The World Beneath

Chapter 44

Ozan saw Tesla stumble. He’d hit his arm. He didn’t want to kill him. He had questions that only Tesla could answer.

“Stop!” called Ozan. He sent another shot just wide of Tesla’s head.

Tesla stopped. He held the wounded arm against his chest, but he wouldn’t let go of the case. Braver than he looked.

“I just want to talk to you,” called Ozan. “I want to know about what’s in that case.”

“It’s full of parasites called toxoplasmosis, Mr. Saddiq,” Joe said. “He was going to inject it into soldiers.”

Ozan wasn’t surprised that Tesla knew his name. The man knew everything. “Does it make you sick?”

“It gives you a fever, headaches, muscle pain.”

Ozan’s head throbbed. He’d had all those symptoms. He moved to a track next to the stopped train. “Then what?”

“It makes you reckless.”

He recognized that, too. This parasite was inside his body. Worry for Erol flashed across his mind. His brother would be alone without him. “Is it curable?”

The track points shifted with a clack. Ozan screamed as the bones of his foot were ground together. The train had been switched to the track on which he stood, catching his foot between the two tracks.

He dropped his gun and yanked at his foot. Hot pain flooded up his leg, but his foot didn’t budge. “Help me!”

Tesla put the case down and ran to him. He kicked away the gun before bending down to try to grab Ozan’s foot.

“Work the switch!” Ozan tried to push his foot straight back, but it was stuck tight.

The train rolled toward them, ready to go down the new track and run over him.

Tesla leaped up. He waved his arms over his head. Blood ran down his forearm from the gunshot wound.

Ozan looked up at the cabin to see if the engineer saw them. He could switch them back to another track and release his foot. The cabin was empty. The engineer must still be in the second car with Dr. Dubois.

There was no way to get his foot out.

And there was no way to stop the train.

Tesla saw it, too. He tore at Ozan’s leg with bloody fingers. Bones scraped together in Ozan’s foot when he lurched to the side. Panic tamped down the pain. He fumbled in his pants pocket. He had a knife in there. He could cut his foot off.

The train bore down.

Even as time slowed down, Ozan realized that there wasn’t enough of it. He straightened to face the oncoming headlights. The vision of Erol sleeping peacefully under his manatee blanket flashed through his head.

Tesla crouched next to him, still working on his foot. The man would die trying to save him. That was who Tesla was. The clarity that often came to Ozan on the battlefield came to him now. He grabbed Tesla’s shoulders and threw him away to safety.

Tesla sprawled on his ass and stared up at him with round eyes.

Ozan could trust him.

“Take care of my brother, Erol,” he called.

The train struck.