Fifty Years After the Anima Ignition
The fuel gauge had twitched. The radio had whispered.
But by morning, the Impala was still and silent again—like nothing had happened at all.
Katra didn't mention it to anyone.
She just pulled the sheet back over the car, locked the bay, and got to work.
The wrench slipped—again.
Katra cursed under her breath and braced her boot against the undercarriage of the Camry, forcing the bolt loose with a sharp clang that echoed through the garage like a warning shot. Outside, Requira was already stirring—soft hums of hovercrafts, the hiss of automated street sweepers brushing gutters clean, the quiet drone of machines doing what people no longer needed to.
She wiped her hand on a rag and straightened slowly, shoulder tight from sleeping wrong on the cot in her office. Her braid stuck to the back of her neck. She didn't check the mirror.
She already knew what she'd see: the same face she'd had at twenty-five. A little harder now. Not older. Just… out of place.
That was the cutoff.
Anyone over twenty-five the day the sky turned violet had frozen in time. Hair stopped graying. Skin stopped wrinkling. Bodies stopped drifting toward decay. Those younger kept aging—slowly, inevitably—until they hit that number. Then they froze too.
No one aged past it. No one ever would again.
Katra had just barely crossed the line. And sometimes, when she caught her reflection in certain light, she wondered if that was a gift… or a trap.
She blinked at her reflection in the kettle's steel curve, then turned away before it could stare back.
There was work to do.
The Impala needed a dozen things before it would be anything more than a relic. Brake seals. Belt tensioners. A fuel regulator if she could find one that hadn't been stripped for housing components or converted into bonding scrap. She ran through the list in her head, sorting it by likelihood, by salvage, by risk.
Katra reached for her jacket—canvas, oil-stained, patched at the elbow—and locked the garage behind her. Just the key. Just her. The way it had always been.
Requira's mid-morning air hung thick with city haze and faint ozone. Somewhere overhead, a transit shuttle whispered past—silent, seamless, as if the sky had swallowed its sound. The streets were swept clean. Trash bins were never full. Mailboxes emptied themselves on schedule, and no one stopped to ask how.
Katra passed two neighbors on the narrow walkway. One was watering a planter with a can that moved like it had a mind of its own. The other watched Katra with the flat indifference of someone who'd long since decided she didn't belong.
No one spoke.
She walked with purpose, eyes on the ground, ticking through her mental checklist.
Impala:
Vacuum line (cracked)
Brake pads (beyond toast)
Regulator (no chance, but check anyway)
Console fuses (maybe salvageable)
She turned a corner and slipped through a side alley toward the market, past brick walls still bearing scorch marks from a fire that no one ever talked about.
The market was alive, in its own hushed way.
Vendors leaned behind long steel counters, rarely moving. Their machines did the labor—bagging, weighing, calculating, organizing—while they merely watched, waiting for silent commands no one ever explained. Katra, untethered, moved between them without acknowledgment. Not ignored. Not welcomed.
Familiar, in the way that an empty seat at a full table becomes part of the furniture.
She approached the parts stall near the plaza's edge. Old, chipped paint spelled out "Renn's Salvage + Supply" above a shuttered awning. Behind the counter stood a woman maybe ten years older than Katra looked—real years unknown, like everyone.
Katra cleared her throat. "You still have carb kits for analog regulators?"
Renn looked up slowly. "What make?"
"Chevy. '67."
A pause. Not surprise—just consideration. "Might have one. Why?"
Katra tapped a knuckle against the counter. "Project."
Another pause.
Then: "You always have a project."
Katra didn't reply.
Renn gave a half-shrug and turned to the back, disappearing behind a curtain of mismatched wiring and stripped conduit. Katra waited. She didn't fidget. Didn't check her comm. Just stood still, hands in her pockets, eyes tracking a nearby vendor counting empty crates as if they were full.
After a minute, Renn returned with a small plastic bin, the lid scuffed and sun-faded. She set it on the counter, flipping it open with a practiced snap. Inside, nestled in faded foam, sat the regulator kit—dusty, incomplete, but real.
"Last one," Renn said. "You crack this, you're out of luck."
Katra leaned over, inspecting it. "No gasket?"
"Find your own." Renn's tone was dry as sun-baked stone. Then, softer: "But it'll run."
Katra nodded, and slid her creds across the counter.
Renn didn't take them immediately. She looked at Katra for a long moment—longer than the transaction required.
"You still working that old shop?"
Katra nodded again.
Renn snorted through her nose, but there was no meanness in it. "Place oughta be dust by now."
"Guess I'm stubborn."
"No." Renn reached for the creds. "You're the only one left who still gives a damn."
Katra blinked at that. She didn't smile, but the silence between them eased by half a breath.
Renn slid the box across to her. "Bring me the core if it's bad. Maybe I can rework it."
"I will."
Katra turned to leave, but Renn added, not looking up, "And try not to break the car. Whatever it is, it's got you walking different."
Katra paused, hand on the curtain, unsure what to say.
"Just a job," she muttered.
Renn didn't reply.
The garage was quiet when she got back.
She locked the door behind her, set the box on the bench, and pulled the tarp off the Impala with a slow, steady tug. The fabric dragged over the metal like a held breath.
The car sat there—still, silent, waiting.
Katra exhaled and popped the hood.
She started with the spark plugs. Always start there. They were a quick tell—like checking the teeth on a horse.
She pulled one, held it up to the shop light. The tip was caked with carbon, dark and dry like old coffee grounds.
"Too rich," she muttered. "Too long."
She cleaned it with a wire brush, checked the gap with her feeler gauge—slightly off, but nothing fatal—and moved on to the next one. It was worse. Fouled and wet.
"Cylinder two's running cold."
She made a note of it in the back of her manual—an actual spiral-bound thing, pages smudged with grease, dog-eared from years of notes no tethered mechanic would ever bother to take.
Next, she inspected the vacuum lines—rubber cracked and stiff with age. She flexed one and it split right down the middle.
She didn't curse this time. Just added it to the mental list.
By the time she reached the carburetor, sweat had begun to gather behind her knees. The air was thick with the scent of old oil and powdered rust. She unfastened the linkage, removed the air cleaner, and lifted the housing free.
Fuel regulator next.
She cracked the old one open carefully, as if it might fight back. Inside, the diaphragm was warped, dry-rotted like old leather.
"Dead as it looks," she murmured.
She opened the box Renn had given her and swapped the core with practiced hands. Screwed down the mounts. Reattached the hoses. Sealed it tight.
Then she sat back on her heels and just looked at it.
The Impala wasn't humming. Wasn't glowing. Wasn't doing anything strange at all.
But there was something about it—how every part felt like it wanted to be whole again. Like the car wanted to breathe.
She shook the thought off and moved to the battery terminals. Cleaned the contacts with a toothbrush and baking soda paste. Replaced a frayed ground wire. Rechecked every bolt she'd touched.
It wasn't about speed. It never was.
It was about care.
She dropped the oil pan. Pulled the heads. Labeled bolts in neat rows across the bench. She checked cylinder compression. Every task sharpened her focus until nothing else existed—not the shop, not the city, not even the hour.
Her hands were deep inside the engine block now, wiping carbon from piston heads, measuring clearances, checking for cracks. She ran her finger over the metal, slow and certain.
And something shifted.
Not heat. Not vibration.
Presence.
The piston shifted slightly in her grip—not mechanically, more like a joint relaxing. Like a breath.
She leaned closer.
Her thumb brushed the piston.
TOCK.
The dashboard clock ticked.
She froze. Turned. Time, held hostage for half a century, had finally taken a step forward. 03:48.
Unwired. Unpowered.
Her breath caught.
She looked back at the engine. Inside, something had begun to tick—a slow, sticky rhythm like the pulse of an unlubricated engine. Not clean. Not smooth.
But alive.
Behind her, something moved.
She looked back from the clock, and there he was.
Standing just beyond the pool of light cast by the overheads. Humanoid. Barefoot. Limbs long and strange, like forged steel given form. Skin the color of ash and metal. Chest rising in slow, unfamiliar breaths. Joints etched with piston lines. Engine oil still dripping from beneath his ribs.
A slow, mechanical tick echoed from inside his chest.
His eyes met hers.
Not glowing. Not cold.
Searching.
Katra's mouth parted, but no sound came.
The word whispered through her like breath finding shape:
Tock.
She didn't speak it. She named it.
And the moment she did, he breathed deeper. The tick inside his chest grew steadier.
He stepped forward. No echo to his footfalls. No threat in his motion.
Only recognition.
This wasn't a machine.
This wasn't a tether.
This was something new.