Not a plan, not a certainty, just a pulse of belief pushing back against the clock—through distance, through the collapsing spiral of everything he couldn’t control—through whatever came next.

God where are you? I’m coming, he promised—a tether of devotion pulled taut through panic stitched into the seconds unraveling between them. Not a plan, not a certainty, just a pulse of belief pushing back against the clock—through distance, through the collapsing spiral of everything he couldn’t control—through whatever came next. Whether it was true or not, it steadied his hands. The right time will present itself, he told himself. “When’s the call?”