Ben Carter

Lucas Ward is a mechanical engineer specializing in transportation infrastructure. He's spent nine days in Millhaven consulting on a rail bridge stress analysis, and now he's heading home on the Iron Pass Express—an overnight service through the Cascade Mountains, one of the last long-distance passenger routes on the western corridor. He notices things. It's his profession and his nature. He notices that the signal relay at Ridgeback junction was upgraded with the wrong switching protocol for mountain grade. He notices the metallic drag beneath the platform before departure. He notices, twice in the first hour of travel, a micro-fluctuation in the air brake system—a sound almost below the threshold of perception. The winter storm is worse than forecast. The winter storm advisory has been upgraded to a warning. Expected accumulation: 18-24 inches above 4,000 feet. Travel strongly discouraged. But the Iron Pass Express is running. Fourteen cars: two engines, a baggage car, sleepers, a dining car, a lounge car. Passengers who don't know each other, who have their own reasons for being on this train, who are about to discover that some of them are not what they seem. Frank Doyle is a retired railroad man who ran this route for eleven years, who knows every grade, every curve, every sound the train is supposed to make—and who knows that Cascadia Rail keeps patching systems instead of upgrading them. Kara Bennett is a graduate student doing her thesis on mountain rail infrastructure, treating the journey as research rather than transit. Elias Romero is a freight logistics specialist with opinions about the storm and a way of describing himself in professional terms first. And there are others. A woman with a conference lanyard from a medical summit. A man in the corner who eats without looking up, who chose his table for sight lines to both exits, whose nondescript appearance is itself a form of camouflage. The train climbs into the mountains. The storm intensifies. And L