“To the train station, then?” he asked, and I wondered if I should be worried about him peeing on me in his excitement.
“Well, that depends,” I said. “You said there are no trains running at this time of night. Did you mean passenger trains?” He nodded. “So…do cargo trains move through in the middle of the night?” He nodded again. “And do you know where I could catch one?”
He didn’t even answer, just shifted the car into gear. “You must be in a hell of a hurry, not wanting to wait for a passenger car. I mean, that’s dedication, riding the rails on a cargo train. Dangerous too—”
“I scoff at danger,” I said, looking out the window as he steered us out onto the street carefully. It was still looking dingy, but he dodged us down a side street and off the main drag I’d been heading down when I’d ducked down the alleyway at his approach.
“You surely do,” he said, guffawing lightly, giving it way more humor than the remark deserved. “Can I just say? I’ve been a huge admirer of yours for a long time now.”
“It’s nice to be admired,” I said, a little forlornly, without looking over at him. It had been nice. Of course, not that he remembered it, but those days were well over now.
“Ye’ve just done so many amazing things,” he gushed. “That meteor over Chicago?” I turned to look at him, and he was staring at me with a glowing face. “I mean, I guess that was never technically confirmed by anyone, but—I mean, everyone knows it was you under that big bloody rock. They don’t just hover in the air in the air by themselves and gently come to rest in a lake, you know.”
I could remember the weight of it on my shoulders. “Yeah. I know.” I kept looking out the window.
“And that first battle in Minneapolis!” He was on a roll now. “I mean, watching the cell phone footage of that…it was just incredible. You go turning into a dragon and chomping on that Sovereign bastard! I mean, it’s like the stuff of legends. I love it.” I looked over at him and he blushed. “You know. I admire it.”
It had been a long time since anyone had said anything this nice to me, and it stung considering I’d ripped some memories out of this man’s mind to make it happen. “Yeah, well…you and nobody else these days.”
“Och, you’ve got just tons of admirers,” he said. “I’m sure a lovely lass such as yourself probably has a never-ending line of male admirers seeking your hand.”
“Nope,” I said quietly. “Not my hand. Nor anything else, lately.” If I had any energy, that might have been a lot more self-pitying, but as it was, I didn’t have much thought to spare for the deficiencies of my love life.
The ride was a steady stream of gushing, and the officer’s excitement at meeting a “real-life celebrity superhero!” only made my guilt at messing with his mind more present in my own. Here I had someone who had been a genuine fan of mine, and yet the knowledge that I had done terrible things had turned him against me. Somehow that made me feel even guiltier for depriving him of his memories, even though they were all misapprehensions about what I’d done.
The police car slid up to the side of the road and stopped, and the officer nodded his head. I avoided looking at his nameplate; I didn’t want to feel any more responsible for him than I already was. “Train tracks are right over there.”
“Any idea when the next train will come through?” I asked.
“Usually every few hours, I think?” He didn’t sound too sure.
“Thanks,” I said, and popped the door open. Standing there, I leaned back in. “Hey…you mind keeping the fact I was here between the two of us for a while? It’s supposed to be a secret.”
He tapped the bridge of his nose. “Just between you and me. I’ll keep it under my hat for a few days, then?”
“If you could,” I said, smiling faintly. “Good luck to you—”
“Officer—” he started, extending his hand toward me.
I recoiled from him, and watched the pleasant expression melt off his face. If I touched him again right now, it’d vault him into immediate pain as my powers started to rip his soul out of his body whole. “I, uh—sorry,” I said.
“Oh, not a problem,” he said, apparently just as embarrassed as I was horrified. “Just wanted to…shake yer hand.”
“Maybe next time,” I said, and shut the door, walking away before he could come up with another thing to say that would make things more awkward for us both. I could hear a train whistle in the distance, and it sounded like sweet freedom, with maybe just a little tingle-twist of guilt.
28.
I rode through the night, thankfully unable to sleep under the gentle sway of the train on the rails. It didn’t feel like it moved all that fast, rattling as I lay atop one of the carriages, staring up at the steadily lightening sky. I had a bad feeling about where we were going, thinking it probably wasn’t York. I kept low, laying flat the whole time I was aboard because I figured, being on an open-topped car, standing or sitting up would reveal my profile to any witnesses watching the train pass. There probably weren’t going to be many at this time of night, but all it’d take would be one and my chase would suddenly get a whole lot more exciting.
The slow break of day found the train squealing brakes and slowing down, and as I popped my head up, I could see no more countryside around me. Now it was suburban neighborhoods, or the Scottish version thereof. Looking around, way, way ahead I could see Edinburgh Castle perched atop its massive basalt peak.
“Hellfire and brimstone,” I said.
I’d been afraid of this when I’d caught a westbound train, but I was running shy of options that didn’t involve stealing or co-opting a car to make for York. While I could have gotten the cop back in town to drive me, and it might only have been a few hours, I had these fears about the dispatcher trying to reach him and failing, and sounding the alarm. The same applied to me stealing a car right now. I might get away with it, but all it would take would be someone noticing it before I reached York and they’d be looking for me. I didn’t know how integrated Police Scotland was with the UK police services—it could have been very integrated, or suffer from a total lack of cooperation—and didn’t feel like gambling my escape on it.
But the closer I got to York, the less of a gamble it would be. The closer I got, the more it’d be an issue of navigation rather than risk of discovery. But not being able to find where I was going was a very real concern, and it made me wish I’d brought John Clifford’s map with me, even though I knew it wouldn’t have survived my swim in the Firth.
The train continued to slow, chugging down to what felt like twenty miles an hour. Pretty soon, I had a feeling, it would stop, and that was a vexing thought. If I’d had a complete map of Edinburgh in my head, it would have made things easier. As it was, I needed to figure out how to find a southbound train, preferably without strolling right into the middle of Waverly Station and buying a ticket.
Oh, the woes of being a fugitive.
The sky had adopted a blue-purple haze, clouds strung across it. I’d seen prettier dawns, but I couldn’t recall when. It was a strange sort of stray thought that smacked at me, recalling to mind that over the last few years I hadn’t exactly taken a ton of time to stop and smell the roses, even before I was a fugitive. I’d been so busy building up my agency, trying to do my job, that I was doing a pretty piss-poor job of living my life.