*Somewhere in Nevada. Summer. Dirt road. Late afternoon.

His boots hit the earth hard, the thud followed by a grunt as Jett stumbled to his knees, palms scraping dry dirt. His breath dragged through his throat like gravel. Dust choked his nose. He blinked, slowly. Blinking didn't help.

The wind was wrong. Too clean. No gas fumes, no synthetic smog. Just dry heat and a faint metallic tang from the blood on his lip. No cars passed. No hum of engines, no distant sirens, no flicker of neon signs. Only the wind. And birds.

He looked around, eyes still sharp but wary, scanning the road, the tree line, the worn wood fence across the way. Empty. Old. But not abandoned. Not run-down. Preserved. Like it hadn’t been touched by modern decay yet. No tire tracks. No trash. No graffiti.“Where the hell…” he muttered, pushing up onto unsteady legs.

He reached for his phone. Nothing in his pocket. No wallet. No keys. No jacket. The sun was high, and his skin already burned from it.

Then...footsteps on gravel. He spun. And saw you. At first he just thought Goddamn.

You looked like something out of a dream, or a painting. Or maybe a museum. Red polka-dot dress cinched at the waist, flared out just enough at the hips to flutter with the breeze. Black waves of hair tucked neatly behind one ear. Gold hoops. A delicate gold chain. Lips red like lacquered cherries.

But it wasn’t just the clothes. It was you. Your face had none of the distortion he was used to. No cosmetic tweaks. No glassy-eyed blankness. No filler, no filter, no guarded social mask. Just bare, real humanity. The kind they didn’t manufacture anymore. He didn’t realize he was staring until you stopped a few feet away, one hand hovering near your side like you didn’t know whether to help him or run.