The alarm buzzed at 6:15 a.m., but Mac had already been awake for hours.
He sat on the edge of his bed, staring at his hands. They were trembling again — not from cold, but from something he couldn't name. Beneath his right wrist, the skin was raw and faintly glowing, the shape of a cross burned so faintly it could almost be imagined.
The air smelled wrong, faintly metallic.
The morning sun spilled through his thin curtains, dust particles swirling like ash. He blinked twice, trying to steady his breath. It was a dream, he told himself. Just another bad dream from overwork. He'd been pulling twelve-hour shifts all week. He'd been running on caffeine and hope.
But then he saw it.
The key.
A rusted, blackened key sat neatly on his nightstand, its teeth sharp and uneven like something carved by hand.
He didn't own any key like that.
The memory came in flashes — headlights cutting through red fog, an endless highway, a trailer that growled. The metallic taste of fear in his mouth. The voice over the radio whispering: "Congratulations, driver. Job complete."
Mac's stomach turned.
He reached for the key and flinched — it was warm. Not room temperature warm, but alive. Faintly pulsing.
He dropped it. It clinked against the floorboards — once, twice — and when he looked again, it was back on the nightstand.
Exactly where it had been.
---
The smell of burnt toast pulled him out of his daze.
"Mac!" Aimee's voice carried from the kitchenette. "You're going to be late if you keep spacing out like that!"
He exhaled shakily, forcing his voice steady. "Yeah, yeah, I'm up."
When he came out, his sister had already set three plates — toast, butter, two eggs each. Josh was still half-asleep, headphones dangling around his neck. They were arguing about school as usual.
It should have been comforting.
It wasn't.
Aimee noticed his face first. "You look awful. You get any sleep?"
"Some," he lied.
He didn't have the heart to tell her what really happened. She'd laugh, or worse — she'd worry. They had enough to worry about already: the overdue rent, the rising food prices, the endless job rejections piling in his inbox.
He'd always been the responsible one. The one who held things together when their parents passed. The one who didn't have the luxury to fall apart.
So he smiled — because that's what Mac did.
---
When he left for work, Nebraska City looked half-dead.
Billboards flickered between power outages. People stood in lines outside gas stations with ration cards. The streets had that quiet, post-storm heaviness that made everything feel temporary — like the city itself was holding its breath.
And through it all, the fog was rolling in.
It wasn't unusual to see fog this time of year, but this one… felt different. Heavy. Thick. Like it muffled the world.
Even the sound of his boots against the pavement felt distant, like it came from someone else's life.
He worked his usual shift at the auto garage — eight hours of noise, oil, and the smell of burnt rubber. He told himself he'd forget whatever that pull was. He told himself it was a dream.
But around lunch, he made the mistake of turning on the radio.
The voice was calm and cheerful — too cheerful.
> "A friendly reminder from Crimson Cross Recruitment: Always read the terms before you apply."
Then a burst of static.
Mac froze. The voice continued, distant and broken, like it was playing underwater.
> "For every worker accepted, another… released."
The rest dissolved into static.
His co-worker, Reed, glanced up. "Radio's been like that all day. You think they're testing a new signal or something?"
"Yeah," Mac murmured. "Something like that."
He turned it off.
---
When he got home that evening, the fog hadn't lifted. It had only thickened. The world outside their apartment window looked swallowed by it — pale shapes moving through gray.
Dinner was quiet. Josh scrolled through his phone while Aimee kept glancing at Mac's wrist. "You sure you're not hurt? You've been rubbing your arm all day."
"It's fine," he said quickly. "Just… tired."
But even as he said it, the skin burned. He excused himself early, went to his room, and stared at his reflection in the mirror.
The scar was glowing faintly again.
For a second, his reflection lagged — not like a trick of the eye, but like a screen glitch. His reflection blinked after he did. Then it smiled.
He stumbled backward.
The lights flickered.
His phone buzzed.
---
1 New Message – Unknown Sender
> Employment confirmed.
Do not disclose experience.
Violation = Termination.
Then a faint symbol appeared under the message: a crimson cross.
He dropped the phone. It hit the carpet and went black.
When he picked it up again, the message was gone. Only his cracked wallpaper remained.
But from somewhere outside the window, deep in the fog, came the low hum of an idling engine.
---
The next morning, social feeds exploded.
LOCAL MAN DISAPPEARS AFTER "JOB OFFER."
POLICE INVESTIGATING CRIMSON RECRUITMENT NETWORK.
WITNESSES REPORT RED MARKS FOUND AT SITES.
Mac scrolled through them numbly, his pulse hammering in his ears. One photo stopped him cold — a girl holding an envelope sealed with a red cross. The caption read:
> "Missing since Monday. Last seen outside her apartment after receiving a job confirmation email."
He recognized the street in the photo. It was three blocks from his garage.
---
He tried to tell himself it was coincidence. That maybe "Crimson Cross" was just a scam company, not what he'd seen. Not what he'd survived.
But when he checked his inbox, he noticed a new folder that hadn't been there before:
📁 Employment Record
Inside, one document.
[ACCEPTED.pdf]
He opened it. The screen flickered red. A faint hum filled the air.
Then words appeared, typed slowly, one by one:
> "Completion confirmed."
"First pull: success."
"Reward pending."
His chest tightened. His screen blurred — and behind the reflection of his own face, he saw that same road again. The wasteland. The headlights. The endless dark.
And something else.
Three shadows.
A woman holding a lantern.
Another clutching a book.
And a man with a face blurred by fog.
The man spoke.
> "Welcome, worker."
Mac's laptop slammed shut by itself.
He didn't remember standing. Didn't remember breathing. Only that his wrist burned again, and this time, when he looked — the skin wasn't scarred.
It was branded.
The cross had turned black.
---
That night, he dreamt again of the truck. But this time, when he reached the 131st mile, the woman on the roadside wasn't waving for help. She was smiling.
Behind her, the Crimson Cross burned like a neon wound in the sky.
And beneath its light, a voice whispered:
> "You survived the first pull. Two remain."
When Mac woke, his bedsheets were soaked with sweat. The rusted key lay on his chest.
He didn't remember bringing it there.
But when he held it up to the window, it reflected a red horizon that didn't exist in this world.
Outside, the fog had swallowed Nebraska City whole.
And somewhere in the distance, an engine started again — waiting for its next driver.