The train screamed.
It wasn't a mechanical whine. It was a roar of tortured metal and magnetic fury.
The landscape outside was a blur of gray and white.
[SPEED: 220 MPH.]
[TEMP: -30°C (WIND CHILL).]
Marcus lay flat on the roof of the engine car. The wind tore at his cloak. His nanites were burning energy just to keep his skin from freezing to the metal.
Marcia was beside him. She had lashed herself to a ventilation grate with climbing rope. Her railgun was deployed on its bipod, the barrel steady despite the vibrations.
"Status!" Marcus yelled over the wind.
"Radar is clear!" Marcia shouted back, adjusting her goggles. "But for how long?"
"Until Titus wakes up."
Below them, inside the engine cab, Galen was fighting the controls.
The Nuclear Battery was pulsing. Every surge sent a tremor through the entire train.
"Stabilizers are offline!" Galen screamed into the radio. "We're drifting!"
"Keep it on the track!" Marcus ordered.
"I'm trying! The magnets are fighting the core! It's too much power!"
Narcissus was in the cab with Galen. The giant was acting as a physical anchor, bracing his massive metal feet against the swaying walls.
"More power!" Narcissus roared, slapping the dashboard. "Make it fly!"
The train hit a curve.
The cars leaned dangerously.
On the flatbeds behind them, the refugees huddled behind their makeshift walls of corrugated tin. Sparks flew where the metal scraped the pylons.
A child screamed. A sheet of metal tore loose and flew away into the snowstorm.
"Hold on!" Decimus yelled, grabbing the child by the collar.
They were a mile long streak of rust and desperation, hurtling toward the mountains.
[ALERT: INCOMING BOGIES.]
[VECTOR: 3 O'CLOCK HIGH.]
[ID: VULTURE DRONES.]
"Here we go," Marcus muttered.
He stood up, boots mag-locked to the roof.
"Contact right!" Marcus yelled.
Three black shapes dove out of the clouds.
They were flying wings—sleek, unmanned interceptors. Machine guns mounted under their fuselages.
BRRRRT.
Tracer fire stitched a line across the snow, walking toward the train.
"Shields!" Marcus activated his energy barrier.
A dome of purple light flared around the engine car.
Bullets sparked off it. Ping. Ping. Ping.
"Marcia! Drop them!"
Marcia didn't hesitate. She tracked the lead drone.
THWUMP.
The railgun fired. A kinetic slug punched through the drone's engine intake.
The drone exploded. A fireball in the sky.
"One down!" she yelled. "Two breaking left!"
The remaining drones split up. One dove low, aiming for the flatbed cars. The other climbed for a strafing run on the engine.
"They're targeting the passengers!" Marcus realized.
He couldn't protect the whole train. His shield only covered the engine.
"Galen! Evasive maneuvers!"
"It's a train, Marcus! I can't swerve!"
"Change speed! Break their lock!"
Galen slammed the throttle back.
The train decelerated violently.
The drone diving on the passengers overshot. Its bullets churned up snow ahead of the train.
"Now punch it!"
Galen slammed it forward.
The train lurched. 100 mph to 250 mph in seconds.
The passengers were thrown against the back walls of the flatcars.
The second drone came around. It lined up on the engine.
It fired a missile.
A small, heat-seeking rocket.
"Flare!" Marcus yelled.
Marcia fired a flare from her pistol.
The missile ignored it.
"It's radar guided!" Marcus realized. "It's locking on the big metal box!"
"Narcissus!" Marcus screamed into the comms. "Get on the roof!"
"Moving!"
The hatch popped open.
The giant climbed out. He crawled onto the roof, moving against the wind like a tank driving uphill.
"Catch!" Marcus pointed at the missile.
Narcissus looked at the incoming projectile.
He stood up. He braced his legs.
He didn't catch it. He swatted it.
With a backhand swing of his massive metal fist, he hit the missile mid-air.
BOOM.
The warhead detonated.
The explosion engulfed the front of the train.
Marcus was thrown backward. His shield flared and died.
Smoke cleared.
Narcissus was still standing. His arm was blackened. Armor plating was stripped away, revealing glowing red hydraulics.
"Batter up," Narcissus grunted.
The drone flew past, too close.
Narcissus reached out.
He grabbed the wingtip.
The drone's momentum tried to rip his arm off.
Narcissus roared. He held on.
He slammed the drone into the side of the train.
CRUNCH.
Metal screamed. The drone disintegrated against the engine housing.
"Clear!" Marcia yelled. "Sky is clear!"
Marcus crawled back to the edge. He looked down at the coupling.
The flatcars were still attached. Battered, smoking, but moving.
"Is everyone alive back there?" Marcus radioed Decimus.
"Three wounded!" Decimus reported. "Shrapnel! But we are still rolling!"
"Keep rolling," Marcus said. "We aren't done yet."
"Map update," Marcus ordered JARVIS.
[DISTANCE TO TARGET: 20 MILES.]
[OBSTACLE DETECTED.]
[OBJECT: BRIDGE 4.]
[STATUS: COMPROMISED.]
"What do you mean compromised?"
Marcus looked ahead.
The track ran straight toward a massive gorge. A river cut through the rock a thousand feet below.
The bridge was there. Concrete pylons. Steel truss.
But the center span was gone.
A gap of fifty feet.
The kinetic strike shockwave from earlier had shattered it.
"Bridge out!" Marcus yelled. "Galen! Brake!"
"I can't!" Galen shouted back. "We're doing 280! Stopping distance is three miles! We're one mile out!"
"Then we crash," Marcia said, gripping her railgun.
"No," Marcus said. He looked at the gap.
He looked at the speed readout.
[SPEED: 295 MPH.]
"We jump it," Marcus said.
"It's a train, Marcus!" Marcia screamed. "It doesn't jump!"
"It's a maglev," Marcus corrected. "It floats. If we hit that ramp fast enough... momentum carries us."
"Or we drop like a stone and die in a fireball," Marcia said.
"Galen!" Marcus keyed the mic. "Override the safety limiters on the levitation coils!"
"That will melt the magnets!"
"Do it! Dump all power from the core into the lift!"
"It's going to get hot in here!" Galen warned.
The train accelerated.
The hum became a shriek. The engine vibrated so hard Marcus's vision blurred.
The gap rushed toward them.
"Hold on!" Marcus grabbed Marcia. He wrapped his arms around her and magnet-locked his boots to the roof.
Narcissus grabbed the ventilation stack with both hands.
They hit the end of the track.
The world dropped away.
Silence.
For three seconds, they were airborne.
A thousand tons of steel flying over a gorge.
Marcus looked down. He saw the river far below, a thin white ribbon.
He saw the other side of the bridge rushing up to meet them.
They were dropping.
"We're too low!" Marcia screamed.
"Narcissus!" Marcus yelled. "Shift weight! Back!"
The giant understood. He ran to the rear of the engine roof.
The nose pitched up slightly.
SLAM.
They hit the rails.
Sparks showered like fireworks.
The landing gear groaned. Metal shrieked as the magnets fought to re-engage.
The train bounced. Once. Twice.
Then it settled.
Smooth gliding.
"We made it," Galen whispered over the radio. "Holy... we made it."
"Don't celebrate," Marcus said. "Look."
He pointed ahead.
The mountains rose up like a wall of white teeth.
And at the base of the peaks, a red line stretched across the valley.
[TARGET ACQUIRED: THE IRON WALL.]
It was a fortress line. Bunkers. Automated turrets. Shield generators. A literal wall of steel and energy blocking the pass.
"That's Titus's front door," Marcus said.
[ALERT: ORBITAL LAUNCH DETECTED.]
[SOURCE: ZEUS PLATFORM.]
[TARGET: OUR COORDINATES.]
Vane hadn't forgotten them.
"He's firing again," Marcia said, looking up at the sky.
"How long?"
[IMPACT: 30 SECONDS.]
"We can't outrun it," Marcus said. "And we can't stop."
He looked at the Iron Wall.
"Galen! Aim for the gate! Full speed!"
"We're going to ram the fortress?"
"We're going to use Vane's rod to open it!"
"What?"
"If we time this right," Marcus said, "the rod hits the wall just as we get there. It cracks the shield. We slip through the hole."
"And if we time it wrong?" Marcia asked.
"Then we're the hole," Marcus grinned.
He looked at the streak of light descending from the clouds.
"Ten seconds!"
The train barreled toward the red laser fence.
"Five!"
The turrets on the wall swiveled toward them. They didn't fire. The IFF virus Lucilla uploaded was working.
"Green light!" Lucilla shouted from the cab. "They think we're friendly!"
"Three!"
The rod hit the shield generator tower directly above the gate.
BOOM.
The world turned white.
The shockwave shattered the energy barrier. The gate crumpled.
The train shot through the fireball.
Smoke. Debris.
Then... silence.
They coasted into the tunnel on the other side.
Darkness swallowed them.
The train slowed. The nuclear battery finally died.
It ground to a halt deep inside the mountain.
"We're in," Marcus whispered.
He stood up on the roof, smoke curling from his cloak.
"Welcome to the Alps," Marcus said.
He drew his sword. The purple glow illuminated the tunnel walls.
"Now we find Titus."