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Marla, who had pretty well followed the drift of that, said, “That’s funny, since Dalton
believed this world was just a computer simulation, with all of us being self-aware
avatars.”
“He had some strange ideas. But, to his credit, the irony didn’t escape him. Care to
play?”
“How about I just watch you—”
The lights flickered, and the train slowed noticeably. “What the fuck?” Bethany
muttered, rising and going to the control panel, which had gone dark. She pressed a few
buttons and tugged a steel lever, which didn’t move. “Shit,” she said. “The controls are
dead, and all my surveillance is out.” She jerked her head up, eyes widening, goat-slit
pupils narrowing nearly to the point of vanishing. “And there’s somebody on the stairs.”
“That’s our Mutex,” Marla said, standing up. “Better get your Taser spray up and
running.”
“It’s offline,” Bethany said. “I control it from here!” She slammed her hand against the
control panel. “Fucking Dalton! This all used to be practically fail-safe, gears and
wheels, pistons and engines, parts that moved, and I knew them better than I know the
articulation of my own skeleton, it was a perfect retro-scientific steampunk wet dream,
with magic filling in for the places where engineering broke down, but Dalton
convinced me to upgrade to something modern and digital, all run with computers, and
now somebody else has cracked my security, and they own my train!”
“Take it easy,” Marla said. “I’m surprised Mutex is so technologically savvy—I figured
obsidian knives were about the pinnacle of his tool-using skills—but we’ll deal with it.
So we don’t have aerosol-mist Tasers. We’ll improvise. You’re an apex predator, and
I’m no defenseless bunny rabbit myself. We know he’s coming. He moves fast—blurryfast—and
he’s got a lot of poison frogs and surprisingly invincible hummingbirds, but
we can beat him, if we get our shit together.”
“That bastard took my train away,” Bethany said, her face twisted in a silent snarl, the
rings in her nose glistening. “He’s not getting back into daylight alive.”
“Anger is good. Keep being angry.”
“I can get the emergency lights on anyway,” Bethany said. “They’re just batterypowered.”
She flipped open a panel on the wall and clicked a few switches. Faint red
light emanated from recessed panels around the ceiling and floor of the train car. It was
like being in a submarine in a movie.
Marla glanced around. “How many ways are there for him to get onto this train?”
“Not many, while it’s moving.”
As if Bethany’s words were a signal, the train slowed. “Huh,” Marla said. “I think we’re
about to be boarded, hon. Get yourself prepared. The guy’s a blur, but I can slow him
down. When he comes in, wherever he comes in, I’ll hit him, and while he’s distracted,