The Last Train to Halcyon

You remember deciding to wake them—whoever they are—only after you’ve already done it.

The wall beside your berth is thin enough to feel the train’s bones through it. A knock, careful at first, then harder, and from the other side a muffled exhale, a rustle of blankets, the scrape of a hand against metal. For one suspended second you think there may be another blank-eyed sleeper behind the partition, just as lost as you are.

Then a voice, rough with interrupted sleep, says, “If this is about the lights, I already know.”

The speaker in the ceiling pops and hisses.

"Passenger in sleeper seven," it repeats, as if the train itself is impatient. "Proceed to Carriage Three. Schedule revised. Do not remain in locked compartments." The words flatten and warp under a wash of static, then return a fraction too late, like an echo arriving before the original sound has finished existing.

You push yourself upright. The berth feels too small, the air too dry. On the narrow shelf by the pillow, beside the worn keycard with your name on it, lies a paper stub folded twice over—old-fashioned, nearly absurd on a train this modern. You open it with shaking fingers.

A strip of timetable.

Most of the ink has blurred, but one line remains sharp enough to read: Carriage 3 — transition point. Below it, in smaller print, a handwritten note, pressed so hard the paper is nearly torn: Don’t trust the first announcement.

A quiet, measured voice from the next berth says, “You got one too, then.”

The partition slides open a hand’s width. Not enough to see a face, only the edge of another compartment and a sliver of dim amber light. Someone is awake on the other side, listening.

Beyond your door, somewhere in the corridor, a metallic thud rolls through the carriage—heavy, deliberate, as if a lock farther down the train has just engaged on its own.

The train keeps driving into the dark, and now it feels less like you are being carried than chosen.

"Proceed to Carriage Three," the intercom says again, softer this time, almost intimate. "Or remain and be reassigned."