by J A Raikes
My head snapped to face the front of the cabin and I yelled, “Harris! That thing is gaining on us! It’s a ways off, but I can see its eyes behind us and it's definitely going to catch up!”
Without hesitation, Harris threw a lever coming from the floor as far forward as it would go. The freighter picked up speed and I was pushed back against the wall once again. We were already going at intense speeds, but now we were shooting through the darkness with nauseating intensity, to the point that the cabin began shaking as our speed increased.
The sudden shaking jostled Eva against the side of her bench, and it took her a moment to recover. Briefly we locked eyes and I noticed concern etched on her face. She shook it off and turned to stare steel-eyed out the back window.
The glowing eyes were growing ever larger as the beast gained on us. Harris worked fiercely at the control panel, trying to get us moving quicker, but the car wasn’t fast enough to stay ahead of the creature. I called out to Harris update him as he worked the controls. Eva stood and pulled her way forward through the cabin intent on helping Harris.
Still gaining speed, the entire car began to shake violently. I'm sure that these things were never designed to be in a high speed chase versus a nightmare beast, and it was clear we were losing. Eva worked her way to the helm pulling against the force of our forward motion and had to stop every other step to hold onto something to not lose her balance. I could see she was struggling and it was frustrating that I wasn’t able to help. All I could do was let Harris know how close the Voidkin was to our position. I hated being in this chair. I felt so useless and pathetic and I hated every minute of it.
As I sat stewing over my predicament, we must have emerged from the tunnel. Just before Eva reached the cabin with Harris, a second Voidkin came out of nowhere and smashed broadside into our car.
The car faltered and swayed on the hinge that held us to the rail. Already shaking from the speed, the freighter made a sound like metal tearing and sparks flew down around the cabin, momentarily lighting up the darkness just beyond us. As the Voidkin hit the car, Eva was sent flying into the windows. Glass spewed out behind us and Eva landed on the floor with a thud. She didn’t move.
Harris was also jolted from his post. I watched Eva slam into the wall, but Harris held his footing better. He was brought to a knee, but he held onto the console and that helped to steady him. He immediately pulled himself up and continued working at the gears. He took both hands and placed them directly on the empty space of the console. For a moment I worried that he was going to pass out or something, but then a sudden flash of blue sparks left his fingertips and burrowed into the console. Renewed, the trolley took on new speeds and everyone was pulled backwards once again. Stupid inertia.
I called out to Harris, “Eva’s been hit and isn't moving!”
“Cogspit!” he snapped and then turned his head to look at me. “I can't take my hands off of the console here or we're dead in the water. Can you get to her?”
“I'm sure gonna try!” I took hold of the wheels of my chair and pushed as hard as I could against the force of the trolley moving forward. I expected there to be more pain in my arm, but surprisingly it didn't hurt much, save for a dull ache. The trolley shot through the darkness and I pushed with all of my strength to get to Eva. Every few moments, the cabin shook so hard it jostled me against the seats. I made progress, but it was slow going.
Sometimes I forget how loud everything is when you’re in motion. If you were in your car, going a few hundred miles an hour with the windows down and you have a flat tire or two and your engine is making a horrible noise, that would be deafening. This was significantly worse than that, now that the Voidkin hit us. Metal screeched as wheels clicked methodically along the rails. When Eva hit the window, it broke and the oppressive noise of rushing wind filled the cabin. Combined with the periodic shuddering of the entire freighter, it was insanely loud. To top it all off, I had no idea where the Voidkin was who hit the trolley. I glanced back to see if I could make out the features of the other creature. Sure enough, its eyes were glowing brightly several dozen yards back.
After what seemed like an eternity, I made it halfway down the cabin. Another loud screech of tearing metal ripped through the night and a new wave of sparks showered from the gears above and fell on the outside of the cabin. In the afterglow, I now saw two Voidkin keeping pace behind us by only a few yards. Trying to ignore them, I pushed myself forward to get to Eva’s unconscious body. She must have hit the wall hard to still be out. I could feel the muscles in my left arm working hard to keep up with the strain, pushing against our momentum.
Finally, I managed to get close enough to her. I wedged my chair between a bench and a pole usually used, I assume, for standing passengers and took a deep breath. I bent over and reached for her arm. Pain pooled in my back and spread out over my entire midsection. Again, it wasn't the sharp stabbing pain I had experienced earlier, but it definitely hurt. I grimaced and wrapped my good hand around Eva’s wrist and pulled with all my might. The force of the trolley helped a little and in a moment, her head and torso were slung over my lap. I heaved her to the side and managed to get most of her body onto the bench beside me. I grabbed her legs and swung those onto the bench as well. With her in place, I moved my chair beside her to act as a barrier so she wouldn't go flying off anywhere in the event something else happened.
“How much further? Can you tell?” I called out to Harris.
“No way to know for sure,” he called back, never taking his eyes off the window in front of him. “We were coming from the far reaches and it's usually several hours to get to the Emberhollow. But usually that’s with stops in all the other Wards along the way and any number of other delays.”
“Well, crap.” The words left my lips like poison. I shouted back, “I’ve got Eva here on a bench and I'm blocking her in. She doesn't look too bad from the outside considering the hit she took and she is definitely breathing, but otherwise she isn't moving.” I wheeled my chair in front of her midsection to help block her into the seat in case the cabin shook.
“There's not much else we can do until we get to Central!” Harris yelled over the noise. Sparks periodically leapt from his hands to the console and the trolley pushed faster and faster with each passing moment.
“I don't know what you're doing, but the faster we get there, the better! Those things are still out there and we can't take another hit like that,” I said, looking out the back window. The blue glow of the Voidkin still menacingly maintained an uncomfortable close distance.
“I’m doing everything I can!” Harris called out, as sweat beaded down his forehead and darkened his shirt.
“Just out of curiosity,” I shouted while investigating Eva’s head for any sign of bruising or swelling, “is it normal that there aren’t any other trains on this rail? Seems to me like we should have seen a few by now.”
“Good question. I don’t really want to think about catching up to another freighter.”
“Will you be able to stop us when we reach the station?” I asked.
“We’d better hope so! We’re going way too fast for normal brakes. If I were to stop us now we’d snap right off the rail and plummet a couple hundred feet!” He squinted and it seemed to me like he was trying to see ahead, even though none of the light from the trolley made an impact on the impenetrable darkness.
I tried not to think about if we made it to the station or met up with another car on the tracks what might happen to us, so I busied myself with trying to see if Eva had really hit her head. I moved her red hair gently until I spotted a small bruise forming under the skin, right behind her right ear. It was only a little swollen, but I knew from experience that even a little swelling on the head can lead to some serious complications. I needed to relieve the pressure so it didn’t cause any substantial damage.
“Harris, you got anything to help with swelling?”
“Nah, sorry!” He called back. “But Eva usually has somethi
ng like that on her. She uses a multitool at work.”
I searched her pockets and sure enough, clipped to the hem of her left front pocket was a small tool. I slid it from her pocket and tried to open it. When I heard “multitool” I assumed it was one of those combination pliers, screwdriver, knife tool thing that mechanics and the like keep on them. This was not that tool. Naturally. Why would anything in this place be normal?
Instead, this contraption was a solid piece of metal about 4 inches long and 2 inches wide. It had a button on one end that when pressed, extended a prong out one end of the device. It looked a little like one of those pokey meat forks with just the two big prongs that’s useful for getting meat on and off the grill. Between the two prongs, though, there was a beam of blue electricity. It reminded me a little bit of a taser or somesuch.
“Uhh, I don't think this’ll work,” I said, turning the multitool over in my hand.
“Then it'll have to wait!” Harris called. “I think we’re coming up on the entrance to Central now! You’d better hang onto something. I don't know how fast we’re going to stop!”
Before we started slowing, a third Voidkin came out of nowhere and slammed into the side of our cart. I had just enough time to grab ahold of one of the poles before I got tossed to the side. The force of the collision made a tremendous crashing sound - adding shattering windows, wood cracking and more metal tearing to an already overwhelmingly loud and tense situation. I was able to keep hold for a moment and in turn, keep Eva from flying off her seat. Harris was jolted from his post and went slamming into the wall next to him. He didn't hit the wall as hard as Eva had earlier and thankfully, got up quickly. As soon as his hands left the console, though, the train started slowing down so violently it began shook and twisted in the air.
Harris tried to regain his footing and put his hands back on the gears but it was too late. Every second that passed, more metal was sheared away from the cart. A moment later, there was a horrid snapping sound and the rail that held our trusty little car snapped in half and our car flew off the tracks at terrifying speed toward the abyss below.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I threw my body over top of Eva as best I was able and held tightly to the poles next to us. Unnerving quiet filled the train as it left the track and my stomach lurched as we settled into a free fall.
The freighter smashed into the ground and sent Harris flying again. I barely hung on and grabbed Eva to keep from falling off the bench. With a horrid screech, the tram sailed for several hundred feet along the floor, smashing into object after object I couldn’t see but heard before finally slowing to a stop. Fortunately we didn’t smash into anything large or we wouldn’t have walked out of there alive.
I heard coughing from where Harris had been and it took me a moment before I could move once the dust settled. Harris coughed again, spit up something and then stood to his feet. He was bleeding down one arm and his clothes were torn all over. I sat up and uncovered Eva, and looked down to see that she was okay and breathed a sigh of relief. Harris stumbled over, stabilizing himself against the wall.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
“Mmnn,” he replied, nodding his head as he did so. He rubbed his face and shook his head, clearing the haze.
“We were close to the station. I think we landed just inside the station door. Otherwise we would’ve fallen a lot further and we’d all probably look more like you did several weeks ago.”
“Just what I needed, another lesson on the reality of gravity,” I said.
“Yeah, well, let’s get Eva and see if we can get to the council. We need to get there pretty much yesterday.”
I nodded and lifted Eva from the bench. She was limp but also small, so it wasn’t much trouble for me, even with a busted arm and back.
Harris came over and scooped her up and held her cradled in his arms. He wasn’t a tall man, but he was well built and Eva looked like a child in his arms.
“Can you take care of yourself?” he asked.
“I should be okay. As long as I can get out the door and onto the ground, I should be fine to wheel myself. I don’t know what you did to me back in the Barrow, but I feel a hundred times better.”
Harris grunted and set Eva down gently on a bench near the door. We spent a few moments navigating the wreckage to get me and the wheelchair out of the cabin and then he went back, grabbed Eva and we pressed on into the darkness.
By now, I was getting used to how dark it was. There had been dim light in the cabin of the trolley and in the Barrow but the darkness seemed to have settled on the entire city and it was almost as though nighttime never wanted to give up. The unsettling thing about the darkness, though, was that we couldn’t see if something was coming for us. Three Voidkin had been chasing after us for some time and I couldn’t imagine they were giving up just as our train derailed. Although, then again, I have no idea why they were chasing us. It seemed as though the people in the Barrow had gotten there just fine without anything chasing them. Did we accidentally lure that creature down to the depths and get those people killed? And what about the staff from Dr. Fleming’s house? Ms. Weatherby wasn’t in the Barrow when we got there, which hopefully meant she wasn’t attacked like those poor people, but it also doesn’t solve where she or any others would’ve gone. We seemed to have all the luck of a gambling addict hoping for another big score at the casino. All the right choices, all the wrong results. I just had so many questions and no answers for anything.
As I worked through these issues, Harris slowly led us through the darkened corridors of the train depot. What I could make out of the depot, it seemed pretty grandiose but very old. There were wooden benches spaced periodically and large pillars made of burnished metal. Given that we were stumbling around in the darkness, that’s just about all I could make out.
The further into the station we got, the more something just felt completely off. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Don’t get me wrong, I was pleased that for the time being, the Voidkin weren’t chasing us and we gradually were getting closer to our destination. Hopefully, Dr. Fleming would be able to fix me up and help his daughter too. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone or something was out there waiting to nab us.
We entered a hallway with stairs leading up out of the train depot itself and made our way past the entry gate. Harris looked at me and my chair and then sighed heavily.
“There should be a lift somewhere which will get us upstairs to the landing bay. That should allow us to get to the thoroughfare and then to the lifts heading to the top levels of Central. The Proterezar chambers are in the penthouse of the Ward.” Harris said. He shrugged his shoulders slightly and tilted his head, clearly getting sore from carrying Eva and the crash earlier. Blood still pulsed periodically from his arm, but he seemed to manage alright.
“I’ll follow you,” I replied, turning my chair and pushing myself behind him as he looked for the lift. We found it and made our way to the main level of the depot. There was an eerie stillness about the entire place. The darkness felt thicker up here than it did down in the tunnels and the hair on the back of my neck began to stand on edge.
“Harris, something feels off,” I said quietly in the darkness.
“Yeah, I don’t like it either,” he replied, gathering Eva closer to himself and moving a little bit quicker than he had a moment earlier.
“Do you know where to go?” I asked
“Most of the Wards are built similarly. They may have different layouts but they all generally build the vertical ascension the same. Once we get out of the train depot, we should be on the main road on this level and then the lifts should be about three blocks down the road. As long as there is still power, we should be ok. I just don’t want to linger out in the open any longer than necessary. Hopefully the Voidkin got distracted with our crash and we can sneak through here.”
“Well, I’m feeling okay, so if you want to hustle, I say we do it.”
“Alright then, follow c
lose and try not to get cut off,” Harris replied.
He peered left and right, checking for Voidkin and then quickly marched out the large glass door entryway of the train depot.
I pushed my chair closely behind Harris trying to avoid accidentally tripping him and did my best to not get distracted. It was difficult though, considering the sheer size of the city. In the dark, I could see the outlines of massive buildings lining the road on either side. The road itself was wide and made of cobblestone, but looked more like a six lane boulevard back home. It was completely empty of all life though, and that made the size all the more daunting.
Harris walked as fast as he could without jostling Eva and I was pushed alongside him, keeping a wary eye out for any glowing blue eyes that might be following us. So far, thankfully, there were none.
We passed a side street that led into pitch darkness and continued forward. All along the boulevard, vacant storefronts and businesses reinforced my fear and I was barely able to hold it together as we pushed on. I opened my mouth to ask Harris how close we were when a dim light popped through the darkness and a door clicked open next to us.
“What’re you kids doing out there!” an older woman hissed in our direction.
“We have to get to Central,” Harris replied without looking over.
“It isn’t safe out there! You need to get inside!” She called back through a hoarse whisper.
“Just shut the door, ma’am and stay inside,” Harris calmly replied, his deep voice quiet but confident and never taking his eyes off course.
The woman scowled at us and then shut her door quietly and flicked off the lights again. We kept moving quickly through the street as quietly as possible.
A moment later, Harris leaned over to me and whispered, “There! The lift is just up ahead. Come on!”
He took off at a jog and I pushed to keep up with him. We made it to the elevator and pressed the button to call it. The door to the elevator had a beautiful intricate design that looked like that of an old elevator from the early 1900s. Brass and silver squares with impressions on them of geometric shapes lined the metal doors and a small light above the door showed that the lift was currently up on the 87th floor. It wasn’t a fast-moving lift but it seemed that shouldn't take more than a few moments for it to come.
