Steel steam and flame

Falling into darkness again, all feelings disappeared completely. Cassia began to suffocate. Mud poured into his body through his mouth and nose crazily. There was a raging feeling of vomiting in his stomach, but for this mud that seemed to have life force, Still no resistance.

Then there was another mental rupture like the lights being cut off, and Cassia completely forgot what happened next. The golden skull on top of his head was still suspended there, his empty eyes just looking at the squirming mud, not knowing what he was thinking. It's possible that without the assembly of his brain, he simply couldn't imagine such a thing.

When he woke up again, it was the clear sound of bells that rang in Cassia's ears, and a slight vibration came from the waist behind him. Opening her eyes with difficulty, Cassia subconsciously covered her eyes with her hands, but the dazzling sunlight did not shine through as she imagined. It was still late at night, it was pitch black outside the window, and there was nothing that could be used as light. This place was still in a deserted wilderness, and the sharp and protruding rocks showed that this was the foothills of a mountain range.

"It's the sound of the small alarm clock." Cassia picked up the alarm clock that was still "ding ding ding" crazily. The sound was like a series of thunders exploding in the extremely silent carriage, shaking his eardrums and making him feel faint pain. . My whole body was still in the same state as when I woke up in the morning, soaked with sweat, and my heartbeat had not yet recovered.

Without strength, Cassia could only be forced to sit in her seat and breathe heavily. He did not turn off the small alarm clock. No one around him, including Julien and Taranto, who were sleeping next to him, had any reaction to the loud alarm sound.

They all slept to death. Cassia checked Julien's condition and realized that sleeping to death might not be an appropriate description. Perhaps suspended animation would be more appropriate. Their breathing, heartbeat, and body movements all dropped to the lowest point in the middle of the night, as if all the blood in their bodies had been drained. Now they are just dying bodies struggling on the line of death. Just people.

"Sure enough, there is something wrong here. There are external factors affecting the entire train." The memory is still very vivid. Cassia clearly remembers the complete appearance of the skull and the feeling of being completely swallowed by the black sludge.

After resting for about a minute or two, the sweat became cold in the cold air of the carriage. Cassia simply took off her short-sleeved clothes and adjusted the air circulation system to slowly increase the temperature in the car.

Pulling out the .07 revolver, Cassia hung the bullet bag on her waist again, barely adapting to the feeling of not having much strength in her body. Looking around, all the passengers were in the same state, their faces were very calm, and they did not have the same strong feelings as Cassia.

There was no change in the carriage. The only difference was that there was one less person and a black box.

It was the girl, the girl sitting diagonally behind Cassia. The seat there has long been empty, and there are still a pair of small footprints on it that have not yet been wiped clean. It seemed that the little girl stood on the seat and took the black box off the luggage rack with difficulty. Cassia could imagine the scene when the little girl took down the box. Her thin body was not proportional to the black box.

"Did that sentence come from a little girl?" Cassia vaguely remembered that a sentence came into his ears before he was swallowed by the mud, but the memory of that sentence was fading out of his mind at a visible speed. Inside the brain.

Without thinking about these unforeseen things, Cassia first went to the first few cars and took a look. Apart from the passengers with different faces in the same condition, there was nothing else that needed attention. In the conductor's room, the train driver also fell asleep on the console, but fortunately, the program had been set in the difference engine. There is no need to stop or slow down to stop, so there is no need to worry about the safety of the entire train yet.

Her body still felt weak and weak, and Cassia walked carefully in the aisle between carriages. When I returned to my own carriage, I tried to go to the next carriage, but found that the doors connecting the two carriages were all locked. But fortunately, it is not the kind of door that is opened by a password card. This is a handle-type door that is locked by a key.

I originally thought I could see what was going on in the car behind through the glass window above the door, but what Cassia saw in the window was her own pale face. On the other side of the door, just as Cassia fell asleep, the glass had been processed. They were pasted with a layer of bright paper, turning the originally transparent glass into a standard mirror.

"It's really..." Cassia looked at herself in the mirror, and it took her a while to find the right adjective, "It's easy to use and effective."

Not daring to shoot at will, nor to spread the cross pupils at will, Cassia followed every important instruction given to him by his body. Just taking a rest in front of the door to gather strength, Cassia took a few deep breaths and injected the little strength in her body into her arms in one breath. Then with a sudden twist, the door lock was completely destroyed.

Push the door open and go in, which is the connection between the two carriages. It can be called the smoking area. The wind was still as strong and whistling, and the temperature was even lower. It blew on Cassia's exposed upper body and made him feel a little cold.

There is the same door in front, and the glass windows have been treated as well. Cassia opened him in the same way, but there was nothing stuck in the carriage here that he wanted to find. It was eerily quiet inside, so quiet that even people's breathing and heartbeats could not be heard.

Walking to the bottom of this carriage, there is still a locked door.

"Did that little girl do these things?" Cassia was confused, and her image of the girl deepened. Using the same method to open the locked doors of the two carriages in front of him, Cassia held the gun carefully. There was something strange everywhere on the train, and it had been like this for two days, but he still couldn't find any clues. Except for the golden skull whose memory is becoming clearer and clearer, and the pair of empty eyes that look like gods.

After twisting the doorknob in her hand, Cassia felt a lot of cold sweat break out all over her body. Under the cold light, her naked upper body seemed to have just flowed ashore from the river, covered with beads of sweat. I really have never been so tired, and I have never been like this in the years at the steam factory, as if this kind of fatigue will completely corrode my bones.

After resting for a while, Cassia opened the door in front of her a crack and looked into the carriage.

It was finally no longer quiet inside. There were several people standing, both men and women, and the little girl was also inside. But what happened there didn't seem to be a good thing. At least in Cassia's view, things that could be solved with pistols and daggers generally did not have a happy ending.