A Gentleman's Game: Part 3 - "Leave it Behind"

[ShockArcl1te]

“What a surprise --
You're f**k with again Yeah
It's a way of life you need to get over
All the rage just eats you alive
Can you leave it behind
I don't know where it'll end
The sun has set
And I can't be friends
I don't know if I can forgive
The day is long
But you were so dead wrong”

The Offspring – Leave it Behind

Tremor’s mind was miles away as he casually made his way through the passenger cars on his way to the luxury suites. Anyone as high profile as Mr. Hartshaw wouldn’t be making an exchange as important as this without some privacy. ‘Except there is no exchange.’ He corrected himself. The whole job was fixed somehow. If they wanted stealth, they could have grabbed Seven. ‘If such a thing is even possible.’ He smirked slightly. No. There was more to this. They had given him a knife, but no fake ID or even so much as a train ticket to validate his presence on board. Not that the concrete dust on his clothes didn’t make him conspicuous enough. They were maybe a day away from California, so what did they expect him to do? Wait until he was about to get off the train? If so, why wake him up only 32 hours into the trip? Did they really expect him to somehow sneak in and pick-pocket the thing without anyone noticing and then just sit tight while they searched every car for someone who didn’t belong? Of course not. They knew his reputation, it was why they picked him for the job. They wanted him to fight. The Colorado mountains would make it difficult to send help. It was isolated. In a fight his powers could very well derail the train right off a cliff. Why though? Why endanger the lives of so many innocents? Someone was the target here and it wasn’t some fake kingpin. If it was Tremor then they could have saved the ticket and put a bullet in his head. It just didn’t make sense!

Up ahead he neared the door to the luxury car. It had guards posted at the door, dressed like they belonged to transit security, but they had hand guns holstered at their belts that looked anything but standard issue. As he closed the distance, he began to make out more details that seemed out of place. Their stance was wrong. Their radios were turned off and yet they were wearing ear buds. One of them spotted him coming and started speaking into his collar. This was their plan. He was set up to fail. Now there was no way but forward. He opened the door to exit the passenger car and closed it neatly behind him before turning to face the guards with a smile, “Hi. I’m Tremor. You were expecting me?” The two guards looked at one another and then back to Tremor, clearly puzzled. That was all the time he needed to strike.

Tremor had spent many hours in the sims back on campus perfecting his weapon techniques in the training programs, but even before that, he could move surprisingly fast. In his experience, he had learned that one didn’t have to be the fastest or the strongest, but simply the least predictable. Gain the element of surprise and even the best battle plan will go to hell. Unpredictable didn’t necessarily mean random, rather it meant one should be able to deceive their opponent while anticipating or controlling their next action. ‘War is deception. – Sun Tzu’ Who said he wasn’t paying attention in philosophy class?

The entire scene unfolded in slow motion. Tremor’s first action was to move as if going for his knife. The guards caught this in an instant and immediately went for their own weapons, but didn’t expect Tremor to ignore his knife completely and grab their hands as they tried to lift the guns from their holsters. He didn’t give them time to figure out what just happened. He just focused a sharp and violent vibration through their hands and into the pistols. The savage frequencies shattered their bones almost instantly and ripped through the handguns splintering the mechanisms to pieces and then detonating the gunpowder charges for one or two of the shells within the magazines. The force from the exploding weapons sent bits of shrapnel into the already tenderized hands of the two guards, resulting in sudden screams of pain while falling to their knees. Behind Tremor, he could hear the passenger cars suddenly alive with commotion and cries of fear. The guards gripped their ruined hands and groaned on the floor as Tremor stepped past and opened the door into the luxury suite. He watched as more poorly disguised guards turned and gawked at him, others shouting orders while the rest pulled their sidearms. Past the madness was Mr. Hartshaw, sitting calmly at a booth by himself. He seemed to be watching with almost a passive expectation of what was to come. Tremor smiled darkly. He wouldn’t disappoint.

***********************************************

D1 calmly sipped her coffee as she watched a live satellite feed of Tremor’s train making its way through Colorado. The warehouse spotlights had kicked on as it got darker and the shadows cast by her and the two brutish body guards known only as H1 and A1 were thrown in multiple directions across the largely vacant floor dotted with crates of surveillance and communication equipment. Her temper over E1’s dismissal of her proposed plan to intercept Tremor had faded, but only because she had anticipated he would do so. It was clear Tremor had to be removed before he could leave the train. To that end, she had prepared a little insurance policy. Explosives planted in the track just five minutes from his present location would go off as soon as the engine passed by, triggering secondary blasts from ruptured fuel lines and turning the train into a tumbling mass of fire and twisted steel. Forensics might scratch their heads about trace evidence left on the rails, but the easier answer would be that Tremor, a rouge mutant, had gone ballistic on board and destroyed the train himself. It wasn’t as if he would be around to argue the point! Sure they would lose C1 who had been planted on board as the infamous Mr. Hartshaw, but sacrifices had to be made and wasn’t that the name of the game? She smiled slightly as she checked her watch. Tremor might be E1’s little pet project, but she saw him as nothing but a waste of time. Less than five minutes from now, Travis Waltman would be dead and she would be accepting the king’s apology. ‘As it should be,’ She smiled, ‘Long live the queen.’