Several hours later.

There was a train, hurdling through unnatural darkness. The interior of the train carriage was elaborate, hand carved armrests leading to plush, plumb maroon cushions. Light fixtures jingled gently overhead as the train lumbered onward, the crystalline globes the only defense against the oppressive unnatural night outside. The few survivors unaffected by the gloom were seated in the trains seats. Two men dressed in three piece suits, one donning a dashing charcoal color, the other a no-nonesense brown. One lady wore a kimono, elaborately embroidered. The other two women were wearing clothes more suited for working, flowing skirts leading to fitted bodices, though the fabric of the two were very different, one was clearly of higher quality than the other. A teenaged girl was in a wheelchair, her hair perfect inexplicably against the trains rambling flight.

There was the train conductor, and his friend, the secret investigator.

And then there was a frazzled, redheaded young lady, perhaps 18 or 19 years old. She had her hair swept up into a rushed bun, though the sweat and grime left her perhaps truly in need of a shower.

It was me. That's me. Switching from third to first person. That was me. And I did need a shower.

As far as we knew, it was only us who remained awake on the train against the unnatural night. Everyone else was unconscious but alive, or restrained and also alive. That or unaccounted for.

"All I wanted was a quiet week in the central city. But the impossible cases, they find me. They find me. Like how we find ourselves here with a conundrum." Said the secret investigator. "We find ourselves perhaps in mortal peril. Each of you..." she made eye contact with each individual. "...Could be the saboteur. Three times, this train was almost stopped again. Mrs. Saizoko, you were the last to be seen before the extra light fixtures were broken."

The lady wearing the kimono scoffed and clicked her tongue. "I have no reason to destroy the light. The gloom is nearly enough to kill us already. When my husband hears how I've been treated, there will be trouble."

The secret investigator sighed. "And Mr. Jones, you and the victim had been seen fighting."

The man in the no-nonsense coat made a disgruntled noise. "As a retired officer, I find those who skip their duty a stain on the honor of the solider class. We didn't fight. If we had fought, he would have been dead a lot sooner."

"And Miss Clark, you were the last person to escape the lights going out. Hard to imagine that."

The girl in the wheelchair bunched into herself. "As someone with limited mobility, I always make sure that I have access to the door. I was right next to it when the lights started going out in the other train. Also, call me Bethany. Miss Clark is my older sister." She fingered a beaded bracelet nervously. "In the darkened train car, everyone else went to look, but I knew something was wrong."

"We will see what the truth reveals." Said the investigator. She was kinda cool. Like Hercule Poirot. She had a way of cutting through lies. I had watched her work and bring order to the few remaining survivors on this train. Her hair was pulled back too tightly, and the pale fine blonde made it almost see through, so her head even resembled an egg. While many of the people here wore fancy attire, the way she wore her three piece suit was perfect, like it was a piece of art itself.

"So." Said the investigator. To me. "You expect us to believe that you really had nothing to do with the disappearance of Deputy Constable Hawthorne, Miss Ward?" Her green eyes resembled a cats as she stared at me.

"Miss Ward, do you really expect us to believe that?"

Oops, too busy narrating. "I was with Bethany." I said, pointing to the girl in the wheelchair.

"She was, Mizz." Said Bethany. "She really really was. We made bracelets together."

"See? I have a witness." I said, feeling very proud of myself and my bracelet. It had turned out well.

The secret investigator preened. "Right. And did you have access to a time piece, Miss Bethany?"

"I haven't got a watch." she said, leaving out the 'H' sound. "But I won't lie, Mizz."

Somehow I didn't think the crowd was very accepting of my witness. The retired military man even scoffed. But I believed her!

The secret investigator seemed to favor the majority as she turned her cat like focus back to me. "And you were also the last person seen in the breaker room, before the pilot light went out."

I smiled sincerely. "Nope. The last person in the breaker room before the pilot light went out was Mr. Craig...who is also missing...I was the person who fixed the pilot light."

"But Mr. Brown said he was the one to relit the pilot light." She said, to the man in the charcoal suit.

I didn't think calling him a liar would work. Especially since I knew he was a coward. He had lied to save face when he had run away the other direction. "I understand there can be multiple claims. And in the fog of scary things, people..." I looked at Mr. Brown in his stupid charcoal suit. "Can be mistaken. But my hands have the residue from the match. If we tested his hands, I am very sure that we will find there is no residue."

He clasped his hands behind his back.

"We cannot test that until we reach the Central City."

"If you cannot prove he did it, you can't prove I didn't do it. And vice versa. And unlike Mr. Brown, my courage has been proven." I had been the one to retrieve the parts from the dangerous forest. I had also been the one to forsake my own safety for the sake of the passengers, when I had been part of a plan to draw the extra dinos away from the train.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Strange to be that courageous."

Honestly, I was surprised too. I thought I'd have the valor of an undercooked pizza roll. But then again, I think I was in shock so it didn't feel real at the time.

"And you were the last person to see Master Lee and the Steam Engineer." The Secret Investigator said, perfectly rolling her Rs.

I sighed. It really didn't look good for me. I promised to never be the main character again if I survived this.

The two other women glared at me. At least Mrs. Saizoko seemed to treat everyone the same. It wasn't very nice, but at least it was consistent.

The other two women were friends, they claimed, but there was a large differences in their socioeconomic stances. Miss Hanes was clearly more well to do. Her friend Miss Copperfield, the lady wearing clearly a coarser and cheaper fabric, was very pleasant when Miss Hanes wasn't around. I was getting companion vibes, not friends.

I pushed up a frazzled loose strand of hair away from my eyes. "I reiterate, that Miss Copperfield told me she heard them later."

"No she didn't." Said Miss Hanes.

Miss Copperfield said nothing but looked away.

"Well, Miss Ward." Said the Secret Investigator lady. She wore her hair entirely too tightly; her prim demeanor was dour enough to frighten small children and the delicate, faint of heart like myself.

I disliked how so many of the people on the train were so eager to blame me. I could have avoided this whole mess and hung out in the shelter. I didn't.

"My friend is a forester. He said he would be back and he will be."

"Master Lee seems to be an exceptional forester, but wasn't it strange how little he spoke. Almost like he had taken a vow to remain silent." she said, hypothesizing.

I grimaced. It was a complicated situation.

James was exceptional. I had seen him fend off multiple other foresters. At least 1/3 of saboteurs had undoubtedly been after him as civil war was breaking out in the Sects. I didn't know much, but I knew him to be a steadfast companion, who I had already entrusted with my life.

He was also shy.

Like...

So shy he bordered on being mute. He had all the swagger of a confident martial artist, but that confidence did not extend to his speech.

He could speak to his mentor, Mr. Prattallike (not his real name, I just needed to call him something in my head and that name stuck). And he could speak to me, for reasons neither of us understood. But anyone else? That was a no. When he tried to talk to groups, it came out stilted and tight.

He was so shy that during a forester battle, he had asked me to antagonize the bad guys as his mouth didn't move right when talking to other people. Punching and kicking grown adults much bigger than him? Not a problem. Battle quips? Nope.

I had been entrusted with him, and strangely I had more world experience than he did. I mean, at that point I had been in the world about 2ish hours. But using my knowledge of fairy tales, I had told him not to reveal his name, not even to me. So he had adopted the name I called him, Rock Lee. Except when he said it, Rock came out sounding like Peter. Weirdness. Almost like I wasn't actually completely speaking English and somehow I had a translator working for me. Like how Little Red Flower, the name Yu Lin called me, sounded more like "shel buy". But I didn't have enough time to understand everything, and somehow I still hoped I'd get to take my finals. My accounting final. In another world.

Wow, my priorities were messed up.

"I don't know what he promised or didn't." I said at last, lamely.

The investigator shook her head sadly, making a small tut tuting sound. "Of course. And I'm sure you do not know how several pounds of highly dangerous components came to be inside the train meant for the good citizens of our proud cities?"

That one was actually my fault...

But while I indeed did know who had unknowingly brought all the destructive material (It was me), I denied it the same way I denied everything else. I had played that party game before where one person pretends to get murdered and one person in the group did it. The group had to find out who had done the killing, while the killer had to pretend to be a normal member of the group.

"I helped fix the train. I don't know anything about extra components. If they were dangerous, why haven't they exploded yet?" I said.

She nodded, the first time she softened to me at all. "I will admit that point. But you have secrets, Miss Ward. So many secrets. Perhaps you even know who the killer is?"

My throat caught. I knew secrets alright.

"I didn't kill the Lt." I said. "Redshirt...Richard was a friend to me. He saved my life."

"Does his death come as a surprise then?"

All my new friends had targets on their backs. The good Lt. Richard Burnadee had been waving the most death flags. I had been worried he would be the first loose thread to be snipped. He was even wearing a redshirt.

My new friends had been the ones to get the train moving, though it moved much slower than before. A few hours ago, we got the train moving, but before Deputy Constable Hawthorne, Steam Engineer Jesseme, James/Rock Lee the Heir of a Great Forester House, Lt. Burnabee, and I went inside the train, the sky around us was plummeted into the unnatural night. With all the fighting of the name bound and the foresters each other, blood had been shed.

It was no longer safe to be outside.

Death walkers, Rock and Deputy Constable Hawthorne both confirmed. I now officially hated this world. We all knew dangers lurked inside the train. The people trying to stop us would not stop. Everyone in that group had secrets that threatened something massive. Secrets worth killing for, apparently. And we would have to go inside the train now. With the saboteurs.

All my friends knew secrets of the Attalla project, directly or indirectly.

But Richard was the only one with a saved message from one of the disappeared guards that claimed that the project had gone too far. And had perhaps let in a great evil. A being from another world. The Harbinger. The fabled creature that heralds the end of the world.

I had a secret too. None of my friends realized I was Iseikaied there. By a quirk of fate, I had been wearing my silky bathrobe, which looked close enough to the fashion of the world. I didn't look like I was from the city, but everyone had accepted me as a newcomer from the countryside. My lack of social aware brushed aside as a bumpkin trying to make her way in the world. My lack of social graces forgiven by my youth and earnestness. My lack of knowledge was surmised as inexperience.

I wasn't an nameless evil. I wasn't the Harbinger of death. I was just an ordinary girl working to get a CPA to make a bunch of money. Purely normal. Except the red hair, I was no different from anyone else. I had risked my life several times to save other people. That is not something a nameless evil would do. And I had a name, too. I just won't share it because magic is apparently real, even if the citizens of this world didn't see it as magic.

I didn't know any rules here. But I knew the less I said, the less I exposed myself, the better. I was a stranger with less than a day's experience in a land far from my home. I had no choice. I...couldn't tell them. I didn't lie. But I didn't tell the truth.

To prevent my secret from escaping, I had to wonder...Would it be better to be arrested for the Murder of Lt. Richard Jason Burndree, found dead just an hour ago?

I shook my head at the Special Investigator. "I will be honest, the flags were there all along that he was the target of the train's saboteur."

I had secrets to keep.

And my friends to help.

I looked at everyone here in this train carriage. Mr. Brown in the charcoal suit, still hiding his hands behind his back. Mr. Jones, the retired military officer, seemingly pleased. Miss Hanes in her practical but opulent dress. Miss Copperfield, her face withdrawn, not looking toward me. Mrs. Saizoko in her gorgeous kimono, her head cast to an aloof angle. Bethany in her wheelchair with her perfect hair. The train conductor, his uniform dirty from all the unexpected repairs. And even the Secret Investigator, her white blonde hair pulled back tightly, her green catlike eyes shining as she considered every word everyone spoke.

Someone in this group was the last saboteur. And I was going to find out.