The silver pocket watch in Kashem's palm felt like it was made of liquid ice, its coldness seeping through his skin and chilling his very marrow. The black, oily smoke leaking from its cracked face didn't just rise into the air; it coiled around his fingers like tiny, dark serpents, whispering secrets of a time that should have remained buried. Opposite him, the hooded figure stood perfectly still, a silhouette of pure darkness against the flickering oak panels of the carriage. The intruder held a jagged blade of frozen data that glowed with a sinister, violet light, humming with the sound of a thousand deleted files.
"Give it to me, Analyst," the intruder hissed. The voice was distorted, sounding like a corrupted audio file—a thousand overlapping whispers that made Kashem's ears bleed. "That watch is a piece of the 2026 terminal. It is a foreign object, a virus in the sanctuary of 1884. Your grandfather knew this. That is why he was 'deleted' from the source code of reality."
The mention of his grandfather's fate sent a surge of hot fury through Kashem's veins, momentarily pushing back the paralyzing fear. "You know what happened to him!" Kashem roared, his voice echoing against the vaulted ceiling. "Where is he? What did you do to the man who gave his life to guard this train?"
The intruder didn't answer with words. Instead, he lunged. He moved with impossible speed, not like a human, but like a glitch in a video game—appearing and disappearing in a blur of shadow and static. Kashem barely had time to throw himself behind the heavy mahogany drafting table. The violet blade sliced through the thick wood as if it were soft paper, leaving behind a trail of dissolving pixels and the smell of ozone.
"The table! It's disappearing!" Kashem gasped, scrambling back as the centuries-old furniture began to turn into transparent blocks of data.
"Everything in this carriage is a manifestation of memory, Kashem!" the fading echo of Abhay Roy shouted from the corner, his translucent form flickering violently like a candle in a storm. "If he strikes you with that blade, your existence in 2026 will be overwritten! You will be a memory that no one remembers! You will never have been born!"
Kashem looked at the mark on his arm—the lighthouse. It was pulsing in sync with his rapid heartbeat, glowing with a fierce, sapphire intensity. He realized he couldn't just run; he was the Analyst, the only one who could bridge the gap between the mechanical past and the digital future. He closed his eyes for a split second, ignoring the chaos around him, and focused on the data flowing through the brand on his skin.
Authorization: Zero-One. Firewall... ACTIVATE!
As the intruder swung the blade again, a translucent shield of blue geometry erupted from Kashem's arm. The violet blade struck the shield with a sound like a mountain of glass shattering. The impact sent a massive shockwave through the carriage, blowing out the remaining windows and sending shards of wood and glass flying like shrapnel.
Outside, the crimson void roared, sensing the breach in the train's defenses. The red mist began to pour into the carriage, smelling of salt and ancient dust.
"You are stubborn," the intruder growled, the hood falling back as he regained his balance.
Kashem's breath hitched. His blood ran cold. The face beneath the hood wasn't a face at all—it was a mirror. Kashem saw his own reflection in the intruder's features, but it was a version of himself that looked decades older, his skin scarred with glowing purple lines, his eyes hollow and filled with an infinite sadness.
"Who... what are you?" Kashem whispered, his legs feeling like lead.
"I am the consequence of your failure," the mirror-Kashem replied, his voice a haunting echo of Kashem's own. "I am the version of you that watched Chittagong burn in 2026 because you couldn't let go of a broken watch. I am the shadow created by your indecision."
The intruder raised his hand, and the black smoke from the silver watch began to flow toward him, strengthening his violet blade. The train groaned, a metallic scream of agony vibrating through the floorboards. The 'Contradiction' was tearing the Dead Express apart. The floor beneath Kashem's feet began to turn into iron rails, then back into carpet, then into nothingness.
"Kashem! Destroy the watch!" Abhay Roy's voice was now a faint, ghostly whisper. "The past cannot save the future if the present is held captive by ghosts! Break the tether!"
Kashem looked at the watch one last time. He remembered the rainy afternoon in Chittagong when his grandfather had pressed it into his small hand. 'Keep it safe, Kashem. It tells more than just time; it tells the truth of who we are.' Now he understood the terrible truth. The watch wasn't a gift; it was a burden, a beacon that allowed the Void to track the bloodline of the Guardians.
With a roar of defiance that came from the very depths of his soul, Kashem didn't throw the watch away. Instead, he slammed the silver watch directly onto the glowing blue lighthouse mark on his arm.
"Authorization: Overwrite! ACCESS GRANTED!" A
blinding flash of white and sapphire light consumed the entire carriage. The silver watch shattered into a thousand fragments, its gears, springs, and glass dissolving into pure, raw energy. But instead of the energy flowing to the shadow-intruder, the mark on Kashem's arm acted like a vacuum, absorbing every bit of the watch's power. The lighthouse brand expanded, weaving itself around Kashem's entire right arm like a suit of digital armor, glowing with an unbearable brilliance.
The mirror-intruder let out a horrific, digital shriek as the surge of pure light pushed him back toward the open, shattered door. His form began to pixelate and tear.
"This isn't over, Analyst!" the intruder cried out as he was sucked into the swirling crimson void outside. "The 1884 station is not a refuge—it is a trap! You are delivering the Source Code exactly where we want it!"
The heavy iron door slammed shut, and a sudden, suffocating silence returned to the carriage. Abhay Roy was gone. The drafting table was nothing but a memory of splinters. Kashem fell to his knees, his right arm still humming with a power he didn't understand. He looked at the floor where the watch had been. There was nothing left of his grandfather's legacy but a single, tiny gear made of pure gold.
He picked it up. It wasn't ticking, but it felt warm, pulsing with a faint, steady beat—like a heart. He had sacrificed his last link to his family to save the train, but the intruder's final words haunted him like a curse. 'The 1884 station is a trap.'
Kashem stood up, his gaze hardening as he looked toward the front of the train. The 1884 Dead Express was accelerating, and the real nightmare was just beginning.