Chapter 141: Watermelon
The portal opens slowly.
A foot comes through first. A railwayman’s work boot, leather scarred down to fiber, laces made of wire. Then a leg. Then the rest of him.
The Engineer.
He looks like a deep-sea diver who died inside his own suit and never took it off. Bronze diving helmet, corroded through in patches, the round visor fogged from the inside—something moves behind the glass and refuses to settle into a shape I can name. Hoses hang from the back of his suit like dead tentacles. The rig is rubber and metal, patched with plates of ship hull, riveted with rust, barnacles crusted along the shoulders like medals. He smells like the deep. Pressure. Salt. The dark of something that was never supposed to come up.
He stands fifty-five feet from me. The portal closes slowly behind him.
He doesn’t move. He just exists where he stands.
255 climbs into view at the edge of the horizon.
We can’t make it before 255 or the engine won’t stop. The energy is location-based.
"Lola. On three..."
Silence. She’s already in position—I can hear it in the absence of her usual noise.
I time it without taking my eyes off the signal or the Engineer.
"One."
"Two."
"Three."
255 flashes past the side of the engine.
"NOW!"
I haul the lever down with everything I’ve got.
Hissing rush of escaping gas. A mechanical crack runs the length of the train. I twist enough to look back—the rest of the cars are pulling away. The magnetic coupling has broken. The rails between us are growing.
"Lola, run! Jump now!"
I look forward. The Engineer is moving. One step at a time. Slow. Each boot landing like the floor sinks an inch under his weight.
I steady on the roof. Crouch. Brace to leap to the rear car as the gap widens.
"Boss, a new lever popped up here after the decoupling. Brakes, I think. Jump already!" Oliver, in the comm.
I look behind once more, checking the Leviathan distance, but then I see it.
A small head with bear ears, pushing up out of the hatch.
"LOLA, NO! WHY DIDN’T YOU JUMP?!"
She steadies herself on the roof of the locomotive. Better than me, actually. Lower center of gravity. Small feet finding purchase mine couldn’t.
"I felt the energy. I couldn’t go."
Her voice. Calm. Too calm. No child in this world should be able to sound that quiet right now.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
The Engineer keeps coming. The rear car keeps falling away, Oliver waiting for the brakes to scream on the rails behind us.
I run the math in the same second.
By distance, Lola can’t make the jump alone. Even with a Scale, she can’t soak the impact damage. Pressure Step with both of us is too much weight—the kick would come up short and we’d land between the cars instead of on the rear one, and that’s worse than not jumping at all.
Twenty seconds, maybe. The car is too far. Too fast.
I grab Lola. Pull her against my chest. A hard, full-armed hold. She’s so light. So small. The bear ears of her hoodie touch the underside of my jaw.
I know what I have to do.
Rotate with Pressure Step. Use the spin to add to the throw. She’s light enough that I can launch her—not me, but her—and the angle and the speed of the rotation will carry her the distance the cars have opened.
I won’t be on that car when she lands.
Sorry, Mom.
Sorry, Lili.
This is the son you raised. I can’t just leave her here. I hope you understand.
I’ll figure something out. I always do.
I pivot.
The first Pressure Step fires. Both of us spin. The wind cuts across us. The rotation builds. I’m setting the angle. It needs to be perfect. It needs to be now.
Halfway through the second rotation, Lola tries to say something. The wind eats it. My focus eats it. I see her mouth moving against my collarbone.
Then I see her eyes.
Wet.
Lola doesn’t cry. Lola has never cried. In all the time I’ve known her I have never seen a tear leave that kid’s eye. Not when she lost the bear. Not when Brendon died. Not when she thought she was going to die on the rope.
She’s crying.
A flicker of focus breaks in me. The rotation wobbles a quarter-degree.
In that splinter of a second I read her lips.
"Watermelon — big or small?"
She smiles.
Not the bored smile. Not the smile when something explodes. A smile I have never seen on her face—open, whole, every piece of her behind it. She’s made a decision and the decision is final and the smile is letting me know.
A goodbye.
Beep.
A Scale against my chest.
Pressed between her body and mine.
"NO—"
The blast tears us apart.
It isn’t a combat blast. She calibrated it. Watermelon. Big enough to throw me. Small enough not to kill me.
The air leaves my lungs all at once. My body goes weightless. I spin—sky and rails and trees blurring into a single rotating wash. My ears scream. My chest burns. My HUD lights up red across half the screen.
Lola hits the roof of the engine car on her back. Small. Limp. The bear-ear hoodie streaked with soot and blood.
I slam into the door of the rear car. Plate first. The impact knocks every piece of breath I had left out of me, and for a second I’m not sure if I’m conscious.
I push myself up. Already moving toward the edge.
I need to go back.
Oliver catches me with both hands. With everything he has, he ignores his broken ribs against my chest and holds me together by force.
"It’s too far! You won’t make it!"
"LET ME GO, OLIVER!"
"YOU’LL DIE!"
"LET ME GO!"
Behind us, Rhayne is crying. I hear it without seeing it. I hear her good hand find the brake lever Oliver left her. I hear the brakes bite into the rails, metal on metal, a scream that splits the air down the middle.
But the engine car doesn’t have brakes anymore.
The engine car keeps going.
The locomotive carrying Lola toward the Engineer. Toward the portal. Toward a place no one comes back from.
I stop fighting Oliver.
Not because he’s stronger. Because there’s nothing left to do.
I stand there. On my feet. Holding the door frame because my legs don’t fully work yet. Watching the engine car shrink into the horizon between the trees. Watching Lola shrink with it. A small white smear with bear ears, getting smaller.
And the only thing I have left of her is the heartbeat in the corner of my Party HUD.
Lola ♥ ’Thump-thump, Thump-thump’
Faint. Steady. Alive.
My knees hit the floor of the car. I don’t remember deciding to fall.
Oliver says something. I don’t hear it.
Rhayne is beside me. I don’t feel her.
I just watch the heartbeat blink.