Chapter 97: Moon rise

Down became the ceiling hard enough to wrench Sio’s shoulder. His fingers caught the rail before the rest of him followed Angle upward, while Gumm cinched around his neck and loose restraint clips struck the ceiling in a scatter of metal ticks. Behind Fern, the freed children cried out as Rhea hit the wall sideways, found a handhold and flattened one palm against the panel as though the Arcline might explain the change through vibration.

Angle had landed against the ceiling but was already forcing himself upright, boots braced against a lighting strip never meant to carry weight. His stare had fixed beyond the broad window. "That’s him." Sio followed his gaze and did not need a name.

The Arcline groaned around them, not with its normal deep hum but with a drawn-out complaint through the frame as gravity pulled in a direction the vehicle had never been built to accept. The guide flickered above the black core in Sio’s hand, its tiny body stretching toward the ceiling with everything else while it calmly announced, "Please remain seated during route correction."

Fern hooked one arm through a rail and locked the other around two children. "Caspian, keep them off the ceiling." Caspian pressed both palms outward. The nearest children slowed, their upward motion bending sideways into the wall instead, while Rhea crawled across the vertical surface toward them and Angle kept watching the darkness outside.

The buried tunnel slid past in pale strips. The other Arcline still ran in a neighboring channel, close enough now for silver light to expose an outer service platform along its side. A man stood there as if gravity had remembered him correctly, coat barely moving despite the speed between the two machines. One hand rested at his side. The other was raised toward Sio’s carriage, fingers slightly apart, and behind him floated a dark disc cratered across its face like a broken moon.

Heat burst from Angle so quickly the ceiling panel under his boots blackened. Sio felt it against his cheek from several steps away and remembered Arch dropping at the Grand Exchange, Maelor’s hand at his throat, Angle arriving too late to do anything but see what remained. Angle’s knees bent against the ceiling strip. Heat thickened the air around both hands, and his shoulders turned toward the window.

"Angle." Fern’s voice cut through the grinding metal, but a pulse of heat rolled down the corridor as he launched from the ceiling toward the window. Sio’s Scar caught the path instantly: Angle, glass, the parallel platform, Maelor. Straight enough to understand and bad enough that Sio’s hand tightened around the rail.

A child screamed behind them as gravity twisted diagonally toward the window. Three children lost their grips at once. Caspian caught two by bending their momentum toward the wall, but the smallest slipped beyond his reach and shot toward the glass.

Angle changed direction in the air. He planted one foot against the wall, twisted and caught the child against his chest before both struck the window. His shoulder hit with a dull crack, but he wrapped the child tighter and slid along the glass while the pull kept dragging them sideways.

Across the gap, Maelor’s head turned. His raised hand lowered slightly as his attention settled on Angle, and Angle stared back while holding the child instead of attacking. Fern reached them along the rail and pulled the child into her arms. "Not now." Heat crawled across Angle’s fingers again, but his eyes moved from Maelor to the children scattered around the carriage. His left wrist had gone rigid near the glass. Sio saw him notice it too. Angle flexed the joint once, forced it loose and turned his body away from the window. "I know." The heat remained, but it settled closer to his hands instead of spilling toward Maelor.

Gravity released, and everyone crashed back toward the floor. Sio landed on one knee hard enough to jar his teeth while Gumm bounced against his shoulder with an offended squeak. Restraints and loose equipment followed in a delayed metallic rain. Rhea landed in a crouch with one palm already pressed to the floor, then turned sharply toward the front of the vehicle. "They’re inside."

A blast shook the carriage. The far wall bowed inward as silver lines in the ancient panel flared white, and a second impact tore the seam open. Cold air ripped through the split carrying stone dust and the sharp smell of heated metal. Dark-clad figures forced their way through with lunar-phase marks catching the Arcline light across collars, gloves and armor plates.

They moved fast, the first pair driving hooked anchors into the wall and clipping themselves in as Maelor’s pull twisted through the carriage again. Dropped rifles and restraint bars dragged toward the breach. Caspian bent their motion sideways, sending the loose metal crashing into a row of old seats while Fern fired through the opening and Rhea shoved the children behind the ramp wall.

Sio opened a short portal beneath one Eclipse attacker and placed the exit against the ceiling behind him. The man dropped through, struck the upper panel shoulder-first and crashed back to the floor when Sio closed it. Both endpoints belonged to the same moving carriage, so the route held, but pain still burned behind Sio’s eye after the strain of his new trick. Temporary means temporary. Great.

Angle passed him and reached the breach. His eyes went through the torn opening toward Maelor, but his hands came down on the damaged panel instead. Heat raced into the metal until the edges glowed and sagged inward, forcing an Eclipse fighter to yank his arm back. "Rhea, where are the prisoners?"

Her palm pressed harder against the floor. "Lower decks. Hundreds. The Organization is moving some toward the rear." Fern’s gaze shifted toward the Legacy Index still pulsing farther down the corridor, where one Eclipse attacker had ignored the children completely.

The attacker threw a small black device through the breach. It skittered toward the silver interface, and thin lunar symbols spread over the Organization display the instant it touched the panel beneath the Index.

LEGACY INDEX ACCESS CONTESTED

Fern swore as the Arcline guide flickered. "They want the records." Sio looked toward the lower decks while the silver interface fought beneath the lunar symbols. "And the Organization wants the people." Rhea’s ears flattened. "They can both choke."

Another gravity pulse rolled through the carriage. Sio’s weight multiplied until his knees bent, the children dropped hard against the floor and old seats creaked under the pressure. Angle braced himself against the glowing breach while Rhea spread her fingers against the floor, reading the stress through the structure as a trace of black threatened beneath one eye and stopped there.

"The frame’s taking it badly," Rhea said through clenched teeth. A silver seam beside her palm had begun to widen, then squeeze shut again as Maelor’s pull distorted the carriage. Fern looked toward the children and the lower decks beyond them. "Then he doesn’t get much time." Rhea’s fingers shifted with another tremor. "Neither do we."

Sio’s Scar opened without permission. Routes crowded his vision: the children, the lower decks, Organization escorts shifting prisoners rearward, Eclipse reaching for the Legacy Index, Maelor outside, the neighboring Arcline and the ancient route beneath all of them. He forced most of the lines away before the pressure behind his eye sharpened, but one violet path remained between the Legacy Index and the black Eclipse device.

He pointed. "Fern." She followed the line with her eyes, and Caspian understood from the same motion. Caspian twisted his hand, sending the device shooting sideways just as its lunar symbols reached the first silver line. Sio opened a portal in the device’s path and fixed the exit to the outer skin beside the breach.

The device vanished outside and struck the neighboring tunnel wall in a white flash. The lunar symbols disappeared from the Legacy Index, but the crushing pull through the carriage remained. Across the other Arcline’s service platform, Maelor had not moved. The cratered disc behind him shifted as fragments of stone began orbiting its edge, and his attention never left Angle. His chest rose in a deeper breath, and when he lifted two fingers, the movement came a little slower than before.

The front of the Arcline dropped. Sio’s stomach rose into his throat as the entire carriage pitched forward. Children slid toward the wall. Fern caught one, Rhea caught two by their coats, and Gumm stretched both arms around a rail while his body pulled taut across Sio’s shoulder.

The ancient guide’s smile finally disappeared. "Route deviation detected." Sterling’s projection tore into existence above Fern’s wrist in broken pieces, his face scattering with static before pulling itself together. "I have a problem."

Sio gripped the rail with both hands. "Join the club." Sterling forced a map onto the display, and Broker-style sighting windows began blinking into existence around the buried route. One became three. Three became seven. More appeared beyond them, each carrying a fresh purchase or location request.

"Broker’s network just lit up," Sterling said. "People are buying this location faster than I can track." Fern looked from Maelor’s artificial moon outside to the route leading toward the lower decks full of prisoners. "How many?"

Sterling stared at the multiplying notices. "Enough that this is not an Eclipse problem anymore." Outside, the cratered moon brightened against the tunnel dark while new route markers continued appearing across his map, each one pointed toward the same moving Arcline.