The Shadow Cipher

by Laura Ruby

  The train idled a few more minutes, a few people stepped on. The doors closed. The train began its journey south. Tess swallowed hard, then stumbled toward the glass booth. Nobody else in the car noticed. The Guildman ignored her. Tess pressed her hands on the glass. He looked past her.

  She did what they’d all decided she would do: she offered the pile of tokens to the Guildman.

  The train stopped. The people filed off; the people filed on. The train inched forward. Tess glanced back at Theo and Jaime. So, maybe their theory was wrong and the Guildman knew nothing. Or Theo and Tess and Jaime knew nothing.

  The Guildman turned his stone face toward her, expressionless as the Sphinx. He opened the window and plucked a token from her palm, his fingers dry and scratchy. He said, “Your journey is just beginning.”

  Tess’s heart spasmed. “What? What was that?”

  But he wouldn’t look at her again, no matter how much she waved her hands. She stumbled back to Theo and Jaime.

  “Now what?” Tess said.

  Theo said, “We switch to the next train on the list. D. Get out at 145th.”

  Tess sat next to Theo, bouncing with so much excitement that she would have bounced herself right onto the floor if Theo hadn’t gripped one of her knees. But he was gripping her knee so hard that she knew he was just as excited. A grin split Jaime’s face.

  They got off at 145th Street and caught the next D train going downtown. They walked up to the first car, found seats. The Guildman in this car was as small and wiry as the one in the first had been large and beefy. His brown skin shone like oiled wood rather than stone, but his expression was just as blank and unknowable. This time, Tess didn’t wait until they hit the end of the line. She positioned herself by the glass and offered the tokens.

  He opened the glass door, took a token. His brown eyes met hers. He said, “Your journey continues.”

  She ran back to Theo and Jaime. “Where can we catch the G?”

  Theo pulled out a pocket map and opened it across their laps. The G line was a Queens–Brooklyn line, and they would have to make a few transfers to reach it. As they traced the route, the train jerked and the map slipped to the floor.

  “Is it me,” said Jaime, “or is the train going faster?”

  Theo said, “They always go the same speed unless there’s some sort of emergency.”

  “Feels faster,” said Jaime.

  And it did. Tess’s thoughts raced through the various what-ifs—what if they went too fast to stop, what if they drove all the way down to Brazil, what if they crashed through one Underway tunnel into another, what if they burst through a wall and pitched into the sea—until Theo interrupted.

  “We’ll have to get off at 53rd, transfer to the E train, go to the Court Square stop, and then catch the G there.”

  It was a quick trip to 53rd. They hopped on the E train, not bothering to work their way up to the front. They took the E train across town and over to Queens and then found the G line. Unlike the trains in Manhattan, this train was strangely empty. When they arrived in the front car, there were no other passengers. Tess approached the booth and spoke to yet another wooden-faced man in a white apron, paid a token, and got the same message as the last: “Your journey continues.” She turned to go back to her seat, but the train jerked again, and she lurched into one of the poles and nearly tumbled into Jaime’s lap.

  “He said the same thing the last guy did,” she said.

  Theo said, “You might be right.”

  “Of course I’m right,” said Tess.

  “No, I meant Jaime. I think the train is going faster.”

  “But this is a different train,” said Jaime.

  “Yes, it is,” said Theo.

  Tess’s stomach lurched along with the train, but she tried to ignore it. “Where do we catch the L?” Tess said.

  “Metropolitan Avenue,” said Theo, and then grabbed for the pole as the train lurched again. When it stopped, the brakes squealed in protest. They ran for the L line. On the L line, the Guildman took two tokens from Tess’s outstretched hands. Tess had just gotten the next message from the Guildman on the L—“Your journey continues”—when the Guildman took hold of a lever and pushed down hard. The train took off, the passengers gasping as they hung on to poles and straps. Protests rang out in the car—What’s going on? Who’s driving this thing? Why is it going so fast? Is he trying to kill us?—but the Guildman had turned his seat forward and was facing the black hole of the tunnel. The train screamed to a stop and pitched Tess forward, the tokens spilling to the floor. As the terrified passengers ran out through the open doors, Theo and Jaime helped her gather the tokens and pushed her into an empty seat.

  “We have to stay on this awhile, to Myrtle-Wyckoff.”

  What if he won’t stop? But he did, barely. The train jerked forward and braked, jerked forward and braked so abruptly that Tess held her knuckles to her lips to keep back her lunch, then tried not to think about the word lunch. And then the sign overhead was blinking MYRTLE—WYCKOFF AVS L—M, and the three of them were staggering down the platform to catch the next train. She had a small pile of tokens left. Theo looked green, Jaime looked gray, and though Tess had no idea what color she was, she was sure it didn’t look too healthy. Crowds parted as if the three of them were zombies and what they had was catching.

  Once on the M, Tess maneuvered herself to the seat closest to the Guildman. When she was informed that their journey, yes, continued, the train bucked so hard she whacked her temple on the glass. Cold, dead eyes regarded Tess and then the train sped up again. It was supposed to stop at Knickerbocker and Central, Essex Street, West 4th, and more, but it blew through them all, chewing up the tracks, going so fast through three boroughs that the force pulled them all sideways. They’re communicating, Tess thought. They know we’re here; they know we’ve figured out the next bit of the puzzle. But aren’t they supposed to be helping us? What’s going on?

  The train stopped. Tess looked up at the blinking sign—Jackson Heights—exactly where they were supposed to catch the R train.

  “It’s like the trains are running just for us,” said Theo.

  “Yeah,” said Jaime. “But they don’t seem happy about it.”

  Her stomach scuttled into her mouth as they got on yet another train car to hear “Your journey continues.”

  Right before the lights cut out.

  The train hurtled through the dark. Tess gripped the seat, screwed her eyes shut. The darkness and the movement of the train toyed with her, telling her up was down and left was right, and she would never get off, she would be trapped in this whirling, hurtling blackness forever.

  And then the lights blazed on, the train stopped and spit them out, dizzy and stumbling, toward the S shuttle. Their journey continued.

  “Two . . . more . . . ,” she said, breathing heavily.

  “Three,” said Theo. “The S, then the 4, 5, or 6 to Canal, where we catch the Z.”

  She swallowed hard, but kept moving, afraid that if she stopped, she would never get on another train for the rest of her life. But they did get on the S shuttle, a short, bone-jarring ride over to Grand Central Station. This ride cost Tess three tokens. The train rocked as if something huge and monstrous were trying to punch it off its tracks, the train tipping to one side only to crash back down again, over and over. Tess bit her tongue, and her mouth flooded with the tinny taste of blood.

  At Grand Central Station, they hopped on a crowded 6 train headed for Canal Street. The 6 screeched past every stop between Grand Central and Canal, turning the vague grumbling to hysterical shrieks weirdly muffled in the tight space. When the train stopped, it stopped so short that entire groups of people tumbled like dominoes.

  “I’m calling the police!” someone screamed.

  Tess gripped the three remaining tokens in her palm so hard that they left imprints on her skin.

  And then it was time for the last train, the Z, suspiciously empty, except for the caterpillar zigzaggin
g back and forth over the floor of the car. The Guildman was older than the others had been, shaved bald, small features crowding the middle of a pale face. He took the last tokens out of her hand and said, “It’s the end of the line,” and then turned away as the train started to move.

  Finally, thought Tess.

  And then, What kind of end?

  “I think we’re the only people on this train,” Jaime said as Tess sat down.

  “How is that possible?” said Theo, but this was the Underway and who knew what was possible?

  The train gained speed. Unlike the last train, which had rocked and rolled down the tracks, this train barreled straight ahead as if it had been shot from a gun. The force pulled at their hair and their cheeks, a strange wind whipping through the empty car. The train plunged through the darkness of the Underway tunnels, lights buzzing and flickering, making everything appear like a series of terrible snapshots, moments lost between them—first the Guildman’s bald head was turned away, then he was staring right at them, then turned away again, the back of his head like a face wiped clean of eyes, nose, mouth. Tess’s head pounded, and her ears popped as the train broke free of the rock under Manhattan and into a tunnel at the bottom of the East River, this one made of some sort of transparent material. Outside the tunnel was a vast green murk stained here and there with shadowy and unrecognizable things that swam in the dark, tentacled things that Jaime’s grandmother had never mentioned were below the surface. Maybe she didn’t know about them, maybe nobody knew, maybe they weren’t real, maybe this whole thing was a dream. And then the train charged back into the rock under Brooklyn, churning with impossible speed toward who knew where. A terrible thought pierced her brain.

  “It’s not going to stop!” she said.

  “What?” Theo yelled.

  “What if it doesn’t stop?”

  Jaime said, “It has to . . . doesn’t it?”

  The train jerked upward, the track leading them to the surface. The car emerged from the tunnel and accelerated on an elevated track. The train got higher and higher, level with the tops of the highest buildings in the borough, the speed of the train making the people walking below look like rain-smeared chalk scrawled on a sidewalk.

  The Guildman slipped out of his glass box. He stood regarding them with a detached, clinical expression, as if he were unaffected by the motion of the train, the screaming wind, or the fear of the kids huddled on the seats in front of him. He walked toward the caterpillar still cleaning the floor, scooped it up the way you scoop up a baby, and whispered to it. Then he put the caterpillar back on the floor, strode past them like any other commuter anywhere looking for a comfortable place to sit. When he reached the door at the end of the car, he turned. In a low voice that should not have carried over the screeching of the wheels and the howl of the wind, he said, “To read the map, you’ll have to look into the lights.”

  “What map?!” Tess shouted. “What lights?”

  The man didn’t answer. He kicked at the door at the other end of the car, stepped through the opening, and shut the door behind him. He hovered on the platform between cars, bald head floating in the window, before he disappeared.

  “Where did he go?” said Theo.

  Strange thudding sounds came from overhead.

  “He’s on top of the car. But why would he climb on top of the car? How can he even stay on?” said Jaime.

  Even though it seemed impossible that the train could go any faster, it picked up speed.

  Jaime said, “This thing is driving itself.”

  “But to where?” said Theo.

  “The end of the line,” Tess said.

  Theo slid to the floor, crawled to the glass booth, reached up yanked on the door. “It’s locked. I can’t get to the controls.”

  “Nah, don’t like that. I don’t like that at all, nope. NOPE,” said Jaime, and pointed. Outside the car, the Guildman dangled, face still wearing that same clinical expression.

  And then the man let go.

  Tess’s breath caught.

  Through the back window, she saw the Guildman rolling to his feet on the top of a nearby apartment house.

  “We’re not going to do that, are we?” said Tess. “Tell me we don’t have to do that.”

  “We don’t have to do that,” said Theo. But the train only picked up more speed. More stops without slowing.

  “I think we’re going to have to do that,” said Jaime.

  “Look for an emergency brake,” Tess said. “There! On that wall.”

  Jaime staggered over to the red lever, pulled it. Sagged when nothing happened.

  Tess’s skin prickled with sudden cold. “They disabled the brake?” People had been investigating the Cipher for decades, but no one had ever risked anything more deadly than a paper cut before. No one imagined surging across the borough in a runaway train, no brakes, no way to stop.

  As they rounded a rather sharp bend in the tracks, the train tipped, landing back on the tracks with a crash. Tess, Theo, and Jaime crouched on the floor. The caterpillar passed within inches of their noses.

  Theo said, “We need to get off this thing now, while there are still buildings to land on. If we get past the populated areas, there could be nowhere to jump.”

  They crawled to the door the Guildman had taken. Using one of the poles, Jaime hauled himself to his feet. He wrenched open the door. A rough wind plowed through the car, an invisible hand shoving at them. Jaime used the chains that attached one car to the next to pull himself outside. “There’s a ladder out here!”

  Tess and Theo looked at each other, then at Jaime. The Guildman was gone, the brake was disconnected, there was no reason to believe the train wouldn’t keep going until it fell into the ocean. They didn’t have a choice.

  Theo nodded. Jaime began to climb, Tess right behind him. The wind tore at her hair, whipping her braid against her back. Her sweaty palms slipped on the ladder, and then her sneaker slipped, too. Theo gripped her calf, set her foot back on the rung. She would not think of the what-ifs, she would only think that this would all be fine, some funny story they would tell after they had solved the Cipher and they were back in their home with their families and they would laugh and laugh and laugh.

  Jaime crawled onto the top of the train and flattened himself, inching forward. When Tess crawled up after him, she found a wide trench running down the center of the train car with two thin rails on either side. The wind was so strong it stung her eyes, so she kept her head down as she inched forward. She risked pressing herself up to her knees, saw the buildings flying by, some with roofs only a few feet away. If the train would just slow down a little bit.

  The train hit another bend, and the force pulled Tess to the right and jammed her against the railing. Another bend, and she hit the left rail and flipped over the side of the train car. A shriek tore out of her throat as Jaime’s hand clamped around her wrist and hauled her up again. She’d barely breathed her thanks when the train hit another bend and Jaime pitched over the side. Theo lunged forward and caught Jaime’s arm just before he fell, pulling him back. The three of them dropped to the top of the train, panting. The train jerked again, and Theo slipped backward off the end of the car. Tess pounced on his outstretched arm, landing on her stomach with an “oof!” The impact of his body flopping against the back end of the car nearly wrenched her shoulder out of the socket but she held on. Theo’s eyes rolled in his head as his feet scrabbled, but the train swerved so wildly he slipped again and again.

  Behind her, Jaime said, “Hold on, Tess, I’ll help you!”

  “NO!” Tess yelled, just as the train rocked, and Jaime was tossed over the side of the train once more. With her free hand, she grabbed for him. Her shoulders screamed as she was pulled in two directions, Jaime on the side of the car, Theo at the back, both of them scrabbling for purchase. The what-ifs crashed in her head—what if Theo fell, what if Jaime fell, what if they all fell? Pasted to the top of the train, feet hooked over the thin rails, she
looked for a safe place to let go, any place to let go—the top of an apartment building, a rooftop garden or pool—but they had entered a long stretch of tiny suburban homes, and the drop was long and terrifying and impossible. Her thin gibbon arms were stretched to their limit, her legs quivered and burned. The wind slapped at her and the blue skies mocked her and the what-ifs punched her when the wheels locked. The train screamed, and she screamed with it, using every molecule of strength to hold on.

  And then, when it seemed as if the train would enter orbit, it shuddered and shrieked to a stop, nearly pitching them all into the sea of tiny houses before it pulled into the last stop, the end of the line. Theo and Jaime dragged themselves onto the top of the car and the three of them lay there, lungs heaving, the smell of scorched metal in the air. Slowly, they sat up in the late afternoon light. Theo opened his mouth to speak, but Tess punched him in the arm.

  “Ow!” he said. “What was that for?”

  She kept socking him, punctuating each word: “Don’t you EVER say ANYTHING bad about MONKEYS or GIRLS again!”

  And then she hugged them both as if she would never let them go, as if she hadn’t just proven that very thing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Theo

  Theo let Tess hug him for as long as he could stand it; he was still too shocked to move. But she was squeezing him so hard his eyes popped open, and what he saw all around them was nothing but blue sky, as if the train were suspended in midair by the clouds alone.

  “Yo,” said Jaime, apparently noticing the same nothing. “Where’s the station?”

  Tess let go. The three of them carefully slid to the edge of the train and looked down. The train was stopped next to a narrow, uncovered platform many, many stories off the ground, with a spindly staircase that zigzagged down to street level. It was so windy that Tess’s braid kept smacking Theo and Jaime in the face.