Shadow Army: A Shadows Rising Novella

5. Train

Nox

Sounds of anguish and pain echoed from parts of the bunker I couldn't see.

I stared upward for a moment. I had done that. People were dying because of me.

The weird blue light still glowed along the lines of my skin. Unlike all those field tests, every last line of code embedded in my body had lit up this time, turning me into a walking torch. That power was still there. I could bring this entire place down, turn everyone in it into grease streaks in a puddle of glass. Not a single person in this facility had lifted a finger to help me, or any of the others. We were all numbers to them. 

For a moment I thought about it, but if I slagged them all I would be doing exactly what Dr. Marodian had designed me for. 

I closed my eyes and took a breath. I still had to find a way to end this.

I stepped through the gap in the accordion door.

I had only been in the vehicle hangar once. I had been strapped to the tilt-table then, unable to move or see anything but what was above me: high, vaulted stone-block ceilings, with twin lines of long orange-and-black military banners hanging from the eaves. Luxglass mirrored gaslights had been suspended from the ceiling, illuminating everything in sharp detail.

Now, the gaslights were gone, globes shattered, mirrors distorted, gas lines spewing long plumes of sickly yellow flame. The only other light came from a fire that licked along the walls of a wooden guard shack at the far end of the hangar. The shack had once been on stilts, overlooking the yawning maw of a steam engine tunnel. Now it lay in a burning heap on the tracks. There were no signs of life in or around it - if guards had been posted there, they were either dead or gone.

I took a moment to glance around, but there weren't any signs of life anywhere else, either, so I set off across the vast expanse of flagstone that formed the hangar floor, moving fast, my footsteps loud in the silence. I passed what had been a row of military bi-tracks. Only the few farthest from the door were still standing in their spaces. Most of them lay tossed against the wall, bulky frames crumpled, caterpillar treads torn to ribbons, fuel leaking along the cracks in the floor.

The main hangar exit was blocked by rubble - I could see it faintly, a press of boulders and stone slabs and dirt piled high against the metal panels of the blast door.

That left only one other option. I veered around the fallen guard tower and began running down the engine tracks, again covering more ground than I ever had during training.

I was little more than fifty yards into the tunnel when I heard the sound of a bi-track roaring to life back in the hangar.

At the same moment, a high-pitched whistle pierced the air somewhere in the depths of the tunnel ahead of me. 

Behind me, the bi-track came lumbering around the end of the tunnel, and Havier wasted no time. A shot ricocheted off of the stone wall just ahead of me, then another. 

I pushed my feet to move faster, throwing myself forward, the tracks a blur beneath my feet.  

That high-pitched whistle sounded again. I lowered my head, felt the breath in my lungs, the thunder of my heartbeat. I was flying. Hurtling along the rails. 

The roar of the oncoming steam-engine rose to blot out all other sound. 

This was it. This was the end. Breathing hard, I came to a halt. Planted my feet. 

A bright beam of light came scything around the bend just ahead of me. 

I thought of Marrin —

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Air. 

My lungs stuttered, then dragged in a breath. 

I exhaled and drew a breath again. 

A string of amber warning signals flickered in the dark. Hydraulic loss imminent. Refuel immediately. Lower left leg disconnected. Autopilot protocol unavailable. Weapons systems unavailable. Refuel immediately. Memory cortex damaged. Refuel immediately. 

I dragged in another breath, then opened my eyes.

I wasn't dead.   

The grid sprang up, flickered, fuzzed, then disappeared, only to come back in patches. I shook my head, as if that would help clear it, and strained to focus on something. Anything. 

An arch of stone gilded a warm, rosy gold by a nearby fire... 

I blinked and glanced around. I was lying half in and half out of the doorway of a service shaft. 

So was part of the steam engine. There was a crumpled piece of copper exhaust coil not a foot from my head, and beyond that lay a thick disk of black metal that could only have been the nose-plate of the boiler. 

I took another breath and let out on a groan. What was it going to take to kill me? 

Slowly, I pushed myself up into a sitting position.

The main body of the engine was farther down the rails, resting on its side. The cargo bins it had been hauling were lying in a jumble like oversized children's blocks, tossed about when the flatbeds jumped the tracks. The fire from the coal box had spread to the engineer's cabin, and what was left of the front end was burning quietly, casting light and shadows that leaped over the tunnel wall.

I closed my eyes then opened them again, but everything was still the same. I had derailed a steam engine. 

Refuel immediately. Hydraulic loss imminent. Hull integrity low. Left lower leg disconnected...  

There was no pain, and I glanced down. 

My leg wasn't just disconnected. It was gone. Torn off. My left knee ended in a wad of frayed weavings and wire, and an oily, shiny liquid had soaked the gravel beneath the stump - the source of that refuel warning. There were half a dozen cuts and rips in my hide, too, that were all slowly oozing fluid. My weird vision outlined each in a floating, jittery red line.

The rumble of an approaching bi-track had me glancing back down the rails, my breath freezing in my lungs. 

They were coming. Still. 

I couldn't be there when they arrived. 

With another groan, I began moving, pushing debris away as I shoved myself up onto my good leg. I found a length of planking long enough to lean on, and set off at an awkward, lurching run into the pitch-dark of the tunnel.     

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