Read Tube Riders, The for Free Online

immediately, delighted with his success, and jogged back down the platform again, rubbing his sore stomach.
    He did a couple more one-eighties to the right, then one to the left, against the flow of the train. This was more difficult, and he landed awkwardly, twisting his ankle a little.
    He rubbed it for a while, watching a couple more trains pass. He didn’t care about the pain, only whether or not he could run quickly enough for the mount. The others didn’t know about the tricks he did, and one day he hoped to astound them with a stunning display of dismount moves. He wasn’t far off, but with an audience he’d have nerves to deal with too. And for his last move, he needed full concentration.
    The back flip. He’d done it twice without hurting himself, but didn’t trust himself to pull it off in public. Still, it was the last thing he needed to make his repertoire complete.
    He sprinted as the train roared out of the tunnel and leapt for it, clawboard stretching for the rail. He caught and braced himself against the side, peering in but without concentrating. Several people had seen him today, but he was thinking of his dismount too much to worry about cultivating their legend further.
    He quickly realised this wasn’t a normal commuter train, though. A group of men in dark suits stood near the window with their backs to him, and he recognised them as the special police, the Department of Civil Affairs. They were the ones who made people disappear, who rounded up heretics and dissenters and pretty much anyone else they didn’t like. He had come across one of the bastards drunk once and had cut the guy up, carved the word “cunt” into his back and left him for dead. Whether the guy had survived or not, Switch didn’t know or care.
    He was starting to think about an early dismount to avoid them seeing him, but then one moved slightly and through a gap in their bodies he saw a cloaked, hooded figure sitting down, facing him. Leather straps with metal chains threaded around them kept the figure’s arms at its sides. They were transporting a fugitive, it looked like, and he leaned closer to the window, trying to see the face under the hood, wondering wryly if he might recognise the man.
    Then a roar over the top of the wind seemed to shake the window in front of his face. The cluster of DCA agents separated as though blown apart by the bound figure as it jerked into a standing position, straining against more bonds that held it down. To either side, more agents tried to restrain what was not a man but something else, something alien, something monstrous.
    As the wolverine face roared at him again, its sharp teeth bared, Switch recoiled in shock and his feet lost their purchase.
    ‘Oh, fuck–’
    For a second he hung loose from the side of the train, feet dangling just above the gaping hole between the train and the platform edge. He glanced forward and saw the end wall of the platform rushing towards him.
    He looked back into the carriage and saw the thing trying to reach him, its bound hands shaking, its jaw snapping, a group of men trying to restrain it. He closed his eyes –
    And his feet gripped. He kicked up blindly, falling backwards, not caring about his dismount, just wanting to be away from that snarling, menacing thing. He plummeted through the air, hearing the sound of the train cut off early, way too early, and then he landed hard, the mattresses catching him, the clawboard striking his temple as he failed to control its momentum. His forehead ached, but he was safe, he was off the train, he was away from that thing.
    As the train vanished into the tunnel he rolled on to his side, dismayed to see blood dripping on to the mattresses. He untangled himself from the clawboard and wiped his face, holding a finger over the gash in his forehead to stem the bleeding. The pain barely registered as he looked up at the empty tunnel as though the beast might still come back for him. Despite the muggy heat in the