The Falcon Lake Static

Out on the frozen Trans-Canada, two couriers race a blizzard and their own paranoia. What they're carrying is nothing, and everything.

“Is it supposed to make that noise?”

Sid didn’t look away from the road, or what passed for it. The highway was a suggestion, a memory buried under five centimeters of fresh powder. The automated lane-assist markers were flickering, unreliable ghosts in the swirling white. “Define ‘that noise.’ Are we talking the high-pitched whine that sounds like a dying servitor, or the low, guttural clunk that suggests the transmission is about to fall out and start a new life in a ditch?”

Poe slumped further into the passenger seat, the synth-leather cracking in protest. “The whine. Definitely the whine. It’s getting into my teeth.”

“That’s just the auxiliary power converter for the jammer. It sings when it’s happy.” Sid’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, a cheap plastic thing worn smooth by a thousand nervous grips before this one. “Means it’s working. Means the corporate snooper drones think we’re a broken-down grain hauler with a firmware bug.”

“And the clunk?” Poe asked, eyes tracing the hypnotic path of a single, fat snowflake melting on the windshield.

“The clunk is new,” Sid admitted, the words tight. “Try not to think about the clunk.”

Poe made a noncommittal noise and turned their attention to the window. Outside, the world had been reduced to three colors: the oppressive grey of the sky, the stark white of the snow, and the black skeletons of jack pines lining the road. They’d left the glow of the Winnipeg sprawl an hour ago, trading the claustrophobic neon canyons for this unnerving, endless emptiness. The transition was always jarring. One minute you’re navigating sky-lanes clogged with cargo haulers and dodging ad-drones projecting shimmering noodle bowls onto the perpetual smog; the next, you’re in the great, silent nothing of the Canadian Shield, where the only signs of life were the fiber-optic cables buried somewhere under the permafrost and the occasional automated patrol car that slid past like a silent, predatory fish.

The car, a relic from the late 2010s, was an automotive cockroach. A gasoline engine, a physical steering wheel, doors that actually opened with a handle. It was so obsolete it was practically invisible to most modern scanning grids. But its analog nature was its weakness, too. The heater worked in angry, intermittent blasts of hot, dry air that smelled of burning dust, followed by long stretches of creeping cold that made Poe’s breath fog. The windshield wipers, jury-rigged with a motor from a kitchen appliance, smeared the snow more than cleared it. Every kilometer was a gamble against entropy.

Sid, on the other hand, seemed to prefer the gamble. They were a creature of focus, their entire being narrowed down to the task of keeping this four-wheeled anachronism pointed east. Their gaze flickered from the road to the rearview mirror, to the custom-built console bolted to the dash where a series of flickering readouts monitored their digital footprint—or lack thereof. Poe could see the tension in their shoulders, a rigid line beneath the worn fabric of their jacket. Sid drove like they were trying to outrun their own shadow.

Poe’s own job was simpler: watch, wait, and handle the talking if things went sideways. And to keep Sid from vibrating apart with sheer stress. “You know, for a grain hauler, we’re awfully light on grain,” Poe said, poking at a loose thread on their seat. “And we’re moving awfully fast for being ‘broken down.’”

“It’s a conceptual state,” Sid shot back, not a hint of a smile in their voice. “The system sees a vehicle ID that’s been flagged for maintenance for the last three years. It doesn’t expect it to be breaking speed limits in a blizzard. The discrepancy creates a processing error that kicks us down the priority list. By the time some corp-sec analyst in a cubicle in Mumbai decides to check the live feed, we’ll be a ghost.”

“A ghost in a very noisy machine.” Poe shivered, pulling their thin jacket tighter. The clunk happened again, this time feeling like it was right under their feet. “Seriously. What was that?”

Sid’s jaw worked for a moment. “Ice. Hitting the undercarriage. Has to be.” But their eyes darted to the temperature gauge, which was hovering a few ticks higher than it should. The needle’s faint red glow seemed menacing in the dim light of the cabin. Poe saw the motion. Sid knew they saw it. Neither of them said anything.

This was the rhythm of their journey. Long silences punctuated by banter that felt like tapping on a sensitive bomb casing. They were both acutely aware of the thing nestled in a shielded compartment under Poe’s seat. It wasn’t large. It wasn’t heavy. It had no moving parts. It was a data shard, a sliver of crystallized memory no bigger than Poe’s thumb, and it was valuable enough to get them killed ten times over. It was, Poe thought with a detached sense of irony, literally nothing—just information. But information was the only currency that mattered anymore. It could build empires or, in this case, burn one to the ground.

“Remember that run to Regina?” Poe asked, trying to fill the silence before it could be populated by more unnerving mechanical sounds. “The one with the vat-grown alpacas?”

A flicker of something—not quite a smile, but a lessening of the tension—crossed Sid’s face. “The ones that got loose at the Portage la Prairie checkpoint? How could I forget? One of them tried to eat my coat.”

“It liked the texture,” Poe said. “They were bio-engineered for luxury yarn production. Your coat was probably the most organic thing it had ever tasted. You should have been flattered.”

“I was too busy explaining to a very confused customs bot why three genetically modified camelids were frolicking on the highway. Its programming couldn’t handle it. It kept trying to classify them as ‘unauthorized livestock’ and ‘traffic obstruction’ simultaneously and nearly blue-screened.”

“I still have the incident report saved,” Poe grinned. “‘Subject Sid repeatedly insisted the alpacas were ‘emotional support animals’ while subject Poe attempted to bribe the automated unit with a half-eaten protein bar.’ Classic.”

The memory brought a fleeting warmth to the cold car. It was from a simpler time, a few years ago, when the jobs were smaller and the stakes were lower. A time before this. Before the shard. Before the constant, nagging feeling that they were already dead and just hadn't stopped moving yet.

Sid’s brief moment of levity evaporated. The road ahead was getting worse. The snow was coming down harder now, thick and wet, and the wind was picking up, rocking the car in its gusts. “That was different. That was just cargo. This is…”

“This is also just cargo,” Poe finished, a little too quickly. “It’s data. Zeros and ones. We don’t know what’s on it. We don’t want to know. We’re just the delivery service.” It was a mantra they had repeated to each other for the past forty-eight hours, a fragile shield against the enormity of what they were doing.

“Right,” Sid said, but the word was flat, lifeless. They knew, and Poe knew they knew, that it was a lie. They’d seen the face of the man who gave them the shard. He was a senior data-ethicist from Micro-Tek, one of the big three corps, and his hands had trembled so badly he could barely make the transfer. He had the haunted look of someone who had stared into the abyss and was terrified of what he’d seen there. People didn’t risk everything for ‘just data.’

The whine from the jammer pitched up a half-octave, a sharp, piercing note that made Poe wince. “Happy little converter,” they muttered.

“It’s working overtime,” Sid said, their focus absolute. “Someone’s pinging the highway. Hard.”

Poe sat up straight, the manufactured ease gone. “Corp-sec? Or constables?”

“Can’t tell. The signal is broad-spectrum. They’re not looking for anything specific; they’re just shaking the whole digital tree to see what falls out. Standard procedure when something goes missing.”

“Something or someone,” Poe whispered. The data-ethicist was supposed to have vanished, a clean extraction. But clean extractions were a myth.

“Just sit tight. The car’s signature is buried under layers of spoofed IDs and junk data. To them, we’re just noise. Static.”

Static. That’s what it felt like. Their entire existence had been reduced to a blip of interference on someone else’s screen. Poe pressed their forehead against the cold glass of the window, watching the landscape fly by in a white-and-grey blur. They were passing the turnoff for the Whiteshell Provincial Park now. In the summer, it was a playground for the corporate elite from Winnipeg, a patch of managed wilderness where they could pretend the world wasn’t paved over. In the winter, it was a dead zone. No cell service, no net access, just miles of rock, ice, and trees. It was the most dangerous part of the drive. If the car died here, they would die here.

The clunk returned, louder this time. A violent, metallic bang followed by a scraping sound. The car lurched sickeningly to the right.

“Sid!”

Sid wrestled with the wheel, muscles straining. The car fishtailed, its ancient tires screaming for a grip they couldn't find on the ice-slicked asphalt. The world outside became a chaotic vortex of white and black. Sid didn’t curse, didn’t shout. They were preternaturally calm, their movements precise and economical as they counter-steered, feathered the brakes, and fought the physics that were trying to hurl them into the ditch.

Poe’s heart was a frantic drum against their ribs. Their hands shot out to brace against the dashboard, every muscle tensed for an impact that felt inevitable. They could see the headlines in their mind: *Unidentified vehicle found in spring thaw. Occupants presumed dead.*

Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over. The car straightened out, its momentum spent. It coasted to a stop, angled awkwardly on the shoulder of the highway. The engine sputtered, coughed, and died. The silence that fell was absolute, broken only by the ticking of cooling metal and the soft, insistent hiss of the snow against the windows.

For a long moment, neither of them moved. Poe could hear their own ragged breathing, the frantic pulse in their ears. The cabin, which had felt like a fragile bubble of safety, now felt like a tomb.

“Okay,” Sid said, their voice perfectly level, betraying none of the terror of the last ten seconds. They let go of the steering wheel, flexing their fingers one by one. “New rule. We’re allowed to think about the clunk now.”

Poe let out a shaky laugh that was half a sob. “What was that? Really?”

“Sounded like we lost a piece of the heat shield. It probably got snagged and pulled us.” Sid was already running a diagnostic on the dash console, their fingers flying across the touch-sensitive surface. The screen glowed with lines of scrolling code. “Engine temp is critical. Coolant line might have ruptured when we spun out. We’re not going anywhere until I can check.”

“Check? You’re going out there?” Poe looked out the window into the swirling blizzard. It wasn’t just snow; it was a physical wall of white. Visibility was maybe ten feet. The temperature outside would be pushing minus thirty with the wind chill.

“No choice.” Sid unbuckled their seatbelt and reached into the back, pulling out a heavy thermal jacket and a pair of insulated gloves. “We stay here, we freeze. The car’s core temp will drop below freezing in an hour. If the battery block cracks, we’re done.” They paused, pulling on a balaclava. Only their eyes were visible, dark and serious. “The jammer is still drawing power, but on battery alone, we’ve got maybe thirty minutes before the signal fades. Thirty minutes before we stop being a grain hauler and start being a very interesting target sitting dead on the side of the Trans-Canada.”

Poe swallowed hard. “Okay. What do you need me to do?”

“Stay here. Keep watch. Cycle the locks every two minutes. Don’t open the door for anyone. I don’t care if they look like they need help. I don’t care if they’re on fire. You don’t open this door.” Sid popped open the glove compartment and pulled out a heavy, ugly-looking pistol, a relic that fired chemical projectiles. It looked ancient and brutal next to the sleek, silent energy weapons most security forces used. Sid checked the clip, then handed it to Poe. It was cold and shockingly heavy.

“I don’t…” Poe started.

“I know,” Sid cut them off. “You point it at the thing you don’t want to exist anymore, and you pull the trigger. It’s not complicated. Safety is here.” They tapped a small lever above the trigger guard. “Don’t shoot me when I come back.”

“Don’t be a hero out there,” Poe said, their voice small. The gun felt alien in their hands.

“Heroism is for people with better-paying jobs.” With that, Sid opened the driver’s side door. The storm roared in, a blast of arctic air and stinging snow that instantly filled the car. Then the door slammed shut, and Sid was gone, swallowed by the white.

Poe was alone. The silence was different now. It was heavier, more menacing. Every creak of the car’s frame settling, every gust of wind, sounded like a threat. They cycled the locks. *Click-clack.* The sound was small but reassuring. They stared at the pistol in their lap. They’d never fired a real gun before. They’d run simulation after simulation, of course. Everyone did. But the cold, hard reality of the weapon was something else entirely. It was a tool designed for one purpose: to make a hole in a person. The thought made them feel sick.

They peered through the windshield, trying to catch a glimpse of Sid, but there was nothing. Just the endless, hypnotic dance of the snowflakes. The world outside the car had ceased to exist. They were adrift in a sea of white. Two minutes passed. *Click-clack.*

Their mind started to wander, a defense mechanism against the rising panic. They thought about Kenora. The client they were supposed to meet. A man known only as ‘The Locksmith.’ He was an information broker, one of the best, living in semi-retirement on the Lake of the Woods. He was one of the few people with the resources to decrypt the shard and the guts to use what was on it. He was their only hope. If they didn’t make it… Poe shook their head, trying to banish the thought.

Failure wasn't an option. The people they were running from, Micro-Tek, didn't leave loose ends. Disappearing the data-ethicist was one thing, but retrieving their stolen property was another. They would sanitize the problem. Sid and Poe were the problem. *Click-clack.*

A shape materialized out of the snow. Poe’s breath caught in their throat, their hand tightening on the pistol. It was low to the ground, scuttling, its form indistinct in the blizzard. It wasn't human. It looked like a dog, or a wolf, but it moved with an unnatural, jerky gait. A series of red lights blinked on its head. A patrol drone. Not corp-sec, this one was municipal. Probably a wildlife management unit, programmed to keep animals off the highway.

It stopped about twenty feet from the car, its head tilting as it scanned them. Poe held their breath. The jammer was still working, hopefully. To the drone, they should just be a cold, inert lump of metal. A dead car. Not interesting. The drone stood there for what felt like an eternity, its red optical sensors seeming to stare right through Poe. Then, it turned and scuttled away, disappearing back into the storm as silently as it had arrived.

Poe let out a breath they didn't realize they'd been holding, their shoulders slumping in relief. A false alarm. But it was a reminder. They were not alone out here. The wilderness was wired. *Click-clack.*

Where was Sid? It had to have been ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. How long does it take to check a coolant line? The anxiety started to coil in Poe’s stomach again, cold and tight. What if Sid slipped on the ice? What if they hit their head? What if the cold got to them? Poe fought the urge to open the door, to call out their name. Sid’s instructions had been clear. *Don’t open the door.*

To distract themself, Poe focused on the console. The jammer's power indicator was down to forty percent. The outside temperature reading was minus thirty-two. A small, persistent notification blinked in the corner of the screen: *SUBSCRIPTION FOR SMART-ROAD SERVICES EXPIRED. RENEW NOW?* Poe snorted. The irony. Here they were, carrying a secret that could bring down a corporation, and they were being hassled for a ten-credit road subscription.

Another shape appeared. This time, it was upright. Human-shaped. Poe’s blood ran cold. The pistol came up, held in a shaky, two-handed grip. It was Sid. They were stumbling, leaning heavily to one side. Poe’s relief was so intense it felt like pain. They fumbled with the lock, thumbing the button to disengage it.

The passenger door was wrenched open and Sid collapsed into the car, pulling a gale of snow and ice in with them. They slammed the door shut and lay against it, panting, their chest heaving.

“Sid! Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Poe reached out, grabbing their arm.

“I’m fine,” Sid gasped, pushing the snow-caked balaclava off their face. Their skin was pale, their lips tinged with blue. There was a dark gash on their forehead, already beading with half-frozen blood. “Just… cold. So cold.”

“What happened? What’s wrong with the car?”

Sid took a few deep, shuddering breaths, trying to regain their composure. “It wasn’t a heat shield. And it wasn’t ice.” They looked at Poe, their eyes wide with a fear Poe had never seen in them before. “Someone put a tracker on us. A magnetic limpet. It must have hit a patch of rough road and detached, but it snagged the brake line on its way down. That’s what pulled us. I cut it free.”

Poe stared, the implications washing over them in a sickening wave. A tracker. They hadn’t been a ghost. They had been leading a trail of digital breadcrumbs right to their door. “How? When?”

“Must have been in the city. Back at the garage. Someone got to the car before we left.” Sid leaned their head back against the seat, closing their eyes. “They know we’re here. They knew our route. They were letting us get out into the middle of nowhere, where there are no witnesses.”

The car, their one piece of sanctuary, suddenly felt like a trap. They were exposed, disabled. A sitting duck. “Can you fix the brake line?” Poe asked, their voice barely a whisper.

“I bypassed it,” Sid said, their voice weary. “We’ll have braking power, but it’ll be sluggish. The coolant line was nicked, too. I patched it with thermal tape, but it won’t hold for long. We need to get moving. Now.”

Sid reached for the ignition, their hand trembling slightly. They pressed the button. The engine whirred, turned over, caught. It sputtered for a moment and then settled into a rough, uneven idle. The sound, which moments before had been a source of anxiety, was now the most beautiful noise in the world.

“Okay,” Sid breathed. “Okay.” They shifted the car into gear and carefully, gently, eased it back onto the highway. The tires spun for a moment before finding purchase, and they began to move, crawling through the blizzard.

The jammer’s power was down to twenty percent. “We need to shut it off,” Poe said. “Save the battery.”

“No,” Sid said firmly. “They already know we’re here. The tracker going dark and our car suddenly dying at the same time? That’s confirmation. They’ll send everything they have. Our only chance is to keep the jammer running, hope it masks our engine signature, and pray we can make it to Kenora before the battery dies or the engine gives out.”

So they drove. The heater was off to conserve power, and the cold seeped back into the cabin, deep and unforgiving. They didn’t talk. There was nothing left to say. The witty banter, the shared stories, they all felt like relics from another lifetime. All that was left was the struggle for the next kilometer, and the one after that.

Poe watched the battery percentage on the jammer tick down. Fifteen percent. Ten. They were driving blind, digitally and literally. The world was a maelstrom of white noise outside their windows.

And then, up ahead, through the curtain of snow, a light appeared. It wasn't the warm, welcoming glow of a town or a service station. It was a single, piercing red light, pulsing with a slow, methodical rhythm. It was directly in their path, hovering in the middle of the highway.

“Sid… what is that?” Poe asked, their voice tight with dread.

Sid didn’t answer. They just slowed the car, their grip on the wheel so tight their knuckles were bone-white. The light grew closer, resolving itself. It was attached to a barricade, a sleek, black metal barrier that stretched from one side of the road to the other, blocking it completely.

Ahead, a single red light pulsed in the swirling snow, blocking the road where no road should be blocked.