⚡ 〙 dated to directly at midnight est.
Lightning has unobtrusively scoped her way from one end of the train to the other several times over by the time midnight hits -- the cusp of Saturday and Sunday, breaching day three of this ridiculous moving prison with its illusions trying to reach through the otherwise darkened windows. The ex soldier stands in car thirteen where there is less comfort to be had, willing to bet that it looks different for no reason as soon as she would bet that it looks different because it actually means something. Hard to tell.
If being stuck on a train isn't bad enough, the deaths have been and the bursts of mechanical chaos too -- darkness, inexplicable chills, the damn compartment walls seeming to breathe inward, and the way shadows threaten even in the dark, the way water ripples visibly when there isn't any light to make sense of it. All in all it feels like the deities have just decided to use a minimal divergence from a theme park ride as their literal vehicle to...do...whatever.
Mulling this over with no one else around at midnight seems the perfect time for said whatever to turn its attention to her. When what light there was disappears, panic isn't in Lightning's nature. Instead she focuses on what's around her -- yes still trying to see in the dark however much a losing battle that might be -- and listening, listening to how quiet things are, contrasting deeply with the way the pulsing shadows seem to emulate a sound's image without audibly realizing it. Rhythmic. Measured. What does it mean? She doesn't have time to think about it further.
One moment it feels like everything has become perfectly still, even the train which makes no sense, but that's exactly the kind of point that seems to last much longer to the person experiencing it. Outside of that perspective the last twelve seconds of the midnight toll coincide with twelve different blades tearing their individual ways through her. When the lights come back up -- when someone finds the body -- the mess will only be rivaled by the stench of it.
][ b r o a d c a s t || AUDIO ❱❱ video ][
[ First, there's the audio which amounts to a bunch of static, then the crumpling of a body to the floor, and then the clatter of the device as it lodges itself on the floor after rolling on its side to hit the video function...
...which gives the audience a vague angle of another midnight express victim. ]
[ooc; Death 8 on the best train of all time, uhhhhh investigative types or whoever feel free to...do your thing. Poor City custodial types... ]