The Abyss

Abyss Station 436 · the end of the line

A mile-wide flaming pit ringed by thousands of portals where spent trains are dumped — and the secret to backtracking the floor.

Story so far

The Abyss is what Carl finds at the top of a long stair from Abyss Station 436, the Nightmare Express's highest stop on The Iron Tangle. A mile-wide, thousands-of-feet-deep flaming pit is ringed by hundreds of catwalks and thousands of glowing subspace portals; driverless trains burst through and crash into a mountain of wreckage swarmed by Jikininki. Using his portal-sight, Carl grasps the truth: colored trains aren't looping in time — the cars are junked here while only engine cars teleport to a fenced trainyard full of zombie-guards beyond.

He also learns the escape secret: equipping the junk conductor's souvenir hat (or holding an engineer's key) lets a rider pass the portals to the early, stairwell-bearing stations.

Appearance

An immense, near-perfectly round flaming chasm at least a mile across and thousands of feet deep, its interior walls studded with hundreds of glowing portals and irregular iron catwalks; trains erupt from portals and tumble to a burning heap of wreckage below.

Role

The floor's hidden heart and the key to understanding the trains and escaping.

Relationships

Nightmare Express — The train whose line ends at the station beneath the Abyss.

Train Conductor's Souvenir Hat — The junk item that, equipped, grants passage through its portals.

Jikininki — The ghouls swarming the crashed trains at its base.

Earlier in this series

Also appears in books you've already read — spoiler-safe to their endings:

Carl's Doomsday ScenarioBook 2

Sources — 1 recorded facts, by chapter

Chapter 15

A mile-wide flaming pit ringed by thousands of portals where spent trains are dumped — and the secret to backtracking the floor.