Friction in Car Four

Why did every Authority enforcer smell like high-grade bleach and starch?

The invisible clamp around my throat tightened, squeezing the air from my windpipe as seat fourteen-B turned into my personal execution chamber. My muscles locked solid, turned to petrified wood by the gray-coated bastard standing three paces down the aisle. He had his eyes locked on the bridge of my nose, radiating that suffocating, bureaucratic stillness that made my teeth ache.

If I did not shake his telepathic hold within five seconds, my heart would stop pumping blood to my brain.

Worse, he would take my canvas rucksack.

Three military-grade biological power cells sat packed in the bottom beneath a layer of salted mutton and spare bootlaces. If the Central Steppe Authority seized those cells, my clan back in the high frost-valleys would freeze before the winter solstice.

I stopped fighting his grip with brute muscle. You do not push against a granite wall; you melt the mortar between the stones.

I drew on the fat reserves along my ribs, dropping my core metabolic brake. The bio-electric glands in my palms ignited with a wet, sharp snap. A surge of white-hot plasma tore through my skin, blistering the synthetic vinyl behind my head and setting my frayed woolen sleeves on fire.

The enforcer’s mental spike shattered against the thermal burst.

He staggered back half a step, a choked grunt rattling in his throat. His regulation cap slipped a fraction of an inch over his forehead.

Through the broken psychic link, his mind recoiled like a burned hand. But the connection did not snap cleanly. It frayed into a screaming braid of mental static.

A wave of icy, orderly discipline slammed directly into my chest, tasting like mint and frozen iron. At the same instant, my feverish adrenaline dumped straight into his nervous system. I felt his pulse spike, violent and uninvited, hammering against the back of my own ribs.

My skin prickled with electric heat. It felt terrifyingly intimate, like having someone’s fingers buried inside my marrow.

Get out of my skull, Hound, I snarled silently.

I did not waste time admiring the charred hem of his immaculate coat. I whipped my right arm downward, driving a jet of blue plasma straight into the brass floor runners beneath our feet.

The conductive metal screeched. Sparks showered the aisle in a blinding white rooster-tail, ear-splitting and hot enough to vaporize the rubber seals along the floor.

The electric feedback tore through the cabin’s grounded wiring, overloading the overhead fluorescent fixtures with a cascade of sharp pops. The lights went dead, plunging Car Four into the gloom of the alpine twilight rushing past the viewports.

The enforcer threw an arm over his face to shield his eyes from the glare. His mental focus fractured for half a heartbeat.

That half-heartbeat was all I needed.

I hooked my fingers into the canvas strap of my rucksack, hauled thirty pounds of dead weight against my hip, and charged down the darkened aisle.

Sedated passengers slumped in their seats on either side, entirely limp, completely oblivious to the ozone stench filling the cabin. I hurdled an outstretched boot, vaulted over an open surveyor’s satchel, and slammed my shoulder against the pneumatic partition leading to Car Five.

The automated door refused to budge. The localized surge had fried its electronic relays.

Behind me, heavy bootsteps struck the deck runners with terrifying precision.

\"Step away from the bulkhead, Sretkov,\" his voice cut through the dark, cold and utterly unhurried.

He was already recovering. The man was built like an iron stove, unrelenting and stubborn enough to cite administrative codes while his cuffs were on fire.

\"Not today, Warden,\" I yelled back.

I pressed both palms flat against the steel locking mechanism of the door.

Heat flared in my chest, draining another heavy slice of my lipid reserves. My hands glowed cherry-red, then blinding blue-white. The heavy steel latches hissed, turned to slag, and bubbled down the doorframe in molten droplets.

I kicked the glowing plate with the heel of my heavy boot.

The partition gave way with a deafening groan, swinging outward into the freezing void between the train cars.

I tumbled through into the coupling gangway.

Sub-zero mountain air hit me like a slap across the mouth. Wind screamed through the unshielded accordion baffles, whipping snow across the steel grate under my boots. Below the grating, the dark blur of track ties raced past at eighty miles an hour, suspended hundreds of feet above a jagged ravine.

The cold was brutal. For a plasma-witch, sudden freezing temperatures were poison. The ambient chill began leeching my stored heat immediately, turning my fingertips numb.

I scrambled toward the reinforced hatch of Car Five, reaching for the mechanical latch.

A wall of invisible force slammed into my back.

I crashed against the outer railing, the breath knocked violently from my lungs. The canvas rucksack slipped from my shoulder, dangling over the open abyss by a single frayed strap.

My heart seized. \"No!\"

I lunged, catching the strap with my left hand just before gravity claimed my clan’s lifeline.

Before I could haul the pack back onto the grating, the enforcer stepped through the ruined doorway of Car Four.

His charcoal wool coat was torn at the lapel, singed black along the hem, and dusted with soot. A thin line of blood ran from his left nostril where the psychic backlash had ruptured a capillary. Yet his posture remained as rigid as a parade-ground sentinel.

\"End of the line,\" he said, his voice carrying over the roar of the alpine gale.

He did not lunge for the bag. Instead, he stepped between me and the entrance to Car Five, boxing me against the exterior safety gate.

He raised his gloved left hand, focusing his dampening field once more. But out here in the screaming draft, where the wind tore the oxygen from our lips, his invisible grip felt thin and frayed. The crushing pressure in my skull flickered, starved of the still cabin air it needed to sustain full power.

He noticed it too. His jaw tightened in grim irritation.

\"You're out of regulation uniform, Warden,\" I wheezed, shaking the snow from my eyelashes. I forced a jagged grin through chattering teeth. \"I hear the Authority docks your pay for soot on the lapels.\"

\"Section Twelve covers field contamination during suspect apprehension,\" he replied without a trace of irony.

He reached out with his right hand, not toward my throat, but toward the red emergency lever mounted beside the exterior gangway gate.

My grin died.

That lever controlled the pneumatic emergency jettison for the entire coupling corridor. One pull, and the floor plates beneath our boots would uncouple, dropping whoever stood on them straight into the frozen gorge below.

\"Drop the rucksack on the deck,\" Kazimir said, his gray eyes pinning me against the howling wind. \"Or we test whose reflexes survive the drop.\"