Season 2, Episode 15 — Bells & Rails
Timeline: Minutes after Ep 14. Zack = Level 20. The vow is loud. The rain's a metronome.
⸻
Cold Open — The Bone Bell
Station 9 used to be a church, red brick and sorrow. Tonight its nave thrummed with cables and radios, antennas stabbing the bruised sky. The bell in the tower wasn't bronze anymore; it was cast from fused ribs, veined with runes, pulsing like a slow, wrong heart. One pull on the rope and every Shade in five boroughs would know where to feed.
Shades in turnout gear drifted the aisles, radios hissing prayers. Bone-masked Surgeons wired the altar to a console that looked like a confession booth strapped to a war crime. On the gallery above, a figure in a captain's coat watched with a hand resting lightly on the bell-rope, smile small and eager.
Zack crouched in the vestibule shadow, eyes burning steel-white, hearing the bell breathe. Luna knelt beside him, axe hugging her shoulder. Silas stood behind them, a silhouette that never apologized.
The HUD sketched lines across his vision:
LEVEL 20
EXP: 0 / 1000
OBJECTIVE: Seize Station 9 — prevent bell ring
OATH BONUS: Rescue Multiplier ↑ if zero civilian casualties
PENALTY: If bell rings → Citywide swarm (Oath Debt risk: Extreme)
Zack whispered, "Quiet until loud."
Luna cracked a grin. "That's new."
Silas rolled his sleeves with the grace of old sins. "On your count."
Zack closed his eyes and listened: hearts in the pew shadows—three living dispatchers zip-tied, gagged. Four more in a side office. An EMT in a closet, pulse fast and stubborn. No civilians on the tower. Good.
He breathed the vow. The city breathed back.
"Luna: left aisle, Surgeons on the altar. Silas: gallery stairs, rope man is yours if he twitches. I'll clear patrol on the right, cut the radios, and grab the hostages."
"Copy," Luna said, then, softer, "Don't let it ring."
"Won't," he said, and moved.
⸻
Act I — Station 9: Whisper Violence
Zack ghosted down the right aisle. The nearest Shade turned its head at a sound a human wouldn't hear; Zack was already beside it, palm where its larynx should be, pushing in until the body remembered it had an off switch. It sagged into a pew like regret.
+150 EXP
EXP: 150 / 1000
He slid behind a second Shade, took its radio, and bit the antenna off. Sparks hissed. He palmed the radio under a pew and crushed it with a foot; the plastic whispered amen and died.
Across the nave, Luna walked like a sin you confess after the wedding. She set her axe down on velvet, then took a Surgeon's mask in her hands, tilting it like she might kiss it, then slammed its face into the altar edge. The skull shattered. She caught the syringe it dropped, flung it into the throat of a second Surgeon without looking. It gurgled a bad prayer and sat down forever.
Silas drifted up the side stairs, coin flicking, silver eyes pinned on the bell-rope Captain. The Captain's smile sharpened. Fingers tightened on the rope.
"Don't," Silas said, a simple word with an argument buried in it.
The Captain tugged.
Silas wasn't there, then was, one hand on the rope above the Captain's, two fingers tapping air. Probability skipped. The rope slid without tension. The bell didn't swing.
"Later," Silas murmured.
Below, Zack slid to the pew shadows where three dispatchers sagged, bound. Hearthchain clicked—a soft silver line to their cuffs—yank—and they slid into the aisle as if God had ordered a conveyor belt. He cut gags, met eyes.
"You're going to run on my mark," he whispered. "Don't look back."
They nodded, seeing the glow under his skin and choosing to believe anyway.
A Shade patrol rounded the pillar, eyes blank, pike pole raised. Zack snapped the pole with two fingers and fed the Shade its mistake, then guided the dispatchers toward the door with a nod.
+200 EXP (Rescue)
EXP: 350 / 1000
At the altar, Luna had become a storm. Two Surgeons tried to flank; she pirouetted into them, low, dirty, gorgeous, and cut their legs into statements about gravity. Bloodfire tried to ignite from a rune; she stomped it out with a snarl. "No open flames in church, bitch."
Silas and the Captain circled each other above, the rope a serpent between them. The Captain drew a flare—bone-white—and snapped it; a pulse rolled the air. Silas flinched—first time Zack had seen it—but his hand didn't leave the rope. He spoke a word that made the flare forget combustion.
The Captain smiled wider. "I only needed you to look away."
It kicked the clapper with its boot.
The bone bell shuddered. The first hint of a note crawled into the world—thin, newborn, malicious.
Zack moved without thinking. He hurled Hearthchain straight up—tether like a harpoon. It latched the clapper—click—and he dragged. The clapper froze mid-swing, whining like a denied dog.
The Captain hissed. "Cute."
Zack yanked again and ripped the clapper out of the yoke. It fell, hit the aisle, and cracked a tile with a sound like a no learning to fly.
+250 EXP (Bell Neutralization)
EXP: 600 / 1000
OATH BONUS STACK: +0.2 (Zero-civilian, hub save in progress)
The church exhaled. Radios stuttered from prayers back into weather.
The Captain drew a halligan bar etched with runes and vaulted the rail, landing in the aisle with grace it hadn't earned. "Fine," it said, "we'll ring you."
Zack met it halfway. They slammed together, steel on not-quite-steel, tools chiming. The Captain feinted high; Zack let it, ate the pain, buried his shoulder in its ribs, and bit—fangs tearing collarbone. Oath-thread sewed itself into the wound.
"Bad dog," Zack breathed.
It laughed through blood. "Collars break."
Silas stepped behind it and placed two fingers at the base of its skull. "Not this one."
The Captain spasmed and knelt. Luna's axe descended like punctuation.
Silence.
The last Surgeon bolted for the sacristy. Zack Hearthchained its ankle and reeled it back across the floor, into Luna's hands. She ended its ambition with a neat thunk.
Zack turned, eyes bright. "All clear?"
"Office," Silas said, pointing with his chin.
They broke the door. Four terrified dispatchers blinked up from duct tape and bad dreams. Hearthchain clicked them into safety. The EMT in the closet banged once, twice; Luna tore the hasp with her bare hands and dragged him out into air.
The HUD scrolled receipts:
STATION 9: Secured
Zero civilian casualties
+400 EXP (Hub Seizure)
EXP: 1000 / 1000
LEVEL UP → 21
Gain: Surge Control ↑ | Hearthchain Range +5 m | Split Tether now (4)
ROUTE 2: Firehouse Syndicate — DISMANTLED
The bone bell hung quiet, robbed of tongue. Zack stared up at it, jaw tight. The vow hummed—pleased, demanding more.
Silas flicked his coin, catching dawn's first gray. "You did it quiet."
Luna blew a strand of wet hair from her face. "I can be quiet," she lied.
Zack's phone buzzed (a miracle, considering what it had endured). A text with no number: UNDERGROUND. SOUTH LINES. 200+ TRAPPED. SHADES CONTROLLING DOORS. A selfie followed—blurred motion, a terrified mass in a subway car, bloodfire fogging glass.
The HUD chimed like a heartbeat:
NEW INCIDENT: SUBWAY GRID (S Line → R → W junction)
Civilians: 200+
Threat: High (enclosed, oxygen risk)
Advisory: Precision combat only.
Zack looked at the bell, at the dawn, at the two people who made war feel survivable. "Rails," he said.
"Rails," Luna echoed.
Silas's smile thinned. "Trains hate oaths. Let's make them like one."
⸻
Act II — The Descent
The station breathed heat and panic. Floodlights stained tile the color of a broken tooth. On the mezzanine, a transit cop with a glazed stare waved people toward exits that… weren't. Shades wore uniforms like costumes.
Zack spotted a conductor pressed against a pillar, shaking. "They won't open the doors," she whispered when he asked. "They sealed the safety overrides. People are inside. Some are… coughing."
"How many cars?" Zack said.
"Three full trains," she breathed. "Two on S platform, one on R local. We heard a fourth… but it went dark."
Luna glanced at Zack. "Split?"
Zack shook his head, eyes half-lidded, listening to breaths. The vow mapped them in his blood: S platform—most severe, oxygen dropping, children. R platform—stable panic. W junction—Shades guarding, prepping… harvest. The "dark" one—parked just beyond the tunnel mouth, doors jammed, air bad.
"Order," he said. "S platform first. Then tunnel ghost. Then R local. Luna, clear mezzanine—if it's wearing a hat and not sweating, drop it. Silas, ride with me."
Silas lifted two fingers in a mock blessing. "We will not be hit by a train."
"Try to pick one up for me if we are," Luna said, already moving.
They slid down the stairs into the S platform—white tile, advertisements peeling, three cars lit from inside with fear. The middle car was a terrarium: bloodfire misted the ceiling, sinking like Moloch's breath.
Shades in MTA vests stood guard at the gap between cars, hands on the manual door catches. One started to smile as Zack approached, then realized the smile was a poor plan.
Zack surged. One punch powdered the Shade's face behind its vest. Silas flowed past him, two fingers to a second's temple—sleep descended with litigation. Zack bit the third's wrist before it could push a button, tearing bone. Bloodfire lines running along the platform flickered as the oath-thread cut signals.
He grabbed the manual release on the middle car's door. It had been welded. He didn't care. Steel rippled under skin; he wrenched. The weld squealed like a rat. The door ripped open.
A wall of heat hit. Heads turned. Children cried at a pitch that curdled adults. A teenager raised a phone, streaming all the wrong lives.
"Back," Zack said, and Hearthchain split—four tethers, latching to four bodies at once. He dragged them out in a skidding line. Silas followed, palms quickly turning panic to movement with touch and tone only he owned.
"Stay low!" the conductor yelled from the doorway, voice cracked. "Crawl if you have to!"
Luna finished turning the mezzanine into a morality play and slid onto the platform like an expletive. "Crowd will stampede if we blow the far doors. Keep the stream this side."
"On it," Zack said. He anchored his feet, split the Hearthchain into two pools—gear his body didn't have last week—and hauled in steady rhythm. The tethers sang. The vow thrummed. People slid out of death like socks from a dryer.
+300 EXP (Mass rescue)
EXP: 300 / 1000
A Shade climbed atop the car and dropped a bone flare down the open door. Silas flicked his coin midair; the flare's arc changed by an inch and landed in Zack's palm. He crushed it. Smoke curled, peevish.
"Thanks," Zack grunted.
"Consider it interest on that coin I loaned you," Silas said. (He hadn't. Yet.)
The middle car emptied. Zack blew the other doors with a twist and began pulling from both flanking cars, four tethers dancing like lines cast from a boat in heavy weather. Luna guided, yanked, shoved, swore. Silas re-routed motion into flow.
A scream lanced from the tunnel mouth—pure, cut-glass terror. The dark car.
Zack's head snapped toward the black. He saw it: a stalled fourth train just beyond the platform lip, most doors sealed, one half-open, a hand white-knuckled at the edge.
"Oath priority shift," the HUD warned, unnecessary.
"Go," Luna said. "We'll finish S."
Zack ran into the dark.
⸻
Act III — The Ghost Car
The tunnel swallowed light and amplified breath. Water dripped like metronomes stupid with pride. Zack's eyes cut through—steel gave him edges where there shouldn't be.
The ghost car hunched in the gloom, half its lights dead. Inside: maybe sixty people, condensed into a single organism called panic. A child's cry hiccuped into silence, then resumed. The half-open door had a man jammed in it by the chest. His eyes were silver coins of please.
"Don't move," Zack said. "Everybody. Don't move."
He wedged his fingers into the rubber lip of the door and pulled. The mechanism fought like union pay. He felt the steel in his arms answer—not brute, oath—and the door gave an inch, then two. The man spilled out, sobbing, babbling thanks into Zack's shirt.
"Back to platform," Zack said, and Hearthchain ran from his chest to the man's belt—click—and dragged him like a stubborn suitcase into safety.
Inside, a woman pounded on glass. A baby wheezed. An elderly couple stared at each other like they'd decided dying together wasn't the romantic they'd been sold.
Zack put his shoulder to the door, grabbed the manual override, broke it with a thought, and pried. The door groaned open.
"Stay low," he said. "Follow the tether."
He split Hearthchain again—four lines—click to four, yank into air, knees and elbows bumping tile, faces tensing into life. Back and forth, back and forth—drag / breathe / drag—until the car had lungs again.
+300 EXP
EXP: 600 / 1000
A growl rolled the tunnel. Not mechanical. Marrow. The third rail glowed where it shouldn't, arcs snapping like tongues.
"Don't," Zack snarled to the infrastructure. "Not here."
The rail shrugged and stayed lit. Figures peeled off the tunnel wall—Shades in utility orange, wrenches big enough to vote. One swung. Zack took the hit on his forearm; sparks flared like cheap fireworks. He countered with a punch that dented a face he couldn't see. The second Shade lunged; Zack caught it by the vest and threw it under its friend's feet. They tangled, learned about friendship, and died.
Silas's voice drifted from the platform: "Two minutes until NYPD tries to help and makes it worse."
Luna's voice cut in: "R car is acting up."
Zack doubled his pace. Hearthchain burned his sternum; the Oath took the heat and turned it into a metronome. The last handful in the ghost car stumbled past him, out, toward sound and purpose.
He took one step back and froze. A small terrarium sat under a seat. Inside, a snake blinked lazy in the gloom—mint green, unbothered.
The vow hummed. Love is weird. Rescue is not negotiable.
He slid the terrarium out, tucked it under an arm. (The snake flicked a tongue like huh, steel.) He jogged back to the platform.
Luna saw it and cackled. "We really are running a Noah now."
"Two snakes is where that starts," Zack said. "Don't get any ideas."
They swung to the R local—still packed, doors locked, Shades in MTA blues faking authority. Zack didn't stop. He went through the nearest Shade, hit the emergency release, ripped the lock, and began another pull. Silas cleared space by gently persuading gravity to honor its debts. Luna stood on a bench and yelled lies that made people move correctly.
+300 EXP (Mass rescue)
EXP: 900 / 1000
Marrow's voice crawled down the tunnel again—warm, like he'd rehearsed bedside manner and gotten high marks. "Zack, Zack… you've turned trains into rosaries. Beads of panic you worry with your blood. How many beads will you break before you notice my fingers on the wire?"
"Come down here," Zack said, not looking up. "Let me make you a bead."
"Not yet," Marrow sighed. "Season pacing."
The last car emptied. The conductor from earlier stumbled close, cheeks soaked, and clutched Zack's sleeve. "I've driven this line twenty years. I didn't think… thank you."
He didn't have a word that made sense. He nodded, and that had to be the word.
Sirens above. This time real. Firefighters in real gear came down with real eyes and took the edges of the work like they'd been born for it.
The HUD wrote it clean:
SUBWAY GRID: Stabilized
+500 EXP (Multi-train rescue)
EXP: 1400 / 1000
LEVEL UP → 22
Gain: Hearthchain Shield Yank cooldown −5 s | Surge fatigue reduction (Oath resonance)
OATH PATH BONUS: City Acknowledgement (Moderate) — crowds route around you more naturally
Zack let Surge dim until the edges of him were just edges again. The world stopped shimmering like it had opinions.
He sat on a bench for one single breath. The snake looked at him like you're a weird tree and he grinned despite himself.
Luna collapsed beside him, head on his shoulder for a scandalously brief second. "We didn't fuck it up."
Silas leaned against a pillar, arms crossed, coin silent. "Not tonight."
Zack stared down the tunnel into the dark. "He'll try to ring another bell."
"He will," Silas said. "You tore out a tongue. He'll grow a throat."
"Good," Zack said softly. "I like breaking throats."
The conductor shouted from the platform edge. "Hey—uh—whatever you three are? You should see this. News chopper caught… you guys."
They followed her gaze to the big station TV. Grainy helicopter footage showed the square from earlier, then the firehouse, then the school gym, then—the subway. The camera caught a boy with steel shining under his skin dragging a line of people out of a train with invisible rope. His eyes glowed like welds. He looked like a rumor that wanted a raise.
The chyron read: UNIDENTIFIED FIRST RESPONDERS SAVE HUNDREDS. The anchor kept saying "vigilantes" and "heroes" like she was tasting both.
Luna snorted. "You're viral, chrome-teeth."
Silas's mouth curved. "Cities love a story. You have one now. It will feed you and starve you."
Zack's HUD pulsed, as if in answer:
CITYWIDE OBJECTIVE: Shut down every route feeding Marrow
Progress (Season 2 Arc 1):
Catacombs — 1/1 ✔️
Firehouse Syndicate — 1/1 ✔️
Subway Grid — 1/1 ✔️
Arc Boss Unlocked: River Leviathan (Ep 22) (hidden)
He stood. His bones felt older. His vow felt younger.
"Where next?" Luna asked.
Silas tilted his head like someone listening to the dirt. "He'll shift to markets. Where he sells, not where he collects."
"Blood Market," Zack said. "Then Tribunal. Then the river."
"Ambitious," Silas said, amused and worried at once.
Zack picked up the terrarium. The snake yawned like an opinion. He handed it to the woman who'd refused to leave her pet in the tenement hours ago. She cried and said three thank-yous that were actually one prayer.
Luna hooked her axe on her shoulder. "Let's go make capitalism cry."
"Let's go make Marrow cry," Zack said, and the rain agreed.
They climbed back to the street. Dawn was trying to happen and the clouds had no respect. Sirens became birdsong in the cheap seats.
From a rooftop two blocks over, a man in a bone-white suit watched with a smile that had learned patience the hard way. He touched his chest where a collar had once been and wasn't now. He chuckled.
"Ring as many bells as you can," Marrow murmured to the waking city. "He'll silence them. He's very good at that. And when he's quiet… we'll talk about Prestige."
Zack didn't hear him. He didn't need to. The vow thrummed, steel sang, and the day opened its fist.
He started running.