X-Marks: Rising Shadows

Visitors

Valencia and I raced down the narrow hole in the ground with the others.

Below the ground, I could see the inside of the rusted old train. It was clear no one had started the train in a long time. Above, carpets of dust and cobwebs gathered along the rusted pipes like tangled ropes, and below piles of buckets and tools littered the way.

"Do you think it will even work?" I said as I ran my hand over a rusted shelf carpeted with sticky black grime.

"It's going to have to," Mat said and cleaned a soot-covered window with his sleeve, "We have visitors."

On the other side of the window hordes of lower city people rushed down the concrete stairs beside the tunnel and into the platform beside the train. They clawed and elbowed each other to the head of the line. They were just a desperate to get out of this place as we were.

"Looks like they got your message," Mat said with a low hanging mouth as he looked back at Valencia.

"Quick!" Valencia shouted and pointed to the red doors that lined each side of the cabin, "Someone open the doors for them."

Before I could rush to help Nate ran from the front of the train.

"Valen," Nate said and huffed on his words, "Do you know how to unlock the train controls."

"Unlock the controls?" I said as my chest dropped at the thought, "Can't you break it?"

"I would need a lot more time than we have," Nate said and pressed his finger to his lips, "There has to be another way."

"Valen, go with Nate to the front," Evee said as she forced open a door with a broken crowbar with Macie, "We'll help everyone back here. Just get this train out of here!"

I ran with Nate to the front of the train. I looked back for a quick moment to see Mat's mother and Evee's father helping people over the platform and into the cabin. The lower city people were filling the cabin like waves of rushing water. I picked up my legs faster and hurled over the discarded tools in my way when the earth rocked at my feet again.

"Nate," I shouted through the dim, crowded cabin ahead, "What was that?"

Nate stopped and peered his eyes through a gap in an opened window.

"Oh no," he said and flinched his face away from the window.

"Nate, what's going on!" I said, "What's happening out there?"

"They're shooting them," he said and turned to continued to run up the cabin.

I followed him, one cabin after another as the sounds of screams behind us and grew louder and louder. Every bone in my body tensed at the piercing sound. I thought Ocean and her blood-soaked head as I continued to run. I remembered how lifeless her eyes were as they stared back at me. I thought of her dark brown eyes until they became a fiery green, like Mat's and it turned my body numb all over.

In my distraction, I tripped over a loose bolt on the ground. The corner leather bound book stabbed me in the side before it flung out of my coat pocket.

"Are you okay?" Nate said and lifted me by my hand.

"Yeah, I think so -" I said and stood up beside him, "Is this it?"

"We made it to the controls," Nate said and paced into the next cabin.

This last cabin had a long desk at the front made of hundreds of buttons and switches. The walls were made of glass and looked out into the bleak darkness where a faint light flashed at the other end.

"Is that the way out?" I asked and squinted my eyes on the faint light.

"It is if we can figure out the code," Nate said and typed into the keys of the long desk.

The middle screen on the desk flashed with blue boxes and lights that turned to red. Behind us, the sounds of gunfire and earthquakes grew closer and louder.

"Damn, that wasn't it," Nate said and ran his hand through his tangled blond hair, "Valen, I think they're moving up the train. I need you to think really hard at what the code could be. I'm going to try to buy us more time, but it might take me a minute."

"What are you going to do?" I said.

"If Gen's going to go back on her promise. I'm going to back on mine," Nate said and typed into his slate, "The upper city is about to get a real shock."