On the Transantarctic Rail,
Somewhere underneath the mountains of Antarctica
74°14'25.4"S 77°12'10.7"E
19.05.2024 – 01:30 UTC +05.00
“I can’t,” Marcelo said. Understandable. “I can’t sleep.”
I looked around me, a bit guilty. No one was in Wagon Three but. Still, I felt uncomfortable at the idea that anyone would walk in on me talking to him and realize my closeness to the Prince. The Sagrados were, of course, aware, and my best guess was that T-2 Azura knew as well. But Marcelo had also made sure this information did not leak to anyone besides those.
We could not change the fact that we grew up together, and being a T-Agent was the career I always wanted.
I stood up and walked to the wagon’s door. I could see through the wagon door’s window: they were awake. A group of T-4s and T-5s, drinking beer. Catalina was among them. I stepped away from the door before they would see me watching.
Through my mind passed all the things they would say, if they knew my relation with the Royal family. The daughter of the Prince’s teacher. A plant, a nepo-baby. No wonder a woman climbed up so high in the ranks. Little Ela got into the Academy, just because she knew her mum taught the Prince Spanish.
Perhaps Miguel also somehow knew. With how he was always trying to pick up my nerves by calling me Ela and all.
“Are you there, Ela?” Marcelo asked.
“What will happen now?”
Marcelo sighed.
“I think it will be a while before we see each other again. I will have to travel to Madrid and play Apology Prince. I am sure my mother has already learned and is preparing me a private jet.”
“Maybe I can come to Madrid as well?” I asked, with a begging tone.
He knew I meant it. Five years ago, with the insurgence of terrorist threats, I had asked to be assigned to the Royal detail in Santiago Towers. Back then, I had just gotten to Tier 3. I did not even ask Marcelo to pull any strings; I just needed to be close, and I succeeded. Years on that post, I always made sure Marcelo and his mother were safe.
If this diplomatic clash with the Commonwealth posed any risks, I would ask to be reassigned again, to wherever Marcelo went.
“Ela, I don’t think it is a good idea.”
“Shit, Marcelo, not the same thing again. Spain is not safe for you. You know that.”
I heard an insistent tone in my earpiece, indicating someone was trying to reach me on another frequency.
“I am so…” Marcelo tried to say, but I stopped him.
“I need to pick this up, stay on.”
For an illusory moment, I felt a rush of confidence and unexplained adrenaline. My heart pumped fast, and then slow again. The world around me sped up, and then slowed down again. Was that anxiety? Or had that conversation given me a sense of plan and resolve? Yes, that was it. It would all be fine because I was not going to leave him alone.
Hand raised to click on the earpiece, I heard a woman shouting.
“Elena! Do not!”
Was that Catalina? Was it from the earpiece, or was she in the room?
I sprang up, instinctively reaching for my handgun. I looked around at the empty wagon.
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Was I imagining things? No, something was very wrong. I looked out of the window of the train, and the bedrock outside was moving slowly. That made no sense. No, rather, the train had decelerated abruptly, without me noticing it.
I clicked on the earpiece for an explanation.
“Catalina, are you okay?” I asked. I stepped awkwardly back and forth in the Wagon. I looked through the window of the wagon door to Wagon Four. A handful of T-Agents had left the beer to the side and were glued to the TV instead.
Miguel’s voice startled me.
“Elena, do you copy? Why are we slowing down? Wagon Six here, all clear.”
“I am here, I am here. I… I don’t know. Did you also hear Catalina? Catalina, are you there? Do not what?”
Azura had not briefed us about a planned stop, and frankly, there was nothing so far from the Trastamara Domain border, besides the tunnel of the Transantarctic. We wouldn’t reach the first town, Nuevo Trujillo, for an hour or two. But undoubtedly the train had slowed down, pulling almost to a halt. I grabbed my jacket from the couch I was previously leaning on, wore it, and passed through to Wagon Four. The doors slid with a humming sound, scanning my T-Chip for permission.
The lights of the train flickered as I stepped into the group of T-4s and T-5s. They were looking at the TV, arguing about something. Miguel mumbled into the earpiece, something about the snow and ice. I tuned out his annoying voice and tuned into the channel of T-3s. There was already chatter there, Azura, Emilio, and Ricardo reporting back from all the wagons.
“…and Two, we are good,” T-2 Azura said.
“Wagon Three was clear,” I added, looking back, “Wagon Fo…”
“Wagon Four clear,” T-3 Ricardo said. I spotted him among the T-Agents crowd, his expression serious, locked in to the TV. I saw around him his right-hand T-4; her name was Palma or Palmira, something like that. She sometimes hung out with Catalina, being one of the few female T-Agents in the mission. But Catalina was nowhere to be seen. Wasn’t she here just a few minutes ago? “Forget about that and turn to your screens!”
I stepped closer to the commotion. I previously thought they were being unreasonably distracted, but boy, was I wrong. I pushed past the T-4s and reached Ricardo’s side. His eyes’ pupils were motionless, glued to the TV screen.
“Dios se apiade de nosotros. May the Lord show mercy,” he said. I turned to the screen.
TRASTAMARA DOMAIN COMPROMISED
An emergency news bulletin from Nuevo Trujillo, the frontier city of the Trastamara Domain, flashed up on the screen. Pictures taken from above, most probably by Drones, showed buildings covered in icy mist. A video of the Avenida Sol de Medianoche played in a loop, pavements covered in white mist and blur.
An icon at the top right of the screen warned the viewer:
DISTURBING IMAGES – REMOVE CHILDREN FROM THE SCREEN
Where the blur faltered, either by technical hastiness or editorial sensationalism, the images were clear. People, frozen in place. Hundreds, thousands, maybe. I heard some T-Agents around me exclaim in shock and whimper. I did not blame them; we were not trained for… whatever this was. And I am sure some of them had families in Nuevo Trujillo.
“What is happening?” Emilio said over the silent channel. The broadcast switched to a reporter from the main Nuevo Trujillo station. Plaza de Armas, it was written in the descriptive tag at the bottom of the screen.
“No survivors are expected in the Northern Chinese District. The tally of the dead will reach many thousands. Tens of thousands,” he said, “the authorities are still seeking to understand, but one thing is certain: today the Domain did not hold. For the first time in centuries.”
New video clips of injured and mutilated people being rushed out of icy rubble and into makeshift tents flashed before our eyes. I grabbed the remote control from Ricardo’s hands, and I flicked through the channels: all of them played the same scenes and the same story. The Domain had been breached.
“The people you see, the injured, they are the lucky ones. They managed to escape the cascade of ice, just in the nick of time, still losing limbs to the icy tendrils of the Domain collapse,” a news anchor, far away from the scene, in a Santiago newsroom, said. The Santiago towers stood tall in the digital screens behind him, the sun shining on the horizon.
The channel changed back to the disturbing broadcasts from Nuevo Trujillo.
“Marcelo…” I whispered, wondering if he had seen this also. I raised my hand to change the channel of my earpiece back to his frequency. His mother was the Queen, the royal Cursed that kept the Domain up, so if it was compromised… I needed to hear his voice.
The TV screens turned to static. For a moment, I lost myself into their noise, the lack of information. The lack of image. My hand hesitated, not clicking to the earpiece, forgetting my urge to hear Marcelo’s voice. The static trickled from the TV into my brain.
I was in a state of shock. But not for long:
“Hostiles in Six!”
Miguel’s voice overrode the channels. He was not taunting, he was not ridiculing. He was scared.
“I repeat: hostiles in Six!”
My numbness got replaced by training instincts.
Listen, assess, execute. And then repeat. Marcelo had to wait for me to listen to Miguel.
“Elena? I can’t see them, but Agents here, they are…”
“Yes? Miguel, do you copy?” I asked. I looked at the Agents around me. They looked startled, confused, and unprepared. I had to snap them out of it. “Initiate lockdown! I said lockdown!”
