Chapter Thirty-Nine: Do You Trust Me?

A shrill whistle pierced the sky, shattering the tranquility of the glacial mountains. The runaway steel train thundered forward, billowing thick smoke, its speed along the rails climbing ever higher with no sign of slowing.

"Did Steve mess up on his end?"

Kyle raised an eyebrow, about to climb up onto the roof and make his way to the front of the train. But seeing that the train was about to enter a tunnel barely wide enough for the cars, he quickly retreated back inside, closing the door behind him.

As the train plunged into the tunnel, the light inside the carriage dimmed, leaving only faint lamps to stave off the gloom. Kyle peered down the corridor of the train; at each end of every carriage, automated mechanical doors had been installed, all now firmly locked from the direction of the control cabin.

There was no time for hesitation.

A translucent blue card materialized between Kyle's fingers; in the next instant, an energy laser gun solidified in his grip. He aimed the weapon at the sealed door and fired.

A sharp hiss— The locked mechanical door was instantly blasted apart by the laser. With his gun at the ready, Kyle stepped through the ruined passage and hurried toward the engine.

One by one, the blocked passage doors fell to his relentless blasts, leaving a trail of wreckage in his wake.

"This should be the last one," Kyle muttered, eyeing the fifth door. He fired again; the steel mechanical door was vaporized by the energy beam, and the resulting shockwave blew away the dense smoke ahead in the driver’s compartment.

A grisly scene greeted him, so shocking that even Kyle’s eyes widened in surprise.

Both sides of the driver's compartment had been blown open, gaping holes torn through the steel shell of the train, exposing the tunnel walls flashing past outside and the sparks flying up from the wheels. The floor was littered with fragments of bone and flesh, soaked in crimson blood, as if someone had detonated themselves as a human bomb. Smoke and fire still poured from the ruined control console.

Steve sat wearily on the floor, a bald professor lying unconscious beside him—Kyle recognized their target for this mission.

"Kyle, you're here." Steve looked up, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles cracked, as if enduring immense pain.

"What happened here? How did it come to this? Are you hurt?" Kyle tossed aside the energy gun, rushing forward to help Steve up, then asked, as if suddenly remembering, "Where's Bucky?"

"It's my fault—I underestimated them," Steve sighed, unable to suppress his grief. "Bucky... He tried to save me, but the blast from the conductor’s body bomb threw him out of the train, down into the snowy valley hundreds of meters below."

So fate has repeated itself for the Winter Soldier.

Kyle betrayed no emotion, though he knew Bucky was not dead. Yet the fate awaiting him was a torment worse than death: decades as a soulless weapon, controlled by a foreign regime.

Kyle was not one for comfort. He merely patted Steve’s shoulder. "Don’t dwell on it. For a soldier, dying on the battlefield is commonplace. Don’t let it distract you from the mission."

"I know." Steve drew a deep breath, hoisting the unconscious professor onto his shoulder. "At least the mission is done—the target tried to bite a poison capsule, but I knocked him out first."

"So the intel was right. Hydra’s people love their suicide poisons," Kyle mused. "Now we just need to get our man out of here safely."

"That’s the problem," Steve said with a wry smile, nodding toward the smoking, burning control console. "The explosion didn’t just blow out both sides of the compartment—it destroyed the controls. The train’s out of control, still accelerating."

"At this speed, we must be over a hundred and fifty kilometers an hour, and still speeding up. There’s no way to stop now." Kyle watched the sparks flying from the wheels, searching for a solution.

Jumping off at this speed would be suicide—even for him. And on either side of the train, sheer cliffs and icy chasms awaited.

If he were alone, he could use "Stealth" for instantaneous escape. But with Steve and a hostage in tow, that was out of the question.

Steve offered an idea. "All we can do is head to the rear, decouple the carriages from the engine, and hope the rest of the train stops."

Kyle shook his head. "If I remember the glacier map correctly, once the train leaves this long, straight tunnel, there’s an immediate curve. At this speed, even without the engine, the cars will derail and plunge into the canyon before they can stop."

Steve’s face grew grim. "Then what do we do? We can’t just sit here and wait for the train to fly off the tracks, can we?"

Kyle fell silent for a moment, then locked eyes with Steve. "Do you trust me?"

Steve blinked, then answered without hesitation. "Of course. If I don’t trust you, who else would I trust in this world?"

"Then do nothing." A mysterious smile touched Kyle’s lips. Now that he had decided, he seemed relieved, all trace of crisis gone from his face.

He spoke with certainty: "When the train bursts out of the tunnel and starts to fall, I’ll tell you to jump. Take the hostage and leap over the edge."

"Jump off a cliff?" Steve stared at him, bewildered. The canyon below was no deep river, only frozen, unyielding ice.

"You said you trust me." Kyle shrugged.

"All right. If you say jump, I’ll jump." Steve slung the hostage more securely over his shoulder, eyes fixed on the tunnel wall, ready for whatever came next.

In barely a dozen seconds, the train, now exceeding two hundred kilometers an hour, reached the end of the tunnel. Darkness was swept away by the blinding daylight outside.

The dazzling white light made Steve squint. At that very moment, the train was wracked by violent tremors—the wheels shattered amid a shower of sparks!

With a harsh metallic screech, the runaway train, unable to make the curve at such speed, hurtled off the rails, soaring out over the abyss.

Icy wind and snow blasted into the compartment, and the sickening sensation of freefall gripped them all.

"Steve, jump!"

Before Kyle finished speaking, he leapt from the car.

Steve didn’t hesitate. With the hostage on his shoulder, he followed Kyle out of the plunging train, hurtling down into the canyon hundreds of meters below.