Seventeen miles behind him, the bike slept in the shadows where Shoal Creek begins to forget it’s a creek and starts becoming a memory. His legs throbbed from the climb, not just in the muscle but deeper—where old things settle. He sat outside the attorney’s office on East 7th, helmet in his lap like a second, more fragile head.

The sun hung low behind the trees that looked bleached and brittle, like they’d survived something. Light slashed across the cracked concrete and drew gold veins on his arms, maps of places he’d never make it back to.

From the high ridge near Commons Ford, he’d looked east—past the cypress-lined cuts of Shoal, past the trail that used to carry laughter and wind, past the bluff where he once showed their son how to skip stones like tiny prayers.

Austin stood like a broken altar in the distance. Glass towers in bloom. Air Canopy shimmer. Bird-nest buildings tangled in green. Beautiful. Futuristic. Indifferent.

The attorney’s office was squeezed between a tattoo parlor and a dead taqueria, the kind with chairs still upside-down inside. Nearby, a shopping cart leaned into a pole like it was waiting for the end of the world.

He hadn’t gone inside yet.

The ride hadn’t just been exercise. It had been a confession. Or maybe a slow undressing. Every turn of the pedal unwrapped something old and unspoken.

On 360, the wild mansions stood above him like smug gods. The gardens were tight. The windows were mute. He stopped once where the trail cut under the power lines and saw a red-tailed hawk circling above the bones of the old transmission tower. It reminded him of the Intake Station, the one Silva had mentioned—the forgotten vault beneath Lady Bird Lake, where the city's soul flickered between water and wire.

This whole stretch of road was his prayer mat now.

Inside, the receptionist smiled too kindly. He gave his name like you hand someone a piece of broken glass—careful, but done with it.

The attorney, older, wore no jewelry and asked no questions. She talked like a trail guide: plain, firm, knowing the woods were deeper than they looked.

Still, the metaphors came. The marriage like a greenhouse grown over with weeds. The divorce like pulling moss from wire, the kind that clings even when you’re done.

He thought of Eva, of Langley, of the network threading through Austin’s underbelly. Of the way the future hung in the trees like a promise too faint to trust. Of Silva’s voice: Find the tunnels. Beneath the lake lies the key.

When it was done, he stepped out into light that felt different. Not warmer. Just more honest. The skyline blinked at him—familiar and foreign.

He clipped his helmet back on.

Seventeen miles, this time uphill. The ride would hurt, but he welcomed it. He might stop near the creek where the moss grows thick and the cicadas speak in riddles. He still had the orange. He still had his breath.

Shoal ran behind him like a wire pulling toward something unfinished. Ahead, more hills. A long ride in. And the feeling, just for a moment, of being split wide open and still alive.