The train shook and slowed in the tunnel while booms broke from above. I braced myself for the lights vanishing, gasps sweeping through the carriage, high-pitched and solid like the coos of a dove. The train stopped. One by one, screens were switched on, little lighthouses in an ink black sea. I glanced around at my fellow passengers. It was easy to spot the tourists, the recent movers, the people who hadn’t dealt with this on a weekly basis. The wide worried eyes, the mouths slightly agape, bodies taunt and tense; dead fish on iron hooks. I longed to reach out, touch their scales, tell them there was nothing to be worried about, that they would get used to it if they simply stayed long enough. Run a finger down their cold bulks, let the salty smell of scare bury itself under my nail. Instead, I caught the eye of the woman opposite. She was local, a horse eye jack who saw all before, a familiar tale to her now. When the banging increased she never flinched. We nodded at each other, grimaced in our shared annoyance. Of course it happened on our Monday commute. God forbid they did this on the weekends. Frustration and fear rippled through the crowd, swirled in the dark, whirlpool threatening to capsize the carriage. I exhaled deeply, remained calm. Knowledge weighed my worries down, anchored hysteria to cool damp earth. I had read only a couple of days ago another inmate had escaped the asylum. Something to do with ice. It was only a matter of time before the man-bat-whatever found and fought them, crashing into buildings, disrupting the city’s currents. They were kids splashing in surf, the sun beating the waters white, careless and uncaring. Everyone else was irrelevant, no matter what they said. I rested my head against the seat, prepared for a long wait. As the bangs and booms bounced overhead, as blood shed, I closed my eyes, dreamt of vacation, the ocean bed.