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LJ remembers the days before the freeze.
She remembers houses and malls and schools, remembers parks and zoos and forests. She remembers being able to leave your house and walk down a street if you wanted to; she remembers children riding bikes and teenagers rolling around in cars. She remembers buses and planes and trains with less than a thousand cars.
But then, Snowpiercer is now a train with less than a thousand cars too.
LJ hasn’t spoken to anyone who Knows yet, but she’s pretty sure her mom and dad were on the seven cars detached in the scheme to scrape off the jackboots and save the Tailie and Thirdie rebellion. This is a likelihood she cannot fully comprehend at the moment; for now, she simply presses on through the throngs of people littered throughout First and Second Class.
They’re mostly involved in their own business of looting and breaking and celebrating, and don’t notice her. The Tailies might know her name, but they wouldn’t know what LJ looks like; the Thirdies, on the other hand, have a better idea, and she sees a few heads turn her way as she weaves through the cars.
“Is that LJ Folger?”
“The murderer?”
“The one who got off by appealing to Mr. Wilford?”
“You mean Melanie?”
“Little bitch killed people.”
“And got off.”
“She’s the reason Nikki’s dead.”
“Bitch.”
“Murderer.”
LJ waits, sweat dripping down her forehead, until the door to the next car opens; she picks up the pace, moving at not quite a run.
She’s not stupid- quite the opposite. LJ knows she is massively unpopular outside of the first and second classes, that maybe only a handful of Thirdies and Tailies would have fallen for the time-tested ‘I’m just a poor little girl, my big strong boyfriend made me do it’ defense. And she is aggressively aware that she has very few avenues of escape within the confines of Snowpiercer.
Few allies, very little ability to defend herself, and zero ability to escape.
I’m going to die, LJ thinks as she hurries to Third, thinking that this is the last place anyone would think to look for her. If she’s fortunate, they’ll think she died on the train cars with her parents (if. if they are dead). If she’s really lucky, maybe Layton will tell them about how she helped their revolution, helped to reveal Melanie Cavill’s ruse and create an opportunity for them to strike, which might inspire them to offer LJ some slack, some reprieve.
But LJ isn’t naïve enough to think that people will honor their word. She remembers enough of the world, the real world, before Snowpiercer and First Class to remember how untrustworthy people are. She even has enough self-awareness to know that she is one of those untrustworthy people.
Towards the middle of the train, where Second and Third meet, LJ starts to see a lot more blood and gore and dead bodies that haven’t been cleaned up yet. Some of them bear signs of Kronole use, so she figures that they must have gotten into Snowpiercer’s store of it when there was no one there to stop them.
LJ steps carefully to avoid slipping in the blood, or getting any on her clothes. The last thing she needs is someone seeing blood on her and thinking that she’s struck again: LJ can no longer rely on her parents or her First Class status to protect her from mob justice anymore. She has to look after herself, and she is woefully unequipped to do that.
I want to go home.
LJ thinks of the big eggshell-colored house with the white shutters they had lived in before the Freeze, the one with the forest nearby where she used to poke dead animals with sticks. She thinks of the sleek new school she had attended, the one that had slowly emptied of classmates as the Freeze became more intense and their families began fleeing to warmer climates.
That is Home. Not First Class, surrounded by fake smiles and put-on gentility.
Not Snowpiercer, full of delusional idiots under the ridiculous belief that they are somehow special and gifted with greater purpose in this world by virtue of their continued survival aboard the train.
There is no greater purpose.
The universe is indifferent.
Nobody knows this better than LJ, for better or worse.
So she finds a random car in Third, tucks herself into a dark corner, and hopes beyond hope that no one finds here there.
-End