The Cat and the Wolves

“We need to get in front of them,” Enfie said. “Get the magi further down the train than we are. Then we decouple their car and leave them on the tracks.”

Mayfly didn’t quite know what she’d been hoping for, but it was definitely something…else. Enfie made it sound like they could just ask Foste politely to let them by. “But they’re in front of us. How do we get all these people past them?”

“There’s a technoscape coming up. We’ll slow down while we pass over it, which won’t take too long, but should be enough time for me to herd everyone towards the front while you…uh…”

“While I what?”

“Lead them down the roof.”

Mayfly looked up at the ceiling and tried to think of an appropriate word for the idea that wasn’t just: ‘scary.’ “Okay. Okay, yeah. I can do that.”

“Are you sure? We’ll slow down, but not terribly. And you’ll have to make sure you’re close enough to get back onto our side when I detach the car.”

“I can do it. I can.”

Enfie still seemed hesitant, but another shaking of the train, and the shared realization that the gunshots were cracking off less frequently, was enough to convince her. “I wish I had more time to argue with you,” she said, standing. “But I suppose the nagging will have to wait. Let’s go.”

Together they struck back out into the aisle, last in line now that the crowd had passed them. The passage door had shut again, and Mayfly couldn’t see into the next car, only guess how much time they had.

When they’d made it about halfway, Enfie stopped them. “Here,” she said. She placed a boot on the armrests of the seats on either side of the aisle, and stood up close to the ceiling. Above her was a square panel with a little pad of numbers next to it, which she didn’t bother with. “Need the codes to open this. Conventionally.”

She tied the sleeves of her duster around her waist, revealing the matte red metal of her prosthetic arm. All along its sleek length were a network of seams, and the joint at the elbow was a disc, rather than a ball. With a flick, a panel on the knife-edge of her forearm popped out, containing a thin nozzle that she slid up to be parallel with her hand.

“What’s that?” Mayfly asked.

“A very aggressive excavation tool.”

Slowly, slightly, she curled her fingers in, and the tip of the nozzle grew bright, then brighter, and brighter. When she had made thereabouts a claw, a light burst forth as a cherry beam no thicker than a finger. She held her hand up to the panel, and where light touched metal there was a sharp hissing sound, a burst of sparks, and then it dug in. She closed a fist, and the beam grew from its deep red color to a pink more vibrant than the wild lights in Flytrap. The metal hissed louder, whitened, even dripped to the floor like syrup where it steamed and spat and eventually cooled into little gray buttons.

The people closest to them stopped, muttering confusedly to each other, even to Enfie, but no one tried to stop her. Enfie’s tongue slipped out between her lips and held there in concentration. She dragged the beam along the panel’s edges, until at last she’d made the full circuit.

The panel dropped to the floor with a crash, and the wind rushed in through the new skylight. Enfie opened her hand and the beam fizzled out, before she popped the panel back into her arm. Hopping down, she ushered everyone away from the opening.

“Back up! Keep moving!” she called, giving Mayfly a nod. “Good luck up there.”

“You too. Uh—down here, I mean.”

Bouncing up off the armrests, Mayfly got a grip on the roof just in time to spot guards rush into the car.

No, not guards, just Foste and the scarred man in their uniforms. “Don’t you fucking dare!” he roared, face twisted with naked rage.

Foste raised his rifle and took a shot at her that pinged off of the ceiling and into the wall, sending a wave of fearful shouting through the crowd. The scarred man took aim as well, but before he could fire, she pulled herself up out of the car, and rolled onto the roof.

She almost didn’t notice how dead the world looked.

Endless ruddy earth, dry and cracked, broken by nothing but scattered rock formations and the iron rails carrying their train towards the horizon.

And the technoscape.

At first it just looked like a distant, gray smear, maybe the outline of a town like Flyrap, maybe a hunk of the malformed sky fallen to the dirt. But as they came closer, she saw that it wasn’t a smear, it was a span—and a mighty one at that. It must have been a dozen miles wide, and long enough that she couldn’t yet see the other end. Metal trees stretched high, their wiry canopies interlinked randomly into a patchy silver net. Beneath that there was only the indecipherable blur of gray foliage. In the light of the shattered eclipse, there was hardly a glint.

Movement below, Mayfly got to her feet. The wind was fast and harsh, it whipped at her cloak and her hair, and whistled faintly where it kissed her metal skin. But it wasn’t cold, and it didn’t move her. She cut through it like a knife, hopping the opening and making for the backmost cars.

The train shuddered, and over the wind she heard screams from below. Her heart sank, she whirled around, fearing she might see blood shoot up into the air.

Instead she saw Foste. He floated from the car as if raised by ropes, and stepped easily onto the roof. A moment later, the scarred man joined him the same way. Both of them looked ragged, their rifles were gone.

“I’m just about sick of this shit, girlie!” His voice carried effortlessly downwind. “Don’t know what kind of weird tech you’ve got, but I’m gonna rip it all off you with my bare hands if you don’t come over here right the fuck now!”

It would have been a lie to say his words didn’t frighten her to her core, but she had half of a plan to deliver on. She wasn’t about to let fear anchor her again.

So, she shouted the first thing that came to her mind: “Make me!”

Mama would have gasped.

Foste spat over the edge, nodded impatiently to his companion. “Alright. Make her.”

The scarred man stomped forward, but only a few paces. He raised his hands up, and for a moment nothing happened. Then she noticed his clothes blowing the wrong way. It was hard to tell at first, but the closer and longer she looked, the wind became sharper, more visible. Airy whips swirled around him, spinning, intertwining into wild gusts that he reached out and grabbed like they were fish from a river. Sneering, he reeled one back and then loosed it directly at her.

Mayfly lunged to the side as the thing went screaming past her head. The second one came faster, and she only just managed to drop before it ripped past where her chest had been and swerved off, unwinding into the air like a ball made of grass. 

Foste closed his fist into a short uppercut, and she heard the metal beneath her crunch and whine the instant before a hand-sized section of the roof split and shot up in jagged spikes. She scrambled back, and more tore up to follow her, closer and closer until she got back to her feet and dashed away.

“Where are you gonna go!” Foste shouted. A swath of roof peeled up in front of her, she side-stepped it from cleaving into her chest. “You’re running out of train!”

“Fuck this!” It was the scarred man this time, and the gravity in his voice warned her to brace herself.

Glancing back, she saw him leap forward too far for a normal man, but still not close enough to grab her. Not that he was trying. He swept both arms behind him, heaving a gust of dirt and wind up from the ground, and then swung it across the roof.

She was low when it hit her, ready as she could be, and it would have thrown her clear off the train otherwise. Instead it knocked her off her feet and sent her tumbling over the edge with a yelp. Her hand shot out, gripped the roof so tightly her fingers sunk into the metal. The momentum made a flag of her, flailing free in the wind until she slammed into the side of the train.

With her face pressed against the window, she saw the car was empty. The last passengers vanished into its forward passage.

On top, Foste and the scarred man drew closer. No time to climb up, they’d just throw her back off, or worse.

Her hand crunched the roof. She looked at herself in the glass; panicked, bloody, hair flying. All metal.

Bracing, Mayfly pulled back a fist and let fly the most graceless punch Gen had ever seen.

The window humored her and shattered anyway.

She flopped inside, rolling off the seats into the aisle. It wasn’t pretty—somewhere, the Valley strays were judging her harshly—but at least no one had been around to see it.

Beneath them the ground began a steady incline. Ahead, a long archway bridge ran over the coming technoscape. Luggage shifted in the compartments above, glass clattered along the ground. It wasn’t quiet, it wasn’t peaceful, but it was close enough to steady herself.

The solitude didn’t last. Metal screeched and split, and Foste dropped from a sizeable tear in the ceiling. With a flick, he rent another hole behind her, and the scarred man joined them.

“End of the line, girlie. Fun as this is, it doesn’t make up for the clusterfuck you just put me through. I’m still taking you apart.” Foste twisted a hand at her. Fingers of pressure skirted her face, her arms. She shook them off. He grimaced. “But maybe if you tell me how you’re doing that, I’ll make it fast. Faster, at least.”

“Please,” she begged. “Please don’t do this.”

His sigh sounded more like a frustrated growl. “Fucking spare me. There’s only one thing I hate more than a traitor,” he said, coiling his hands together. All around them were metallic cries for mercy. “A coward.”

Foste ripped his hands out to either side, and the walls burst like they’d been made of jelly. The roof tore away, tumbling in the air until it was lost. All that remained of their car was the floor, and the rows of seats. A legion of scrap hovered above, poised, and with a squeeze of his hands Foste ground them together into dozens of jagged spikes easily bigger than she was.

“Don’t be sad!” he yelled, and suddenly his anger was ravenous and gleeful. “We’re preventing a war together!”

The first spike came down fast for her chest, and the next two slammed down in quick succession just by her feet. She danced back, only to hear the wind wail sharply behind her. Ducking on instinct, a gale as thin as a blade sliced the headrests clean off the seats beside her.

The scarred man approached. He moved his arms in quick, fluid strikes, and where the edges of his hands went, whistling cuts followed. Chunks of seat tore away, narrow scratches marked the floor. She tried to match him, tried to anticipate his moves; he was fast, but she was nimble enough to keep up—at first. As he drew closer, the wind nicked her cloak, she felt its pressure as it grazed her skin, heard it sing when it struck the metal spikes and unwound.

Just when she thought to use them for cover, Foste pulled them free, raised them high and swung them down again. She managed to avoid being impaled, but the instant she split her focus, an airy blade sliced the sleeve right off her shirt. Blessedly, her arm took the hit like a champ.

Snarling, the scarred man made a spear of his hand and stabbed out. Without thinking, Mayfly lunged sidelong. Her feet met air and she might have careened right off the edge had she not grabbed onto a seat in front of her. Instead, the momentum swung her around through the next row while Foste took the brutal gust head-on and flew onto his back.

“Fuck!”

They passed onto the bridge. The sprawling silver forest yawned below them.

On the far end of the car, the passage door opened. There knelt Enfie, the floor paneling torn up around her, beam tool at the ready. There was enough urgency in her eyes for Mayfly to understand it was time to go.

Foste groaned, alive but struggling just to roll over. Only the scarred man barred her path.

The wind trilled on his fingers. Mayfly shook out her wrists, bounced on her toes. She hunched, she waited.

She pounced.

The scarred man punched forward, the gust came and Mayfly darted beneath it. The second strike went low, and she leapt onto an armrest, her balance impeccable, and then up. With no roof above, she met free wind and rose level with his head. Torquing herself almost sideways, she managed to clear him and twist back around to land on her feet.

She was running again before he even turned around.

“Come on!” Enfie shouted, reaching out.

Taking her hand felt like winning a race. Mayfly half expected another hug, but instead Enfie pulled her in so roughly she fell to her knees.

A blast of air dented the doorway. The scarred man reared on them, wind-swirled hand slashing for Enfie’s head. She turned sideface, snatched his wrist with all the speed of a peregrine and wrenched his arm aside. Her prosthetic hand snapped up, her fist closed, and the beam burst to life directly in his face.

He screamed and stumbled back clutching his other eye, now the twice-scarred man.

Enfie crouched and swung her tool through the coupling. The metal hissed. Whatever wasn’t severed quickly broke apart.

The last thick wires connecting them snapped under the strain, and the car began to fall behind. Foste was back on his feet, but too late. He leaned heavily against the seats, murder in his eyes muddled with a strange amusement. As he slowed and fell further and further behind, Mayfly prayed never to see such vicious hunger again.

***

Eventually the technoscape was a gray spec on the horizon. The track leveled out, the train closed in on a distant tower. Wind howled in the open air, broken metal ground against the rails, but the loudest sound was her own heart still raging in her ears. She wasn't ready to be calm. 

Enfie sat down beside her. Though not physically tired, Mayfly’s mind was heavy with fatigue, and she leaned against the woman with an exhausted sigh. Behind them the passengers clamored for answers, still plenty panicked themselves. There’d be time for that later.

For now, she took an unnecessary, invaluable breath.