Season 2 chapter 8
The Exothermic Slap
"I don't need to go to Zhongwas," Malesh whispered to the empty cavern, a dark smile forming on his face. "I'm already here."
He looked down at his oil-soaked hand, then up at the tiny sliver of sunlight twelve feet above him.
"But the first thing to start my empire," Malesh muttered, wiping the toxic sludge on his ruined suit trousers, "is to get the fuck out of this pit. I don't want anyone to know about this seep. I am going to buy this entire piece of the country as soon as possible, but I can't do that if I starve to death in a hole."
Climbing out was a nightmare. The sandstone walls were crumbly, and his shoes were completely slick with crude oil. Every time he gained three feet of elevation, he slipped back down two. He cursed Kniya, he cursed the government of Sulwadiya, and he cursed gravity.
It took him two grueling, exhausting hours. His fingernails were bleeding, his suit was shredded, and he was covered head-to-toe in black, toxic dirt. With one final, violent heave, he dragged himself over the edge of the ridge and collapsed onto the hot yellow clay, gasping for air.
He didn't rest for long. Time was capital.
Malesh picked up his suitcase, ignoring his aching muscles, and continued walking north along the tracks to find the source of the delay.
A mile down the line, he found the problem. A massive boulder had rolled down from the adjacent cliffs, smashing directly onto the iron rails and snapping a huge section of the track cleanly in half. A crew of railway engineers in sweaty uniforms were standing around the broken iron, scratching their heads and arguing over how to replace the massive rail without a crane.
Malesh walked up to the group, looking like a swamp monster that had just crawled out of an industrial waste pipe.
"Can I lend a hand?" Malesh asked flatly, dropping his suitcase.
The head engineer turned around, disgusted by the sight of him. "Who the hell are you? You look like you just bathed in a tar pit. Back off, kid. You don't know anything about heavy rail infrastructure. We are waiting for a replacement track from the capital. It's going to take two days."
"Two days is unacceptable," Malesh said, stepping past the man and examining the snapped iron rails. "I am an on-site structural engineer. You don't need a replacement track. You just need to weld it back together."
"Weld it?" the engineer laughed. "With what? We don't have a portable blast furnace out here in the desert!"
"You don't need a furnace," Malesh said, pulling off his ruined suit jacket. "You need basic chemistry. Gather the rust scrapings off the old train cars. Get me the aluminum shavings from the broken carriage axels. Now."
The engineers were too stunned by his absolute authority to argue. They brought him what he asked for.
Malesh mixed the iron oxide (rust) and the aluminum powder inside a makeshift clay crucible he packed around the broken joint of the track. He used a flare from the engineer's emergency kit to ignite it.
The reaction was immediate and violent.
A blinding, intense white light erupted from the clay mold. The highly exothermic thermite reaction reached temperatures of over 2,500 degrees Celsius in seconds, melting the iron and seamlessly fusing the snapped tracks together with liquid metal.
The engineers shielded their eyes, stepping back in absolute shock. As the slag cooled, leaving a perfectly welded, solid iron joint, they stared at Malesh like he was a wizard.
"I studied the exothermic displacement of metal oxides in the academy," Malesh said casually, dusting his hands off. "I didn't know it was actually going to come in handy. Track is fixed. Clear the boulder and start the train."
He picked up his suitcase and began the long walk back to the station.
The Station Master and the Slap
Malesh walked back toward the Sulwadiya station, his shoes squelching slightly with residual crude oil. He was covered in black toxic sludge, his tailored suit was ruined, and he smelled like a chemical fire.
But internally, he was thrilled.
Ah, yes, Malesh thought, wiping a smudge of oil off his cheek. I fell into a pit, discovered a multi-billion credit oil reserve, and successfully fixed a heavy rail line using improvised high-temperature explosives. Productivity is at an all-time high today.
He stepped onto the wooden platform, expecting the passengers to be boarding the train.
Instead, the argument was still going on.
The wealthy merchant with the tea-stained trousers was currently screaming directly into the face of the exhausted station master.
"You incompetent fool!" the merchant yelled, his face purple with rage. "I am losing thousands of credits every hour this train sits here! You are a disgrace to the railway!"
Malesh stopped and stared.
"Sir, please," the station master begged, holding his hands up defensively. "I do not control the rocks on the tracks..."
"You are fucking garbage!" the merchant roared, and in a fit of pure, adult-toddler entitlement, he raised his hand and struck the station master hard across the face. Smack.
The station master stumbled backward. The other passengers gasped, clutching their pearls.
Malesh let out a long, heavy sigh. He walked up right behind the merchant and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Bro," Malesh said, his voice completely flat and devoid of emotion.
The merchant spun around, taking one look at the oil-soaked, soot-covered teenager in absolute disgust. "Excuse me? Who the fuck do you think you are? Listen here, you filthy little swamp rat! I am a very important—"
"A very important whore to a brothel, I know," Malesh interrupted, looking at the man with utter exhaustion.
The merchant choked on his own breath, his eyes bulging. "What?!"
"I understand basic economics," Malesh continued calmly, wiping a streak of black oil onto his ruined pants. "I know it is really important for you to get to the brothel on time because your customers are waiting to fuck you. And if they aren't able to fuck you, your hour is getting wasted. That is why each of your hours is so financially critical to your pimp. I respect the hustle, but stop hitting the ticket guy. He doesn't control your appointments."
The entire platform went dead silent. A woman in the back row dropped her umbrella. The merchant's face shifted from purple to a terrifying shade of boiling red.
"You little shit!" the merchant screamed, spit flying from his lips. "I will have you arrested! I will have you thrown in a cell for the rest of your miserable life!"
Malesh didn't even blink. He just stared at the man's face, running a quick structural calculation in his head.
"Yeah, yeah, go on," Malesh said, his voice dropping to a low, deadpan monotone. "Get me arrested. Call the cops. But understand this—when I eventually get out of jail, I will find you. And as a certified engineer, I will surgically and permanently weld a steel pipe directly from your ass to your mouth."
The merchant took a step back, genuinely terrified by how calm Malesh was.
"It will be a perfectly sealed, highly efficient closed-loop system," Malesh explained, gesturing with his blackened hands. "So that your food goes straight from your ass back into your fucking mouth. Zero waste. Maximum biological efficiency. You will be a self-sustaining ecosystem of your own bullshit."
"You... you are a psychopath!" the merchant raised his finger, his hand trembling.
"No, I am just tired," Malesh muttered.
SMACK.
Malesh didn't wind up. He didn't look angry. He just casually backhanded the merchant across the face with the heavy, unyielding force of a guy who had just spent two hours hauling himself out of a ravine.
The sound cracked like a gunshot across the quiet desert platform.
The merchant's eyes rolled back into his head, and he dropped to the wooden platform like a sack of wet flour. He was completely out cold.
Malesh shook out his hand, completely unbothered, and looked at the stunned station master, who was staring at him like he was staring at the devil himself.
"The track is fixed," Malesh stated calmly, stepping right over the unconscious merchant. "Tell the conductor to prep the engine. And get me a telegraph machine, please. I need to buy this entire fucking desert."
The Liability of Cowards
The Sulwadiya station platform was dead silent, save for the hiss of the train's steam engine.
The station master, shaking uncontrollably, stepped over the unconscious merchant and rushed to the telegraph machine. He quickly tapped out a message to the engineering crew down the line. A minute later, the machine clicked back.
The station master read the paper, his eyes widening. He looked at Malesh, who was currently scraping a thick layer of dried crude oil off his fingernails with a pocket knife.
"The... the engineers confirm it," the station master stuttered, addressing the remaining passengers. "The track is fully operational. A perfectly fused iron joint. We are ready to board."
The passengers didn't complain. They didn't speak. They formed a perfectly orderly, terrifyingly quiet line and boarded the train, giving Malesh a very wide, very respectful berth. Nobody wanted to be the next guy to get a steel pipe surgically attached to their digestive system.
Malesh didn't get back on the Continental Express. His journey north was canceled. Instead, he walked out to the dusty street behind the station and flagged down a rusted, rattling steam-cab to take him to the local provincial capital.
Sitting in the back of the cab, leaving oily black stains on the cracked leather seats, Malesh stared out the window at the endless desert.
His mind naturally drifted back to the broken track.
*Why were those engineers so incredibly incompetent?* Malesh thought, watching a tumbleweed roll past the road. *It was a basic thermite reaction. Iron oxide from the rust, aluminum powder from the axles. A first-year chemistry student could balance that equation in their sleep.*
He tapped his chin, analyzing the variables.
*Ah. Right. The explosion risk,* Malesh realized, his lip curling into a sneer of disappointment. *It is a highly volatile, uncontrolled exothermic reaction reaching 2,500 degrees. If the ratio is off by even a few grams, it doesn't weld the track; it blows your arms off. The engineers knew the chemistry. They just didn't want the liability. They preferred sitting in the dirt for two days waiting for a replacement track to keep their pensions safe. Cowards. Development requires risking your limbs occasionally.