Content deleted Content added
→The Prequel: Fixed some typos, the prequel is three volumes. |
Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit |
||
Line 44:
While exploring the station, the passengers are seized by people wearing mice masks. The passengers are given food, but put in quarantine and inoculated for disease. The passengers are permitted to join the mice community but are forced to be barcoded and blood-tested, and children and pregnant women are taken away for "special treatment." Val uses a distraction to barcode herself and avoid a blood test, which would expose her pregnancy. It is revealed that the compound is a hybrid research laboratory and amusement park named Future Land. Its deranged founders, the "switchmen", have prolonged their life by using the stem cells of babies, and used the radio signal to lure all the other trains to them: There were ten perpetual trains, of which Icebreaker was the last of seven that successfully reached the station. It is further revealed that the switchmen have neutered all the mice and performed genetic experiments on fetuses and babies, in a misguided attempt to engineer a perfect human species. Laura betrays Val, who is taken to the switchmen.
While these events transpired, Puig escaped his captivity and recovered with the engineer's aid. Under disguise as a mouse, Puig uncovers that the nuclear plant that powers the compound is leaking and slowly killing the population. Puig reunites with Tom (the former radarist), Val, and the other explorers, and together they free the children and animals held in captivity. They return to the Icebreaker, which the engineer has repaired, but are confronted by armed mice. Puig describes the situation and appeals to them to join him and the other passengers, and many of the mice defect. When Lewis tries to stop them from escaping, she's run over by the train.
The story ends in the future: Hunters have just killed a [[Orca|killer whale]], and as Puig dies of old age, a glimpse of flowers growing out of a patch of thawed earth is shown.
| |||