Ragged howls ripped from burning throats, hands clawing against unbreakable windows, and the roar of flames flickering with the stomach-turning greens and blues of melting tech shook the air. The mangled cars groaned and vanished behind the smoke.
Nothing to be done for them but hope it ended quickly.
Nate wiped his nose. The dangling car wasn’t on fire yet. Fists pounded against the windows, and faces distorted with terror pressed against the glass.
“Burn!” a Witherson yelled from a balcony nearby. “Burn, bastards! You left us to die!”
The people on the train were citizens of Gathos City. By any Witherson’s definition, they were enemies for abandoning Winter Heights to disease decades before. But screaming and desperate, they didn’t look like enemies. They looked helpless. Hundreds and hundreds of people who would die in agony if no one helped them.
Nate knew better than anyone else what people in Gathos City were capable of. But Bernice had always told him that it was the ones in charge, the ones at the top of the tallest towers, who established the systems that let them shit on everyone else.
Not everyone could be bad.
Pushing his fingers into his pockets, Nate squeezed the thin wires and sharp edges of buttons until his palms stung. He could leave now—run in the opposite direction. He wouldn’t have to watch them burn.
He thought of the little boy dragged to the trappers by his mother. Reed’s gang, unaware of the danger they were in by crossing the Breakers and hiding a GEM. Nate spent so much time convincing himself that there was nothing he could do—no way to make things better. But this time, that wasn’t true.
I can help them.
Biting his lip, he tore out of his coat and crammed it into an empty fire bin, brushing soot onto it to make it look like trash. A dirty coat beat having the entire haul stolen.
He’d never forgive himself for that.
Nate ran toward the flames.
Thick, oppressive heat pushed him back. It smoldered in his throat, sucking the breath from his lungs. He stumbled to a stop beside an older man and a girl skirting the edge of the violent flames. The man wore a tool belt. Another Tinkerer.
“We’re not gonna get to it this way!” he called out to the Tinkerer, shouting over the roar of the fire. “What about the next ladder?”
The man nodded, and they took off running and climbed the rusting rungs along the next support piling. Here, the cars remained upright on the track.
Nate tried not to look down. The wind whipped smoke in curling tendrils around his body.
The fire in the distance wasn’t as loud, but it gurgled—an eerie sound like metal brought to a boil. Nate climbed onto the narrow ledge beside the car and startled when the emergency exit hatch opened. He braced himself, not sure what to expect from a Gathos City commuter.
A man with blood on his hands helped a younger woman from the hatch. Both were dressed in monotone form-fitting clothing. Blood ran down her face from a split at her forehead. She looked at Nate like she could see right through him and limped onto the narrow ledge beside the train.
The man hesitated. Others climbed out behind him, each as dazed and bloodied.
“Come on!” Nate shouted, gesturing to the ladder he’d climbed up. The man and woman flinched. “You have to get down there, before the fire spreads. Get down to the ground!”
They began to move, and relief softened the edge of Nate’s frustration. The passengers could get out on their own. As long as they moved their rotting feet, they’d be all right. But he still needed to get to the cars where the exit doors were jammed against the guardrail and light posts, trapping the passengers inside.
“Nate! Nate!”
Reed and Sparks pushed through the growing crowd below, waving him down frantically. Reed’s skin shone with sweat, and the whites of his eyes were big. He had on one of Brick’s shirts. Backward.
Nate pictured him grabbing whatever was nearby to get out of the hideout as fast as he could. Goose bumps rose up on his bare forearms despite the heat.
“Nate!” Reed shouted. “Get back from there!”
It felt good that Reed was worried about him—until Reed got close enough for him to see the terror in his eyes. He was afraid of fire. And here Nate was, trying to walk into it.
“Do you have tools on you?” Nate yelled back. No sense in apologizing. He couldn’t stop now.
Reed’s eyes widened more, and he opened his mouth, looking like he wanted to pluck Nate off the railway and shake him silly. But Sparks took off up the ladder, pulling off her backpack. She reached Nate quickly and handed him a wrench she used as a weapon and a rusted set of wire cutters she used to cut findings for the clothes and jewelry she made.
“That’s all I have,” Sparks said, breathless. “You’re crazy. Let the rats burn, Nate.”
