"He’s shifting his weight again," Zoya whispered, her eyes locked onto the shadowy upper ribs of the wooden boxcar where the roof beams met the vertical pine slats. "The wind is masking the rest of his movements, but the suspension just dropped two inches on the rear left corner. He’s not trying to kick the door down anymore. He’s climbing higher." Toby swallowed hard, his small hands clutching the hem of his oversized coat as the train surged forward, negotiating a sharp, banked curve that sent a chorus of high-pitched squeals rippling through the iron couplings. "Higher? Where is there to go above the door? There’s only the roof overhang and—and the gap between us and the coal tender." "Exactly," Zoya said, her voice entirely devoid of panic, though every muscle in her frame was coiled like a strained spring. "He’s riding the blind spot. If he’s straddling the coupling between this car and the tender, he’s protected from our line of fire if we somehow managed to blow the door off,

Vance hit the gravel shoulder with the practiced, effortless fluidity of a man who had tumbled from moving freight cars more times than he had slept in a proper bed. His heavy boots dug into the loose ballast, kicking up a spray of grey dust and crushed stone as his knees buckled and absorbed the crushing forward momentum. He rolled once, twice, his long wool coat swallowing the friction, before coming up into a low, tactical crouch behind the rotting timber pilings of a rusted water tower.He didn't grunt. He didn't curse. His breathing remained slow, deliberate, and perfectly measured, a stark contrast to the screaming metallic shriek of the train’s braking system as the timber car and its trailing loads rattled past his position at a still-dangerous twenty miles an hour.With gloved fingers that moved with mechanical precision, Vance slid the heavy canvas scabbard off his custom-built, scoped bolt-action rifle."Too easy to kick a door," Vance muttered to himself, his voice a low,

"He’s going to keep punching holes until he hits bone," Zoya said, her voice tight, hard, and clipped as another massive slug tore through the cedar siding a foot to their left, raining a fresh cascade of wood chips across her shoulders. "We can’t stay in this wooden trap. It’s a coffin on wheels."Ariful coughed violently into his sleeve, his face pale and slick with cold sweat as he pressed his back against the vibrating wall of the boxcar. "The... the walls of this car are old pine, Zoya. Rotted through by decades of winter damp and mountain rain. But the connecting bulkhead ahead..." He wheezed, drawing a ragged, painful breath. "The bulkhead leading into the next flatcar... it’s reinforced with iron brackets, but the flooring at the base... it’s rotting out from coal dust and oil.""Show me," Zoya ordered, dropping to her knees beside him amidst the scattered debris of splintered wood and dust. "Toby, keep your head down against the lumber stack! If wood starts flying again, curl

"Through the gap! Move, Toby, move!" Zoya yelled over the deafening, metallic shriek of the train wheels hammering against the frost-covered iron rails, her hand clamping hard onto the back of the boy’s wool jacket and shoving him forcefully toward the gaping, splintered hole in the bulkhead.Toby scrambled frantically on his hands and knees, his boots kicking up a small cloud of rotted wood dust and dark coal slag as he wriggled through the narrow, jagged opening like a desperate animal diving into a burrow. "I’m through! I’m in!" he cried out, his voice cracking with a mixture of terror and adrenaline as the fierce alpine wind caught him square in the chest, stealing his breath away.Ariful followed immediately, his frail body shivering violently as a deep, rattling cough tore from his throat. He dropped hard onto his hands and knees, his long coat snagging briefly on a protruding iron bolt before Zoya reached down, grabbed the fabric of his collar with a fierce grip, and hauled him

"I'm behind it! I'm tucked all the way in!" Toby’s voice scrambled across the steel deck, thin and frantic against the mounting roar of the rail line. The boy wedged his narrow frame deep into the recessed angle of the lower girder stack, his small hands clutching his knees as his wide eyes stared up at Zoya through the swirling grey mist. "Zoya, look at the wall ahead! The rocks—they're right there!""I see it!" Zoya shouted back, her boots locking into the diamond-plate ridges of the flatcar floor as the sky above them abruptly swallowed its remaining light.The jagged, grey limestone cliffs of the canyon wall sheared inward, pinching the tracks into a narrow, stone-ribbed corridor. Above them, the sky vanished entirely, replaced by the low-slung, dripping stone archway of the Blackwood Tunnel."Keep your head down, Toby!" Ariful rasped, his voice breaking on a harsh, wet cough as he curled tighter against the base of the steel beams. "The soot—the smoke inside—it's going to choke t