My mom texted, “We used your Amazon account to furnish your sister’s new apartment / Chapter 36 / 55

Chapter 36 - The Breach at Mile Marker 14

The darkness inside the carriage was absolute, thick with the smell of scorched brake linings and ionized air. Outside our thin compartment door, the heavy tactical boots shifted, settling into firing stances.

"Sylvia," Briana whispered, her fingers digging through my wool sleeve into the skin of my forearm. "What do we do?"

"Quiet," Henrik hissed from the corner.

Through the faint greenish glow of his wrist-mounted terminal, I saw him slide a compact, matte-black cylinder from his boot. It wasn't a weapon; it was an industrial-grade magnesium flare paired with an acoustic disruptor. He jammed the device into the narrow luggage rack beneath the ventilation duct, whispering two rapid words into his throat mic: "Cover ears."

I pulled Briana down toward the floor, pressing her head into my chest, clamping my palms over her ears as I slammed my eyes shut.

The brass mail slot on the compartment door snapped open with a sharp clink. The muzzle of a silenced carbine poked through, followed by that same chilled voice: "Last chance, Carter. The key."

Instead of the key, Henrik struck the ignition cap.

A concussive, deafening screech tore through the confined compartment, accompanied by a flash so violently white it burned through my closed eyelids. The screams outside the door were instantaneous and ragged. The men in the corridor, equipped with high-gain night-vision optics, were completely blinded, their retinas seared by five million lumens of instantaneous phosphorus heat.

Henrik didn't hesitate. He kicked the latch release on the emergency maintenance panel beneath the window seat. Cold mountain air blasted into our faces, roaring with the damp chill of subterranean limestone.

"Down!" Henrik barked, grabbing our satchels. "Service catwalk! Move!"

I pushed Briana first into the narrow chute. She slid through without hesitation, her old timidity entirely replaced by raw survival instinct. I dropped after her, landing on a wet, rusted iron grate suspended four feet above the ballast rocks of the railway floor. Henrik dropped right behind us, slamming the service hatch shut and wedging a titanium piton through the locking ring to buy us minutes.

Above us, heavy automatic fire ripped through the floorboards of the train car, sparks raining down like fiery hail in the blackness of the Alpine tunnel.

"They aren't border police," Henrik shouted over the deafening echoes of gunfire. "Arthur hired private contractors out of Lyon. They knew the train’s electrical cutoff grid!"

"Where do we go?" Briana gasped, her breath clouding white in the freezing subterranean air.

I held the heavy silver skeleton key tight against my ribs. "Mile marker 14 has an emergency ventilation shaft leading to the Swiss service road. We walk out into Switzerland on our own terms."