“Stop!” Danny yelled, but it was too late. The man, trailing blood, launched himself outside.
Meena gasped and Danny swore. But the man hadn’t leapt to his death. He’d caught a rope ladder that dangled from a small aircraft, which had been following alongside the train.
His attacker clung to the rope as the aircraft carried him away. Even through his dark goggles, Danny felt their eyes connect—a threat and a promise.
Danny slid back to the floor as Meena moaned something in Hindi. One of his wrists was bleeding, but the wound was superficial. All the same, the shock of crimson and the smell of the man’s blood in the carriage made him dizzier.
“No!”
The cry came from the operations room. Danny scrambled back to his feet as Amala ran out. Through the doorway, which Amala had finally managed to open, Danny saw the limp forms of the driver and the fireman.
“They were knocked out,” Amala said. “No one’s been controlling the water level in the boiler!”
“What does that mean?” Meena demanded.
“The steam pressure’s been building all this time. If we release it, the firebox is going to collapse.”
“And if that happens?”
Amala mimed an explosion with her hands.
“Can we detach ourselves from the boiler?” Danny asked.
“We have to.”
They helped Amala drag the unconscious yet still breathing bodies out of the operations room. Then Amala unhooked the couplings between the passenger and driver’s carriages, and they watched the front of the train with its boiler trundle onward without them.
But their carriage was still moving forward at an alarming rate, blasting air through the open hole.
“How do we stop this thing?” Danny yelled as the wind whipped his hair and stung his eyes.
Amala searched for the brake cylinder. When she pulled it, the carriage shuddered and Danny and Meena fell onto the burgundy benches. The piston and wheels screamed and sparks flew from the tracks. They continued forward for another couple hundred yards before the carriage came to an exhausted halt.
A minute later, the chassis on the boiler farther down the tracks blasted apart, sending flames in all directions.
“Oh, God,” Danny whispered.
They watched the flames gradually recede, leaving an unnatural quiet in their wake. The three of them shifted, taking stock of the situation. Danny had a lump on his head and a nick on his wrist. Meena had a split lip and the beginnings of a bruise on her cheek.
“I messaged for help when I got the door open,” Amala said. “Someone from the city should be here soon.”
Danny looked out the rear door. “I hope the others are all right.” He hadn’t seen the large airship that had attacked the Notus, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be out there, picking off Captain Harris and his men. Or maybe it was after Daphne.
The shock hit then, and he slumped to the floor. Meena put her hands on his shoulders and whispered something that sounded soothing, though he couldn’t make out the words past the ringing in his ears.
About an hour later, the group spotted a caravan of autos heading in their direction. Danny had spent the entire time gazing at the sky, so worried about another aerial attack that he hadn’t considered one from the ground.
But it wasn’t an attack, it was a rescue. British officers from Meerut ushered them into their autos, warming them with blankets and the promise of tea.
Danny accepted the aid without speaking. A medic said he might have a concussion as he bandaged Danny’s wrist.
Seated next to Meena as they were whisked away to the city, he couldn’t focus on anything beyond breathing and blinking. Meena was all too happy to keep quiet.
As they approached the city perimeter, though, she asked him if he would be all right.
He took a deep breath and muttered, “I should have taken your brother’s stupid plane.”
Captain Harris greeted them when they were shown to their accommodations.
“Thank goodness! We felt the carriage break off, but we couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Are you two all right? What happened?”
Danny told the captain about the man with the tinted goggles. Harris listened with an anxious frown.
“We’ve been on the lookout for that rebel airship. They must have known we would be searching, so they tried a different method.” He put a warm hand on Danny’s shoulder. “We’ll get to the bottom of this, don’t you worry. In the meantime, I’ll set up a guard. Don’t go anywhere without consulting me first. Is that clear?” They both nodded. “Good. I’ll send a cable to the major and tell him the news.”
When he was gone, Danny sank into an armchair and closed his eyes. He couldn’t stop the loop in his mind: the smell of the man’s blood, the sound of gunfire, Colton’s face as he heard the news that Danny was dead or had been taken.
We’ll be watching.
Danny’s eyes shot open.
First the threatening note. Now someone was following him, attempting abduction.
He was an idiot for not linking them sooner.
Meena hesitated when a guard asked to escort her to her room. “You shouldn’t sleep with a concussion,” she said to Danny. She asked the guard in Urdu for some tea. “I have to keep watch over you for a few hours, at least.” Danny was too tired to argue, and the sound of tea was tempting. He needed something to clear his head.
As she crossed the room, he heard the swish of fabric and remembered what she concealed in the folds of her salwar. Watching her, he added another person to the list of those he needed to keep an eye on.
The airship made a loud whirring sound as it cut through the air. The initial liftoff had sent an odd blend of fear and excitement through Colton as he looked out a small, round window, watching in awe as the earth fell away. He wasn’t afraid of heights like Danny was, but he’d never been so far from the ground before. He liked it.
According to Brandon’s brother, David, the journey to India would take at least ten hours. He’d snuck Colton inside the cargo hold and promised to sneak him back out when they landed in a place called Jaipur. Danny had never mentioned the name, so Colton didn’t know anything about it. All he knew was that it was not Agra, which meant it wasn’t where Danny would be. But he would figure out how to get to him.
He hoped.
I’ll bet no clock spirit has done this before, he thought with a hint of pride. It vanished as he reminded himself why he was making the journey in the first place.
“I’ll save you, Danny,” he whispered to his upraised knees. “Wait for me.”
Tucked between two large boxes, he felt secreted away, safe from prying eyes. He would have to conserve his strength for whatever came next. With hours to go until they landed, and his body aching, Colton willingly slipped into unconsciousness.