Spellhacke- M. K. England Page 0,65

breathe a relieved sigh as I step over the gap and onto the train, the floor vibrating with pent-up power under my feet.

“Hey, you,” someone says right behind me, and I turn automatically. The guard is waving a hand in Remi’s face. My blood turns to ice in my veins.

“Yeah?” Remi mutters, not looking up from their deck.

“Oi, will you look up from that thing for five seconds?” the guard snaps.

Remi looks up, their expression baleful. Good acting. I hold my breath.

The guard studies them for what seems like an hour, then nods in satisfaction. “Get your face out of that thing when you step on the train. You fall through that gap, you break your leg. Got it?”

“Yeah, fine,” Remi says, and holds their deck out for the ticket to be scanned.

Then they’re on. And so is the next person after them, and the next. Some of the stiffness finally bleeds out of my shoulders as we follow Jaesin from car to car, looking for an empty compartment. By the time we find one, the loudspeaker is already announcing our impending departure. My brain hits the brakes hard.

This is not where I thought I’d be. This was supposed to be our grand farewell week. Parties, concerts, food, Kyrkarta. I’m supposed to be celebrating in the city I love, with the people I love. I’ve never left my city, not once. Neither has Remi. Jaesin hasn’t left since he first arrived after the plague. At the end of this week, they were supposed to leave and I was supposed to stay. That’s not what’s happening at all, though.

My butt has barely hit the cushion when the train hums gently as the maglev activates, then sails smoothly into motion. The world outside the window slides past slowly first, then faster and faster until it’s nothing but a blur. We sail along, nearly frictionless, past the wards guarding the city from the contaminated wastelands beyond and out into craggy mountains. On our way.

My head is a mess. I want to scream, want to tell them to stop the train, because this would be great, an adventure, but for two things.

I want to share this moment with Remi. Our first time leaving Kyrkarta, and they’re right by my side, like I always thought they would be. But they won’t look at me. They may as well be on the other side of the planet.

But more than that, it’s the sick certainty in the pit of my stomach.

When we get to Jattapore, the others are going to stay.

And I’ll be going back alone.

In the days before the plague, the high-speed train to Jattapore would have taken an hour at most. It’s less than four hundred miles away, connected directly by rail. With the decreased train service, though, we’re forced to ride a loop that circles through several surrounding cities. Stop in Batista, take forty-five minutes to load and unload passengers, on to the next city, rinse and repeat. What used to be a one-hour trip now takes almost six, and once we’re locked in a compartment together, it takes barely twenty minutes for the anger and resentment to boil over.

Remi stares out the window, silent, with their forehead pressed to the clear acrylic. They’re utterly disconnected, save for the occasional heavy look they shoot in my direction. Jaesin somehow manages to turn sitting next to them into worried hovering without saying a word, shooting glares at me every time I so much as shift in my seat. Ania stares off into space in a way that I know means she’s reading a book on her lenses, her face twitching into slight smiles, frowns, and confusion along with the story.

The atmosphere is oppressively awkward, and I’m about sick of it. I get it, I screwed up, but am I going to be ignored and punished forever? Even while we take on this huge investigation into something that I discovered? I was the only one willing to figure out what happened, and I was right, and we’re finally doing something about it—but somehow I’m still the jerk everyone hates.

Right as I finally decided to pull up a movie on my lenses and zone out, Remi stands from their seat, shoves past us all, and slips out of the compartment, shutting the door behind them with a solid click.

I stare at the closed door. My fault, probably. Everything is my fault. I glare at the door and turn back to face forward . . . only to