Black Coin

Chapter 17: Ambushed

Chapter 17: Ambushed

Crunch.

Steel wheels ground against frozen rails. The Infinity slowed to a crawl, a black serpent slithering through the corpse of the city.

From the cockpit, Seven watched the ruins slide by. Buildings with shattered windows stared back like dead eyes. He kept the speed down. Noise was a death sentence. Attention was a curse.

Click.

He switched lines, merging the Infinity from the skeletal light rail onto the broader Jiangyu mainline. The world opened up. Warehouses and rusted cranes replaced apartment blocks. Derelict freight trains sat on sidings like discarded toys.

Scrape. Thump.

Something moved between the tracks ahead. A shambling figure in tattered office clothes. It didn’t even look up before the Infinity’s cowcather plowed into it. A wet, final crunch. The train didn’t shudder.

Seven’s expression didn’t change. Nulls didn’t flinch.

He passed turnouts, each one a branch into industrial decay. Sidings sprawled out, packed with stationary trains. Container trains, their doors wrenched open, guts spilling out—cardboard, plastic, nothing of value left. Flatbeds. Tankers. Some were tipped over, wheels in the air like dead beetles.

This was the freight hub. The loading zone. The place where things came before people ever saw them.

Hiss.

The Infinity sighed to a stop at a double-track entrance. Seven scanned the route, eyes calculating. He popped the hatch. Cold air slapped him in the face, a sharp, metallic burn in his lungs. The sun was a bright, cruel joke in the bleached sky.

“Stay,” he said to the girl, Chen Sixuan, without looking back. “Radio on. Door stays shut. If it’s me, I’ll open it myself.”

She nodded, clutching the walkie-talkie. She knew his power now. The train listened to him. It was the only thing in this world that did.

He shouldered a pack, palmed a short combat knife. The blade was dull grey. Honest.

“Be careful,” her voice was small behind him.

He didn’t answer. The hatch sealed shut with a thud of finality.

Outside, the silence was a physical weight. Only the wind, whining through steel gantries. He moved, low and fast, his enhanced speed making the world slow down. He was a ghost among the graveyard of machinery.

He darted across tracks, checking locomotives. Most were diesel. Useless.

Then he saw it.

On the lead of a plundered container train, it sat. A Star Orbital 7F electric locomotive. Nearly sixty meters of sleek, silver-and-blue muscle. The “Star Orbital Strongman.” A pre-collapse beast that gulped down high-voltage current from overhead wires. Now, it was a billion-yuan paperweight.

To everyone else.

To Seven, it was a treasure chest.

Its internal systems—the advanced kinetic recovery, the massive capacitor banks—were a perfect, temporary battery bank for the Infinity. A pulse of energy waiting to be harvested.

He placed a hand on its cold flank.

[ SCANNING: STAR ORBITAL 7F. INTEGRITY: 94%. ENERGY RESERVES: 0%. SYSTEMS: DORMANT. ]

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. Got you.

He was about to climb into the cab and start the disconnection sequence when a sound cut the silence.

Thump. Thump-thump.

It was rhythmic. Purposeful.

Not zombie chaos.

Seven froze, his body coiled. The sound came from a warehouse up on the loading platform. Warehouse 14.

He crouched, slinking through the undercarriage of a freight car, then onto the concrete platform. The smell hit him first—the high, sweet stench of rot. Old meat. Spoiled cold storage.

Thump-thump-thump!

“HELP! IS ANYBODY OUT THERE?!”

A woman’s voice. Muffled. Desperate.

Seven’s eyes narrowed. Desperation was common. This… this sounded staged. Too clean. Too loud in a world where being loud got you eaten.

He moved to the warehouse door, slightly ajar. Peered in.

Two large, white freezer units dominated the space. Through the thick observation window of one, he saw two figures. A woman in her thirties, face flushed, beating her fists on the glass. An older woman slumped at her feet, barely moving.

“Please!” the younger woman screamed, her eyes locking onto Seven’s. “Open the door! My mother’s dying!”

Her performance was good. The panic in her eyes looked real.

Seven’s gut screamed trap.

He took a single step inside, his senses dialed to eleven. He saw the condensation pattern on the glass. The lack of frost on the freezer seal. This unit hadn’t been cold in weeks.

It was a set.

He didn’t hesitate. He exploded into motion, diving sideways.

BANG!

The gunshot was deafening in the enclosed space. A bullet sparked off the concrete where he’d just been standing.

Ambush.

BANG-BANG-BANG!

More shots. He didn’t look back. His mind was ice. Two shooters. Entry point blocked. Need cover.

The second freezer unit was five meters away. He moved in a zigzag, his enhanced agility making him a blur. Bullets chewed up the floor at his heels.

He hit the heavy freezer door, yanked it open, and threw himself inside.

SLAM!

He pulled it shut behind him just as two more rounds THWACK-THWACKED into the thick metal.

Darkness. Silence. The smell of old plastic.

Click.

He felt for the internal lock. A heavy manual bolt. He slid it home.

Outside, he heard voices.

“Damn, this kid is fast!”

“Don’t let him get away!”

“Hah! The idiot ran into a freezer!”

Footsteps. Heavy boots on concrete. They stopped outside his door.

THUMP.

A kick rattled the frame. Then another. The door didn’t budge.

“What the hell? It’s locked?”

“From the inside? How?”

Seven stood perfectly still in the dark, his breathing controlled. He listened. The skinnier one was at the window now, peering in. Seven could make out his silhouette against the fogged glass.

“Hey! We can’t open this damn thing!”

The leader cursed. Then, the sharp sound of a gun being raised.

BANG! BANG!

Two shots directly at the observation window. The sound was a monstrous GONG inside the steel box, vibrating through Seven’s bones. The window, 200mm of reinforced polycarbonate, starred but held.

“Shit! It’s bulletproof!”

Idiots, Seven thought, cold contempt washing over the adrenaline. You lock people in freezers, but you don’t know how they’re built.

Then, a new sound. A hydraulic hiss. The door of the first freezer unit swung open.

Light spilled into the warehouse. The “distressed” woman stepped out, brushing off her pants. The “dying” old lady followed, stretching her back with a grunt. No fear. No relief. Just business.

Four of them now. Surrounding his frozen coffin.

The leader, a man with a thick neck and a faded dragon tattoo creeping up from his collar, pressed his face close to the window. His breath fogged the glass. Seven could see the malice in his eyes.

“This kid’s got some nerves,” the man growled, his voice muffled but clear through the metal. “Walked right into it.”

The woman from the freezer walked up, a smirk on her face. “Told you the ‘damsel in distress’ bit still works. Men are so predictable.”

The old lady cackled, a dry, harsh sound. “He’s a juicy one. Look at that gear. That knife. The train he came in on is fancy, too.”

Seven didn’t move. He analyzed.

Four hostiles. Two firearms, likely modified pistols or crude rifles. One knife on the skinny one. The woman and the crone are likely close-range. Leader is the problem.

His hand rested on the short knife at his belt. Trapped in a steel box. Four predators outside.

But they’d made a mistake.

They’d put him in a fortress.

And they’d forgotten he could hear every word they said.

“So,” the leader said, tapping the window with his gun barrel. Tap. Tap. Tap. “You in there. You’ve got two choices. You open this door nice and slow, hand over your stuff, your train, and maybe we let you walk onto the tracks. Or we wait you out. You’ll get hungry. Thirsty. You’ll have to come out eventually.”

Seven remained silent. He closed his eyes in the dark, listening past their voices.

He could hear the faint, almost subsonic hum of the city. The groan of metal cooling in the false sun.