LOCATION: KILIMANJARO INTERNAL RAIL NETWORK (ELEVATION: 5,100 METERS).
SPEED: 120 KM/H.
CABIN TEMP: -15°C.
The tunnel wasn't black. It was a blur of streaking blue light.
The Siberian Breaker roared like a dying dragon. Its sixteen steel wheels ground against the frozen tracks, throwing up sparks that were instantly extinguished by the crushing cold of the tunnel.
I stood in the engine room, my hands fighting the throttle lever. The vibration was so intense my teeth rattled in my skull.
"Pressure is critical!" Colonel Volkov shouted over the noise of the Blue Salt Reactor. He was clutching a railing, his fur coat flapping in the draft. " The boiler is rated for 600 PSI! You are pushing 900!"
"It's not a boiler anymore!" I yelled back, checking the brass Foundry Command Module I had jury-rigged into the ignition. "It's a fusion drive! If I drop below 800, the salt crystallizes and we stall! Do you want to stall in there?"
I pointed to the rear monitor.
The grainy green-and-black screen showed the tunnel behind us.
It was alive.
A tide of white fur and blue ice was flooding the tracks. The Yeti-Stalkers—hundreds of them—were sprinting on all fours, running on the walls and the ceiling. They were faster than the train.
THUMP. THUMP. SCREEECH.
The roof of the engine car buckled. Claws—long, serrated icicles—punched through the armored plating like it was tin foil.
"They are boarding!" Volkov drew his service pistol. "Lieutenant! Defensive positions!"
"I'm on it!" I grabbed my Obsidian-Tipped Bolt-Driver. "Juma! Suleiman! Keep them off the engine!"
THE ROOF WAR
I kicked open the rear door of the engine cab and stepped out onto the tender. The wind hit me like a physical hammer. We were moving at over a hundred kilometers an hour through a pitch-black tunnel, illuminated only by the blue ion trail of the engine.
Juma was already there.
He stood on top of the coal car, a silhouette wreathed in steam. He wasn't using a weapon. He was using his fists.
A Yeti-Stalker leaped from the tunnel ceiling, screeching. It landed on the coal pile, raising a massive fist of ice.
Juma lunged.
CRACK.
Juma's fist, glowing with thermal orange light, collided with the Yeti's ice armor. The thermal shock was instantaneous. The Yeti's chest plate shattered, exploding into steam. Juma grabbed the creature by its fur and threw it off the train. It hit the tunnel wall and disintegrated into red mist.
"There's too many!" Suleiman yelled. He was clinging to the ladder, swinging his Obsidian Sword.
Three more Stalkers landed on the roof of the passenger car behind us. They began to tear at the roof hatch.
"The refugees!" Nayla screamed from inside the car. "They're coming in!"
"K-Ray! The turret!" I shouted into my comms.
On the rear of the train, the Dual Howitzer turret spun around. K-Ray was in the gunner's seat.
"I can't shoot!" K-Ray panicked. "They're on the roof! If I fire, I'll blow up the train!"
"Don't shoot the train!" I yelled. "Shoot the tunnel ceiling! Bring it down!"
"What!?"
"Do it! Collapse the tunnel behind us!"
K-Ray hesitated for a second, then swung the barrels up at a 45-degree angle.
BOOM. BOOM.
The twin cannons fired. The concussion shook the entire train, nearly throwing me off the tender.
The shells hit the tunnel arch fifty meters behind us. The rock shattered. Tons of ice and granite collapsed, sealing the tunnel in a massive cloud of dust.
The swarm of Yeti-Stalkers was cut off.
But we weren't safe. Five of them were still on the roof.
And one of them was looking right at me.
It was bigger than the others. An Alpha. Its eyes were burning blue stars. It opened its mouth, revealing rows of transparent crystal teeth.
It didn't roar. It spoke.
"Give... Her... Back."
The voice sounded like grinding glaciers.
I froze. "It speaks?"
The Alpha charged. It leaped over the gap between the cars, landing on the tender right in front of me.
I raised the Bolt-Driver.
THUNK.
The obsidian bolt hit the Alpha in the shoulder. It pierced the ice armor, but the creature didn't even flinch. It backhanded me.
CRACK.
I flew backward, hitting the steel wall of the engine cab. My ribs screamed. The Bolt-Driver skittered across the floor.
The Alpha loomed over me. It raised a claw to finish me.
Then, a shadow fell over it.
Juma.
Juma didn't punch this time. He tackled the Alpha.
They rolled across the tender, a tangle of fire and ice. The steam rising from their contact hissed violently.
"Tyler! The engine!" Juma yelled, holding the Alpha's jaws open with his bare hands. "Vent the intake!"
"I can't! We'll lose speed!"
"VENT IT!"
I scrambled to the manual release valve. I spun the wheel.
WHOOSH.
A jet of superheated, blue-salt steam blasted out of the side vent.
Juma kicked the Alpha into the steam jet.
The creature shrieked. The intense heat didn't just burn it; it destabilized its molecular structure. The "Cryo-Flesh" melted into slush. The Alpha dissolved into a puddle of blue goo and white fur, blown away by the wind.
Juma stood up, panting. His skin was grey, shivering.
"They want the box," Juma rasped, pointing to the cargo car. "They aren't hunting us. They're rescuing Her."
THE CARGO
We stumbled back into the engine cab, slamming the heavy steel door.
Volkov was staring at the pressure gauges.
"We are losing integrity," Volkov said calmly. "The vibration is cracking the chassis. And... look at the Cargo Monitor."
He tapped the screen.
In the armored cargo car, the crate marked SUBJECT ZERO was glowing.
The bio-hazard containment straps were smoking. The blue ice packing inside the crate was melting.
"She's waking up," I whispered.
"We are ten minutes from the Peak Station," Volkov said. "If she breaches containment before we reach the Array, the radiation will kill us all."
"It's not radiation," Juma said, sliding down the wall. "It's a signal. She's broadcasting."
Suddenly, the train lurched.
SCREEEEEEEEEEEECH.
Sparks flew from the control panel. The lights flickered and died, replaced by emergency red strobes.
"What was that?" Suleiman yelled, running in from the tender.
"We hit something," I said, checking the sensors. "The track... it's gone."
"Gone?"
I looked out the front viewport.
The tunnel ahead didn't have rails. It didn't have a floor.
We had burst out of the internal network. We were outside.
We were on the Saddle—the high-altitude desert between the two peaks of Kilimanjaro, Mawenzi and Kibo.
But the bridge that connected the two peaks... was destroyed.
A massive chasm, two hundred meters wide, separated us from the Kibo cone. The tracks simply ended in open air.
"BRAKE!" Volkov screamed.
"NO!" I grabbed his hand before he could pull the emergency lever. "If we brake, we slide off the edge! We'll derail!"
"If we don't brake, we fall!"
"Not if we have enough speed," I said, my eyes locked on the chasm.
I looked at the Foundry Command Module. The brass cylinder was humming, glowing with quantum energy.
Analyze. Adapt. Dismantle.
"Volkov," I said crazy calm. "Does this train have thrusters?"
"Thrusters? It is a train, not a rocket!"
"It has steam vents," I corrected. "Rear-facing emergency vents for clearing ice."
"Yes, but—"
"Juma," I turned to the hybrid. "I need you to touch the Command Module."
"Why?"
"Because you're a conductor. The module is limited by its software. But your biology... you can bypass the limiter. I need you to dump the entire Blue Salt reserve into the boiler in one second."
"That will blow the engine," Volkov shouted.
"It will create a thrust vector," I said. "We're going to jump."
"Jump the train?" Nayla asked, horrified. "Tyler, it weighs four hundred tons!"
"And we have a nuclear fusion drive," I smiled grimly. "Physics is just a suggestion."
We were five hundred meters from the edge.
Four hundred.
"Do it, Juma!"
Juma placed his hand on the brass cylinder.
"Moto," he whispered.
His violet energy surged into the machine.
The Siberian Breaker screamed. The pressure gauge needle snapped off. The engine turned from blue to blinding white.
We hit the end of the tracks at 180 km/h.
The ground disappeared.
THE FLIGHT OF THE IRON HORSE
For three seconds, we were weightless.
The massive armored train sailed through the thin, freezing air of the Saddle. Below us, the clouds churned with Blue Static. Above us, the stars were razor-sharp.
Inside the cab, we floated. Wrenches, coffee cups, and dust suspended in zero-g.
I watched the edge of the Kibo crater rushing toward us.
"We're going to make it," I whispered.
Then, I saw it.
Rising from the crater, blocking our landing zone.
A Foundry Gunship.
It was a massive, rotored aircraft, hovering over the tracks. Its searchlights blinded us. Its side-guns spun up.
It hadn't expected a flying train.
CRASH.
The Siberian Breaker didn't land on the tracks. It landed on the Gunship.
The impact was cataclysmic. The locomotive's armored cowcatcher smashed through the Gunship's cockpit like a hammer through glass. The aircraft exploded in a fireball of aviation fuel and twisted metal.
The explosion propelled us forward. We slammed onto the Kibo tracks with a bone-shattering CLANG.
The wheels shrieked, finding purchase on the icy rails. The train fishtailed, sparks showering the snow, before finally stabilizing.
We skidded to a halt. Smoke poured from the engine. The Blue Salt drive was dead.
We were alive.
We were on the Peak.
[LOCATION REACHED: KIBO CRATER RIM]
[ELEVATION: 5,895 METERS]
I kicked open the jammed door and fell out onto the snow.
The air here was so thin I gasped for breath. But it was clear. The Blue Static storm was below us, a rolling ocean of lightning.
We were on the roof of Africa.
"We made it," Suleiman wheezed, helping Nayla down.
"Look," Volkov pointed.
In the center of the crater, nestled in the volcanic ash, was a massive array of satellite dishes and tesla coils.
The Sky-Shield Array.
It was dormant. Frozen. Covered in a thick layer of blue ice.
And standing around it... were statues.
Hundreds of them. Human figures, frozen in mid-step, mid-scream. They weren't glass statues like in Arusha. They were Ice Statues.
"The previous garrison," Volkov crossed himself. "The cold took them."
"Tyler," Juma called from the train.
I turned.
The Subject Zero crate had been thrown from the cargo car during the crash. It was lying in the snow, cracked open.
A white light was pulsing from the crack.
And standing over the crate... was Kioo.
The dog was growling. But he wasn't growling at the crate. He was growling at the sky.
I looked up.
Descending from the stars, piercing the atmosphere, was a Pillar of Green Light.
It wasn't the Foundry.
It was the Source. The origin of the Spores.
A massive, organic ship—shaped like a seed pod the size of a city—was entering low orbit. It had detected the signal from Subject Zero.
"The Foundry wants to sterilize the world," Juma whispered, staring at the sky. "But They... They want to harvest it."
"The Gardeners," I realized. "The aliens who sent the Spores. They've come to collect their crop."
I looked at the frozen Array. I looked at the descending alien ship. I looked at the Foundry's army climbing the mountain below us.
Three apocalypses. One peak.
"Volkov," I said, grabbing my wrench. "Get that Array online. Now."
"And the Angel?" Volkov pointed to the crate.
"Leave her," I said. "We're going to need bait."