There is a moment in transit where your body tries to bargain.
It offers anything.
Sleep. Vomit. Prayer. Childhood memories. A quick forgiveness for everyone you ever hated.
Anything, it thinks, to convince the universe to stop moving sideways.
But the carriage doesn't listen.
It isn't built for comfort. It's built for delivery.
I sit with my hands flat against the seat as the world unthreads outside the walls. The hum in the metal deepens, then thins, then deepens again, like a breath being taken by something too large to have lungs.
The text on the wall keeps changing as if it can't decide what I am.
UNKNOWN SUBJECT.
ANOMALOUS ROUTE.
CLIENT: NOOR [REDACTED].
INVALID CONTEXT.
RETRY.
Each line appears, flickers, fails, and gets replaced by another that feels less like information and more like the building talking to itself.
It's trying to sort me.
It's trying to name me.
It's trying to fit me back into a box I slipped out of.
The carriage shudders, and the darkness outside thins like ink watered down. For a second I see the lights again—those distant, floating grids like cities pinned to a void-board.
Some of them look like Null in different moods.
Some look like places I don't recognize at all: spirals of light, vertical towers, roads that loop into their own shadows. Systems with their own rules, their own lies, their own ways of calling erasure "necessary."
I catch myself scanning them the way a person scans faces in a crowd.
For Echo.
For Samira.
For my mother's café.
For anything that looks like home.
Nothing does.
Home, I realize, is a timeline you don't get to keep once you've seen how it ends.
The hum shifts. A new vibration travels through the floor, gentler, like wheels finding a track.
The carriage slows.
The text on the wall stabilizes in a way that makes my teeth ache.
ARRIVAL: SWITCHYARD NODE.
PURPOSE: ROUTE CORRECTION / CASE TRIAGE.
WARNING: DO NOT EXIT UNLESS AUTHORIZED.
The door on the side of the carriage outlines itself in faint white seams.
I stare at it, heart beating too hard.
I don't have authorization.
But I also don't have time.
Whatever reset me did it because I got too close to something the cosmos didn't want touched. If I let the system "correct" my route now, it will shove me gently back into my dorm room with a pass card and a schedule and the illusion that I can save anything by following procedure.
I stand before I can talk myself out of it.
The carriage is still moving, but it's slow enough that the motion feels like a thought rather than a force.
I step to the door and press my palm against the seam.
The metal is warm again.
Like the carriage recognizes a hand that shouldn't exist here yet.
"Open," I say, quietly, because it feels ridiculous to yell at a machine that eats worlds.
For a moment nothing happens.
Then the seam brightens.
The door unlatches with a soft click that sounds exactly like Null's dorm doors.
Of course it does.
Everything down here is built from the same language. Different dialect. Same intention.
I pull the door open.
Cold air hits my face like a slap.
Not cold like winter. Cold like a freezer that stores mistakes.
I step out.
The floor beneath my feet is not a platform. It's a wide, pale expanse that looks like polished concrete until you look closer and see it's layered with something thinner.
Paper, maybe.
Sheets pressed together until they become a surface.
A city made of reports.
The ceiling is high and full of dim light sources that don't cast shadows so much as they erase them. There are lines painted on the floor like rail guides, except they don't lead anywhere consistent. They curve, they intersect, they vanish into blank walls and reappear behind pillars that weren't there a second ago.
And everywhere there are doors.
Not doors like in Null.
Doors like choices.
Some are upright, framed in metal. Some are just rectangles of darker air standing in the open like wounds. Some are hanging mid-space, unreachable, like someone drew an exit and forgot humans can't climb.
Above each one, faint text flickers.
NULL-01.
NULL-02.
POINT OF ZERO.
DEEP LEGACY.
REDISTRIBUTION.
RECORD CORRECTION.
RETRY.
I feel a sick, dizzy relief.
So it's real.
The Great End has a switchyard.
A place where systems get routed like train lines.
A place where endings are scheduled.
I take a cautious step forward. My shoes make almost no sound, like the floor is trying to keep secrets.
Behind me, the carriage door stays open, waiting.
Like a mouth holding itself politely ajar.
Ahead, something moves.
Not a person at first—more like a shadow detaching from the shadowless light.
Then it resolves into a figure in a vest, pale and crisp, with a badge clipped to the front.
The badge has no name.
Just a role.
CONDUCTOR.
Their face is… ordinary. Too ordinary. The kind of face you forget the moment you look away. They have the soft, tired expression of someone who works customer service in a world that never stops arriving.
They stop a few feet from me and look me over without curiosity, only assessment.
"You're early," they say.
Their voice is calm, almost kind.
It makes my skin crawl.
"I'm not supposed to be here," I reply.
"That's what early means," they say.
I glance past them at the doors. At the labels. At the way the text flickers as if it's alive.
"I need to know who reset me," I say.
The Conductor's expression doesn't change.
"We don't use that word," they say.
"Rewind," I offer.
"Restart," I say.
"Erase," I say, louder, because the anger is finally catching up to the shock. "Whatever you call it when a whole life gets treated like a draft you didn't like."
The Conductor tilts their head slightly.
"We call it stabilization," they say.
"Of course you do."
They take a small step to the side, not threatening, but positioning—like they're guiding traffic.
"You exited without authorization," they say, still gentle. "This node is for routing, not for wandering."
"I'm not wandering," I say. "I'm refusing."
That lands.
I see it in the small pause, the tiny delay like a system buffering.
The Conductor's eyes sharpen, just a fraction.
"Refusal patterns are handled elsewhere," they say.
"Then route me to elsewhere," I snap.
Silence.
Then, unexpectedly, the Conductor looks past me—at the open carriage door, at the place I stepped out of.
As if checking something.
As if listening.
Then they speak again, slower.
"You're carrying contradictory timestamps," they say. "That's why the carriage flagged you. You have memory residue from an outcome that has been… deprioritized."
My throat tightens.
Deprioritized.
Like my future was a folder moved to an archive.
"Why?" I ask.
The Conductor's face does something close to sympathy.
"It didn't converge," they say.
"Converge with what?"
"With survivability," they answer, as if explaining a weather report. "Too many systems failing simultaneously. Too much spillover. Too many threads cut too fast."
I stare at them.
"So humanity had no chance," I whisper.
They don't deny it.
"We allocate probability," they say softly. "We don't allocate hope."
My hands curl into fists.
"Who decides that?" I ask.
The Conductor's gaze flicks to one of the doors.
POINT OF ZERO.
The label is steady, not flickering. It looks heavier than the others, like a verdict that doesn't need to be refreshed.
"That's above my role," they say.
"Then let me through," I say.
The Conductor doesn't move.
"Point of Zero is not a destination," they say. "It's a calibration. You don't go there unless invited."
"I've been there," I say before I can stop myself.
The Conductor's eyes narrow.
That's the first real emotion I've seen from them.
"That's not possible," they say.
I laugh once, bitter.
"People keep saying that," I tell them. "And then the impossible moves anyway."
The Conductor studies me, and for a moment I can feel them trying to place me inside a category.
A case type.
A hazard label.
A training scenario.
I can almost see the tag flickering on my chest the way it did on the mannequins in the drill.
Then the Conductor exhales.
A small release, like a decision being made.
"I can't route you to Point of Zero," they say. "But I can show you what you're touching."
They turn and gesture toward a wall that looks blank until you look at it from the side.
Then you realize it's glass.
A long pane, slightly curved, like the inside of a fish tank.
Except instead of water, it holds views.
Not images. Not video.
Windows.
Through one window I see an office I recognize immediately: a Null desk, a terminal, fluorescent lights. A clerk hunched over paper.
Through another window, I see the café near the university district, the one where my mother sat—except it's empty, chairs stacked, the sign outside wrong, the street too quiet.
Through another, I see something that makes my stomach flip.
My dorm room.
The cot.
The vent panel.
The same cheap ceiling.
And on the cot—
Me.
Not this me.
The me who stayed.
The me who didn't crawl into the vent.
He's sitting with his head in his hands, shoulders shaking like he's about to cry or laugh or both.
Samira stands at the door, talking. Echo is leaning against the wall, doing something playful to soften the scene.
They look real.
They look… untouched.
And for one second I feel an urge so sharp it almost breaks me: to slam my fist into the glass, to shout, to warn them, to go back.
To stay.
To let myself be processed and pretend it's enough because at least it keeps me near them.
The Conductor watches me watch.
"You could return," they say, quietly.
"What happens if I do?" I ask without looking away.
"You follow the assigned cuts," they say. "You become stable. Your probability improves."
"And then?" I whisper.
The Conductor doesn't answer.
They don't have to.
I already saw the End.
I already sat on the café chair that wasn't a chair and watched the winged eye approach like an inevitability with feathers.
Returning would just be a longer path to the same devouring.
I step back from the glass.
The Conductor turns away first, as if giving me privacy to swallow my grief.
When they face me again, their voice is careful.
"Your memory residue is the problem," they say. "It destabilizes the route. That's why stabilization triggered."
"So you wiped it," I say.
"We tried," the Conductor corrects. "You kept it."
That makes me go still.
"You didn't erase me," I say. "You rewound everything. But I kept it anyway."
The Conductor's expression is unreadable again.
"Some anomalies hold on," they say. "It's rare. It's… expensive."
"Why?" I ask.
Their gaze drifts again, not to Point of Zero this time, but to another label half-hidden in the flicker.
ETERNAL REBIRTH.
The text looks wrong in the switchyard. Too emotional to be a system term.
Too religious.
Too angry.
"That's not my jurisdiction," the Conductor says again.
"You keep saying that," I reply. "Like jurisdiction is a moral shield."
They don't argue.
Instead, they reach into a pocket and pull out a small object.
A token.
It looks like a coin at first glance, except it's not metal. It's something darker, matte, almost like char.
It has a symbol etched into it: a circle with a line through it, like a zero crossed out.
"Take this," they say.
I don't move.
"What is it?" I ask.
"A route key," they say. "Not an authorization. A suggestion."
"Suggestions get people killed," I say.
The Conductor's lips twitch in something that might have been a smile once.
"This whole place is suggestions," they reply. "Your carriage didn't know where to send you. You forced it toward Point of Zero. This key will stop it from correcting you back into Null-01 immediately."
I stare at the token.
"Why are you helping me?" I ask.
The Conductor looks tired suddenly, like the ordinary face has cracked enough to show something human underneath.
"Because you're not the first," they say.
My fingers tighten.
"Pilot-03," I whisper.
The Conductor's eyes flicker.
They don't confirm it. They don't deny it.
They just hold the token out again.
I take it.
The token is cold, heavier than it should be, like it's made from compressed refusal.
The moment it touches my palm, the switchyard lights dim slightly, like the node noticed.
The Conductor's voice drops, almost a whisper.
"Don't linger," they say. "If the node fully registers your contradiction, it will route containment."
"Containment where?" I ask.
The Conductor doesn't answer. Their gaze slides toward one of the darker doors, one that doesn't have a label, only a warning band of red text.
LOCAL PURGE RECOMMENDED.
My stomach drops.
"Okay," I say.
I back toward the open carriage door.
The Conductor stays where they are, watching me, not like a guard, but like someone watching a match walk toward a pile of dry paper.
"One more question," I say, hand on the doorframe.
The Conductor lifts their chin slightly.
"Angelus," I say. "Is that a name or a role?"
The Conductor pauses.
Then, carefully:
"Both," they say.
I nod once, as if that answers anything.
I step back into the carriage.
The door closes behind me with a sound too soft to be safe.
Immediately the hum changes, sharper now, strained.
The text on the wall scrolls fast, almost panicked.
ROUTE KEY DETECTED.
NODE EXIT CONFIRMED.
DESTINATION: UNSTABLE.
CORRECTION ATTEMPTED.
CORRECTION DENIED.
My skin prickles.
The carriage jolts, like something grabbed it from behind and failed.
The darkness outside thickens again, swallowing the last pale glow of the switchyard.
I sit, gripping the token so hard it bites into my skin.
I can't stop shaking.
Not from fear.
From what I saw through the glass.
Echo laughing in a room that doesn't know it's about to become a grave.
Samira still believing in "safe."
Me on the cot, hands over my face, still at one hundred, still innocent of the End.
A life I abandoned.
A version of them I may never see again.
The token warms in my palm, as if absorbing my regret.
The carriage steadies.
The text slows, the letters becoming clearer.
DESTINATION UPDATED.
POINT OF ZERO: PROXIMITY INCREASING.
The air inside the carriage grows thin, like high altitude. My ears pop. The metal walls seem to stretch, then snap back, as if space itself is being folded and refolded around a single coordinate.
I close my eyes and see the winged eye again, huge and patient, approaching the café that used to be my mother's.
I swallow hard.
"I'm not going to follow your script," I whisper to the walls, to the darkness, to whatever listens in systems like this.
The carriage hums.
It doesn't answer.
But the token in my hand pulses once, faintly, like a heartbeat.
Then, far ahead, through the thinning dark, I see it.
A place where light doesn't behave.
A point that feels less like a location and more like a decision.
And as the carriage moves toward it, I hear a new sound under the hum—barely there, like a voice caught in a filter.
Not the Conductor.
Not Echo.
Not Samira.
Something smoother. Politer.
A voice that sounds like it knows exactly how to phrase your death as a kindness.
"Welcome back," it says, almost fond.
"You're even earlier this time."
The carriage keeps moving.
And I understand, with a sick, quiet certainty, that Point of Zero noticed me the moment I stepped out of that dorm vent.
That I didn't escape the system.
I simply climbed deeper into its throat.
Act Forty-Fourth's End – "Sinner's Rise."