In this dream, Noor is on a train that has no windows and too many doors.
They line the carriage on both sides, identical: metal, with small clear panels at eye level. Above each door, where station names should be, there are percentages.
12%
67%
3%
0%
He doesn't remember boarding. He's already standing, one hand on a strap, the other in his pocket, fingers curled around a small rectangle of card. He doesn't look at it. He knows what's printed there: two circles, overlapping. An arrow between them.
The train moves without sound. It might be moving through Null, or through the city, or through nothing at all. The only noise is the soft flicker of the percentages changing, like flip-clocks.
At the far end of the carriage, a man sits on an empty chair bolted to the floor. His hair is very white, tied loosely back. His sleeves are rolled. His hands are folded on his knees as if he's decided that posture is the least dangerous.
Gabriel doesn't look at Noor. He watches the doors.
At door 12%, Noor sees his mother through the little panel. Inside, she sits at the café table, cup between her hands, lips moving around a sentence he can't hear. The glass between them is thicker than in waking life.
He doesn't knock. He knows this door already led somewhere, and he followed it to its end. The number above it flickers, then settles on 0%. The door goes dark.
At door 38%, Ben is on the couch, laptop open. Noor can't see the screen this time. All he sees is Ben's shoulders, rising and falling as if they're remembering breathing. There's a mug on the table. His mug.
He wants to say something simple like thank you or I'm sorry or stop, but the door is already closing. The percentage drops: 38% → 4% → 1% → 0%.
Ben doesn't vanish. The glass just stops showing him.
Noor moves on.
Door 19%: Rana at her desk, headphones on, mouth pulled into the shape she makes when she's reading something that's almost a story and not yet an article. The cursor on her screen blinks over a title he can't read.
Door 0.9%: just static.
He stops there.
The panel is snow. Not visual static—something tighter, finer. Like the glass is full of small, restless decisions.
"Noor," somebody says behind him.
It might be Echo. It might be the voice from the wall. It might be his own thought catching up. In the dream, all three share an outline.
He doesn't turn around.
"What's in that one?" he asks.
"Leftovers," the voice says. "Badly deleted lines. A feeling that hit the log and never found a body."
The percentage above the door trembles: 0.9% → 1% → 0.9%. Like it can't make up its mind whether to be alive.
"Is that what I'll be?" Noor asks. "When they're done with me?"
"That depends who writes the ending," the voice says.
He reaches up, touches the metal frame around the panel. It's colder than the others. His fingertips leave no fog, no mark.
Inside the static, for a second, there's a shape. Not a face. More like the negative space where a face should be. A place where anger learned to stand very still.
Words scrape across the inside of the glass, backwards from his side, forwards from theirs.
NO ONE DESERVES TO BE—
The rest of the sentence doesn't fit. The train jolts; the letters smear; the glass becomes glass again. The percentage holds at 1%.
Noor lets his hand drop.
Further down, the doors lose numbers altogether. Their panels are blank. Behind one, he senses the Shelving Floor: the smell of old paper and toner and something like dust that once had names. Behind another, the Theatre's curved wall, lights down, screen bright. Behind another, Room 0, with its table and two chairs and words that refuse to stay buried.
He doesn't open any of them. The train doesn't stop.
"You built this, you know," the voice says.
"No," Noor says. "They did."
"You chose the track," it replies. "They just laid it where you were already heading."
He looks down at his hand.
The card is there, finally: white, weightless and heavy, the little icon printed in the corner. In the dream, though, there's something else on it.
His name.
And under it, a blank line where a role should be.
CLIENT: NOOR [REDACTED]
ROLE: ___________________
He lifts the card to his face, squints, as if the right word might appear if he stares hard enough.
"Tool," the train suggests, in the click of unseen tracks.
"Problem," offers the static door.
"Consultant," says a white-shirted man at the end of the carriage, very softly.
"None of the above," Noor says. His mouth is dry. "Other."
He doesn't write it. He presses the card flat against his chest instead, over where his heart would be if Null had bothered to map it.
When he pulls it away, there's a faint indentation on the surface. Not letters. Not numbers. Just the impression of pressure. Proof that something pushed back.
The train begins to slow.
Noor looks up, expecting a station name: NULL – OFFICE, or ECHO THEATRE, or LEVEL -3.
Instead, the sign above the central doors is blank. The doors themselves open onto nothing: a pale, open brightness that isn't quite light. It smells of fresh paper and burned circuits.
"You can wake up now," the voice says.
"Already?" he asks. "I haven't chosen."
"You did," it says. "By staying on your feet."
The carriage empties. He hadn't noticed the other passengers until they were gone—people with their faces blurred, filing past him into the bright nothing, tickets in hand.
Gabriel stands as he goes by. For a moment their shoulders almost touch. Noor smells something like antiseptic and coffee.
"Seats are limited," Gabriel says without looking at him. "Decide what you want to be before someone else decides for you."
Then he steps through the doors and disappears.
Echo passes next, walking backwards, grinning a little, like they've just heard a joke they can't repeat.
"Try not to be boring," they say. "Whichever way you fall."
Then they're gone too.
Noor is alone in the carriage.
One door remains closed. It has no number. No window. Just a small, square panel at his height, blank.
He reaches out, touches it.
From somewhere very far away—above, below, to the side—Null hums. The card in his hand warms. The blank panel warms back.
The door doesn't open.
He wakes in his cot, hand still pressed flat against his chest, fingers curled around nothing.
The room looks the same. The notebook is still under the bed. The card is still in his pocket.
But for a few seconds, lying there between breath and hum, Noor has the very sharp, very quiet feeling that somewhere inside the building, an extra door has just appeared.
Waiting to see what he'll call it.
Memory shaken, present dead.