The smog tasted like pennies.
It seeped through the ventilation seals of the Behemoth, filling the cabin with a thick, metallic haze.
Jason coughed into his sleeve. The blinding light of the Glass Desert was gone, replaced by a suffocating twilight. Outside the windows, the world was a blur of gray ash and rusted girders.
"We're slowing down," Hughes reported. "The tracks are vibrating. I'm picking up a signal beacon."
CLANK-THUD.
The train lurched violently to the left.
"Switch!" O'Malley yelled, grabbing a handrail. "They diverted us!"
Jason ran to the window.
They were off the main line. The Behemoth was rumbling down a side track, flanked by towering walls of concrete topped with razor wire.
"It's a chute," Jason realized. "They're funneling us."
On the parallel tracks, other trains were moving. Long lines of cattle cars. But they didn't smell like manure. They smelled like unwashed bodies and fear.
Jason squinted through the grime.
Through the wooden slats of the cattle cars, he saw faces. Hollow eyes staring out at the armored Behemoth.
Men and women in ragged gray uniforms. On their arms, they wore silver armbands.
"Silver Legion," Jason whispered. "Pelley's deserters."
"He sells them," Sarah said, standing beside him. Her face was hard. "Pelley captures the disloyal, and sells them to the Midwest. Bodies for power."
It was a supply chain. A closed loop of horror. Pelley provided the fuel. Hitler burned it. Alta Rockefeller bought the electricity.
"The gate!" Hughes shouted. "Dead end!"
Ahead, the track terminated at a massive steel wall.
INTAKE 4.
The words were stenciled in black paint on the rusty metal.
"Brakes!" Jason yelled.
Hughes slammed the emergency brake. Sparks showered the rails. The Behemoth slid, screeching, stopping inches from the gate.
CLANG.
Behind them, a heavy blast door dropped across the track.
They were boxed in.
"Kill box," O'Malley racked his shotgun.
A hiss filled the air.
From vents in the concrete walls, green gas began to pour out. It was heavy, rolling along the ground like a carpet.
"Gas attack!" O'Malley shouted. "Seal the vents!"
"It's chlorine!" Oppenheimer screamed from the engine room. "I can smell it! It will melt our lungs!"
"Masks!" Jason ordered, fumbling for the emergency locker.
He threw a gas mask to Sarah. He pulled one over his own head. The rubber smelled of old sweat.
"The filters won't hold forever!" Oppenheimer yelled, his voice muffled by his mask. "That concentration is lethal! It will corrode the seals!"
The green fog rose, swallowing the wheels of the train.
"We have to neutralize it!" Oppenheimer was frantic. He grabbed a heavy tank from the cooling system. "Ammonia! The cooling loops use anhydrous ammonia!"
"So?" Jason asked.
"Basic chemistry!" Oppenheimer shouted. "Ammonia plus chlorine equals ammonium chloride! Solid salt! It neutralizes the acid!"
"Do it!"
"I can't do it from here!" Oppenheimer pointed to the intake fans on the outside of the engine car. "I have to release the ammonia into the external intakes! I have to go outside!"
Jason looked at the scientist. Oppenheimer was a twig of a man. A theoretical physicist who smoked too much.
"I'll go," Jason said.
"You don't know the valve sequence!" Oppenheimer pushed past him. "Cover me!"
Jason grabbed O'Malley. "Open the side hatch!"
The hatch hissed open. The green fog swirled in.
Oppenheimer jumped out onto the running board. He dragged the heavy ammonia tank with him.
He was instantly swallowed by the gas.
"I can't see him!" Jason leaned out, pistol raised.
Shadows moved in the fog.
Men emerged from the gloom.
They wore heavy rubber aprons stained black. They wore gas masks with long, trunk-like hoses. In their hands, they carried pneumatic bolt guns—the kind used to kill cattle.
"The Butchers!" O'Malley fired.
BLAM.
A Butcher took the buckshot in the chest. He staggered but didn't fall. His rubber apron was lined with steel plates.
He raised the bolt gun.
THWUMP.
A steel bolt punched into the side of the train, inches from Jason's head.
"Robert! Look out!" Jason screamed.
A Butcher lunged out of the fog, grabbing Oppenheimer by the throat.
The scientist flailed. He dropped the wrench.
The Butcher raised his bolt gun to Oppenheimer's temple.
Oppenheimer didn't scream. He panicked.
He smashed the valve of the ammonia tank against the train hull.
HISSSSSS.
A jet of freezing, liquid ammonia shot out. It hit the Butcher full in the face.
The cold was absolute. The Butcher's rubber mask shattered. He screamed, letting go of Oppenheimer as the chemical froze his eyes.
Oppenheimer scrambled to the intake fan. He jammed the spewing tank into the blades.
The fan chopped the liquid into a mist.
The reaction was instant.
The green chlorine gas turned white. Thick, heavy snowflakes of ammonium chloride began to fall.
The acidic burn in the air vanished.
"It's working!" Oppenheimer yelled, collapsing on the deck.
Jason reached out and hauled the scientist back inside. O'Malley slammed the door.
The white snow covered the Butchers. They stopped advancing, confused by the sudden chemical shift.
Then, a horn blasted.
A deep, bone-rattling sound.
The massive steel gate ahead began to groan. Gears the size of cars turned.
The gate opened.
Light poured in. Not sunlight. Electric light. Harsh, white floodlights.
"They're opening it," Sarah whispered. "Why?"
"Because we passed the test," Jason said, stripping off his mask.
The Behemoth rolled forward, into the complex.
It was a city of pipes. Steam vents. Furnaces.
And in the center, a train station that looked like a temple.
Waiting on the platform was another locomotive. It dwarfed the Behemoth. It was black and gold, covered in gothic skulls and eagles. It hissed steam like a dragon.
A ramp extended from the gold train.
A figure stepped out.
He wasn't wearing a military uniform. He wore a pristine white industrial suit, tailored perfectly. He held a cane made of polished ebony.
Floating behind him was a drone. A spinning ball of Tesla coils and cameras.
Adolf Hitler.
But not the dictator Jason knew from history books. This was a CEO. An efficiency expert who had turned genocide into a profit margin.
Jason stepped out onto the deck of the Behemoth.
The train stopped.
Hitler smiled. It was a terrifyingly polite smile.
"Efficient," Hitler said. His voice was calm, magnified by the drone. "You neutralized the chlorine in forty seconds. Most shipments just... spoil."
"I'm not a shipment," Jason said.
"Everything is a shipment, Herr Prentice," Hitler said. "Biomass in. Power out. It is the only law of the universe."
Jason put his hand on his holster.
"Let us pass," Jason said. "Or I drop the sun on this factory."
Hitler laughed. "The sun? You have no nukes, Jason. I can smell the decay on your ship. You have a dying battery and a stolen robot."
He pointed his cane at the door behind Jason.
"I do not want to fight," Hitler said. "War is expensive. I want to trade."
The door behind Jason opened.
Gates stepped out. The iron giant loomed over Jason, his red eye fixed on Hitler.
Hitler's eyes lit up with hunger.
"The Logic Core," Hitler whispered. "The brain that never sleeps."
He looked at Jason.
"I have the centrifuge you need," Hitler said. "Industrial scale. Capable of mass-producing your isotope. You can save your wife. You can save the world from the flu."
He pointed the cane at Gates.
"Give me the machine," Hitler said. "And I give you the cure."
Jason froze.
He looked at Sarah. She was watching him from the window, her face pale. She needed the cure.
He looked at Gates. The machine that had saved them in the glass desert. The machine that was also a monster.
"A trade?" Jason asked.
"A business transaction," Hitler corrected. "One monster for another."
Jason looked at the white suit. He looked at the smoking chimneys of the factory.
"Deal," Jason lied.
He stepped down onto the platform.
The game had changed. He wasn't building an empire anymore. He was dismantling one, brick by bloody brick.