The train did not slow for the red signal; it surged through it like a thought you try not to think. The platform lights smeared into white claws against the rain-dark air. People scattered. Someone screamed my name—thin, panicked—while my shoes hammered the yellow line as if I could outrun steel.

“Ben!” Leena’s voice snapped. “Leave it!”

But the boy on the tracks wasn’t “it”. He was a small shape in a school hoodie, frozen between the rails as the wind from the oncoming carriages lifted his fringe. His eyes were huge, not with fear, but with that blank surprise children have when the world suddenly refuses to be gentle.

My hand found the emergency lever. Red plastic. A promise. I yanked.

Nothing happened.

No heroic shudder. No obedient shriek of brakes. Just the same relentless roar, the train’s nose cutting the rain into shreds.

A guard in a soaked vest lunged at me. “It’s delayed!” he shouted over the noise, face twisted. “The system—there’s lag—”

Lag. A stupid word for a life.