Mytro: Nayzun

Chapter 2: London Rain

Turtle was a freshman in high school. He had spent the previous year traveling the world and eating paella in Barcelona on weekends. The winter after those adventures had been tough - lots of school work and endless boredom in his room as the weather turned - but now that school was almost over and he was about to be a sophomore, he relaxed a little bit. His grandmother was already worrying about college essays, however. He'd have to make up something life-changing to write about. He was thinking about writing about his parents. After all, he couldn't very well tell admissions officers about the thing that changed his life - the Mytro - and the girl who showed it to him, a girl named Agata.

It was raining now, heavily. The pin pricks had turned to big drops. He was approaching Oxford Circus and decided to head home. He took out his phone and brought up an app called 13. A raindrop plopped onto the screen. After typing in a four digit security code, he pressed a button marked "Find Me." In an instant directions to the nearest Mytro stop popped up. First the map pointed to the tube station entrance and then, with a swipe, showed a dotted line through the station and onto one of the platforms. Another swipe and Turtle saw a series of blurry pictures. The Mytro stop was hidden behind a small door on the main platform. He would have to be quick if he wanted to get into it without anyone seeing him.

The Mytro was a secret train system. It ran around the world instantly and it was the most amazing thing Turtle had ever seen. He first discovered it when his ex-friends Nick and Nate Kincaid showed him a Mytro stop in Central Park, in New York, and he had met his best friend, Agata when she tumbled out of a door a few minutes later. He and Agata stopped a disaster from happening in Barcelona by taking control of the Mytro for a moment, a feat that exhausted them both for almost a month, giving them a feeling like having worked out too hard while suffering from the flu.

He and Agata were now quite familiar with the Mytro. They used it to visit each other and travel the world and, most important, they had a new app that told them exactly where to go and how to find stations. It was so modern that many of the old Mytro riders - riders who met once a month at the Conductor's Guild meetings - refused to use it, depending instead on complex paper maps that had been written years before.

A secretive network of Mytro riders created the map over the past few years. When mobile phones became popular they began befgan an exhaustive - and exhausting - process of cataloging all of the Mytro stations and building new ones where they were needed. Turtle never met these secret riders - the system was huge and only a few people understood or rode the Mytro anymore - but their work was instrumental. It was, in fact, built upon the work done by Agata's father Barcelona and his assistant who studied at Oxford.

Turtle checked his Casio Pro-Trek watch. It showed the time in multiple places - New York, London, Moscow - and he saw he had plenty of time. He decided to stop for his favorite bun before he took the Mytro to school.

The bakery was near the train station. It was run by an older Middle Eastern couple - Turtle assumed they were Syrian by the flag that hung behind the counter - and they made something they called Chelsea buns. The pastries weren't terribly sweet and tasted of cinnamon and dried fruit. Turtle usually bought one before heading home. Now he turned into the shop. He took a thin paper napkin and wiped his brow - he was still sweating from the run - but he was cooling now.

The woman - an old lady with a lined face and white hair - smiled at him.

"Good to see you," she said. "Our American customer!"

Turtle smiled. "Good to see you too!" he said. She pulled a Chelsea bun out and handed it over.

"We don't have these things back home," said Turtle.

"You should try our Syrian pastry. With cheese. It's very good."

"So I'll take one Chelsea bun and one Syrian pastry then, please," he said.