Chapter 7: The Road to Damnation

Chapter 7: The Road to Damnation

There was no time for grief. Grief was a luxury for people whose worlds were still intact. Luka’s world was a shattered, suspended corpse in the middle of his living room, stinking of ozone and impossible decay. He moved with the numb, robotic efficiency of a trauma survivor. The only thought in his head was move.

He didn't wipe his fingerprints. What was the point? There was no earthly explanation for what lay in that room. He was already a ghost, a fugitive from the laws of physics itself.

His hands, steady with shock, found his backpack. The headphones, the mask, the earplugs—the useless tools of his failed containment. He shoved them inside. Next, he retrieved the brick of fifty-euro notes from its hiding place beneath a loose floorboard. The devil's money, stained with the psychic residue of its origin, was his only key to escape. He took one last, horrifying look at the impossible sculpture that had once been Rose, her silent scream a permanent fixture in his mind, and walked out of the apartment, leaving the door unlocked behind him.

The city was a hostile landscape. Every siren was for him. Every passing glance was an accusation. He kept his head down, the hood of his jacket pulled low, and walked until the cobblestone streets of his neighborhood gave way to the grimy asphalt of the industrial outskirts. He was a man with no destination other than away.

But as he stood on the hard shoulder of a motorway on-ramp, the wind whipping at his clothes, a new clarity burned through the fog of his shock. Running away was pointless. The echo wasn't a place; it was a part of him now, a daily appointment he could never miss. He could run to the ends of the earth and at 4:42 PM, the abyss would find him.

Hiding hadn't worked. Containing it had failed catastrophically. There was only one option left. He had to go back. Back to the source. The secluded German estate where his soul had been auctioned off. He had to find the Man in the Suit. He had to understand what had been done to him, to them. He had to find the heart of the machine and break it, or die trying. There were no other choices.

His thumb, raw and chapped, was a pathetic flag of surrender to the oncoming traffic. For hours, cars and trucks roared past, their drivers seeing only a gaunt, desperate-looking young man they wanted no part of. The sun began its slow descent, and the clock in his head ticked louder. He had less than five hours until the next echo. The thought of it hitting him here, on the side of a busy road, was a fresh spike of terror.

Just as he was about to give up and retreat into the woods to suffer his daily torment alone, the hiss of air brakes broke the rhythm of the traffic. A massive, long-haul truck, its sides caked with road grime, pulled over twenty yards ahead. The passenger door swung open with a pneumatic sigh.

The driver was a thick-set man in his fifties with a grey-stubbled jaw and tired, bloodshot eyes. "Where to?" he grunted in heavily accented German.

"East," Luka said, his own German rusty but passable. "As far as you're going."

The driver, Gunter, sized him up for a moment, then shrugged. "Get in. But no trouble. I've got a tight schedule."

Luka climbed into the cab, the smell of stale coffee and diesel a strange, grounding comfort. He mumbled his thanks and retreated into himself, staring out the window as the city lights finally disappeared behind them. He had a ride. A small victory.

They drove in silence for hours. Gunter seemed content to listen to the crackle of the radio, while Luka watched the landscape blur by, his thoughts a maelstrom of Rose’s shattered form and the impending deadline. The familiar dread began to build in his gut as the dashboard clock crept past 4:30 PM. He was trapped in a metal box with a stranger, hurtling down a highway. There was no closet, no headphones, no mask.

4:40 PM. The vibration started in the soles of his feet, mingling with the rumble of the truck’s engine. He gripped the seat, his knuckles white, bracing for impact.

4:41 PM. The air grew thick. He could taste the ozone. He squeezed his eyes shut, a pathetic substitute for his mask, and prepared for the vision.

Then, at exactly 4:42 PM, something new happened.

The truck's radio, which had been playing a tinny folk song, erupted in a deafening blast of static. But it wasn't normal static. It was a piercing, structured noise, a high-frequency shriek that vibrated with the same dissonant, microtonal quality as the note. It was the echo, broadcast through the airwaves.

"Verdammt!" Gunter swore, slapping the side of the radio console. "Piece of junk. Does this every damn time on this stretch of road. Right at this time."

Luka's eyes snapped open. The vision was there, at the edge of his perception, a faint, shimmering curtain of impossible color, but the shriek from the radio was dominating his senses. The echo was… externalized. Leaking. He wasn’t the only source anymore. The man’s words hit him. Every damn time on this stretch of road. This wasn't just about him.

The static cut out as abruptly as it began, replaced by the same cheerful folk song. The clock read 4:43 PM. The echo was over. Luka was left trembling, not from the vision, but from the horrifying implication.

Gunter, oblivious, was still muttering. "Always happens on the final leg of this delivery. Creeps me out."

"Delivery?" Luka asked, his voice barely a whisper.

"Yeah. Some weirdo private collector out in the countryside. Pays a fortune for 'special handling' of his 'art supplies'," Gunter scoffed, making air quotes with one hand. "More like junk, if you ask me. Heavy crates, no markings. And he's a strange one, the buyer."

A cold, heavy certainty settled in Luka's stomach. "What's he like?"

"Rich, I guess. Always wears a dark suit, even out here in the middle of nowhere. Looks right through you. Gives me the shivers. Wants his stuff delivered to this big, crumbling estate. No lights, no people. Just him, waiting."

Luka stared straight ahead, the blurred lines of the highway stretching out into the twilight. A crumbling estate. The German countryside. A quiet, menacing patron in a perfectly tailored dark suit. The pieces didn't just fit; they locked into place with a terrifying, final click.

The radio static wasn't a coincidence. It was a marker, a beacon along a pre-determined route. Gunter wasn't just a random driver giving a lift to a desperate hitchhiker. He was a cog in the same machine that had chewed Luka up and spit him out.

Luka felt a bitter, hysterical laugh bubble up in his throat. He had spent the day running, thinking he was making a choice, taking control of his destiny. But he wasn't. He wasn't a fugitive seeking the source of his damnation.

He was cargo, being delivered.