The three of them walked down the center of the oversized train, which had enough space in the center for two of Hardcase’s mech-suits to walk side-by side. Which was probably by design.
The construction was mind-bogglingly massive and resembled a towering apartment complex sitting on it’s side rather than a train, and it had the space to match.
There was nothing ‘standard’ about the inter-city train. The steel beams for the tracks had been mass-produced by an Industrial Tinker, designed and reinforced by a Train Tinker, then covered in armor plating sourced from The Workshop.
The tracks were ten meters apart and as wide as a king-sized bed. Rather than cutting someone in half by laying them out on the tracks, you would simply flatten their entire body like one of those railroad pennies.
Contrary to expectation, the inter-city train did not go as fast as possible to avoid staying out in the wilderness for long, because the Replicators were smart and it didn’t take much smarts at all to sabotage the tracks.
Instead, the train moved along at a relative snail’s pace, escorted by a few dozen supers while scanning the track in front of itself carefully.
Perry could ride his bike to Washington city faster than the train could.
He’d probably get eaten by mutated ants or giant mind-controlling badger people, but the point stood.
The three of them arrived in the middle of the pack and were lucky enough to find three seats next to each other near the front of the auditorioum, where a man was standing next to the podium.
Once everyone was seated, the man at the podium began to speak, his jowels making his grey mustache jiggle.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, I’m conductor Walthers. When speaking to me, call me Conductor or Conductor Walthers. When speaking of me to others, I don’t give a shit.”
“Now,” the conductor said. “Orientation. Your cabin assignment and your escort details were chosen by Nexus to maximize efficiency, and for the most part I’m going to stick to that, but while you’re on my train, I have the final say.”
“To my right is Commander Vern, and to my left are lieutenants Hutchins, Cassock, Jackson and Clark.” He said, pointing at the men and women standing at attention beside him. “Commander Vern will be in charge while I sleep, and the lieutenants will organize the escorts. Any order from them is an order from me.”
A silver screen dropped down behind Conductor Walthers, and he turned partially to face it as a graphic of the train was displayed.
“Now, the armory, where the Tinker weapons are stored is here,” He motioned to a heavily armored segment of the train that was buried under layers of cabins and armor, near the center.
“If there is a need, you can follow the yellow line on the ceiling to reach the armory. It’s roughly equidistant from all the cabins.”
“The train has a series of automated alarms, each of which is composed of multiple color combinations, borrowing from Franklin City’s setup for ease of transition.”
A list of a dozen or so color combinations filled the screen, along with a sentence describing them.
“You’ll also receive a pamphlet and there’s a cheat sheet painted on the inside of your room’s doors. The ones circled in red are all hands-on-deck situations and mean that everyone on board will likely need to defend themselves. In those situations, the armory will be unfolded, allowing for higher traffic to pass through.”
“The ones circled in yellow indicate certain bulkheads have been sealed as containment measures. There will be a pictogram LED display beside these warnings that will indicate which bulkheads are sealed, and where you are in relation to them.”
Perry’s attention began to wane, despite his best efforts. He knew it was important stuff, but it was so dry!”
Perry tuned in on some of the more interesting fragments of the train’s orientation.
“…In the event of brain controlling parasites, you are expected to commit suicide before they achieve full motor control. If this is too difficult, please inform one of the lieutenants that you’ve got brain-worms, and they will end your suffering…”
“…The event that no one you know remembers who you are, you may assume there is either a Minder attack or you are a composite entity that has been regurgitated by….
“…Do not go outside during a wandering gravity storm without the power of flight and a body that is rated for at least fifteen G’s…”
“…Do not bring back animals you have hunted during escort duty to the cafeteria and serve them up. That’s how you get brain worms...”
“…The cafeteria has a set menu each day and you may eat as much as you like. Loitering in the cafeteria is encouraged for those who don’t have escort duty…”
“…Children conceived on the train must be checked for supernatural entities that may have tried to stow away inside them before the age of four…”
“…The rec room has been difficult to find ever since the minder, Nonsense was killed there repelling a hostile boarding action. If you do find the rec room, do not report where it is to command. We won’t remember it, and neither will you. If you stumble across the rec room and aren’t on duty, feel free to have a good time, but make sure you clean up after yourself, since the janitorial staff cannot find the place…”
Another fifteen minutes of orientation later, and they were dismissed, Natalie holding their escort schedule.
“Looks like we’re on duty in two days,” Natalie said as the three of them walked back to their rooms. “We’ll be escorting the fourth car for eight hours, and about half the days afterwards, too.”
“Two days off?” Perry asked. “That’s sweet! Who wants to find the rec-room?”
“You don’t find the rec room, man,” A nearby man in a grey jumpsuit with a mop and bucket called out to them through the crowd. “You gotta let it come to you.” He was missing at least one tooth, and his hair was frizzy and matted. The whites of his eyes were visible all the way around.
This seems like a legitimate source of information. Perry waded through the foot traffic and addressed the janitor.
“And how do you ‘let it come to you’? Is there a specific method?” If the room itself had residual psychic energy pushing people away, there might be a particular mindset or behavior that would act like a key and allow someone to stumble into it more easily.
“Whoah, nobody’s ever asked that…” The wild-eyed man frowned glancing down. “I guess you just gotta be there already before you can realize that you’ve found it.”
“So what you’re saying is, we should get lost and play around with stuff until whatever we’re fiddling with turns into a foosball table.”
“You got it, man!” the fellow said.
“Thank you!” Perry said. “That was very helpful.”
“You wanna smoke? I got an ‘office’ I set up in one of the emergency escape pods.” The man pulled an outrageously big joint out of his jumpsuit.
“I’m underage, and
“Same,” Nat said, waving her hand and shaking her head.
“Cool, cool, you, Ma’am?” he asked, turning to Heather.
Heather shrugged. “Eh, why not?”
Perry sighed and followed them to the man’s ‘office’, which was a hall full of decrepit escape pods from back when the government thought escape pods on a train were a good idea.
Heather and Jerry smoked while Jerry gave them a janitor’s-eye view tour of the train.
“Yeah, back in the early aught’s,” Jerry said over Heather’s coughing. “They had the ‘great’ idea to add lifeboats to the train that could allow passengers to make a break for it. Only problem was, anything nasty enough to stop the train was nasty enough to stop the escape pods. Took a lot of dead people, but they eventually just panelled this place up and removed it from the map of the train.”
“They forgot to seal up the maintenance access on this car, though,” he said, pointing at the door they’d come through.
“Now I use it to take my smoke breaks and watch TV, maybe catch a siesta in the middle of the day.”
“These batteries are worth millions,” Perry said, peeking at where Jerry had hotwired one of the escape pod’s quantum foam batteries to run a TV and gaming console. “Coulda sold one and retired.”
Natalie peeked out around his waist and gasped.
“I ain’t a thief,” Jerry said with a shrug. “Besides, I love my life, I love my job.”
“I guess that’s fair enough.” Perry couldn’t steal one of the batteries without incriminating Jerry, nor could he inform the train conductor of the massive amount of wasted power just sitting here without losing Jerry his ‘office’, which would be a grade A ‘Dick Move’, after the aging janitor had invited them into what appeared to be his actual home.
There was a sink composed of an emergency decontamination unit and a plastic tub, a ‘kitchen’ with a heating coil and a saucepan, even a mattress in the corner of the room with a ton of old magazines of various levels of safe-for-work spread around it haphazardly.
‘Whoah there, Ma’am,” Jerry said, taking the joint out of Heather’s fingers as she started coughing violently. “The point is to have a good time, not punish yourself. Take it easy.”
“I don’t think I can see.” Heather croaked between coughing fits.
“Give it a couple minutes, blink the tears away.” Jerry said, puffing on the joint.
Perry peered up above the huge, rocket shaped emergency escape pods, into the tubes they rested in.
“Does that lead all the way to the outside?” Perry asked.
Jerry stood up and peered up the firing tube, smoke curling around his nose and into his eyes and hair, although he didn’t seem to notice.
“Sure does, just a thin hatch between us and the outside world. Could even open it up to get some fresh air if you wanted to.” Jerry motioned toward one of the oversized buttons encased in a sturdy plastic box beside the escape hatch.
“Although I’m not entirely sure which one opens the hatch and which one launches the escape pod…” Jerry stroked his scraggly beard.
“Probably not a good idea to open this area to the outside world while we’re outside the city,” Perry said. “And they definitely have an automated report sent to the bridge if an escape pod begins launch procedures.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Jerry said with a shrug. “Knew there was a reason I taped those down.”
Perry chuckled.
“Hey, am I seeing things, or is your friend…melting?” Jerry asked when he turned back towards the seating.
“I have no idea what’s going on, my short term memory is fried,” Heather said, shaking her head from where she drooped around the edges of the milk-carton ‘chair’ she’d been sitting in.
“I think we’ll take Wraith to our cabin.”
“Cafeteria.” Heather said, shaking her head. “It’s all-you-can-eat.”
“Cafeteria then.”
“Try the gummy worms and pizza,” Jerry said, waving to them as they left, Heather putting her utmost focus into walking and not turning into a puddle.
Once they were out of earshot and back on the main hall, Perry spoke.
“I don’t want to come off as judge-y, because Jerry seems harmless and you could probably kill him if he tried anything, but what inspired you to follow a strange man back to an undisclosed location to do drugs with him? That’s generally a red flag.”
“I dunno,” Heather said. “I’m just…frustrated, and thought maybe smoking some pot would help.”
“Frustrated with what?”
“My dad! Where is he? What is he doing? Is he planning on killing me, or did he just cut ties completely? I think…I think he might be in Washington City.”
“Oh,” Perry said.
“I wanna find him while we’re there.”
“And then what?” Perry asked.
“Kick the crap out of him for eighteen years in a row. Then we’d be even.”
“That seems difficult to cram into two weeks, but we can help you look for him.” Perry said.
“I’ll help too.” Natalie said, her face set with determination.
“Aw, thanks Nat, you’re so cute and tiny and squishable,” Heather said, stepping away from Perry’s shoulder. “I could just eat you up. Nom nom nom!”
Natalie shrieked as Heather began to engulf the smaller girl like The Blob.
“We’re fine, it’s fine,” Perry said as passing supers in the main hall gave the three of them odd looks while he tugged the squirming Natalie out of Heather’s grasp.
“Heather. Pizza? Remember the cafeteria being all you can eat?”
Heather reformed, her eyes bloodshot while a trembling Natalie clung to Perry like a koala.
“You’re right,” She craned her neck to look at the arrows on the ceiling. “Which color was it, again?”
“Blue for the cafeteria.” Perry said.
“Dear Lord, I’m hungry,” Heather said as she began following the line.
“Are you all right?” Perry asked Natalie.
“I’m fine.” Natalie said, climbing down from his torso. “It was like stepping into a warm bath with a plastic bag around you. I was just surprised is all.”
“Gets into weird places,” Natalie muttered under her breath as they walked.
Nerve boosted Perry’s hearing by about 47%. High enough above normal to be considered a superpower.