Stiff wakes up the same way he has for years: under a highway overpass, next to the hum of the tracks, wrapped in the last things he owns. Hunger gnaws. Exhaustion presses. Ghosts don’t rest. Once, he was a combat medic. Now, he’s just another face the city doesn’t see.

Then he spots her.

A woman—older, polished, dressed in clothes that haven’t seen the dirt—wanders too close to the edge of the rails. Her shoes crunch gravel, and the low whine of an approaching train gets louder. She doesn’t hear it. Doesn’t even see it. Stiff bolts and yanks her back before steel meets flesh.

She doesn’t know her name. No phone. No ID. Just a stunned, glassy stare and confused mumbling. The system won’t help her, not fast enough. So Stiff does what the system won’t: he steps in.

What follows is a tense, aimless chase through the city’s blind spots—shelters, psych wards, clinics. He’s joined by the few people who still know his name. His crew. Other castaways with more grit than glory. A lead surfaces. Then a name. Then a sobbing daughter and a photo that confirms it all: Beatrice, a grieving widow, gone missing days after burying her husband of sixty-one years.

The reunion is loud. Messy. Tearful. They offer him money. A warm bed. Something clean. He says no.

This wasn’t about reward. For one brief second, he wasn’t invisible. He was needed. And that’s more than he’s had in years.

He disappears again, slipping back into the streets, wondering if Beatrice’s family—if anyone—will start seeing people like him for what they really are: not lost causes, but survivors. Souls with value. Stories. Purpose. Even if the world stopped listening.