The Runaway Train

"Whooo, clatter clatter—"

On the railway hemmed in by snow-white mountains, the whistle of an old-fashioned train drew nearer, faintly echoing above the snow-covered peaks.

A long steel cable hung down from a mountaintop, spanning a drop of over a hundred meters before being fastened to the mountainside opposite. Directly beneath it lay the railway tracks.

"It should feel like swinging on a swing." Kyle shrugged as he stood at the edge of the peak, both hands gripping the metal ring apparatus on the descending cable.

"Be careful," Steve reminded him. "If we miss that ten-second window, we'll all be run over by the train."

"All right, I'll time it properly." Bucky nodded. He clearly did not possess the extraordinary physique of a Super Soldier, and carried an Energy Pistol as his weapon against the enemy.

"Guys, get ready!"

Fury had been watching through binoculars. When the enemy train appeared on the tracks below, he raised his voice. "It's moving fast. Get ready—"

"3, 2, 1, GO!"

The moment Fury gave the signal, Kyle was the first to leap from the peak. Clutching the metal ring, he rapidly slid down the cable, with Steve and Bucky swiftly following behind him.

"Whoosh!"

Icy wind mixed with snow blew into his face as Kyle, dressed in black combat gear, cut through the storm.

Watching the locomotive race along the tracks beneath him, he released his hands and landed lightly on the roof of a carriage near the middle of the train.

Thud! Thud!

Steve and Bucky landed on the train roof one after another. The train continued racing along, while beside the tracks lay a snow-covered valley hundreds of meters deep, enough to make anyone's heart pound.

"Kyle, what's the plan?" Steve asked. Knowing Kyle well, he understood that despite having attained the rank of major, Kyle still preferred fighting alone in operations like this.

"Simple. I'll enter through one of the middle carriages and draw the guards' attention. You two push through the front carriages and capture the target alive in the driver's cabin." Without waiting for Steve's response, Kyle decisively climbed down the side of the carriage, twisted the handle, and forced his way through the door.

Less than a few seconds after Kyle entered the carriage, an intrusion alert blared from inside, followed by the crackling bursts of Energy Pistols and the miserable screams of enemy soldiers.

Bucky shook his head as he listened from the roof. "Yep. Simple and brutal as always."

"Let's go." Steve was already used to it. He waved ahead, crouched low, and used the train roof as a path toward the carriages at the front.

Inside the middle carriage, beneath glaring lights.

The cold corpses of five fully armed German guards lay sprawled across the floor. Some had both arms severed outright, some had been cut in half at the waist, while the luckier-looking ones had merely been stabbed through the heart.

Several blue-glowing Energy Pistols, stained with blood, lay scattered across the floor. Most of the German guards had not even had time to use these advanced weapons against the intruder before losing their lives.

Drip—

Kyle's face remained cold and expressionless. His left hand held a longsword dripping blood, while his right Vibranium Bracer still gave off a faint wisp of smoke. His leather military boots slowly stepped into the thick, scarlet pool of blood.

He swept his gaze over the piled supplies in the carriage, then suddenly looked up toward a corner wall, where a surveillance camera glowed with a faint red light.

"Have you noticed me?" A cold smile touched Kyle's lips as he crouched down and picked up a blue-glowing Energy Pistol from the floor.

He aimed and pulled the trigger. A thin blue laser shot from the muzzle, and the surveillance camera instantly turned to dust.

At the other end of the surveillance system, in the train's main driver's cabin.

A bald, bespectacled middle-aged professor and the train driver both revealed genuine terror from the depths of their souls.

"That butcher really came! We're dead, we're dead... The guards on the train can't stop him." The driver's tongue seemed frozen, his voice trembling and cracking.

Major Kyle of the American army was famous not only throughout America, but was equally well-known across Germany!

Yet that reputation had been built upon the corpses of thousands upon thousands of German soldiers. The German military hated Kyle to the bone, and had even tried sending frontline bombers to carpet-bomb him into oblivion.

He haunted the Germans like a nightmare. Even the bravest, most battle-hardened soldiers would be terrified before the fight began upon hearing the name "Kyle."

"Shut up! Send more guards to defend the main driver's cabin!" The bald professor slapped the driver across the face. Staring at the static-filled surveillance screen, madness surfaced in his eyes behind his lenses as he muttered, "Come on. You came at just the right time! Even if I die this time, I'll drag you down to hell with me!"

After destroying the surveillance camera, Kyle looked around the carriage and began extracting the supplies into cards.

There were two reasons he preferred fighting alone. First, he had too many secrets concerning cards and did not want to expose them too much before others—even Steve.

Second, only when fighting alone could he conveniently extract high-quality enemy supplies into cards whenever he came across them.

Especially with Hydra, the organization independently developed by Germany. After they began manufacturing New Energy Weapons, quite a few military supplies had reached the quality of Blue Item Cards.

Charged laser rifles, Reinforced Energy Pistols, Gem Energy...

Every extractable Blue Item Card within three meters of Kyle entered his field of vision.

"There's actually a whole crate of Gem Energy." Kyle blinked in delighted surprise. This was an unexpected haul. A crate of Gem Energy often amounted to nearly twenty-five Blue Item Cards.

Sometimes, even after capturing an entire base or factory, he might not find half a crate of Gem Energy blocks used as raw energy material.

"With Steve and Bucky together, they should be able to handle the guards in the driver's cabin easily enough." Kyle muttered softly, but his thoughts never paused. At a rate of one Gem Energy block every three seconds, he converted all the energy blocks in the crate into cards and stored them in Card Space.

More than a minute passed, yet not a single enemy guard came this way to interrupt his card extraction.

Just as Kyle finished extracting them and stood up, the train suddenly shuddered violently, nearly making him stumble to the floor.

"What's going on?" Kyle frowned. He quickly opened the carriage door, stuck his head out, and looked toward the front of the train.

The front carriage had been blasted open with a massive breach. Thick smoke billowed from the driver's cabin, and crimson flames flickered within.

More importantly, the steel train was accelerating continuously. It soon exceeded its speed limit, causing countless sparks to spray from the wheels against the tracks!

It was Qixi Festival. Send some recommendation votes to comfort this lonely single dog, QAQ.