The heavy iron door of the eighth carriage groaned as Kashem pushed it open. The metallic screech echoed through the narrow corridor, sounding like the cry of a dying beast. He stepped inside, but his boots didn't hit the familiar wooden floor of the train. Instead, they sank into a thick, swirling mist that smelled of salt, wet earth, and the pungent aroma of burnt coal—the unmistakable scent of the old Chittagong Port.
Kashem froze, his heart hammering against his ribs. The lighthouse mark on his arm began to pulse with a low, rhythmic thrum, acting like a sonar in the dark. He wasn't in a carriage anymore. Or rather, the carriage had become a bridge—a temporal overlay where 2026 and 1884 had collided into a single, unstable reality.
"Authorization: Zero-One... Scan Environment," Kashem whispered, his voice trembling as he raised his glowing right arm.
The blue light from his skin cut through the dense fog like a searchlight. As the data streamed into his vision, he felt a sharp, agonizing pain behind his eyes—the kind of pain an old computer feels when trying to process a file too large for its memory.
Location: Chittagong Junction - Temporal Distortion.
Stability: 38%.
Warning: Reality deletion in progress.
Through the shifting mist, the silhouettes of massive steam ships appeared, their masts looking like the skeletal fingers of giants reaching for the sky. The water of the Karnaphuli River wasn't the muddy brown he remembered from his childhood; it was a shimmering, oily silver, filled with floating fragments of digital code and glowing binary strings.
"Kashem... is that you? My little analyst?"
The voice was faint, drifting through the fog like a ghost. Kashem's breath hitched in his throat. He knew that voice better than his own. It was his mother's voice, but it sounded younger, full of a hope that had long since died in the ruins of 2026.
"Ma?" Kashem called out, stumbling forward on the slippery wooden planks of a pier that shouldn't exist. "Where are you? This isn't real! It's just a glitch in the system! You're not here!"
He ran toward the sound, his boots clattering on the wood. The fog parted for a brief moment, revealing a small, thatched-roof house—the kind of home his family had owned generations ago, long before the skyscrapers of Chittagong had touched the clouds. Standing by the door was a woman in a simple cotton saree. Her face was blurred, shifting and flickering like a corrupted video file, but the warmth she radiated was undeniably real.
In her hands, she held a small, leather-bound diary. "The Architect told us you would find your way back, Kashem," she said, her voice echoing as if she were speaking from the bottom of a deep well. "The cycle is almost complete. The Dead Express doesn't just carry passengers; it carries the 'Source Code' of our entire history. It is the backup file of humanity."
Kashem stopped a few feet away, his hands shaking uncontrollably. "What source code? I'm just a data analyst, Ma! I spent my days looking at spreadsheets and fixing server errors! I'm not a hero! I'm not a guardian!"
The woman stepped closer, and for a fleeting second, her face became clear. It wasn't his mother, but an ancestor who shared her eyes—eyes that glowed with the same sapphire light as the mark on his arm. She was a Guardian, one of the many who had died to keep the train moving.
"You are more than an analyst," she whispered, her translucent fingers brushing against his glowing skin. The touch felt like a jolt of static electricity. "You are the one who can translate the chaos into order. The 1884 Dead Express was built to protect the 'Primary File' of our reality. If the train reaches the Final Terminal, the file will be deleted to prevent the Void from consuming it. We will be erased to save the universe from a fate worse than death."
"No!" Kashem shouted as the house began to dissolve into black, pixelated smoke. "If the file is deleted, what happens to the people? What happens to the millions of lives in 2026? We can't just be 'unwritten'!"
The woman's image began to stretch and tear. "To save the future, the past must sometimes be sacrificed. That is the burden of the Analyst."
Suddenly, the ground beneath Kashem's feet shook violently.
A massive, metallic screeching sound—the sound of iron grinding against iron—filled the air.
The fog was sucked away in a sudden vacuum, and Kashem realized with horror that he was back in the train, but the floor of the carriage had disappeared. He was standing on a narrow, rusted metal catwalk, suspended directly above the roaring, glowing gears of the train's massive engine.
Below him, in the shadows of the machinery, he saw them. The Erasers. But they weren't just three or four anymore. A whole army of them was crawling up the sides of the train, their featureless, white faces turned toward him. They didn't have eyes, yet Kashem could feel their collective hunger—a hunger not for flesh, but for the data he carried.
"Stay back!" Kashem roared, the blue light from his arm flaring up with intense heat, illuminating the dark pit below.
He realized he couldn't fight them one by one. His energy was low, and his mind was fracturing. He had to use the train itself as a weapon. He looked at the single golden gear he had recovered from his grandfather's watch. It wasn't just a memento; it was a mechanical override key.
Kashem knelt on the vibrating catwalk, his fingers searching the cold iron for a port. Near the edge of a massive, spinning flywheel, he found it—a small, circular indentation marked with the symbol of a lighthouse. With a prayer to the ancestors he never knew, he jammed the golden gear into the slot and turned it with all his remaining strength.
"System Override: Steam Pressure... MAXIMIZE! Authorization: Zero-One!"
The Dead Express let out a whistle that sounded like the roar of a celestial dragon. Huge jets of superheated, blue-tinted steam erupted from the sides of the carriage, blasting the Erasers off the train and into the crimson void outside. The train accelerated with a jerk that nearly threw Kashem off the catwalk. The speed became so immense that the iron walls began to glow a dull, dangerous red.
He collapsed onto the metal floor, his lungs burning from the steam and his body aching from the shock. He had survived another wave, but the cost was high. His vision was blurring into static, and the sapphire mark on his arm was fading to a dull grey.
As he lay there, gasping for air, he heard a new sound—a slow, rhythmic, and deliberate clapping.
From the shadows at the far end of the catwalk, a man stepped out into the light of the glowing engine. He was dressed in a pristine, white British naval uniform, his gold medals clinking softly with every step. He held a wooden pipe in one hand and a heavy iron key in the other. His presence was calm, terrifyingly calm, amidst the chaos of the accelerating train.
"Well done, Analyst," the man said, his English accent thick and old-fashioned, yet perfectly clear. "I haven't seen an override of that magnitude since the Great Flood of '76. You have the spirit of a Guardian, I'll give you that."
Kashem looked up, his eyes narrowing through the pain. "Who are you? Are you the Conductor?"
The man smiled, but his eyes remained cold and dead, like two pieces of polished obsidian.
"No, dear boy. I am the one who ensures that every story reaches its proper conclusion. You've just accelerated us toward the one place you were never supposed to find."
Kashem's heart sank. "The 1884 Station?"
"No," the officer replied, tapping his pipe against the iron railing. "We aren't going to a station. We are heading for the End of the Line, where the code ends and the void begins."