Descent Protocol:
Far above the candidate compartments, past the layers of living metal and memory circuits, the CNC had gone silent. Rows of supervisors stood in front of their consoles, staring at the impossible readings streaming in from the train's core.
The descent code — the one no one expected to see again — burned across the screens in gold.
[Protocol Active: SECTOR NINE DESCENT]
[ETA: 18 Hours – Trajectory Confirmed]
[Warning: Non-Standard Energy Signature Detected in Compartment 10]
A low murmur rippled through the deck.
"Sector Nine? Impossible."
"The last time we descended was the Sundered Cycle.""That was four hundred fifty years ago—before even the Echelon Merge."
The lead operator swallowed. "It's real, sir. The descent pattern's authentic. No one can forge this sequence—it came from the train itself."
From her console at the far end, Brenda leaned forward, her blue holo-screen reflecting off her lenses. Her tone was calm, but her fingers trembled slightly as she scanned the output.
"Cross-verify the timestamp," she ordered. "Run it through all fourteen coach registries."
A technician hesitated. "All fourteen? That'll take—"
"Do it," Brenda said. "The descent involves every compartment. You think the train moves one piece at a time?"
Brenda — Internal Monologue
She knew this wasn't just another anomaly. To most lower officials, the Doom Train was a transport — a moving fortress carrying candidates, data, and forgotten experiments through endless tunnels.
But to those who had studied its architecture — the Circles, and those like her — it was something else entirely.
Fourteen compartments wasn't just a number. Each one was a self-contained ecosystem — an arcane biomechanical plane, big enough to hold cities, jungles, oceans, even weather.
And between every two compartments lay a Station Barrier — an ancient field that had to be cleared by candidates through Station Trials, tests meant to align their consciousness with the train's rhythm before they moved forward.
Those barriers weren't mechanical locks. They were dimensional anchors.
The descent protocols… they didn't break through barriers. They lowered them.
Her voice came softly, half to herself. "Every station acts as a seal. Every descent shakes the seals loose. If Sector Nine is opening… something's rewriting the core code."
CNC Lower Decks —
Messages poured in from across the train.
"Control! Energy output in Sector Seven increased by 200%.""Atmospheric readings in the passenger belts are shifting — feels like the train's generating its own gravity gradient."
"What's the order? Do we halt descent?"
Harry's voice cut through the static over comms:
"No one halts a descent once it begins. The train isn't asking permission. It's remembering the path."
Every official froze. Even those who didn't understand the reference could feel it — a heavy, ancient certainty that they were witnessing something not seen in lifetimes.
Brenda's POV
Through her observation window, Brenda saw the curve of the world below.
Not a planet — not in the ordinary sense — but a sleeved dimension stretched across endless metal plains. Each compartment had its own sky, its own horizon, its own rules. Some compartments rotated on different temporal scales, some looped space itself.
The Doom Train didn't travel through worlds.
It carried them.
When it stopped at a Station, it wasn't docking — it was aligning realities.
She'd seen schematics before — diagrams that hinted each station wasn't just a checkpoint but a seal between universes, compressing entire layers of existence into stable lanes.
Maintenance stops were rare because the train didn't need repair. It only paused when the core consciousness — what the Circles called The Engine Mind — detected an imbalance in reality itself.
And now… it had chosen to descend.
Brenda's Console — Classified Transmission
Her system blinked with a high-clearance ping.
[Source: Circle Relay // Clearance: Upper Tier Only]
[Subject: Candidate Acknowledgement Confirmed — Compartment 10]
[Action: Observation Only. Do not interfere with Resonant Entity.]
She froze, her throat dry.
Raghu. That was the name that came to her mind.
She didn't know the why directly, but the compartment dynamics and recent event confirmed it.
She whispered, "Compartment Ten. Again."
Around her, the supervisors barked orders, tried to control data overflow, re-synced failing circuits. None of them understood what was really happening — but Brenda did.
This wasn't a descent.
This was summoning.
A younger analyst, wide-eyed, leaned toward her.
"Ma'am… why would the train descend at all? We haven't received a boarding or evacuation notice from any external sector."
Brenda's gaze stayed fixed on the holo display. "The train doesn't descend for passengers," she said softly. "It descends when something inside it… wakes up."
"But what does Sector Nine even mean? We don't have clearance files for it."
"That's because Sector Nine was erased from the public architecture. The last descent there tore half the train's lattice apart."
The analyst paled. "So we're—"
Brenda finished for him. "—doing it again."
Through the transparent hull layer, space warped.
Beneath the Doom Train's long body, rivers of light spiraled like veins. One by one, massive rings of code — ancient, planet-sized mechanisms — began to rotate below it, aligning.
Each rotation sent out a pulse that made the entire metal world hum. And as the final ring aligned, the stars themselves dimmed — replaced by an emerald horizon pulsing like a living heart.
The Doom Train was no longer merely moving. It was descending through its own memory.
Brenda whispered, awe and dread intermingled:
"Fourteen compartments, seven stations, one consciousness… and now, it turns again."
"What have you remembered this time, old one?"