The Unstoppable (Chapter Eight)

Chapter Eight: Black Envelopes

Standing on the train as it rolled quietly down the track, I could hardly believe it had been just six hours since I'd watched Candi hand Tony that fateful black envelope. I still didn't know what they meant, those slips of paper enclosed in dark wrapping. I still felt overwhelmed and out of my depth.

Sabrina reached into my jacket quite frankly then and with no warning. Her fingers searched about for a few very uncomfortable seconds until she found the holster. After curving her hand around the grip, she withdrew, apparently satisfied. I had half expected her to draw the weapon, but apparently she wasn't interested just yet.

"Alright, let's get going." Sabrina urged. "Mission's still on, yes? He's on the train somewhere, I know that much. I can only assume he would be in the front, where the controls are. Maybe we can take him by surprise."

We rounded a corner and the lights flickered ominously. It was getting darker outside as the day progressed. I nodded and made for the door that led to the next car of the train. An automatic door with a little window slid aside for me, making the transition surprisingly easy. This cab was identical to the last, plush red cushions all in neat rows.

And no people.

Moving cautiously, we made for the next car. I wasn't sure how long the train was. I hoped Sabrina knew. I didn't want to stumble on Super Hobo without warning. I looked out the windows, watching the city quickly sliding by.

"You wanna draw that gun now?" Sabrina asked. "We're only going to get one chance to take this guy out." The gun. It was as awkward as ever where it lay against my shirt. I reached into my jacket, letting my own hand fumble against the grip.

"This gun could save us, yes, but it could also get us killed. I should empty the clip and throw it away." I made a motion to do exactly that, but Sabrina snatched it from my hand.

"That's a risk I'm willing to take. If you can't handle it, I'll hold onto it." I shrugged and moved on. I could heal from almost anything. It was her choice if she wanted a weapon around that could wind up being turned against her.

If we failed right now, that was exactly what would happen. The next cab was as empty as the last, and so was the next. Nothing broke the monotony until Sabrina finally spoke up. "This is the last passenger car. The engine is right through that door." Holding her gun, she reached into her pocket, fumbling for something. A little vial.

The automatic door in question was just like all the others. The only difference this time was, there was no window. No way to see in or out. No way to know what was waiting for us.

Also unlike the other doors, as we snuck close this one didn't immediately open for us. I was relieved at this, because I wanted a minute to mentally compose myself before we dove in. I didn't get it, however. The moment we were leaned against the wall by the entry, Sabrina slapped a button, opening the door.

It opened into a control booth occupied by panels of buttons and levers. Windows opened up on all sides to show us a world being taken over by the slow pull of twilight. There were two men inside, one in the uniform of a train engineer, the other an old man dressed in ragged clothing.

The puppeteer.

All this took mere seconds to absorb. By then I had a had raised and ready, lightning crackling at my fingertips. Sabrina raised the gun and fired a shot, but her arm didn't obey her aim. It swung to me and shot me in the chest. As before, I felt a white-hot flash of pain in my chest. I wanted to drop to the floor then and there, but I locked my knees and grit my teeth, standing my ground. The wound healed quickly enough, but being shot was still being shot.

At that point, I was about to let fly with a burst of lightning, but Sabrina was suddenly in the way. The vagrant was using her as a human shield. I was conflicted. I could try to knock him back with my telekinesis, but my control was shaky at best.

Before I could do a thing, Sabrina had walked behind the puppeteer and was wrapping her arms around his shoulders. "No!" She screamed in protest. "You don't know the rules! You'll get us both kil-" Her panicked scream cut off as she disappeared from sight.

Now that my view of the track the train slid down was unobscured, I could see a man emerging from the mist. It was the bomber who'd nearly blown me up in the empty lot. His stance was casual, as if standing before a barreling was something he did every day. There could only be one reason someone would stand like that.

He was going to derail the train.

Now that he was out in the fading light of day, I could make out a few details I hadn't before. My adversary had long hair bound up in a pony tail, and was dressed in a long gray trench coat. He upraised one hand, and I saw another of those slim black cylinders appear.

The way I saw it, I had two options.

I could let him bring down the train.

Or I could try to hurl his little explosive back at him. I might kill him, but I would probably damage the track.

And then the trail would be flying from the rails anyhow anyhow.

Realizing escape was my best option, I turned to run back the way we’d come. I burst through the door back into that first passenger car. I had almost made it to the entry to the next car when the engine exploded behind me. The explosion knocked me clean off my feet. As the train began to slip from its moorings to the ground below, I was hurled over the seats to hit the windows on one wall. They shattered on impact, razor shards of glass cutting every unprotected inch of my skin to ribbons.

I felt another impact as the car hit the street, could hear the asphault being ground to bits. Cars screeched to a halt under this unprecedented rampage into their territory. I came to a rolling halt on the center aisle, battered and beat to hell. My blood had left red patterns on everything. The windows, all variously spiderweb cracked or completely gone, had taken their toll on me.

Just when I was catching my breath, thinking it was all over, and my wounds were fading into memory and oblivion, it began again. Another car derailed right on top of mine. The mostly unharmed windows on the other side shattered as the integrity of the other side began to buckle, bringing more glass raining down on top of me. This time however I managed to shield my body inside my jacket, allowing the worst of it to pass me by.

There was no time to flee, no time to react. More and more of the train began to rain down on me. One after another, like silver bullets hammering a tin can. The crash was the most catastrophic, mind blowing thing I’d ever experienced. I counted it a mercy when my attempt to stand met with failure, and a jarring finally threw my head into a wall hard enough for me to black out.

When I awoke, the train car I’d been trapped in was so horribly battered that either side had nearly been pressed together, with me being nearly squished between them. I crawled outside to find a world in frightening chaos. This was the second time I’d woken up from head trauma to find things having spiraled out in my absence. I decided I hated that feeling of helplessness. I resolved to be less careless next time. I knew this mess wasn’t exactly my fault, but I couldn’t help thinking I could have handled things differently.

My mind reeled as I thought over the next possible move. I made my way through a maze of random cars variously wrecked or stopped. It didn’t look like anyone but me had been seriously injured. The street I’d crashed into didn’t seem like it had been too heavily trafficked, which was surprising since rush hour was nearly upon us.

I found Sabrina and Super Hobo not far from the wreckage. They were at an intersection illuminated against the growing dark by a lonely streetlamp. We seemed to be in a bit of an abandoned corner. That explained the low impact we’d had, the delay in rescue workers arrival. Super Hobo was on his backside, trying to crawl away. Sabrina was clutching a wound in her belly, trying to reach my gun.

The gun that lay at my feet, I realized.

“Blackpool! Hurry up! Take him out!” I bent down and picked up the gun, examined it for a moment. Was I capable of shooting someone else? Could I willingly snuff out another man’s life. The vagrant was concentrating on me, gazing at me with ancient, pale blue eyes. I took a few steps closer, and the look intensified. He’s trying to take control of me, I thought. It’s not working.

His powers were useless against me.

“Come on Blackpool!” Sabrina cried in a strained voice. “Take the damn shot!” Emboldened, I took a few steps closer, lifted the gun to his forehead.

“Please…” the vagrant looked up at me with a pleading look on his face. “I surrender. No more tricks. You can take me into custody.”

“Agent Blackpool, take the shot. That’s an order.” Tony’s voice came from behind me. “And hurry up about it. This is some mess we’ve got on our hands.”

“He surrendered,” I replied meekly. “I can’t.”

“Do it Blackpool! Kill him right now or so help me God…” Before I knew what was happening, Tony lunged at me, wrestling the gun from my grasp again. Realizing the error I’d made, I half expected Tony, Sabrina or I to be the one that got shot, but Tony leveled my weapon at the vagrant.

“Sorry newbie, this mission was code black right from the start.”

“You can kill me,” the vagrant said, “but you can’t break the chain, the cycle of life. The Seed will bloom, and her flowers will choke you all.”

The man left the world with a bang, defeated at last. I realized I’d been holding my breath and let it out with a massive whoosh. “What is code black? What do the envelopes mean?”

“Assassination orders.” Tony replied tersely. He began to rummage through the corpse’s dirty old corpse till he found what he was looking for, the Oracle Sphere. “Take care of Officer Rathbone,” the senior officer ordered. I tore a strip off my shirt, making a bandage for what appeared to be a wicked knife wound in her abdomen. As I wrapped the skinny intelligence officer in my jacket, I asked her what happened.

“I sedated him, of course. You were pretty much useless, so I had to do something.” I remembered her messing with a little vial right before our assault. She must have hidden it in her hand so the vagrant wouldn’t know about it. "When we teleported down here, I nearly got away but he started to come around a lot faster than I anticipated. He managed to stick me with his switchblade before I could escape.

“I’m sorry,” I said vehemently. “Next time I promise I’ll do better.”

“Yeah well, we’ll see,” was her only answer. I graciously elected not to bring up the fact that she’d shot me.

“Is that Sphere thingie alright?” I asked Tony.

“Oh, it’s just dandy, newbie.” He brought the little device close to where I knelt and held it close to my face. Squeezing it tightly between his fingertips, it began to crack.

It was made of plastic.

“It’s… fake?”

“Oh yeah. This whole operation was a setup. Like I said, an assassination.” Agent Kramer’s face was lined with exhaustion and disgust. “That scumbag was the highest profile of high profile targets, one of the top dogs with the Seed. He was no hobo. He was in disguise so he could get close without arousing too much suspicion. Would have worked perfectly too if Rathbone hadn’t thought on her feet.”

Sabrina's already wan features turned white-hot with anger. "And you didn't think we might need to know what was really going on?"

"We needed to sell the fact that the Oracle Sphere was real. It needed to seem like an authentic mission."

"That's bullcrap." Sabrina replied. "I'd kill you right now if I could get ahold of that gun." Keeping us in the dark, that's Melville's thing, isn't it? I swear, he thinks we're all his lab rats sometimes."

"Trust me, all was as it needed to be." The agent said smoothly, unperturbed. We let the word slip about where the sphere was being kept, and then that it was due to be moved somewhere safer. Everything worked out perfectly on that end of things."

What hadn't worked out so well, apparently, was our getting taken by surprise, Tony getting shot, and the target escaping the bank without difficulty.

Of the second vell we'd encountered, the demolition man, there was no sign. Our success was obviously a mixed blessing. We'd succeeded, but the cost to the city was going to be astronomic. We weren't in charge of cleanup though, Tony assured me. While the cops and firefighters were coming out of the woodwork to mop up our mess, we simply fled.

Apparently being injured made teleportation difficult for Sabrina, so I had to carry her. After she refused to allow Tony to pick her up. We didn't have to go far. A taxi was waiting for us a few blocks from the wreck, as if the fact that our mission would end here had been anticipated all along.

Tony walked ahead and got the door, allowing me to gingerly lay the injured woman in my arms down. I slid in next to her and he followed. I sat back in those plush leather seats in clothes ragged and tattered. I was filthy and exhausted but largely unharmed. There was a tinted window keeping me from seeing who our driver was.

"Back to base." Tony ordered.

I laid back against the headrest, wondering if being shot, if shooting, if all this insanity, was something you could get used to. I didn't think so, but if I was ever going to survive, I knew I would have to find a way to adapt.

That was my first mission.

The light hadn't come yet.