Chapter 373: The Skeleton Had a Departure Board

The station clerk charged us extra because our crawler had wheels, which seemed like an ambitious complaint from a business that had built its entire reputation around them.

I asked whether removing one would improve the price, and she offered to charge us for loose machinery instead. After that, I paid the seven hundred twenty credits before she discovered my wings and introduced an air tax.

[System: She’s got you there, mate. You’re a passenger, a decorative hose and an oversized personal problem, so technically she’s giving you a discount.]

If she charged by usefulness, you would owe the train an apology.

The freight service carried vehicles across Jawbone Cut while the main road bent around the dry hills. Its public timetable promised two days to the repair yards on the far side, and its loading crew promised to leave without anyone still arguing about the fee.

Lukas drove the crawler onto a flatbed and watched the crew fasten wheel restraints. We kept our bags, water and the copied evidence with us rather than trusting a stranger’s cheerful claim that nobody ever stole anything on his shift.

My lie warning stirred when he said it. I asked for the restraint receipt, and his expression lost several layers of customer service.

The first rib appeared beyond the station roof as the freight cars started moving. At first I mistook it for a bridge support, until the second curved over the track and the third rose behind it, each thicker than the street outside our club.

The whole railway passed through the open chest of something that should have required its own weather report.

Lukas stared through the carriage window while I tried to find the end of the thing. Its spine ran along the ridge above us, half buried beneath pale stone, with service ladders climbing toward bolts driven through the old bone.

"If you found one of those in your garden, would you call pest control or move countries?"

"I’d ask what killed it before I bought the house," Lukas said, which ruined the view in a useful way.

A rail worker passing our seats overheard him and said nobody agreed on what the animal had been. The station museum sold three different models, all claiming to be accurate, and the cheapest came with a removable saddle.

The worker tapped the window at a repair crew above us. They had fixed a shade roof beneath one rib and lowered supplies from a small winch, turning somebody’s ancient dinner into public transport.

"Bone stays cooler than open steel," he said. "Just don’t lick the white dust off anything, whatever the souvenir seller tells you."

I hadn’t planned to, but the warning made me wonder how aggressively the souvenir seller advertised.

Our carriage held freight handlers, two traders and a woman traveling with a box that occasionally demanded more blankets. Nobody explained the box, and I respected a fellow passenger’s right to have a worse morning than mine.

Lukas bought us hot food at the next stop. I spent the afternoon resting my wing against a folded coat, watching tiny settlements appear beneath the ribs wherever water pipes reached the track.

Their homes sat above the flood marks, their workshops below them. Everyone who loaded goods checked the weather board before the prices, which told me more about the place than the museum’s heroic model would have managed.

By evening, Rex’s name appeared again on a freight label outside our window.

The crate stood on the next flatbed, covered with a heavy blue sheet and secured beside a smaller equipment cage. I recognized the production number from the diner dispatch board, then checked Lukas’s saved photograph to make sure anger wasn’t doing the reading for me.

It matched exactly.

[System: Could be towels, mate. Could be another bloody murder cupboard. Either way, the rich prick probably packed better snacks than we did.]

You had me at towels, because I was tired of drying my dignity with rental fabric.

I waited until the carriage settled for the night, then slid toward the rear service door. Lukas came with me, carrying the route photograph and wearing the expression he used when I described theft as an inspection.

We asked a handler what the covered shipment contained. He checked his manifest and said it was a dormant display animal traveling to a controlled demonstration near Glasswake.

He also said the crate would remain locked until its receiving crew took charge.

My warning stayed quiet. He believed it, which made him either an excellent liar beyond my limits or another employee who had been given the friendly version of the job.

I told him about the diner and showed him enough footage to remove the smile from his face. He called the freight supervisor, then walked with us to inspect the shipment instead of leaving us to break it open for entertainment.

The blue covering had a viewing flap. Beneath it, a thick glass panel showed a creature with a broad muzzle and heavy forelegs folded under its chest. Fresh surgical seams joined an extra pair of limbs to its sides, and metal braces held pale grafted tissue against its throat.

This wasn’t a naturally odd beast that I could label a mutant because I disliked its face. Someone had cut parts into it, and the wounds hadn’t finished healing.

Lukas photographed the crate label while the handler checked the external timer. Its printed destination still named the next day’s receiving station, but a second instruction had been fixed over the normal controls.

RELEASE FOR TRANSIT FOOTAGE appeared above a row of numbers counting down.

The handler swore and called the driver. I looked along the flatbed at the narrow door leading into the occupied carriage, then at the chain holding the crate against its frame.

Old Mate set his drink down so carefully that I stopped trying to make the situation funny.

The timer reached zero before the driver answered, and the light above the cage turned green while the train was still moving.