"Focus on me! Mavrik, get the cutting torch. If that infection reaches the main distribution line, we're all walking metal!" Varkelion roared, shaking the boy by his collar until Harlan’s teeth rattled."I can't cut it!" Mavrik yelled back, his voice cracking as he scrambled away from the pulsating bulkhead, kicking his tool bag forward. "Look at the floor, you stubborn bastard! Look at the deck plates!"Varkelion dropped Harlan against the wall. He snapped his head down, his eyes widening in the dim, flickering amber emergency light. The iron plating beneath his heavy boots wasn't just resting on the frame anymore; it was shifting. The seams between the steel tiles were weeping a thick, clear oil that bubbled and hissed as it came into contact with the ambient air, smelling faintly of ozone and old, copper coins. The deck plates were knitting together, welding themselves shut without heat, drawing jagged, metallic lips over the gaps like a living wound closing over foreign debris."I

"The freight car is gone, but the vibration isn't stopping!" Mavrik roared, slamming his heavy grease-gun into the wall socket to lock the emergency partition. "Look at the pressure valves, Varkelion! The needle is pinned in the red!""I can see the damn needle!" Varkelion snapped, wiping dark, copper-scented grease from his brow as the entire corridor shuddered violently beneath their boots. "Harlan, get your hands off the bulkhead! Don't touch the iron while it's sweating!""It's not sweating anymore, Conductor!" Harlan whimpered, crawling backward along the vibrating floorboards, his glowing, mercury-veined leg dragging limply behind him. "It's... it's singing! Listen to it!"A low, resonant hum echoed through the cramped steel hallway—not the harsh screech of iron on iron, but a harmonic, thrumming chime that vibrated directly inside their teeth."That's not the metal," Mavrik growled, unholstering a iron-headed wrench with a trembling hand. "That's coming from inside the maintena

"I’d rather it burst through the hull and kill us quick than keep vibrating my marrow into dust!" Mavrik roared, his knuckles white against the iron casing of the primary intake valve. The maintenance hatch began to bulge, the rivets screaming as they fought against a force that felt less like mechanical pressure and more like a claustrophobic, physical expansion.Varkelion drew his blade, the steel edge humming with a faint, blue discharge. "If you open that, we might lose pressure to the rear engines entirely. We aren’t even halfway to the Terminus, Mavrik. We stop moving, we die.""We’re moving toward a furnace, Varkelion!" Mavrik retorted, his voice cracking. He didn't look at the conductor; he stared at the hatch, his eyes wide, bloodshot, and reflecting the erratic pulse of the emergency lamps. "Can’t you feel it? The train isn’t just breaking down. It’s changing. It’s becoming him."Harlan let out a wet, gurgling sob from the floor. He pressed his back against the vibrating bul

"Step away, Mavrik! That’s an order!" Varkelion lunged forward, his trench-blade humming with a predatory, high-pitched whine. The corridor tilted sharply as the locomotive groaned, a sound that wasn't mechanical, but organic—a deep, guttural moan of shifting ballast and tortured steel.Mavrik didn't flinch. He leaned harder into the wrench, his eyes fixed on the hatch. "Look! Just look at it, damn you!"Varkelion skidded to a halt, the blade tip hovering inches from Mavrik’s neck. He looked. The rivets weren't just rusted; they were calcifying. They were hardening into jagged, serrated protrusions of obsidian-black carbon, sinking into the metal housing like fangs into gums. The maintenance hatch was no longer a plate of heavy iron; it was a sphincter of writhing, living alloy."By the void," Varkelion hissed, his resolve wavering as the smell hit him—not the acrid scent of ozone and burnt oil, but the cloyingly sweet, metallic stench of old blood and rot."It’s not just broken," Mav

The maintenance valve exploded.Not with the clean, sharp hiss of pressurized steam, but with a wet, metallic crunch that sounded like bone snapping under a hammer."Get back!" Varkelion roared, his hand slamming into Mavrik’s chest and throwing the engineer backward onto the greasy deckplates.A slurry of black, bubbling grease and calcified carbon erupted from the ruptured hatch. It poured over the rim, sizzling violently as it hit the hot floor. In the center of the steaming pile, a massive, tangled shape writhed. It wasn't a mechanical failure. It was alive."Deyvorn?" Mavrik choked out, scrambling backward, his heavy wrench clattering against his boots. "By the void... what is that?""He's breathing," Varkelion hissed, his trench-blade humming to life, its blue-white discharge casting long, jagged shadows against the narrow corridor walls.The shape in the grease rolled over. It was Deyvorn, but the man who had gone missing from the lower housing was gone. His flesh had turned a