A Tale of Forgotten Gods

Chapter 100: Hijacked Train.

Mo Fei looked around first; people were asleep, and no one noticed the unusual silence.

That was when he suddenly heard footsteps coming toward him. He sat down on his seat and waited. Something stopped beside him and as he tilted his head toward it.

A thing stood holding a ticket nipper. Its face was hidden behind a black cloth, leaving only two dark eyes staring down at him, and its hand slowly shifted. Leaning forward, it murmured in a dark, heavy tone that echoed in the carriage. ”Sir, ticket please.”

Mo Fei exhaled as a soft mist emerged from his lips, but yet he did not reach for his pockets to pull out his tickets, nor did he remove his eye contact with the thing staring down at him behind the ticket checker’s coat.

Beside him, the bound thief let out a pathetic whimper in a muffled voice and pressed himself against the back of his chair. His eyes fixated entirely on the entity’s hand. Clutched in those pale, elongated fingers was a brass ticket punch, though it didn’t seem new since its metal was rusted.

As the creature waited, its thumb twitched as the nipper let out a sharp, mechanical snip-snap that vibrated through the freezing air of the carriage, then murmured again. ”Sir... ticket please.”

”A ticket?” Murphy muttered underneath and slowly leaned back into his seat, putting a hand on his cheek with an absolute unbothered expression. ”I truly have been under the impression that the conductor usually wore a uniform, friend. Black cloth and that cold breath don’t match well.”

The thing stared down without blinking and not even breathing as the cold radiating from its body turned intense. ”The line has changed, sir.” It whispered in a raspy voice and extended his hand, which held the nipper. The brass ticket punch rose forward and cast a long, distorted shadow across Murphy’s lap. ”All passengers must present their passage. Or forfeit their stop.”

Mo Fei’s mind raced behind his stoic exterior. He had a ticket tucked securely inside his vest pocket, yet his thoughts immediately flicked to the carriage behind him. Lin and Zhuo. They also held the two third-class slips he had purchased for them. If that thing were moving down the train, car by car, it would reach them next, and he couldn’t take the risk that it’d spare sleeping ones.

He couldn’t let it pass this carriage, so he continued to distract it. ”Is that so?” Murphy reached into his long coat, pretending to find a ticket, then pulled out an empty hand. ”Ah... I think I may have lost it.”

The entity’s dark eyes locked onto Murphy’s empty palm where no ticket was in his grasp. Slowly, the rusted brass jaws opened wider. ”Loss of passage.” Its accent suddenly changed, reminiscent of those in foreign lands he had not met. ”Is a loss of destination. Step off the line now.”

”Step off the line? Sorry, I’m afraid I have a terrible habit of staying exactly where I’m not supposed to be.” Murphy answered then waved on his hand. ”I will try again to find the ticket.”

He glanced outside where the station had already shifted into something else. Outside, various entities walked through the platform; some of them had no face, some of them had no head, and some of them had no lower body. His gaze lay on the ticket agent’s office, where dim light escaped through it. Inside, a man with the same clothes as the conductor sat. It’s hand holding a long scissor with human teeth attached to the sharp edges.

Murphy turned back and reached into his long coat, his fingers bypassing the ticket slip entirely. Instead, his hand brushed against the cold handle of his hidden revolver, though he kept his grip hidden beneath the fabric instead of pulling the gun out. He needed to test the rules of this encounter before turning it into a bloodbath. ”And what happens to those who cannot produce a slip? Like my companion here?” Murphy nodded subtly toward the terrified thief bound to the chair.

The entity’s dark eyes pivoted toward the thief. The brass punch opened and closed with a high, pinched snip-snop. ”Unregistered weight. It will be pruned.”

The thief winced out of terror, thrashing against his ropes.

Murphy glanced at the thief, then leaned forward. ”Pruned? That’s a harsh penalty for a lack of cardboard.” He shifted his weight as he prepared his next move. He needed to draw its attention entirely onto himself, keeping its eyes away from the door connecting to the second carriage.

”Tell me, conductor... would you accept a gentleman’s upgrade?”

”An upgrade...?” Its voice echoed while keeping the foreign accent in its voice and overlapped with a suffocating whisper. ”This one line accepts only valid passages. In what sovereign way your upgrade is paid with?”

Murphy kept his piercing gaze alongside the maddening curl on his lips. Slowly, his fingers tightened around the cross-hatched grip of the revolver beneath his coat.

Rules. He thought. Every unusual twisted being has a twisted logic to define them. And to me, if it accepted a payment, it was bound by a contract of murder. If it wasn’t satisfied by that, then simply it was just an executioner. These twisted minds caught me thinking of how I actually find if something is bloodthirsty or just trapped.

Finally, Murphy took a brief break and spoke in a fake gentle manner. ”Sovereign blood sounds terribly expensive to me.” He said smoothly, keeping his left hand in his pocket while his right stayed on the trigger. ”How about something with a bit more immediate utility? Would you accept that?”

Slowly, Murphy withdrew his left hand and pulled out a silver pocket watch. The watch ticked softly and caught its attention.

The entity’s twin dark eyes dropped to the watch. The shadow it cast on Mo Fei’s lap stretched further as its eyes locked on the watch, then it let out a rough, unpleasant grunt and spoke again. ”Stolen hours won’t work, sir. Please give me the ticket.” Its rusted nipper snapping once that simply said not to waste any moments, yet it still watched the watch with a level of hunger named greed.

Murphy quietly examined the reaction. It was greedy; he was right about it. It was bound by the concept of value. It tilted its back and whispered more darkly. ”Sir. Ticket. Now.”

He dangled the watch by its silver chain, letting it swing like a pendulum. ”Two seats in the first-class carriage. Total immunity from pruning for the rest of the line. Do we have a deal, conductor?”

The entity reached out, its pale, elongated fingers stretching toward the watch. The stench of wet earth and copper filled the space between them as it said in a low tone, finally getting caught in greed. ”Deal...” it rasped.

But just as its fingers were about to brush the silver casing, Murphy’s eyes flicked past the creature’s shoulder.

Outside the window, the station platform was moving faster. The faceless entities and the man with the tooth-lined scissors were blurring into a smear of grey darkness. The train was accelerating into the dark zone between stations. And on the glass, reflected in the dark windowpane, he saw the creature’s shadow.

The shadow wasn’t holding a ticket punch. It was holding a noose.

Murphy’s unbothered expression vanished, quickly replaced by a cold, lethal focus, and he spoke in a heavy tone. ”On second thought.” He tilted his head toward it. ”I hate overpaying.”

Before the entity’s elongated fingers could close around the watch, he dropped it. In the same split second, his right hand whipped out from beneath his long coat, the heavy barrel of the revolver clearing the fabric and pressing directly under the black cloth where the creature’s jaw should be. The entity paused; it couldn’t move down to get the watch before a loud shot echoed in the carriage.

BANG!

The bullet pierced through the entity’s jaw, hitting the ceiling.

The gunfire forced everyone to wake up and see the detective standing tall.

Their expressions quickly shifted in horror as they saw the thing lying on the train’s surface. The detective’s gun pointed it toward the entity whose body twitched to move again.

The nipper slid across the surface, reaching near the thief, who moved back in fear.

Lin. And Zhuo’s eyes stirred before slowly opening up to see the scene and saw the detective towering over an entity. Lin fixed her savanna-beige flower hat and looked at the situation clearly at Murphy’s cold expression as the blood soaked the train’s surface.

His finger curled around the revolver as he looked at the entity and questioned with his terrifyingly calm tone. ”I ask only once whether this train has turned normal or not.”

The entity’s hand reached to its mouth, but it only shook its head and let out a whimper and spoke in a cracked tone. ”The driver... is... not...here.”

Murphy smacked a kick on its chest, smashing it downward, then pulled the trigger multiple times as the thunderous shot echoed in the whole carriage once again.

BANG! BANG! BANG!