As for Alexia, she is still out there on the midnight highway. You will know her by the sound. Not a roar. A purr . And if you flash your brights at her, she will slow down. She will roll down her window.

She stood. The mechanics around her—the greasy boys with their wrenches and their cheap cologne—did not see her. They saw a girl. A survivor of the crash. They did not see the way her spine yearned to become a drive shaft.

And she is pregnant. With a key.

The cold came first. Not the cold of winter, but the cold of the operating table. The cold of the morgue drawer. Alexia lay on the linoleum of the garage, her scarred skull humming against the concrete. The titanium plate the surgeons had screwed into her cranium years ago was no longer a foreign body. It had grown hungry.

Not an engine rumble. A sympathetic vibration. The same frequency as her molars. She leaned forward and pressed her cheek to the windshield. The glass did not break. It softened . It became a second skin.

The first boy laughed. "You gonna kiss it?"

Behind the glass, she has no face anymore. Just a grille. Just a smile made of chrome teeth.

She touched her temple. The metal was warm now. Pliant.