8:38 a.m.
The bullets were gone, but not their memory. They crept behind Mike's eyes like a rotting afterimage, silent and unwelcome. Pressure built from the back of his skull, rippling old screams and flashbursts of blood toward the surface, threatening to shatter his control.
He held the line and didn't let them rise. He had to.
He lay flat against the train floor, cheek pressed to the vibrating steel, breath caught halfway between a gasp and a command. Glass littered his coat, blood pooled on the ground, and above them, the lights sputtered and blinked like they were trying to decide whether to abandon them.
The packed car had become a battlefield of twisted limbs and scattered belongings. A construction worker lay motionless against the pole, his lunch box open beside him, sandwich still wrapped. A middle-aged man in a heavy jacket sprawled across the center aisle, his briefcase burst open, papers scattered around him like fallen leaves. A woman in scrubs had fallen across the seats, her hospital ID badge catching the flickering light, blood pooling beneath her.
Mike stayed on the floor a few seconds longer, eyes closed, counting his breaths like it might keep his heart from bursting open. "One... two... three," he whispered.
"Get up." His own voice was weak but urgent. He pushed himself up, careful not to cut his hand on the glass beneath him.
The lights had stabilized again, if barely, casting the car in a jaundiced haze that made the blood on the floor, the fear on their faces, look sick and unreal.
A woman was crawling toward the broken emergency intercom, dragging herself by the elbows through a field of glass. To her right, the broad-shouldered man was trying to lift a collapsed luggage rack off a woman's chest. His hands moved with surprising gentleness, like someone who knew how easily bodies could break. The woman wasn't screaming. Just staring, wide-eyed, her breath coming fast and shallow. The kind of breathing that meant she was close to fading.
Farther down, the red-haired woman was helping the elderly passenger sit upright. She moved with quiet purpose, retrieving the cane from where it had rolled across the floor and pressing it gently into her hand.
Mike's eyes locked on a man near the door bleeding heavily from the shoulder. He was barely conscious, and a woman was kneeling beside him, frantically trying to tie an expensive silk scarf around the wound. Her hands were trembling so badly she kept dropping the knot.
Mike moved toward her without thinking.
He crossed the car quickly and knelt beside them. The woman looked startled, like she hadn't even seen him coming.
"I—I don't know what I'm doing," she stammered, voice cracking.
"It's okay," he said. "You're doing fine. Just tie it tighter. I've got him."
Mike pressed his hands down against the man's wound. Warm blood surged between his fingers. The man groaned in pain, but Mike didn't flinch.
The woman got the knot on the scarf right the third time, tears running down her cheeks. Mike gave her a brief nod and moved again.
A voice rose across the car.
"We have to stop the train! People are bleeding, we need help now!"
Mike's head snapped up.
The businessman was stumbling down the aisle toward the emergency brake, his face pale and sweat-streaked. His hands shook, knuckles white around the polished leather strap of a briefcase he still hadn't let go of. His voice cracked as he shouted again, louder this time, like panic alone might be enough to bend the world his way.
"We can't just keep going! We need to do something!"
"Don't—" Mike said, already moving. "Don't pull that!"
But the guy had already reached the panel. His fingers slipped against the latch, fumbling to tear open the protective casing.
"I'm serious, stop!" Mike barked, stepping closer now, voice sharp enough to cut through the fear like a blade.
The man turned to face him, eyes wide and desperate. His hand hovered over the brake. "Are you out of your mind?! There's blood everywhere! People are dying! We need to stop the damn train!"
Mike held his ground. "Listen to me. If you pull that brake, we stop right here, in the middle of the tunnel. Trapped in the dark with no way out. No signal. Nothing!"
The man looked like he was about to cry or snap. Maybe both. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, but no words came out.
Then another scream rose from across the car, voice thin and trembling.
"What about the shooters? What if they come after us? What if they shoot again?"
The question hung in the air like static.
Mike turned his head slightly, eyes locking on the speaker. A middle-aged woman clutching a purse to her chest like armor. Fear filled her eyes. But fear didn't justify blind panic and stupidity.
"Think about it for a second," Mike said, his voice calmer than he truly felt. He pointed toward the shattered rear window, the dark mouth of the tunnel behind them. "They're behind us. They can't reach us if we keep moving." Then, quieter. Barely keeping the anger out of his voice: "If we stop right now, this car will be our coffin."
He let the words hang, hard and cold. The man's hand fell away from the brake. Others were looking now. No one was breathing loud enough to interrupt.
Mike turned, sweeping his eyes across their scared, injured and confused faces. Noting which passengers could move and which couldn't.
"We get to the next station," he said, "We get off there, and then we get help."
No one argued this time. The businessman stepped back, chest rising and falling like he'd been holding his breath for years.
Mike nodded once and turned away. His hands were still wet with blood. He wiped them on his jeans and exhaled hard, the taste of copper lingering in his mouth.
Looking down, the ink on his palm was barely visible now. Blurred beneath blood, sweat, and the quiet tremble in his hand. Even the warmth of her smile had been consumed by the cold chaos spreading since the morning broke apart.
'I hope she's okay.'
8:42 a.m.
The train kept moving, shaking and rattling as if the engine itself was afraid to stop. People whispered now, some prayed. A man was crying behind Mike. Mid-thirties maybe, sobbing like his vital core had imploded. Loud and raw, with no shame left in it.
The high school artist kid, who couldn't have been more than sixteen, huddled under the bench near the door, shaking so hard Mike thought his bones might rattle loose.
Around Mike, survivors crawled through the debris of shattered lives, some struggling to sit up, others helping the wounded. The living moved carefully between the dead, stepping over belongings and blood as they tried to make sense of what had just happened.
Mike stayed focused, scanning the aisle every few seconds. Looking for anyone injured who needed urgent help, but also for anyone scared enough to do something stupid. Or dangerous. He knew how this worked. Pain came first. Then fear. And then the tipping point: when panic twisted into violence.
The emergency brakes slammed on without warning. The train lurched to a violent stop, hurling bodies forward at once. The wheels screamed around them. High and sharp, like a wounded animal in full collapse.
Mike slammed into the back of the seat ahead, his hands scraping along the cold metal arms as he tried to brace the fall. Beside him, someone hit a pole with a sickening crack and crumpled to the floor in a final sound Mike didn't need to look at to understand.
People screamed and metal shrieked even louder. Then came a deep and terrible grinding sound, like the bones of the earth tearing themselves apart.
Mike understood immediately: someone had pulled the emergency brake. Not from their car, he had been carefully looking at everyone so he was sure of that.
The train had stopped completely. The lights flickered once and died, letting Darkness blow its suffocating breath on them.
"Lights!" someone yelled.
"I can't see!" Weight crashed to the floor.
People were pushing, grabbing, holding on to whatever they could find. It was pure chaos unraveling in the dark.
Mike blinked a few times but his eyes couldn't adjust. There was no light to catch. For a moment, blackness blinded him. But quickly, pinpricks of white began to cut through the dark fog. Phone flashlights, shaky hands holding them up like makeshift torches. The glow bounced off shattered glass and pale faces, casting jagged shadows across the car. It wasn't much. But it was enough.
The car filled with rising voices.
"What happened?!"
"Who pulled the brake?!"
"We're stuck!"
"No one told you to pull that thing!"
"It's not my fault! I didn't touch it!"
"Shut up! Everyone shut up!"
The car had become a storm of confusion. People clutching at each other. Screaming. Others curled up, rocking, whispering prayers in languages Mike didn't recognize. Every breath felt heavier than the last.
The train wasn't a train anymore. It was a cage, a pressure cooker, one spark away from exploding.
Mike could feel it happening. The way fear moved through a crowd. How it crawled up spines, set fire to voices, made people tear at each other just to feel in control.
"We have to stay put!" a woman near the front shouted, her voice cracking. "They'll come for us—they'll fix the electricity, the train will move again!"
Another angry voice cut through: "Or the shooters will come back and finish what they started! You saw them!"
"They're probably already waiting out there in the dark—"
"You want to wait here and die?!"
An older man's voice, deeper, from the middle of the car: "If we move into the tunnels, we'll get lost. We could get hit by another train at any moment. It's suicide."
"It's suicide to stay!"
"We're safer here!"
"We're targets here!"
"God, SHUT UP!"
Mike didn't speak. He wasn't interested in debating right now. The situation was deteriorating fast, and he needed to stop the bleeding panic.
Someone had pulled the emergency brake. That meant other survivors somewhere in the train. If he could find them, show his group they weren't alone, it might calm the panic and give everyone hope.
Their car was at the rear of the train, so he moved toward the door leading to the next car forward. The door was jammed, sealed shut, but through the window he could see the carnage inside. Blood painted the walls and floor. Bodies sprawled everywhere. He couldn't see a single person standing.
His heart sank. Their car had suffered major casualties, but this was far worse. There was no survivors at all.
Mike's eyes clenched shut, his breathing shallow and controlled. The memories pressed against his skull like a dam about to burst. Flashes of violence, echoes of screams, the familiar taste of failure flooding his mouth. His hands shook against the car door as he fought to keep the darkness locked away.
"One... two... three," he took deep and controlled breaths and pushed everything down.
That's when he heard the red-haired woman's voice cutting through the chaos.
"We have to move together," she said, voice loud and clear. "We can move along the tunnel walls and reach the next station in ten minutes." She gripped a metal pole like it anchored her.
But others started shouting over her.
The old man jabbed a finger at the window, breath fogging the glass. "They'll kill us the second we step outside! You think they're just gonna let us walk away? And what if there are more gunmen at the next station?"
"We don't know what's out there—" another voice added.
"But we know what's in here," the broad-shouldered, bearded man interrupted. "Nothing. If we stay here, nothing good will happen. Who do you think will show up first, the rescue teams or the shooters?"
Mike's jaw clenched. He used the door for balance. His ribs throbbed where he'd slammed into the seat. He wiped the remaining blood from his mouth with the back of his sleeve and stepped toward the center of the aisle. Not to shout. Not to command.
Mike pulled his hood down, revealing his face for the first time. He looked at everyone for a moment. Fear could be as dangerous as any bullet.
The choice they were making right now, to stay or go, wasn't about safety.
It was about hope.
How much of it did you still have? How much were you willing to bet on a path you couldn't see?
If no one else was going to say it, then he would.
"If you want to stay," he said quietly, "then just stay."
His voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. He wasn't here to convince them.
"But if you're hoping someone's coming... if you think help is going to break down that door..."
He pointed at the exit door laced with bullet holes, barely lit by phone's lights. "They're not coming."
A hush settled. The kind of silence that came after breaking glass.
Mike glanced at the red-haired woman and the broad-shouldered man.
"For everyone else, we move," Mike said. "And we move now."
Some people nodded slowly. Others stayed frozen, arms tight around their knees, eyes not quite focusing. The group wasn't unified. But it had a direction now. And its center of gravity bent around Mike.
8:47 a.m.
They were twelve. Twelve out of maybe twenty-five.
The rest stayed in the train, faces hollow, hope already eaten. Some gave nods. Some didn't look up at all. Their silence wasn't cowardice. It was the weight of people who had lost too much at once to gamble on the unknown.
Mike's eyes found the elderly woman in the corner, clutching her cane with white knuckles. The maternal warmth that had made her shine in his eyes just minutes ago was gone, replaced by hollow fear and despair. She stared at nothing, her radiant face now etched only with terror. She wasn't coming with them.
To see someone who had glowed with such life now broken and hopeless. It was almost worse than the bodies on the floor.
The woman with the scarf sat by the injured man she'd been helping. She was rocking in her seat, hands still streaked with blood. Her expensive silk scarf was still tied tightly around his arm.
He was gone now.
Mike could see it in the stillness of his chest, the way his head had tilted to one side. The woman either didn't know or didn't want to know.
Mike didn't judge them. He just turned toward the door and adjusted his hood on his head, flexed the tension in his jaw, and pressed his hand to the door's release bar. The broad-shouldered man stepped forward beside him.
"Ready?" the man asked quietly.
Mike nodded. "On three."
They pushed together. The door groaned open with a dull grinding sound.
Thick cold air rushed in, hitting Mike's face like a slap. Metallic dust swept in with it, forcing his eyes shut for a beat. The tunnel smelled like wet concrete, old motor oil, and burned metal. As if the earth itself had been singed and left to rot.
Mike crossed the threshold without hesitation and dropped down onto the tunnel floor. The drop was longer than expected, his knees absorbing the impact on the rough concrete.
He slowly stood up and faced the dark tunnel for the first time.
The path stretched ahead endlessly. Narrow, uneven, ribs of wiring and rusted piping exposed along the walls and the roof. The train tracks split the floor like twin scars. And somewhere far ahead, water dripped steadily, echoing like a clock counting down.
He turned once to look at the group behind him, the others followed one by one. No one second-guessed it.
The red-haired woman had taken position near the middle, the broad-shouldered man toward the rear. She could relay warnings, he could watch their backs.
'Good instincts.'
"Stay close to the right wall," Mike said quietly. "Watch the rails in case they are still electrified. If you hear noise. Any noise at all. Freeze and don't make any sound."
Mike caught a glimpse of someone's phone screen as they held it up for light. 8:49 a.m.
Ten minutes ago, he'd been smiling at a wonderful woman, who made him almost believe in kindness again. Now he was stepping into hell with strangers' blood under his fingernails and their lives in his hands.
Mike took a deep breath of the thick metallic air and stepped forward. The dark tunnel opened its hungry throat, and they disappeared into its depths.
There was no turning back now.