The game begins the same way every time: with Toma yelling, “Incoming!” and the rest of us dropping behind whatever the world offers as cover.
Today it’s a rib of twisted metal half-buried in ash-gray dirt. Yesterday it was a broken cart in the orchard. Tomorrow it’ll be a stone wall, or a ditch, or the shadow of the water tower. We don’t need a real battlefield to make one—just space, just breath, just the way our hearts speed up when we decide the air is dangerous.
Except this time, the air is different.
The old field beyond the village isn’t really a field anymore. It’s a place people avoid, where the soil looks scorched in patches and the grass grows in strange, stubborn lines. Everyone calls it “the burn,” like naming it makes it smaller.
We came anyway, because we were bored, and because we were brave in the careless way you can be when you haven’t lived long enough to understand what bravery costs.
And because we found something.
“Hold the line!” Sera shouts, her voice cracking a little with excitement. She’s crouched behind a chunk of concrete, using a stick as her “signal wand,” the way she saw the transit officers do during last year’s festival. “No one crosses the ridge!”
Jax—who isn’t actually named Jax but insisted we call him that during games because it “sounds like a pilot”—leans over the metal rib and squints into the smoke-colored distance like he’s seeing enemies between the trees. “I see movement,” he says. “Two… maybe three.”
“There’s nothing there,” I whisper.
He doesn’t look at me. “That’s what they want you to think.”
Theo, the smallest of us, is pressed flat against the ground, cheeks dusty, hands planted like he’s bracing for an explosion that hasn’t happened yet. “Do the stompers come now?” he asks, eyes wide, half terrified, half thrilled.
Toma makes the sound effects because Toma always does. He rumbles his throat low and drags a rock across another rock to make it feel like something huge is shifting out there. “They’re close,” he says in a voice that isn’t quite his. “You can feel it.”
We can feel something, actually—faint vibrations, a weird buzz that sometimes seems to come up through the soles of our shoes. Sera says it’s just wind through hollow metal. Toma says it’s the ground remembering.
I don’t know what I think. I just know the burn feels like it’s holding a story in its ribs, and we keep poking it like it might answer.
Jax lifts a hand to his head, as if he’s adjusting a visor. Except he isn’t.
Because the visor is real.
The helmet sits on the broken slab beside him, catching the last sunlight in dull, curved surfaces. It’s heavier than it looks—he proved that earlier by nearly dropping it on his foot and swearing so hard Sera threatened to tell his mother. The front is smooth, the faceplate dark, the lines clean in a way that doesn’t match the messy ruin around it. A piece of a world that wasn’t ours, left behind like someone forgot it mattered.
We found it under a sheet of bent metal, wrapped in ash and silence. Toma had dug it out with his hands like he was unearthing treasure. Theo had reached out and then pulled back as if it might bite.
Sera didn’t touch it at first. She stared at it like it was a question.
Then she said, “It’s a pilot helmet.”
Jax said, “It’s my pilot helmet.”
And that was that.
Now it sits between us and the sky, a silent referee of our pretend war.
“Alright,” Sera says, slapping her stick against the concrete like it’s a clipboard. “We’re pinned. We need a runner.”
Everyone looks at me.
I didn’t volunteer, but nobody ever does. The runner is the one who has to cross open ground, the one who has to risk being “tagged” by imaginary fire. The runner is the one who gets remembered in the retelling.
“You’re fastest,” Toma says, like it’s a compliment and not a sentence.
“I’m not—” I start.
Jax puts on the helmet.
The sound of it settling over his head changes everything. It isn’t loud. Just a soft thunk, a finality, like a door closing. He lifts his chin, and the dark faceplate reflects the burn field in a warped curve.
He becomes someone else.
“Runner,” he says, voice deeper because he thinks the helmet deserves a deeper voice. “On my mark.”
Theo’s eyes go even wider. “He looks real,” he whispers.
“He’s still Jax,” I whisper back.
But I’m not sure it’s true, not in the way we usually mean it.
Sera points her stick toward the far side of the field where the ruin thickens into a line of broken beams and half-sunk panels. “Your target is the tower,” she says. “You plant the signal, and we push forward.”
“The tower is fake,” I say.
Sera’s expression is serious enough to make my stomach tighten anyway. “Everything is fake,” she replies. “That’s the point.”
Toma makes another rumble sound. “They’re moving,” he says.
Jax turns his helmeted head slowly, as if tracking something tall and unseen. Then he raises a hand. “Now.”
I run.
The burn field rushes up under my feet—grit, ash, scattered pebbles that shift under every step. The air tastes metallic. Wind snaps at my sleeves. I can hear the others behind me, shouting instructions and threats and warnings like they’re reading from a script only kids can see.
“Incoming!” Toma yells.
“Down!” Sera shouts.
“Too late!” Jax adds, and makes a sharp sound like a laser blast with his mouth.
I throw myself into a slide behind a broken panel and grit scrapes my palms. I laugh—just a little—because sliding is fun and because I didn’t get “hit.”
Then the ground really vibrates.
Not the soft imagined kind. A clear, unmistakable shudder that ripples through the metal around me. A loose bolt rolls and clicks against the panel. Dust lifts off the ground in a thin puff.
I freeze.
So does everyone else. Even Toma stops making sounds.
For a second, the burn field is quiet enough that I hear a bird call from somewhere far away. A normal sound, like the world is trying to remind us it still exists.
“What was that?” Theo says, voice small.
Sera doesn’t answer. She’s staring at the helmet.
Jax—helmet still on—slowly turns his head toward the deeper ruins beyond our play zone. His shoulders square, the way they do when the game gets serious.
“Maybe it’s them,” he says softly.
“That’s dumb,” Toma says, but he doesn’t sound convinced.
Another vibration comes, lighter this time, as if something shifted far away and the earth politely informed us.
Sera steps forward, stick lowered. “Okay,” she says, trying to keep her voice steady. “New rule.”
We all look at her.
“No going past the beam line,” she says, pointing to the jagged skeleton of a fallen frame farther into the burn. “That’s the edge of the map.”
“We always—” Toma begins.
“No,” Sera cuts in. “Not today.”
For a moment, none of us argue. We just listen to the wind moving through the hollow metal, making it sing in long, low notes. It doesn’t sound like a warning exactly.
It sounds like a memory.
Jax walks toward the edge of the map anyway.
Not far. Just a few steps, slow and deliberate, helmet reflecting the burnt field and the orange sky. The faceplate makes him unreadable, which is unfair, because it means we can’t tell if he’s scared.
“Jax,” I call from behind the panel. “Don’t.”
He stops.
In the fading light, the helmet looks less like a toy and more like a relic. Like it belongs to a person who wasn’t playing.
Jax reaches up and lifts it off.
His hair is flattened. His cheeks are dusty. He looks like himself again—almost.
“It smells like smoke inside,” he says quietly, like he’s surprised.
Theo takes a step closer. “Can I—”
“No,” Sera says immediately, then softens. “Not yet.”
Toma, who hates seriousness, clears his throat and forces the game back into place. “Okay,” he says loudly. “The stompers are retreating! We won!”
“We didn’t win,” I say before I can stop myself.
They all look at me.
I point toward the beam line, toward the deeper ruin where the vibrations came from, where the air seems to hold its breath. “We just… stopped.”
Sera’s eyes narrow, thoughtful. “Sometimes,” she says, “stopping is winning.”
That sounds like something a grown-up would say. It makes all of us uncomfortable.
Jax sets the helmet on the concrete again, carefully this time. Like it’s fragile. Like it’s listening.
Then he raises a hand in a sloppy salute. “Pilot’s grounded,” he declares, trying to brighten it.
Theo laughs, relieved.
Toma makes a triumphant rumble noise.
And the game tries to restart.
But the burn field doesn’t feel like it’s letting us go.
Sera points her stick toward the beam line again, voice back in command mode. “New mission,” she says. “We retreat to the village. We tell no one. We come back tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Toma repeats, a little too quickly.
Jax picks up the helmet.
He doesn’t put it on this time. He cradles it against his chest like a secret you can carry.
As we start walking back, the streetlights of the village blink on one by one in the distance. Warm. Normal. Safe.
Behind us, the burn field hums again—so faint we could pretend it’s wind.
But the helmet in Jax’s arms feels heavier with every step.
And none of us says what we’re all thinking:
Tomorrow, the game might not stay a game.
This is an original work of fiction created by Brick Crossing, inspired by the design themes of LEGO® set 75429.
LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group, which does not sponsor, authorize, or endorse Brick Crossing.
