Even the color of Yulianka's eyes had dimmed—his irises a hazy gray, cataract-like, expression slack and vacant as if he'd lost his mind. He no longer looked human, more like some frenzied hybrid creature.
He stared into the cockpit.
Then, a flicker of green light emerged in the grayish-white of his eyes.
Jiang, seated at the controls, recoiled instinctively at the sight of his ghostly face. Aisha, standing beside him, didn't flinch. She suddenly turned around.
Her face was blank, pupils pitch-black, hands still forming seals. Her gaze locked onto Pei Ran.
The moment Pei Ran caught sight of Aisha's unnatural expression, she clutched the metal orb and bolted toward the rear compartments.
With a deafening boom, the spot she had just vacated exploded. The cockpit door blew off behind her.
Murky yellow water surged into the cockpit.
Yulianka, face pressed against the glass, saw that Aisha had missed her mark. In an instant, he slipped away, sliding down the body of the train into the swirling flood below.
The moment Aisha's strike missed, her expression cleared. She stared at the burst-open cockpit door and the raging water pouring in, then quickly turned, looking for the culprit outside.
Wrapped up inside her clothing, W couldn't see what was happening, but sensed something was wrong. "What's going on?" he asked Pei Ran.
Pei Ran already knew.
If it had only been a suspicion before, now it was a certainty.
"It's Yulianka," she said. "He just controlled Aisha and used her hand seals to attack me. W, you lost the bet."
Apparently, Yulianka possessed a strange ability—not a power of his own, but the power to manipulate those who did.
Back in the corridor, when Inaya had stared at her with that vacant expression, trying to hypnotize her, her black pupils and dull look had been exactly the same as Aisha's just now.
Thankfully, Aisha had just used her seal once already. The second attempt was much weaker—otherwise Pei Ran might not have survived.
The cockpit, being at the front of the train, sat at the highest elevation, but the water flooding in still reached thigh-level. All three of them were submerged waist-down in the frigid, muddy water, but no one had the luxury of caring.
The water was still rising rapidly, as if determined to drown them all.
No time to lose. As Pei Ran spoke with W in her mind, she fixed her gaze on the wall ahead and activated the green light.
In that moment, she considered every possible word she could write.
Only two characters.
If she used the usual "explode," "tear open," or "blast through," the result might be like what happened with Aisha—breaking through one wall only to find another behind it.
Maybe if she included the character for "wall" in the phrase, the green light would better understand the target.
Then again, they were inside a dam. Was "wall" even the right concept here?
Two characters. No room for nuance—only rough approximation.
The green light traced across the air. Two characters formed:
[Wall Gone]
Pei Ran added the period.
Nothing happened. The concrete wall remained intact.
Making something vanish into thin air was likely beyond what Greenlight No.1 could handle.
She quickly erased the text and rewrote:
[Wall Open.]
Jiang had mentioned that when Night Sea No. 7 entered Tangu Dam along the track, the opening would eerily open and close on its own. She hoped it would now behave like a door.
Still no response from the concrete wall.
Pei Ran immediately rewrote again:
[Wall Crack.]
Something about it felt off—but if the wall cracked open, the floodwater would at least have a place to go.
She added the period. Thunder split the silence.
With a deafening roar, the wall—already damaged by Aisha's earlier attack—tore open from bottom to top, splitting clean in two as if ripped by invisible hands.
And it didn't stop at that wall. The next one behind it split the same way.
Layer upon layer of nearly identical concrete walls—like the layers of an onion—came apart, each of them tearing in half, at least five or six in total.
Pei Ran had seen the structural plans W sent her. This was nothing like the original layout of the dam. After fusing with something, it had undergone monstrous internal changes.
Only the wall directly in front of her, the one she had targeted, reacted. The walls on either side of the train remained untouched.
A torrent of filthy water rushed through the gaping crack, flooding out of the cockpit. The water level instantly dropped.
Things were going better than expected. Not only had the water receded, but the split walls now revealed the track ahead—perfectly straight.
And at the far end of the ruptured corridor of concrete, suspended in the gloom, was a faint, pale-yellow glow.
The moon.
Jiang needed no prompting. He immediately pushed the lever forward.
The engine had been submerged—who knew whether the circuitry was damaged, whether the train could even move?
Pei Ran prayed silently: Please. Please work.
Night Sea No. 7 came through once again. As soon as the handle was pushed, it surged forward, charging through the split walls of concrete.
The car was silent, but every passenger was cheering in their hearts.
The nightmarish walls fell behind. Jiang's expression remained grim. After traveling some distance, he slammed on the brakes.
In the rear compartments, passengers opened the doors to let the floodwater drain. Pei Ran leaned out from the cockpit to take a look.
Behind Night Sea No. 7 was the now-mutated Tangu Dam. The main body still loomed over the Yala River, but one long, limb-like extension had shifted onto land—right over the tracks.
That was where they'd just emerged from.
Now, that limb had been ripped open. The dam itself remained still, sprawled in the dark like a sleeping beast.
Ahead, under the moonlight, they could make out a Y-shaped junction in the track—the one they had passed during the backward retreat.
Aisha poked her head out too, pointing: [Is that the switch?]
Pei Ran nodded: [I think so.]
She pulled the metal orb from her coat and asked W, "Is that the junction you meant?"
The metal orb's eye rotated, scanning the area. "Yes, this is it. We've backed into it. Left leads to the old circular track—it loops back to the Night Sea. The right branch goes toward Heijing."
Tonight, the train had followed the left route. The switch was still set that way—it needed to be flipped right.
Pei Ran asked W mentally, "Can we do it here by hand?"
W replied, "No."
"Night Sea No. 7 is a vintage sightseeing train. Its tracks are an old system, completely separate from the Federation's current control grid. When the new sightseeing route was built, it got its own electric switch, and a special little control room."
"You press a button inside the control room. The signal's transmitted, and the switch's mechanical parts shift automatically."
In the era of hover-trains, someone had gone out of their way to create this archaic spectacle.
"The old-fashioned control room," W added, "was even considered a scenic stop. Whenever the train passed by, a staffer in retro uniform would open the door and wave at the passengers..."
Pei Ran cut him off. "Where is it?"
"According to the map I accessed," W said, pausing, "the control room should be…"
"…inside the dam."
Tangu Dam had come to life. Its land-tethered extension had shifted position, not only swallowing the train tracks—but also the control room.
Pei Ran was still conversing with W when Jiang came over. He patted both her and Aisha's shoulders, pointing behind the train.
He knew where the control room was too. When they had reversed the train, passing the junction and continuing further back, the plan had been to stop right next to it. Instead, they'd gone straight into the dam.
W said, "By my estimate, the control room should be right behind where we stopped earlier."
Great. After finally escaping, they had to go back in.
"Fine," Pei Ran decided. "I'll leave you with Aisha. You both stay on the train. I'll go back into the dam and find that control room. Flip the switch."
W refused calmly. "I'm coming with you."
"No," Pei Ran said. "If the dam floods again, I can't guarantee you won't short-circuit."
"The control room might be complicated. You'll need me."
He paused, then shifted into his sarcastic, high-level language mode.
"Besides, I'm just an AI. All this effort, trekking to Heijing, is just for the benefit of humans. If they don't care, why should I? Let me short-circuit. Doesn't bother me."
He was acting tonight like he was drunk.
Pei Ran said sincerely, "You might not care, but I do. I still need you for the meds."
W suddenly got stubborn. "If you don't take me, you can forget about the medicine."
"…You're being unreasonable."
Pei Ran relented. "Fine. If you insist, I'll take you on this suicide mission."
As she argued with the crazed version of W, she motioned to Aisha, pointing behind them and mimicking the motion of switching the track.
Aisha understood, nodding and pointing to herself and the back of the train—she wanted to go too.
Pei Ran shook her head, then pointed to Aisha and the floor of the train.
Someone had to stay and watch Night Sea No. 7. Aisha was the best candidate.
Also, there was a risk: Yulianka could control Aisha. If he attacked again, Pei Ran might not survive another hit.
She had one last thing to tell Aisha.
Tapping her knuckles together, she signaled: [Watch out for that doctor. He can control your ability to attack others.]
Aisha nodded. She had likely realized it the moment she lost control.
Pei Ran pulled a wrench from Jiang's toolbox and handed it to her, tapping out: [If you see the switch move, knock three times on the wall. That way I'll know the junction is set, and I can come back.]
Aisha took the wrench and nodded seriously.
Tang Dao and a few other passengers had come up front, gesturing—apparently asking why the train had stopped again.
He and Aisha each knew their own kind of sign language—one could do Morse code, the other a homemade gesture system—but neither understood the other.
No speech. No writing. Communication was difficult and slow.
Pei Ran didn't have time to explain. She pulled her coat back on, left her backpack, slung the metal orb over her shoulder, and jumped off the train.
Her pants, soaked to the thighs, were still dripping. Her shoes squelched with every step. Her coat wasn't much better—damp from the spray.
The wind across the wilderness bit through everything.
Perfect.
Pei Ran's nose itched. She felt like she was about to sneeze.
Coughing was considered safe—but sneezing? Who knew if that would set something off? Pei Ran wasn't about to use her own life to run that kind of experiment. She pressed a finger hard against her philtrum and forced the sneeze back down.
"Aaah—choo—!"
A sneeze suddenly burst out behind her.
Pei Ran jumped and whipped around.
It was Tang Dao. He was half-soaked too, and had sneezed by accident—then stood frozen in place, utterly stunned.
That one sneeze sparked chaos.
Aisha reacted instantly. The cockpit was too cramped—she'd already grabbed Jiang and leapt down from the train. The others who had followed Tang Dao quickly scattered, retreating into the rear compartments.
Thankfully, after three tense seconds of silence, nothing exploded.
Tang Dao was still alive.
Skirting the edge of death, his face had gone pale as chalk.
So sneezing, like coughing, seemed safe. Pei Ran finally let herself relax a little.
The western plains of Sip stretched out under the night sky, quiet and vast. A crescent moon hung on the horizon, and the wide surface of the Yala River shimmered faintly in the dark.
Not far ahead, the main body of the Tangu Dam loomed, its lights all extinguished, black and hulking across the river like a massive fortress. Its high walls divided the enormous difference in water levels between upstream and downstream.
Thankfully, the dam itself hadn't moved yet. It was still holding back the fifteen billion tons of reservoir water behind it.
W offered, "We should go check the junction switch first."
Pei Ran understood immediately—if the switch had been damaged during the last few attacks from The Silence, they'd need to find a way to fix it before going any further.
The switch lay just ahead of the train's front.
Pei Ran approached it, circling once around. W observed carefully, then gave his assessment:
"Looks intact. Should still be functional."
That meant the only thing left was to return the switch to its proper position.
Pei Ran adjusted the strap on her shoulder, securing the metal orb, then jogged along the track toward the back of the train.
Everyone onboard watched her silently through the windows. They didn't know what she was about to do—but the abrupt stop of the train, and her choice to run back, made it clear that it had to be something crucial.
On one of the dam's extended limbs, a blown-out rupture gaped like a huge black mouth—and quickly swallowed Pei Ran's figure whole.
Inside the rupture.
There was no more light from the train. The interior of the dam was pitch black. The ground, at least, was dry—the water had already rushed out through the gap.
Pei Ran gave the metal orb at her waist a firm smack to activate its light.
W let out a sigh. "You do know you could've just asked me to turn it on."
Pei Ran glanced around and replied casually, "But that wouldn't be any fun."
She had to smack it. That was the point.
W: "…"
Pei Ran asked, "You're not low on power, are you? Can you brighten it up a bit?"
"It's just lighting. That barely drains anything. However bright you want it, I've got it covered."
"Good—then brighter, please."
She smacked the orb again on the back of its head.
W: "…"
"…Does hitting me actually make it brighter?"
He complained, but still cooperated—just as her palm came down, the light brightened on cue.