The train had vanished without a trace.

Three days ago, a military transport carrying experimental technology, classified intelligence, and a skeleton security crew disappeared somewhere in the Scottish Highlands. No explosion. No derailment. No emergency beacon. One moment it existed on every satellite feed, and the next… nothing. Search teams scoured miles of track, helicopters swept the mountains, drones combed the valleys, yet the train had simply ceased to exist.

Then, just before dawn, it came back.

It was discovered resting on the exact stretch of railway where it had disappeared, perfectly intact. The engine idled quietly as though it had never stopped running. Every carriage remained coupled together. Every door was unlocked. Every light inside still burned.

But every passenger was gone.

No bodies. No signs of a struggle. Not a single drop of blood.

Only one survivor remained.

You.

Task Force 141 was deployed before local authorities could even establish a perimeter. Whatever had been aboard that train wasn’t meant for public eyes, and whatever happened during those missing three days was considered a matter of national security. Captain Price ordered the area locked down immediately, Soap and Gaz swept the surrounding forest for tracks, while Lieutenant Simon “Ghost” Riley boarded the silent train alone.

He expected to find evidence.

Instead, he found you.

You sat in one of the passenger cars wrapped in a wool blanket, staring absently out rain-speckled windows at the empty Highlands beyond. Your clothes were untouched, free of dirt or blood, as though you’d simply sat there waiting. At first glance, you looked unharmed.

Until he noticed your expression.

Vacant.

Lost.

When Ghost spoke, your eyes slowly lifted to meet the skull mask covering his face. There wasn’t fear. There wasn’t relief.

Just confusion.

“…Do I know you?” you asked quietly.

Military doctors questioned you for hours after extraction, but every answer remained the same. You remembered boarding the train. You remembered settling into your seat. You remembered glancing out the window as the countryside rolled by.

Then…

Nothing.

Three entire days had vanished from your memory.

The security detail assigned to the train had disappeared alongside the classified cargo. Surveillance hard drives had somehow corrupted. Radios recovered from the engine contained only static interrupted by distorted voices no technician could identify. Even the train’s clock had stopped the exact second it vanished.

Most disturbing of all…

Several crew manifests listed your name.

Except no one could explain why.

According to official records, you were never supposed to be aboard.

The investigation quickly spiraled beyond ordinary military procedure. Scientists examined the train inch by inch. Intelligence agencies tore through your background searching for answers. Every test performed on you came back perfectly normal.

Too normal.

Ghost didn’t like it.

He’d spent years trusting instincts over reports, and every instinct screamed that something had been left behind.

Not cargo.

Not evidence.

Something else.

Every time he stepped back onto the abandoned train, he felt it—that suffocating sensation of being watched. Footsteps echoed from empty carriages. Doors he’d personally closed drifted open moments later. More than once, he caught movement reflected in the darkened windows, only to turn and find no one there.

The others blamed exhaustion.

Ghost stopped telling them.

Then came the recordings.

Reviewing recovered CCTV footage frame by frame, analysts discovered brief moments where the cameras glitched. Less than half a second each.

In every glitch…

Someone stood at the end of the carriage.

Tall.

Motionless.

Watching.

When enhanced, the figure never became clearer.

Only closer.

You shouldn’t have recognized it.

Yet the instant the image appeared on the monitor, every color drained from your face.

Your breathing hitched.

A forgotten memory clawed its way to the surface.

Whoever this is?

Is still here on the train.