Chapter 3: The Zoo Car
Amelia and Jam were crossing the bridge on their way to another car. She glanced at him and noticed that he took human form again. If Hazel's transformation habits were anything to go by, she considered this meant Jam was feeling comfortable around her.
He stared at his right lower arm's display monitor, where the red arrow pointed in the direction he needed to go to find his brother. It also displayed the remaining battery of the armor. It was at 55%.
Amelia shot a quick look at the display, then smirked at Jam. "So, when are you going to fess up?"
She caught Jam off guard with that question. "Uh, what?" He morphed back into a softshell turtle. "I swear I'm not hiding anything!"
After poking the tip of his long nose with her finger, Amelia said, "Sure you aren't, Pinocchio."
"Hey!" he said, putting some distance between them while rubbing his nose.
She had a smug look on her face. "Do you take me for a fool? You have this power armour on. Those gingerbread denizens wouldn't stand a chance in a fight against you. And if you wanted to avoid the conflict entirely, you could have just used your jets to escape."
"Um, it's low on battery," he said, hiding his right hand behind his back and grinning sheepishly at her.
She crossed her arms. "Oh, really? Then why did your screen show you still have a bit over half power left?"
His eyes looked away from her. "I … have the right to remain silent."
Amelia opened the door to the next car while saying, "Well then, I'll just have to get the answer from your brother. I'm sure he wouldn't have left you behind like this if he knew you could easily get in trouble."
Jam continued to remain silent and followed her into the car.
The inside had nothing but reflective walls and looked like a short hall that led to a dead end.
Amelia looked at her reflection. "We're in the fart car, aren't we?" She sniffed the air. "There is no smell, but there is no door either. This isn't right."
A muffled burp came out of nowhere.
She scowled. "A burp car. Sometimes I want to have a serious talk with One and ask him why he thought things like the fart car and this place should exist."
The silence was filled with more muffled burps emitted at an interval of five seconds. It sounded as if the burps were questions.
Jam stared at the floor. He didn't have a reflection, excluding his armor, and due to the light mysteriously coming from all sides of the room, he didn't have a shadow either.
Amelia noticed this. "Can I ask you something?"
"If it's about my brother, I'm not answering," he said, crossing his arms.
"No, it's about you."
"I might answer it. Fire away."
She pointed at the floor near his feet. "If you have no reflection, then how did you know Simon looks like you?"
"While my brother and I don't have reflections, we still appear on camera. We've seen ourselves on wanted posters and in videos on monitors, especially when the news covered our heists."
"So Hazel isn't the only one who didn't have a reflection after being created," Amelia said. "She has inherited Simon's reflection after he died."
Jam frowned. "If I had a reflection, I could shave without having to ask my brother to check if I missed a spot. But I wouldn't want people to die just so I'd get one."
"People die every day anyway," Amelia said. "You will probably get one at some point whether you like it or not."
They both stared at the wall at the end of the hall. Still no door, and the burping continued.
Amelia touched the wall and said, "If the fart car requires sniffing the farts, then what does this car want us to do? We've heard plenty of burps already, even if they're muffled."
Jam looked around. "Hmm. Muffled. Hold on, I've got an idea!" He took in a deep breath and let out a burp.
Amelia winced. "Really, Jam?"
The room burped slightly louder.
He grinned. "Looks like it wants me to do better."
Amelia rolled her eyes. "This is childish."
Jam took in a deeper breath and burped even louder than the car's burping. It sounded almost like a motorcycle.
She struggled to hold back a laugh, though her lips formed a smile.
The car burped even louder.
Jam felt even more confident. "Oh yeah?" He took in such a deep breath that he felt his armor like a giant hand wrapped around his chest. It was time to unleash the beast. He burped so loud that the walls shook and the car admitted defeat by revealing the door.
Amelia burst into laughter. "That sounded like it came from something out of this world!"
Jam grinned and puffed up his chest while morphing back into human form. "I declare myself champion of the burps!"
At that moment, Amelia heard a sound she recognized immediately. She looked at her right palm. Her number had decreased to 45.
Jam looked at it too. "It's lower. I saw other passengers leave when theirs hit zero, so this must be good news for you."
"Yes, but even if I reach zero, I'm still going to stay here and try to find a way to take you and your brother with me."
"You're so nice," Jam said. "It seems almost … too good to be true."
Amelia opened the door. "I understand it is hard for you to trust people due to the way everyone's been treating you. All I can say is that if I wanted to hurt you two, I would have no trouble using my sound shield to make your molecules vibrate until you'd burst into flames."
Jam stared at her in shock while exiting the car with her.
"Look, as long as you don't murder anyone, I have no reason to use it on you," Amelia said. She bowed her head and frowned. "I've had to use it that way only once, and I am not proud of it. The ones I've killed were messed up versions of my coworkers. They went on a killing spree on trains of various universes, and they were about to add my coworkers to their list of victims. I couldn't let them continue like that."
"My brother and I avoid killing. We only fight if we get attacked, but our goal is always to escape. I know we've caused lots of property damage and ruined a few businesses, but we need parts for our armors, and we also need food to survive."
Amelia put her right hand on his left shoulder. "I'll make sure you two will never have to worry about food, water, and security, even if the train refuses to let you leave."
Jam really wanted to believe her, but deep inside he feared she was just another enemy who would try to rid the world of him and Alrick. After all, everyone else thought the world would be a better place without them in it.
The next car had lots of grass, bushes, flowers, trees, benches, swings, and trash cans.
"This appears to be a park car," Amelia said.
Jam went to smell the red flowers to his right. It turned out they were aware of him, so they closed up their tips into buds. He walked away, disappointed.
From above, a flock of red birds with white undersides observed him. One of them said, "There's the Apex trash that destroyed our nests!"
Another bird said, "Let's get him!"
The flock flew in formation and aimed to bomb him with droppings. Jam stepped out of the way, avoiding most of the hits except the three that landed on his right arm. He cleaned the mess off with his left hand, and was pecked on the head by two birds that flew past him.
Amelia tried to approach him, only to halt just next to another carpet bombing with bird droppings aimed at Jam.
He sought shelter under a tree, but then realized it had eyes and was sentient too. It dropped all of its leaves over him. When he made his way out of the foliage, the birds targeted him again.
"Stop attacking him!" Amelia shouted at the birds. "He's not who you think he is!"
They didn't listen, and continued to chase Jam away. One of them said, "Get out of here! You don't belong on the train!"
Another added, "To the wasteland with you!"
The grass under Jam's feet moved in such a way that it made him slip and fall on his back. His armor's chest was immediately covered in bird droppings. He sighed and got up, accidentally bumping into a fountain. "Oops! Sorry, I didn't see you there."
The fountain's multiple eyes near its top glared at him before it hit his face with a jet of water, blinding him for a few moments.
He tripped around and ended up heading into a bunch of trees, only to get slapped away by their branches and fall flat on his face.
"Jam, stay near me!" Amelia said, trying to reach him.
Jam got up and wanted to say something, but was swarmed out of the blue by locusts. He morphed into his turtle form while trying to shoo the insects off his messy hair. A bench smacked him hard in the back and pinned him to the ground, putting one of its clawed paws on his head.
Amelia lifted the bench and threw it away. Then she helped Jam get up. "Are you hurt?"
The sandbox nearby refused to allow him to say anything. It formed a wave of sand and sent it his way.
Amelia activated her sound shield and repelled the sand, keeping Jam safe.
"Thanks, Amelia," he said.
"You can call me 'mother' if you want," she said. "Although, given how I've left you to suffer for so long without even knowing you exist, I might not be worthy of that title."
Jam gave her an awkward stare. "Uh, no offense, but I'm not comfortable with calling someone I've just met 'mother'. You do know a lot about me and my brother, and you seem to be a nice person, but trusting you that much doesn't come easy. Alrick and I have been tricked before. Those people played nice until they thought they had us cornered." He looked away. "They paid for it with their house."
The birds tried to bombard him again, but Amelia put up the shield and deflected the attack.
"You're nice to me now, but what will you do when we reach my brother?"
She shrugged. "I'll explain the situation and try to get you two off the train or to a safer place on it."
As they passed by the slings, they swung Jam's way, trying to hit him. The sound shield stopped them from getting too close and caused them to bounce off it.
He looked at his right fist. "You better be telling the truth, because if you corner us we'll start a really nasty fight against you!"
She calmly said, "It is the truth. Please, just work with me."
They finally reached the door at the end of the car. Jam opened it this time, then they both exited. He looked at his right arm's display and tapped on it to zoom out. "My brother is about two cars away. He isn't moving around, so I guess he's asleep."
"Good," Amelia said. "Once we meet up with him, we can set up camp and rest for the night." She looked at the cloudy red sky, then at her wristwatch. "At least it should be night where I come from."
Jam yawned before saying, "I'm kind of tired myself."
Amelia opened the door to the next car. They entered a world where purple and blue colors dominated in its vegetation. Evening was settling there.
"This place looks nice," Jam said. "I've never seen plants and mushrooms that glow in the dark like this." He tripped on a rock. "Huh? The rocks glow as well."
"This is the jungle car," Amelia said. "Hazel lived here for a while with her adoptive mother Tuba, a gorilla denizen."
"If Hazel is outside the train, what happened to Tuba? Did she return here?"
"Simon happened. He murdered her out of his hatred for denizens."
Jam gasped. "Why did you people hang out with that murderer?"
Amelia stuck up her nose. "Well, I certainly didn't like hanging out with him, but Hazel forgave him, Grace forgave him, even One forgave him, so I had no choice but to accept he was going to be part of the team."
Jam looked at his armor's hands. "I wish he hadn't died." His fists clenched. "If he were still alive, I could hold him accountable for ruining my life before it even began!"
"He never meant to ruin your life," she said. "Just like I didn't mean to ruin his and Grace's."
"What do you mean?"
"When she was a kid, Grace saw me while I was looting orbs from a car. She thought I was the Conductor, and she was amazed by my robot suit and the number covering my right arm. In her teenage years, she and Simon started a cult around their distorted image of me. They recruited children and taught them to do horrible things." She wanted to continue the story, but the massive metal cages up ahead demanded her attention. "Good heavens, what went on in this car?!"
"That sure looks out of place," Jam said.
Amelia gestured toward him. "Come! Something shady is afoot here."
They rushed to see what was inside the cages. That was when they were stopped by a tall, slender, furry creature with a cream underbelly and orange backside.
"Are you behind this?" Amelia asked the denizen while pointing at the cages inside which there were various creatures.
"Hello, dear passenger! I am Jerry the weasel. Welcome to my zoo car! Here you can see all kinds of dangerous or cool looking creatures, such as the golden winged snakes, the killer squid, the crystal man, the tiny wizards, and even a new addition that will send chills down your spines."
The weasel denizen's grin full of sharp teeth was enough to give Jam the shivers.
"No, this is not your zoo car!" Amelia said. "This is supposed to be the jungle car. What you are doing here is illegal."
The weasel gave her a bored stare. "Oh yeah? According to whose rules?"
"According to the Conductor's rules!" she said. "Caging denizens, no matter their level of intelligence, is considered a felony."
Jam heard squeaks from a cage hidden deep within the jungle. "There are ghoms here!"
Amelia raised her eyebrows. She poked the chest of the weasel with her index finger. "Jerry, are you insane? If those things get out of that cage–"
Jam used his jets to fly all the way to the back of the wannabe zoo. Amelia followed him there, in spite of Jerry protesting that she didn't pay the entrance fee.
The cage at the back contained five ghoms and not much space for them to roam or fly around. They emitted pitiful squeaks as they lay on their bellies.
"Look at them," Jam said. "Their feelers are drooping, they're crying, and they don't even care that we're here. What has this guy done to them?"
Amelia never thought she'd feel sorry for ghoms of all things, but with Jam's help she saw a side to the beasts she had never noticed during the many years she had experimented on them. They weren't screeching monsters from hell thrashing about like the ones she had dealt with. They suffered just like any other creatures that had no more fight left in them.
Jerry arrived, shouting, "Stay away from my ghoms! It took me a lot of work to trap them and tame them!"
"What do you mean 'tame them'?" Jam asked. "You've traumatized them!" He chittered at the ghoms.
They shuddered and chittered back really fast.
Jam pointed at Jerry. "They say you're a bad leader! You hurt them every day, even when they've given up on attacking you."
Jerry laughed. "They're just ghoms, stupid! If I let them out, they're gonna suck your energy until you turn into ashes."
Jam grabbed the bars of the cage and said, "Oh yeah? Let's see what happens if I let them out."
Amelia shouted, "Jam, no!"
Too late. The softshell bent the bars outward, making an exit for the ghoms. He chittered something at them. They all looked away from him and hissed. He hissed back at them.
Jerry stared at the scene before him, clueless as to what as going on.
Seeing that the ghoms refused to do anything, Jam grabbed Jerry and carried him into the cage, in spite of the weasel's squirming.
Amelia asked, "What are you doing?"
"Don't worry; he'll be fine," Jam said. He lifted Jerry above himself and screeched at the ghoms.
The creatures got up and raised their feelers, screeching back at him. He chittered while leaving the cage, and they all followed him out of it.
Amelia watched as the ghoms passed by her with no hostility from their side.
With the ghoms freed, Jam threw the weasel into the cage and straightened the bars. "Now let's lead the ghoms back to the wasteland."
Amelia nodded while taking out her e-mailing machine. "I'll ask One to send a team to take these caged denizens back to their corresponding cars."
Outside, Jam watched as all but one ghom flew away. He chittered at the remaining one, who hissed at him.
Amelia pointed at the ghom. "What does this one want?"
"I'm not sure. It's daring me to touch it." He put his right hand on the ghom's head and tried to pet it.
The ghom reacted by sucking in a bit of Jam's life force through the armor before flying away hissing loudly.
"Darn it!" Jam said, holding his right hand with his left one.
"What was that all about?" Amelia asked.
"It claims leadership over the other four ghoms. That was a warning to stay off its territory."
She let out a laugh. "That ungrateful bastard."
Jam grinned. "Oh, it is grateful. It let me off with a warning instead of challenging me to a fight."
"Ghoms are weird," she said. "But then again so am I."
He put his left hand on her right shoulder. "Hey, you may be weird, but it's a good kind of weird."
"Let's continue the search," Amelia said, looking amused.
The car they entered looked like a forest during autumn, with trees full of red leaves everywhere. There was a full moon in its night sky.
Jam looked at his tracker. "My brother moved to this car for some reason. But I don't see him anywhere."
"Call to him," Amelia said.
"I don't think he trusts you enough to show up, but I'll do it. Alrick! Hey, Alrick! Where are you?"
No response.
Jam tried again. "Alrick! Come out, bro! She's a nice lady once you get to know her!"
Still nothing.
He dug through the leaves underneath his feet and looked at what lay hidden below. Instead of soil, there was a giant tree extending down, making the leafy floor its canopy. Alrick was there too, hiding behind a branch. Jam waved at him.
"Do you see your brother there?" Amelia asked.
"Yeah, I see him. He's too scared to join us."
"Then go talk to him."
"Nah, he needs to get over his fear of you. Nothing I say will convince him to trust you."
Amelia prepared her sleeping bag. "Then we'll camp here and hope he doesn't decide to run away by morning."
Jam poked his head through the leaves. "Hey, bro! We'll be sleeping here until morning! Feel free to join us!"
Alrick glared at him.
After looking around to make sure there were no threats, Jam pressed and held the left triangular button of his power armor. The armor's back opened up, allowing him to exit as if he were hatching from a cocoon.
Amelia stared at his smooth, leathery shell. It had black, distorted rings with dark green centers. A few black dots and stripes decorated the shell's edges. Although the shell hid most of it, Jam seemed to be wearing the black academic dress from Amelia's memories.
As he lay on his belly, retracting his limbs and most of his neck into the shell, Jam said, "I hope this doesn't look too creepy. It's how I sleep."
Amelia waved her hand dismissively. "It's no problem. I've seen Hazel sleep like that before."
"Okay then. Good night, Amelia."
"Good night, Jam."
"Oh, and good night, bro!"
Alrick refused to say anything in return.
To be continued.