The Hollis Ridge Tunnel was only seven kilometers long. Trains passed through it every day — commuters, freight haulers, maintenance crews. It was old, yes, over a century, but predictable. Solid. Geological surveys said the mountain was stable. Engineers trusted it.
That trust ended on August 9th.
At 3:14 p.m., Passenger Line 77 entered the Hollis Ridge Tunnel.
At 3:14 p.m. the next day — exactly 24 hours to the minute — it came out.
Same train.
Same passengers.
No one aboard aware that anything had happened.
Except one man was missing.
And one extra passenger was on board.
Dr. Niko Aldrin arrived two hours after the incident, summoned by the Transportation Authority for what he assumed was a structural anomaly. He expected cracks, rock shifts, maybe a sinkhole.
He wasn’t expecting a train that had somehow lost and gained people without stopping.
He met the station supervisor, Marla Hayes, at the tunnel entrance. She handed him a tablet.
“Train telemetry logs,” she said. “I want you to look at the timestamps.”
Niko scanned the data.
Entered tunnel: 15:14:02
Exited tunnel: 15:14:03
Duration: 1 second
“That’s normal,” Niko said. “Transit time inside the tunnel won’t show on this—”
“Swipe,” Marla interrupted.
He did.
A second log appeared, overlaid in red.
Entered: 15:14:02
Exited: 15:14:02 + 24h
Duration: 86,400 seconds
The system had recorded both timelines.
“You’re telling me the train existed in two states simultaneously?” Niko asked.
“I’m telling you,” Marla said, “that 148 people stepped off that train insisting they’d been in the tunnel for only a heartbeat. Meanwhile, their families aged a day waiting for them.”
“And the missing passenger?”
“That’s complicated.”
She gestured him inside the tunnel.
The air inside was wrong.
Too still. Too cold.
Like a cave that hadn’t been opened in centuries, not hours. Niko ran his hand along the wall. Damp. Metallic taste in the air. Gravity felt… slightly heavy? Or maybe that was nerves.
He reached the halfway point — the section where the train’s onboard cameras had gone dark.
He set down his gear and activated the field sensor. The display jittered with static, then stabilized.
“Marla,” he said over the radio, “I’m getting EM spikes unlike anything I’ve seen.”
“How bad?”
“Not bad. Structured.”
He adjusted the wavelength.
A pattern emerged.
Not random noise — a repeating waveform.
Almost symmetrical.
He expanded the view.
His skin went cold.
Someone — or something — had left a signal inside the tunnel walls. Not audio, not normal EM leakage. A mapped, repeating pattern like a signature.
Then the lights in the tunnel flickered.
Once.
Twice.
The sensor beeped with a proximity warning.
Something stood behind him.
Niko spun around.
A woman — early thirties, soaked as if she had walked through heavy rain.
“Ma’am,” Niko said, raising his hands, “you’re not supposed to be—”
She stepped forward.
Her eyes were wrong.
Not dangerous.
Not blank.
Just… seeing something he couldn’t.
“If you hear it,” she whispered, “do not answer it.”
Niko’s throat tightened. “Hear what?”
“They don’t like to be spoken to in this world.”
She turned her head, as if listening to distant voices.
“They’re still in the tunnel, you know,” she said. “Your people. The ones who didn’t come out.”
Niko froze. “How many?”
“Thirty-two,” she said. “Maybe more. It’s hard to count across timelines.”
She looked up at the ceiling.
“Your tunnel touches a place it shouldn’t.”
The words were calm, matter-of-fact — and delivered in a voice that did not feel entirely her own.
“Who are you?” Niko whispered.
Her eyes focused sharply on him for the first time.
“I came back by mistake.”
Before he could respond, she stepped backward — and disappeared.
Not fled.
Not vanished behind a bend.
Just… was no longer there.
Niko’s radio crackled violently.
“Niko!” Marla shouted. “We’ve got movement on the exit cameras — something’s coming back out!”
A cold dread climbed his spine.
“What do you mean something?”
“Not a train.”
When Niko and the security team reached the far mouth of the tunnel, they found the tracks coated in a thin layer of frost.
A figure crouched on the gravel.
Not human.
Not fully.
It was shaped like a person — limbs, torso, head — but its skin shimmered, translucent and vibrating like heat distortion. Its hands clutched the gravel as if it were trying to anchor itself to their reality.
“What is that?” a guard whispered.
Niko whispered, “A phase-shifted return.”
The creature lifted its head.
Its face flickered between three forms — a middle-aged man, a teenage boy, an old woman — faster than the eye could track.
It tried to speak.
Sound warped.
Then it managed a single word:
“Help.”
Niko took a step forward.
The creature recoiled.
Its body pixelated — not literally, but in spacetime. The air around it rippled with impossible angles, breaking geometry as easily as breath.
Marla grabbed his arm. “Niko, don’t—”
He shook her off gently.
“Just hold the perimeter,” he said. “Don’t startle it.”
He knelt in front of the thing.
“Who are you?” he asked softly.
It flickered again.
When it stabilized, it wore the face of one of the missing passengers — Victor Hale. Father of three. Vanished without explanation in the tunnel thirty years ago.
“Time… folded,” the creature rasped. “Light… wrong. Many… screaming. We could not… hold shape.”
“What happened inside the tunnel?”
Its eyes widened with terror.
“The tracks split. Not physically. But in… possibility.”
Niko felt his heart hammer.
“The train didn’t move,” the creature said. “The world did.”
The creature’s limbs buckled.
Frost spread around its hands.
“Niko!” Marla shouted. “Readings are spiking — it’s destabilizing!”
Niko reached out.
The creature flinched.
So he spoke gently:
“It’s okay. You’re back.”
It shook its head violently.
“No. Not back. You must close it.”
“Close what?”
“The breach,” it whispered. “The tunnel doesn’t go to one place anymore.”
It looked past Niko, toward the darkness inside the mountain.
“It goes to all of them.”
Then its chest collapsed inward.
Light poured out.
And it evaporated into a fine mist.
Silence swallowed the tunnel.
An hour later, Niko stood alone at the midway point, staring at the spot where the EM pattern first appeared.
He recorded a voice note:
“This is no longer a geological investigation.
The Hollis Ridge Tunnel is not a tunnel.
It’s a boundary.
And yesterday, something pushed from the other side.”
The lights flickered.
Then a whisper echoed behind him —
The same voice as before:
“Do not answer.”
Niko’s breath stopped.
Because this time, the voice wasn’t human.
And it wasn’t a warning.
It was a request.