"The train is dead."
Marshal Dain delivered the verdict twenty minutes later, standing in the gutted dining carriage that now served as their command center. The carriage rested on its side, its former wall serving as an uneven floor. Frost was already creeping across the exposed surfaces.
"Rails ahead destroyed for a hundred meters minimum. Coupling between locomotive and surviving carriages — sheared. Even with full equipment and a repair crew, we'd need two days of work. We have neither."
He let that sink in.
Mirael sat against the overturned bar, her splinted arm resting on her lap, her good hand clutching a leather field journal she'd rescued from her destroyed carriage. She was writing in it, one-handed, with a focus that bordered on obsessive. Her spectacles were cracked down the middle, held together with a strip of medical tape.
