“Goddammit, you bitch!”

Jade let go, and Chloé brought the muzzle of the gun level with the horizon again, but it was already too late. They both knew it. The man was surely half a mile away, hunched over and almost invisible amidst the tall yellow grass and snow.

“Oh, you fucking bitch!”

“Chloé, we’re not here to kill them,” Jade said.

“They’re going to die anyway, who the hell cares if we do it?”

“We don’t know that,” Jade said softly. “That’s just what they print in the papers.”

“They deserve it!” Chloé snarled.

“I know,” Jade said. “I know. But we have better things to do.”

“Goddammit, my husband is coloured! Our son is!”

“Husband?” Jade said, blinking.

“If you give me shit for being bi right now, I swear to the gods…”

“No,” Jade said, hands raised in surrender. “No, no, no. We’re just not supposed to talk about it.” He took off his hat, and stuffed his hair apologetically back inside. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry, Chloé, I didn’t know. But…” He twitched a pained smile. “This isn’t safe and we have better things to do.”

“They are not things,” Chloé said darkly. “They are not ‘dangerous things.’”

“No, they are people,” Jade said, dragging her by the hand. “They are a lot of scared people who have already been hurt, and they have no idea we’re not going to hurt them more. So, please, Chloé. Let’s take care of the people.”

Grudgingly, Chloé slung the rifle across her back again, and followed.

◆◇◆

Most of the ones in this car could walk. This mechanized death march had been relatively short, there hadn’t been many deaths — only the very old, the very young, and the very sick. They’d been scraping snow off the rooftops and eating it — not an ideal solution but the best available. It had been worse in summer. Summer was short, thank the gods. Two brief months and then the rains came. They could stick hands and coats and hats through the tiny windows, and sometimes do a little magic to catch the rain. But summer had been very bad.

She’d managed to explain, brokenly, that they had tents with more food and hot drinks and medicine, you just couldn’t see them. They were in the general direction of the large glowing magical sign that said, in Anglais script these poor people could not read, Instant Tent with Optical Shield by Mad Bartholomew! It switched off, in case of the rare emergency where they actually needed to hide, but the damn cheerful sign and the striped, circus-like interior of the tents got up her ass worse and worse every time she saw ’em. This was not a cute or funny situation!

There were threads of people wandering in the general direction of the sign, even if they didn’t understand what it was. The others inside would reach out and help them in. Some of their backup had arrived — not all of it, the nearest ’port was two miles away — but once the prisoners were out of the magic-stunting cars, everyone who could help was eager to do so — up to and including calling some gods.

She felt a tug on the hem of her coat and turned, expecting to see another scared, doubtful, coloured face.

It was Jade, looking pale and pained. Her hair was hanging out of her hat again. For gods’ sakes, she must’ve changed ten or fifteen times already.

“Chloé, we’ve got kids,” she said.

The older woman winced. “Crackles or chips?”

Jade shook her head. “Piebald.”

“Bullshit!” Chloé cried. “They want the pies! They’re not going to throw them away! It’s a trick, or…”

Jade was still shaking her head. “It’s not. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not a trick. Maybe they don’t want those ones, or they’ve got something new they like better, but we’ve got to get them out of there.”

“Where is Fedya? Did you tell him? Or someone else who at least speaks the goddamn language?”

“Chloé…” Jade shut her eyes and turned away. “Pies don’t even know what they are anymore. They’ve never seen someone like him… Or if they have, it’s so they’ll know people like him are bad and wrong. They’re… They’re really little. They’re kids. We have to go get them. They trust people who look like us.” Jade looked up again, haunted. “People like us did it to them.”

“Fuck,” Chloé said. She leapt down from the car. “Which way?”

Jade took her by the hand again, pulling her. It was five cars down, almost at the end of the train. Fedya was already outside, and a few others like him, talking through the slat sides of the car. As his two friends approached, someone tugged on his arm and gestured to his face, perhaps suggesting that black looked plausibly unmagical and he might try… But he only hung his head and spoke a few low words. He didn’t want to risk it. None of them did. Whatever he’d told them had scared them, even if they didn’t understand it.

One by one, the concerned survivors noticed Jade and Chloé, quieted, and watched hopefully.

“Do you really have a kid?” Jade whispered.

“Yeah,” Chloé replied. “He’s five. So this is gonna fuck me up like nobody’s business.” She pasted on a smile, and boosted herself through the open door. “Hi, everybody! Vy golodny? You like chocolate chips? Uh… Shokolad?”

Jade gave her about five minutes, enough for the worst of the crying and pleading to quiet a little, then followed after her with a camera in hand. “Chloé…”

Chloé was knee-deep in piebald children, handing out endless granola bars and bottled water. She tore each wrapper, getting them started, and loosened the top of each bottle. She looked up with a scowl.

Jade lifted the camera. It was pocket-sized, with an automatic flash for low light. “Can you explain?”

Chloé forced another tight smile and spoke in a gentle singsong voice, “What the fuck do you think you’re do-o-oing? You’ll scare the hell out of them with tha-a-at! Go a-wa-ay!”

“If I don’t take a photo, we can’t show anyone they were here,” Jade said miserably. “Please. I don’t want to scare them, but someone has to know. Someone has to help us make it stop.”

Fedya’s voice spoke up from outside. A few of the children answered, shaking their heads and sobbing. He switched over to Anglais and told them, “They think they’ve done something wrong, or they might be sick or dying. They just want to go home. They think that place is home. They miss their… their teachers.”

Chloé called back, “Are they all fucked up about people examining them and taking photos?”

“Of course they fucking are!” Fedya snapped. “But we have to do it! Jade is right!”

“Tell them we’ll take them home,” Jade said softly. “Chloé?” She lifted the camera. “Tell them just one more picture and we’ll take them home.”

“Oh, you cunt!” said Chloé.

“They can’t understand,” Jade said. “Please.”

Chloé smiled at the children. She spread both arms as if inviting a hug, and pointed one casual finger at Jade and the camera, making her best effort at Prokovian while Fedya backed her up from the outside. “Just fucking take it,” she said.

The flashbulb blared for five long seconds.

The children were crying, but they didn’t make a sound.

◆◇◆

They were back in Ansalem. The second floor had a games room with a big fireplace. A rack of elk antlers and various hunting paraphernalia were hung on the walls, a game-related pun indicating rich people had senses of humour too. There was a shelf with cards, puzzles and board games, and a billiard table, but nobody was playing. There were 1,267 new people in need of food, water, shelter, and medical care, including twenty-four children. Many of them had already moved on to Central, or elsewhere, but others were desperately searching for friends or relatives who they’d seen get onto another car, or another train.

Or their children. They knew there had been kids on the train, everyone knew. They were all missing kids, or knew someone who was missing a kid, and they wanted to see the kids. They didn’t understand. They didn’t understand how their own children could be afraid of them. If they could just talk to them and hold them and explain…

Chloé was taking a break, a mandated break. She was supposed to get some food and some sleep, but fuck that. She couldn’t even if she wanted to. The games room was quiet, so she hid there, in a high-backed chair, waiting for someone to allow her back to work.

The speed of it was disorienting. There were people back there doing intel and organization who had been at it for months, maybe even a year, but the great train robberies took three days at most. They set up where they’d heard a train was supposed to be and they picked a good place to kill it. If one showed up — Hosanna! — they’d herd everyone into an instant tent as fast as they could, call Greg, and start ’porting them out. The rescue and the escape only took a few hours.

Longer, if there were a lot of dead ones. People never wanted to leave the dead ones. They’d already lost enough.

They were supposed to split up and send the people through Central, but that was an old rule, from when Central was the only safe place for care and rest. There was never enough room at Central. So they’d go to Ansalem with Chloé and her group, or other places she didn’t know, with some other group.

She was based in Ansalem, so she knew Central existed, somewhere, and she might be able to get a person to the place in Ansalem from town, if she made some lucky guesses. If they caught her, that was all they could get out of her — if she wasn’t fast enough to blow her own brains out with her pistol.

She’d just been smuggling human beings out of a hostile foreign country and wondering if she might have to blow her own brains out, and now she was home. She could go rest in her own bed, if she wanted. She could get some takeout from that burger place, with the secret sauce, and buy a toy for Maxie.

Like she was gonna leave that roomful of kids who kept calling her “teacher” and who cried and said “you can take a nap here” when she told them she had to rest.

She curled forward and put her face in her hands, almost in her lap. Silent. Not crying. Nothing at all.

I don’t have to go back there, she thought. I can just stay here, if I want. Or quit. I can quit anytime I want — they keep saying that, like they expect me to, so I might as well. Haven’t I done enough…?

Someone sat in the chair opposite her with a sigh. She saw laced high-top tennis shoes and green leggings bathed in firelight.

The feet in the shoes pitched sideways in shock. “Yikes,” said a young voice.

“They kicked you out too, huh, Jade?” Chloé said.

“Yeah, I guess, I dunno.” Jade leaned back and lit an unfiltered cigarette with a paper match.

“Those things’ll kill ya.”

“Eh. Your loss.” They blew a smoke ring.

Chloé frowned at… The gods alone knew what it was now. “Gods, I can’t even tell without the hat. What are you?”

Jade slumped a little. “I don’t know. Tired. ‘He,’ I guess, but I don’t care.”

“What is it with you? I’ve known other fluid people and they don’t give themselves whiplash like you. Are you still working it out, or…?”

“No.” He sighed again. “Maybe, but that’s not it. I get nervous. I’m like one of those jackasses that won’t stop clicking their ballpoint pen. Click-click-click-click. It’s different when I’m…” He winced, and frowned at her. “We’re not supposed to talk about that stuff. I shouldn’t know you have a kid. I don’t even know your name.”

“I think I’m going to quit. Do you want to know it?”

He blinked at her. He shook his head and sat back. “Why ‘Chloé,’ though? Where’d you get it?”

“There’s this model I like… I think she hocks perfume or something, I don’t know. I saw her in one of those swimsuit magazines, she’s cute.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jade said, nodding. “She’s thin,” he added.

“So?”

“Heh, I don’t like skinny girls,” Jade said suavely.

“Uh-huh. Sure.”

Silence, but only for a moment. Neither one of them wanted to think.

“Why ‘Jade’?”

He pointed to his eyes, which were barely visible. “Green-eyed monster. And ‘Emerald’ is too many syllables. If someone’s about to shoot me, I don’t want you to trip over, ‘Emerald! Duck!’”

Chloé snickered. “Why not just ‘Green’?”

Jade drew a vague circle with the cigarette, trailing smoke. “It lacks a certain romance.”

“‘Green’ is a perfectly fine name.”

This time, they both started and went, “Yikes.”

The girl had deep brown skin, gorgeous long blue-black hair, and a plate of sandwiches. Her fluffy hooded sweatshirt had teddy bear ears, and a stuffed waist bag rested against her left hip.

These sorts of things were ubiquitous among caregivers of all kinds, but this was Nell. They knew Nell. Everyone knew Nell. She’d been there longer than anyone, except Granny.

She wasn’t in full anger mode yet, but her half-smirk said they’d already tried her patience and she wasn’t going to give them much more. “You haven’t been anywhere near the kitchen, you idiots are supposed to eat.”

“We weren’t hungry,” Jade said.

“Eat anyway.” Nell handed them each a sandwich, and sat on the rug between them, where she could glare at them both in turn. “You don’t have to like it.”

Chloé sighed and took a bite. Jade did too — he smiled, and flicked his spent cigarette into the fire. “It’s not bad.”

“You’ve killed all your taste buds,” Chloé muttered.

“No, I’ve always been this tasteless.”

“Give me a cigarette,” Nell said.

“Your brother…”

“My brother can go fuck himself. I can get needle drugs if I want them, give me a goddamn cigarette and keep me off the streets.”

Jade lit another cigarette and handed it over. Nell took a long drag with practised ease.

“You have a brother?” Chloé said.

“No,” Nell said. She blew out a dismissive stream of smoke. “Maybe, but we’re not supposed to talk about it.”

“Chloé thinks she’s quitting, so we’re spilling our life stories.”

“Good,” Nell said. “Quit. I’ll replace you. When are you going out again?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’re like the fire department.”

“If we’re the fire department, we’re fucking criminally negligent,” Nell spat. “That whole goddamn country’s going up like a lit match, and maybe this one, too, and all we’re doing is pulling out a few people at random and watching it burn.”

Silence again, but not for long.

“How’d you join up with them?” Nell said. “The Rainbows, I mean. Us. I’m a goddamn Rainbow too. You don’t hafta quit if you don’t gimme names and specifics.”

Jade snickered. “This kid at a club put a sticker on my shirt — I think just to be cute. This other kid saw it and he started talking to me about it, and I thought he was cute, so I pretended I was one of you.” He grinned. “I’ve been pretending for three whole trains.” He winked at them. “Don’t tell.”

“I was a Silver Swan,” Chloé said.

“Really?” Jade drew up his legs and sat forward. “Cool!”

Chloé scowled. “It’s not cool.”

“It has a certain romance,” Nell offered airily. “But it’s a shitty thing to do to a kid.”

“Yeah.” Chloé shrugged. “I had a girlfriend. My parents kicked me out when they found out about her. Then she didn’t want me anymore either. I had a room with a guy, but he used to knock me around and I didn’t like to go home. You could hang out in back of the Black Orchid until the dishwashers went home — like, two AM. Sometimes they’d spot you some doss money. I felt bad about taking it, ’cos I had a place to sleep, I just didn’t like it.”

“I think a lot of them are like that,” Nell said.

“I was scared of it,” Chloé said. “The club and, like, the whole deal. Scared of people like you.” She gestured towards Jade. “I didn’t know what my deal was, but I knew I wasn’t like you. I kinda told myself I was conning them. I was hungry. I just wanted some food. I figured you’d chase me off eventually, but in the meantime I wouldn’t be hungry.

“This one night, this woman…” She shook her head. “I don’t know if it was a woman. It’s all really complicated. She was dressed as a woman, but I could tell she wasn’t one originally, you get me? I’m not trying to be mean, I’m just telling you I was a dumb kid and I got scared. She was going to go in through the kitchen door with her friend, but I thought maybe she’d grab me or hit me or something, I don’t know. I had a guy at home who liked to hit me all the damn time, too, but I was more scared of this poor lady — or whatever she was.

“She smiled at us, and she put her hand in her purse, and I thought… I don’t know, I guess I thought she had a rag with chloroform in there.” Chloé laughed weakly, shaking her head. “She had hot sauce packets. And right then I knew she’d been where I was, or someplace even worse, and she saw me. She understood.

“The Black Orchid is a supper club. They have chicken, steak or fish with rice or potato and seasonal vegetable, and that’s all they have. You gotta eat, and you’re grateful, but sometimes just the sight of swan foil makes you wanna throw up. Hot sauce is a lifesaver. She knew.

“I hugged her, and she hugged me back, and then I wasn’t scared anymore. A month later, I aged into being a dishwasher, and two months after that I got a real job that paid enough for me to quit. I made a lot of really great friends and I don’t know who gave me a Rainbow Card first, but that woman is how I got in. I didn’t see her again, I don’t think she’s with the RA, but I think about her a lot. And all those foil lunches and dinners.”

“I don’t think you owe anyone,” Jade said. He shook his head and lit another cigarette for himself, sandwich gone. “I mean, you can be grateful, glad, but you don’t have to pay it back. We wouldn’t make any of these people pay it back. They just need help. This is… This is what’s supposed to happen.”

Nell exploded and slammed a hand on the rug. “This isn’t what’s supposed to happen, people aren’t supposed to need help like this! People aren’t supposed to have other shitty people trying to kill or… or mutilate them for existing!”

Silence.

Jade said, “Are the kids…”

Chloé opened her mouth but Nell got words out first, “Broken. They are broken. We can help them, but the poor damn pies don’t even understand they need it.

“They tell them they’re sick. They have nightmares, and they can’t remember what happened or where they came from because they’re sick. All that pain they inflict is to heal them. Kill the magic and heal the man. Like magic is fucking cancer and they need someone to cut it out of them. Like they are cancer.

“When we get them away, they get scared because we’ve cut them off from their treatment, and we boxed them up with a bunch of other sick people who don’t even want to get well because they’re crazy. Even if it’s their fucking families. They cram them so hard into their demented idea of what makes a normal human being that everything else about them shrivels up and dies.”

Chloé put up a hand. Nell closed her mouth in a frown, impatiently waiting.

“I’m sorry, Nell. It doesn’t compare, not really. It’s not the same…”

“But it rhymes,” Jade said.

Chloé nodded.

“It’s not,” Jade said. “It’s not gone forever, is it? Can they do that? Can that god they have…”

“I don’t know,” Nell muttered. “I’m not just saying that, I hate all this spy shit, I really don’t know. I don’t think anyone does. I do know they’re trying. These aren’t the first piebalds they’ve thrown away, and we think we’re going to see a lot more. They were… a phase. And they’re done with that and they’re onto something worse.

“They won’t be happy until they get all of them — and they all look just like you and me, only with no magic at all. Better than you and me. Functional members of society, and maybe they take a pill sometimes to stop them from wanting to scream.

“Fucking Azee,” she spat.

Jade winced, but Chloé looked confused.

“Absolute Zero,” Nell said. “Fucking easy, palatable, normalizing Absolute Zero, in its little foil-wrapped cups with a cute little sticker on.” She mimed putting the sticker on a tiny cup that fit in her fingertips. “With a little vanilla blossom like it’s a goddamn yaourt! That’s where they got it from. They want it to work just like that, so clean and convenient, only forever. Just let them cut up a few more of these worthless dangers to society and they’ll have it.”

“But isn’t that medicine?” Chloé said. She shrank from Nell’s furious expression. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. I thought… Don’t they need it when it storms? Max…” She shut her mouth and shook her head. “My little one is miserable without it. It’s free, but they run out sometimes, and… He doesn’t like that. He can’t eat. He can’t sleep. He cries. When he has some… Damn it, it’s like the ads at the bus stop — ‘just another rainy day!’” The quote marks and cheerful font were audible. “He can even play outside…”

Jade leaned closer and tried to be subtle with Chloé’s personal information, “Isn’t he a little young…?”

“The doctor said he could have half a dose with food and it won’t hurt him! Did you honestly think we’d hurt…”

“Flush that shit down the toilet and take care of your kid when he needs you,” Nell spat. “They got along without it since mankind crawled out of the sea — they don’t need it. It’s just so corporations can drag them into work and the government doesn’t have to pay more money to keep them safe. Human beings don’t exist for the convenience of others. Fuck ’em.”

Chloé shot to her feet, “Listen, you little bitch…”

And Jade stood too. “No. No. We don’t need to do this. We’re tired. We’re just tired.” He smiled weakly. “It’s complicated, and we’re too tired to do ‘complicated,’ so we need to stop. We’re supposed to be resting.”

Chloé sat down, and Nell had never gotten up, but they still wouldn’t look at each other.

“I have green eyes and ‘Chloé’ is a swimsuit model,” Jade said. “Where’d you get ‘Penelope’?”

“‘Penelope’ is this dumb girl who stays home fighting battles while her man is away, and she doesn’t get a poem about her,” Nell muttered. “She’s just holding down the fort with her goddamn loyal dog until he gets back with the plot.”

Jade paused a moment, blinking. “Um, not to pry, but you don’t actually have to… Can he stop you? If you want to go… How old are you?”

“Nineteen. Older than you, and I’m smarter than him.”

Jade straightened. “I’m twenty-one!”

“I’m twenty-eight, and like hell you are,” Chloé said.

“It’s moisturizer. I moisturize.”

“It’s amniotic fluid,” Chloé said.

Nell burst out cackling. “Born yesterday!”

Jade smiled at them. “Three trains ago. Not quite.”

Nell sniffled and dabbed her eyes with her sleeve. “I can’t tell you who it is… I probably could, and you’ll probably guess, but I can’t tell you. My big brother is goddamn Rainbow royalty, okay? So they’re gonna do whatever he wants because they’re scared the whole thing will fall apart without him.” She shrugged. “And they love him a lot, I guess. He’s very lovable. That jerk.”

“Manu isn’t your brother?” Jade said, blinking.

“Manu resembles my brother from a distance and I’m not supposed to tell you why we need someone to do that.”

“Oh,” Jade said. Jade and Chloé exchanged a glance. “Ohhhh,” they both said.

Chloé cleared her throat and looked aside. “Do you guys wanna play…”

Jade slid down to the rug and tented his hands under his chin. “Is he really so gay he sparkles?”

Nell narrowed her eyes, then smiled with surface-level sweetness. “I assume you’re talking about someone with metal repairwork in one or more parts of their body, and this person would not like you to tease them by saying ‘you’re so gay you sparkle,’ if you ever happened to meet them.”

She raised a finger. “However, if you do happen to meet someone who resembles Manu and appears, under certain circumstances, to sparkle…” She narrowed her eyes again. “Tell him I’m going fucking mental cooped up here and he needs to get out of my way. And fucking well visit sometimes!”

She shrugged. “You might be yelling at some random guy, but, hey, couldn’t hurt.”

Jade snickered, and Chloé stood up with a laugh. “Okay, okay,” she said, holding up both hands for a pause. “I’m going to grab a pack of cards before we all blow what little cover we have left. You guys wanna…”

“Oh! Vot ona! Are you Miss Chloé?”

The man in the hallway was bright blue, wearing boots, an overcoat, and a neat pair of black suit trousers. There was a messenger bag slung over his shoulder.

Chloé came away from the shelf of games at a rapid jog. “What is it? Is it the kids?”

He bowed. “So sorry. I only have moment. Don’t want to miss my train!”

Chloé’s concern melted into confusion, but with no less concern. “What?” She didn’t have an exact location, but if a train was going to come here, it would need to hike up a few mountains, with no tracks. “Honey, you mean ‘’port’…?”

Nell scrambled over and shoved her aside. “No-no. Kolya, that’s fine. We won’t keep you. What is it?”

“We look for Miss Jade or Miss Chloé,” Kolya said brightly. “Because Fedya love them and will listen. He want to forge papers but they don’t want, and he throw desk and hit someone…”

Jade stood up too. “Aw, hell. It is the kids. He’s pissed about…”

“Oh! And here is Miss Jade!” Kolya bowed again. “They are in library. And now I really must…”

“There isn’t,” Chloé said.

Nell shoved her aside. “It’s not coming for a while, Kolya. You could wait here with us, and play a game, or just talk…”

He shook his head, still smiling. “No, I don’t want to miss. Sorry, Miss Penelope. I wait with my family.” Now he turned his persistent smile on Chloé. “We are going to Khorivgrad Circus!”

“Oh,” Chloé said, pained. She wasn’t sure if she was smiling back. “Cool.”

“I bring back balloons for children. People who live in train station are so funny…”

Nell caught his arm. “It’s too far to walk, Kolya, right?”

He laughed. “Of course. That’s why we wait for train!” He waved and wandered off down the hallway again, clutching his bag.

“What the actual hell happened to him,” Chloé said numbly.

Jade peeked out of the doorway, watching Kolya head obliviously for the stairs. “Is that one of those from the passenger trains?” he whispered. “Nell? Those early ones where they told them they were going somewhere nice…”

Nell turned from the doorway and pulled Jade after her. “No, and don’t stare at him…”

Chloé frowned at Jade. “That’s just shit they tell the newbies to scare them. You’ve seen a passenger train, you idiot. They…”

“No, they’re real,” Nell said. She left them and sat down in a chair by the fire. “They were real, anyway. But you guys better go get Fedya…”

“Well…”

Jade and Chloé exchanged a glance. Fedya did sound like he needed some help, but Nell didn’t seem to be in very good shape either.

Chloé thought Jade looked painfully interested in the passenger trains, like a little kid straining towards the candy store as they walked past on the street. “They don’t need both of us,” she said. “I’ll go.” She smiled at Jade. “You rest.”

And then, at some more convenient time, Jade could tell her about the passenger trains.

Jade agreed with a nod, “Yeah.” He wandered towards Nell with hardly a glance back, and Nell did not look up to acknowledge him. “Hon, are you…”

“It was early days,” Nell muttered, “and we never managed to stop one or even find one — they didn’t have any anti-magic on ’em — but we do have a few folks who survived the first trains. They were actually pretty survivable, because they were loading everyone up with Azee the whole time — they fed it to them, so they had a little food, and water. And everyone thought they were going to Marsellia. A nice little mountain village. Here. They thought they were coming here, and this place didn’t exist until we built it.

“On the way, they gave them as little care as possible, and they’d kick the weaker ones off in the goddamn wilderness and let it finish them off.”

“What’d they do with the stronger ones?”

“God fodder,” Nell said. “Or psychosurgery, electroshock, weird drugs and potions, all kinds of fun shit. They weren’t as focused back then. They were trying everything, all ages.”

“Oh, fuck,” Jade said. He staggered and sat down on the rug.

“It fucking sucks, because those early trains were actually going somewhere. If we’d tripped over one of ’em, we could’ve followed it back to someplace they’re doing this shit, but we couldn’t find them. We probably still couldn’t, even with all we have now, but they don’t know that and I pray to the gods every night that they don’t figure it out.”

She shook her head and turned away, staring into the fire. “That first kid, Marc, they’re pretty sure he came off one of those trains. They told him he was going to Marsellia and he walked the rest of the way. Like, maybe they made a mistake and he’d catch up with them, I don’t know. It’s hard to get anything out of Marc, but that’s not his fault…”

“You met Marc?”

Nell stared at him. She shut her hanging jaw with a click. “Gods, clear the amniotic fluid out of your ears and listen to the grapevine, newb. Yeah. I was in the room when we were trying to decide what to do about Marc. We let him stay in our st… With us. I was at ground zero when our first ever crackle started coughing up scary stories, and we had no idea what was wrong with him.

“It was The Sound of Music,” she added. “Did you know that? Crackles and chips pick new stories and fill in the blanks, you know that part?”

Jade nodded hesitantly. He’d met a few crackles; they were terrifying, but oddly cheerful about it. That girl he’d spoken to, she’d introduced herself as Sandra, then as Margarite, and she claimed to be a marine biologist, a princess, and a spy. She was “defragmenting,” they said. She’d piece together something that resembled her old identity eventually, or at least something that made her happy.

He’d only seen chips in photos. He sincerely hoped they were also defragmenting, in a nice place where they wouldn’t hurt themselves or anyone else.

“Okay,” Nell said. “Well, they were showing it at La Stella — that’s an old theatre, it’s just down the street — and he sat through the whole thing. I dunno what he thought he remembered before that, and neither does he, but by the time he showed up at the club, he thought he hiked out of Gundaland and he was looking for his family and/or his boyfriend Rolfe.”

“Oh, my gods,” Jade said. “He thought he was Leisel?”

“They are trying to rebuild their identities out of fragments,” Nell replied. “They don’t care. And, let me tell you, it’s a good thing he picked a girl. He would’ve wound up in the asylum if he didn’t try to get a meal at the Black Orchid. They knew that…” She drew a line around her face, then threw up a hand and splayed her fingers like a shattered mirror, with a brief imitation of the sound of crunching glass, “That chkkt. All that business wasn’t a weird birthmark or whatever, it was damage. But they didn’t know what to do and neither did we.”

“It looks like you worked it out,” Jade said. He gestured to the room, and the estate in general.

Nell didn’t even bother to glance over. “Not really,” she said.

He scooted nearer and put a hand on her ankle. “How is he?”

“He’s a mess.” Nell shrugged. “But he’s a happier mess. He doesn’t want to do any more flyers now, he says he has to stop punishing himself for forgetting and start making new memories. Better ones. He knows what he’s lost, but they broke it so badly he can’t put it back together again, so he’s starting over. Sound of Music has a happy ending, maybe that helps.”

“Will Kolya,” Jade began.

“I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do about Kolya. Kolya isn’t like Marc. Kolya’s never been on a train. We did that to him.”

Jade fell backwards and even scuttled slightly away. “What?”

Nell shooed a hand at him. She pressed the other to the bridge of her nose, as if nursing a headache. “Kolya is from Kirov and Kirov was a shitshow. Do you know that much?”

He was nodding.

“Did Chloé fill you in at all? Does she know?”

He shook his head.

“Fuck,” Nell said.

“You don’t have to…”

“No, you gotta get it from someone, newb. We got a guy who sees things on random. He doesn’t have good control over it, but what he knows is real information, he just doesn’t always have context or express it well. He saw them coming to clear out Kirov and he was very clear about it. He had a date.” She shook her head. “We had a week. Like, a little more than a week to do something about it.

“We didn’t have all this.” She gestured as Jade had done. “We had Central, and there was a little bit here, just in the house, and we had our guy with the info. We’d started the Cat Network days ago, and we had three nodes total. We barely knew how to rob a train, we sure as hell didn’t know how to find one, and we had very little room for people. Kirov had over five thousand people in it, and our guy with the info was melting down begging us to help them.”

She sighed.

“He was sick, by the way. He was literally, physically sick at the time. And we had scared people and animals ‘porting in and out of his room for days. I think we damn near killed him.”

“Sorry. Woo-hoo.” Jade whistled and waved a hand. “Just a sec. Animals?”

“Aha.” Nell winked and pointed at him. “You are train people, you don’t deal with animals. Greg loves animals, and the Cat Network won’t go without him. He’s a god, the damn gods don’t have to make sense. They want what they want and if they don’t get it, they smite you. So, yes. I should have said, ‘over five thousand people and all their animals.’ All their kitties and hamsters and budgies and fancy rats and fucking goldfish. Some of them had ferrets. Gods, I hate ferrets. They’re too fucking smart, they get everywhere. There’s probably one in here watching us right now. We’re goddamn lucky it was a ghetto and not a farm.”

She paused, contemplatively, then frowned. “We have goats now. It’s only peripherally related to Kirov, but we got goats outside. You want a goat? You know anyone who wants a goat? Or a chicken? Granny says she’ll find a place for ’em, but she says that about everyone.”

Jade said, “Are they those cute little designer goats you can fit in…”

“They are definitely not.”

“If a small child happened to find out about the goats — not from me, of course — will you let him pet them?”

“Sure,” Nell said. “What the hell. Gimme a sinq and I’ll let you pet anything here. We are obviously a zoo.” She sighed and returned to Kirov with reluctance, “We couldn’t explain it to them. We had some folks who spoke the language and looked like them, but not enough of them to sit down and explain it to five thousand people. And we had no time.

“We kidnapped them,” she allowed, looking down. “The whole place. We swooped down on them in the night with magic and guns and started grabbing people out of their homes, and we blocked off all the exits and the walls so they couldn’t get away from us.

“We were trying to explain, at the start. Some of them knew, or suspected. A bunch of them had lost kids — but that goes both ways, they either believe you right away or they get scared and shut you right down. But as it went on…” She shook her head. “I don’t think we were even trying anymore.

“They have this huge storm shelter under Kirov — a bunch of entrances and it’s practically invisible, because they broke into an old cistern and that could’ve gotten them into trouble. If we couldn’t get them out right away, we stuffed them down there. They had canned goods and toilets and everything, that was great. But of course they didn’t want to fucking be in there.

“Somebody knew that spell from the early trains, or maybe they didn’t know it but they kinda backwards-engineered it because they knew it was possible. It was a group effort; they were passing it back and forth and kludging it until it worked. We don’t know who came up with the circus version. It was like a game of telephone, probably nobody came up with it.

“I think it was the tents,” she added, aside. “Those instant tents, with the banners and the stripes. We’re the circus.”

She sighed. “But we can’t get them to believe that, and we can’t take it off them. Most of them shook it off,” she said firmly. “Once in a while, one of ’em still does. We had this girl, last week, she woke up and said ‘Papa, there isn’t going to be a circus, is there?’ and she wanted to have some cereal and listen to the radio. She was really annoyed her parents wouldn’t stop crying and hugging her.

“They do know this place,” she swept a hand towards the door. “And all of us. They retain new information and make new friends and have conversations. I think they have some idea what we’re doing. When they wake up, it’s all very matter-of-fact. But the ones who still believe it just want to wait patiently in a room together so they won’t miss their train. We coax them out for a couple minutes sometimes, but they go right back.”

“That guy’s family,” Jade said.

“They’re fine,” Nell said. “Well, the ones that were in Kirov are fine. They don’t want to go to the circus anymore, but they go in there and wait with him sometimes. So I guess maybe they’re not fine, maybe they’re fucking miserable, I don’t know.” She was crying.

Jade scooted a little nearer and took one of her hands.

It was too quiet, and he didn’t even have any tissues to offer her.

“Have, um, have you tried taking them to an actual circus, on, on a…”

“Of course we fucking have!” she shrieked.

He cringed. “Sorry.”

He pushed up to his knees and put an arm around her back, then, slowly, he brought the other arm around and held her.

“Does it even help?” she said softly, after a time.

“Of course we’re helping! My gods, look at all these people. They wouldn’t be here if we didn’t…”

“No.” She brushed him away. “Not that. Going out there and hitting back. Doing damage. Blowing shit up. You feel any better about it? You sleep any better at night?”

“Well…”

Footsteps and a scuffle were approaching down the hall. Jade stood up and turned away well before he had to, if he even had to at all, and went to the door to have a look.

It was Chloé, pushing a struggling Fedya in front of her, and she did not appear to need Jade’s help. “Sit down.” She pressed a bottle of water into the man’s hand, then shoved him into a chair by the fire. “Cool off and eat something!” She flung a bag of pretzels into his lap.

“Ya ne khochu…”

“I don’t care. You don’t have to like ’em.”

He started to cry.

It seemed to take a lot less effort to get a Prokovian man to cry, or maybe they cared less about hiding it, but that could’ve just been their circumstances.

“Sanya, Sanya, Sanya…”

“Frig,” Nell muttered. She hauled to her feet, wandered off, and eventually commandeered a somewhat dusty box of tissues, for the group. She took two herself and handed the box to the improbably black gentleman.

“Ona poyedet na poyezde, ona poyedet na poyezde…”

Jade edged nearer to Chloé and said, “Who is…?”

She nudged him and shook her head.

Fedya shoved away the tissues, the water bottle, and the pretzels, all of which landed quietly on the rug. “It was all I had left, you understand? I… I tell myself… I think… It is so stupid, but sometimes I think maybe someday I will see Sanya with spots, or not even with spots, and she will not know me, but I will know her and see she is happy. I will tell Tania and Fima, she is happy. But they will not, they will not… Ona poyedet na poyezde!”

Chloé whispered in Jade’s ear, “He says, ‘she will go on a train.’”

“No,” Jade said weakly. But he caught the word and covered his mouth. “I think I’d like to switch back to ‘she.’”

Chloé sighed. “Kid, we need to get you an actual ballpoint pen…”

“They won’t even let me help!”

“Oh, yeah,” Nell said, nodding. “I feel ya.” She took the cap off the water and pressed it into his hand. “We have to stop sometimes. I fucking hate it, too, but if we don’t stop sometimes we’ll break down and stop forever. I don’t know what to do with myself, I never know what to do, but however we come around to it, we have to stop.”

“Moya doch’ poyedet na poyezde…” But he did take a sip of water.

“My nakhodim lyudey v poyezde… poyezdakh,” Nell said carefully. “Sometimes. But no matter what, there will come a day when it doesn’t hurt so much to love her. In the meantime, it hurts a little less when we can help other Sanyas go home. It still hurts like hell, but it’s not nothing. Take what you can get. Don’t be proud. Here.” She pulled a bag of fruit snacks out of her waist bag, tearing the wrapper for him. “Eat sugar, drink water, and then we’ll go get you some real food, or a shower, or we’ll go for a walk and look at a goddamn tree.”

He reluctantly ate one fruit snack, frowning at its cheerful cartoon shape. “Blin, eta sladkaya.”

“Says it’s got vitamins in it, it’s good for you. I believe everything I read. Eat.”

He had another, and a sip of water. He broke down again, but softly, shaking his head. “I hate this. It shouldn’t help. It shouldn’t make any difference. It’s offensive.”

“Sure it is. Take it and say ‘fuck you,’ if you want, but take it anyway.”

“I don’t deserve…”

“Nobody deserves anything. This broke-ass universe is on random. Right now, you need help and we’ve got some. We’ll trade places later so we don’t get bored.”

He nodded. He hid his eyes with a crumpled tissue and drank a little more water. She had a bottle of antihistamines in her bag, and a few tranquilizers — one of which she broke in half for him. He took everything she offered.

Finally, he said, “Tania and Fima will be worried. I don’t even know what I said. And I hit that poor stupid guy…”

“They’re fine, we take care of everyone. Right now, I’m taking care of you. We’ll go back and see all of them when you’re ready for it, but until then, they are fine.”

He laughed weakly. “Will you take me to dinner? I will eat and… maybe I bring them some dinner…? Maybe I bring that stupid guy some dinner, too, he…” He looked up and around, out the windows. “Govno. Your sun is wrong. Is it dinner?”

“It’s dinner whenever we say it is. Screw the sun.”

“I’ll come too!” Jade said quickly. “I like dinner!”

Chloé swatted her. “You just had a sandwich, what the hell…”

“A sandwich isn’t dinner.”

Nell smiled at them. “She’s a growing young girl.”

“Boy,” Jade said with a grin.

“…Boy,” Nell said doubtfully. “Um, sorry,” she added. “I could’ve sworn…”

Chloé gestured to Nell’s waist bag. “You got a toy in there for the kid or something? If it keeps playing with its pronouns, it’s going to go blind.”

Nell put an absent hand into a zippered pocket and handed Jade a square of bubble wrap, “Here…”

“Oh! Cool!”

“…and don’t tease him,” she said, glaring at Chloé.

“Her,” Jade said, popping away.

Fedya laughed.

Nell closed her hanging jaw in a sour frown. “Alright, you may tease her a little.”

Chloé was still staring at Nell’s waist bag. “Why do you have bubble wrap?”

“Crackles and chips love toys,” Nell said. “Hell, pies love toys, too, once they stop being so scared. Everyone loves bubble wrap. Bubble wrap imposes order on chaos and gives a brief focus to the unbearable repetition of samsara.”

“Samsara?” Jade said absently. She popped another bubble.

Nell shrugged. “The endless, ultimately pointless, cycle of life, death, and rebirth. An inescapable cosmic hamster wheel powered by human suffering, which we inflict on ourselves and each other without ever once stopping long enough to examine why, until the whole damn race of us is ready to puke out our karma and embrace the annihilation at the end of existence just for a break…”

Now they were all staring at Nell, with not a little concern.

She smiled at them and flipped up the fluffy teddy bear hood of her sweatshirt. “Eh, but don’t let it get you down.”

Fedya said, “I would also like one of the ‘bubble wrap,’ please.”

Nell handed over another square, slid past him and made for the stairs. “Come on.” She waved an absent gesture at all three of them. “Walk and pop.”

Fedya followed, readily enough. Jade and Chloé brought up the rear.

Jade tugged Chloé’s sleeve and spoke in a low voice, “Do you still wanna quit?”

“Yeah.” Chloé offered a weak little laugh. “But I’m not going to.”

Jade gave her a sickly smile in return. “It’s like needle drugs, isn’t it?”

Chloé nodded.

“If you’re not gonna quit… Could you stick with me through dinner?” Jade nodded towards Nell. “She asked if it helps. Like, if we feel any better after we go out there and do some damage. If she asks again, will you change the subject? I’m afraid to tell her.”

“Afraid to tell her it helps, or afraid to tell her it’s like needle drugs and the hits wear off faster and faster?”

“Both.”

Chloé nodded. “Yeah. I get it.”

Jade smiled again, a better one this time. “Hey, a couple minutes ago, did I catch you calling me ‘it’? Like a kitty-cat?”

Chloé winced. “Sorry.”

“Nah,” Jade said. “I kinda like ‘it.’” It beamed. “I’ll add ‘it’ to the rotation!”

https://www.tumblr.com/asksoldieron/745053254979895297/so-22-dont-be-so-specific