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face and judged my reaction. I was pretty sure the world was freezing and my heart was exploding because there was no way on earth it could have been moving the way it was.  
    But, as he leaned in, an awkward cough came from the shadows.  
    “Hey there. Care to share a camp?”  
     
       

Chapter Three

    The boy was determined, I’d give him that. Not a single obstacle had deterred him yet, and this one was no different. The only way back to the tracks past the bridge was to climb— in the dark.  
    I went first. I didn’t know if he’d ever climbed before, and I wasn’t going to be under him if he fell. I blindly felt with my hand for every solid hold. I had to trust my fingers more than my eyes, and I felt my forearms tense as I gripped. Climbing had a way of using muscles that weren’t supposed to exist, but I’d grown into those muscles over the past two years, like I’d grown into many things about life on the Tracks.
    The boy didn’t slip once. We made it over the ledge and worked our way through the rest of the trees, until I found what I was looking for. Just as the river had done, the train-tracks cut a different road of stars in the sky. It was narrower, but the traveling would be smoother from there.  
    Of course, I was operating on several assumptions: that the Militia would least expect us to take the closest path to them, that they wouldn’t have walked over the bridge, that they may not have realized we’d climbed the wall down in the river, and, if a distress call went through and reinforcements came, they’d come from the other direction (since we were in front of where the train was heading). I was banking on it… willing it to be the case.  
    I hopped on the track and tried to look on the bright side. We were close to a Colony, and I could foot it within a few days if I walked fast.  
    I adjusted the length of the straps so that my pack hugged my back snugly. Running with a bouncing pack could get painful. My feet hit the wooden planks that looked like lines on paper between the rails. Xavi taught me how to move comfortably on them. “It’s the one part of living out here where there’s no need to read between the lines. Think of the planks like rungs on a ladder and the pebbles between them as air. Stay on the rungs to prevent twisting an ankle.” It took a different type of stride to run on the tracks compared to running on the ground. Momentum and speed had to be steady to stay on the planks, and I had to become train-like in rhythm. Patient. Constant. Never too fast. Never too slow.  
    I began to run and didn’t much care if the boy followed by that point. I’d gotten him as far as I was going to, and I didn’t feel like waisting time or words to officially ditch him. I figured running the tracks would do the job for me. It was one of the rare instances where having short legs had advantages, and my stunted stride made the timing of steps easier. Plus, he was a Colony-kid— a Republic-kid. It’s not an easy transition into this life, and I had my experience going for me. It’d be difficult for him to keep up. I found a steady pace, but I stopped to rest a few times. The boy was always farther and farther behind me, lost in the darkness, since he couldn’t find the right rhythm.  
    Every time I thought I lost the boy in the dark though, he’d find a way to catch up when I took my breaks. He was a machine, and he never needed to stop. The nearer he got, the less breaks I wanted to take.  
    “Slow and steady is the often the best course,” Xavi would have said, but I didn’t want to listen to Xavi in my head anymore. For the life of me, I still couldn’t understand how, despite his reasoning for everything, he’d do something so illogical? How he could so easily fall into the tramp-trap that was Legs? Xavi was the last person I wanted to hear.  
    I kept running— my own feet tha-thrumping against each plank. I listened to my momentum instead of listening to Xavi.