The world was a blur of grey rain and screaming wind.

  We were clinging to the roof of Car Seven like barnacles on a whale. The Centurion’s magnetic clamps groaned under the strain, the metal feet sliding inches with every lurch of the train.

  Below us, the tracks were a mesmerizing, deadly ribbon of steel rushing by at ninety kilometers per hour. One slip, and we wouldn’t just fall; we would be erased.

  "Contact front!" Rax roared, his voice barely audible over the gale.

  Through the rain-lashed windshield, I saw them. Three Imperial Battle Mages emerged from the hatch of the forward car. They didn't struggle against the wind like we did. Their heavy rubberized coats stayed eerily still, anchored by gravity spells.

  The lead mage raised a copper-shod staff. He didn't chant. He just pointed.

  A bolt of blue-white lightning, brighter than the sun, tore through the storm. It slammed into the Centurion’s chest plate.

  CRACK-ZZZZT!

  The cockpit exploded in sparks. The smell of ozone and burnt insulation filled the tiny space. The screens went dark. The hydraulic pumps died. We were blind. We were dead weight.

  "System failure!" I screamed, wrestling with the dead levers. "The breaker tripped! I need ten seconds to reset!"

  Ten seconds. In a firefight, that was a lifetime.

  I saw the mage raising his staff again. The second bolt was already gathering, a ball of crackling plasma that would melt through the unshielded cockpit glass and turn us into ash.

  I couldn't move the mech. I couldn't dodge. I instinctively threw my arm in front of Amelia, a useless gesture against lightning.

  But Amelia didn't cower. She unbuckled her harness. The click was sharp in the sudden silence of the dead engine. She didn't look at me. She looked straight at the lightning.

  "Amelia, get down!" I yelled.

  She ignored me. She slammed her palm against the freezing, condensation-covered glass of the windshield. Her eyes weren't fearful. They were narrowed in absolute, terrifying focus.

  She didn't try to block the lightning. She didn't have the mana for a hard shield. Instead, she reached out to the hurricane-force wind rushing past us.

  WHOOSH.

  Just as the mage fired, a compressed sphere of air, dense as water, formed inches in front of our nose. The lightning bolt hit the air pocket. It didn't stop. It refracted.

  Like light hitting a prism, the deadly plasma bent sharply to the left. It missed the cockpit by inches, blasting a crater into the steel roof of the car beside us. Molten metal sprayed into the wind.

  Amelia gasped and slumped back into her seat, her hand sliding down the glass, leaving a streak of sweat. She looked at me, her chest heaving, her eyes wide with adrenaline. She didn't say a word. She didn't have to. I bought you time, her eyes said. Now fix it.

  I grit my teeth and slammed my fist into the emergency reset button. TH-TH-THUMP. The V8 engine coughed, choked on the rich air, and then roared back to life. The lights flickered on.

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  "Rax!" I shouted, grabbing the controls. "Make them pay!"

  Rax swung The Riveter around. The hydraulic motors whined. He didn't bother with the sights. At twenty meters, you don't aim. You point.

  THUNK-THUNK!

  Two heavy railway spikes launched from the shoulder cannon. The first mage’s shield shattered like glass under the kinetic impact of the one-pound iron slug. The second spike hit him square in the chest. There was no blood. just a wet thud. The force lifted him off his feet and pinned him to the metal wall of the engine car behind him.

  The other two mages scrambled back, diving for the open hatch. They weren't paid enough to fight a walking siege tower.

  "Clear!" Rax yelled. "But we have company!"

  I felt it before I saw it. A rhythmic, metallic tink-tink-tink on the hull of the Centurion. Small. Fast.

  "Crawlers!" Amelia pointed to the side window.

  Scuttling up the side of the train car were six mechanical spiders. Clockwork Centurions. Each was the size of a large dog, armed with a spinning mono-molecular saw blade. They leaped onto our legs. Two of them scurried up the chassis, their saws whining as they cut into our hydraulic lines.

  "Get them off!" Amelia screamed as sparks showered down from the roof.

  "I can't reach!" Rax cursed, trying to aim the cannon at his own feet.

  I watched a warning light flash on the dashboard: HYDRAULIC PRESSURE DROPPING - LEFT KNEE. They were bleeding us.

  "Hold on!" I yelled. I didn't try to shake them. I looked at the curve coming up in the tracks. I disengaged the magnetic lock on the left foot.

  The Centurion lurched violently to the right, balancing on one leg at eighty kilometers per hour. Centrifugal force took over.

  The spiders on the left side, suddenly finding their footing gone, were flung outward by physics. They flew off into the darkness, flailing metal limbs, before smashing into the concrete pillars of the viaduct.

  CRUNCH.

  I re-engaged the magnet. The mech slammed back down onto the roof with a bone-jarring impact. Amelia’s hand shot out and gripped my forearm. Her nails dug into my flight suit. It hurt, but it was grounding. It was real.

  "We're clear," I breathed, my heart hammering against my ribs. "Cutting the roof now."

  I activated the left arm. The industrial plasma cutter flared to life, a jagged tongue of blue fire. I jammed it into the roof of Car Seven. Sparks cascaded over the windshield like a waterfall. Amelia didn't flinch this time. She watched the cutting beam, her face bathed in the harsh blue light.

  "Hurry," Rax warned. "Tunnel!"

  I looked up. Two hundred meters ahead, the viaduct entered a mountain tunnel. The clearance was low. Too low for a ten-foot-tall mech standing on top of a train.

  "Ten seconds!" I pushed the cutter harder. The metal glowed cherry red, then white, then liquefied.

  "It's not cutting fast enough!" Amelia cried.

  The black maw of the tunnel was rushing toward us. It looked like the mouth of a monster waiting to swallow us whole. If we were still on the roof when we hit that arch, we would be sheared off at the waist.

  "Five seconds!" Rax shouted.

  I didn't finish the circle. I cut three sides of a square. "Brace!"

  I retracted the cutter. I raised the Centurion's massive right leg. And I stomped.

  CLANG! The weakened roof section buckled. CLANG! It groaned.

  The tunnel arch was fifty meters away. I stomped one last time, putting fifty tons of desperation into the blow.

  The metal gave way. The roof collapsed inward.

  I cut the magnetic locks. Gravity took us. The Centurion fell through the hole in the roof just as the train screamed into the tunnel. WHOOSH. The stone arch passed inches above my head, missing the top of the cockpit by a hair's breadth.

  We crashed onto the floor of Car Seven in a shower of sparks, twisted metal, and rain. The impact was heavy, knocking the wind out of all of us. The sudden darkness of the tunnel was absolute, broken only by the sparks from our damaged knee joint.

  We lay there for a moment, breathing hard in the enclosed space. The sound of the wind was gone, replaced by the rhythmic clack-clack-clack of the wheels on the tracks.

  "Is everyone alive?" I croaked.

  "Alive," Rax grunted from the back.

  "Alive," Amelia whispered. Her hand was still gripping my arm. She hadn't let go.

  I reached up and flipped the switch for the external floodlights. The high-intensity beams cut through the gloom.

  We weren't in a cargo hold. We were in a laboratory. Rows of glass tanks lined the walls, filled with glowing green liquid. Inside them floated things that looked like organs. And in the center of the car, sitting on a velvet cushion inside a mithril cage, was a small, unassuming wooden box.

  "We're in," I said, unbuckling my harness. "Now let's see what was worth dying for."