~ blur reality
The mountains were quiet in the way only winter mountains can be.
Not empty.
Just… holding their breath.
Snow covered everything in a thick white hush, smoothing the sharp edges of rock and fallen branches. Sunlight poured down from a clear sky, spilling over the peaks and slipping between tall conical trees. The light fractured through the pine needles, scattering gold across the snow in long, soft streaks.
Young Lucas lay flat behind a fallen log, his gloves pressed into the cold bark.
The air tasted clean. Sharp. Like it could cut through thoughts.
He wasn’t afraid.
He was waiting.
Beside him, his father crouched low against the same log, broad shoulders steady, movements calm and deliberate. The metal of the shotgun caught a sliver of sunlight as he checked it.
Click.
Another smooth motion.
Lucas watched his hands more than anything else.
They didn’t shake.
They didn’t rush.
They knew exactly what they were doing.
His father leaned slightly toward him and whispered, “Loaded.”
Lucas nodded, even though he hadn’t realized he was holding his breath.
His father tapped the side of the shotgun lightly. “Good balance,” he murmured. “Strong kick though. You don’t brace right, it’ll knock your pride out before it knocks anything else down.”
Lucas grinned quietly.
His father smiled back, a small one, almost hidden beneath his beard.
“You listen first,” he whispered. “Not with your ears. With everything.”
Lucas tried to do that. He let the wind brush against his cheeks. He felt the cold through his knees. He focused on the silence between sounds.
Somewhere in the trees—
Soft.
Barely there.
Crunch.
Not loud. Not dramatic. Just the faint press of paw against snow.
His father went still.
Completely still.
It wasn’t tension. It was control.
Lucas felt it ripple through the space between them.
Another soft step.
Closer.
His father’s eyes shifted toward the treeline. Focused. Sharp.
Lucas tried to see what he saw.
All he saw were shadows between trees.
Then—
Movement.
A flash of white between trunks.
A shape.
A white wolf slipped between the trees, almost blending into the snow itself. Silent. Light-footed. Powerful without trying to be.
Lucas’s heart thumped once, hard.
He hadn’t expected that.
His father moved in one clean motion.
Up.
Over the log.
The shotgun lifted.
Time stretched thin.
Lucas watched it like a scene in slow motion. His father’s boots barely sinking into the snow as he rose. The wolf mid-step, muscles coiled.
The shot cracked through the air.
The echo bounced off the mountains.
The wolf dropped before it finished its leap.
Silence returned, but it felt different now. Thinner.
His father lowered the shotgun slowly and exhaled.
Lucas scrambled up from behind the log, boots slipping slightly as he rushed forward.
The wolf lay still against the snow, white fur almost glowing in the sunlight.
Lucas stared at it, stunned.
“You heard that?” he asked quietly.
His father nodded.
“Paws don’t fall like hooves,” he said. “And not like boots either. Wolves move light. But snow tells on everyone.”
He crouched beside the animal.
For a moment, his father just looked at it.
Not with pride.
Not with celebration.
With something heavier.
He placed a gloved hand gently against the wolf’s fur.
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“Sorry, buddy,” he murmured.
Lucas watched that closely.
The way his father’s expression softened. The way the apology didn’t sound fake.
“You always say that,” Lucas said.
His father glanced at him.
“You respect what you take,” he replied. “If you don’t, you shouldn’t be out here.”
The wind moved softly through the trees, carrying the faint scent of pine and gunpowder.
Lucas looked at his father then.
Really looked.
At the steady posture.
The calm eyes.
The confidence that didn’t need to shout.
He had never seen anything stronger.
Never seen anything more certain.
The mountains behind him looked massive.
But in that moment, his father looked bigger.
Lucas’s chest felt full. Warm despite the cold.
One day.
One day he would stand like that.
Move like that.
Hear things before they happened.
Be steady when the world wasn’t.
He stepped closer, snow crunching under his boots, and said with all the certainty a child could hold—
“One day, I’m going to become like you, Dad.”
—
Chapter 04 - The world of Gangsters...—
The train had been running clean all morning.
Steel wheels humming over the rails in steady rhythm.
CLACK—CLACK—CLACK—CLACK.
The desert stretched endlessly on both sides, flat and exposed, the kind of landscape that made you feel small no matter how big the machine beneath you was. The sun hung high and white, bleaching the sky into something almost colorless. Heat shimmered above the tracks ahead, warping the horizon like the world itself was tired.
Inside the engine cabin, the driver loosened the top button of his uniform.
It was too hot for October.
He wiped his forehead slowly, careful not to take his eyes off the rails for long.
This route was routine. Southern stretch, long freight haul, cutting toward the borderlands before heading down toward Mexico. Isolated enough that sometimes he would go ten minutes without seeing another soul.
He didn’t hate it.
Silence meant stability.
Stability meant paychecks.
Paychecks meant hospital bills covered.
He adjusted the throttle gently. The engine responded with a deeper rumble.
Behind him, dozens of cargo cars followed in obedient alignment. Containers sealed and cataloged. Food shipments. Manufacturing materials. And one reinforced vault transport logged with elevated security clearance.
Two million dollars.
He knew because he had signed the papers. He had held the clipboard. He had seen the number.
Two million.
He tried not to think about that part.
Instead, he thought about home.
His wife’s breathing machine at night.
The soft mechanical hiss in the dark.
The way her fingers trembled when she tried to pour herself water.
The way she tried to smile anyway.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she had told him last week. “I’m not dying tomorrow.”
He had laughed then.
But he hadn’t believed it.
He shifted in his seat.
He thought about his daughter instead.
Six years old.
Missing one front tooth.
Big eyes that always asked too many questions.
“Papa, do trains ever get lonely?”
He had smiled at that.
“No,” he told her. “They always know where they’re going.”
She had nodded seriously.
“Then don’t let yours get lost.”
The memory softened him.
His phone buzzed once in his pocket.
He shouldn’t have checked it.
He knew that.
But he thought maybe it was the hospital.
Maybe an update.
He glanced down.
Half a second.
Just half—
The world detonated.
KABOOM!!!
The blast came from beneath the rails ahead. A violent eruption that lifted the engine upward like it had hit an invisible wall.
The cabin jolted sideways. Metal screamed in agony. Glass fractured in jagged lightning patterns.
The driver slammed into the window with bone-rattling force.
The world twisted.
Rotated.
Collapsed.
The sound was unbearable.
Steel grinding against steel.
Cargo cars buckling.
Couplings snapping like gunshots.
The engine left the tracks entirely.
Then impact.
Everything slammed down in a thunder of dust.
Silence.
Not complete silence.
But the stunned kind.
The ringing kind.
He blinked.
His vision blurred and doubled.
The world was sideways.
No.
He was sideways.
The dashboard hung at an angle. Sunlight poured through shattered glass. Smoke curled lazily upward.
He tried to breathe.
His chest burned.
He looked down.
His legs.
Wrong.
One bent unnaturally beneath him. The other soaked in dark red.
Pain arrived late but arrived brutally.
It stole the air from his lungs.
He swallowed a scream.
“Move,” he whispered.
He reached for the cabin door, fingers trembling.
Metal scraped under his grip as he forced it open.
Hot desert air blasted inside.
Dust hung thick outside.
The cargo cars were scattered like discarded toys across the sand.
And then he saw movement.
Black figures.
Calm.
Deliberate.
They weren’t running toward the wreck in panic.
They were already there.
Working.
One man barked something sharp and controlled.
Another sliced through a container seal.
Boxes spilled out.
Cereal packages.
Plastic cracking open.
“Trash,” one of them said.
They kicked the food aside.
The driver felt his heartbeat slam against his ribs.
Not random.
Not chaos.
Planned.
He slid himself down from the broken cabin, collapsing into the sand with a choked gasp. The ground felt like fire beneath his palms.
He dragged himself toward the nearest cargo container.
Each movement sent lightning through his legs.
He forced himself not to scream.
Stay quiet.
Stay small.
He crouched behind the container, pressing his back against metal still warm from impact.
His breathing shook uncontrollably.
He turned slightly—
And froze.
The train master lay half beneath twisted steel nearby.
Pinned.
Still.
His eyes were open.
Dust settling over his uniform.
The driver stared.
For a moment, his brain refused to understand.
That man had shared coffee with him two hours ago.
Had complained about the heat.
Had joked about retirement.
Now he didn’t move.
The driver crawled closer, dragging his injured leg behind him.
“No, no, no…”
He reached out with trembling fingers and pressed them beneath the train master’s nose.
Nothing.
He pressed harder.
Nothing.
His chest tightened violently.
“I looked away,” he whispered.
It looped in his mind.
I looked away.
If he hadn’t checked his phone.
If he hadn’t blinked.
If he had kept his eyes on the rails.
Would he have seen something?
A disturbance?
A flicker?
Would he have braked?
Would they both be alive?
His hands shook as he pulled them back.
He remembered the train master laughing about his daughter’s drawings taped inside his locker.
“She draws me with a superhero cape,” the man had said.
He remembered that.
He remembered thinking how lucky that man was.
Now half of him lay crushed under freight.
The desert wind moved softly, brushing dust over the body.
The driver felt tears mix with grit on his face.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
He imagined calling the man’s wife.
What would he even say?
He imagined someone calling his wife.
That thought crushed him.
He saw her in their small kitchen, leaning slightly against the counter for support.
He saw her trying to hide the cough.
He saw her pretending she wasn’t tired.
He saw his daughter sitting cross-legged on the floor, drawing trains with uneven wheels.
“Papa’s train never crashes,” she had said once.
The memory sliced through him.
His daughter waiting at the window.
Her small fingers pressed against the glass when she heard his truck pull in at night.
Running to the door.
“Did you bring me something cool?”
He had once brought her a tiny metal whistle.
She had treated it like treasure.
He thought about her first day of school.
The way she refused to let go of his hand.
The way he promised he would always come back.
Always.
His chest began to shake.
He couldn’t die here.
He couldn’t leave them with hospital bills and condolences.
He couldn’t leave his daughter asking questions about rails and explosions.
He couldn’t let this be the last thing she remembered about trains.
Shouting cut through his thoughts.
“I found it!”
The words rang sharp and triumphant.
He froze.
Slowly, dread coiled in his stomach.
He glanced behind him.
The reinforced vault container.
He had dragged himself directly behind it.
Of all places.
Boots crunched through sand.
Closer.
He tried to move again.
His leg screamed in protest.
He crawled toward another container.
Too slow.
A shadow fell over him.
“Well,” a voice said evenly. “What do we have here?”
He looked up.
Dark glasses.
Calm posture.
No panic.
The man holding the rifle didn’t look angry.
Didn’t look excited.
Just… finished.
The driver raised both hands instinctively.
“Please,” he rasped. “I have a wife. A little girl.”
His voice broke.
“She’s six. She thinks trains don’t get lost.”
The men exchanged brief glances.
One of them studied him.
For a second, hope flickered.
The leader gave a small nod.
The rifle lifted.
The driver’s heart pounded so hard it hurt.
He thought of his daughter’s missing tooth.
He thought of her laugh.
He thought of his wife’s hand squeezing his in the hospital room.
He thought of the train master’s daughter drawing a superhero cape.
The desert wind moved gently across the sand.
The sky remained mercilessly blue.
The shot cracked through the air.
And the desert swallowed the sound.
