Nine coaches ahead, Ethan Ward was not allowed to stand.
The first impact threw him against the side of his seat.
The lights failed. Red emergency strips appeared along the floor, and every restraint in Crown Car Two locked across its passenger.
Ethan pulled against his belt.
"What happened?"
The guards stationed beside the doors were already moving. Two lowered visors over their faces while another opened the secured cabinet beneath the communication panel.
A second impact passed through the train.
The nearest screen flickered.
REAR CONNECTION LOST
Ethan stopped struggling.
"Which coaches?"
The railway officer struck the unresponsive panel with the side of his hand.
"Eleven and Twelve."
Nate was in Eleven.
Ethan forced his thumb beneath the emergency release. The restraint opened, and he rose into the aisle.
A guard pushed him back into his seat.
"Stay down."
"My friend is back there."
"So are eighty other passengers."
"Can you contact them?"
"The internal line is dead."
"Then stop the train."
The guard stared at him.
An explosion struck the forward door before he could answer.
The reinforced frame bent inward.
Everyone in the carriage moved at once.
Guards formed a line across the aisle. Railway staff pulled metal partitions from the walls and locked them between the passengers and the damaged entrance.
Mara released her restraint beside Ethan.
"What are they doing?"
A second explosion tore the door from one hinge.
Gunfire entered through the opening.
The first rounds flattened against a guard’s barrier. He returned fire through a narrow gap while another guard dragged passengers toward the centre of the carriage.
Someone screamed in the compartment ahead.
A mercenary reached through the broken doorway and threw a silver device onto the floor.
It unfolded before anyone could destroy it.
Four mechanical arms struck the walls and locked into place.
Pressure filled the carriage.
Ethan’s energy stopped inside his Core.
He tried to push it toward his Root Node, but every path felt thick and narrow. Mara folded forward with one hand against her chest.
The guards suffered more.
The nearest barrier flickered.
A bullet passed through it and entered the guard’s throat.
He fell into the aisle.
Another man caught him beneath the arms. A mercenary came through the doorway and fired twice.
Both guards went down.
Ethan’s Root Node reacted.
Stand Before All.
He saw the second guard beneath the mercenary’s weapon.
His Skill activated before he chose a destination.
The carriage vanished.
Ethan reappeared in the aisle.
His feet struck the floor at the wrong angle. One knee folded, and his shoulder hit the partition.
The mercenary stood directly in front of him.
Two stable loops moved beneath the man’s armour.
Second Circuit.
The rifle dropped against its sling. A curved blade replaced it in his hand.
Ethan tried to rise.
The blade descended.
A hand caught the back of his uniform and dragged him away.
The edge passed close enough to cut several strands of hair.
Professor Garran Dacre threw Ethan behind the partition.
"Can you control the distance?"
"Not yet."
"Then stop using it."
"The guard—"
"Is dead."
Dacre turned away.
He wore the same dark teaching coat he had worn at the station. There was no armour beneath it and no visible weapon at his waist.
The mercenary attacked.
His blade crossed the aisle faster than Ethan could follow.
Dacre shifted his head. The edge missed his face.
His hand touched the attacker’s elbow.
The man’s arm continued forward while the joint twisted sideways.
Bone broke beneath the armour.
Dacre pushed him into the doorway, blocking the next attackers from entering.
"Suppression rig!" one of the guards shouted.
Dacre looked toward the silver device.
Lines appeared beneath the skin of his neck and travelled across his chest.
A complete loop almost formed.
The rig pulsed.
The lines broke apart before they could connect.
Dacre’s right hand tightened.
A second pattern tried to rise deeper inside his body. That one collapsed even faster.
Blood appeared beneath one of his nostrils.
Ethan had expected Dacre to attack the device immediately.
Instead, the professor stepped back behind the partition as another burst of gunfire crossed the aisle.
The rig had not made him weak.
It had made the rest of his Circuit inaccessible.
More mercenaries breached the rear entrance.
They had attacked both ends of the carriage.
One turned his weapon toward Mara.
Ethan felt Stand Before All pull at his Core again.
He forced the Skill down.
A guard struck Mara from the side and carried her behind a seat. Bullets tore through the space where she had been.
A heavy impact came from beneath the carriage.
Metal screamed along the left wall.
The train tilted.
Seats shifted against their locks. A crack opened through the floor beside Mara’s boots.
She placed both hands against it.
Energy escaped her Root Node.
Unbroken Ground.
The damaged floor stopped moving.
Mara stared at her hands as the Skill spread farther than she intended. It fixed the bent plates and the nearest section of wall in place, drawing more energy from her with every second.
"How do I stop it?"
A railway engineer dropped beside the crack.
"Don’t."
She looked at him.
"They’re attaching something beneath the car. If this section breaks, we lose the coupling."
Her arms began to shake.
"How long?"
"Until I remove it."
He opened a maintenance panel and crawled beneath the seats.
Ethan moved toward Mara.
A guard blocked him.
"You stay where I can see you."
"She can’t hold that."
"Then don’t give me a second problem."
Gunfire struck the partition.
Dacre watched the silver rig between the gaps in the metal.
Its pulse arrived at regular intervals. Each one crushed his circulation before the deeper loops could close.
The mercenaries advanced behind it.
A First Circuit fighter entered through the forward doorway with a broad shield fixed to one arm. Another followed close behind, using the shield as cover.
Dacre waited until both crossed the rig.
Then he kicked the broken mercenary lying near his feet.
The body struck the shield.
The fighter absorbed the impact easily.
Dacre’s fingers moved.
The force changed direction.
The shield snapped sideways and crushed its owner’s arm against the doorframe. The second mercenary lost his cover.
A guard shot him through the chest.
The silver rig pulsed again.
The faint loop beneath Dacre’s skin shattered.
He caught himself against the wall.
The armoured commander entered behind his men.
Lines along his weapon brightened as his energy passed through the metal.
His gaze moved from Dacre to Ethan and Mara.
"Take the Legacy carriers alive."
Two mercenaries moved toward the central compartment.
Dacre stepped into the aisle.
The commander lifted his weapon.
"Kill the professor."
Three rifles turned.
The first round struck Dacre beneath the collarbone.
His coat tore open.
The bullet slowed before reaching his skin and dropped flattened at his feet.
Two more struck his chest.
One turned sideways inside the pressure surrounding him. The other split apart and scattered across the floor.
Kinetic Sheath had formed despite the rig.
Incomplete, but enough.
The shooters continued.
Every round slowed around Dacre’s body.
Some fell. Others curved into the walls under the smallest movement of his hands.
Dacre walked toward them.
The silver device pulsed again.
His Sheath flickered.
A bullet cut across his cheek.
He did not stop.
"Cease fire," the commander ordered.
One frightened mercenary fired again.
The round slowed near Dacre’s shoulder.
His fingers closed.
The projectile changed direction and struck the suppression rig.
Three more flattened bullets lifted from the floor and followed it.
They hit different points along the device’s casing.
The rig survived.
Its next pulse arrived unevenly.
Dacre’s first loop closed.
The pressure around him deepened.
A second Circuit formed across his chest and legs.
The commander’s expression changed.
"Force Conductor."
Dacre placed one foot against the floor.
The dented partition beside him snapped back into shape.
Its stored impact travelled into his body.
He moved.
Ethan saw the first step.
The suppression specialist stood beside the silver rig with both hands over its controls.
An instant later, his body struck the ceiling.
Dacre appeared beneath him.
He touched the centre of the device with two fingers.
A single point sank into the casing.
Cracks spread through all four mechanical arms.
The suppression rig collapsed.
Pressure left Ethan’s body.
His circulation surged hard enough to make him retch.
Mara gasped.
Unbroken Ground expanded through the carriage, locking another section of floor before she could restrain it.
The engineer shouted at her from beneath the seats.
Dacre’s third Circuit opened.
Every loose piece of metal rose from the floor.
The broken forward door shifted toward him. The carriage lights dimmed as several overlapping loops moved beneath his skin.
Ethan felt his own Root Node tremble.
A surviving guard lowered his weapon.
"Third Circuit."
The words reached both sides of the carriage.
The kingdom had barely a hundred people at that level.
One of the Unlinked mercenaries turned and fled through the rear breach.
The commander did not look at him.
"Vanguard forward. Everyone else withdraw."
A fighter carrying a heavy Conductive weapon charged.
Dacre moved before the man completed his first Skill.
Ethan heard two impacts.
The weapon struck the ceiling.
Its owner hit the wall and dropped beneath it.
The commander attacked through the opening.
His Vanguard blade crossed Dacre’s shoulder.
The edge passed through Kinetic Sheath and opened the flesh beneath his coat.
Blood ran down Dacre’s arm.
The commander twisted the blade.
Dacre caught his wrist.
The movement continued, but its direction changed.
The commander’s elbow folded inward.
His grip opened.
Dacre took the weapon from him and placed his free hand against the centre of the man’s armour.
The metal caved inward at one precise point.
The commander’s forming Skill collapsed inside his body.
He left the floor and struck the broken doorway.
The remaining hinge tore free.
Both man and door vanished into the space between the carriages.
Silence reached Crown Car Two before Ethan understood that the fight was over.
Several mercenaries were retreating through the rear section. The guards did not pursue them.
Dacre looked once at the wound across his shoulder.
Then he turned toward the carriage.
"Count the living."
People began moving.
The order gave them something they understood.
Medics crawled toward the fallen guards. Railway workers gathered around the damaged floor. The engineer beneath Mara’s seat shouted that the extraction clamp had lost power.
Mara tried to release Unbroken Ground.
The Skill resisted.
Dacre knelt beside her.
"Reduce the left side first."
"I can’t feel the difference."
"Close your right hand."
She obeyed.
Part of the energy beneath the floor weakened.
"Again," he said.
The Skill finally withdrew.
Mara collapsed against the seat.
A medic pushed Ethan aside before he could reach her.
"She’s breathing. Give me room."
Ethan stepped back.
His shoulder hurt where he had struck the partition. When he touched his neck, he found a shallow line where the mercenary’s blade had passed through his hair.
It had never reached his skin.
Three guards had died between that blade and him.
Mara had nearly emptied her Core holding the carriage together.
Dacre had opened three Circuits and ended the assault.
Ethan’s legendary Skill had moved him once.
Someone else had needed to save him from it.
The communication panel restarted.
Status lines appeared across the screen.
CROWN CAR TWO — SECURE
FORWARD ESCORT — ACTIVE
REAR CONNECTION — LOST
Ethan crossed to the railway officer.
"Coach Eleven."
The man continued working.
"Still offline."
"Can we turn back?"
"Not on this track."
"Then send a team."
The officer looked around the carriage.
Two guards lay beneath emergency sheets. Another medic held both hands against a wound in a third man’s chest. Dacre stood nearby while someone wrapped his shoulder.
"With what?" the officer asked.
"People could still be alive."
"They could."
"Nate is."
The officer did not argue.
He returned to the damaged controls.
Ethan opened the internal messaging system on his phone.
Where are you?
The message remained pending.
He wrote another.
Answer when this reaches you.
The priority display refreshed above him.
FIRST BANNER — SECURE
LAST STANDARD — SECURE
Coaches Eleven and Twelve remained grey beneath their names.
Ethan’s messages were still pending when the system checked his status again.
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