Derailed, Part 2

After Part One

Agmund was shouting, too, snapping out workings, and then “Three, two, one, now!” At now, Luke launched the heavy man at the back of the train.

Freed of the excess weight, Luke sprang through the air, swooping down on the first car like an eagle catching his prey. The tracks would take the train where they wanted it; the trick was making sure it got there with its cargo intact.

The engineer was still trying to get the train stopped, cursing and shouting at mechanisms that were no longer listening to him. He barely noticed Luke slipping into the locomotive and from there into the first car.

Somewhere between him and Agmund were, hopefully, two things: a hostage, and a bomb. The one was powerful enough to blow up not just the other, but the train and its city of call, as well. The second was a pretty impressive stack of explosives, too. Neither one of them had a long fuse, and neither was completely under the control of the moron who had come up with this plan.

“Evening,” he grunted at the passengers, who had gone from staring out the windows in horror to staring at him in horror. “Just passing through.” He strode through the center aisle, muttering Workings. She was somewhere on this train. They knew that much. She was nearby. But she also defied most conventional Knowing.

“Terrorist!” a woman shouted at him. “I heard him! You heard him, Jim, he was praying! Terrorist!”

He barely had time to duck before she hit him with her purse.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/314366.html. You can comment here or there.

0 thoughts on “Derailed, Part 2

  1. Short, dark, talking to himself in a strange language? How would this woman react to a man from, oh, southern India?

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