Arc 2 — Old Frost
CHAPTER 17 (caught)
The rear platform was exposed on three sides.
Iron railing. Open air. Snow driving sideways across it in thin sheets, barely visible but constant — the kind that doesn't accumulate, just stings. The train sat still while it refuelled, but the wind off the frozen plain moved like the train was already doing two hundred.
Eren and Avelin stood at the back of the last car, pressed against the door. Below them the tracks disappeared into white. To either side — nothing but the scale of the thing they were standing on.
The outer platform was narrow. A maintenance ledge running along the rear car, one rusted railing between them and the drop to the tracks below.
Cold.
Still.
Just the low idle of the engine and the distant sound of machinery.
Avelin scanned the door.
Then she stopped.
A small door. Set flush into the iron body of the car, handle corroded but intact.
She glanced back at Eren.
He nodded once.
She pulled it open.
Heat hit them immediately.
Not warmth — heat. The pressurized, oily kind that lives inside machinery. The corridor beyond was narrow, barely wide enough for one person straight on, and it was full.
Pipes.
Every surface. Left. Right. Overhead. Below the grating under their boots. Pipes running the full length of the car in both directions, bundled and bolted, some the width of a fist and some wide enough to put both arms around. The air smelled of hot iron and something chemical underneath.
They moved through it single file, Avelin ahead, Eren behind.
The sound was constant — low mechanical breathing, pressure cycling, something deep in the train's body that never fully stopped.
Then —
Avelin slowed.
Ahead of her, a valve on the left pipe cluster. A pressure gauge beside it ticking upward. The seal around the valve body glistening, wet with condensation.
Building.
She took another step forward —
Eren's arm came across her chest.
He pulled her back hard, one step, two —
HISSSSS—
Steam erupted from the valve in a white jet, violent and immediate, cutting straight across the corridor at chest height. Gone in three seconds. The pipe groaned and settled.
Avelin stared at the space where she'd been standing.
The air where the steam had passed was still moving.
She turned to Eren.
"That would have—"
He put one finger to his lips.
His eyes had moved.
Avelin went still.
Then she heard it.
Boots.
Not close yet. But getting there. The particular cadence of a military patrol — measured, unhurried, certain of the ground beneath them.
Eren's gaze went upward.
A ventilation panel. Set into the ceiling between two large pipe clusters. Grating over a narrow dark space beyond.
He looked at Avelin.
She didn't need it explained.
He laced his fingers together. She stepped into his hands and he drove her up — she caught the vent frame, fingers finding the edge, worked the grating loose with one hand and pushed herself through.
The footsteps were louder now.
She reached down from the vent.
Eren jumped, caught her wrist. She took his weight without sound, jaw set, and he found the frame edge with his other hand and pulled himself up into the dark just as the corridor below shifted from shadow to light.
Three soldiers.
Two men. One woman. Iron Hammer uniforms — heavy coats, red armbands, rifles slung across their backs. They moved through the pipe corridor with the ease of people who'd walked it a hundred times, not checking anything, talking quietly between themselves.
Eren and Avelin looked at each other in the dark above them.
Waited.
The soldiers passed directly below.
Eren dropped first.
Silent. Both feet finding the grating without sound, hands already moving — he took the nearest man from behind, one arm across the throat, the other behind the head. A single controlled rotation.
The neck gave.
The body was already being lowered when Avelin landed beside him.
She took the woman. Quick. Precise. The kind of movement that doesn't have hesitation in it anywhere.
The third soldier turned at the sound —
Eren was already there.
Two seconds.
Then silence returned to the corridor.
Three bodies. Three uniforms.
Eren looked at Avelin.
"We disguise ourselves."
The uniforms fit well enough.
Not perfectly. But well enough to pass a glance.
Eren adjusted the red armband. Avelin buttoned the coat to the collar, hiding the glow beneath her skin. They left the bodies in the vent space above. It took longer than he would've liked.
Then they moved.
The hallway they emerged into was different from the pipe corridor.
Wide.
High-ceilinged.
Lit properly — overhead panels running the full length, casting flat white light across iron walls and grated flooring. The scale of it was unexpected. The train was larger on the inside than it had any right to be.
They pressed into the frame of a side doorway and looked.
At the far end of the hallway — elevated, set back behind a wide viewing window of reinforced glass — a room.
Screens. Panels. The glow of a dozen displays visible from here.
Avelin's eyes settled on it immediately.
"That must be the control room."
Eren looked. A stairway ran up along the left wall to the room's entrance. One guard on the stairs, seated, chin dropping toward his chest.
"If that's the control room," Eren said, "it'll have information on where the prisoners are."
"Exactly." Avelin's voice was flat and focused. "Find Saffron before we split up."
She reached into her coat.
Produced an earpiece.
Held it out.
Eren looked at it.
Then at her.
Then at the coat she'd stolen off a dead soldier ten minutes ago.
"Where do you even keep all this stuff."
"Pockets," she said. "Don't make it weird."
He didn't.
They crossed the hallway in two movements — quick, separate, sticking to the wall. The sleeping guard on the stairs hadn't moved. His head was fully down now, chin on chest, rifle propped against the railing beside him.
At the top of the stairs — a door.
A panel beside it.
Avelin looked at it for one second.
"Key card."
Eren was already moving back down the stairs.
The guard's belt. He could see the card from here — a flat rectangle clipped to the left side, just below the radio. He crouched beside the man and reached for it slowly.
Fingers closed around the card.
The guard's eyes opened.
Direct. Immediate. No grogginess.
Eren didn't wait.
His right hand came up fast — two fingers, edge of the hand, the junction between neck and shoulder. Sharp.
The guard's eyes closed again.
His head dropped back to his chest like nothing had happened.
Eren straightened, card in hand.
Avelin was already at the panel.
The door clicked open.
The control room was cool compared to the rest of the train. Screens on every wall. A central console running the length of the room, covered in switches and displays. Nobody inside.
Avelin moved to the console without pausing. Her hands found the input panel, navigated through the interface with the ease of someone who understood systems.
A map appeared.
The full length of the train — rendered as a schematic, each cabin marked and labeled.
She studied it for three seconds.
"Prisoners." Her finger touched the screen. "Second cabin."
"And weapons control?"
"Middle cabin."
Eren looked at the map.
At the distance between the two points.
"We should move before someone notices."
"We split up," Avelin said. "Turning off the weapons triggers the alarm. If that alarm goes before you have Saffron—"
"Then we need both done at the same time."
"Exactly."
He looked at her.
"I'll get Saffron."
"Then I'll handle the weapons." She stepped back from the console. "Go."
He turned toward the door.
"Lead the way first," he said.
She moved past him. Pointed down the hallway as they stepped back out, indicating the direction without breaking stride.
They went.
Another corridor.
Narrower. Dimmer. Walls closer.
A door at the end — heavy, circular window cut into the centre at head height. Through it: a second hallway beyond.
Two guards.
Both armed. Both facing forward.
Eren stepped back from the window.
He couldn't speak — the door wasn't thick enough and sound carried in metal corridors.
He looked at Avelin and raised one finger.
Pointed it forward.
Then held up two fingers.
She watched.
He pointed his index finger left, then turned it toward himself.
Then his thumb — right, turned toward her.
She stared at him.
Her brow pulled together slightly.
He repeated it. Slower.
Forward. Two. Left — him. Right — her.
She opened her mouth.
"What—"
Not a shout.
Just half a beat too loud.
Through the door. Through the window. Into the silence of a corridor where two guards had nothing to do but listen.
One of them turned his head.
His hand went to his radio.
"Intruders. I repeat — intruders, section four—"
The door came open.
Eren's boot hit it from the frame.
The door swung hard. The guard on the other side caught the full weight of it across his chest and shoulder and went into the wall — the impact cut his transmission short.
The second guard was already raising his rifle.
Eren didn't go for the gun. He went for the barrel — grabbed it from underneath with his left hand and drove it upward, hard. The guard's grip held but the barrel kept going.
CRACK CRACK CRACK—
Three rounds into the ceiling. Sparks. A strip light shattered.
Eren drove his right fist into the side of the man's jaw.
One punch.
The guard went down without catching himself.
Behind him —
The first guard had pulled himself off the wall. Reaching for the weapon on the floor. Hand finding the grip, fingers closing, beginning to raise it—
A boot connected with his wrist.
The gun skidded across the grating.
Avelin followed the kick immediately — her right hand came across in a short, committed arc.
The impact snapped the guard's head sideways.
His neck went with it.
He went down.
Silence.
Eren looked at the guard on the floor.
Then at Avelin.
"I think he's dead."
She looked at him flatly.
"Yes," she said. "I know."
Then —
WAAAAAAAAAAAAH—
The alarm tore through the entire train at once.
Red lights strobed along the corridor ceiling, casting everything in pulses of crimson.
Somewhere ahead — running. Boots on metal. Lots of them.
Somewhere behind — the same.
Eren looked at Avelin.
One second of silence between them beneath the noise.
Then —
"Go," she said.
They split.