As Old as time, second part

Runaway Train

Skià pov

Toby and Silvester have been doing a very good job of keeping my secret. Possibly because I threatened their lives but who knows. I am headed to Paige's house because I agreed to go with her, Ralph, his classmate and his classmates mom to the science museum here. I have only been to the science museum queens so I figured it would be fun to go to a different one.

We are taking the subway and I decide to sit by Ralph and talk about some of my current projects that I am doing for fun. I have moved past the compact weapons for now as I made all the ones I wanted and the ones that other people asked for. Now I am working on making a substance that works as a bandaid or suture material depending how you use it.

Ralph briefly tried to talk to his classmate about his telescope but the boy was rude so we switched to talking about the telescope. He likes the older version of his telescope brand and it is the one that I used to watch the meteor shower that caused a lot of trouble with the wolf bloods. So I know a lot about it and can talk about it in detail.

The boys mother seems unimpressed that Ralph does not do sports or boy scouts but he uses his time for college courses which I think is much more impressive. I can hear the boy ask his mother why he has to be partners with Ralph but honestly it will probably do his grade some good.

I notice a problem however when we miss our stop and seem to be picking up speed. "Something is off." I say mostly to myself but Ralph nods in agreement. We all grab on to something as the car we are in rocks as the speed is more than the subway cars are made for.

"It's not just bumpy, the train is going too fast for the tracks. Something wrong mom." Ralph says to Paige and she seems very concerned.

"Things are about to go down hill very fast if we cannot get it to stop speeding up." I say as I pull out my laptop and hack into the train. The only problem is that the controls are closed out for some reason. "Call Walter, see if they can get someone to stop it I am going to try and hack through the blockade that has been put on the controls."

She gets on the phone and I hand Ralph a tablet so he can help me try to break through. We get through but any commands that we put in are not going through. Paige tells us that the department of transportation is unable to do anything either. "It looks like we are going to have to hardware into the train directly." Ralph says to me.

"Walter says that a curve is coming up."

"That is unfortunate but let's assume that they will fix the problem because we cannot and get to work on stopping this train. Ralph gather the parts we need to get into the system." I say while striping one of my spare phones so it can properly connect to the system.

We abruptly switch gears however because we need to get ahold of the other cars because everyone has to get onto the right side so we can make the turn. We quickly connect that and Paige announces what has to happen over the speakers.

We make it around the bend and quickly get back to work. Happy tells Paige that she is going to teach her how to switch it from automatic to manual but something tells me that that is not going to work so I keep building.

The door is electronically locked so Ralph uses a nine volt battery to overload it allowing it to open. When the door is opened Paige goes in and opens the trap door that is supposed to have the switch to change the control over but of course there is nothing there. As I thought, this was planned.

I finally finished putting together the machine to get into the train's controls manually. I attach it and start telling it to slow down but someone is trying to override me. I put up a barrier but it won't keep them out forever and we are going too fast to stop anytime soon enough for them not to get back in. I start slowing the train down and turn to Paige.

"Whoever planned this has some way to control the train and is trying to override me. I briefly blocked it but we will not be able to stop before they will get back in. Walter and the team need to find them." She shares that information and I turn to Ralph. "Get me a few more wires I am going to connect another device and you will counter them while I keep the speed going down at a safe rate."

"Got it." He gets me the wire and I connect another one of my spare phones. Ralph takes that one and starts putting up firewall after firewall. We might actually be able to keep them out long enough for us to get the train stopped and everyone out safely.

We get the train to a stop at a station and get everyone off. The hacker is quickly getting through our firewalls. I grab my things and everyone else grabs their things and get off. We get off last as we have to make sure that everything is fine until we get out. I leave the phones and we get off. It only takes a few minutes for it to start careening down the tracks again but everyone is safe so it is fine.

We find out when we return to the garage that the people that hacked into the train did it so they could get some coins. They were caught and the train was stopped.