On the Transantarctic Rail,

  Somewhere underneath the mountains of Antarctica

  74°14'25.4"S 77°12'10.7"E

  19.05.2024 – 01:45 UTC +05.00

  Nobody moved. Luckily, the emergency AI of the train recognized the command. The noise of metal rolling on metal dominated, as long heavy bars fell vertically to bar the windows. Their sound muted my thoughts, Miguel’s shouting, and the news broadcast on the TV. But it awakened the agents around me into action: strapping their belts, uncocking the safety of their guns. Ricardo yelled commands, trying to reach T2-Azura.

  “Miguel?” I shouted, holding my earpiece tight to my ear, pressing it against it, as if that would do anything. But I did not wait more than a second. If he were MIA, I had to switch to my priorities.

  I changed the channel to the Prince’s frequency.

  “Are you okay?”

  Static. Nothing.

  “Do you copy?” I asked again.

  Enough with the protocols. I pulled my gun from my belt. I ignored Ricardo’s shouting: he wanted to regroup with Emilio in the control room. But it did not matter; safety protocols would fail in the scenario we were in: comms were being cut off one by one, screens were shutting down. We had to be in the center of the action to even understand what was happening.

  I started sprinting through Four. I prayed for a word from Marcelo, an indication that he was safe.

  “Marcelo, do you hear me?” I asked again.

  Marcelo was in Wagon Seven, in a room sealed and not reachable by anyone. He was on the other side of whatever was happening in Wagon Six. Right before opening the door to Five, I couldn’t help but feel that a strike so near his wagon could not have been a coincidence.

  But what was happening exactly? Agents were closing in hesitantly in the same direction, but I sprinted, surpassing them.

  The doors slid open automatically as I approached them, and I entered Wagon Five, where a few agents were standing next to the closed door to Six, their guns raised and on the ready. Ready for what? Who was in Wagon Six?

  “Status report!” I said just as I stepped among them.

  The only person I recognized was T-3 Emilio. Where was Catalina? I shoved the thought away; I could not track that question as well.

  “Fucking status report!” I shouted again. One Emilio’s Agents, a woman with a Chinese background, if I could guess from her accent, listed the facts:

  “T-4 Miguel signaled a hostile presence in the next Wagon, but we have lost him. Doors do not react to the T-Chips; we cannot open them.”

  “Did you try manual override?”

  The Agents looked at me, perplexed, and Emilio tried to say something.

  “For fuck’s sake,” I said and rushed to the wall, shoving Agents that stood in my way. I tapped my fingers onto it, and a screen popped out, expecting identification and a password.

  A hand grabbed me by the shoulder while I typed my credentials.

  ACCESS DENIED

  The static in my ears only grew stronger, or at least I started noticing it more.

  “Elena, we got a response from Wagon Eight,” I heard Ricardo’s voice. He had finally reached us with his Agents. I had made up my half mind to lash out at him for the crucial seconds his lack of reaction had cost us, but then I realized what he had attempted: reaching out to the Agents on the other side.

  That was smart. I turned to him, failing to open the door.

  “It won’t take my password,” I said, breathless. I tried again.

  ACCESS DENIED

  All I could think was that Marcelo was exposed to danger, and I was trapped away from him.

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  Ricardo pulled me to the side. He had a rifle on hand.

  “T3-Elena, we got the wagon surrounded from here and Eight. We will get in, but step to the side and let my men break the door.”

  I stared into his eyes. He had maintained his calm, he had a plan, and he still took time to handle me. I wanted to punch him, but he was right.

  I tapped my earpiece once again, hoping Marcelo would react:

  “Do you hear me? Are you safe?”

  Three of the Agents ran and rammed into the door, shaking the entire wagon in the process.

  “We have not heard a single sound from in there. Maybe their comms are jammed,” Ricardo explained, thinking I was trying to reach out to the agents inside Wagon Six.

  “Someone set-up emergency radio,” Emilio shouted.

  “We need to get past Wagon Five,” I stuttered. Everyone else was having smart ideas, but all I could think of was the static on the TV screens. A static taking over my mind, my decisiveness to act. My hope of succeeding. Succeeding in anything.

  The T-4 Agents rammed at the door. Again, and again. And then they stopped, standing and looking at the door.

  “Keep trying!” I shouted.

  “You don’t have command here, we…” Ricardo pulled me on the side, but then paused, looking eerily right at me.

  “I don’t care for your assessment. We need to secure the Prince,” I barked at him. “Do you hear me?”

  He was, in fact, not listening. His pupils dilated. I saw his mouth closing, taking a slanted form. He stood upright, ignoring me, as if something terrifying had manifested behind me. Or if I were measly dust in the air – I mattered not.

  “Ricardo?”

  He shoved me to the side, not by intention but by ignorance. I glued my eyes on him, unable to comprehend, but saw him walk to the barred window.

  “Emilio tell your…”

  I turned back to him and the Agents previously standing by the door, not ramming against it anymore. They also exhibited the same behavior: slowly walking to the windows, ignoring my words, eyes empty. Apathetic.

  “Trastamara Agents, wake up!” I shouted at them, to no reaction.

  My first instinct was to look outside and see what they were looking at in the empty rocky tunnel– but my training kicked in. I crouched in a corner, a few rows of seats further away from the door. Something was pulling their attention away, and that could be many things, but it could only mean one. I changed the channel to the general frequency, pressing to push an emergency message.

  “Do not look outside. I repeat, do not look outside. Code Black. Do not look through the windows. Code Black.”

  Code Black. Confirmed Cursed threat. I had not actually confirmed it, but nothing could enthrall people’s attention and control it like that, except for a Cursed individual.

  The Agents, fascinated and unblinking, crowded the windows and gazed outside at rocky tunnels grown silent and unmoving. The train’s full rest was a stark reminder that we were fully exposed to outside threats if someone could breach the train’s hull.

  I took in my surroundings, trying to think of a potential action. The pad on the door? Locked. All Agents? Useless. The TV screens attached to the train’s walls? Static.

  And my comms? No one responded to my emergency message. Was I the only unaffected? I stayed there crouched in silence, ready for anyone to jump in from any of the doors.

  There was another option.

  I could try to break whatever Curse held them.

  “You can do that, Elena. Break through the static,” I said to myself, but regardless, I did not dare. An immense guilt took over and numbed me; in the critical moment, for some reason, I was losing my will to even try. My eyes trailed to the screens and their static. All I could think of was what kind of sound the static of being alone made.

  I spiraled, trying to think of all the potential ways things could escalate, and how much worse I could do things if I tried to meddle. If I used my god-forsaken Curse, as well.

  I switched again at Marcelo’s frequency. He was what could Soothe me, perhaps. If he was even there anymore.

  “Marcelo, please talk to me,” I whispered, “I don’t want to make things worse.”

  At this point, he was either also fascinated by whatever was happening outside or...

  Nothing but static played back in my ear. And then, abruptly:

  “Ela, can you hear me?”

  I heard his voice, barely through the static. It was like the world stopped spinning, and for a moment I lost sense of time, order of events, order of thought. All that mattered was that Marcelo was back.

  “Yes! Yes, I can!” I said, “Are you…”

  “-lose it all.”

  I felt my skin crawl as a breeze blew through the train. His words each pummeled through my train of thought.

  Lose it all.

  “Where are you, Marcelo? What do you mean?” I shouted through the comms.

  The train’s lights turned on again. The static on the TVs got replaced again by a functioning broadcast. And in a twist, we started moving again.

  “Marcelo, please,” I begged.

  The comms went completely dead. No more static. As if the other side had killed communications.

  And then I felt it, fully for that time, irrevocably, with the train inexplicably picking up pace again, that he was gone.