The Passport of Torenza — Part II

Jonathan Reed had worked at London Heathrow for fourteen years. He’d seen frightened tourists, forged documents, and even a smuggler who tried to hide a parrot in his coat sleeve. But nothing—nothing—prepared him for the man from Gate 13.

Flight 227 from Lisbon landed at 9:42 a.m. Passengers shuffled through customs, tired but ordinary—except one. A tall, pale man in a charcoal suit stood silently at the back of the line. His expression didn’t flicker. In his hand was a black leather passport embossed with faint silver letters: **Torenza.**

Reed frowned. The name struck him like a ghostly echo. He’d read it once before—in an interdepartmental memo about a case in Toronto. A woman detained with an identical passport from a country that didn’t exist. The memo ended abruptly, stamped *CLASSIFIED.*

Reed called out, “Sir, step forward, please.”

The man smiled politely. “Of course.”

He handed over the passport. The material felt… wrong. Too smooth. Warm, almost alive. Inside were neatly printed details:

**Name:** Adrian Mirov

**Nationality:** Torenzian

**Date of Birth:** Unknown

His co-worker, **Sarah Malik**, leaned over Reed’s shoulder. “Never heard of that place,” she muttered. “Torenza? Sounds like something from a novel.”

Reed flipped the pages. The holograms shimmered, shifting colors like oil on water. “And your visa, sir?”

Adrian’s calm smile never faltered. “You already have it,” he said.

Sarah blinked. “Excuse me?”

Before Reed could respond, the lights above flickered. Every monitor in the hall froze. Clocks reset to **00:00**. The air grew dense, heavy, almost electric. Then everything returned to normal.

Except the man was gone.

“Where the hell—” Sarah gasped. The corridor beyond was empty.

Reed sprinted to the CCTV station. **Officer Patel**, the night shift security tech, rewound the footage.

“There,” Patel said. “See? He’s walking toward baggage claim—wait… what the—”

On screen, Adrian Mirov walked halfway down the hall and then—blink—he vanished. No blind spot. Just a single frame of static where he’d been.

Reed filed an incident report. Two days later, he was summoned by **Supervisor Helen Carr**, a stern woman with a voice like a knife.

“You’ll drop the case,” she said without meeting his eyes. “No passenger by that name existed. No record. No footage.”

“But the cameras—” Reed began.

“There was a power glitch,” she cut him off. “It’s been handled.”

When she slid the official passenger list across the desk, Adrian’s name was gone. So was the flight number. Reed left her office shaken.

That night, as he walked to his car, the janitor—an old man named **Kamil**—whispered, “You saw him, didn’t you? The man who walks between gates.”

Reed froze. “What do you mean?”

Kamil’s cloudy eyes stared through him. “They come every few years. Passports from places that never were.”

Reed didn’t sleep that night. The word *Torenza* pulsed in his mind like a heartbeat. By morning, he’d decided to check Gate 13 again.

The terminal was closed for maintenance. Yet, the light at the customs desk flickered faintly. He stepped closer—and froze.

On the counter lay a black passport.

The same one.

He reached for it, trembling. Inside, the name had changed.

**Jonathan Reed — Citizen of Torenza.**

He dropped it, backing away. The air thickened; the floor vibrated. From the ceiling speakers, faint whispers echoed in a language he didn’t know. The clock struck midnight, though his watch still read 10:47.

He turned the last page. New words burned in glowing script:

**“Welcome home.”**

The glass wall at the end of the terminal cracked. Beyond it, clouds twisted like smoke, revealing something vast—a city suspended in the storm, towers spiraling, windows glowing cold white.

Sarah’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Reed? Are you there? Security’s coming—don’t move!”

But Reed’s voice was gone. The camera caught only static.

By morning, his badge and flashlight were found near Gate 13. No trace of him. The passport had vanished.

Three weeks later, an encrypted memo appeared on internal airport channels:

> **Subject:** Passport of Unknown Origin

> **Identifier:** “Torenza.”

> **Directive:** Do not engage. Isolate evidence. Report immediately.

At JFK Airport, a junior officer named Daniel Price received an unmarked envelope.

Inside lay a black passport.

The name printed inside was his own.