[CURRENT ZONE: THE EUROTUNNEL] [MAIN SCENARIO TIME REMAINING: 6 DAYS, 17 HOURS, 38 MINUTES]

  Behind the train, a terrifying, silent wall of pure, erasing white light materialized in the tunnel. It wasn't water. It was raw formatting code. Everything the white light touched the tracks, the concrete walls, the residual code … simply ceased to exist.

  And it was moving down the tunnel directly toward the back of the train.

  [FORMATTING SECTOR 4... 3... 2...]

  "Terry!" Kai screamed, diving into the passenger seat as Grom, Maya, and Gideon piled into the back alongside a cowering Walter and Pigglesworth. "Drive!"

  "We're inside a locked metal box, Kai!" Terry roared, gesturing to the sealed steel doors at the front of the carriage. "I can't push a train from the inside! That's not how physics works!"

  "The physics engine is already corrupted!" Walter yelled from the back seat, pushing his glasses up his nose. "Terry, clip the hitbox!"

  "Speak English, Walter!" Terry shouted.

  "Drive the cab directly into the front doors and don't take your foot off the gas!" Walter screamed over the blaring siren. "Because the train is locked to fixed transit rails, the physics engine can't push us sideways! If you force the cab's collision mesh to overlap with the train's geometry, the server will panic! It will try to mathematically separate the two objects by applying infinite forward momentum! It only works because we're inside a guided transit object! You'll turn the train into a railgun!"

  Terry didn't hesitate. "Right. Infinite momentum on a fixed rail. Hold onto your teeth!"

  Terry slammed his boot down on the accelerator. The Black Cab's diesel engine roared. The glowing [∞] symbol on his broken fare meter flared brilliantly in the dark cab.

  With a horrific screech of metal against metal, the Black Cab surged forward, slamming its heavy grill directly into the locked steel doors of the carriage. Terry kept his foot pinned to the floor. The tires spun wildly, screaming against the wet steel floor.

  For one agonizing second, nothing happened. The cab just ground helplessly against the door.

  Then, the System physics engine broke.

  [WARNING: COLLISION ERROR DETECTED. RESOLVING MESH OVERLAP...]

  The server panicked. To resolve the physical impossibility of the cab and the train doors occupying the exact same digital space without being able to move them laterally off the tracks, the physics engine violently multiplied the train's forward velocity.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The entire Eurotunnel train shot forward through the dark tunnel like a fired bullet.

  The sheer G-force slammed everyone back into the leather seats. My velvet jacket!" Pigglesworth shrieked, his cheeks flapping under the intense acceleration. "This is a highly undignified mode of transportation! I am wrinkling!"The train's wheels sparked violently, shrieking against the tracks as it rocketed away, frantically trying to outrun the wall of white deletion code.

  "I am not getting formatted on a Tuesday!" Terry bellowed, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as the speedometer pinned itself to the redline.

  Through the rear-view mirror, Kai watched the white light consume the carriage directly behind them, dissolving the steel into nothingness. The light was fifty feet away. Then thirty.

  A pinprick of natural light appeared at the end of the dark tunnel.

  The white wave of deletion code slammed into the rear bumper of the Black Cab, instantly vaporizing the 'TAXI' license plate into raw data. The deletion wave was creeping forward, millimeters at a time, threatening to consume the trunk.

  "Terry!" Kai yelled.

  Terry slammed his hand onto the nitrous button on his dashboard ..a residual, glitched modification from their M25 escape. Blue flames erupted from the exhaust.

  The nitrous didn't add any speed to the impossible velocity the server was already generating, but it was a defiant, screaming middle finger to the wall of deletion code breathing down their necks. The sheer, brute force thrust kept the cab's grill pinned inside the train's collision mesh, forcing the server to maintain the glitch.

  The physics engine gave one final, violent shove.

  The train burst out of the tunnel.

  Blinding, natural sunlight flooded the steel carriage. The front doors of the train violently blew outward from the air pressure, and the Black Cab rocketed completely off the moving train. It flew through the air, clearing the tracks entirely, and slammed down hard onto the massive, sprawling concrete off-ramps of the Calais Terminal.

  Terry stomped on the brakes, throwing the cab into a wild, screeching drift. The heavy car spun 180 degrees before coming to a smoking halt just inches from a French toll booth.

  Behind them, the Eurotunnel train screeched to a halt at the platform. The tunnel entrance they had just flown out of violently snapped shut. A massive, impenetrable grey wall of code sealed the mouth of the tunnel perfectly shut.

  [SECTOR FORMATTED. TUNNEL QUARANTINED.]

  Kai sat in the passenger seat, his chest heaving, listening to the ticking of the cab's cooling engine. He looked down at the beginning of the rear bumper in the side mirror. A very small part of metal had been sheared off perfectly smooth, as if sliced by a laser. Few feet closer, and they would have been erased.

  Terry exhaled slowly, his hands shaking slightly on the steering wheel. He reached up and adjusted his flat cap.

  "Right," Terry grunted. "Welcome to France."

  Kai looked at the apocalyptic timer in his UI. The digital numbers blinked relentlessly against the clear blue sky.

  [6 DAYS, 16 HOURS, 10 MINUTES REMAINING]

  "Terry," Kai breathed, exhausted but smiling. "Take us to Paris."

  Terry didn't argue. He shifted the grinding gears and pulled the battered Black Cab away from the smoking toll booth, merging onto the sprawling French autoroute. But the victory felt incredibly short-lived, instead of rocketing toward the capital, the heavy taxi immediately sagged, its rear suspension groaning in protest under a sudden oppressive weight. The tires began to scrape agonizingly against the wheel wells. Outside, the blue sky of the French countryside looked suspiciously, aggressively idyllic, but inside the cab, the grim reality was settling in. They were barely doing 30 miles per hour, and Paris was still a long way away.