Hades knelt in the ash of the old Switchyard and pressed his palm against a rail buckled like a broken rib. The Last Ember, the spike blade at his hip, gave off a faint red pulse. He was here to write names on a wall, and he did not have enough names. That was the whole problem. Tomorrow the sanctuary would light its first memorial lanterns, and half the dead had no one to speak for them. His journal lay open on his knee. Thirty-one names. He knew there had been more than a hundred people the day the Switchyard fell. Melissa, his wife, had asked him last night how a sanctuary could honor silence. He hadn't answered. He was answering now, digging through burned ticket booths for anything with writing on it. Small boots hit gravel behind him. Lil Ray, his daughter, dropped a rusted lockbox at his feet. "Found it under the platform," she said. "It's heavy. That means paper." She was already gone before he could thank her, sprinting toward the next collapsed car. Ollie came slower, cradling the recording device he never put down. His son had green eyes that noticed everything, especially the things adults tried to hide. "Dad," Ollie said. "The passenger logs burned. I already checked." Hades pried the lockbox open with the spike blade. Inside: a conductor's roster, water-stained but readable. He counted. Forty-seven names. Not enough. A shadow moved along the rail line where no shadow should have been. Hades stood. The big silver husky at his side, his wasteland guardian, growled low. Then the shadow spoke. "You're missing the ones the Switchyard doesn't want remembered." Nyx Ravenfall stepped out from behind a leaning signal post, hood up, hands empty on purpose. Hades hadn't seen the scout in two years, not since a raid neither of them talked about. Nyx held out a folded bundle of paper. "Manifest from the freight side. The workers. The ones without tickets." Hades took it. His hand shook. He counted seventy-three names in a cramped, unfamiliar script. Added to what he had, the number cleared a hundred. "Why bring this to me?" he asked. Nyx watched the horizon, not him. "Because I know who erased them. And they know I know. I came here fast. That means I was followed." Melissa arrived then, her train-glass lantern swinging, breath quick. She read Hades' face before he spoke. She always did. "You got them?" "All of them," Hades said. He closed the journal on the new pages. "Every name." The husky's growl deepened. Down the far rail, three points of red light bobbed toward them in the dusk. Not lanterns. Not friendly. Hades pulled Ollie behind him and set the journal in Melissa's hands. "Get the names home," he said. "I'll hold the line."

Melissa held the journal against her chest. She did not run yet. She watched Hades the way she always watched him before a fight, reading his hands, his breath, the tilt of his shoulders. "How many?" she asked. The red lights bobbed closer along the rail. Hades squinted into the dusk. Three points. Then a fourth flickered behind a leaning car. Then maybe a fifth. He could not tell. The rails bent the light. The ash in the air smeared it. Guessing wrong meant dying here, and Melissa dying with him. "I don't know," he said. That was the truth, and he hated it. Lil Ray crouched at his knee, her backpack half-open, wires spilling. "I can find out," she whispered. She pulled a cracked bicycle mirror from her pack and a coil of copper. Ollie was already unspooling something from the recording device at his hip, thumb on a switch. "Echo trick," his son said. "I bounce a sound off the far tank. Count what answers." Hades wanted to say no. He said, "Do it fast." Lil Ray sprinted low along the rail bed and wedged the mirror against a signal post. She angled it back toward him. In the glass he saw the track behind the leaning car, stretched and small, but clear. Ollie pressed the switch. A short, sharp tone rolled down the yard. Boots stopped. Boots started again. Hades counted the lanterns reflected in the mirror. Not three. Not five. Seven. Seven pursuers, spread in a loose net, two circling wide to cut off the south rail. He turned to Melissa. "Go north. Now. Not the south path." She nodded once and kissed his forehead. Then she ran, the lantern hooded under her coat, the journal wrapped tight. The husky went with her without being asked. Hades stood up into open ground and let the spike blade catch the last light. Seven was too many for one man. He knew it. He also knew the shape of the trap now, and a known trap could be broken. He whistled low, three notes, the old scout call from the raid two years back. For a long breath, nothing. Then a shape rose from behind a rusted freight car he had already checked twice. A short, broad man with a black beard and a scar splitting one eyebrow. Varek Thornclaw. Behind him, low and silent, the yellow eyes of a beast the size of a small truck opened in the dark. Its armored jaw clicked once. "Nyx sent word," Varek said. He spat into the ash. "Seven, you said?" "Seven," Hades answered. "Then we make it four." Varek walked past him toward the south rail, the metal-plated beast pacing at his shoulder. Hades followed. Melissa was gone into the north dark with every name they had. The line would hold. It just would not hold quietly.