by Stone, J.
Fiona welcomed Mayor Thaddeus Bowden to her collection as well. He was a coward and a shill for the Cultwick Empire - someone they could trust to do as they instructed, someone who wouldn’t stand up to them and most importantly someone who feared them. The still present mind of Benjamin Nettles found the inclusion of the two corpsmen and the mayor to be a beginning to the justice he felt his family deserved.
Having partially satisfied a base desire in her horde of a mind, Fiona moved backward to a memory of her own childhood. Her older brother, Warren, always walked her to their school in the mornings. They walked along the railway tracks, which served as a barrier between the poor and middle class neighborhoods.
Fiona had never known her brother to be a kind individual. He had teased her as long as she had known him. One particular morning, Warren was balancing on the rails as they walked to school. Behind them came a loud, shrill whistle signaling the coming of a train. This was neither unusual nor unexpected, as there was a train that would pass them every morning.
On this day, however, the noise startled Warren, causing him to slip on the slick metal of the railing. One of his feet slid through the mound of gravel and underneath the rail, pinning him there. The back of his head landed with a thud on the opposite rail, and he was momentarily disoriented.
After he regained his senses, he yelled out to his sister, “Fiona! Help me up!”
She approached her brother but hesitated, when she thought about all he had done to her in their short lives. All the mean names. The destruction of her toys. The pokes, prods, and pinches she had suffered. She thought of these things and instead of helping him, she simply stood her ground and waited for the train.
“What are you doing?” he asked, when she stopped. “You need to help me!”
Warren looked back and forth between her and the train, as it steadily approached. Fiona stared at him emotionlessly, while the train released another louder, closer blast of its whistle. He struggled to release his foot from under the railing, but it was lodged too well, and his energy and coordination were lacking from the bump to the head.
“Fiona!” he continued more desperately. “Please! Help me!”
She was splashed with his blood, as the train collided with her brother. Fiona arrived at school a few minutes late that day still covered in the gore from what she described as an accident.
Fiona switched her mind’s vision to witness Lyle Harris strangle his brother, Clint, in the kitchen of his home. Nearby on the floor lay Clint’s wife, Ellen, bleeding from several bites and slashes.
Despite his broken legs, Lyle’s corpse had managed to crawl all the way to Chrome City and break into their home. After assaulting Ellen, Lyle attacked his brother and somehow brought him to the ground, where the ghoul strangled the life from his kin.
While Lyle killed his brother, Fiona searched through his mind for a possible motivation. When Lyle and Clint were still young, they were both attracted to the same woman, Ellen. Ultimately, she chose Clint, and Lyle had harbored a seething hatred for both his brother and his bride long after their marriage. The two had not spoken, since the vows were exchanged.
Ellen and Clint both soon joined Lyle inside Fiona’s consciousness. Instead of moving to another memory of one of her pasts or to the present of one of her ghoulish pets, her mind moved forward to her future. She was in Cultwick City surrounded by legions of her pets. Her collection had grown exponentially, and she was purging the city of the empire’s presence.
Buildings burned in the dark night, soldiers battled her minions in vain, and in the middle of a large garden in the sky, Erynn stood as a gleaming beacon. She beckoned her toward her, as a white-hot flare among the soot, grime, and filth of Cultwick City. Her mind became more and more disjointed the closer she got to Erynn, but regardless she was drawn to her.
In a sweat, Fiona awoke to find herself in the musty storage room on the Dreadnought Prime. She tried to recall what she had been dreaming about, but the harder she tried, the further the dream was from her grasp. Deciding the effort to be futile, Fiona shrugged her shoulders and went back to sleep.
Chapter 27. Vincent the Anti-Hero
“Identification?” the conductor asked.
Vincent handed over the three identification papers, one each for himself, Pearl, and Lucy. The man looked at the documents for a moment and then looked up at Vincent’s party.
“The Cultwick Transit Commission thanks you for your patronage,” the conductor said. “Enjoy the ride.”
He moved to the side, allowing the three of them to board the train, entering the passenger car of the vehicle. Vincent walked through the center aisle, until he arrived at the seats they had bought. They entered the small cabin room, placing their bags on the chair. Once they had all entered, Pearl slid the doors shut behind them.
“Alright, let’s get ready,” Vincent said to the others.
Pearl and Lucy both unclasped and flipped open the suitcases they had brought on board. Inside Pearl’s case were the contraptions Erynn had prepared for the train heist. Lucy’s case contained their weapons - Erynn’s rifle, the shotgun she built for Pearl, Vincent’s rifle and revolver, and Lucy’s brace of pistols. The two rifles and shotguns were in pieces and needed to be reassembled.
Pearl began piecing her shotgun back together, while Vincent did the same with his rifle. Lucy took off her long coat and placed both of her pistols in their corresponding holsters. Vincent finished putting together the rifle and picked up his revolver, putting it in his holster underneath his duster. Lastly, Pearl rebuilt the shotgun, picked up Erynn’s rifle, and began piecing it back together.
“Do we know which car your girl is in?” Lucy asked Vincent.
“I can make an educated guess,” he explained. “According to the ledger, the shipment will include two cars of chromite, a dining car, three passenger cars, a government car, the medical car, a car reserved for military or corps purposes, a security car, and a prison transport... in addition to the engine.”
“So where’s the prison car?” she asked.
“Well, that’s where we have a problem, sweetheart,” he began. “Instead of the original plan of just going through the passenger cars and the security car before unlatching the med car, we now have to make our way through whatever is in the corpsmen car just to get into the prison car.”
“You always did keep things interesting,” Lucy said sarcastically.
Outside he heard a conductor yell for any last passengers. A few minutes passed and the train let forth a loud whistle and began moving forward. It slowly built up momentum, as they were on their way to Cultwick City.
“You about ready there, Pearl?” Vincent asked.
Pearl had finished piecing back together the rifle and slung it over her shoulder. “Just now,” she said picking her shotgun up and loading a pair of shells into the chamber.
“We’re in the middle passenger car,” Vincent continued. “We’ll need to go forward through the next one. From there you both will need to watch my back as I break through whatever security is on the corps car.”
He picked up the contraptions that Erynn had built for the job and loaded them into his belt. Vincent slid the door back open and looked out for any passengers or train personnel roaming the halls. When he saw no one they exited their room and quickly made for the front of the car. They passed by a series of rooms, inside of which the passengers were unloading their bags and otherwise getting situated for the ride.
They reached the door between cars that led outside and found it to be unlocked, and they continued onto the next passenger car. Again, this car’s hallway was empty, so they went through it and out between the final passenger car and the military car.
Gently and quietly, Vincent tried the handle as the wind rushed violently past them. The door was locked, but Vincent had expected this much and came prepared. One of the contraptions Erynn had created would be able to circumvent the locking mechanism in the door.
He pulled a
circular coin-looking object from his belt, placing it just above the door’s lever. Clicking a switch on the flat surface of the device, a light changed from red to green. Small, blue flames burned on the backside of the device, creating holes in the door. Little wires and cords crept out of the device after the fires were extinguished.
There was the soft sound of metal scraping and moving around inside the door, before the lock was undone. Vincent tried the handle again and was able to open it. He pulled the device off the outside of the door, stuffing it back into his belt, and made his way inside the corpsmen car, followed by Pearl and Lucy. They found themselves occupying a very small storage room, stocked with ammunitions, armaments, and various incendiary devices.
“Ooh,” Lucy exclaimed. “We just hit the fucking jackpot, honey.”
Lucy began picking through the boxes, as Vincent looked through a window in the door that led into the main area of the railcar. There were roughly a dozen men sitting around lazily in Cultwick Corps uniforms, playing cards, drinking, and otherwise wasting time until they arrived at the destination. None of them had their helmets on, and some of them weren’t even wearing their armor.
“You find anything we can use?” Vincent asked. “There’s a few too many for us to take in a fair fight.”
“Few smoke grenades here,” Lucy answered and after a moment continued, “Wait. This is all fucking worthless. It all requires a biometric key to use any of this stuff. This shit is corps only.”
Pearl asked, “What about some of that stuff Ryn made?”
“There’s probably something we can use,” he said.
Vincent pulled out the spherical toy walkers that Erynn had loaded with smoke gas and placed them on the floor. He then retrieved a small tubular respirator from his belt, and placing it in his mouth, bit down on the device. He slowly opened the door, turned the knobs on the toys, and sat them down on the floor of the railcar, as their legs began to propel them forward into the room.
“You both stay here,” he said to Lucy and Pearl. “I’ll take care of this.”
He entered the room and closed the door back behind him. He switched his eye-patch to a different setting that would allow him to see through the smoke once it was released. Vincent hid behind a crate, as the walkers stopped moving and a thick, green gas exploded from their backs.
The corpsmen quickly noticed the smoke, but without their masks and respirators on, they quickly succumbed to the knockout gas in the toys. One by one, the men fell to the railcar floor. Once the entire group was out, Vincent went to the wall of windows and began lifting them up to let the smoke out of the railcar.
After he had opened up both sides, the air began to quickly clear. The high speed of the train caused the wind to rush noisily past, pulling the smoke out from the car. A few minutes passed and the gas had cleared, so he decided to retrieve Lucy and Pearl.
Opening the door to the small storage area he said, “Should be clear now.”
He stored his breathing device back in a pouch on his belt and turned back toward the prison car. When he arrived there, he slid the lock open on the door leading outside between cars and carefully looked through the glass to the prison unit. Inside were a series of barred cells that were mostly empty. Erynn was inside a cell on the far side of the car, but it didn’t look like anyone was bothering to guard her.
Vincent waited for Pearl and Lucy to catch up to him, and then went inside the prison unit. He looked around the room with his revolver still drawn, in case he had missed something. There were no additional surprises inside the railcar, though.
He gave a signal to Pearl and Lucy that they could come inside, and so they did. Pearl spotted Erynn and ran over to her. She appeared to be unconscious though. Meanwhile Vincent holstered his weapon and pulled out from his belt a key-like device.
He walked over to where Erynn was being kept and slid the device into the hole. Twisting a knob on the end of the shaft, it made a whirring sound, and almost immediately, the lock fell to the floor. He swung open the cage, as Pearl rushed inside to Erynn.
Pearl dropped to the floor, picked her up, and placed Erynn’s head in her lap.
“Kitten?” she asked hopefully.
When there was no response, she said, “Ryn, honey. Ya need to wake up.”
Again, Erynn didn’t respond, so Vincent rummaged through a pouch hanging from his belt. He pulled out a small capsule that was half-white and half-black.
“Here,” he said and then threw it to Pearl. When she caught it he continued, “Twist the ends in opposite directions under her nose. It’ll make a terrible stench. If she doesn’t wake to that, she ain’t waking.”
She nodded and did as he instructed, twisting the capsule. The aroma was so bad that Vincent could smell it even outside the cell. Erynn gasped as she woke up to the stench. She immediately covered her nose instinctively and sat upright.
“Who smells awful?” she asked looking from Pearl to Vincent.
“Hey, kitten,” Pearl said softly to Erynn. “Ya okay?”
“Pearl,” Erynn simply replied smiling. She placed her hand on Pearl’s cheek and continued, “I’m alright. It’s good to see you again.”
“Clover,” Vincent said, nodding his hat. “I know you were eager to get on board, but I’m not sure this was the best way.”
“All part of my master plan that I make up as I--” she stopped and looked at Lucy. “You! What is she doing here?” she asked Vincent.
“You two have met?” he asked looking between Erynn and Lucy for an answer.
“She’s the reason I’m here!” Erynn shouted. “Caught me and handed me over to the sheriff.”
“No hard feelings, honey,” Lucy said. “It was all just business.”
“So why the hell is she here, Vincent?” Erynn repeated.
“You were indisposed, and we needed help,” he answered.
“But why her?” she asked again.
Pearl laughed and told her, “Yer gonna like this part, kitten.”
Vincent scowled at Pearl and said, “She’s my wife.”
“Oh, well, that just figures,” Erynn said. “I’m so damn lucky that I get the only husband-wife bounty hunter team on my trail.”
“There’s that Clover luck fer ya,” Pearl noted.
“We’re separated,” Vincent said. “Let’s just get back to it.”
“What did they do to ya?” Pearl asked pulling the rifle strap off her shoulder.
“Just tried to get some information out of me,” Erynn answered taking the rifle from Pearl. “I’m fine though. Like Vincent said, we should focus on the job.”
Pearl noted a mark on Erynn’s hand as she took the rifle, however, and asked, “What is that?”
“Heretic’s mark,” she answered. “It’s not a big deal. Let’s go.”
Erynn groaned in pain, as she stood from the prison floor. Vincent began to lead them back through the prison car towards the corpsmen car, when Erynn stopped.
“You guys go on ahead,” she said. “I’ve got to go take care of something.”
“We don’t really have time for ‘something,’” Vincent told her.
“Just go,” she said. “I’m not leaving yet. Get through the security car. I’ll meet you when I’m finished.
“Fine. Do whatever you want, Clover,” Vincent instructed. “But don’t have any misconceptions. All I’m interested in are those medical supplies. You’re on your own from here.”
“Noted,” she smugly replied.
Vincent continued through the car, with Pearl and Lucy trailing behind him, leaving Erynn. He led them back through the security and passenger cars with no additional confrontations. The dining car was their next stop, however, and it was crowded with wait staff and many of the passengers were sitting down to eat.
Rather than try to deal with them quietly, Vincent simply fired his pistol in the air and shouted, “Everybody back to your rooms!”
The crowd of people ran past Vincent and the others on the way
back to the passenger cars. The wait staff made themselves scarce, and the bounty hunter led Pearl and Lucy to the next car.
The next railcar consisted of a group of security personnel, charged with protecting the chromite and medical supplies being carried by the train. Between the two cars, they paused while Vincent looked through the window to see what lay in wait for them. He could see several guards seated on benches along the walls of the railcar. He again placed the apparatus Erynn had created for opening doors above the lock, as it went to work. If Erynn’s electricity device worked, he thought, this would be rather easy.
Chapter 28. Alice the Zealot
Alice sat reading a newspaper in the empire’s private railcar, while Edwin paced back and forth through the room. Their train wasn’t scheduled to arrive in Cultwick City for another hour, so they had some time to spare.
She skimmed through the paper until finding a story about a new discovery from the Center for Empirical Research that could prove to be quite useful. A group of scientists had found a link between certain brain activity and disobedient behavior. They had detailed their results from the brain scans of over a dozen captured rebels, heretics, and other anti-Cultwick individuals.
Perhaps Ms. Clover’s brain would be donated to their research after the execution, she thought. Certainly, they would want her mostly intact by the time they presented her to the council. She was thankful that Edwin had such clever methods of interrogation.
When they arrived in Cultwick City, Erynn would be taken away in preparation for the trial. The council would oversee the entire proceeding before undoubtedly finding her guilty of the crime of heresy. She would be sentenced to death and publicly executed by a genetically engineered poison cocktail.
Edwin said, “You should’ve delayed this trip for another day. We could’ve found out more about the rebellion and their plan.”
