Platform District - Station Interior
05:12 PM, Jan 14, 2534
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The glimpse of the dead man settles over them like a second winter. Nobody breathes right afterward. The silence is packed with snow, heavy and sharp, warning them that staying here will get them killed faster than the tiger prowling outside. The cold inside the car crawls up their sleeves and settles in their bones. The air even tastes like metal and fear.
Kaius moves first. The nanite bandage tightens on his forearm, tugging hard as he steps forward. He's sweating under the layers, the fever giving him a faint, shaky pulse in his muscles. He ignores it, focusing on the projected map instead, jaw set like he's holding the whole car together by sheer force of will.
"Boulder, you stay and protect the rest of the group-." Kaius begins but Solan makes a strangled noise. "I'm... I'm sorry, I can't do this anymore."
Kaius blinks at him. "Do what?"
Solan's glasses are fogging around the edges. He wipes them so aggressively he nearly flings them across the car. "The n-n-names. The n-names you keep calling people. F-F-Four Eyes? B-B-Boulder? N-N-Neon? They're not... they're not stray cats."
Jessa huffs out a sharp laugh. "Is it bad if I don't hate the names?"
Kaius shrugs. "You glow in the dark when you're pissed."
"I do not." Jessa balks, pausing. "Actually... that might be biographically correct."
"You literally do." Kade adds, not helping.
Solan lifts both hands. "S-s-s-stop. Please. If we're risking our lives together, you need to know who you're talking to. P-p-p-properly. I'm serious."
Kaius looks like he wants to argue just for the hell of it, but the deep exhaustion settling into his eyes wins out. "Fine. Knock yourself out."
Solan clears his throat and gestures around the cramped, freezing car. "Okay. This is Evin. And that's his wife, Mariel. She's holding their baby, Tovin. She does most of the m-m-medical work when I'm not... when I'm not falling apart."
Mariel gives Kaius a polite, tired nod, her breath misting around Tovin's head. Kaius nods back, eyes flicking briefly to the tiny bundle before returning to Solan.
Solan shifts, pointing next toward the girl leaning against a cracked panel. "Calyx. Their daughter. She's good with r-r-rebellion and teenage angst. Also a little terrifying."
Calyx lifts her brows. "Thanks, I guess."
"Then..." Solan swings his hand toward the twins, who are pressed shoulder to shoulder like they're one organism. "Jessa and Kade Venn. They break into things and o-o-occasionally fix what they break. They've saved our asses more times than I can count."
Kade flashes a grin. "We're delightful."
"You're l-loud," Solan answers, and they both snort.
"And... Rhea." He nods toward the woman tightening the strap on her pack, her eyes sharp as knives. "She's our logistics m-mind. She's the r-reason none of us starved this winter. She also keeps trying to make me sleep m-more."
Rhea mutters, "Because you crash like a dying snowbird if you don't."
Solan gives her a grateful, sheepish smile.
Finally, his hand settles on Thora, who stands silent and immovable near the side door, arms crossed, cold air drifting in through a crack right beside her. "And this is Thora Nyx. She doesn't talk, so s-s-s-stop expecting her to. She signs. Real signs. European system. She's been doing it all along."
Kaius turns, looks at Thora, then back at Solan. "Yeah. I know."
Solan stares at him. "Y-You know?"
"Been answering her."
Jessa gawks. "You understood her this whole time?"
Kaius shrugs. "She's loud."
Thora gives him a sharp gesture that probably isn't polite. Kaius snorts.
Solan exhales, relieved. "Good. Good. Now we can k-keep going without you creating a zoo's worth of nick-nicknames for everyone."
Kaius grunts. "As long as everyone keeps up, I'll call them whatever the hell helps me remember where they're supposed to be."
Solan presses his fingers to his eyes. "I'm losing y-years off my life."
Kaius nods once, returning to the map, voice dropping into the low, steady tone that pulls them all in. "We're not moving the whole group. We're going to the Sotira Clinic. Solan marked it earlier. That clinic has what you need for the pheromone expansion. Chemicals, filters, compression units, all of it. It sits on the Plaza Overhang, and the only two ways there are the Riverspine Bridge and a back entrance."
Solan jumps in, still rattled but focused. "That bridge is open to the blizzard. It's long. The w-w-w-wind's hellish out there. If skin's exposed longer than five minutes, it'll m-m-mottle."
Kaius taps the section of the station map, the light flickering against his fever-sweat. "The tiger's outside this door, pacing around the trains. It's waiting for a clean shot at someone. It won't risk the bridge until it's certain it'll win. We use that."
He turns to the others. "Solan, you're with the twins. You get inside the clinic, pull dimethyl sulfoxide or anything close to it. You grab a compression container. You don't scout for food. You don't get curious. You've got ten minutes."
"Ten minutes to raid a clinic?" Jessa's voice cracks around the edges. "While a tiger's doing laps outside?"
"Ten minutes to get there," Kaius repeats. "By then, the tiger will be dead."
Kade rubs his arms, breath puffing pale. "You're planning on baiting it, aren't you?"
"That's the idea." Kaius checks the rifle, slots the special round in place, and slings the strap across his chest. The cold metal smashes against his fingers. "I lead it away. Kill it if I can"
Solan's voice wavers as he studies Kaius's shaking hands. "You're b-b-b-betting your life on seven minutes? And you're already sick. Your t-t-t-temperature's climbing. Your reaction time's dropping."
Kaius gives him a tired half-smile. "I've got the gun. And I'm the fastest liability in here."
"That's not f-funny," Solan mutters.
"It's not supposed to be." Kaius pulls his hood up. "If I stay, the fever drags me down and it drags you with me. If I go, you cross the bridge. That's the math."
Solan's throat tightens around a tiny stuttered breath. "I still h-hate it."
Kaius doesn't look at him. "Good. Means your head's working. Now get ready."
Kaius keeps his eyes on Solan. It's steady, unblinking focus, the sort of attention that pins a person still. "I'm doing this alone. You get inside, you lock the doors, and you do what you're there to do. Either way, you don't come looking for me. No brave shit. You're the brains. Keep the brains alive."
The words drop onto Solan like sandbags. He stiffens as if any wrong move will spill responsibility all over the frozen floor. "I... I got it. We move through the connection car. The one with the... with the cargo."
"No." Kaius's voice snaps like ice under a boot. "Movement in that car sends sound down the metal like a dinner bell. The stink will give you away before you cross the threshold. The tiger is keyed to this car already. It's waiting for someone to panic and run. We give it exactly what it thinks it wants."
Solan swallows, his breath shaking hard.
"That's i-insane."
"Good. Means nobody else thought of it first." Kaius taps the main door with a gloved knuckle. "I leave from here. It sees me, it stops thinking, and it charges. Thora cracks the door, grabs the sled in so you get your supplies back, then shuts the door before it gets smart again. While it's screaming at the wall, you and the chaos twins open the rear door by the west end and slip to the back, that connects to the plaza. You use the noise I'm making so it doesn't hear your feet."
Jessa mutters something about therapy. Kade mutters something about needing a bathroom. Rhea mutters something that sounds suspiciously like a prayer.
Kaius doesn't wait for agreement. He tightens his hood. The fabric freezes where the wind catches it. His gloves creak as he tests the seal. Fever sweat chills instantly on his skin, leaving his body trembling in little fits he pretends are just nerves.
Thora meets his stare. Her hands move in quick, sharp signs. Kaius nods once, understanding every flick of her fingers.
He positions himself beside the door.
Mariel presses Tovin against her chest. Evin folds his arms around both of them as if he could stop the entire station from shaking.
"Hold your breath," Kaius murmurs.
Kaius keeps his focus locked on the view through the left window. Two trains separate their stalled car from the sled, where two long metal bodies are angled just enough to block everything. The floors beyond the glass shine with a slick sheet of ice, thin as varnish, reflecting the hanging fluorescent lights that buzz like angry insects. Somewhere out there, the tiger circles, its shadow sliding between the gaps like a piece of living night.
He tracks the rhythm of its steps. The slow tap of claws. The controlled weight. It's not pacing out of confusion; it's mapping the space the same way he is.
He looks up at the ceiling. The maintenance hatch is there, sealed tight. The latching bracket is bent from old service work, but it hasn't budged since the line froze years ago.
Kaius reaches up with his good arm. The metal bites into his palm. His injured arm sends a hot, electric shock through his ribs when he tries to brace. He stops, tries again, and grinds his fingers under the lip of the panel. The hatch squeals once. Too loud. So he freezes, listening. The tiger pauses somewhere between cars. The station goes still.
He pushes slower this time. The frozen hinge protests, but inches open.
Solan whispers behind him, barely moving his mouth. "Kaius... the warmth."
Kaius nods once. He understands. If this hatch stays open, the precious pocket of heat inside the car will drain out and the baby, the injured, all of them will feel it.
He sets his shoulder to the panel and forces it open just wide enough to slip fingers through. His muscles tremble hard. He bites down on the strain, heaves, and the hatch finally cracks upward. A thin stream of cold air drops onto his face. His eyes sting.
He looks at Solan. "I only need a push."
Solan crouches and cups his hands. Kaius steps in, braces, and Solan lifts. Kaius grabs the lip of the hatch with both hands, pain detonating through his injured arm. But he swallows it and pulls himself up, slipping through the narrow gap. His boots clear the opening and he immediately reaches back, dragging the hatch shut with a soft metallic thump. Warmth stays locked below.
He sprawls flat on top of the rail car, chest pressed to the icy metal. The chill hits with a shock that steals half his breath. He smells cold steel, old grease, and the faint musk the tiger left behind earlier. He listens.
Footsteps. Slow. Heavy. Measured.
The tiger crosses between the second and third trains, its claws making faint ticks against the tile. Its breath huffs in low bursts. Kaius watches it from the roof's edge, only the top of its spine visible between the cars. When the beast turns away, heading toward the rear platform, Kaius moves.
He lowers himself over the far side, his gloves squeaking against the metal siding, and drops into the shadows. His boots slide across ice but he steadies himself, keeps low, and slips under the nearest car. The space is cramped, rails cold enough that his skin aches through his layers. The iron smell of the old train settles in his throat.
Inside their car, Solan, Jessa, Kade, and Thora crowd the window, tension locking every muscle in their bodies.
The tiger stops.
Kaius hears the shift, the sudden pivot, the inhale, the click of claws adjusting. The beast walks straight toward his hiding place. He presses against the rails and shuts down every tremor in his body.
The tiger lowers its head and sniffs. A low growl vibrates through the floor. It steps past him.
Kaius breathes once. A tiny, controlled exhale.
The tiger whips back.
A massive paw slams down beside the car's undercarriage. Claws rake under the gap, scraping for him. Kaius rolls under the wheel assembly, metal biting into his spine as the claws swipe where his legs were a second ago.
He bolts.
He darts out from under the car and heads for the open door of the adjacent unit. The one with the ceiling hatch still hanging from their last close call. His boots skid across the icy platform, but he catches the doorway with one hand, yanks himself inside, and leaps for the interior handrails.
He swings hard, legs arcing above his head. The motion jolts his wounded arm so violently he nearly loses his grip. His fingers slip. His shoulder screams.
He snarls under his breath and yanks through the pain.
His body launches upward. He smashes through the open ceiling hatch and lands on the roof of the car, rolling once and rising just as the tiger explodes into the doorway below. Its roar punches up the opening like a blast wave.
Kaius runs.
He tears across the top of the train, boots sliding on patches of ice. The tiger bolts down the parallel platform, its claws hammering tile. It keeps pace easily. Its bellow shakes the thin metal beneath him.
Kaius hits the last car.
The tiger leaps, claws biting into the side of the train. It hauls itself upward in one furious motion, head rising into view, teeth glinting under the fluorescent lights.
Kaius doesn't wait.
He cuts left and drops between the cars. His boots hit tile hard. He rolls, feels the blast of air as the tiger sails overhead and lands wrong. Its claws screech across the roof. It loses footing, skids, and slams off the platform edge into a violent heap.
Kaius doesn't look. He climbs the short ladder, vaults onto the main platform, and runs flat-out toward the Concourse. The cold air burns his lungs. Every breath shreds. His boots slam against tile, and behind him he hears the animal dragging itself up again.
He sprints harder.
Four trains away, Solan tears from the window with panic tightening every line in his face.
"Thora. Sled. Now."
He turns to the twins as they shoulder packs.
"The side exit is down-track. We take it. We cut through to the clinic from the back. The front's iced over and Kaius just dragged that thing into the main hall."
Kaius tears across the concourse with his lungs scraping against the cold, his breath hitching in sharp, uneven bursts. His boots skid over patches of frost that have spread thin as glass across the floor, and the polished stone beneath offers nothing but treachery. He pushes through it anyway. He angles his body low and drives forward until he feels the shift in traction, the one disastrous moment when his feet threaten mutiny.
He commits.
He lets the slip happen so he can turn it to his advantage. His boots shoot out from under him. He drops his weight and throws his good hand out, catching one of the waist-high guide rails that line the platform edge. His palm slaps cold steel hard enough to numb his fingers. He uses that pain as leverage. His momentum swings him sideways with brutal speed. Ice sprays behind him in a ragged arc. The redirected force hurls his body toward the up-ramp that leads to the deserted upper access stairs.
The landing is messy. He rolls once, shoulder-first, which detonates agony across his wounded side. His groan is swallowed by the cavernous acoustics of the station. He shoves himself upright before his brain can argue. His legs protest, but they still follow orders, and he drives them up the steps.
The climb is quick but vicious. Each stair is covered with a film of ice that crunches underfoot, and his balance wavers. The air grows colder as he rises, the temperature dropping a few degrees with each level. The upper tracks spread out like dead arteries above the active lines, bridges of steel and concrete stretching between platforms that haven't carried a train in years.
He reaches the first span and cuts across it. His boots thump against a walkway so coated in frost it looks like it was carved from chalk. The fluorescent lights overhead flicker and pulse like a dying pulse, painting the world with jittery shadows.
He hears the tiger below.
A low, resonant snarl echoes through the main concourse, followed by the wet, violent sound of claws shredding traction into the floor. Then the crash of something heavy slamming into a pillar as it corrects its turn. Then silence.
Then the pounding.
The beast leaps onto the lower set of stairs, each impact a full-body tremor that shivers up the metal. Kaius doesn't look back until he's halfway across the span, and when he does, the sight nearly steals what's left of his breath.
The tiger is sprinting up the stairs, its massive frame barely fitting between the rails. Its fur is haloed with frost. Its eyes reflect the sickly station lights, wide and ravenous. It clears the last step in a single bound and barrels onto the walkway behind him, claws tearing long scars into the ice.
Kaius runs.
He cuts right, onto another pedestrian bridge that curves upward to the highest section of the station. His breath rips the air in ragged bursts that cloud instantly. His ribs feel like someone is driving nails into them. He climbs the steep incline, boots slipping just enough to make every step a gamble.
The tiger follows without hesitation. Its paws slam against the slope, shredding ice into powder.
Kaius reaches the top platform, the one just below the roof. The air here is colder than anything inside should be. The ceiling panels overhead have long since fractured, leaving jagged gaps where the winter air sneaks through. Snow drifts in, forming pale dunes that ripple when the wind pierces through cracks in the roof plating.
A service ladder waits at the far end, leaning at a slight angle from centuries of metal fatigue.
Kaius sprints for it.
He grabs the ladder and hauls himself up with one arm while the other radiates a molten ache that almost blinds him. The ladder rattles hard under his weight, every rung slick. He climbs anyway. The roof access hatch is already busted open, its hinges twisted, leaving a gap wide enough to slip through.
He rolls out onto the roof.
The world explodes into white.
Snow and ice blanket every inch of the curved rooftop. Wind tears across the surface, carrying needling shards of ice that sting his cheeks and slice at his lips. The roof tilts gradually toward the open western edge of the station, where the building ends abruptly over a massive frozen river that sprawls into the horizon.
The city's western district lies across the water, its skyscrapers rising out of the pale light. The late-day sky has gone purple at the edges, bruised with the last traces of daylight.
The rooftop surface is hazardous in ways that would make most people weep. Kaius runs across it like it's a training course he designed himself.
He hears the ladder rattle behind him, then the heavy crack of weight landing on steel.
The tiger climbs.
It hauls its bulk onto the rooftop with one explosive pull. Its paws punch holes in the ice crust. It shakes once, sending a spray of frost into the air, then hones in on him instantly.
Kaius angles toward the southwestern arc of the roof, closer to the bridge-like extension that juts slightly over the edge. From here he has a clear view of the ground far below.
And he sees movement.
Solan. And the twins. Sprinting through a side exit gate five levels down, cutting across the service platform and heading toward the emergency stairwell that leads to the clinic's back corridor.
Kaius mutters a curse so bitter that it tangles in his teeth. The tiger's trajectory will take it right down toward that exit if he loses its attention.
He veers sharply left.
The tiger roars, furious at the change in direction, and pursues him with a burst of speed that shatters the ice under its paws. Kaius runs to the very lip of the roof where a slanted ridge of steel leads to an overhang. The frozen river waits below, its surface broken by dark seams where the current churns under the ice. The drop is at least thirty to the first icy plate, maybe more.
Kaius gauges the distance, adjusts his stride, and commits to the most reckless plan he has all week.
He runs straight off the edge.
But he doesn't jump.
He slides.
His boots lose purchase instantly, and gravity drags him downward. He drops into a knee-first slide along the slanted overhang, wind screaming past his face. His injured arm flares, but he clamps the pain down and waits. The tiger barrels after him, claws raking sparks across the metal. Its weight is too much, its momentum too high. It cannot stop.
Kaius reaches the edge.
He grabs the lip with his good hand and clamps down so hard his knuckles almost split. His body whips forward, snapping like a pendulum over the abyss. His legs dangle above the frozen river, the cold rising toward him like a living thing.
The tiger goes airborne in a way that feels wrong for something that heavy. Kaius sees every detail in a stretched, fevered frame of time. Its paws swipe at empty air. Its back arches. Its jaws gape wide enough to show the black cavern of its throat as gravity tears it away from the roofline.
It falls once.
Then it rotates, an ugly half-spin that makes its silhouette distort against the pale sky. The mass of it drags the air down with it. The wind around the gorge seems to suck inward. The beast drops like a collapsing star.
The tiger hits the frozen river so hard the sound doesn't even register as one impact. It's a sequence. First the deep whump of flesh hitting ice. Then a sharp, vicious crack. Then a rolling boom as the ice sheet fractures outward in a wide, violent ripple. The entire river quakes as if the blow rattled it straight through to the riverbed.
And the beast doesn't bounce.
It punches through.
The ice gives way in a jagged ring, collapsing under its mass. The tiger plunges straight through the broken lid of the river, swallowed in a spray of shattering ice and black water. The splash is enormous, a thunderous eruption that sends freezing spray arcing up the sides of the gorge.
Kaius cranes his neck, hanging by one arm, breath ragged, sweat burning his eyes.
The tiger resurfaces.
Not gracefully. It bursts up through the hole with a snarling, choking roar, slamming its paws onto the fractured edges. The water dripping off its fur is already turning to slush in the air. Its fur clings tight to its ribs. Its breathing is ragged and furious, breath steaming so thickly it looks like smoke.
Somehow, impossibly, it drags itself onto the sheet.
Kaius wheezes out a half-laugh, half-exhausted curse. "You strong son of a bitch... that was supposed to kill you."
The tiger doesn't hear him. It only knows the need to climb.
It lunges toward the rocky incline at the base of the station. The slope rises almost vertically, a wall of jagged shale and thick glaze ice. The beast slams its claws into the frozen rock and hauls its weight upward.
For a moment, it looks unstoppable. It climbs with sheer murderous will, paws finding purchase where none should exist. Its muscles quiver under its soaked fur. Its breath rasps. Water drips from its belly in long, freezing ropes.
Then its front paw slips.
The beast drops a foot. Its claws shriek against the ice. It snarls, furious, and climbs again. It makes it higher this time, back legs churning, tail whipping to counterbalance.
Then the slope gives out beneath it.
A wide plate of ice, thick, clouded, holding the entire hillside together, shears off under the tiger's weight. It cracks with a noise like a gunshot. The whole slab slides downward, carrying the tiger with it. The beast rakes at the rocks, desperate to catch something, but every swipe only rips more ice free.
The tiger falls again.
This fall is shorter but crueler. It slams back onto the river ice sideways, knocking the air from its lungs in a wounded, guttural bellow. The moment it hits, the weakened sheet beneath it collapses completely. The beast plunges straight down, swallowed by the river a second time.
This time, the water closes fast.
The tiger explodes up once, front paws breaking the surface. It claws wildly at the broken rim, teeth bared in a silent snarl. Its roar comes out strangled, bubbling, its chest straining against the cold that has now soaked into skin and flesh.
Kaius watches helplessly from above as the creature thrashes, weaker with each strike. Its claws scrape against the ice, leaving deep gouges but gaining no hold. Its movements slow. Its head dips.
One last roar tears out of its throat. An unholy, vibrating sound that echoes off the gorge walls and ends in a gurgling choke.
The water drags it under.
The beast sinks, limbs drifting outward, swallowed by the black beneath the ice. The surface seals around the broken rim in seconds, freezing over the fresh cracks.
Silence slams shut over the gorge.
Only then does Kaius feel the danger return to him. His fingers slip on the rim he's clinging to. His injured arm twitches violently. His body screams in protest as he hauls himself up, every inch a war against gravity.
He drags himself over the edge, rolls onto his back, and collapses hard onto the ice-slick rooftop. The sky above him is a washed-out violet streaked with the last thin glow of dying daylight. His breath comes in ragged bursts. Every inhale burns.
Below him, the river buries its monster.
Above it, Kaius lies trembling, alive only because the world finally stopped trying to kill him for five seconds.
He snarls through clenched teeth, digs deep into what strength he has left, and pulls himself upward. Every muscle screams. The metal bites into his palm. His boots scrape the edge as he drags himself back onto the overhang.
He collapses in a heap.
He lies there on his back, staring up at the bruised purple sky, snowflakes drifting sideways through the gaps in the ruined roof. His chest heaves. Every breath feels too big for his lungs. His whole body throbs, but he's alive. The world keeps spinning.
And below him, the river swallows the last ripples of the fallen predator while the city stays silent and waiting.
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