The bus emptied beneath a monument.

A titanium rocket curved into the sky atop a sweeping plume of metal, its nose disappearing somewhere above the apartment blocks.

Dani found a bench while I tried photographing it, but every angle lost either the rocket or the curve that held it aloft.

The metro entrance waited beyond it.

Every corner of the intersection led underground.

Thousands of commuters poured through identical entrances, carrying us with them before we had time to understand where we were.

Every pause put us in someone’s way.

We found the ticket machines, but they only reloaded existing cards.

As we stood, confused, a line formed behind us.

The moment I stepped aside to think, someone filled the space we’d left.

A security guard watched us for a few seconds, then pointed back toward the street.

“Window,” he said.

Outside, tucked into the station wall, an elderly woman sat knitting behind the glass.

She sighed when Dani approached, and set down her needles.

Then she copied our passport information into handwritten ledger, and after several minutes of searching through drawers filled with buttons, ribbons, and loose coins, she slid two heavy metal tokens beneath the window.

Her needles were back to work again before we’d collected them.

~

Back inside, Dani and I drifted with the crowd through security.

The metal detector buzzed.

So did Dani’s.

So did the man behind us.

Nobody stopped. Nobody looked up.

Neither did the guard.

I just picked up my backpack and started walking.

Moments later, a second guard intercepted me.

Without a word, he pulled the bag from my shoulder and dropped it into a steel cylinder with a vault door.

He spun the wheel shut, pressed a button, and stepped back.

The machine began to hum.

It grew louder and faster until the sound swallowed the station around us.

A green bar slowly climbed across a nearby screen.

When it reached the end, the humming stopped—all at once.

The conversations returned.

The footsteps returned.

He opened the door, shoved my backpack back into my hands, and nodded.

“Good.”

~

We reached the escalator.

It kept going.

The tunnel dropped through corrugated steel for what felt like hundreds of feet.

Standing still, I lost my sense of level. People riding upward leaned at impossible angles until the floor appeared beneath them and carried them away.

I reached out for Dani.

At the bottom, the station opened into a hall the size of a cathedral.

Marble columns marched into the distance.

Bronze chandeliers hung from vaulted ceilings.

Mosaics filled the arches overhead.

Angular shapes—spears and laurels—covered every surface. I couldn’t help but shrink away.

Nothing about this suggested public transportation.

Then a train arrived.

Nobody looked up.

We all simply stepped aboard.