The mountains ended, and the world turned into a mirror.
The Behemoth roared out of the Cascade foothills and slammed into the Great Plains. But the plains weren't made of grass.
Jason squinted through the slit of the armored shutter.
"My God," he whispered.
The ground was glass.
Miles of it. A limitless sheet of fused silica stretching to the horizon. It rippled like a frozen ocean.
"Chemical warfare," Einstein murmured, standing beside him in the darkened navigation car. "Mustard gas and incendiary bombs from the timeline wars. They burned the prairie so hot it melted the sand."
The sun crested the horizon.
FLASH.
The light hit the glass. It didn't just reflect; it magnified.
The interior of the train turned blinding white.
"Shutter the windows!" Jason screamed, shielding his eyes.
It was too late. The light seared through the gaps. The temperature inside the black iron train spiked instantly.
"Heat warning!" Hughes yelled over the comms. "Intakes are sucking superheated air! The batteries are boiling! Cabin temp is 110 and rising!"
Jason slammed the heavy steel shutter closed. Darkness fell, save for the red emergency lights.
But the heat remained. It radiated through the hull.
"We're driving blind!" Hughes panicked. "I can't see the track! The glare is washing out the cameras!"
"Don't look outside!" Jason ordered. "Use the instruments!"
"The instruments are optical!" Hughes shouted. "I'm flying a 100-ton missile with a bag over my head!"
Jason turned to Einstein. The physicist was sweating through his tweed suit, but his hands were steady. He was hunched over a periscope modified with a pinhole filter—a piece of cardboard with a needle puncture.
"Navigate us," Jason said.
Einstein peered into the tiny hole.
"Left, three degrees," Einstein said calmly. "There is a silica spire ahead. If we hit it at this speed, it will peel the train open like a sardine can."
"Three degrees left!" Jason relayed to Hughes.
The train lurched. Metal groaned as the wheels fought the track.
SCRAPE.
A terrible screeching sound ran down the side of the hull.
"We grazed it!" O'Malley yelled from the rear car. "Hull integrity holding, but we lost paint!"
"Steady," Einstein murmured. "Right, five degrees. The track warps here. The heat expansion..."
They were threading a needle at eighty miles an hour, guided by an old man looking through a piece of cardboard.
Jason slumped onto a bench in the dining car. The heat was suffocating. Sweat dripped from his nose.
He picked up Hemingway's shotgun. It was still on the table where the writer had left it.
He racked the slide. Clack-clack.
Sarah walked in. She was wearing a tank top, her skin glistening with sweat. The radiation scars on her neck were angry red in the heat.
She didn't ask if he was okay. She took the gun from his hands.
"Stop it," she said.
"We left him," Jason said, staring at his empty hands. "He held the line, and we cut him loose."
"He was ballast," Sarah said. Her voice was cold. Efficient. "You traded a pawn for a king. That's not cruelty, Jason. That's chess."
Jason looked up at her.
"Is that what we are now?" he asked. "Pieces?"
"We're survivors," she said, checking the shotgun's chamber. "And if you want to beat my mother, you need to stop mourning the pawns."
Jason looked at her. Really looked at her.
The shy, sick girl he had married was gone. The radiation hadn't just cured her flu; it had burned away the softness. She was becoming Alta.
"Contact!" O'Malley's voice boomed from the intercom. "Starboard side! Something's moving!"
"On the glass?" Jason grabbed his pistol. "Nothing moves on the glass. It's too slick."
"Tell that to them!"
Jason ran to the starboard peephole. He flipped the cover open for a split second.
The glare was blinding, but he saw them.
Shadows gliding over the mirror.
They were sleds. Scavenged car hoods rigged with sails made of reflective foil. They moved silently, skimming over the glass on polished runners.
Riding them were men wrapped in rags of Mylar and chrome.
"The Glaziers," Einstein whispered. "Scavengers of the wastes. They hunt metal."
One of the sleds pulled alongside the train. The rider raised a long pole. It wasn't a spear.
It was a mirror.
He angled it.
A concentrated beam of sunlight hit the train's side.
HISSS.
The paint bubbled instantly.
"They're cooking us!" Hughes screamed. "They're aiming for the sensors!"
More sleds appeared. Ten. Twenty. A swarm of silver locusts.
CRASH.
Something slammed into the side of the car.
A spear made of sharpened glass punched through the iron plating. It shattered on impact, filling the car with razor-sharp shrapnel.
"They're boarding!" O'Malley yelled. "Roof hatch!"
Jason heard the thumping of feet above. The Glaziers were leaping from their sleds onto the moving train.
"Tesla!" Jason screamed. "The coils! Fry them!"
"I cannot!" Tesla's voice crackled. "Their boots... they are wrapped in glass wool! It is non-conductive! The electricity cannot touch them!"
The roof hatch wheel began to turn.
Sparks flew as a Glazier used a diamond-tipped saw to cut the hinges.
"They're getting in!" Sarah raised the shotgun.
Suddenly, the intercom buzzed. Not a human voice.
A grinding, synthesized tone.
"IMPEDIMENT DETECTED," Gates said. "COUNTERMEASURE DEPLOYED."
"Gates, stand down!" Jason yelled. "Don't open the doors!"
"NEGATIVE," Gates said. "PHYSICAL INTERACTION UNNECESSARY."
The PA system squealed.
It wasn't a siren. It was a frequency.
A sound so high-pitched it felt like a needle being driven into Jason's ear.
SCREEEEEEEEEEEEE.
Jason fell to his knees, clapping his hands over his ears. Sarah screamed. The glass water pitcher on the table shattered.
Outside, the effect was catastrophic.
The glass desert vibrated.
The spears held by the Glaziers shattered in their hands.
The glass wool armor they wore disintegrated into dust.
On the roof, the attackers froze as their weapons exploded into shards.
"Now!" Jason yelled, kicking O'Malley. "The steam!"
O'Malley scrambled to the emergency valve on the wall. It was connected to the boiler's relief vent.
He spun the wheel.
WHOOSH.
Jets of superheated steam erupted from the roof vents.
Without their protective glass armor, the Glaziers had no defense.
They screamed as the steam hit them. They slipped on the wet metal roof.
One by one, they slid off.
They hit the glass plains at eighty miles an hour.
Jason watched through the peephole as the bodies tumbled away, leaving smears of red on the perfect silver mirror.
The high-pitched screeching stopped.
Gates's voice returned.
"THREAT NEUTRALIZED. EFFICIENCY RESTORED."
Jason stood up, his ears ringing. He looked at Sarah. She was wiping blood from her nose—the vibration had ruptured a vessel.
"He saved us," Sarah said, staring at the speaker.
"He protected his chassis," Jason corrected. "We're just the cargo."
"Approaching sector boundary!" Hughes called out. "The glass is ending! We're hitting... smoke?"
Jason looked forward.
The mirror world ended abruptly.
Ahead, a wall of black, greasy smog rose from the ground to the sky. It blocked the sun completely.
"Chicago," Jason whispered.
"No," Einstein said, cleaning his glasses. "That is not a city. That is a furnace."
The train plunged into the smoke.
The light died. The heat vanished, replaced by a cold, damp chill.
And the smell.
It penetrated the filters. It smelled of rendered fat, sulfur, and old copper.
The smell of a slaughterhouse.
"We're here," Jason checked his gun. "Welcome to the meat grinder."