He was sitting on that very bench at the abandoned bus stop he went to when he wanted to dissolve into the city like a bad dream. The lamp above him flickered and wove yellow bands across the wet asphalt; the air hung heavy with the smells of petrol, damp earth and a distant kitchen — scents that resurrected memories you didn't need. Luca pulled his hood up, leaned his elbows on his knees and listened to his own heartbeat — steady, like a metronome that needed to be obeyed.

At first the noise sounded foreign — distant voices, the scrape of tires, the rumble of the street. Then he saw the light: low-mounted headlights tore out of the black, and the space around him was momentarily blinded by a white glare. Before his mind could map the threat, a shot rang out — sharp, familiar, like the crack of a glove. Luca's heart answered faster; his legs coiled, and his body snapped into a mode honed by years: run, pick a route, make the smallest possible moves.

Bullets hummed against empty balconies and ricocheted off the walls. In his head flickered shelter points, windows he could slip through, camera footage, routes where plates could be swapped. He didn't look back — not out of cowardice, but calculation: panic makes your steps loud, and he could afford only ten quiet ones. He cut into a narrow alley where the smell of burnt oil mixed with rotten leaves and pushed himself forward — his body remembered the steel paths of escape.

The parking lot met him with its opened doors and the city's careless habits: someone had left keys in cars, bags sat on seats, a scratch glinted on a bumper — one Luca had noticed before. He didn't pause: his gaze hooked on a familiar silhouette — a car he'd seen in different places, with the same chips and dark windows. In a leap he vaulted over a bumper, slid into the cabin, eyes hunting for the ignition — and failed to notice the dark shape behind. Only one formula occupied his mind: start, go, hide.

A quick nod to indifferent gods, the key turned — the engine swallowed the night and broke free. Two pursuers' cars barreled into the street, boxed the exit; gunfire flared anew; one bullet sliced through a mirror, another sent plastic shards skittering across his face. Luca gripped the wheel and breathed evenly to avoid giving himself away; his eyes flicked between the gauges and the road, between the points where he could cut the trail and the turns that would confuse them.

When at last, with knees aching and the pursuers' lights burning in his temples, he turned into a narrow gap beneath an old warehouse and drove the car into a garage, the world tightened into a held fist. He cut the engine. His heartbeat braided with the drip somewhere in the roof. Outside — night and the distant hum of patrol motors; inside — the warm smell of upholstery and someone's steady, even breathing.

He took the keys out, hands still shaking, but his breathing slowly evened. Only then, under the garage's yellow ceiling lamp, did he sweep his gaze across the cabin and see her: on the back seat, curled in a coat, stretched in a strange trusting pose, a woman asleep. Her hair spilled across the seat, her lips slightly parted, her hands folded on her stomach. She didn't move; it seemed even time had slowed around her.

She woke when he opened the garage door — from the sudden light, from the sound of his steps, or from the fact that the world had stopped wobbling. Her eyes opened slowly; there was distrust and stupor in them at first, then recognition, a cold tide washing over him: a strange man, a garage, bullet marks on the bumper. Their gazes met, and in that meeting there was everything: fear and surprise, guilt and an unspoken promise of protection.

He couldn't find words at once — he only said quietly, "Are you okay?" — and understood that the question was no longer merely about wounds; it was about what he himself was willing to do next.