Chapter 5: Fight on the Train

I stirred as someone shook me awake. I reluctantly opened my eyes to see Harry, looking restless. 

I muttered "What is it Harry?" as I sat up and rubbed my eyes. 

"I'm bored, Ron." he replied. 

I looked at him in annoyance and said "You woke me up from my lovely nap to tell me me that?" 

"Yes, and to tell you that I can't get to sleep." 

I sighed exasperatedly and said "So, use a sleeping pill or something! But let me sleep!" 

He looked at me confusedly and replied "Where would I get a sleeping pill from?" 

"I can help there." said Squad Leader Perez from opposite us, sipping something warm and steaming from a large mug. 

"Here, take one." he said, passing over a packet of pills. Harry popped one out and threw it in his mouth, before swallowing it. Minutes later, he was reclining peacefully, fast asleep. 

Perez chuckled, before saying "Those pills are very strong. He'll be completely knocked out for the next few hours, and nothing short of an earthquake will revive him!" I thanked him before lying back and trying to go to sleep again, but that was it. I was awake, and that's how I was going to stay. 

I looked out the window as the desert flew by. Maybe in the past, some of these areas of Nevada were fertile, but not anymore. The Toxic Age turned vast areas of formerly good land covered with grasses or forests to barren desert. 

Then I looked around our train carriage. It was a second class one, and was mostly deserted. Perez had explained to me that that was because the travelers these days were largely split between those who wanted to travel cheaply, who took third class, and those who wished to travel in style, who took first class. That left the second class, which few people ever took. That gave us privacy, so there was less of a chance of our identities being discovered. 

I asked Perez how much longer it would take us to reach Mala. He replied that there were still three hours to go. After that, the small talk evaporated and I just stared at the table while Perez looked out the window, the sun shining off his tanned skin. 

Soon, we the train shuddered and came to a stop at the next station. I was still staring at the table when Perez's hand gripped my arm. I looked up with a cry of pain and he gestured out the window. 

At first, I couldn't see anything through the crowd, but then my heart skipped a beat as I saw what I had truly dreaded the most. 

At the back of the crowd, but now moving through it without resistance, were seven figures in the black and silver uniforms of Blade Hunters. And they were heading straight for the carriage which we were in. 

Perez muttered softly to me in an urgent voice "Leave Harry, the pill will keep him asleep no matter what. But wake Mark. I'll wake Franz and Warrick." I nodded and shook Mark. 

He groaned and opened his eyes. I whispered to him what was happening and his eyes widened. He looked out the window and stared out at the Hunters. I was amazed at how he could remain calm at a time. I myself was getting more agitated as they came closer. 

The twins seemed to be even more calm, and took these events as a matter of course. A minute later, they had finally passed through the crowd and reached our carriage. 

They came in, and to my horror walked the aisle to stand right before us. One of them was carrying a folding chair, and he set it up on our right and sat down, as if he was at the head of the table (If indeed there had been a table). 

All of them looked nearly the same, with tanned skin and bulging muscles. They looked business like and all were clean shaven with expressionless faces. 

The man sitting on the chair said "Hello, boys. How are you today?" We all just sat silently, not sure what to say. 

The Hunter smiled evilly and said "Good? That's great! I have also had a good day today. I just bought a new dog whistle!" and he pulled out a small steel whistle. I barely managed to keep a look of horror from my face. 

Unlike Humans, Blades could hear very high pitches, including dog whistles. But those sounds were always painful to our ears. 

He grinned at all of us Blades and said "Y'know, I haven't tested it out yet. Perhaps now would be a good time!" And he lifted the whistle to his lips and blew. 

None of us had covered our ears, as we knew that that would be a dead giveaway, so we heard the full screeching sound. 

I had been prepared for a painfully high pitched sound, but I hadn't been prepared for the way the sound screeched and seemed to penetrate my skull and bury itself in my brain. 

Mark, Perez, and the twins managed to keep their faces calm, but after a few seconds of this, I couldn't hold back a cry of pain from issuing from my mouth. At that moment, I felt something press against my knee, and I fell back, electricity coursing through me. 

The shock traveled through my body, seeming to stun every part of me. My eyes closed, and I started to black out. My entire body yearned to drift off into the peaceful oblivion of sleep, but I forced myself to stay conscious. 

I couldn't move for a few seconds, my entire body stunned from what I was sure was an EC that one of the Hunters had pressed against my knee. But I still managed to keep awake as I gathered my strength. 

I focused all my energies on opening my eyelids, stretching my entire strength just to do that small task. Finally, they opened, and I found myself looking at the ceiling of the carriage. I heard sounds of fighting from around me, but couldn't move. 

My vision started to blur, and I blinked to clear my eyes. I did this a few times, and gradually, my senses started to return.  The feeling in my fingers came back, and then my arms. I pressed them against the floor and pushed myself up, my arms practically groaning with the effort. 

My mouth felt dry, and as I looked around and saw that I was on the floor of the carriage near where we had been sitting. Mark lay unconscious on the ground a few feet away from me. And Harry still lay exactly where we had left him; sprawled out, asleep in his chair. I looked around as the feeling in my neck came back. 

There was combat raging around me. One of the twins was in the aisle, fists raised defensively as he battled two opponents, dodging ECs as he did so. He seemed to run circles round them as he dodged and struck. 

The other twin had leaped on the top of the back of a seat, perfectly balancing himself as he whirled and kicked out at his opponents. As I watched, he kicked the hand of a Hunter, knocking his EC away. 

Of the three, Perez was having the hardest time. He was backed up against the doors of the train battling three opponents. To my horror, as I watched, one of them managed to jab him with the EC and he fell back with a cry. 

I quickly got up and grasped the seat for support, the feeling in my legs and indeed my whole body returning faster now, and grabbed a mug from the table.I shook my arm, gaining back my strength, and as one of the hunters shoved his limp body against a wall, I threw the mug. 

It sailed straight into the head of one of the Hunters, and he fell to the ground. The other two, disregarding Zeren's paralyzed body came towards me. 

I flew at the first one delivering a hard punch to the ribs, and tried to follow up with a blow to his jaw, but he blocked me, and grabbed my arm. I had forgotten that the Hunters were trained specially to make their reflexes nearly as fast, or even as fast as Blades. But they could never replicate my natural strength and power. 

I remembered Bert's training sessions in martial arts, and spun on my heel, kicking him in the shin. I heard the satisfying crack of his bone as he fell to the ground with a groan of pain.  But just as I did so, the other Hunter slashed at me with his EC. 

I jumped back just in time, but he still gave me a glancing blow. In my recently shocked state, the electric current of even that caused me great pain. 

I fell back to the seat next to me. The two hunters bore down on me, grinning evilly. At that moment, I heard a small crackle of electricity near me and realized that the EC that one of the twins had kicked out of the Hunter's hand was right next to me. 

As the first Hunter plunged his EC down towards me, I rolled of the seat on to the floor, and the EC went down narrowly missing me. 

Before the hunter could react, I sat up, grabbed the EC from the seat and jabbed him in the shins with it, and he fell back onto his friend and they both collapsed backwards into a pile. 

I quickly leaped up, grimacing with pain as I did so, and jabbed the EC into both of them until I was sure that they were fully incapacitated. 

I then surveyed the room, and saw to my horror that, while I had been fighting my own battle here, things had take a turn for the worse. 

One of the twins had been pinned to the wall, and one of the Hunters was relentlessly pressing an EC to his rib cage. 

The other twin was fighting to get to his brother, but his two opponents were keeping him cornered refusing to let him go anywhere. I ran towards the twin hoping that I could get there in time to save him before the electricity finished him off, but one of the Hunters rushed to intercept me. 

I jabbed at him with my EC but he used his own to knock it away. He then slashed it my face, but I fell back so he just missed my nose. 

Angered, I rushed forward and headbutted him in the stomach. As he fell back with a cry of pain, I socked him in the jaw and he fell unconscious. 

But I was too late.As I watched, the other Hunter stood up, grinning evilly. 

The twin stared up, eyes open and lifeless. The other twin came milliseconds too late, having only just defeated his opponents, and slammed his brother's killer to the ground, and landed punch after punch on him. 

The Hunter I had just knocked unconscious started to recover, looking up dazedly. I was furious. 

I looked down on him with hatred, and grabbed him around his neck in red hot anger and flung him against the wall. He collapsed to the ground and stared at me with cold, dead eyes. a cold feeling of dread came over me as I realized what I had done. I had just killed a man, and it shocked me to my bones. 

Right then I heard a voice cry out "Sayonara, borgs!"  and I turned to see the first Hunter whom I had thrown the mug at jumping out the open doors of the train that he must has forced open. 

With all the fighting, we must have missed that. But before he jumped out, I had caught a glimpse of his face. I hadn't seen it clearly before then, and it was only a glimpse, but I was sure who it was. 

That hairless face with a square jaw, those cold blue eyes and that emotionless expression...surely it couldn't be a coincidence. That was the Hunter who had killed my parents.

At that moment the shock of seeing the man whose face haunted my darkest nightmares, the stress of the fight and lack of food came crashing down on me. I fell to the ground and blacked out. The image that still hung in my mind, long after I fell unconscious was the face of the man I had killed, staring at me with his lifeless eyes.