Chapter 136: First Class
[Try again? Y / N]
Yes.
[FAILED]
[One attempt remaining.]
[Try again? Y / N]
What am I doing wrong? Damn it...
Maybe it’s the corruption. Maybe Consume doesn’t work on a soul that’s already been chewed up by something else. Maybe I’m knocking on a door that was welded shut before I learned the word for it.
I’m betting everything. I don’t know what will come next, so... Yes...
[FAILED]
[The Echo will be destroyed.]
Was I too stupidly greedy?
I sigh deeply.
Well. Nothing to do about that.
The Fragment dissolves in my palm like wet sand losing its shape. Cold granules run through my fingers and spill onto the marble.
A soul lived inside the Turtarex. I just let the last of it fall between my boots.
But I won’t stop to mourn it. I can’t. I feel sorry, but Oliver is breathing through cracked ribs, and Lola is already picking at the stitching on Lullaby’s case, which means she’s three minutes from doing something I’ll regret.
Move.
"By the way, Dryden," Rhayne’s voice says carefully from behind me. "That voice a minute ago. It stopped after you touched the crystal."
I turn.
"Hard to explain. Even I don’t fully know what she is."
I keep it short.
"Long story short—she’s a Leviathan. The tower is alive, and she’s protecting Lost Ark from the system, not the other way around."
"Let’s..." Oliver grimaces from pain. "Let’s just leave. No more weird."
Everyone’s tired. Oliver is past tired—he’s at the edge where people start making mistakes they don’t recover from. I know the look.
"Come on, everyone."
We cross the sanctuary hall toward the great gate behind the altar.
A click rings out from somewhere deep inside the door. Loud. Mechanical. Heavy enough that I feel it vibrating in the soles of my feet.
The gate begins to open slowly and patiently.
What forms on the other side isn’t a corridor. It’s a train station—built with the same white marble as the sanctuary, the same blue crystal columns, and the same impossible dome overhead crackling with pale lightning.
Another pocket dimension. Of course. No train lines run out from the tower.
The locomotive sits parked along the platform.
It doesn’t look like a machine. It looks like something that was grown. The hull is pearl-white, polished to a depth that drinks the light instead of bouncing it. Long seams run the length of each car in a pattern that almost looks like script but never quite settles into letters I can read. The blue crystal of the sanctuary repeats along the frame in miniature—small chips set at each joint, humming low, steady.
Eight cars. Maybe more. The locomotive itself is past the curve of the platform and I can’t see where it ends.
"Doesn’t look like it’ll make that stupid noise like the other ones..." Lola says.
"Compared to the train I took and ended up in the Gatekeeper’s subway?" Oliver grips his side, leaning on a marble pillar. "This one is first class, little girl."
The doors hiss open.
Only one set.
The last car. The door at the very end of the train, farthest from the engine.
That’s strange.
"Easy, everyone. I’ve got a weird feeling about this. Wait here, guys."
I approach the next two carriages, waiting for the doors to slide open as I draw near, but they remain shut. I head back to the final car.
"Nothing..." I tell them.
I step in first.
The interior is silence given form. White paneled walls. Long, clean benches running along both sides, cushioned in something that looks like spun fabric but feels like leather. Recessed light strips tracing the ceiling and floor. No luggage racks. No advertisements. No information screens. No clutter of any kind.
It’s a waiting room disguised as a train car.
"Come on in. It’s safe."
They file in behind me. Oliver lowers himself onto the bench with a controlled grunt. Lola drops beside him with Lullaby’s case across her lap. Rhayne steps through the door—
—and the door slaps shut behind her.
The train moves.
Instant. No build-up. One moment we’re stationary, the next the acceleration is throwing my weight back into the paneling and Oliver is yelping as his ribs meet the bench hard. Lola catches Lullaby before it can slide off her legs. Rhayne is already braced against the closed door, palms flat against the wall.
The landscape past the windows is white.
Just white. The same absolute white from the place Chronia pulled me into. No horizon. No ocean. No sky. An endless blank that the train is cutting through at a speed I can feel in my teeth.
Behind us, I can see the track we came from—two thin rails trailing into the distance, and a plume of pale smoke pouring out of the locomotive far ahead, carried backward by our own velocity.
Then the signals start passing the windows.
1.
A pause. Maybe twenty seconds.
2.
A longer pause this time. Almost a full minute before the next one.
3.
The count starts bleeding into my ears along with the low harmonic of the wheels on the rail. Chronia’s gift unpacks itself again at the front of my skull.
The signals. The window of exactly one minute. Jump at 255.
One problem.
At this speed, jumping from this train isn’t escape.
It’s paint on the rails.
"We need to stop this train."
"Stop?" Oliver straightens, wincing. "But we’re getting out. That’s what this is."
"We have a window to jump. Miss it and we loop back to Lost Ark."
Lola sighs through her nose. Leans her whole face against the window glass and looks at the nothing outside with flat, bored eyes.
"And how do you plan to do that?" Rhayne asks.
"I don’t know yet." I let a crooked smile through. "But I’ve got half an idea. We’re going to the engine car. The other half shows up on the way."
Oliver pushes himself up, a hand on his ribs, and points at Lola without saying anything.
"You want the little lady to blow it all up? Right?" holds back a laugh.
"That’s the main idea."
Lola’s head lifts off the glass.
She smiles.
It’s small, controlled, but real. The boredom falls off her face for half a second and something sharp comes through underneath.
She clicks the release on Lullaby’s case.
The weapon unfolds itself across her lap with soft mechanical precision, every module rotating into place, the barrel extending, the sighting reticle blooming into life with a steady green glow.
Outside the window, another signal flashes past.
4.
Two hundred fifty-one to go.
"Move."