The sky over Detroit wasn't black. It was the color of a bruise—purple and yellow from the sodium lights reflecting off the smog.
Jason stood at the front window of the Behemoth. Sarah leaned against him, weak but alive. The isotope coursing through her veins had stopped the seizures, but the war wasn't over.
"That's not a city," O'Malley muttered, racking his shotgun. "That's a tombstone."
Detroit had changed.
The Standard Oil skyscraper dominated the skyline, but it was no longer an office building. It was a fortress. Anti-aircraft guns bristled from the balconies. Searchlights swept the clouds. The city was ringed by a wall of black iron, fortified with watchtowers.
"We can't just roll in," Hughes said, his hands tight on the throttle. "Look at the track."
Jason followed the rails with his eyes.
They didn't lead into Union Station. They bypassed the city entirely, curving toward a massive industrial complex on the river.
THE ROUGE.
Ford's legendary factory. The largest manufacturing plant in human history.
But the gate was closed.
A massive steel slab, ten feet thick and three stories high, blocked the tracks. On top of the wall, artillery cannons swiveled, aiming directly at the train.
"Brakes!" Jason ordered.
"Too late for brakes!" Hughes yelled. "We're on the approach vector! If we slow down, the artillery shreds us! We're sitting ducks!"
A hologram flickered to life in the smoke ahead. A primitive projection, grainy and blue.
A face appeared. Ten feet tall, floating in the air.
It wasn't Henry Ford.
It was a man with a silver collar and cold, dead eyes.
"Bishop Pelley," Sarah whispered. "My brother-in-law's right hand."
The giant face smiled. It was a cruel, thin expression.
"Welcome home, Ms. Rockefeller," the Bishop's amplified voice boomed over the wasteland. "Your mother sends her love. She paid double for the safe return of the train... but she clarified that the passengers are negotiable."
Jason grabbed the radio mic. "Open the gate, Bishop! Or I'll open it for you!"
"With what?" the Bishop laughed. "You have no army. You have a stolen train and a dying crew. Do you see the walls, Jason? Ford built them. Gates automated them. And I command them."
The projection gestured to the factory behind the wall.
"The Automaton Cavalry was just a prototype," the Bishop sneered. "Inside the Rouge, we are building the future. A legion of steel that doesn't eat, doesn't sleep, and doesn't disobey. You are obsolete, Mr. Prentice."
The artillery cannons on the wall flashed.
BOOM-BOOM.
Shells exploded on the track ahead of the Behemoth, throwing up geysers of dirt and twisted metal.
"They're bracketing us!" O'Malley yelled as shrapnel pinged off the hull. "Next volley hits the engine!"
"We have to breach!" Jason screamed.
"Breach?" Hughes looked at him like he was insane. "That's ten feet of reinforced steel! If we ram it, the train crumples! We'll be paste inside the can!"
"Not the train," Jason said, watching the wall rush closer. "Just the engine."
He grabbed Hughes by the shoulder.
"Uncouple the passenger cars," Jason ordered. "We turn the locomotive into a kinetic missile. We ride the brakes in the rear cars while the engine punches a hole."
"That's suicide!" Hughes yelled. "Someone has to drive the engine to keep the throttle pinned! The dead-man switch will cut the power if I let go!"
"I'll jam it," Jason said. He grabbed a heavy pipe wrench from the tool wall.
"No," Hughes pushed him back. "You're the CEO. I'm the pilot."
Hughes's eyes were wild, manic. He looked at his beautiful, terrifying machine.
"I built her," Hughes whispered. "I'll send her home."
"Howard—"
"Get back!" Hughes shoved Jason toward the rear door. "Get to the passenger car! Decouple on my mark!"
Jason hesitated. He looked at the brilliant, broken man.
"Go!" Hughes screamed.
Jason ran. He sprinted through the tender car, jumping the gap to the passenger section. He slammed the heavy iron door and locked it.
He grabbed the manual release lever.
"Ready!" Jason yelled into the intercom.
Inside the engine room, Howard Hughes laughed. He slammed the throttle forward to 110%. The "Suicide Setting."
The electric motors screamed in agony. The Behemoth surged to 120 MPH.
Hughes jammed the wrench into the gears, locking the throttle open.
He looked at the wall rushing toward him. It filled the windshield.
"Mark!" Hughes yelled.
Jason pulled the lever.
CLUNK.
The locking pins disengaged.
Jason grabbed the emergency brake wheel in the passenger car. "Brace!"
He spun the wheel. Sparks showered the track as the rear cars locked their wheels.
They slowed down.
The engine didn't.
Freed from the weight of the train, the locomotive shot forward like a bullet.
Hughes ran to the back of the engine cab. He looked at the gap between the engine and the passenger cars. It was widening. Five feet. Ten feet.
He jumped.
He sailed through the air, flailing.
He hit the front deck of the passenger car hard. He rolled, slamming into the railing.
O'Malley grabbed him by the belt and hauled him inside just as the engine hit.
CRASH.
The sound was beyond sound. It was a physical blow that stopped the heart.
Fifty tons of armored iron, moving at 120 miles per hour, slammed into the steel gate.
The Gates-Cell batteries in the engine ruptured on impact.
The explosion was blinding. A blue-white sphere of electrical fire engulfed the wall.
The steel gate didn't just break. It vaporized.
The shockwave hit the passenger cars.
The windows blew out. Jason was thrown to the floor.
Through the shattered glass, he watched.
The artillery tower on top of the wall collapsed, falling into the burning crater.
The passenger cars, screeching on locked brakes, slid through the hole.
They were moving sideways now, drifting on the mud.
"Hold on!" Jason screamed.
They slid through the burning wreckage of the gate.
The wheels caught a piece of debris.
The car flipped.
The world spun. Metal shrieked. Luggage, weapons, and people tumbled in a dryer of violence.
Then, stillness.
Jason opened his eyes.
He was upside down. Blood dripped from his nose onto the ceiling.
"Sound off," Jason rasped.
"Alive," O'Malley groaned from a pile of mattresses.
"Functioning," Einstein muttered, checking his glasses.
"My leg," Sarah hissed. She was pinned under a table, but alive.
Jason crawled out through a broken window. He fell into the mud.
He stood up.
The Behemoth was dead. The passenger cars lay on their sides, smoking ruins in the mud. The engine was gone—just a crater of molten slag in the wall.
He looked around.
They were inside.
But there were no soldiers. No alarm sirens.
Just silence.
They were in a massive courtyard. The size of twenty football fields.
And hanging from the ceiling, row upon row, were hooks.
On every hook hung a chassis.
Gray iron skeletons. Hydraulic limbs. Empty camera-lens eyes.
Thousands of them.
"The Rouge," Hughes whispered, limping up beside Jason. "It's not a factory. It's a barracks."
Suddenly, a spotlight hit them. It was blindingly bright, cutting through the smoke.
Then another. And another.
They were bathed in light.
A voice boomed from the hidden speakers. It was calm, elegant, and terrifyingly familiar.
"You broke my train, Jason," Alta Rockefeller's voice echoed. "That comes out of your inheritance."
Jason shielded his eyes. He looked up at the gantry high above the factory floor.
A figure stood there. A woman in a black dress, holding a glass of champagne.
"You have come a long way," Alta said. "But the track ends here."
A mechanical sound filled the air.
Click-click-click.
The hooks on the ceiling began to lower.
The robot army was waking up.
Jason reached for his gun. It was gone. Lost in the crash.
He stood in the mud, unarmed, facing the woman who owned the world.
"We don't need a train," Jason shouted back, his voice raw. "We're walking from here."
Alta laughed.
"Walk then," she said. "Into the grinder."
The first row of robots hit the floor.
CLANG.
The final siege had begun.