The surviving members of the expeditionary force took the Harpy’s words to heart. With help from Henry’s limitless supply of bodies to throw at the problem, the only remaining variable to factor in became the time it took to… disarm them one by one.

  After the first 15 minutes, he’d managed to carve a path that brought his copy within arm’s reach of the wedged train car. As good a start as that was, it would still be another five minutes and a few more dead copies before they could be absolutely certain that they had a safe angle to approach from.

  Ultimately, the persistence paid off. Having cleared the entire width of the tunnel within 5 meters of the train, the current copy gave the all clear with a thumbs-up.

  Satisfied with the thoroughness of the sweep, Henry left his duplicate to a well-deserved breather and broached the question he’d been mulling over during the short wait.

  “So, now what?” Henry asked the group. “Do we go for the windows, or do we try squeezing through the door on the back of the car?”

  Neither option seemed like a quick solution to him. The windows, while closer to the ground than scaling the entire caboose, still required a bit of a climb to reach. But, on the other hand, he wasn’t sure if either option would save time for them to begin with. The door looked about as wedged as the rest of the train car was.

  Fortunately, it seemed that the Harpy was instead planning on a third option.

  “Stand aside.” With the back of one hand, it lightly tapped Henry on the shoulder as it walked past him to get a good view of the train. “I’ll take care of this.”

  Henry was more than happy to shut up and let it take point. As belittling as being dragged around to throw bodies at their problems was, he didn’t feel that airing those grievances now would be of any help to anyone’s situation.

  Right now, regardless of allegiances up on the surface, they were all part of the same team. If they wanted to live long enough to see the moonlight again, working together would be essential.

  Sometimes, that meant taking the backseat while someone else handled the problem at hand.

  As the Harpy approached the exposed side of the train car, its bladed wings extended to their full span and the turbines within whined to life. A light gust of wind kicked up behind it as they spun up, causing its dark green ponytail to flap in the breeze slightly.

  It cracked its neck before it got to work. Granted, it sounded closer to a ratchet wrench than neck joints popping, but other than that it was a remarkably human gesture by the standards the no-nonsense cyborg.

  If not perhaps a little edgy, in Henry’s opinion. But then again, if he looked like a robotic angel of death, in all likelihood he’d find himself leaning into it a bit as well.

  The wings flared forward and outward, and the sharpened tips of the metallic feathers plunged into the wall of the train car. Apparently, whatever metal was used in their creation was pointedly stronger than steel. The train car wall had to be at least several centimeters thick metal, and it had parted about as easily as a knife through bread. It hadn’t even been able to scratch the feather-like filigree on the Harpy’s wings.

  Sounds of stressed metal reverberated along the smooth walls of the tunnel as the train car slowly began to buckle. The whine of turbines reached a fever pitch as they strained near to the point of overheating. Glass cracked in its panes, and solid steel began to deform as the wing joints twisted to wrench it away. Henry got the stark impression of a can opener doing what it does best.

  With a screech that could contest nails on a chalkboard, the metal gave way and peeled the side of the vehicle wide open. The Harpy spun with the direction of the pull, tearing off a section of wall wide enough that the rest of them could probably walk through side by side, and still have clearance.

  The turbines gradually began to spin down in a subdued fashion. He could almost swear that they were glowing cherry red from the exertion.

  “Clone,” it snapped its gaze to the duplicate idling nearby. “Investigate.”

  The copy helpfully complied. Not so helpfully, though, was the decision he made to blow a raspberry at the stronger devil.

  Henry was a little offended that the Harpy decided to send a pointed glare his way for that. It’s not like he was the one who did it!

  Aside from that little debacle, the rest of the initial sweep went off without a hitch. The copy clambered inside the train, and after walking the whole length of the interior, reported back with a confused look on his face.

  “That’s weird… I can’t seem to find any sort of trap inside this thing.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?” One of the delvers from the Gentleman’s Club scratched his head, confused. “What, didn’t you expect having to talk about what you found?”

  The copy’s eyes lit up as a smug smile plastered his face. “No,” he replied, “I expected to... die.”

  The guard gave a quizzical look at the weird emphasis, before realization dawned on his face. As soon as he realized what he was referencing, he let out a groan at the low-hanging joke.

  “Spy movie references? Really?”

  “Why not? You set me right up for it.”

  Henry let out a small chuckle of his own. The reception from the rest of them was much more deadpan.

  Damn, he must be stressing out of his mind right now, Henry realized. I only crack jokes this much when something doesn’t quite sit right.

  As if on cue, the duplicate launched into exactly what was bothering him.

  “But in all seriousness,” he continued, “There should have 100 percent been traps of some kind in here. Unless this is somehow a freshly derailed train, but I haven’t heard of one that was still functional after the Subway Wizards-”

  “-Morlocks,” the Harpy interjected.

  “- I know what I said. After the Subway Wizards started torching the works so they could keep the traps on the rails from being triggered prematurely.”

  The delver with Henry’s revolver piped up. “So you’re certain that there’s not any traps in there, then?”

  “Absolutely positive.”

  “Think that trend continues in the rest of the train cars?”

  “I dunno. Maybe? I was planning on staying ahead of the group and clearing them one by one, at any rate.”

  The thug looked at the Harpy and raised his free hand. “I vote we go through the interior one cabin at a time, then. I’m game for a bit of free progress that way, and who knows? If this train’s as fresh as he says, there might be a working engine in the front that we can use to get this done even faster!”

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  Henry looked at the man, confused. Was he seriously that naive? The lights in most buildings barely worked these days, and he was holding out for a fully functional subway train?

  Must be his first time out exploring, or something. That was the only way he could think to explain his reasoning.

  Unfortunately, the bad call was rather quick to gain traction among most of the others. The Harpy and the one he remembered being called Gordie looked about as skeptical as he did… maybe… but even though their votes probably could have vetoed the idea, they both remained silent.

  This is stupid… but does that mean they’re letting them go ahead with this on purpose?

  Henry was probably the most reluctant, but didn’t have much say in the matter to begin with. On the plus side, it meant he had a break from his summoning duties, but that was nowhere near enough to calm the niggling sense of paranoia he was feeling.

  One by one, they climbed inside of the train, and the duplicate took point. The first door to the following cars opened without any issue, and they watched with anticipation as he walked the length of the next train car, waving his arms as much as possible in an effort to find another one of those enchanted tripwires the locals were so fond of.

  Once again, he found nothing. The rest of them piled into the new carriage, and the process repeated with the next door.

  Then the next. Then the next.

  For being a wreck, the interior was remarkably tidy, Henry noticed idly. The whole train looked almost factory new. Even the seats along the sides of each car seemed barely sat in. Did this one just get finished with a refurbishment before the first Witching Hour?

  Surely, even then, there’d be some damage visible somewhere…

  He wasn’t sure if it was the monotony of their surrounding that was getting to him, or just his nerves in general. Probably both. The formless, gray-green blob of fog that made the exterior of the train look like a single solid color wasn’t helping with that any. Sure, out one side you could just make out the tunnel wall, but out the other…

  Nothing but a misty void as far as the eye could see. Which translated to ‘about three inches out the window’.

  The light from his talisman bounced softly off the interior of the next cabin. Same as the one before it. And the one before that, too. Almost as if…

  “Hey, uh guys… can we wait her for a second?”, the talkative one piped up.

  “What? What’s the matter?”

  “Well, uhm… don’t freak out, but… ah, how do I explain this…”

  “Come on, spit it out already…”, said the other one as he drummed his fingers against the cylinder of Henry’s revolver. Didn’t seem like he was trying to be threatening, but it came off that way a little bit regardless.

  “Well, there was something that crossed my mind a second ago as we were going through this here train. My cousin Norbert used to talk my ear off about trains a bunch, he did, so whenever I’d visit him I’d always end up pulled into conversations about some train fact or another and-”

  “Quit wafflin’ and get on with it!”

  “I’m getting there, okay?! Anyways, he said something once about how the trains in the London Underground met a bunch of really specific standards, and one of them that I just remembered said something about the trains being at most, like… six to eight cars long?”

  “And this is important why?”

  “’Cause, uh, I just counted ten. And I didn’t start until a few cars in, so there’s a few more that I’m missing.”

  Henry groaned, facepalming. He hated when paranoia was proven right. Especially his own.

  “It’s a cursed artifact. This whole bloody train is a cursed artifact, that’s why there’s no traps in here. And we just walked straight into it like a bunch of idiots…”

  “You sure?” One of the thugs pointed back the way they’d come. “We can always just-”

  He turned around, expecting to see all the doors they’d opened to give them a clear path back out.

  All of which were now firmly shut behind them.

  “Well, I guess that might be out of the question, then…” he muttered dejectedly.

  Henry clenched his teeth angrily. “Did you REALLY think it would be that easy?!?!”

  The copy, who’d been about to continue on to the next cabin, turned around in an effort to defuse the brewing argument.

  “Should I keep going? Might still find something further up, after all…”

  Technically, they hadn’t ruled out that possibility just yet. There wasn’t any guarantee that the current pattern would keep repeating, and people found hitherto unseen artifacts residing deeper inside of cursed ones, waiting to be found by those intrepid enough to face the dangers.

  That line of thinking was a huge gamble though. Even on the best days, Henry wasn’t willing to take a shot that long.

  “It’d be better if we got out of here as soon as possible,” Henry declared, making the executive decision based on his gut feeling.

  Should have done this much sooner, he thought to himself wryly.

  This cabin, coincidentally enough, had a side door along the wall facing the center of the tube, which slid open with as little force as any of the other doors had needed. Shame there hadn’t been one like that on the caboose, not that it changed much in the end.

  “Right, you know the drill, me. It was fun while it lasted, but the sooner we get off this thing, the better our collective life expectancy is going to be looking.”

  “Yeah,” the duplicate grumbled. “Because your life expectancy’s the one I’m paying attention to right now…”

  He sat down on the edge of the gate, legs dangling out into the foggy tunnel. Pushing off with both hands, he slid off the ledge, anticipating a short fall back to the ground before more likely than not he tripped another one of those blasted wires.

  The fall was much longer than the half second it should have been. The copy disappeared into the haze below, falling fast until not even his unruly mop of hair was visible.

  Henry frowned as the situation unfolded. He had a really bad feeling about this.

  Though, apparently, the bright spark who’d got them into this mess had no such worries. The thug took a step forward as if to follow immediately after, which forced Henry to hold him back from the opening with one arm.

  “Wait,” he spoke sternly and with a hint of frustration. “I didn’t hear him land.”

  A look of realization struck the man’s face, as if he hadn’t thought of that until he’d mentioned it.

  These guys can’t seriously be the best Guillaume can provide, can they…?

  Granted, why would the shrewd boss of Hallow London’s biggest gang offer up actually competent members if all they needed to do was make sure he didn’t pull any funny business?

  Nearly a minute passed as they all tensely waited around the open doorway. He was about to consider that maybe he was just being overly cautious when a fragmented vision sent him reeling backwards into the cabin behind him.

  There was barely even anything to take note of. His sight filled with a vision of the same pale green of the fog, and that was that. He fell to the ground in a heap, nearly toppling into one of the men behind him. Not his most graceful landing, and by far his least informative vision to date.

  After a moment of pained recovery, Henry rubbed his bruised head and pulled himself off the floor.

  “Well, guess it’s official, then,” he announced to the group. “Mind the gap, because wherever we are must have a serious lack of ground beneath it.”

  < -|- -|- >

  “Find anything out there yet?” Henry called out into the void outside the door, peering down at the winged silhouette hovering below.

  “Fascinating,” came its reply. “As far as I can tell, there isn’t anything holding the train up. And yet, it stretches on well past the limits of what I can see or detect.”

  “Detect? What, you’ve got a radar tucked away somewhere under all that scrap, too?”

  “Sonar, to be precise. But, regardless, that’s not the most important matter currently.”

  “Well, out with it, then!” Henry had been not-so-patiently hoping for the official word from it for longer than he’d like to admit, to the point where once again a bout of anxiety was threatening to flare.

  The other three thugs had deigned to catch some rest while the Harpy scouted around the exterior, leaving him otherwise bereft of a conversation partner to occupy himself.

  Went to show they were probably smarter than he was, that did.

  “As far as my scans have indicated, the wall on the far side of the train is little more than a single, flat plane. As for the other side…”

  The Harpy growled with frustration.

  “No matter how many pings I send, I receive no reports of an end to the empty space in that direction.”

  Belatedly, Henry soaked in the ramifications of those findings. He slunk back inside the cabin and leaned up against one of the practically brand-new seats of the train. The words hung in the air over him like an executioner’s axe.

  His eye twitched. He began blinking rapidly, racing with his chest as heaved even faster as his lungs made an effort to work faster than his eyes. It took everything he had to hold him back from plunging head-first into a full blown panic attack.

  This was bad. He was the one who’d gotten himself stuck down here. The oldest living copy.

  The one that wasn’t on a timed life. Who was supposed to be the glorified spawn point for all the others to appear in relative safety.

  That meant it was only a matter of time until he was trapped down here for good. Along with every other future copy he made. The thought of being stuck inside a cursed artifact permanently gnawed at him from the inside out.

  He spared a glance toward the sleeping frames of his fellow explorers. The engraved enchantments on his old revolver caught the light just ever so slightly.

  The oldest living copy… could always change if the need arose.