The train track.

I was standing in the middle of it, two metal rails running along either side of my body, the wooden planks extending in equidistant rows towards a familiar sight on the left. And a feeling of peace took over my body, because it was a sight that I had known my whole life, a view I could have painted with my eyes closed:

Home.

I was in my own town, and the little train station where Robbie and I had waited with Kieren for our dads' train to pull in from work was only a heartbeat away. It looked impossibly small in the gray light of day. Its ivy-covered walls were long gone, but someone had placed two twin potted Ficus trees on either side of the stout wooden front door.

A glance up at the roiling sky revealed swirls of storm clouds, just as there had been in the two previous doors. What was it about storms that had drawn Alexei to these particular places? Was it some kind of joke? Or a way to clue me in as to how far in the future I had landed? Because if we were too far ahead, all three of these doors would have either led to the inside of a dome...or a wasteland of dust.

And these storm clouds above me were real, as were the rain drops that now began to plop on top of my head.

I shivered against the sudden chill, and was about to step off the track when I noticed the yellow light reflecting through my legs onto the silver rails.

And then I heard the rumbling, upon me in an instant.

Realization struck me in the same moment that my torso turned, my hands shooting up to cover my face.

And the word "no" was lost somewhere between my throat and the impact of the train as it smashed right into me.

*

Bum bum

bum bum

bum bum

I knew this sound. I knew this view: discarded ticket stubs and stray pieces of paper swirling in the breeze that was drawn up from the open slats of the ancient, dilapidated train bottom, revealing the passing track below.

I knew the smell of it too: stale metal, rotting wood.

I knew the feeling deep in my gut that the train was going too fast, and yet was not quite moving. Because the view out the window was right but not right. My home, my city, my country.

And yet none of those things.

I was on the Conductor's train.

The train where my brother had been trapped for almost four years.

And just like last time, I was in the very back of the train, despite having been sucked through a portal at the front of it.

But there was one key difference between now and then. This time, my pockets were empty of spare coins, and so I had no idea how I'd ever get off of it.

And yet that wasn't the thought that scared me the most, not yet anyway. That honor was reserved for the sudden onslaught of panic that I was in the past, not the future. That Alexei had dumped me in that moment three years ago when I had first boarded this train, and Robbie and Piper were trapped in the front. I ran for the door at the front of the car, almost tripping over one of those missing planks, my shoe precariously perched on its edge. I had to make it to the front, to see if Robbie was there.

I reached for the handle at the end of the car, and it took me a moment to recognize my own hand. It wasn't just that my fingers looked somehow more defined, giving the impression that I was bit older. It was the square-cut emerald ring on my finger that threw me off.

This was nothing like Sage's ring. This one was small and simple, but beautifully set in an antique-looking silver band with tiny diamonds all around it. Turning it around to examine it in the light from the train's windows, I saw that the central stone was held in place by two welded little silver hearts.

It was beautiful. Classic. Something that had been designed with great care, by someone who had made it just for me. I slid it off my finger to examine it more closely, tilting it up to see the way the light caught the tiny diamonds that encased the emerald.

That's when I noticed the inscription on the inside of the band, in the smallest of letters, written in an infinite loop:

ever and ever and ever and ever and

Adam had given me this ring. It must have cost him half a year's salary as a school teacher. A wiped a tear of gratitude from my cheek as I slid the ring back onto my finger and kissed it.

He was alive. Somewhere out there. And that meant maybe Kieren was too. And Robbie. Piper. Their son.

Everyone I loved.

A moment of peace settled over my heart. Maybe this was the deal. I would never leave this train, but they would be safe on the other side.

And that would be worth it. Despite everything, that would be worth it.

I leaned my head against the doorframe, my feet planted on the floor of the caboose.

And so when I heard the wailing, sifting through the turbulent wind that gusted and eddied through the car, I almost thought it was just a trick of my ears, confused by the whistling wind that whooshed past the train.

But then I heard it again.

It was human, and it was coming from inside the train.

I yanked the little door open and stepped onto the small metal platform between the cars, remembering that the first time I did this, I had almost plunged off the sides a couple times. I was more careful now, steadying myself on the metal chains that were strung on either side of me.

I entered the next abandoned car, and beelined for the front of it, working my way through the car after that, and then the one after that. I passed through six or seven more, and they were all the same. Their long-empty seats were ripped or missing altogether, their floors equally ravaged by time, just as the caboose had been.

The wailing stopped for a moment. But before it did, I made out that it was coming from somewhere farther up, possibly the engine, where Robbie and Piper had made a home for themselves.

Finally I reached the old library car—the source of all those dismembered book pages that flitted all around the air, making mini tornadoes of paper.

Then there was the car that Robbie and Piper had used for food storage. The moldy blue remains of old oranges and nectarines had coalesced with the wooden planks of the floor, teeming by now with maggots. Well, I figured, at least we'll have some penicillin in a pinch. I smiled to myself, a nervous instinct, because I was about to open the last door.

And I was terrified of who I'd find there.

As I reached for the handle, the wailing returned. But it was quieter now. Someone was sobbing. Someone was asking "Why?"

I took a deep breath, and I opened the door.

Mom was huddled against the wall, her knees pulled up to her chest. And for just a second, she reminded me so much of Robbie—the way he would fold into himself during one of his attacks, the immeasurable sea of grief that would overtake his brown eyes—that I almost ran to her and wrapped my arms around her.

But I didn't get a chance to do that. Because as soon as Mom saw me, her mouth fell open in shock. "What—" she began to mutter, but then she shook her head as she answered her own question—what was I doing here?

A fresh pool of tears welled in her deep-set eyes, and she shook the thought away, leaping to her feet in an instant and rushing towards me.

She grabbed me by the shoulders and wrapped me in a hug, and despite what I was feeling about Mom these days, my arms took on a life of her own and hugged her back.

Finally she pulled away and took my face in her hands. "Do you have a coin, baby? Tell me you brought a coin?"

I could only shake my head, and a couple of those tears that had been pooling in her eyes fell down her cheeks. She was not surprised, but she still seemed crushed by it.

Now I really took a moment to look at her. She was wearing the same kimono-style pajama set she had gone to bed in the night before. Cracked smudges of the red lipstick she had been wearing were still visible in the ridges of her dry lips. The same jewelry—an assortment of precious stones and metal bands, wrapped around her fingers.

This wasn't the Mom from the future, not from the same time as the body I now occupied.

This was the Mom from last night.

Alexei must have done this to her. He had taken her in the night, drugged maybe, and tricked her onto this train.

"What happened, Mom?" I asked through my dry throat.

She shook her head furiously, as though trying to whip the dark thoughts out of it. "He made me do it," she finally admitted. "He took Robbie at gunpoint. He made me follow. He said if I didn't walk through the portal, he would—"

"It's okay," I whispered, though it clearly wasn't.

"I'm so mad at myself," she said, crying harder now. She turned away from me and faced the wall of the engine car. "I trusted him," she said between sobs. "I trusted him, damn it." Then she curled her hand into a fist and pounded the wall. "Damn it," she said again. Another pound. Then another. "Damn it, damn it, damn it."

"Mom, stop."

But she couldn't stop. All her fury was working its way into her fists. She punched the wall so hard I saw the wood buckle. And I felt the same way I had when I'd found Robbie on this train three years before, and he had similarly begun to shake and kick at the train's walls.

I felt like a little girl, broken and scared, and realizing that the safest place in the world—with my family, with the people I loved the most—wasn't that safe at all.

And it never had been.

I stood frozen, watching her fall apart. And there was nothing I could do but wait until it was over.

Finally she calmed down and wiped her face. In the corner of the room, the bed Robbie had fashioned for himself from old seat cushions was still there, covered in tattered blankets and an old plaid shirt. I sat down on it and watched the world pass by out the windows for a moment, not ready to face my mother.

From time to time, the view that passed us would shift, as the train crossed from one dimension to another. It would be day, then suddenly twilight. Dawn, then high noon. There would be cities, then fields. Then nothing.

Sage had explained it to me once. The train didn't just visit one dimension, like the doors did. It whirled through all of them. It was timeless, and yet in the same breath, it belonged to all time.

That was why you couldn't just step off of it. If you tried to disembark in the wrong dimension, you would melt away, fading into oblivion.

And without a coin to pay the Conductor, Mom and I would have no way to return to the right dimension. We could be stuck here forever.

And that still wouldn't be enough time for me to understand her, or to forgive her.

"I know what you're thinking," Mom said, calmer now, standing against the far wall.

"I doubt that's true," I answered.

"I didn't betray you, baby," she continued, as though I hadn't spoken. I flinched at the term of endearment, but I let her keep speaking.

"You know, I labeled the doors in high school," she said, sitting on an overturned crate several feet away from me. "But the truth is, I didn't know much about the Tomorrow door. It was so bleak, I never wanted to spend any time there. I didn't find out until years later that Amalia had found it, too, when she was in high school."

I looked at her, and the shock must have shown on my face. "I thought you and your friends were the first ones in?"

She smiled. "Yeah, that's what I thought too. Amalia ran away when she was sixteen. We were never close. I was only thirteen at the time, and I didn't really know her at all. Years later, she tried to reconnect with me. I didn't know what she wanted. She'd always been...flighty, I guess."

"She was an actress," I said.

"Yes. Sometimes I felt like she was always acting, to be honest. Like you couldn't know the real her. Even before she left. So when she called me out of the blue and wanted to talk about the doors, I was shocked. I didn't realize she had known about them."

"Maybe you two had more in common than you thought," I said, not meaning it to sound as snarky as it did.

"Maybe," she agreed. "But she confessed something I hadn't expected. She and her friends had discovered the portals, and they'd scared her to death. It was why she ran away. She wanted to start fresh, away from the temptation. I guess we both understand that."

I turned my head back towards the window, feeling a wash of shame.

We are all of us runaways.

"But the real reason she called was to warn me. About you. About what would happen to you after...after you invented that thing."

I touched my temple, but my ICD was off. No light had reached my peripheral vision since I entered this portal.

"I never loved Alexei, you know. It was an arrangement. He promised he could change things."

"How?" I asked, unable to control my curiosity.

She shook her head in frustration, as though chastising herself for whatever thought had crossed her mind. "He said the war was inevitable. Too many people were invested. Too many interested parties. The domes were going to be built. And there would be winners. And losers."

"Yeah, that's his favorite line," I said, trying to keep the anger in my voice tempered. I didn't know anymore if the anger was with him, or with her. Maybe both of them equally.

"He said that if someone else invented the ICDs, you would never be targeted."

She must have seen the wheels turning in my mind, because she tilted her head towards me like a wounded cat looking for attention. It was the same thing Adam had said. "Who else did you tell about this plan, Mom?"

She sighed, and seemed to think about it for a moment. Finally, she spoke without looking at me. "I told your friend Adam when he came in January. That if Alexei invented the devices, you would be safe. But he didn't believe me, and he tried to—I don't know."

"Tried to what?"

"He was arrested sneaking onto the grounds of the botanic gardens. He had a knife on him. He would still be in jail now if Alexei hadn't dropped the charges. I thought that meant that Alexei had meant what he said about making it right—that I could trust him."

"You can't trust a word he says," I answered quickly. My fingers brushed over the emerald on my finger. "He was using you to get to me. He always knew he wouldn't be able to start the ICDs without me." I paused, debating whether to continue. But then I couldn't stop myself. "And Adam isn't my friend. He's more than that."

She seemed to notice the ring for the first time. Her mouth fell open in shock, and she began to shake her head. But before she could say another word, the train veered sharply to the left, then began to pick up speed before plunging into a dark tunnel. I clutched the edges of the mattress, struggling to steady myself.

"What's happening?" Mom asked.

I tried to calm my anxious breath, remembering that the same thing had happened the last time I was on the train. "I think..." I began, but the words were caught in my throat as the train was engulfed in another tunnel. When it emerged, we were whipping over a trestle that extended across a deep ravine. One glance out the window proved that the bottom was so far away, I couldn't even see it.

"Oh God," I whispered to myself, and Mom's fingers turned white as they grasped onto a shelf by her side.

Finally, and without warning, the train crossed the end of the trestle, and we were on solid ground again, coming down to a reasonable speed. I stood to assess our situation.

And that's when I heard the footsteps approaching.

Thud, thud, thud.

They grew louder and louder as they came closer. Finally, they reverberated against the wooden planks of the car just on the other side of the back door.

And then they stopped. And the door slowly opened.

The Conductor stood before us, his iridescent skin glowing like parchment paper, his sunken eyes almost black in his skeletal skull.

He reached out a bony hand, extending from the sleeve of his ancient red uniform. And his mouth creaked open like a hinge on a metal door.

"Tickets," he croaked.

And Mom came to stand next to me, neither of us knowing what to say in return.

***

We only have a few chapters left, friends! I can't wait to share the rest with you! Be safe. XO, Rebecca