The engine was already screaming as Arty forced the ute forward, the road ahead tightening into something unstable as movement began bleeding into places it didn't belong.
Not fully chaos yet but close enough that every instinct he had was already warning him the window was closing faster than it should have been.
The kind of pressure that didn't need explanation anymore because he had already lived through the outcome twice.
Leah wasn't beside him this time, and that absence carried weight in a way he hadn't expected, not because he regretted it yet but because he understood exactly where she was in this moment.
He knew exactly how that timeline would unfold if he did nothing, and exactly how much it would cost him if he tried to change it without a plan.
"This is earlier," he muttered, watching the way movement began forming ahead of him, shapes crossing the road too quickly, too erratically, the edges of the world starting to fracture before the main collapse had even begun.
[Variable deviation detected]
"Yeah," he said under his breath, tightening his grip slightly on the wheel. "I can see that."
The viable location still pulled at him, steady and consistent, the only fixed point in a world that was already starting to shift out from under him.
Sitting just ahead like something that belonged to a different version of this timeline, one where he actually had enough time to reach it.
[Viable Location Detected — Distance: 17.9km]
Closer.
But not enough.
Not at this pace.
Not with the way the road was already beginning to choke.
He adjusted his line without hesitation, cutting around a vehicle that slowed too suddenly, then correcting again as a figure stumbled across the road in a way that didn't match normal movement.
The kind of wrongness that would have confused him before but now only confirmed what he already knew.
This was where it started.
Not the outbreak itself.
The lead-up.
The fractures.
The point where the world stopped behaving predictably and began collapsing in ways that punished hesitation more than mistakes.
"I'm still too slow," he said quietly, not with frustration but with the kind of cold assessment that came from seeing the same failure from multiple angles.
The road ahead narrowed further, vehicles angling badly, people reacting late, movement stacking in ways that made clean paths harder to maintain, and even though he drove better than before, smoother, sharper, more controlled, he could already see the same ending forming in front of him.
That was the difference now.
He didn't need to reach the failure point to recognise it.
He could see it building, he could feel it coming, and that changed the decision.
He took the next turn, not toward the viable location, toward the station.
The choice settled immediately, not emotional, not impulsive, but deliberate, because if he was going to test this variable, then he needed to test it properly instead of half-committing and losing time anyway.
"If I'm doing this," he muttered, "I do it clean."
The ute surged forward again, cutting through a narrowing stretch of road as the pressure increased, the environment shifting faster now as more movement appeared, more instability, more signs that the timeline was accelerating compared to the last loop.
The station came into view, still normal, still functioning.
Still completely unaware of what was about to hit it.
He pulled in hard, stepped out immediately, and moved inside with urgency that didn't match the environment but didn't need to, because pretending things were normal had already cost him more than once.
"Leah," he called, his voice controlled but carrying enough edge to cut through the routine.
She looked up from behind the counter, confusion settling in first, then mild irritation as she tried to place him and failed, because in this version of the timeline he was a stranger walking into her space acting like he belonged there.
"Do I know you?" she asked.
"No," he said, stepping closer without slowing. "And that's not important right now. What is important is that something is about to go very wrong, very quickly, and if you stay here when it happens, you may die."
She blinked once, her expression tightening slightly as she processed the words without accepting them, the reaction exactly what it should have been for someone hearing something that made no sense in a world that still felt stable.
"Right," she said slowly. "And I'm supposed to just believe that?"
"No," he replied, shaking his head slightly. "You're supposed to pay attention."
He gestured toward the front windows.
"Watch the road."
She hesitated, then stepped just enough to look, her eyes scanning the outside where everything still appeared mostly normal, where nothing obvious had broken yet, where the first signs were too subtle for someone without context to recognise.
"That's what you're talking about?" she asked. "People driving?"
"That's what it looks like before it starts," he said, his tone tightening slightly. "Give it a minute."
She didn't move away this time.
She watched.
That helped.
Time ticked.
Too fast.
Too slow.
The wrong kind of delay.
Arty stepped closer, lowering his voice slightly.
"In the next few minutes, people are going to start attacking each other, and not in a way you can reason with, not in a way you can talk down, and once it starts properly, you won't get a second chance to leave."
She turned toward him again, uncertainty replacing irritation, but not enough to commit, not enough to act.
"You're serious," she said.
"Yes."
"About what?"
He exhaled once, sharp.
"About you dying if you stay here."
That landed.
Not fully.
But enough to shift her stance.
Then the first scream hit outside.
Both of them turned.
The moment snapped.
A man dropped near the pumps, another person moving toward him too fast, too aggressively, the movement wrong in a way that couldn't be explained away once it was seen clearly.
Leah froze.
"…what is that?"
"That's it," Arty said. "That's the start. We need to go. Now."
She didn't move immediately.
Her brain was still catching up, still trying to reconcile what she was seeing with what she believed was possible, and those few seconds stretched longer than they should have, longer than he could afford.
"Leah," he said, sharper now. "We nee to move."
"I—" she started, then stopped again, her eyes flicking back outside as more movement followed, more bodies reacting, more instability spreading outward.
Then she moved.
Not fast enough.
They ran for the ute, but Leah didn't move cleanly or decisively the way someone would if they fully trusted what was happening, her steps hesitating just enough that Arty had to physically grab her arm and pull her forward.
When another scream tore across the forecourt and something slammed into the glass behind them hard enough to crack it.
"I don't—" she started, resisting for half a second as she looked back toward the station, toward normality, toward everything her brain was still trying to hold onto.
"You don't have time," Arty snapped, dragging her the last few steps as movement exploded properly behind them.
That broke it.
Not belief.
Not trust.
Just survival.
She moved.
They got in.
Arty didn't wait for the door to fully close before the ute surged forward, tyres biting hard as he forced them back onto the road, already knowing they were late, already feeling the difference in how quickly everything was collapsing compared to before.
"You weren't lying," she said, her voice tight, still trying to process what she had just seen.
"No," he replied, not looking at her. "I wasn't."
The route tightened almost instantly, vehicles blocking lines that had been clear before, movement spreading faster.
Pressure building in a way that made it obvious he had pushed the timeline into a worse configuration by interfering without enough speed to offset the cost.
Every second he had spent convincing her had cost him.
Every hesitation had compounded.
"I lost too much time," he muttered.
"What?" she asked.
"Nothing," he said quickly. "Just hold on."
The ute clipped a stalled car as he forced a line through a closing gap, the impact throwing them sideways just enough to destabilise the rear before he corrected, pushing harder, faster, trying to outrun something that wasn't behind him but already everywhere.
Then something hit them.
Hard.
From the side.
The impact tore control away instantly as the ute snapped sideways, metal screaming as the frame twisted under force, glass exploding outward in a violent burst that turned the world into fragments and motion.
The vehicle rolled.
Once.
Twice.
Then slammed down with crushing force.
Everything stopped.
But not cleanly.
The cab had collapsed inward, the structure folding just enough to trap rather than kill outright, metal pressing into space that used to be empty, turning the inside into something too tight to move in properly.
Arty tried to breathe.
The first inhale came shallow.
The second worse.
His chest tightened as pressure built slowly, the kind that didn't end things instantly but made it very clear that it was going to, the weight of the crash settling in around him as the vehicle locked into its final shape.
Leah was beside him.
Close.
Too close.
He could hear her.
A broken sound.
Then a breath.
Then—
Nothing.
Air didn't come properly anymore.
Each attempt shallower than the last.
His body tried.
Failed.
Tried again.
Failed harder.
Time stretched.
Not long.
But long enough.
Long enough for the understanding to settle in without panic, without denial, just a clean, brutal clarity.
It wasn't the crash.
It was the time he didn't have after it.
His vision narrowed.
Edges collapsing inward.
Thought slowing as the need to breathe became something his body could no longer answer.
And then—
Everything stopped, there was no impact, no sensation, no body.
Arty existed in a space that had no direction, no weight, no sense of distance or time, awareness held in place without anything physical to anchor it, the memory of the crash still sharp even though the reality of it was gone.
The system was there.
Not distant anymore.
Present.
Active.
[Cycle Terminated]
[Cause of Death: Structural Collapse / Asphyxiation]
[Cycle Efficiency Increased]
Arty exhaled slowly, or at least the idea of it, because breathing wasn't something he needed here.
"This is where I choose."
[Reset Options Available]
Option 1: Return — 1 Day Prior to Outbreak
Penalty: +10% Debt
Option 2: Return — 7 Days Prior
Penalty: +25% Debt
Option 3: Return — 30 Days Prior
Penalty: +50% Debt
The options hung in front of him, clear and unavoidable, and for the first time he actually understood the weight behind them, not just the time but the cost attached to each decision.
Thirty days would fix this.
He knew it.
He could feel it.
It was the only option that actually gave him enough room to change anything properly.
His jaw tightened.
"Too expensive."
The debt was already out of control.
Every cycle was making it worse.
Taking that option now would push it into something he wasn't sure he could ever recover from.
Not yet.
His focus shifted.
Locked.
"Option 1."
[Confirmed]