As he pulled into traffic, a blue sedan cut him off at an intersection. Felix smiled, yielded, and waved.

“You failed me,” she whispered. “You always brake too late.”

The echo tilted her head. “Then prove it. Drive me home.” The last 28 hours were a blur of impossible drives — a collapsing tunnel in the rain, a bridge that folded like paper, a fog so thick the only guide was the echo sitting silently in the passenger seat. Felix didn’t just learn to control a car; he learned to control his reaction to chaos. Panic became precision. Fear became focus.

The echo was gone. But the lesson remained.

He didn’t know the route. The GPS refused to work. So he drove by memory — not street names, but emotional landmarks. The corner where his father taught him to ride a bike. The bridge where he’d first kissed Lena. The hill where he’d sat alone after dropping out of university.