- Chapter 3 -
Ward Station Nine
Embedded Files
AUSTIN CLOUT: THE RELATION OF EUGENE NIX
AUSTIN CLOUT: THE RELATION OF EUGENE NIX
By: Michael David Simmons
Volume 1
Volume 1
Chapter 3 — Ward Station Nine
Chapter 3 — Ward Station Nine
Deborah did not like being followed.
Mercy Delgado had told Austin this at least twice in the last twenty minutes, as if the tow truck were a horse with opinions, a church lady with standards, or a judge who had seen enough foolishness for one evening.
Austin did not argue.
A man who had watched a cherry-red tow truck ram a black science van in a thunderstorm knew better than to disrespect Deborah.
The old truck growled down the back roads east of Fort Worth with the damaged Sun Reich van hooked behind it, dragging one half-crippled wheel and leaving a thin line of sparks in the rain. The tow chain groaned every time Mercy took a turn too hard. Which was often. She drove with both hands on the wheel, shoulders squared, eyes narrowed, red bandana damp against her dark curls, looking like she had been personally called by Heaven to violate several traffic laws.
Austin sat beside her with the folded map on his knee and the cracked railroad lantern between his boots.
Eugene Nix rode in the back of the cab, wedged between a toolbox, a coil of tow cable, and the canvas evidence bag. She had Ace Neumanson’s medical bracelet wrapped in a handkerchief, held so tightly in her fist that her knuckles had gone white.
No one spoke for three miles.
Rain hammered the windshield.
The wipers squealed.
The stolen van rattled behind them like a coffin full of loose teeth.
Finally, Mercy said, “I got rules.”
Austin stared out at the wet county road. “Of course you do.”
“Rule one: nobody bleeds on Deborah’s upholstery.”
“I’m not bleeding.”
“You are bleeding from your eyebrow.”
Austin touched his face. His fingers came away red.
“That’s not upholstery.”
“Rule two: nobody says words like ‘tone discipline’ or ‘relation keys’ without explaining them to the woman currently helping y’all commit felony towing.”
Eugene leaned forward.
“I do not know if felony towing is a formal charge.”
Mercy looked at her in the rearview mirror. “It will be after tonight.”
Austin unfolded the map again. “Rule three?”
Mercy’s mouth flattened. “Nobody brings a child into this world just to make him a machine.”
The cab went quiet again.
That rule did not need explaining.
Eugene looked down at the bracelet.
“I did not know he lived,” she said.
Mercy’s eyes softened, but only for a second. “I heard.”
“I believed them when they told me he died.”
“Evil people get a lot of mileage out of paperwork.”
Eugene nodded once, a small broken motion. “They forged everything. Death certificate. Hospital transfer. Autopsy summary. Even a cremation receipt.”
Austin looked back at her.
Eugene did not cry. That somehow made it worse.
“The doctor who handed me the envelope had kind eyes,” she said. “That is what I remember. Kind eyes and a false document.”
Mercy’s grip tightened on the wheel. “Lord forgive me for what I’m thinking.”
Austin said, “He can hear you anyway.”
“Then He knows I’m trying to mature.”
The road narrowed beneath a canopy of dripping oak and power lines. The lights of Fort Worth had faded behind them, replaced by scattered farmhouses, gas stations, sleeping churches, and fields that swallowed the rain without complaint.
Austin studied the map.
It was old paper, thick and expensive, folded and refolded along precise lines. Not a highway map. Not exactly. County borders had been redrawn in ink. Rail lines had been darkened. Rivers and transmission corridors were marked in gold. Names were circled with strange numbers beside them.
Fort Worth.
Waco.
Tyler.
Shreveport.
Tulsa.
Memphis.
Birmingham.
Atlanta.
A body of the South turned into an anatomy chart.
Eugene leaned forward again. “Do you see the black circles?”
Austin tapped the East Texas mark near the Sabine River. “Ward Station Nine.”
“It is not the only ward station.”
“No, but it’s the one stamped like a funeral invitation.”
Mercy glanced at the map. “Y’all better tell me that ain’t near my cousin Tilda’s hunting lease.”
Austin squinted. “You got a cousin everywhere?”
“I’m Catholic and Mexican. I got cousins in places the Census Bureau gave up on.”
Eugene reached over the seat and touched one of the gold lines.
“These are not just routes. They are relation corridors.”
Austin looked at her. “Meaning?”
“The Sun Reich tracks families, not just people. They monitor movement, marriage, adoption, church membership, military service, hospital systems, university records. Some of these lines follow actual infrastructure, but others follow blood.”
Mercy made a disgusted sound.
Eugene continued. “The map is not showing where roads go. It is showing where certain family histories intersect.”
Austin stared at the black mark over East Texas.
“And Ace is at an intersection.”
“Yes. Or bait near one.”
“Could be both.”
“Almost certainly both.”
Mercy looked between them. “Y’all got a real talent for making rescue sound worse every sentence.”
A flash of lightning lit the road ahead.
For one instant, the trees became white bones, every branch raised like a warning.
Austin felt the lantern pulse near his boots.
He looked down.
The flame inside was out, yet a faint gold glow moved beneath the cracked glass.
Not steady.
Rhythmic.
He picked it up.
The metal handle was warm.
Eugene saw it and sat forward sharply. “What is it doing?”
“Breathing.”
“Lanterns do not breathe.”
“Neither do vans full of brain radios, but here we are.”
Mercy glanced at the lantern, then back to the road. “Do not let it explode in my truck.”
Austin listened past the engine, past the rain, past the tow chain, and felt something beneath them.
Rails.
Not under the road.
Under the world.
A rhythm buried so deep it might have been memory instead of sound.
Steel on track.
Hammer on spike.
Bell in tower.
Gavel on bench.
The lantern brightened when they crossed a set of railroad tracks outside a darkened feed mill. Deborah bumped over the rails, and the glow flared gold.
Austin inhaled through his teeth.
For half a second, the rain outside became sparks. The road stretched into two shining rails. Trees blurred past like courthouse witnesses. Somewhere ahead, a boy lifted his head in a white room.
Then it passed.
Austin leaned back against the seat.
Mercy watched him. “You just had one of those looks.”
“What looks?”
“The look a man gets when he realizes he should have eaten before becoming chosen.”
“I had chicken-fried steak.”
“Then I’m concerned for the steak.”
Eugene said, “The lantern reacted to the railroad crossing.”
Austin looked at the map again.
“Ward Station Nine,” he said. “Station. Not clinic. Not lab.”
Mercy clicked her tongue. “Old rail station?”
“Maybe.”
Eugene shook her head. “The Sun Reich uses old language. Ward. Station. Line. Relation. They hide ideology inside ordinary words.”
“But Dr. Wrong said Ace was in a station without a map.”
“That could mean the map is incomplete.”
Austin looked out the windshield as the road curved through a stand of pine.
“Or it means we ain’t supposed to read it like a map.”
The old tow truck cab filled with the smell of rain, oil, and hot metal from the dragging van.
A set of headlights appeared behind them.
Far back.
Then another.
Mercy’s eyes flicked to the mirror.
Austin saw them too.
“Could be regular traffic,” he said.
Mercy snorted. “On County Road 114 at midnight in a storm while I’m towing a Nazi van? Sure. Could also be a parade.”
Eugene turned to look through the rear window. “They found us.”
“How?” Austin asked.
“The van. The equipment. The operatives. Anything.”
Mercy shifted gears. Deborah roared.
The headlights behind them accelerated.
Austin folded the map and tucked it into his jacket. “Options?”
Mercy smiled without humor. “Legal or effective?”
“Tonight?”
“Effective it is.”
She turned hard onto a gravel side road.
Deborah’s rear end fishtailed. The black van swung wide behind them, the tow chain screeching as its damaged wheel bounced into a ditch and back out again. Gravel sprayed into the darkness.
Eugene grabbed the back of the seat.
Austin braced one boot against the floorboard. “You familiar with this road?”
“Nope.”
“That’s comforting.”
“I am familiar with roads.”
“That’s not the same.”
“Neither is a man punching invisible sound, but I ain’t complaining.”
The headlights behind them turned onto the gravel.
Two vehicles.
Fast.
Too fast.
Eugene leaned between the seats. “They will not stop until they recover the drive.”
Austin looked back. “What’s on the drive?”
“I do not know.”
“You grabbed it.”
“It was beside Ace’s bracelet.”
“That’s a powerful filing system.”
Eugene opened the canvas bag and removed the small black drive. It looked ordinary except for a gold dot embedded in the end like a watchful eye.
“I need a computer not connected to any network,” she said.
Mercy laughed. “Honey, my cousin Tilda still prints emails. We can find you something offline.”
The first pursuing vehicle gained on them.
It was black, low, and silent except for the hiss of tires on wet gravel. Not a police car. Not civilian. A sedan with mirrored windows and no plates.
The second vehicle stayed farther back.
Mercy killed the headlights.
The world vanished.
Eugene gasped.
Austin grabbed the dashboard. “Mercy.”
“Trust Deborah.”
“I barely trust physics.”
The truck barreled through absolute darkness.
Rain burst against the windshield like thrown gravel. Trees whipped past in smudged black walls. The only light came from lightning far off and the faint glow of the lantern at Austin’s feet.
The pursuing car hesitated for half a heartbeat.
That was enough.
Mercy took another turn, this one onto a narrower lane almost hidden by brush. The tow truck bounced so hard Austin’s teeth clicked. Behind them, the Sun Reich van slammed through branches, cracking limbs against its sides.
The black sedan missed the turn.
Its brake lights flared too late.
It shot past and skidded sideways across the gravel road, disappearing behind a curtain of rain.
Mercy turned the headlights back on.
“Deborah forgives your doubt,” she said.
Austin exhaled. “Tell Deborah I’m growing.”
The second pursuing vehicle did not miss the turn.
It came after them with its headlights off.
Eugene saw it first, a shadow closing through the rain.
“Behind us!”
A burst of white light flashed from the pursuing vehicle’s front grille.
The tow truck lurched as a sonic pulse struck the rear assembly. The tow chain snapped tight. The black van fishtailed, jerking Deborah sideways.
Mercy fought the wheel.
Austin grabbed the lantern.
Another pulse hit.
The windshield cracked in a spiderweb pattern.
Mercy shouted something in Spanish that Austin assumed was both Catholic and tactical.
The lantern flared.
Austin rolled down the passenger window.
Rain hit his face like buckshot.
“What are you doing?” Eugene shouted.
“Being particular!”
He leaned halfway out of the window and held the lantern toward the road behind them.
The pursuing vehicle fired again.
The pulse came invisible, but Austin felt its shape now. A shove in the air. A ring of pressure. A lie pretending to be law.
The lantern caught part of it.
Not all.
Pain tore through Austin’s arm. His shoulder went numb. But the golden light curled around the pulse, dragged it into the lantern, and spat it back unevenly.
The reflected force hit the gravel road in front of the pursuing vehicle.
The ground erupted.
The black SUV slammed into the burst of mud and stone, lifted on one side, and rolled into the ditch with a crunch that shook birds out of the trees.
Austin fell back into the cab, soaked and breathing hard.
Mercy glanced at him. “You good?”
“My arm’s mad.”
“Can it vote?”
“Not yet.”
Eugene grabbed his wrist gently and examined his hand. The skin across his palm was red, almost burned in a circular pattern.
“You cannot keep doing that without understanding what the tone is doing to you,” she said.
Austin flexed his fingers. They trembled.
“Will it kill me?”
“I do not know.”
“Then it’s still in committee.”
Eugene stared at him. “You joke because you are afraid.”
Austin looked at her.
The cab was dark except for the green dashboard light and the lantern glow. Rain ran down Eugene’s face from when the window had been open. She looked furious with worry, which was a strange thing to receive from a woman he had known less than a day.
Austin softened his voice.
“I joke because if I don’t, I’ll start counting the ways this is impossible.”
Mercy drove without speaking, but her expression said she heard everything.
Eugene looked down at Ace’s bracelet.
“Impossible is where Dr. Wrong builds cages,” she said.
Austin nodded once.
“Then we’ll build a door.”
They drove for another hour through rain that finally began to weaken.
The sky turned from black to deep blue. The world smelled washed and wounded. By the time they reached Tilda Delgado’s place, the storm had moved east, leaving low clouds and distant flashes beyond the pines.
Tilda’s place was not a house so much as a collection of decisions that had formed a compound.
There was a white farmhouse with a tin roof, two barns, three sheds, a fenced yard full of chickens, six dogs of uncertain ancestry, a rusted tractor, a deer stand, a satellite dish held together with prayer and duct tape, and a hand-painted sign by the driveway that read:
NO TRESPASSING.
JESUS SEES YOU.
TILDA SHOOTS BETTER.
Mercy parked behind the largest barn.
The dogs came out barking like a committee of furry alarm systems.
A porch light snapped on.
A woman in a pink robe stepped onto the farmhouse porch carrying a shotgun in one hand and a mug in the other. She was short, round, silver-haired, and radiated the kind of authority that made the shotgun seem like backup.
“Tilda!” Mercy shouted from the truck. “It’s me!”
Tilda raised the mug. “I know your truck, fool girl. Why are you dragging government evil across my driveway?”
Mercy leaned out. “Private evil!”
“Oh, that’s different.”
Austin stepped out of the cab slowly, hands visible. “Ma’am.”
Tilda looked him up and down. “You the man who broke Mercy’s window?”
“I was present.”
Mercy pointed at him. “That is his confession voice.”
Tilda’s eyes shifted to Eugene.
Eugene climbed out holding the evidence bag.
The older woman’s expression changed.
Not because she knew Eugene.
Because she knew fear when it was riding somebody’s bones.
Tilda lowered the shotgun slightly. “Who’s lost?”
Eugene opened her mouth but could not answer.
Austin said, “Her son.”
Tilda lowered the shotgun the rest of the way.
“Well,” she said. “Barn’s got power. Kitchen’s got coffee. Dogs bite strangers unless I tell them not to. Which of y’all is hungry?”
Mercy pointed at Austin. “He’s chosen and underfed.”
“I am not chosen.”
Tilda looked at the cracked lantern in his hand.
The lantern flickered gold.
The dogs stopped barking.
All six of them sat down at once.
Tilda sipped her coffee.
“Baby,” she said, “that lantern just told my dogs to hush.”
Austin looked at the dogs, then at the lantern.
“I might be chosen adjacent.”
Inside the barn, Tilda had more equipment than Austin expected and less dust than any barn had a right to possess. A long worktable ran beneath fluorescent lights. Extension cords snaked across the rafters. An old desktop computer sat beside a radio scanner, a label printer, a sewing machine, a ham radio setup, and three jars of pickled okra.
Eugene stared at the computer.
Tilda crossed her arms. “Don’t insult Betsy.”
“I did not say anything.”
“You looked modern at her.”
Mercy started unhooking the stolen van outside while Austin, Eugene, and Tilda gathered around Betsy. The computer tower hummed to life with the patience of a machine that had survived dial-up, Y2K, and several grandchildren.
Eugene inserted the drive.
Nothing happened.
Then the screen went black.
Austin’s hand moved toward the revolver at his belt.
Eugene whispered, “Wait.”
A white cursor blinked.
A password prompt appeared.
RELATION KEY REQUIRED.
Eugene went very still.
Austin looked at her. “That’s bad?”
“That is personal.”
She touched the keyboard but did not type.
Tilda set her coffee down. “What kind of personal?”
Eugene swallowed. “The Sun Reich does not use ordinary passwords for critical archives. They use relation keys. Genetic references, family names, birth order, dates of hidden procedures, phrases assigned to bloodlines.”
Austin said, “Can you guess it?”
“No.”
“Can you break it?”
“Maybe.”
The screen changed.
New text appeared, typed by no visible hand.
EUGENE NIX CONFIRMED.
Eugene stepped back.
The barn lights flickered.
Austin moved between her and the computer.
More text appeared.
MATERNAL LINE ACKNOWLEDGED.
WARD STATION NINE ACTIVE.
NEUMANSON SUBJECT LIVE.
CONDUCTOR VARIABLE DETECTED.
Austin felt the lantern pulse in his hand.
Tilda crossed herself.
Mercy entered the barn wiping grease off her hands. “Why does the computer know you’re holding a haunted railroad lamp?”
Austin stared at the screen.
A file opened.
Not a video.
A diagram.
It showed a child’s nervous system rendered in pale blue lines. Around it were concentric gold rings labeled with frequencies and coordinates. Beside the diagram was a branching family tree with names blacked out. One branch remained visible.
NIX MATERNAL LINE.
Below it, another phrase blinked red.
RELATION INCOMPLETE WITHOUT CONDUCTOR.
Eugene’s voice shook. “No.”
Austin looked at her. “Talk to me.”
“They need me to stabilize Ace’s pattern. That much I knew. But this says they also need you.”
“They didn’t know me before today.”
“No,” Eugene said. “They knew of something like you. A variable. A person able to conduct, resist, redirect, or amplify relation tone. They may have been searching for years.”
Mercy frowned. “How does a person conduct sound by punching?”
Eugene stared at the diagram. “The tone is not merely sound. It is a carrier. It uses neurological resonance, trauma mapping, inherited pattern recognition, and directed electromagnetic pressure. Ace is the anchor. I am the relation key. Austin is the conductor.”
Tilda leaned toward Mercy. “Did that make sense to you?”
Mercy said, “Enough to hate it.”
Austin stepped closer to the screen.
The diagram changed again.
This time it showed an old rail map of East Texas. A spur line, abandoned decades ago, cut through pine country toward the Sabine. At the end of the line was a black circle.
WARD STATION NINE.
A countdown appeared beside it.
06:00:00
Then it ticked down.
05:59:59
05:59:58
Eugene gripped the table. “They have started an activation sequence.”
Austin’s jaw tightened. “For what?”
A new file opened.
This one was video.
The screen filled with a white room.
Ace Neumanson sat strapped to the medical chair.
Eugene made a sound that was not quite a scream and not quite a prayer.
Ace looked smaller on video than in the photograph. Smaller and paler. His white shirt hung loose on his shoulders. The barcode bracelet was gone from his wrist because Eugene was holding it now. In its place, a black cuff circled his arm, threaded with silver wire.
A voice spoke off camera.
Dr. Wrong.
“Subject responsiveness improved after exposure to unauthorized conductor variable. Maternal breach confirmed. Emotional agitation in the subject increased by forty-two percent, but so did signal clarity.”
Ace blinked slowly.
His lips moved.
No audio came from him.
The video distorted.
Dr. Wrong stepped into frame, white coat immaculate.
“For the record,” he said, “I maintain that naming him Ace was sentimental sabotage by the nursing team. But it has proved useful. An ace appears singular. In truth, its value is assigned by the game.”
Eugene lunged for the computer as if she could tear him out of it.
Austin caught her shoulders.
“Don’t,” he said.
“He’s right there!”
“I know.”
Dr. Wrong looked directly into the camera.
“As expected, Eugene, you are watching this with limited time and inadequate tools. Mr. Clout, I hope you are present. If not, Eugene, do explain this to him in one of your earnest little speeches.”
Austin’s grip tightened on Eugene’s shoulders.
Dr. Wrong continued.
“Ward Station Nine was built over a failed rail spur and an older medical archive. The Americans built one part. The Germans dreamed another. The Chinese money modernized what shame had left unfinished. Ideology is useful, but funding is the real bloodline of history.”
Mercy muttered, “I hate him with my whole breakfast menu.”
“Tonight,” Dr. Wrong said, “Ace will enter the full array. If the relation stabilizes, his pattern will be broadcast through every corridor mapped in the Southern network. Not enough to control a nation. We are not children. But enough to select, sort, agitate, incapacitate, and inspire. A prototype for managed inheritance.”
Austin stared at the screen.
Select.
Sort.
Agitate.
Incapacitate.
All the polite verbs for evil.
Dr. Wrong smiled.
“Come quickly if you intend drama. Come wisely if you intend survival. Come emotionally if you intend to prove my point.”
The video cut out.
The countdown remained.
05:56:11
Eugene sagged against Austin.
For one moment, she was not the infiltrator, not the scientist, not the woman who wanted eugenics nixed. She was only a mother who had just seen her stolen son alive and suffering.
Austin turned her gently toward him.
“We’re going.”
Her eyes were wild. “You do not understand what he will do if we fail.”
“No,” Austin said. “I understand what happens if we don’t try.”
Mercy slapped the bat against her palm. “I’m going.”
Tilda lifted one finger. “No.”
Mercy turned. “Excuse me?”
Tilda’s voice was calm, which made it final. “You are tired, concussed, and angry. That makes you useful for hitting one man and terrible for rescuing a child from a secret death hospital.”
Mercy’s nostrils flared. “Tilda.”
“I need you here.”
“Doing what?”
Tilda pointed toward the stolen van. “Stripping that thing for every wire, chip, tracker, battery, and evil doodad it’s got. If they can see where they’re going, we make them blind. If they can hear what they’re doing, we make them deaf. If they send more men, we give them false roads.”
Mercy’s anger shifted shape.
She did not like the order.
But she understood the battlefield.
“Fine,” she said. “But I’m keeping the bat.”
“That was never in question.”
Austin looked at Tilda. “You got something we can drive that ain’t towing a crime scene?”
Tilda smiled.
It was not Mercy’s smile, but it shared ancestry.
“I got a church van, a cattle trailer, a tractor, and a 1978 Ford Bronco that has seen more sin than most deacons.”
Austin nodded. “Bronco.”
Eugene wiped her eyes with her sleeve and forced herself upright. “We need to know exactly where Ward Station Nine is.”
Tilda moved to a filing cabinet and opened the bottom drawer. Inside were paper maps, hunting leases, survey records, county plats, and church directories.
Austin stared. “You just got those?”
Tilda gave him a look. “Some women scrapbook. I prepare.”
They spread maps across the worktable.
For the next twenty minutes, the barn became a war room.
Eugene matched the Sun Reich map to old rail records. Austin tracked road access, bridge crossings, and places where county roads disappeared into timber land. Tilda marked private gates, old logging paths, and one place labeled BAPTIST CAMP CLOSED AFTER SNAKE INCIDENT, which nobody asked about because there were more urgent concerns.
Mercy worked outside with tools, muttering threats at the stolen van.
At one point, sparks flew from the van’s side panel and she shouted, “This thing had three trackers, two remote relays, and something I’m calling Satan’s garage opener!”
Tilda shouted back, “Put Satan’s garage opener in the jar!”
The countdown reached 05:29:03.
Eugene pointed to an old rail spur on Tilda’s county map.
“There,” she said. “That line was abandoned in the eighties.”
Austin leaned over her shoulder.
The spur passed through a settlement that no longer appeared on modern maps. One name remained in faded print.
Moriah Junction.
“Why would they build there?” he asked.
Tilda answered without looking up. “Because there ain’t no there anymore.”
Eugene nodded. “Abandoned places are useful. So are forgotten people.”
Austin tapped the map. “How far?”
Tilda measured with two fingers and a lifetime of rural math.
“Fast? Three hours. Legal? Four and a half. With roadblocks and devils? Depends how much the Lord loves fools tonight.”
Austin looked toward the barn doors.
Dawn was still far away.
Five and a half hours on the countdown.
Not enough room for caution.
Barely enough for courage.
The lantern pulsed again.
This time everyone noticed.
The dogs outside began whining.
Eugene turned to Austin. “It wants the rail line.”
Austin looked down at the lantern.
The glass was cracked. The metal cage bent from where he had thrown it at Dr. Wrong. It should have been useless. Instead, it felt more alive the closer they got to the map.
“No,” Austin said quietly.
Eugene frowned. “No?”
“It doesn’t want the rail line.”
He closed his eyes and listened.
Under the barn.
Under the rain.
Under the ticking countdown.
A train whistle blew somewhere in the deep architecture of the world.
Austin opened his eyes.
“It wants the boy.”
They left before dawn.
Tilda’s Bronco was dark green, loud, dented, and smelled faintly of hay, old gasoline, and spearmint gum. Austin drove. Eugene rode shotgun with the evidence bag at her feet and the maps on her lap. The lantern sat between them, wrapped in a towel, glowing faintly through the cloth.
Mercy stood beside Deborah as they pulled away, bat over one shoulder.
“You bring that child back,” she said.
Austin leaned out the window. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And you don’t die.”
“I’ll put it on the list.”
Mercy pointed the bat at Eugene. “You too.”
Eugene managed a tired nod. “I will try.”
“No. Try is for opening pickle jars. You come back.”
Tilda handed Austin a paper sack through the window.
“What’s this?”
“Biscuits, jerky, two apples, a burner phone, cash, and a church bulletin.”
Austin looked inside. “Why the church bulletin?”
“In case the Lord wants to advertise.”
Austin gave her a small smile. “Thank you.”
Tilda leaned closer, voice lower.
“I know men like that doctor. Not science men. Not Nazi men. Pride men. Men who think because they can name a thing, they own it. Don’t fight him like he’s smart.”
Austin nodded. “How should I fight him?”
“Like he’s wrong.”
The Bronco rolled out of the driveway.
Behind them, Mercy and Tilda grew smaller in the mirror, two women standing in the blue-black morning beside a tow truck and a stolen van, preparing to make a private army regret its logistics.
For the first hour, Austin and Eugene drove in silence.
The eastern sky slowly bruised purple, then gray. Pine trees thickened along the highway. Towns appeared and vanished: a gas station, a Dollar General, a church with a sign about forgiveness, a water tower with a high school mascot painted on it, a cemetery behind a chain-link fence.
Eugene kept looking at the countdown on the offline computer Tilda had rigged into a small portable monitor.
04:12:44
04:12:43
04:12:42
Austin watched the road.
Finally, he said, “Tell me about him.”
Eugene looked up. “Ace?”
“Not the file. Not the relation. Him.”
Her fingers brushed the medical bracelet.
“I only held him once.”
Austin kept quiet.
“He was born early. Too early. I remember being afraid to touch him because he looked so breakable. They placed him on my chest and he stopped crying immediately. Just stopped. Like he was listening.”
Her voice trembled.
“I said, ‘Hello, little man.’ That was all I had time to say before they took him. The nurse told me he needed oxygen. Then they sedated me.”
Austin’s hands tightened on the wheel.
“When I woke up,” Eugene continued, “they told me he had died. I asked to see him. They said it would be traumatic. I asked again. They said there had been complications. I tried to get out of bed, and my father was there.”
She looked out the window.
“He told me some lives were mercifully brief.”
Austin’s face hardened.
Eugene’s voice became colder.
“That was the first day I stopped being his daughter.”
The Bronco crossed another set of railroad tracks.
The lantern flared.
This time the vision came hard.
The road vanished.
Austin was in the white room again.
But not alone.
Ace stood at the far end of a dark rail platform, barefoot, wearing the white medical shirt with the barcode tag. Fog drifted across the tracks. Overhead, a sign swung from chains, but the letters blurred whenever Austin tried to read them.
The boy looked toward him.
Mr. Clout?
Austin froze.
He had not expected the boy to know his name.
“Ace?”
The child nodded.
His voice sounded like it was traveling through a long tunnel.
Is my mom there?
Austin swallowed.
“She’s right beside me.”
Can she hear me?
“I don’t think so.”
Ace looked down.
The platform trembled. Far off, a train whistle screamed, but this one was wrong. Too high. Too clean. A machine pretending to be a train.
Ace stepped back.
He’s waking the big signal.
“Where are you?”
The boy lifted one hand and pointed down the tracks.
The fog parted for an instant.
Austin saw pine trees.
A black river.
An old station platform.
A white underground door marked with the jagged sun.
Then a shadow fell across Ace.
A tall shadow in a white coat.
Ace’s eyes widened.
Don’t trust the map all the way.
The vision snapped.
Austin jerked the wheel.
The Bronco swerved across the lane and onto the shoulder, gravel rattling under the tires.
Eugene grabbed the dashboard. “Austin!”
He braked hard.
The Bronco stopped inches from a drainage ditch.
For a moment, both of them breathed.
Eugene turned to him. “What happened?”
Austin looked at the lantern.
The glow had faded to a faint ember.
“I talked to Ace.”
Eugene went very still.
Austin told her everything.
The platform.
The fog.
The false train whistle.
The black river.
The old station.
The underground door.
Don’t trust the map all the way.
Eugene pressed both hands over her mouth.
“Was he afraid?”
Austin answered honestly.
“Yes.”
Her eyes filled again.
“But he was clear,” Austin said. “He knew what was happening. He knew you were with me.”
Eugene closed her eyes, and a tear finally escaped.
Austin looked ahead at the road.
“You said the map might be bait. Ace says it’s not all true.”
Eugene wiped her face quickly and unfolded the paper map.
“The marked road may lead into a controlled approach,” she said. “A kill corridor. Surveillance, tone arrays, choke points.”
Austin pulled back onto the highway.
“Then we don’t take the road Dr. Wrong expects.”
Eugene studied Tilda’s maps.
“There is an old logging route that intersects the abandoned rail spur two miles west of the station.”
“Can the Bronco handle it?”
“This vehicle?”
The Bronco rattled loudly as if insulted.
Austin patted the dashboard. “Careful. It’s sensitive.”
Eugene almost smiled.
Almost.
Then the portable monitor beeped.
The countdown changed.
04:00:00
The numbers flashed.
A new line appeared beneath them.
CONDUCTOR APPROACH DETECTED.
ACCELERATING SEQUENCE.
The timer jumped.
02:00:00
Eugene went pale.
Austin stared at the screen.
“They know we’re coming.”
“No,” Eugene whispered. “It is worse.”
The Bronco’s radio crackled though it was turned off.
Static filled the cab.
Then Dr. Wrong’s voice came through every speaker, smooth as polished bone.
“Good morning, Mr. Clout. Eugene. I admit, I expected you sooner.”
Austin’s eyes stayed on the road.
Eugene reached for the radio knob. Austin stopped her.
Dr. Wrong continued.
“You have spoken with Ace by now. That is unfortunate but useful. He has always been socially underdeveloped, but his pattern intimacy is extraordinary. I advise you not to mistake his fear for truth.”
Austin said nothing.
The doctor chuckled through the static.
“Ah. The heroic silence. How masculine. How inefficient.”
Eugene leaned toward the dash. “If you hurt him before I get there, I will end you.”
“My dear cousin, you are already ended. What remains is biological relevance and theatrical grief.”
Austin’s voice was low. “Doctor.”
A pause.
“Yes?”
“You ever been hit by a train?”
Silence.
Then Dr. Wrong laughed.
“Not yet.”
Austin looked at the road ahead, where the highway curved east into a wall of pines.
“You keep standing on the tracks.”
The radio screamed.
Not static.
The tone.
Eugene cried out and clutched her head. The windshield filled with white light. Austin’s hands locked around the wheel as the road warped, splitting into rails, then veins, then lines on a family tree. The lantern flared through the towel, gold fire leaking into the cab.
The Bronco shuddered.
Austin heard Ace again, faint but urgent.
Left.
Austin yanked the wheel.
The Bronco shot off the highway, smashed through a rotten wooden gate, and plunged onto a dirt road hidden between pines. The tone cut out behind them like a severed wire.
Branches whipped the sides.
Mud sprayed.
Eugene gasped, still holding her head.
Austin kept driving.
The dirt road sloped downward into the deep trees.
Ahead, through the pines, something rose from the morning fog.
Not a building exactly.
A roofline.
A platform.
An old rail signal leaning at an angle.
Moriah Junction.
The abandoned station looked dead from a distance.
But the lantern between Austin and Eugene burned brighter than the rising sun.
And beneath the ruined platform, far below the earth, Ward Station Nine began to wake.
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