The train derailed near Churchill in 2047,
leaving only rusted tracks and a ghost town.
RCMP Officer Jarek Maloney was sent to
investigate, his boots crunching over
frostbitten pine needles as he scanned the
skeletal remains of a rail yard. The government
had classified the area as a restricted zone,
but rumors of illegal crossings—of people, not
goods—had reached his desk.
A survivor named Lena, her face streaked with
soot and ash, emerged from the ruins. She spoke
little, but her hands trembled when she showed
him a ledger: names of immigrants from the old
world, marked with dates and destinations. Not
all had arrived alive.
The rules were clear—no one entered or left
without a permit. No permits were issued after
the Collapse. But Lena had one. A forged stamp,
inked in red, bore the seal of the nowdefunct
Immigration Department. It was the same mark
found on bodies recovered from the Arctic coast.
Jarek followed the trail north, past abandoned
wind turbines and the skeletal frame of a
oncethriving logging town. There, in a converted
freight car buried beneath snowdrifts, he found
the camp. Immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe
and South Asia, worked in shifts to maintain the
last operational pipeline, feeding fuel to the
few remaining outposts. They were paid in food
rations and promises.
But the real work was done by others. In the
shadows, a group of Indigenous hunters,
descendants of those who had survived the
Collapse, moved quietly through the woods. They
were not there for fuel. They were there for the
people.
Lena had been taken by them. She had tried to
leave, to find her sister in Winnipeg. The
hunters had intercepted her, believing she
carried secrets about the pipeline’s true
purpose. That it wasn’t just fuel—it was a
conduit for something else. Something that had
been buried under the ice long before the
Collapse.
Jarek confronted the leader, an elder named
Tansi, whose eyes held the weight of decades. He
did not deny the truth. The pipeline ran beneath
the permafrost, carrying more than oil. It
carried memories. Echoes of the old world,
stored in a forgotten data core. The immigrants
had been lured here to keep it running, to
protect it from those who would use it for power.
The final choice came at dawn. Jarek could
report the operation, risk losing the fragile
peace between the surviving groups. Or he could
let it continue, knowing the truth would never
be told.
He chose neither.
With the help of Lena and a handful of
immigrants, he destroyed the data core,
scattering its fragments into the frozen earth.
The pipeline sputtered, then died. The hunters
retreated. The immigrants fled south, some to
find family, others to start anew.
Jarek returned to his station, the weight of the
decision pressing against his ribs. The world
had changed once. Now, it would change again.
