SHADE HAD NEVER run this long, this far. It was, she knew, impossible. Every part of it was impossible. Impossible that she could generate the energy required. Impossible that her brain could seamlessly adapt to a world that should be nothing but a blur.

At top speed she could run faster than a 787 jet; in fact, right now she was moving just below cruising speed for an airliner. Impossible that she could still hear in what amounted to a wind tunnel cranked up to maximum, not to mention the Doppler effect, which should have reduced anything she heard to a whine. Impossible that she could even keep her eyes open, let alone actually be able to see the railroad ties flying away beneath feet moving so fast they should have caught fire.

[...]

It was not easy running on a train track, not easy at all. The spacing of the ties was awkward, and if she missed a step and landed on gravel, it slowed her down so that she missed her next step. As a result Shade was moving at half speed, probably no more than four hundred miles an hour.

Which seemed poky.

She actually had time to notice how very slowly the planes landing a Newark airport were moving. It made her laugh; they looked as if they had to fall, but just kept gliding along at what to Shade looked no faster than a car pulling out of a suburban driveway.

[...]

So as she waited for Edilio’s reply, she kept racing ahead until she was in the train’s slipstream, trotting along just a few yards behind it, slowing to match its speed, a crawling hundred and fifty miles an hour.

The last car, the one she could almost reach out and touch, was an energy car, an engine, identical to the one at the front of the train, bullet headed and streamlined. There were no evident handholds, so if she was to leap atop it, it’d be a mad scramble not to slide right back off.

They were coming up to the Metropark station where the train was to stop, though Shade really doubted it would.

She checked her phone. A text was just popping up.

Abt 7 miles south of Metropark sta see Costco/Target on rt. 2 m after. Trees sparse houses.

[...]

Now, unfortunately, she had another problem: keeping pace with the train, her speed zero relative to the train, she was perfectly visible to anyone on board, including Vector’s insect eyes.

Shade dropped back past the rows of windows, to the back of the train. She took a breath and leaped up to the sloped windshield, and had to motor her legs like Road Runner to keep from slipping off. She clawed and clambered up onto the roof to discover her way impeded by the raised framework called a pantograph that scraped along the bottom of a live electrical line running very high current. She gave as wide a berth as possible to the pantograph then trotted forward, easily leaping the gaps between cars, indifferent to the gale-force wind that would have knocked any normal person flat, and flashing on movie scenes she’d seen of people doing just this. Hadn’t Tom Cruise done this in at least one movie?

Ahead on the right was a big shopping center with, yes (thank you, Edilio!), a Target and a Costco.

Hero, Chapter 35