The Crossing

The woods behind West Point weren’t the same as the day before. It wasn’t supposed to be quiet.

Nick noticed it first, because he was the one panting hardest. His boots slipped on wet fall leaves as he crested the low ridge, lungs burning, heart pounding from the run. Training or not, there should have been sound.

There was nothing. No birds called. No sigh of wind through the trees. Nothing. And not just in the woods either. He didn’t even hear the distant hum of traffic.

“No wind,” Alex said behind him. “That’s not right. It’s always windy up here.”

Tristan stopped and scanned the treeline.

“Did we cross onto restricted land?” Nick said. They couldn’t be in the right place.

Alex shook his head.

They stood in a shallow clearing that hadn’t been there on any of their routes before. The ground dipped inward, subtly, like something had pressed down on it and never quite let to. The trees around it leaned wrong, not toward light, but away from the center.

“Something’s wrong,” Alex said.

Tristan glanced at him. “No shit.”

Nick swallowed hard. “You feel that?”

Tristan nodded. “Pressure.”

It wasn’t painful. Just present.

Alex stepped forward before either of them could stop him. He crouched near the center of the clearing and brushed aside leaves. “The soil’s darker.” He pressed his hand into it. “It’s…almost warm.”

“That’s impossible,” Tristan said.

Nick’s skin prickled. “Back up. We mark it and leave. Someone else can investigate.”

Alex didn’t answer. He stared forward.

Nick followed his gaze, and then he felt it. Not a sound or shape. A distortion, subtle as heat shimmer on asphalt, except colder. The space in front of Alex bent inward, wrong in a way Nick couldn’t articulate. His stomach lurched as if he’d missed a step.

“Alex,” Tristian said, his voice tight. “Step back.”

Alex straightened slowly. “I think it’s a discontinuity.”

“You think it’s a what?” Nick said.

“A break,” Alex said. He smiled, small and tight. “A place where rules didn’t finish forming.”

“What are you talking about?” Nick didn’t like that smile. He liked it even less when Alex reached forward.

Nick sucked in a breath. “Alex, don’t—”

The world folded.

It didn’t explode or collapse. It just folded inward.

Nick felt himself pulled forward. Not with force or violence, but with inevitability. The ground vanished beneath him, his balance tore away, and the pressure snapped into something he couldn’t name.

He hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. His ears rang, and he spat dirt.

“Up,” Tristan barked, suddenly close. “Nick, up.”

Nick rolled and pushed himself upright, heart hammering. He spat more dirt, shook his head, then lurched to his feet. The forest around them was wrong. The trees were thicker, older. The air smelled different, heavier, and sweeter, like clean earth and woodsmoke.

Sunlight filtered through a canopy that shouldn’t have existed.

Alex was already on his feet, turning slowly, awe and fear fighting for dominance on his face. “This isn’t… We’re not behind the academy anymore.”

Nick staggered to Tristan’s side, his gut in a knot. “Tell me this is a mass hallucination.”

Tristan shook his head.

They took inventory of themselves. No injuries.

“My phone’s gone,” Tristan said.

“Mine, too,” Alex said.

Nick patted his pocket. Nothing. “What does that mean?”

“It means we were lucky to make it through with our clothes on,” Alex said. “At least we were spared that indignity.”

“But what does it mean?” Nick said.

Alex shook his head. “I don’t know. It must have something to do with weight.”

“Our boots weigh more than our phones,” Tristan said.

“True,” Alex said. “So it has to be something else. It doesn’t matter. They probably wouldn’t work if we had them.”

Nick turned slowly, trying to orient himself. “Which way’s out?”

Alex stared at the space behind them. His voice was quiet. “The fold closed. You can’t even tell where it was.”

Something like a hollow opened in Nick’s chest. “Maybe temporarily closed?”

Alex didn’t answer.

Tristan spoke instead. “We move.”

They walked for hours through thick woods, pushing through underbrush that snatched at their clothing and roots that threatened to trip them. The wind whispered through the bare treetops, and sometimes birds flushed up from their approach.

“What if we’re the only people here?” Tristan said in a hushed voice.

“We can’t be,” Nick said. God, he hoped that was true. The idea of being in a strange land, completely alone, was enough to drive a man mad.

They kept moving forward, fighting their way through the underbrush.

Tristan slowed and raised a fist.

They froze instantly.

Tristan crouched, fingers brushing the soil. “Tracks. Boots. Not ours. We aren’t walking in circles.”

Nick leaned closer. The prints were deep and narrow, the tread unfamiliar. Not modern hiking boots. Not any military issue he recognized.

Alex frowned. “They’re old.”

“How old?” Nick said.

“Design,” Alex said. “The pattern’s simpler. No polymer flex points. Leather, maybe reinforced at the toe.”

Nick straightened. “That isn’t comforting.”

They followed the tracks at a distance, angling downhill as the woods thinned. The terrain opened into rolling fields. Stone fences lined the edges, stacked by hand. Work that had been slow, patient. Human.

“You hear that?” Alex said.

“Hear what?” Nick said.

“The sound of nothing,” Alex said.

He was right. There wasn’t any distant highway noise. No faint aircraft. No shouts of children or reprimands by annoyed mothers. No barking dogs. Just a lot of nothing.

They moved along the treeline. Nick kept searching for modern signs that would make a joke of it later…a distant cell tower, the glint of a car, the straight line of power poles.

There were none.

They kept moving, and eventually, the first signs of inhabitants came into view.

In the distance, smoke curled from the chimneys of a settlement. On the outskirts, horses and cattle grazed, and small shapes that moved about had to be chickens.

A single gunshot report from far away split the air.

“Come on,” Nick said. “We have to get closer.”

They walked for another hour before they topped a low ridge that overlooked a dirt road. They crouched at the sound of something rattling along the road just out of their sight.

A wagon drawn by a fat horse rounded the bend and came fully into view.

They watched as the wagon pulled even with them. A man walked beside the horse, cap pulled low, a rifle slung casually over his shoulder.

“Maybe this is an Amish community,” Nick said.

“Are you serious?” Tristan said. “Does that man look Amish?”

“No,” Nick said.

“He’s comfortable,” Alex said. “Not worried.”

Nick stared. “That rifle…”

“Bolt-action,” Alex said. “Design’s early twentieth century.”

Tristan watched the road. “We don’t exist here.”

Nick laughed softly, the sound shaky. “Guess we do now.”

They watched the cart rumble out of sight.

Alex rubbed his forehead. “Do you think they have motorized vehicles or…”

“God, I hope so,” Tristan said. “I’m not riding a damn horse.”

Nick snorted. “Horses beat walking. But a vehicle is preferable. We could sit here a while and see what goes by.”

“Why not?” Tristan said. “It isn’t like we’re going to be late for something.”

“I wonder if they’ve missed us back at the academy,” Nick said.

“Of course they have,” Alex said. “We’re probably on the verge of being a news story. Three cadets vanishing on a training run is too good to ignore.”

“What about our families?” Tristan said. “They have to be worried that something awful happened to us.”

“Something did,” Nick said. He’d refused to let his mind go to his family since they’d fallen through, or whatever had happened to them. “My mom must be scared to death.”

“I wonder what the academy will tell them,” Alex said.

Nick snorted and said, “The least they can.”

“Maybe we can cross back,” Tristan said. “Maybe we can find people who know about it and can help us.”

“Maybe,” Alex said. “But don’t bet on it. Something like that… Who knows?”

They sat there quietly for a while before the sound of a motor caught their attention.

“Something’s coming,” Tristan said.

They watched the bend, waiting for the vehicle to come into sight.

Nick forced himself to breathe and not hold his breath.

Finally, a black car that looked like it had been driven straight out of 1940 rounded the curve.

“Shit,” Alex said. “We’re in a different century. Or someplace that’s running behind.”

The car drove past. Two men in suits sat in the front.

“Hope you guys don’t mind inconvenience,” Nick said.

“Good one,” Alex said. “The last three years at the academy haven’t exactly been easy. We can manage this.”

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Tristan said.

The sun moved lower. Bells rang faintly in the distance, church bells, by the sound of it.

“Guess we aren’t too far from a town,” Nick said.

Alex rubbed his face with both hands. “We need clothes so we can go into a town and get information. And not be noticed.”

“And if we are?” Tristan said.

Alex looked at him. “Then we improvise.”

Nick didn’t look at either of them. “No. Then we survive. Whatever that means. We aren’t going to die in some unknown land.”

A dog barked. Close.

A cold certainty settled quietly in Nick’s gut that whatever rules governed the land they’d fallen into wouldn’t be kind to mistakes.

“I wonder what language they speak,” Alex said.

“Probably something none of us has a clue about,” Tristan said.

“Let’s hope I can figure it out,” Alex said.

Nick nodded. Alex had a gift for language and spoke several fluently.

“So,” Alex said. “I’m starving. We need to find something to eat. And shelter for the night.”

“I’m hungry, too,” Nick said.

Tristan nodded.

“So what are we going to do?” Alex said and looked toward the settlement.

“We could beg for something to eat,” Tristan said.

“How do you think that’s going to go over?” Nick said. “Three strangers in unknown uniforms. We don’t know anything about these people. They might be civil, or they might take one of those rifles and kill us. I don’t feel like being shot and thrown in a ditch.”

“We need to get close enough to observe some of them before we take a chance on showing ourselves,” Alex said.

“We heard church bells; some of them have to be decent people,” Tristan said.

“We don’t know those were church bells,” Nick said. “We’re just assuming they are. It could be a call to a town meeting for all we know.”

“Okay, fine,” Tristan said. “Let’s get close to those houses and see what we can learn.”

“All right,” Alex said. “But we’re going to be careful about this. Nick’s right. We could get ourselves killed. These are country people. They see us poking around, they might shoot first and then try to figure out who we are.”

“We wait for dark,” Tristan said. “Then we move.”