The screen faded to black.
YOU DIED.
Andrew Brigh frowned at his phone, thumb hovering over the "Retry" button. His character — a robed mage wielding thunder spells — had just been vaporized by a flaming wyvern. Too slow to dodge. Too greedy to heal.
He exhaled through his nose. Not at the game.
At himself.
With a tap, he locked the screen and stuffed the phone back into his jacket pocket. The battery was almost dead anyway — like him, these days.
He leaned back against the bus seat, listening to the soft hum of the engine and the rhythmic patter of rain against the windows. The air inside was warm and stale. Outside, the city skyline blurred past in a haze of neon and water.
He glanced around the bus.
To his left, a young couple sat shoulder to shoulder, sharing earbuds and a quiet laugh. The girl was asleep, her head resting on her boyfriend's shoulder. He had one hand wrapped around hers, thumb moving absentmindedly over her knuckles.
In front of them, an old man in a brown jacket cradled a sleeping child, probably his grandson, who held a half-eaten packet of chips in his tiny hand.
On the far right, two college students animatedly argued over football stats, slapping each other's shoulders and swearing under their breath.
Andrew watched them with a faint, almost imperceptible smile. And just beneath it — something else.
Not bitterness. Not quite envy.
Just… absence.
He had never built anything like that. No wife. No children. No one to check in on him. His parents were gone. His colleagues were polite. His landlord was forgetful. His phone never rang.
He lived like a ghost among the wires — designing systems to light up malls, apartments, factories… always for someone else.
No one ever noticed the guy who kept things running.
He looked at the rain-slick window, caught his reflection. Tired eyes. Greying hair. A man well into middle age with no legacy and no one waiting.
Maybe that's why he liked the game. At least in there, he could matter.
He smirked faintly.
Then the lights flickered.
The bus shuddered slightly. A few passengers looked up, but no one panicked.
The driver cursed under his breath and fiddled with the dashboard. Andrew noticed the faint smell of burnt plastic.
"Cheap relays again," he muttered, instinctively reaching toward his phone to check the battery. Old habit.
Then —
The bus jolted.
A scream. Brakes locking. The world spun.
Headlights from a truck blinded the windshield.
The driver swerved hard.
Andrew's body flew sideways as the bus skidded through the slick road, crashed through a weak barricade—
And slammed straight into the fence of an electrical substation.
Steel buckled. Glass shattered. Sparks flew like fireflies made of rage.
A brutal noise ripped through the chassis — and then pain, big and sharp.
Something punched through Andrew's chest.
His breath caught. He blinked.
It was a jagged metal rod — thick, rusted, and humming.
He tilted his head downward in a haze of confusion. The rod had pierced him clean through — from back to front. His vision was starting to tunnel, but he could still make out the piece clearly.
It was part of a transformer — the kind used to control high-voltage current flow from the grid into neighbourhoods. It was designed to take raw, dangerous power and make it usable.
But this one was broken.
Exposed.
And still live.
For just a second, Andrew recognized it. Not as a life ending weapon. But as an object from his world — from his craft.
Then it lit up.
And so did he.
The electricity entered him like a scream.
His muscles snapped tight, fists clenching involuntarily, back arched, eyes rolled upward, and thoughts shattered into white.
Every memory, every dream, every regret — gone in a burst of blinding, soundless light.
He couldn't scream. His throat was locked.
He couldn't breathe. The air was gone.
There was only the surge.
It was not like pain. Pain was too human, too survivable.
This was existence disintegrating.
He felt his heart rupture, then beat once more — like a stuttering engine.
He felt something uncoil in his spine, something that wasn't flesh.
Something that remembered the current.
Something hungry for it.
And then—
Everything went still.
The lights flickered one last time.
And Andrew Brigh —
man of circuits, silence, and invisible work —
was no more.