longer than I cared to admit—were wide open and staring at me.
"Ashwitha." Her name came out like a prayer. Like a confession.
"Rahul, I can't—I can't feel my legs." Her voice trembled, but her eyes didn't. They held mine with a desperation that cut deeper than any glass.
"I'm going to get you out." I said it like I believed it. I had to believe it.
I pulled at the door, but it wouldn't budge. The metal was twisted, fused. I yanked again, my muscles burning, my vision blurring with rain and sweat and something thicker.
"Rahul..."
"I'm trying." I gritted my teeth and pulled harder. The door groaned, metal screeching against metal, and then—finally—it gave.
A gap. Small. But enough.
I reached in and grabbed her arms. They were cold. So cold. "Come on. Come on, baby, you have to help me."
The word slipped out before I could stop it. Baby. I'd never called her that. Never dared. But there it was, hanging in the rain between us.
She didn't seem to notice. Or maybe she did. Maybe that was why she gripped my forearms with what little strength she had left and pulled.
I dragged her through the gap, her body scraping against the jagged metal. She cried out—a sound that tore through me like shrapnel—but I didn't stop. I couldn't stop. If I stopped, I would think about what I was doing. About who I was leaving behind.
Her feet cleared the wreckage just as the first flame licked up from the engine.
"Rahul—" She was on the ground now, coughing, gasping, her fingers digging into my shirt. "Rahul, please—"
I looked back at the car.
My uncle was still in there. His pulse had been faint, but it was there. He was still alive. And somewhere in the back, buried under twisted metal and shattered glass, was his son. His eight-year-old boy. My cousin.
I could hear him. A small, thin wail that rose above the rain and the crackling flames. "Papa... Papa..."
I took a step toward the car.
Ashwitha's hand closed around my wrist.
"Rahul." Her voice was different now. Not desperate. Not pleading. Certain. "If you go back in there, you'll die too."
"I can't just—"
"He's gone." Her eyes didn't waver. "They're gone. But I'm not. You saved me. You chose me."
The words hit me like a physical blow.
Chose her.
I hadn't thought about it that way. I hadn't thought at all. My body had moved before my brain could catch up, and when I'd reached into that wreckage, I'd reached for her first. Not my uncle. Not the boy. Her.
The fire caught the gasoline then, and the car went up with a sound like the world ending.
I watched it burn. I watched the flames consume the metal and the glass and everything inside. I watched until the heat forced me back, until Ashwitha's grip on my wrist became a pull, until I was stumbling away from the wreckage with her limp body in my arms.
The rain kept falling. The streetlamp kept flickering. And somewhere in the distance, I heard sirens.
I laid her down on the grass beside the highway, away from the smoke, away from the fire. Her saree was ruined, her body shivering, her lips blue. I shrugged off my jacket and wrapped it around her, my hands shaking so badly I could barely manage the zipper.
"Rahul." Her voice was barely a whisper.
"I'm here." I knelt beside her, brushing the wet hair from her face. "I'm not going anywhere."
She looked up at me, and in her eyes, I saw something I would spend the rest of my life trying to forget. Gratitude. Devotion. And beneath it all, something darker. Something that looked a lot like possession.
"My life belongs to you now," she said.
The words were soft, almost lost to the rain. But they landed in my chest like a stone in still water, sending ripples through everything I thought I knew about myself.
"Ashwitha, you don't have to—"
"I mean it." She reached up, her cold fingers brushing my cheek. "You chose me, Rahul. Out of everyone in that car, you chose me. That means something."
I opened my mouth to argue, to explain, to tell her that it wasn't a choice at all—it was instinct, panic, survival. But the words wouldn't come. Because deep down, in the part of me I never let myself look at too closely, I knew she was right.
The sirens grew louder. Red and blue lights painted the rain.
I stayed on my knees beside her, the fire roaring behind us, the smell of death still thick in the air.
And I wondered if I had just saved her life or destroyed my own.