4. A Breach

She is different this time, the stowaway. Weiwei can't say exactly what it is, but Elena's presence seems more solid, as if she is taking up more space. They crouch on opposite ends of the bunk.

"Thief."

She makes the cramped space between the bunk and the ceiling seem even smaller.

"I didn't know," says Weiwei. "I didn't know what it would do." Didn't you? The patterns on the wall are moving, the lichen growing before her eyes.

"Why did you take it? It wasn't yours."

Because I wanted it,she wants to say. I wanted to hold it and keep it. I wanted something that couldn't leave, that couldn't be lost. But instead all she says is, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." The train thunders in her head, the rails rattle in her bones, and it is not Elena's fault, it is hers, all hers. She has brought the outside into the train, and the Vigil is approaching and there is nothing she can do. She sees again the fear in Alexei's face, the guilt he has wrapped around himself, and her guilt grows stronger still. "Why did you come back?" She doesn't mean it to sound so abrupt. "Henry Grey's looking for you." He will see her, she thinks. He is like Rostov, like her. All looking for something, all unsatisfied with what they have. "He believes you're a messenger, an angel…"

"Not a monster?" Elena touches the wall, and the lichen moves like ripples in the water, flowing outward then turning inward, exploring, lapping at her fingers.

"No, that's not—"

"Not what you think? Isn't it? Out there, you thought I had hurt him. That it's what monsters do. That it's where we belong."

"No…" But she sees it again in her mind's eye, Henry Grey sprawled on the ground, Elena crouching over him. "Don't!" Elena looking up. Betrayed.

"That's not true." Weiwei reaches out to take her hand, but she knows that the words are hollow and dry. Elena will always be a stowaway, an uninvited guest; she will always be a monster—to be feared, hunted, caught. "We will find somewhere for you to belong," Weiwei says. "We will reach Russia and you will see all the world that you wanted, all the things you imagined—"

But Elena is pulling away, twisting her hair between her fingers.

"What?"

"That's not why I came back, you don't understand."

"But I want to, because otherwise how can I understand all this? All these changes…" She needs to get rid of it. She turns to the wall, starts trying to break off the lichen that has grown now all the way to the ceiling; starts trying to scratch it with her fingernails—

"Weiwei, no—"

—and it is as if a sudden spill of ink floods over her mind, and all is dark and empty until the ink is washed away and she is—

—Somewhere she should not be. In the thunderous inferno of the engine room, watching the stokers feed the mouth of the train, flames reflected in their protective goggles, scorch marks on their gloves. Through the grime of the windows she sees that they are not far from the Russian Wall, near the beginning of their crossing. The last crossing. A memory? No, something else. Bright-orange sparks hang in the air but when they fall onto her skin they do not burn her—not sparks but spores, dancing toward the firebox, searching for the heat that powers the train. She sees other spores emerge again from the fire, follows one to where it settles on the wall; she crouches down to see a metallic sheen forming, iridescent greens and silvers, as if part of the metal of the wall, but growing, pulsing in time with the roar of the engine, with the rhythm of the rails—

—and fights have broken out in First. The passengers complain of disturbed sleep, they say that when they catch sight of their reflections in the window they are not their own; they have smashed the mirrors in the Third Class bathroom. Weiwei looks down at the angry red cut on the palm of her right hand, from a shard of glass. She has seen herself in it, distorted into a sly, creeping creature, a starved look on her face. She stands, dripping blood onto the black-and-white tiles of the bathroom, unable to tear her eyes away from the glass.

"I had to do it." A woman with her back to the wall, staring at the remains of the mirror, her own hands bloodied. "It was lying, it was lying."

But Weiwei thinks, Perhaps it was telling the truth—

—and the Captain is raging at the landscape. They are in the lookout tower and the great lake is beside them, almost white beneath the late summer sun, the horizon disappearing into a bleached-out sky. The Captain is shouting for her to close the shutters, to hide the outside away.

"Shall I fetch the doctor?"

"No."

"Some water, then…" Weiwei wants to be out of the tower, to be away from this unfamiliar version of the Captain. She makes for the door.

"How are we to bear it?"

Weiwei stops.

The Captain looks up, her skin pale and clammy. "Don't you feel it? As if it is trying to get in… Always there, growing, whatever we do, however strong we are… How do you bear it?"

Weiwei stares, pinned down by the intensity of her gaze and she sees the Captain revealed, unmasked—afraid. Afraid of the landscape outside. She had never imagined that beneath it all the Captain would be scared. The walls of the train suddenly seem a little less strong, the floor a little less solid.

"You're unwell," she whispers. "Let me take you down to your quarters." But the Captain gives a wave of dismissal.

"Leave me be."

"But you're not—"

"Leave me!" She turns with a ferocity that sends Weiwei scuttling away, down the stairs and into the dark—

—and into the Third Class sleeping carriage, the stillness more shocking than anything she has seen. They are sleeping, the passengers, but in such silence that she has to check for signs of life. Yes, the slow rise and fall of chests, the parting of lips. There are lamps burning but the curtains are open to the night outside. On the edge of her hearing, a small sound. A splintering. Around the nearest window, there is the same metallic sheen she had seen on the engine wall, pulsing with life. She puts her hand to the glass and feels the same, slow pulse. There are veins appearing, silvering beneath her fingers, veins stretching from one window to the other and here is the splintering noise again and the window cracks—

"Come back!"

She snatches her hand away from the lichen on the wall. Elena is leaning toward her. "How do you feel? What did you see?"

Weiwei tries to form the words but she can still feel the glass, alive, then gone. She can still see the spores, floating in the dark, luminescent. The lost days of the last crossing. The train changed, invaded.

"It wasn't the glass," she whispers. "The Company was wrong, the walls of the train had already been breached, the outside had already come in." She remembers the spores, dancing toward the furnace. The sense of purpose.

"What happened?" There is a look on Elena's face that Weiwei recognizes, the same hunger as when she had looked outside at the birds, the foxes—at all the things that were calling her yet keeping her away.

"We were part of it all. Connected." She can barely raise her voice above a whisper. Under her fingers, she feels the raised scar on the palm of her hand. She remembers picking the shard of glass from her skin. Remembers her reflection in the shattered mirror, small and mean and hungry, as if she had seen a part of herself that she kept hidden from view. "We were shown the different parts of ourselves. And then…" The glass cracked. The connection was lost. She can feel its absence, like the ache she gets when the train has stopped. "Is this how you feel?" she manages. "Empty?"

"Empty," Elena repeats, as if tasting the word. Then she says, "Outside, in the grass and the trees and the water, I felt strong again. I thought that I was home."

Weiwei waits.

"But I had betrayed my home. I left it and it would not welcome me back. It has learned too; it has changed."

From us,thinks Weiwei. It has learned from us—from all parts of us, our best parts and our worst. She feels the blood pounding in her temples. "But what does that mean?"

Elena sits back against the wall. She says, "It means that they will not stop now. It does not matter how strong the train might be, there is nothing that can hold them back anymore."