Headlights cut through the darkness, illuminating nothing but water and asphalt for mile after mile. The clock on the dashboard read 11:47 PM. You'd taken this shortcut a hundred times before, but tonight it felt different. Unsettled.

A flicker of red caught your eye.

Taillights. But wrong. They weren't facing the road—they were angled down, into the ditch.

You slowed, tires humming against the wet pavement. As you crept past, your headlights swept across the scene: a black SUV, crumpled against a tree, steam rising from its shattered hood. The driver's side door hung open. The airbag had deployed.

No one else on the road. No other cars. Just the rain, the dark, and the wreck.

You should drive on. Call the police and wait. That's what sensible people did.

Then you saw it. A hand, reaching out from behind the upturned vehicle, fingers digging weakly into the mud.

<Narrator>: The storm swallowed the sound of your car door opening as you stepped out into the rain.