Mercy crossed the last length of bridge at a walking pace. The rails had been laid for a direction no one had planned, and each joint struck the wheels with a different complaint. Beyond the front windows, the floating continent filled the sky. Its underside showed layers of soil, stone, and roots hanging beneath fields that no longer knew which way was down.
Oliver kept one hand on the brake lever. The other rested near the gauge without touching it. The needle had moved into the blank region beyond the marked scale and remained there, trembling whenever Nadia’s core answered the bridge.
“How close?” Aven asked from the forward window.
“Close enough to see the trees.”
“I can see the trees.”
“Then you have your answer.”
Aven turned from the glass. “I was asking for a useful one.”
Oliver glanced at the track. The bridge rose toward a broad shelf of land where an old road had torn away from the continent and hung in sections above the fields. The restored gravity pulled those pieces toward the bridge. One length of road struck the stone ahead and broke into slabs. Another swung past Mercy’s roof, close enough to scrape the chimney.
Nadia sat on the floor beside the engine housing, her back against the wall. The stain beneath her hand had spread, but she had stopped trying to hide it. Her face was pale, and the core beneath her ribs gave off a faint, uneven light.
“Can you hold us through the landing?” Oliver asked.
She looked at him. “You said you would ask before using me.”
“I’m asking.”
“And if I say no?”
“We brake and find another way.”
Aven made a small, disbelieving sound. “There is no other way. We are attached to a bridge that is attached to a continent.”
Nadia’s gaze shifted to him. “Then perhaps you should stop making the situation worse by announcing it.”
Aven closed his mouth. It was the first useful thing he had done in several minutes.
Nadia looked back at Oliver. “I can keep the bridge from twisting. I cannot make the continent receive us gently.”
“Can you choose the point of contact?”
“Not alone.”
The child had been sitting on the step below the gauge, his knees drawn up beneath his chin. He raised his head. “What do you need?”
Nadia studied him. “A direction.”
Next
Inside the black tower, Mercy may finally discover what it was built to carry—and why the continent has begun remembering gravity only along its path.
He frowned at the windows. “The bridge is pointing there.”
“That is where it wants to go. I asked where you want it to go.”
The child stood and approached the glass. Below the approaching road, a cluster of buildings clung to a hillside. Their roofs faced every direction. Some had been held down with chains. Others had lost walls and floors, exposing rooms full of furniture tied together with rope.
“There,” he said. “The open place.”
Oliver saw it: a flat stretch of field between the hillside and a line of dark trees. A stone circle marked its center. Nothing floated above it. Even the grass lay flat.
Nadia closed her eyes. “That may be an old anchor.”
“Can you reach it?” Oliver asked.
“Not by force.”
“What do you need?”
She opened her eyes again. “For you to stop trying to make me responsible for the landing.”
Oliver considered the field, the bridge, and the train behind them. “I’ll steer the rails. You hold the turn. Aven, take the rear brake. If the couplings strain, tell me before they fail.”
Aven nodded. “And the child?”
Oliver looked at him. “He chooses where he stands.”
The child had already moved to the side hatch. He clipped the safety line to his belt, then checked the knot twice. “I’ll watch the bridge.”
“You’ll stay inside unless you decide otherwise,” Oliver said.
“That isn’t the same as being useless.”
“No.” Oliver handed him the signal lamp. “If the field shifts, show me. Green for clear. Red for stop. If you don’t know, show me nothing.”
The child accepted the lamp with both hands. “All right.”
Mercy reached the end of the bridge. The first wheels struck the continent’s broken road, and the train rose sharply. Oliver pulled the brake. Nadia placed her palm against the core.
The bridge twisted beneath them. Stone lifted on one side, dragging the rear carriages toward the gulf. The train’s windows filled with sky. Somewhere behind Oliver, Aven shouted a measurement he could not hear.
Oliver did not pull harder. He watched Nadia’s shoulders, waiting for the signal she had not promised to give him.
“Now,” she said.
He eased the brake and opened the throttle. The engine responded without consuming any visible fuel. The gauge needle slid farther into its blank region.
The bridge turned. Not smoothly. Each rotation threw loose metal across the roof and sent dust streaming upward from the continent’s edge. Nadia’s core brightened under her coat. A crack of blue light appeared at her collar and ran toward her throat.
Oliver saw it and reached for the brake.
“Don’t,” Nadia said.
“You’re failing.”
“I’m choosing.”
The distinction halted him. He kept the throttle steady.
The field approached. The stone circle at its center was not an anchor, Oliver realized, but a ring of old machinery buried in the grass. Its inner surface held the same narrow grooves as Mercy’s gauge. No markings named it. No cables connected it to the buildings or the road. It had been left alone while the rest of the continent drifted.
The child raised the lamp. Green.
Then the grass inside the circle bent toward the train.
The signal changed to red.
Oliver cut the throttle. The engine resisted, then quieted. Mercy rolled on momentum, its wheels shrieking against the uneven rails. The bridge had acquired its own pull. It dragged the train past the field and toward the hillside buildings.
“Why did you stop us?” Aven called.
“The field changed.”
“So did everything else!”
Oliver looked at the child. “What moved?”
The boy pressed his forehead to the glass. “The ground. Not toward us. Down.”
Oliver understood only after he saw the nearest house settle. Its chains went slack. A table fell through an open window and struck the floor inside. For the first time since Mercy had reached the continent, something there had gained weight.
The effect spread in a narrow line from the stone circle toward the hillside. Grass flattened. Stones dropped. A wagon that had been suspended above the road descended and broke its axle.
The bridge was not drawing the continent closer anymore. It was making a path through it.
Nadia’s hand slipped from the core. Oliver caught her elbow before she struck the floor. She pushed him away once she had found her balance.
“Don’t spend what you don’t have,” he said.
Her eyes flashed. “Then don’t hold me like I’ve already agreed to be carried.”
He let go. “What happened?”
“The core found a second rhythm.”
“From the circle?”
“From whatever is beneath it.”
The sealed furnace remained dark behind them. No knocking came. That absence did not reassure Oliver.
Mercy rolled past the field and onto the hillside road. The bridge’s far end sank into the earth behind the train, while its near end remained suspended over the gulf. The road ahead was now heavy enough to support the wheels, though sections still rose and fell under the returning pull.
Aven leaned over the controls. “We’ve landed.”
“No,” said the child. He pointed through the front window.
At the top of the hill stood a tower built from black stone. Its upper half floated several yards above its lower half, held apart by a band of pale light. Around it, people moved between tethered houses and rope bridges. They had seen Mercy. Some ran toward it. Others fled uphill.
The Horologist stood beside the road’s first broken marker, his brass clock open in his hand. He had crossed no visible distance to get there.
Oliver brought Mercy to a stop.
The Horologist looked at the train, then at the bridge behind it. “You are early,” he called.
Aven climbed down from the cab. “Your schedule said the next stop had not been built.”
“It had not.”
“Then what is this?”
The Horologist turned the clock so its face caught the light. The hands spun once, stopped, and pointed toward the black tower.
“A stop remembering how to exist.”
Oliver stepped onto the road. The returned gravity pressed at his boots, weaker than on the bridge but unmistakable. Behind him, Nadia remained in the carriage with one hand over the core. The child stood at the hatch, signal lamp still raised.
From the black tower came a deep mechanical sound. It was not a knock. It was the turning of something enormous beneath the ground.
The gauge needle moved again, beyond the blank region entirely, and stopped where no mark had ever been drawn.
The Horologist closed his clock. “If you enter that tower,” he said, “the train may learn what it was built to carry.”
Oliver looked back at Mercy. The inscription beneath the gauge remained unchanged.
NO ONE CARRIES ALONE.
This time, he did not decide for the others. “We go in,” he said. “If you choose to.”
Nadia rose despite the pain in her face. Aven reached for the step, then stopped and waited. The child lowered the lamp.