Arik turned away from the window so quickly that the air in the cabin seed to get thinner around him. He didn’t look at Noah. His gaze went instead to the console built into the mahogany-veneered wall, the direct interface to the conductor and the train’s automated ether-link.
"Stop the train," Arik commanded.
His voice was low, carrying the weight of a decree. It was the voice of a man who had survived the burning of his own soul, a resonance that seed to travel through the floorboards themselves.
Noah took a half step forward, one hand lifting as if he could physically catch the words before they reached the sensors. "Arik, wait. We’re on an elevated line. There’s no platform here. There isn’t even a maintenance catwalk for another two kiloters."
Arik did not blink. He stepped forward and pressed his palm flat against the ether-sensitive panel.
The device responded with a frantic, high-pitched chirp. Then a smooth, synthesized voice, automated and irritatingly cheerful, filled the cabin.
"Warning. Imperial Transit Protocol engaged. Ergency deceleration is restricted to authorized security personnel or catastrophic system failure. Please remain seated for your comfort and safety."
Arik stared at the console.
"I am a catastrophic system failure," he said.
The console stopped for a minute to load every possible answer and compare it to Arik’s.
Then the voice returned, thinner now. "Statent not recognized as valid authorization."
Arik didn’t blink.
"Your system lacks imagination."
"It lacks clearance," Noah said, already moving, then stopping himself a step short. "Your Highness."
Arik raised a brow at that, the title landing sowhere between formality and irritation. He let it sit for a beat, then the corner of his mouth lifted, faintly amused.
"How obedient of you," he said.
Noah didn’t take the bait. "Don’t get used to it."
Arik’s gaze dropped briefly to the brooch at his collar. His fingers brushed it once, the motion light. "This would have been easier without the jewelry."
"Everything is easier without Wrohan," Noah muttered.
Arik exhaled, slow and asured, then looked back at the console. "zos. Override the train’s internal security system and stop this moving casket before I lose my patience."
A pause.
Then zos’s voice cut through the comm, clean and imdiate. "Thirty seconds."
Noah didn’t even have ti to argue.
The carriage groaned. It wasn’t the sound of chanical brakes but the sound of the ether itself being forcibly re-routed. Outside the glass, the pale blue glow of the transit lines flickered, pulsed a violent violet, and then went dark. The hum of the engine died, replaced by the bone-shaking screech of magnetic locks biting into the rails.
The deceleration was brutal. Noah was thrown forward, catching himself on the edge of the mahogany table with a grunt of pain. Arik, however, didn’t move. He stood with his feet planted, his body swaying slightly with the montum, looking like a statue carved from spite and expensive silk.
The train shuddered to a final, dead halt.
The silence that followed was deafening. The cheerful automated voice was gone, replaced by the low, rhythmic thrum of the ergency power backup. A dull red light bathed the cabin, casting long, jagged shadows across Arik’s face.
"Twenty-eight seconds," zos’s voice crackled through the comm, sounding entirely too proud of himself. "I took the liberty of jamming the conductor’s external signal. Wrohan’s central transit hub currently believes this is a localized power surge, but they’ll realize the Prince of Agaron is missing from their sensors in about four minutes."
"That should be enough ti," Arik said.
He walked toward the heavy, pressurized door at the end of the carriage.
"Enough ti for what?" Noah wheezed, straightening his jacket and trying to regain so semblance of dignity. "Arik, we are sixty feet above a comrcial district. There is no door-to-street service here."
Arik reached for the manual override lever. "You worry about the height, Noah. I’ll worry about the landing."
Noah stared at him.
For one absurd second, all the irritation dropped cleanly out of his face and left only disbelief.
Then it ca back twice as sharp.
"Absolutely not."
Arik’s hand remained on the override lever.
The red ergency light cut across the sharp line of his cheekbone and turned his gold eyes into sothing much less human than Wrohan deserved to be near. He looked, Noah thought with exhausted clarity, exactly like the kind of story people survived only by being on the correct side of it.
Unfortunately, Noah had never once in his life chosen the correct side because it was safe.
He chose it because Natalie was waiting at ho, and the fastest way back to his mate and wife was still through this impossible man.
On the line, zos did not sound remotely alard. "There should be a maintenance strut eight ters to the left of the carriage."
"There should be?" Noah repeated. "That is your wording?"
"It was there on the last structural map."
"That sentence is not improving the situation."
Arik pulled the lever.
The door seals broke with a heavy hiss.
Cold night air knifed into the cabin at once, cutting through the recycled climate control and the lingering scent of polished wood and expensive restraint. The city sounds rushed in after it - distant music, a burst of laughter from the market below, the low murmur of traffic, and the hum of Alexandria pretending it ran on anything except vanity and theft.
Arik stepped to the threshold and looked down.
Below them, the eastern district spilled in light and motion. Black and red canopies. Gold lantern-strings. Steam rising from food stalls. A lower plaza crowded with people too entertained to know their evening was about to beco politically inconvenient.
Noah ca up beside him and stopped hard enough not to be mistaken for eagerness.
It was a long drop.
Even for soone with ether, it was a long drop.
Even for Arik, wearing a suppression brooch and dressed for diplomacy rather than murder, it was a long drop.
The fact that Arik looked utterly unbothered was, frankly, offensive.
"You cannot possibly be serious," Noah said.
Arik did not look at him. "I’ve rarely been more so."
"You’re wearing Wrohan’s little decorative leash."
"And still not especially worried."
"That," Noah said, "is not the reassurance you think it is."
Arik finally glanced sideways.
The faint smile at the corner of his mouth had returned cold and deeply unhelpful.
"You can stay on the train," he said.
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