PORTSTEAD — RETURN TRAIN — 4:20 A.M.
No one slept.
The train car smelled like ink, seawater, blood, and bad decisions.
Mercedes sat under guard at the far end of the compartment, wrists bound in anti-script restraints Ezra had once designed for "theoretical hostile text entities" and had been delighted to discover actually worked.
Shadow watched her without blinking.
Mira had spread the copied registry notes across the table, reconstructing what the Editor's people now knew.
Sera stared out the window into black countryside moving too fast.
And I sat in the middle of all of it trying very hard not to think the sentence *they have everything* over and over like a prayer to a god who hated us.
"Say it clean," Sera said without turning from the window. "No spiraling. Just facts."
Kassandra's voice crackled through the crystal line we'd reestablished the moment the train cleared Portstead's distortion zone.
