The thirty-ton iron wheels of the industrial rail-crane shrieked as they ground against the rusted steel tracks. The enormous machine moved with slow, unstoppable momentum, its shadow creeping over Nora and Amelia like a guillotine.
The silver-nitrate wires of the net hissed against Nora’s skin, burning through her clothes and sending waves of paralyzing, metallic toxin straight into her bloodstream. Her platinum light fractured, sputtering like a dying candle in a gale. Beneath her, Amelia was pinned, her tiny face pale with a silent, hyperventilating terror as she stared up at the rolling mountain of iron less than ten feet away.
"Mommy..." the little girl said quietly, her voice swallowed by the roar of the perimeter fire.
At the edge of the fence, the first wave of federal thermite
