The train didn't have a speedometer. It had a "Buffer Load" gauge, and the needle was vibrating against the glass.
Outside the armored windows, the grey tunnel had vanished. They were speeding through a kaleidoscope of broken images.
Jake saw a flash of the Roman Colosseum. Then a dinosaur. Then a WWII tank floating upside down.
"Cached assets," Oppenheimer muttered, pressing his face to the glass. "This is the garbage dump. The history of the simulation."
"It's fast," Taranov groaned. He was sitting on the floor, looking at his hands. Without his minigun, he looked smaller. Naked. "We're moving faster than a bullet."
"We aren't moving," Yuri corrected. He was adjusting the knobs on the ghostly boiler. "The level is moving around us. We are the static variable."
Jake looked at his arm.
The corruption had stopped spreading at his elbow, but the limb was useless. It was a ghost arm now—transparent blue wireframe. He tried to make a fist. His fingers clipped through his own leg.
"How much fuel left?" Jake asked.
"The Narrative Weight of the minigun is depleting," Valentina reported from the driver's seat. "We're losing boiler pressure."
"We need to feed it something else," Jake said.
"I have nothing!" Menzhinsky cried. "I emptied my pockets!"
"Not objects," Yuri said. "Memories."
"What?"
"The firebox accepts bio-electric data," Yuri explained. "If you interface with the furnace, you can burn a memory to sustain velocity."
"You want us to lobotomize ourselves to keep the train moving?" Taranov scowled.
"It is a trade," Yuri shrugged. "Past for future."
The train lurched. The lights flickered. The speed dropped.
Outside, the darkness was growing thicker. Shapes were forming in the void—massive, lumbering shadows.
"Scavengers," Valentina warned. "Bigger ones. They're keeping pace."
"We're slowing down," Jake realized.
He looked at the blue fire. It was dimming.
He walked to the furnace door.
"Jake, don't," Valentina said.
"We need speed," Jake said.
He put his good hand near the flames. He didn't feel heat. He felt a psychic pull, like a vacuum cleaner for his mind.
He closed his eyes.
He thought of his childhood in 2025. The smell of his mother's cooking. The sound of rain on the roof of his apartment.
WHOOSH.
The memory was ripped out of him. He gasped.
For a second, the image of a 2025 kitchen projected into the firebox, vivid and real. Then it burned. It turned into white energy.
The train surged forward.
Jake stumbled back. He felt lighter. Hollow.
"What did you lose?" Valentina asked softly.
"I don't know," Jake whispered. "I... I can't remember."
"It works," Yuri noted, checking the gauge. "Velocity increased by 15%."
"Who's next?" Jake asked. His voice was hard.
Silence in the cab.
Then, Taranov stood up.
"I have too many nightmares anyway," the big soldier grunted.
He stepped to the fire. He closed his eyes. He grimaced, sweat popping on his forehead.
A projection appeared in the flames: A burning village. German tanks. A young Taranov screaming.
The fire ate it.
Taranov opened his eyes. He blinked. He looked confused, then relieved.
"That felt... good," Taranov muttered. "Like putting down a heavy bag."
"We're accelerating," Valentina said. "But the tunnel is ending."
"Ending?"
"There's a wall ahead," she pointed. "A white wall."
Jake looked.
It wasn't a wall. It was a fog bank. Pure, blinding white.
"The Edge of the Map," Oppenheimer whispered. "The White Void."
The train hit the fog.
Everything went silent.
No track noise. No wind. Just the hum of the engine.
The windows showed nothing but milk-white emptiness.
"Where are we?" Menzhinsky asked.
"The Recycle Bin," Yuri said.
"The what?"
"When an object is deleted," Yuri said, "it is not erased immediately. It is moved here. To be broken down into raw code."
"Look!" Valentina shouted.
Shapes began to emerge from the mist.
They were drifting in the white void like shipwrecks in an ocean.
A Panzer tank, half-dissolved into pixels.
A statue of Lenin, missing its head.
A 1950s American diner, floating sideways, neon sign still flickering "OPEN."
"It's the junk drawer of the universe," Jake said.
Then he saw the people.
Thousands of them. Floating in the mist. Grey, motionless figures. Soldiers. Civilians. Children.
"Are they dead?" Taranov asked, his voice shaking.
"Deleted," Yuri said. "Waiting for the overwriter."
Suddenly, the train slammed on its brakes.
Everyone was thrown forward. Jake hit the dashboard with his glitch-arm. No pain, just a weird buzzing sensation.
"Why did we stop?" Jake yelled.
"Obstruction on the line!" Valentina pointed.
Hovering directly in front of the train was a massive object.
It was a building.
Not just any building. It was the White House.
But it was wrong. It was twisted. The pillars were bent like melted wax. The dome was cracked open, leaking black smoke into the white void.
And standing on the balcony of the ruined White House... was a man.
He was wearing a suit that changed colors—blue, red, static. He was holding a golf club that glowed like a lightsaber.
"Hoover," Jake breathed.
"It can't be," Menzhinsky said. "Hoover is in Washington."
"This is his deleted sanity," Oppenheimer theorized. "The parts of his mind that broke off."
The Hoover-Thing raised the golf club. He pointed it at the train.
"EVICTION NOTICE!" Hoover's voice boomed. It wasn't coming from his mouth; it was coming from the sky, like a PA system.
"He's blocking the track," Valentina said. "I can't go around. The rails go right through the building."
"Ram him," Jake said.
"We don't have the mass!" Valentina argued. "That building has millions of polygons. We'll crash!"
"Then we clear the track," Jake said. "Taranov, with me."
"I don't have a gun, Boss."
"You have your hands," Jake said. "And I have a ghost arm. Let's go."
They climbed out of the cab.
The white void had gravity, but it was low. Like the Moon.
Jake leaped from the train to the floating lawn of the White House. He landed in grey grass that crunched like dry leaves.
Taranov landed beside him.
"Trespassers!" Hoover screamed. He leaped from the balcony. He floated down, slow and menacing.
Up close, he was terrifying.
His face was a glitch. His eyes were missing, replaced by black squares. His mouth was a jagged smile that stretched too wide.
"You aren't real," Jake said, stepping forward.
"I am the Administrator of the Trash!" Hoover swung the golf club.
A beam of red energy slashed the air.
Jake ducked. The beam sliced the top off a floating oak tree. The tree didn't fall; it just deleted.
"He has Admin tools!" Oppenheimer shouted from the train. "Don't let him hit you! That club is a delete key!"
Hoover swung again.
Jake rolled. His wireframe arm passed through the grass.
Taranov charged. He tackled Hoover.
They crashed into the lawn. Taranov punched Hoover in the face.
BAM.
Hoover's face distorted. It rippled like water.
"Unsanctioned violence!" Hoover shrieked. He headbutted Taranov.
Taranov flew backward, sliding across the grass.
"You cannot delete me!" Hoover yelled. He raised the club to finish Taranov.
"Hey! President!"
Hoover turned.
Jake was standing there. He held up his glitch-arm.
"You want to talk about deletion?" Jake said. "Let's shake on it."
He lunged.
Hoover swung the club.
Jake caught it.
He caught the glowing energy beam with his transparent, wireframe hand.
The club sizzled. The code of the weapon fought the code of Jake's arm.
Blue sparks showered the lawn.
"Invalid input!" Hoover screamed. "Let go!"
"You're just a bad memory," Jake gritted his teeth. "And I know how to burn memories."
Jake squeezed.
His ghost hand crushed the energy beam. The golf club shattered into light.
Hoover stared at his empty hands.
"My stick," he whispered. "That was my veto power."
Jake grabbed Hoover by the lapels of his shifting suit.
"You're in my way," Jake said.
He threw Hoover.
Not at the ground. At the train.
"Yuri! Open the door!" Jake yelled.
Yuri kicked the firebox door open.
Hoover flew through the air. He screamed as he hit the blue vortex.
"I am the Presideeeeent—!"
WHOOSH.
The furnace swallowed him.
The boiler pressure gauge exploded. The needle spun all the way around and snapped off.
The train let out a whistle that shook the void. It wasn't a whistle; it was a scream of pure power.
"Get on!" Valentina shouted. "The boiler is going critical!"
Jake and Taranov scrambled back onto the train.
"Narrative Weight: Maximum," Yuri reported calmly. "We just burned a boss-level antagonist."
"Punch it!" Jake yelled.
Valentina slammed the throttle.
The train didn't just move. It teleported.
It smashed through the ruined White House, shattering the building into a cloud of pixels. It rocketed into the white mist, leaving a trail of blue fire.
"Speed is infinite," Oppenheimer laughed hysterically, clutching his hair. "We are dividing by zero! We are going to crash the server!"
"Where does the track end?" Jake shouted over the roar of the wind.
"It doesn't end," Yuri said. "It loops."
"Loops where?"
"To the Installation," Yuri said.
The mist cleared abruptly.
Ahead of them, suspended in the black void, was a massive structure.
It looked like a microchip the size of a city. Glowing green paths pulsed along its surface. In the center was a tower of pure light, shooting up into nowhere.
"The CPU," Oppenheimer breathed. "The Central Processor."
"And look who's guarding it," Taranov pointed.
Orbiting the CPU were ships. Not spaceships. Flying destroyers. Their hulls were black chrome. They bristled with guns that didn't look like they fired bullets.
"Firewall Sentinels," Yuri identified. "They are automated anti-virus vessels."
"They're hailing us," Valentina said.
A voice boomed through the train's radio. It was synthetic, cold, and female.
"UNIDENTIFIED PROCESS. YOU ARE ATTEMPTING TO ACCESS THE KERNEL. HALT AND PREPARE FOR DELETION."
Jake looked at the massive fleet blocking their path.
He looked at his crew. A spy with a bad leg. A scientist losing his mind. A boy with no soul. A soldier with no gun. And a pilot driving a steam train through hell.
Jake grinned. It was the grin of a man who had already died twice.
"Valentina," Jake said.
"Yes, Boss?"
"Do trains have horns?"
"Yes."
"Blow it," Jake said. "Let them know the Soviets are here."
Valentina pulled the cord.
HOOOOOOOONK.
The sound wave was visible. It rippled through the void, knocking a nearby floating car out of the way.
The train accelerated toward the blockade.
"Ramming speed," Jake whispered.
They plunged toward the CPU, ready to break the heart of the world.