Chapter 3: Conductor’s Mercy

From Hurried Ascensions
by Esi Noire

The first thing Rene noticed when she stepped onto the train was the silence.
Not absence of sound, no, the train hummed, breathed, *listened.*

The doors didn’t hiss. They sighed.

Inside, the walls were curved like the inside of a ribcage. Pale gold veins pulsed beneath glass-like bone, flickering in time with her heart. Everything smelled faintly of salt and iron.

“New passenger,” said a voice.

Rene turned sharply.

A tall man in a conductor’s coat stood by the window. He looked almost human, except his eyes reflected too much light, and his coat bore a stitched patch shaped like a keyhole.

“You’re early,” he added.

Rene held up the ticket. “My grandfather…he was taken. I didn’t know where else to go.”

The conductor nodded slowly. “The line is older than time, Miss Dey. But it doesn’t run without cost.”

“I didn’t come to ride,” Rene said. “I came to bring someone back.”

His face cracked, not with anger, but with something older.
Something like sorrow.

“Then mercy be upon you,” he whispered.

He lifted a pocket watch from his coat. It wasn’t ticking. Instead, the hands moved backward, faster and faster, until the glass face shattered without a sound.

The walls flickered. The seats vanished.

The train began to move.

And Rene understood: she hadn’t boarded.

She had been **taken**.