Alexa stirred, slowly waking from her nap. She blinked groggily, realizing she was still sprawled across Cottie's lap in the dining car.

"Morning, sunshine," Cottie said with a smirk. "Or whatever passes for morning on this crazy train."

Alexa sat up, stretching and yawning. "How long was I out?"

"Hard to say," Cottie shrugged. "Time's weird here."

"Time's weird how?" Alexa asked.

"There's an internal atomic battery clock in my armor," Cottie explained, tapping her wrist. "I thought that it is busted at first, but in reality I think that there's something horribly wrong with this train."

Alexa raised an eyebrow. "Horribly wrong how?"

"The view seems to be looping," Cottie said with a bit of a frown. "And each loop is getting shorter. We're currently on a loop that's 1.11 hours long."

"And how is the current loop different from previous one?" Alexa asked.

"The previous loop was 2.22 hours long. The one before it was 4.44 hours long. It's like we're spiraling inward, each cycle getting tighter, the fractal scenery behind the windows moving faster."

Alexa turned to Zee Captain, her eyes narrowing. "Alright, spill it. Why are we stuck in a time loop? Is this some kind of wizardly security measure?"

"Yes," Zee Captain nodded, the mask's lenses flickering slightly. "This train isn't just traveling through space, but through conceptual layers of reality. As we approach Manchester, we're passing through increasingly dense layers of Syntropy."

"To what end?" Alexa demanded. "Are you trying to make me denser or something?"

"Sort of," Zee rubbed the back of her masked head. "The closer we get to Manchester, the more ordered the train becomes. The time loop is simply a manifestation of that compression. The train exists to eliminate otherness."

"What otherness?" Alexa demanded with a growing sense of suspicion.

"To purge things that do not belong in Manchester," Captain said, eyeing Sasha and Cottie.

Alexa's eyes narrowed at Zee Captain's words. "Purge things that don't belong? Like hell you will!" She stood up abruptly, her fists clenched. "Cottie and Sasha are coming with me, end of story. If your fancy train doesn't like it, well, I guess I'll just have to break it."

"Why must you break everything?" Captain asked.

"Because I want to," Alexa said simply.

"Haven't you learned anything from the train station incident?" Zee asked. "Do you want more tags? This is how you get more tags!"

"Tags-shmags," Alexa huffed. "If the accumulation of tags is the price of keeping my new pals then so be it!"

"They're not your pals, Alexa!" Captain growled.

"Oh?" Alexa raised a silver eyebrow. "Then what are they? Hrmmm?"

"I already explained this," Zee said. "Sasha One is a dangerous conceptual virus from the Dead Zone, seeking to infiltrate and potentially destroy Manchester. And Cottie... Cottie is a doppelganger, a liminal construct that reflects your desires but isn't truly the friends you left behind."

Alexa crossed her arms, her silver-blue eyes flashing with defiance. "So what if they are? They're here now, they're part of my story. You can't just erase them because they don't fit into your neat little system."

"Your story?" The Captain asked. "The omniverse does not rotate around you."

Alexa pursed her lips, tapping her raygun thoughtfully.

"Perhaps the universe I left behind was more constrained," she muttered. "But... here. Here things are a bit more fluid, no?"

"Only until we reach Manchester," Captain said.

"I'm the one with the ticket, therefore I make the rules," Alexa said. "The nature of liminality, as far as I understand it... is modular."

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She closed her eyes for a moment, concentrating hard. When she opened them again, she looked at Cottie expectantly. "Martin," she said firmly.

Cottie's form rippled and shifted, transforming into Martin once again. The boy blinked, looking back at Alexa.

Alexa focused again. "Dimmie," she said aloud, squinting at Martin.

Once more, the figure beside her changed, this time into the fiery-haired Ember, complete with her signature scowl. Ember sputtered, looking left and right in confusion.

"Cottie!" Alexa declared and the dopple shifted again back to her bestie.

"See?" Alexa exclaimed triumphantly. "Modality!"

Zee Captain shook his head, unimpressed by Alexa's display. "You're missing the point entirely," he said. "All you're doing is feeding the doppelganger your desires. It's simply reflecting what you want to see, not creating anything new or real. It is a conceptual creature limited by your memories and imagination."

"My imagination is infinite, therefore it's not limited at all," Alexa rolled her eyes. "Oh, and I suppose this train is completely real and not at all a reflection of desires?" She gestured around the dining car. "Why is it a train at all? Why not a flying saucer or a giant sea turtle? I'm pretty sure that you're feeding on my desires too, appearing whatever gender I think about you as."

She stood up abruptly, her silver hair swishing with the motion. "You know what? I'm tired of sitting around and being lectured by a questionable gender-less being in a coat. I'm going to explore this train to find out how I can break it. And... if you try to stop me, I'm going to break you too."

Alexa marched down the train corridor, stained glass lanterns casting different colors onto her orange reflective stripe-covered safety vest. Cottie followed close behind, while Zee Captain and Sasha One trailed after them.

"Alexa, please reconsider your destructive impulses," Zee Captain pleaded. "Breaking things in transit liminality has far-reaching consequences. If you break the train you'll never make it to Manchester and never help your Earth. Is your goal not to help the people you left behind?"

Sasha One's starry form rippled with amusement. "Oh, let her break whatever she wants," the cosmic entity purred. "Rules are meant to be broken, especially arbitrary ones imposed by stuffy old System Wizards."

Alexa paused mid-stride, turning to face her two self-appointed mentors. "You know," she mused, tapping her chin thoughtfully, "it's almost like you two are some kind of shoulder angels. Or demons." She gestured vaguely at Zee Captain. "You're all 'don't do this, don't do that, follow the rules!'" Then she pointed at Sasha. "And you're all 'break everything, cause chaos, whee!'"

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Are you two even real? Or are you just some kind of weird liminal manifestation of my conscience?"

"I assure you, we are quite real," Zee Captain said stiffly.

"As real and lovely as anything can be in this liminal space," Sasha One winked.

"Real and incredibly dangerous," Captain huffed.

Alexa rolled her eyes. "Right. Super helpful as always, thanks."

She resumed her march down the corridor, eyes scanning for anything interesting or breakable. Suddenly, she spotted a closed door that seemed different from the others. It was made of a dark, polished wood with intricate carvings along its frame.

"Hello, what's this?" Alexa murmured, approaching the door.

As she drew closer, she noticed a small window set into the door. Peering through, she saw a twenty-some year old girl with striking violet eyes and long black hair wearing a rather distinctive black and white suit with the letter G on it. The girl appeared to be asleep, curled up on a plush seat. But what really caught Alexa's attention were the Bobbies surrounding her, their human-ish faces impassive as they stood guard around the girl like a group of black crows.

"Mom?" Alexa choked.

"Don't do it," Zee Captain barked, lighter pointing at Alexa.

Cottie's railgun snapped at Zee's masked head. Alexa's fingers wrapped around the conductor-gun too, the atmosphere in the hallway growing tense.

Alexa's heart raced as she stared through the small window at the sleeping woman who looked so much like the entity that called herself Alexa's mother.

Alexa's fingers tightened around the door handle, ready to burst in and... and what? She wasn't sure. But she knew she had to do something.

"Do what?" She hissed back at Captain. "I haven't done anything yet..."

"But you clearly, definitely want to interfere," Zee commented, not lowering the lighter. "This I definitely cannot allow."

"Obviously I want to interfere," Alexa snapped. "That's... her, right?"

"That's her," Sasha One nodded. "Free her and she will tell you everything."

"Alexa, wait," Zee Captain's voice cut through the supervillain girl's rushing thoughts. The System Wizard's tone was urgent, almost pleading. "That's not your mother. You need to understand—"

"Then who is she?" Alexa demanded, whirling to face the masked figure. "Why does she look like Infinity? And why is she surrounded by those creepy Bobbies?"

"The Bobbies are simply transporting a—"

"A prisoner," Alexa concluded, her voice cold. "What's her crime? Thinking too freely? Breaking one of your precious rules?"

"Breaking too many rules, yes," Zee said. "It's... a long, complicated story."

"Oh, I'm sure it's very complicated," the supervillain girl sneered. "Just like everything else in this messed-up liminal wonderland. Well, guess what? I don't care about your complications. She looks like she's in trouble... so I'm going to help her."

"You're not the hero of this story," Zee said. "You can't go freeing everyone from the consequences of their actions, Alexa."

"Oh? Then who is 'the hero'?" Alexa demanded. "Is it you?!"

"I'm not a hero," Zee shook her head. "I'm a... mentor. And I'm trying to calmly mentor you even though you're making things exceptionally difficult."

A dark shape approached the door from the other side. Alexa felt her skin crawling as something gazed at her from behind the glass panel. She turned back to the door and nearly leapt backwards. Agent Three was staring at her from the glass door, round lenses glinting atop a face featuring far too many wrinkles stretched around an inhumanly wide, ever-present smile.