The flying train continued its journey through the vast expanse of sky, cutting through clouds like a knife through silk. Inside the compartment, the tension from the previous confrontation still lingered in the air, thick and uncomfortable. But there was something else now, something that was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
The sound of the train itself was changing.
At first, it had been a low, steady hum the kind of background noise that one could easily tune out after a few minutes. But gradually, almost imperceptibly at first, it had been growing louder. The mechanical rhythm of the engines, the rush of air against the hull, the vibration of the tracks that somehow existed in empty sky all of it was intensifying with each passing moment.
The sound built and built, becoming a roar that filled the compartment and made conversation difficult. Angela pressed her hands against her ears instinctively, even though the synthetic skin didn't provide much relief. Eve remained still, her artificial body unaffected by the noise but her expression showing concern for her companions. Carmilla gritted her teeth, trying to maintain her composure despite the overwhelming cacophony.
And then, just as suddenly as it had crescendoed, the sound began to level off. It didn't disappear it remained loud, insistent, present but it stabilized at a volume that was at least bearable.
Through the windows, the landscape below had been changing. They had passed over forests and fields, rivers and mountains, the geography shifting and transforming as the train carried them across vast distances at impossible speeds. Now, looking down through breaks in the clouds, they could see something distinctive: vast stretches of wilderness interspersed with urban centers, enormous lakes that looked like inland seas from this height, and a particular quality to the terrain that suggested northern latitudes.
"We're above Canada," Angela observed, her voice raised to be heard over the train's persistent roar. She had moved to the window, her face pressed close to the glass as she tried to make sense of their location. "Northern Canada, by the looks of it."
The observation hung in the air for a moment, neither confirmed nor denied by the others. Geography seemed irrelevant compared to the questions that still needed answering, the tensions that still needed resolving.
Vera, who had remained silent during the exchange between Eve and Carmilla, now stepped forward. Her expression was as cold and controlled as ever, giving away nothing of her thoughts or intentions. When she spoke, her voice cut through the ambient noise with practiced ease, commanding attention without needing to shout.
"Eve," she said, her tone formal and precise, "do you remember what I told you about the Tree of Hope?"
The question seemed to freeze everyone in place. Eve's artificial body went rigid, her synthetic eyes widening fractionally. There was a pause just a heartbeat's worth but it felt much longer. When she finally responded, her voice was uncertain, nervous in a way that was unusual for her normally composed demeanor.
"Y-yes," Eve stammered, the words coming out hesitant and broken. "You said... you said Lady Angela will get her body. That the Tree could help her."
Angela's head snapped around from the window, her attention fully captured now. She looked at Eve with an expression that mixed uncertain, distrustful, and something else something that might huncertain real hope, though she was clearly trying to suppress it. Then her gaze shifted to Vera, and that nascent hope was replaced by deep suspicion.
Her mind was racing. *Why are we trusting her?* she thought, the question screaming through her consciousness. *Maybe she wanna trick us?what is this Tree of Hope? How can a tree possibly help me? It doesn't make sense. None of this makes sense.*
Her hands clenched into fists at her sides, the synthetic skin pulling tight over the mechanical structure beneath. Every instinct she had was telling her to be cautious, to question everything, to not allow herself to believe in easy solutions to impossible problems.
Eve, meanwhile, had found her voice again. She turned to face Vera more directly, her nervous energy transforming into something closer to determination. "But you didn't say what the Tree of Hope actually is," she pointed out. "You told us it could help, but not what it is, or where to find it, or how it works."
Vera's expression shifted almost imperceptibly a micro-expression that might have been reluctance, or calculation, or something else entirely. She took a long, deliberate pause, her eyes moving from Eve to Angela. She seemed to be weighing her words carefully, considering how much to reveal and how much to withhold.
Angela was already staring at her with undisguised distrust, her body language radiating skepticism and barely contained frustration. Their eyes met and held for a long moment, a silent battle of wills playing out in that exchange.
Finally, Vera spoke. "If I'm being honest..." She let the words hang in the air, drawing out the tension. "I don't even know that much about the Tree of Hope myself."
The admission landed like a bomb in the compartment.
All three of them Angela, Eve, and even Carmilla stood stunned, frozen in disbelief. The train's roar seemed to fade into the background, overwhelmed by the weight of that confession.
Angela was the first to recover, and when she did, her fury was explosive. She took three quick steps toward Vera, her face flushed with anger, her voice rising to a near shout.
"Then what's the point?" she demanded, each word sharp as broken glass. "Why are you even telling us this if you don't even know if it's real or not? Are you just playing with us? Is this some kind of game to you?"
Her hands were shaking with the intensity of her emotion. After everything she'd been through the fire, the near-death bomb blast experience, the strange dreams, the uncertainty about her getting her old body to be offered hope and then have it snatched away felt like a particularly cruel form of torture.
Vera remained unmoved by Angela's outburst. Her cold composure didn't crack even slightly. She waited for Angela's words to finish echoing through the compartment before responding, her voice measured and calm.
"I might not be fully knowledgeable about this," she acknowledged, "but I know that it's real. The Tree of Hope exists. That much is certain."
Eve stepped forward, positioning herself slightly between Angela and Vera, though whether to protect one from the other or simply to be part of the conversation was unclear. "And how is it real?" she asked, her tone demanding evidence, proof, something concrete to hold onto. "How can you be so sure if you don't know much about it?"
Vera's lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "S.O.W.," she said simply, as if those initials explained everything. "And the Sinners. And various others. They all got their powers from this tree. That's not speculation or theory it's documented fact."
At the mention of S.O.W. , both Eve and Angela's heads turned simultaneously toward Carmilla.Her arms crossed, her expression carefully neutral. But at the sudden attention, at the weight of those two pairs of eyes boring into her, her composure began to crack.
She tried to avoid their gaze, looking away, studying the floor, the ceiling, the window
anywhere but at them. But she could feel their stares, could sense the questions building behind their eyes. The silence stretched on, becoming increasingly uncomfortable, until finally she couldn't maintain the pretense any longer.
"Fine, fine," Carmilla said with a heavy sigh, her shoulders slumping in defeat. "She's telling the truth. The Tree of Hope is real. I can confirm that much."
"Then you've seen it?" Angela asked immediately, hope and suspicion warring in her voice.
"No," Carmilla admitted, and the hope died as quickly as it had sparked. "I've never seen the Tree of Hope. I got these powers" she gestured vaguely at herself, encompassing whatever abilities she possessed, "from my old colleague. She gave them to me before she was going to pass away in European war. Some kind of transfer, though I never fully understood the mechanism."
Eve's voice took on an edge of distrust that was unusual for her. "And?" she prompted, sensing there was more to the story.
Carmilla's face tightened, old pain flickering across her features. "Knowledge and youngness," she said quietly, the words heavy with implication. "The powers granted me extended life and enhanced cognitive abilities. I got these before meeting william one day ago but I hid the truth. Even from William. ."
There was a moment of silence as this revelation settled over them. Eve was the first to respond, and her words carried a weight of genuine confusion rather than judgment.
"Humans are so obsessed with being young," she observed, tilting her head in that peculiar way she had when trying to understand human behavior. "Why is that? What makes youth so valuable that you would lie to those you care about to preserve it?"
Carmilla's response was immediate and defensive. "Who doesn't want to stay young?" she shot back, her voice rising with emotion. "After all, we become ugly, weak, and dependent. We lose everything that makes us capable, everything that makes us ourselves. Age steals from us constantly our strength, our beauty, our independence. Why wouldn't we fight against that?"
Eve was quiet for a moment, processing this. Then she spoke again, her voice thoughtful and measured. "So do we robots, I mean. We become dependent as well. We rely on you for our power source, for repairs when we malfunction, for maintenance and upgrades. And I know that before, metal could rust, meaning we had our own form of aging, our own decay. Nowadays it doesn't happen as much with modern materials, but still..." She paused, choosing her words carefully. "You all fear something that you should simply accept. Death and decay are part of existence, aren't they? For all of us?"
The words struck a nerve. Carmilla's face flushed with anger, her carefully maintained composure shattering completely. "Do you even know about life?" she snapped, her voice harsh and cutting. "Do you have any right to philosophize about existence and acceptance? Just because you have some consciousness, some approximation of awareness, doesn't make you any better. You're still just a damn robot!"
The cruelty of the words hung in the air like poison. Eve visibly recoiled, her body language shifting to something small and hurt. When she spoke again, her voice was barely above a whisper, all her earlier confidence gone.
"I apologize if I was being too loud," she said softly, "or if I was trying to be too smart. I didn't mean to overstep."
The apology was genuine and painful to hear. For a moment, it seemed like Carmilla might say something might apologize in return, might acknowledge that her words had been too harsh but before she could, Vera's cold voice cut through the tension.
"Enough of your talk," she commanded, her tone brooking no argument. "We're wasting time on philosophical debates when there are practical matters to address."
Everyone turned to look at her, grateful for the interruption even if they wouldn't admit it.
Vera continued, her voice taking on a more formal quality. "I want you all to go to the Flower's Home, Valenora. That's where you need to"
"What is this?" Eve interrupted, confusion evident in her tone. "What is Valenora?"
"It's a place of flowers," Vera explained, a hint of impatience creeping into her usually controlled voice. "A sanctuary of sorts. You'll understand more when you arrive. What matters is that you'll get the key to—"
Before she can finish the sentence
The sound camsentenc a sharp crack that cut through even the train's mechanical roar. It was the kind of sound that the human brain is evolutionarily programmed to recognize as danger, even if one has never heard it before in person.
Then came the impact.
The bullet struck Vera in the center of her chest with devastating precision. She had been standing near the doorway between compartments, half in and half out, and the shot had found her at exactly the right angle. The force of it was tremendous, the physics of the projectile transferring its momentum in an instant.
Vera's eyes widened not with fear, but with something that might have been surprise or recognition. Her body jerked backward from the impact, her feet leaving the floor. She stumbled back through the open doorway, her hands reaching out instinctively for something to grab onto, but finding nothing.
And then she was falling.
It happened so fast that for a moment, the others couldn't process what they were seeing. One second Vera had been standing there, speaking with her usual cold authority. The next second she was gone, her body tumbling out into open air, disappearing into the clouds thousands of feet below.
The entire sequence from the crack of the sniper rifle to Vera's disappearance had taken perhaps three seconds. Maybe less.
"What was that?" Eve's voice was high with despair and confusion, her processing systems struggling to make sense of the sudden violence.
Carmilla had moved to the doorway, looking out into the sky with wide eyes. Her analytical mind was already working through the problem, calculating angles and distances. "A sniper," she breathed, disbelief and awe mixing in her voice. "But how? How could anyone make that shot?"
And then she saw it.
Far in the distance, barely visible against the bright sky, was another vehicle. A flying car, sleek and dark, matching their speed and trajectory. As they watched, it began to pull away, accelerating to distances that would make a follow-up shot impossible.
"Damn that bastard," Carmilla muttered, her hands clenching into fists. She recognized that vehicle, or at least she recognized what it represented someone with resources, with technology, with the capability to track them even here.
Angela had moved to stand beside her, looking out at the retreating vehicle with an expression of frustrated helplessness. "What are you going to do?" she asked, though the tone of her voice suggested she already knew the answer.
Carmilla's shoulders slumped, and when she spoke, her voice carried the weight of defeat. "I can't do anything," she admitted, the words tasting bitter. "This train moves on its predetermined destination. It can't be changed or redirected until we reach where it's programmed to go. We're locked into this course now."
"You're pathetic," Angela said, and there was no heat in her words just a flat statement of fact that somehow hurt more than anger would have.
"I know," Carmilla replied quietly, not bothering to defend herself. Because it was true. In this moment, with all her knowledge and abilities and supposed genius, she was completely useless.
The flying car was gone now, disappeared into the distance, leaving them alone with their questions and their loss. Eve remained standing near the doorway, looking down at the clouds below where Vera had vanished. Her expression was difficult to read some mixture of shock, confusion, and perhaps something else.
"Flower's Home," Eve said softly, as if testing the words. "Valenora. She said we should go there." She turned to look at the others, and there was a new determination in her eyes. "We will go there. If it means finding out what life is really about, what my existence means... we have to go."
Angela was silent for a long moment, her mind working through everything that had just happened. Finally, she nodded. "I'll go," she declared. "I'll go until I get a human skin body. Until I'm whole again. Whatever it takes."
Carmilla looked between them, seeing their resolve, their determination despite everything. She sighed, a long exhalation that carried years of exhaustion. "Fine, fine," she said, waving one hand in tired acceptance. "We'll go to Valenora. We'll find this Flower's Home. What other choice do we have?"
The decision made, they fell into their own thoughts. The train continued its journey, carrying them toward whatever destiny awaited in Valenora, while behind them, somewhere in the clouds over Canada, Vera's body continued to fall toward the frozen earth below.
The scene shifted
London.
The city was dark, the sun having long since set. In a particular district, in a particular building that didn't appear on any official maps, there was activity.
A laboratory, though not like Carmilla's. This one was darker, more organic, less concerned with the sterile precision of scientific inquiry and more focused on practical applications of forbidden knowledge. The walls were lined with strange equipment, with containers holding things that moved when they shouldn't, with diagrams that hurt to look at too long.
And in the center of it all was Florenca.
Or rather, what remained of Florenca.
Her body was still half-destroyed, still half-eaten by Pranit. The damage was extensive, grotesque, the kind of injuries that should have been fatal many times over. But she was alive if that word still applied to what she had become.
She lay on a specialized table, surrounded by machinery that hummed and clicked and occasionally released small bursts of steam or stranger substances. Her remaining eye was open, alert, watching everything with sharp intelligence despite the ruin of her physical form.
The maid stood beside her, as impeccable and composed as ever. Somehow her uniform had been cleaned and repaired since the last time we'd seen her, despite the chaos she'd endured. She held a tablet, monitoring various readouts and making small adjustments to the machinery surrounding Florenca.
"Lady Florenca," the maid said, her voice carrying a note of satisfaction, "I believe you will regain your true form soon. The preparations are nearly complete. Within the next few hours, the transformation should begin."
Florenca's lips curved into a smile or at least, what passed for a smile given the current state of her face. It was a disturbing expression, made more so by the damage surrounding it. But there was genuine pleasure in it, genuine anticipation.
She said nothing, but the smile spoke volumes. Whatever was coming, whatever "true form" the maid referred to, Florenca was looking forward to it. The suffering of her current state was temporary, a chrysalis stage before something new and terrible emerged.