The smoke wasn't gray. It was black. Oily.
It rose from the horizon like a bruised thumb against the blue Italian sky.
"Florence," Lucilla whispered, staring out the window of the bullet train. "The City of Flowers."
"City of Ash," Marcus corrected.
The train was moving at 180 mph. The lush green landscape outside was blurring into streaks of emerald. But ahead, the green stopped.
It turned brown. Then black.
A line of fire stretched across the valley.
"Incinerators," Marcia said, adjusting the strap on her railgun. "Nero's boys."
"What are they burning?" Galen asked, monitoring the sensors.
"Everything," Marcus said. "Asset Denial. If they can't hold the ground, they scorch it."
[ALERT: THERMAL SPIKE DETECTED.]
[SOURCE: THE TRACKS.]
"Heat on the line!" Galen yelled. "Braking!"
The train shuddered. The emergency brakes screamed.
Marcus was thrown forward. He caught himself on a seat back.
"Brace!"
The train didn't stop in time.
It hit a wall of heat.
BOOM.
Firebombs hidden under the rails detonated.
The engine car jumped the tracks.
It didn't flip. It slid.
A thousand tons of steel plowed into a field of sunflowers.
Dirt and flowers exploded into the air. The train carved a trench through the earth, slowing down with a groan of tortured metal.
It came to rest at a 45-degree angle, half-buried in the soil.
Silence for a second.
Then, the heat.
The field around them wasn't just burning. It was boiling.
Chemical fire. Green and blue flames licked at the windows.
"Everyone out!" Marcus roared. "Before the fuel tanks cook off!"
He kicked a window out. He jumped into the field.
The air was suffocating. It tasted of gasoline and melting plastic.
"Perimeter!" Marcus ordered. "Marcia! Decimus!"
The refugees scrambled out of the broken cars. They coughed, covering their faces with rags.
Through the smoke, figures emerged.
They looked like demons.
[UNIT: INCINERATOR TROOPER.]
[ARMOR: THERMAL-RESISTANT CERAMIC.]
[WEAPON: HEAVY FLAMETHROWER.]
They wore dark red armor. bulky tanks on their backs. Their helmets had single, vertical slit visors that glowed orange.
There were fifty of them.
They didn't run. They walked. Slowly. Like a spreading fire.
"Burn them," a voice crackled over the loudspeakers.
A massive mech stepped out from behind the smoke.
[UNIT: INFERNO-CLASS WALKER.]
It was twenty feet tall. Bipedal. Its right arm was a rotary cannon. Its left arm was a giant nozzle dripping liquid fire.
"Nero," Marcus growled.
The Incinerators opened fire.
WHOOSH.
Streams of liquid fire arched through the air.
It hit the ground and splashed like water. Sticky. Burning.
"Shields!" Marcus yelled.
He activated his energy barrier. He expanded it to cover the nearest group of refugees.
The fire hit the purple dome. It hissed and ran down the sides, pooling on the ground.
"I can't hold this forever!" Marcus gritted his teeth. "My battery is draining!"
"Return fire!" Marcia screamed.
She raised her railgun.
THWUMP.
A slug hit the nearest trooper.
It sparked off his chest plate. He staggered, but didn't fall.
"Armor is too thick!" Marcia cursed.
"Aim for the tanks!" Marcus shouted. "The fuel!"
Marcia adjusted her aim.
THWUMP.
The slug punched through the trooper's backpack.
KA-BOOM.
The trooper exploded.
A fireball engulfed three men standing next to him. They screamed as their own fuel ignited.
"Nice shot!" Decimus yelled. "Everyone! Aim for the backpacks!"
The Legionnaires opened up with their scavenged rifles.
It was chaos. Bullets sparked. Fire roared.
But the walker was advancing.
It raised its napalm cannon.
"Target the leader," the pilot's voice boomed.
It aimed at Marcus.
"Narcissus!" Marcus yelled. "I need a wall!"
The giant cyborg burst from the wreckage of the train.
He was damaged. His leg dragged. Sparks flew from his knee.
But he was holding a train door. A solid slab of steel.
He slammed it into the ground in front of Marcus.
CLANG.
Just in time.
The napalm hit the door.
The steel glowed red hot instantly.
Narcissus groaned. The heat was cooking his internal systems.
"I... am... melting!" Narcissus roared.
"Hold it!" Marcus shouted. "Just a few seconds!"
He looked around.
They were trapped. Fire on three sides. The walker in front.
But behind the walker... the river.
The Arno River.
"Water," Marcus realized. "They're heat-based. Thermal shock will crack them."
"Narcissus!" Marcus yelled over the roar of the flames. "Can you throw?"
"Throw what?"
"The walker!"
"It weighs... thirty tons!"
"Then trip it!"
Marcus turned to Marcia.
"Distract him! Eye shots!"
Marcia nodded. She fired three rapid shots at the walker's sensor cluster.
Ping. Ping. Ping.
The walker flinched, raising its cannon arm to shield its face.
"NOW!"
Marcus sprinted.
He didn't run at the walker. He ran at the riverbank.
The ground there was soft. Muddy.
"Narcissus! Smash the bank!"
The giant understood.
He dropped the glowing door. He charged.
He didn't hit the walker. He hit the ground next to it.
He raised both fists.
SMASH.
He hit the earth with everything he had left.
The riverbank collapsed.
The mud gave way under the walker's massive weight.
The mech tilted.
"Stabilizers failing!" the pilot screamed.
It slid backward.
It fell into the Arno River.
HISS.
Steam exploded.
The superheated metal of the walker hit the cold water.
CRACK.
The reactor casing fractured.
The water around the mech boiled instantly.
The pilot screamed as the cockpit flooded with boiling water.
The walker thrashed, then sank.
The Incinerators stopped firing. Their heavy support was gone.
"Retreat!" one of them shouted.
They backed away, firing streams of fire to cover their escape.
"Let them go!" Marcus ordered. "Save the ammo!"
The smoke cleared slightly.
The train was a wreck. The field was black.
But they were alive.
"Is everyone okay?" Marcus asked, coughing.
"Singed," Decimus said, patting a smoldering hole in his tunic. "But breathing."
Above them, the sky flickered.
A massive hologram appeared over the burning city of Florence.
It wasn't Vane.
It was a young man. Scarred face. Wild eyes. He was wearing a red suit that looked like it was made of dragon scales.
He was holding a violin.
[ASSET: NERO.]
He played a discordant note. SCREECH.
"Bravissimo!" Nero laughed. His voice echoed across the valley. "You dropped my toy in the bath, Caesar! That was expensive!"
Marcus stared up at the projection.
"You missed," Marcus said.
"Did I?" Nero grinned. "I wasn't trying to hit you, darling. I was trying to start the party."
He gestured with his bow.
"Look at the wind."
Marcus looked.
The wind had changed. It was blowing from the north. From the burning city.
A wall of fire—a firestorm—was moving toward them.
"Run south, little rats," Nero whispered. "The fire is faster than you."
The hologram vanished.
"He's herding us," Marcia said. " toward Rome."
"We have no train," Galen said, looking at the wreckage. "We can't outrun a firestorm on foot."
"We don't run," Marcus said.
He walked to the river.
The water was still steaming where the walker had gone down.
"We float," Marcus said.
"What?"
"The river flows to the sea," Marcus pointed. "To the coast. We build rafts. We use the train debris."
"It's a hundred miles to the coast!" Decimus said.
"Better than burning," Marcus said.
He grabbed a piece of floating debris—a train seat cushion.
"Strip the train!" Marcus ordered. "Foam! Plastic! Anything that floats! We build a fleet!"
The Legion went to work.
They tore the luxury train apart. They lashed seats together with wire. They used carriage doors as rafts.
In an hour, they had a flotilla of junk.
They pushed off into the Arno.
The current caught them.
Behind them, the wall of fire consumed the sunflower field. It roared like a living thing, angry that its meal had escaped.
Marcus sat on a raft made of four train doors lashed together. Marcia was beside him. Narcissus floated on a massive pontoon of foam and steel, looking like a shipwrecked king.
"To the sea," Marcus said.
He looked south.
"Nero wants a race? Fine."
He dipped his hand in the water.
"I'll bring the flood."