I Evolve 10,000 Times Faster

The explosion came eleven minutes later, exactly where Holden said it would.

BOOM!

The blast wasn’t on the track. It came from the engine car itself. A shaped charge mounted on the outer door blew the steel panel inward, sending sparks and twisted metal flying. The train lurched as the emergency brakes screamed against the rails.

screeeeech.

Holden grabbed the edge of the table as the cabin shook. A cup rolled off and shattered on the floor. The lights flickered, died, then came back as emergency red.

The train slowed but didn’t stop. The momentum carried it forward, grinding along the rails while sparks flew past the window in bright orange streaks. The Keldrin Bridge was ahead, and Holden could feel it in the tracks. The rail resonance had changed again, the frequency shifting as the damaged bridge supports took the weight of the slowing train.

"Here they come," he said.

Holden could hear dozens of footsteps, pounding along the roof of the passenger cars, followed by the sounds of doors being kicked in one after another, moving from the front of the train toward the back.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

"Assault team is moving through the train," Maeve said through the earpiece, her voice steady and controlled. "I’m counting twenty signatures. All Rank 2. Heavily armed."

"Copy."

"Holden, the soldiers up front can’t stop them. These are professionals."

"I know."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Nothing. Keep the channel open. I want a recording of this."

"A recording?"

"For posterity."

The footsteps reached the car outside their cabin and stopped. Voices came through the door.

"Back car. Four targets. Sleeping students." The voice was rough and gravelly, like he’d been smoking for most of his life. "Keep the shock rifles on stun. Use the plasma blades if anyone decides to fight back. Thirty seconds, then we’re out. We need the leader alive if possible, but the rest are optional."

"Optional?" A second voice, higher and thinner, gave a quiet laugh. "I like the sound of that."

"Just shut up and get ready. Breach on three."

Holden sat in his chair with his legs crossed and hands resting on the armrests.

"One."

Emric moved to the center of the cabin, stepping directly in front of the door. His shield came up, angled precisely. His 10x cognitive buff was already running the math: angle of entry, number of hostiles, probable weapon positions, blast radius of plasma bolts.

"Two."

Renna rolled off the top bunk, landing in a crouch behind Emric’s shield with her bow drawn and three arrows nocked.

"Three."

The door exploded inward.

BANG!

The Syndicate thugs poured through, four in the first wave, moving shoulder to shoulder in matte-black combat armor. The Crimson Syndicate insignia, a red fang set against a black circle, was stamped across their shoulders. Their weapons were heavy shock rifles with oversized barrels crackling with blue-white energy, and plasma blades hung from their belts.

The first thug through the door was the biggest, a shaved-head man with a scar across his nose. His shock rifle was already firing.

bzzt. bzzt. bzzt.

Three plasma bolts slammed into Emric’s shield.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

The shield was angled perfectly. His 10x cognitive buff had calculated the exact trajectory of each bolt before it left the rifle barrel. The plasma bolts hit the shield face, bounced, and ricocheted straight back at the shooters.

bzzt. bzzt. bzzt.

The first two bolts hit the lead thug in the chest and sent him flying backward into the corridor wall.

The third bolt hit the thug behind him in the shoulder, making him scream, spin, and drop his rifle.

"AAGH! My arm! My ARM!"

Renna fired three arrows from behind Emric’s shield, her bowstring releasing in rapid succession.

whoosh. whoosh. whoosh.

The first arrow slammed into the second-wave thug’s chest, Storm energy exploding on impact and sending him spinning into the corridor wall. Another caught a thug in the thigh, the blunt force lifting him off his feet and pinning him to the wooden panel behind him.

The Syndicate thugs in the corridor panicked. The expected scenario had just collapsed in under five seconds. They started shouting.

"They’re not sleeping! They’re armed!"

"Rank 2! All of them are Rank 2!"

"Where’s the leader? Where’s the leader?"

"Flush him out!"

Six more thugs pushed forward, climbing over their fallen comrades. These ones were smarter, with bigger armor and better weapons, moving in a tight formation. Rank 2, 4-Star. They moved in pairs, one firing while the other advanced, using leapfrog tactics and covering fire.

They were good. But they were focused on Emric and Renna. They didn’t look at the back of the cabin. They didn’t see the man in the chair.

Holden raised his right hand and pointed his index finger.

A tiny, almost invisible point of crimson fire formed at his fingertip, compressed so tightly that it had no glow, no light signature, no visual evidence of its existence. Just pure, concentrated thermal energy shaped into a pinpoint projectile by his 10,000x processor.

He flicked his finger.

The invisible needle of fire passed through the gap between Emric’s shield and the door frame, hitting the lead thug in the chest. The thug’s eyes rolled up. His knees buckled and dropped.

thud.

Holden did it again. Second thug, right shoulder. The needle hit the armor joint, and the thug’s arm went limp, his rifle clattering to the floor.

Third thug, base of the skull. Not lethal, just enough thermal energy to disrupt the neural signals between brain and body. The thug folded like a table with broken legs.

*thud.*

Fourth thug, center of the spine. Down he went.

Four thugs. Four invisible needles. Four seconds. None of them knew what hit them. To the remaining thugs in the corridor, it looked like the explosive arrows had done the damage. Renna’s storm arrows were loud, flashy, and obviously dangerous. The tiny fire needles were silent, invisible, and completely undetectable.

"Four more down! I didn’t even shoot them! Did you shoot them, Emric?"

"I did not shoot them."

"Then why are they on the floor?"

"Delayed reaction to earlier trauma."

"Delayed reaction to my ARROWS, you mean!"

"Sure."

The remaining thugs broke.

The ones still standing in the corridor looked at the pile of unconscious bodies between them and the cabin door. Twelve of their twenty were down, some pinned to walls, some frozen to floors, some had just mysteriously collapsed without an obvious wound.

"We surrender," a voice said from the corridor. "We surrender. Don’t shoot."

Holden stood up and walked to the cabin door. He looked out at the eight thugs with their hands up. Their faces were pale, their weapons on the floor.

"On your knees. All of you. Hands behind your heads."

They knelt. All eight of them. Hardened mercenaries who killed people for a living, kneeling in a train corridor because four academy students had dismantled their entire operation in under two minutes.

Holden reached into a drawer near the window and pulled out a coil of rope. He tossed it to Emric.

"Tie them up."

Emric caught the rope and immediately began knotting them up.

Renna went through the thugs’ equipment while Emric worked. She pulled out shock rifles, credit pouches, uncut gemstones, and black market vouchers.

"These are illegal in every territory," she said, holding up a plasma blade. "These guys are carrying enough contraband to put them away for life."

"Take the credits and leave the weapons."

She grinned. "Team fund! We have a team fund now! I’ve never had a team fund before! What do we spend it on?"

"Arrows," Emric said from the corridor.

"Obviously arrows. But what else can we spend it on?."

"Better arrows."

"You are the worst at spending money."

"Area secured," Emric said, pushing his glasses up. The new ones were slightly crooked. "Eight hostiles surrendered, twelve were neutralized, and we have no friendly casualties. Total engagement time was one minute and forty-three seconds."

"Fourteen thousand credits here," Renna said, still counting. "This is more money than I’ve ever held in my life."

"Keep it for the team fund."

"I’m buying better arrows. The ones I’m going to use to shoot the Syndicate’s faces when we get to the Capital."

"Well, that’s good use of the team fund."

"The station master is going to have a heart attack when he sees twenty tied-up mercenaries on his platform."

The train had stopped fully by now, the engine dead and the front car a smoking ruin from the shaped charge. But the tracks were intact. The Keldrin Bridge hadn’t been blown. The Syndicate had planned to blow it after boarding, to trap the survivors. They hadn’t gotten that far.

A whistle blew from the front of the train. The military escort had regrouped, and the train’s engineer, got the backup engine running twenty minutes later. The train limped forward at half speed, the damaged cars swaying on the tracks.

An hour later, they reached the next station platform.

Holden stepped over the unconscious thugs and opened the window.

The station master stared at the pile of bound mercenaries, then at the train, then back at the pile. "What... what is this?"

"Trash delivery," Holden said. "Crimson Syndicate. They tried to blow up the train."

"I... I need to call my supervisor."

"You should probably also call the military police. And the weapons enforcement division. They’re carrying illegal plasma blades."

The station master scrambled for his phone.

One by one, Holden and Emric dropped the tied-up thugs out the window onto the platform.

The train pulled out of the station, and the pile of tied-up thugs grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared around a bend in the tracks.

Renna was still counting credits. Emric was retying a knot that had come loose on one of the recovered shields. Lyra sat by the window, watching the trees blur past, her spear across her knees.

Holden closed the window and sat back down in his chair, crossed his legs, and leaned back. The Capital was six hours away.

He closed his eyes.

"Wake me when we arrive."