The decision to save the prisoners in the "Carriage of Ghosts" had a cost. A heavy one.
By cutting the power to the biological batteries, the Iron Lung lost 40% of its engine output. The massive locomotive, which had been cutting through the Siberian night at a smooth two hundred miles per hour, shuddered violently. The hum of the magnetic rails dropped to a grinding, mechanical growl.
They were slowing down. And in the Tundra, slow things die.
"Up top!" Amani ordered, his voice barely audible over the screech of the braking wheels. "If we stay inside, we get trapped in the corridors. We need to control the roof."
The Swahili Pack scrambled up the external maintenance ladder of Car 12. The wind hit them with the force of a physical blow. Even with their thermal suits, the cold was a living thing, seeking out every gap in their armor, every exposed inch of skin.
Amani pulled himself onto the roof of the train. He stayed low, magnetizing his boots to the hull.
The view was terrifying.
The Iron Lung was a snake of black steel winding through a canyon of white ice. To their left and right, massive glaciers rose like frozen waves, blocking out the horizon. Above, the sky was a bruised purple, lit by the distant, sweeping searchlights of the Kremlin Defense Grid.
"Formation!" Amani yelled into his comms. "Chacha, take the front! Upepo, watch the rear! Darius, stay center with the Bag!"
Darius climbed up last. He stood up in the gale-force wind, but his cloak didn't flap wildly like the others. It seemed to hang heavy, unaffected by the physics of the storm.
Amani looked at him. In the flickering red light of the train's running lamps, Darius looked less like a man and more like a statue carved from the night itself. His salt-and-pepper beard was frosted with ice, but his eyes—those dark, violet-tinged eyes—were calm. He adjusted the Infinity Storage Bag on his chest, patting it gently as if checking on a sleeping child.
"The train is vulnerable, Amani," Darius said, his voice cutting through the wind without shouting. "We have dropped below the 'Silent Speed.' The local predators will hear us now."
"Predators?" Sia asked, nocking an arrow and scanning the glacier walls. "You mean wolves?"
"I mean Reapers," Darius corrected.
As if summoned by his words, the radar on Bahati's wrist-deck screamed.
"CONTACT. AERIAL VECTORS. MULTIPLE BOGEYS."
"Where!?" Chacha roared, spinning around with his Cryo-Hammer.
"Above us!" Bahati yelled.
From the dark clouds, lights descended. They weren't stars. They were the blue ion-thrusters of Giza Aero-Skiffs.
They looked like flying motorcycles, sleek and silver, ridden by soldiers in white, aerodynamic armor. They carried energy lances—long poles tipped with crackling plasma blades.
The Frost-Reapers.
"Incoming!" Upepo screamed.
Three skiffs dove toward the train in a synchronized attack run. They didn't fire guns; they aimed their lances at the Pack, intending to skewer them and drag them off the roof.
"Shield!" Amani shouted.
Chacha stepped forward. He didn't have his golden shield anymore, but he had the hammer. He waited until the lead skiff was ten feet away.
"Fore!" Chacha grunted.
He swung the hammer upward.
CRUNCH.
The hammer connected with the underside of the lead skiff. The impact shattered the anti-gravity drive. The skiff spun out of control, crashing into the glacier wall in a ball of blue fire. The pilot tumbled into the snow, lost to the void.
"One down!" Chacha cheered.
But the other two skiffs pulled up at the last second. They circled back, their pilots activating magnetic clamps. They landed on the roof of the train, fifty feet down the car.
The Reapers dismounted. They ignited their plasma lances. The blades hummed with a hungry, buzzing sound.
"They want a duel," Darius observed, his hand drifting to his belt. "How quaint."
The Duel on the Roof
"We don't have time for honor," Amani growled. "Bahati, can you jam their lances?"
"Negative," Bahati replied, tapping his gauntlet frantically. "Those are Solid-State Plasma. Analog tech. Unhackable. We have to break them the old-fashioned way."
The Reapers charged. They moved with unnatural speed, their white armor blending into the snowy background.
"Upepo! Intercept!"
Upepo blurred. He met the first Reaper in the middle of the roof. The Reaper thrust his lance. Upepo dodged, vibrating his body so the plasma blade passed through his afterimage.
"Too slow!" Upepo taunted.
He vibrated his fist and punched the Reaper's helmet.
CLANG.
The Reaper didn't fall. He didn't even flinch. He grabbed Upepo's wrist with a hand that felt like a hydraulic clamp.
"Uh oh," Upepo gasped.
The Reaper threw Upepo backward. The speedster slid across the icy roof, dangerously close to the edge.
"They're augmented!" Bahati yelled. "Those suits have Servo-Assist Level 4! They're strong enough to lift a car!"
The second Reaper lunged at Sia. She fired three arrows in rapid succession. The arrows hit the Reaper's chest plate but bounced off harmlessly.
"Armor is too thick!" Sia cried, dodging a swing of the plasma lance that severed a ventilation pipe next to her head. Steam erupted, blinding her.
"Sia!" Amani yelled.
He tried to run to her, but he slipped on the ice. Without his gravity, he was clumsy. He felt useless. A King without a crown.
"Get down, girl!" Chacha roared, charging past Amani like a runaway locomotive.
Chacha tackled the Reaper threatening Sia. Both of them went down hard on the metal grating. They wrestled, the plasma lance sizzling inches from Chacha's face.
"You... are... heavy!" Chacha grunted, headbutting the Reaper. The helmet cracked, but the soldier didn't stop.
The Shadow's Intervention
Amani looked around. Upepo was recovering. Chacha was wrestling. Sia was blinded by steam. And a third Reaper—one who had landed silently while they were distracted—was sprinting toward Bahati.
Bahati was focused on his deck, trying to find a frequency to disrupt the skiffs circling above. He didn't see the assassin behind him.
"Bahati! Turn around!" Amani screamed.
Bahati turned, but it was too late. The Reaper raised his lance for a killing strike.
Then, the shadows moved.
It wasn't a spell Amani had seen before. It wasn't a spike or a shield.
Darius, standing twenty feet away, simply pointed a finger.
"Shadow-Step: Displacement."
Bahati disappeared.
In his place, a heavy crate of munitions (which had been strapped to the roof) appeared instantly.
SLASH.
The Reaper's lance cut through the crate instead of Bahati. The crate was filled with Flash-Powder.
BOOM.
A blinding white explosion engulfed the Reaper. The soldier screamed as his optical sensors were fried. He stumbled blindly off the edge of the train, falling onto the tracks below.
Bahati reappeared next to Darius, looking disoriented and terrified.
"What... what did you do?" Bahati gasped, checking his arms to make sure they were still attached.
"I moved you," Darius said calmly, his violet eyes fading back to black. "You were in a bad position. Now you are in a good one. Do not waste it."
Bahati stared at Darius. Teleportation of objects was Giza-Level spatial magic. Teleportation of people? That was god-tier.
"Who are you?" Bahati whispered.
"Focus, Tech-Wizard," Darius snapped, pointing to the sky. "The swarm is coming."
The Sky Falls
Above them, the clouds parted.
It wasn't just three skiffs anymore. It was a Squadron. Twelve Aero-Skiffs, led by a massive Gunship—a flying fortress bristling with rotary cannons.
"We kicked the hornet's nest!" Upepo yelled, rejoining the group.
The Gunship's speakers blared, drowning out the wind.
"THIS IS COMMANDER VEKTOR OF THE FROST-REAPERS. SURRENDER THE TRAIN OR BE VAPORIZED."
"Surrender is not in our vocabulary!" Chacha yelled, standing up and brandishing his hammer.
"It should be," Darius muttered. He looked at the Gunship. "That is a Class-A Dread-Hawk. Its cannons can shred this train in thirty seconds. We cannot fight that on the roof."
"So we go back inside?" Sia asked.
"No," Amani said, his mind racing. "If we go inside, they'll just derail the train and dig us out of the wreckage. We have to take down that Gunship."
"With what?" Bahati asked. "My Null-Engine can't reach that high!"
Amani looked at the train car ahead of them. Car 10. The Munitions Car.
"Bahati," Amani said. "You said the shells in Car 10 were unstable, right?"
"Extremely," Bahati nodded. "Cryo-Shells. One spark and..."
Bahati's eyes went wide. "Amani, no. You want to blow up a section of our own train?"
"We detach it," Amani said. "We uncouple Car 10. We wait for the Gunship to fly over it. And then we detonate it."
"That's insane," Upepo laughed. "I love it."
"We need to get to the coupling mechanism!" Amani ordered. "It's manual! Between Car 11 and 10!"
The Race to the Coupling
"Cover fire!" Darius ordered.
He pulled a handful of Giza Coins from his pocket and threw them into the air. He snapped his fingers.
"Shadow-Multishot."
The coins turned into spinning projectiles of dark energy. They struck the approaching skiffs, knocking three of them out of the sky. It was a dazzling display of precision marksmanship.
"Go!" Darius yelled.
The Pack sprinted along the icy roof of Car 11. The Gunship opened fire.
BRRRRRRT.
Lines of heavy tracer fire tore up the roof behind them. Metal shredded like paper.
"Faster!" Amani screamed.
They reached the gap between the cars. They jumped down onto the coupling platform—a small, exposed grate between the two massive carriages.
"Chacha! The pin!" Amani pointed to the massive steel pin holding the cars together.
Chacha grabbed the release lever. "It's frozen stuck!"
"Hit it!"
Chacha swung his hammer. CLANG. The ice shattered, but the lever didn't budge.
"It's rusted!" Chacha yelled. "I need more leverage!"
The Gunship hovered directly overhead. It was massive, blocking out the sky. Its belly-cannons began to spin, aiming directly at the gap where the Pack was trapped.
"TARGET LOCKED. GOODBYE, REBELS."
"Bahati! Detonate Car 10!" Amani yelled.
"I can't!" Bahati screamed. "We're still attached! If I blow it now, the shockwave will derail us too!"
"We have to separate!" Amani looked at the coupling.
Darius stepped forward. He looked at the rusted pin. He looked at the Gunship above.
"Chacha, move," Darius said.
Darius placed his hand on the massive steel pin.
He didn't use a spell. He didn't use a shadow.
His arm muscles bulged. Veins of purple light appeared under his skin, glowing through the fabric of his cloak.
He pulled.
It was impossible. That pin was rated for fifty tons of tension. It should have required a hydraulic press to remove.
But Darius pulled it out like a toothpick.
SNAP.
The coupling disengaged.
Car 10—the Munitions Car—began to drift away from them, slowing down on the tracks.
"Bahati! NOW!" Amani screamed.
Bahati aimed his gauntlet at the receding car. He sent a remote signal to the detonators inside the crates.
"Boom."
The Ice Flower
The explosion was silent for a split second, sucking the air out of the valley.
Then, Car 10 erupted.
It wasn't a fire explosion. It was a Cryo-Nova. A massive sphere of expanding blue ice vaporized the car instantly. The shockwave shot upward, straight into the belly of the hovering Gunship.
The Gunship didn't stand a chance. The expanding ice froze its thrusters instantly. The fuel in its tanks turned to solid gel.
The massive aircraft fell out of the sky like a stone.
CRASH.
It slammed into the glacier wall, shattering into a million frozen pieces. The remaining skiffs, caught in the turbulence, scattered like frightened birds.
The Aftermath
The Iron Lung—now one car shorter—continued to chug down the tracks, picking up speed again as the drag from the heavy munitions car was gone.
The Pack huddled on the rear platform of Car 11, breathing hard.
"We... we got him," Upepo panted, leaning against the door. "We actually got him."
Chacha looked at the massive steel pin lying on the floor. It was twisted like a pretzel.
He looked at Darius.
"Uncle," Chacha said, his voice low. "That pin weighs four hundred pounds. And it was under tension."
Darius was leaning against the railing, his back to them. He was rubbing his arm.
"Adrenaline is a powerful thing, Chacha," Darius said, his voice raspy.
"That wasn't adrenaline," Bahati whispered, staring at the pin. "That was augmented strength. Giza-General class."
Darius turned around. His face was weary. The purple light was gone from his eyes.
"We survived," Darius said simply. "Do not question the miracle while you are still breathing."
Amani stepped between them. He saw the suspicion in Bahati's eyes. He saw the raw power Darius was hiding. But he also saw the emptiness of the Tundra around them.
"We clear the next car," Amani ordered, his voice brooking no argument. "We rest. And then... we talk."
He looked at Darius. "We talk about everything."
Darius nodded slowly. "As you wish, my King."
The Cliffhanger
As the Pack moved inside to escape the cold, Darius lingered on the platform for a moment.
He looked back at the wreckage of the Gunship burning (or rather, freezing) in the distance.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, vibrating device. It was a tracker.
It was blinking red.
Message Incoming: PRISON 42.
Sender: The Warden.
Text: "The trap is set. Let them come."
Darius crushed the tracker in his hand. He tossed the pieces into the snow.
"I am sorry, little lions," Darius whispered to the wind. "But the cage is waiting."
He turned and followed them inside.