They emerged back into 3-D space toward the front of the second car. Shade appeared at the exact same moment, but a “moment” to Shade was not a “moment” to the others.

The rearmost wall of the train car was moving at a hundred miles an hour, or a hundred forty-seven feet per second. The distance between the nearest of the Rockborn Gang, Armo, and that door was seventy-five feet.

Shade had less than half a second. And that was not enough, not even for Shade. She might save one, but not the others. Unless . . .

The car ended in a door. The next car would also have a door. Eventually, they would slow down.

Eventually.

Shade leaped, spun in the air, so that she flew backward, facing Armo’s back as the steel door rushed at her. She stuck out her hands and grabbed seat backs that tore away, row after row of blue upholstered seats, bam, bam, bam bambambambam!

Grabbing at seat backs had bled off only a little of their relative speed, and Shade hit the door at seventy miles an hour. She took the impact in her back and felt her chitin armor snap, crushed like a cockroach under a boot. Her head smashed into steel and the thick glass window, cracking her skull like a dropped cantaloupe.

The impact smashed the door open, and Shade plowed into the next door at a mere fifty miles an hour. Her hands were torn, some fingers ripped off and spraying blood, her back broken, her head caved in. She was reduced to a bloody mess of bone and chitin armor and blood.

The impact went: Shade, Armo, Francis, Dekka, and the shell.

Armo, Dekka, Francis, and the shell survived.

Shade looked like a lobster that had been cracked open and torn apart with a fork.

Hero, Chapter 38