The train jerked upward, the track leading them to the surface. The car emerged from the tunnel and accelerated on an elevated track. The train got higher and higher, level with the tops of the highest buildings in the borough, the speed of the train making the people walking below look like rain-smeared chalk scrawled on a sidewalk.
The Guildman slipped out of his glass box. He stood regarding them with a detached, clinical expression, as if he were unaffected by the motion of the train, the screaming wind, or the fear of the kids huddled on the seats in front of him. He walked toward the caterpillar still cleaning the floor, scooped it up the way you scoop up a baby, and whispered to it. Then he put the caterpillar back on the floor, strode past them like any other commuter anywhere looking for a comfortable place to sit. When he reached the door at the end of the car, he turned. In a low voice that should not have carried over the screeching of the wheels and the howl of the wind, he said, “To read the map, you’ll have to look into the lights.”
“What map?!” Tess shouted. “What lights?”
The man didn’t answer. He kicked at the door at the other end of the car, stepped through the opening, and shut the door behind him. He hovered on the platform between cars, bald head floating in the window, before he disappeared.
“Where did he go?” said Theo.
Strange thudding sounds came from overhead.
“He’s on top of the car. But why would he climb on top of the car? How can he even stay on?” said Jaime.
Even though it seemed impossible that the train could go any faster, it picked up speed.
Jaime said, “This thing is driving itself.”
“But to where?” said Theo.
“The end of the line,” Tess said.
Theo slid to the floor, crawled to the glass booth, reached up yanked on the door. “It’s locked. I can’t get to the controls.”
“Nah, don’t like that. I don’t like that at all, nope. NOPE,” said Jaime, and pointed. Outside the car, the Guildman dangled, face still wearing that same clinical expression.
And then the man let go.
Tess’s breath caught.
Through the back window, she saw the Guildman rolling to his feet on the top of a nearby apartment house.
“We’re not going to do that, are we?” said Tess. “Tell me we don’t have to do that.”
“We don’t have to do that,” said Theo. But the train only picked up more speed. More stops without slowing.
“I think we’re going to have to do that,” said Jaime.
“Look for an emergency brake,” Tess said. “There! On that wall.”
Jaime staggered over to the red lever, pulled it. Sagged when nothing happened.
Tess’s skin prickled with sudden cold. “They disabled the brake?” People had been investigating the Cipher for decades, but no one had ever risked anything more deadly than a paper cut before. No one imagined surging across the borough in a runaway train, no brakes, no way to stop.
As they rounded a rather sharp bend in the tracks, the train tipped, landing back on the tracks with a crash. Tess, Theo, and Jaime crouched on the floor. The caterpillar passed within inches of their noses.
Theo said, “We need to get off this thing now, while there are still buildings to land on. If we get past the populated areas, there could be nowhere to jump.”
They crawled to the door the Guildman had taken. Using one of the poles, Jaime hauled himself to his feet. He wrenched open the door. A rough wind plowed through the car, an invisible hand shoving at them. Jaime used the chains that attached one car to the next to pull himself outside. “There’s a ladder out here!”
Tess and Theo looked at each other, then at Jaime. The Guildman was gone, the brake was disconnected, there was no reason to believe the train wouldn’t keep going until it fell into the ocean. They didn’t have a choice.
Theo nodded. Jaime began to climb, Tess right behind him. The wind tore at her hair, whipping her braid against her back. Her sweaty palms slipped on the ladder, and then her sneaker slipped, too. Theo gripped her calf, set her foot back on the rung. She would not think of the what-ifs, she would only think that this would all be fine, some funny story they would tell after they had solved the Cipher and they were back in their home with their families and they would laugh and laugh and laugh.
Jaime crawled onto the top of the train and flattened himself, inching forward. When Tess crawled up after him, she found a wide trench running down the center of the train car with two thin rails on either side. The wind was so strong it stung her eyes, so she kept her head down as she inched forward. She risked pressing herself up to her knees, saw the buildings flying by, some with roofs only a few feet away. If the train would just slow down a little bit.
The train hit another bend, and the force pulled Tess to the right and jammed her against the railing. Another bend, and she hit the left rail and flipped over the side of the train car. A shriek tore out of her throat as Jaime’s hand clamped around her wrist and hauled her up again. She’d barely breathed her thanks when the train hit another bend and Jaime pitched over the side. Theo lunged forward and caught Jaime’s arm just before he fell, pulling him back. The three of them dropped to the top of the train, panting. The train jerked again, and Theo slipped backward off the end of the car. Tess pounced on his outstretched arm, landing on her stomach with an “oof!” The impact of his body flopping against the back end of the car nearly wrenched her shoulder out of the socket but she held on. Theo’s eyes rolled in his head as his feet scrabbled, but the train swerved so wildly he slipped again and again.
Behind her, Jaime said, “Hold on, Tess, I’ll help you!”
“NO!” Tess yelled, just as the train rocked, and Jaime was tossed over the side of the train once more. With her free hand, she grabbed for him. Her shoulders screamed as she was pulled in two directions, Jaime on the side of the car, Theo at the back, both of them scrabbling for purchase. The what-ifs crashed in her head—what if Theo fell, what if Jaime fell, what if they all fell? Pasted to the top of the train, feet hooked over the thin rails, she looked for a safe place to let go, any place to let go—the top of an apartment building, a rooftop garden or pool—but they had entered a long stretch of tiny suburban homes, and the drop was long and terrifying and impossible. Her thin gibbon arms were stretched to their limit, her legs quivered and burned. The wind slapped at her and the blue skies mocked her and the what-ifs punched her when the wheels locked. The train screamed, and she screamed with it, using every molecule of strength to hold on.
And then, when it seemed as if the train would enter orbit, it shuddered and shrieked to a stop, nearly pitching them all into the sea of tiny houses before it pulled into the last stop, the end of the line. Theo and Jaime dragged themselves onto the top of the car and the three of them lay there, lungs heaving, the smell of scorched metal in the air. Slowly, they sat up in the late afternoon light. Theo opened his mouth to speak, but Tess punched him in the arm.
“Ow!” he said. “What was that for?”