Platform X
Time was always against us. The timetable indicated that our train leaves at three fifteen. We had exactly one point five minutes. The next one was due in an eternity. We saved the world, now we had to save ourselves. The station was busy with hundreds of people walking back and forth in all directions desperate to catch their chrono-train back to their own timeline. Agent Lee was right behind me. I had our tickets ready. All we had to do was pull a Christmas miracle and make it to the train in less than one minute. We can do it. I was an eternal optimist.
I picked up on a trail. How can we be followed, impossible. I didn’t have my gun, it was illegal to carry fire arms in the Central Station. I didn’t need this, not now. I signalled to Lee that there is an assailant on our back. She was trained well. She didn’t change her mannerism and kept on running behind me. I hoped to God that we can at least make it into the train. getting stuck in the station was unthinkable. The assailant was brute of a man and he was just watching us from a rail twenty metres up off the concourse straight ahead. Call it muscle memory, call it instinct, but I’ve been doing this job for long enough to sense danger regardless of how subtle it was. I had no choice but to get at least Agent Lee on the train.
We ran down the stairs down to Platform X, thirty seconds left, I can hear the train firing up its engine. It wasn’t over til we were both on the train. Agent Lee was the only one I trusted on any assignment, and she came through on this one. Earth lives another day and it didn’t even know how close it came to ending. When I reached the bottom of the stairs at Platform X I stopped for a second to wait for Agent Lee. I secured the perimeter and made sure she boarded the train. Fifteen seconds to go.
I checked the surrounding and made sure that the brute was no where to be seen. There was no way he could make it down to the platform that quickly. Ten seconds left before the train leaves. Lee looked at me with a worried expression. All of the passengers boarded the train and I waiting another two seconds. I breathed out slowly as a put my right foot in the train. Everything seemed like an eternity. Agent Lee’s worried expression turned to relief when I was grabbed by what felt like a powerful robotic arm.
I was flung back to the platform with the kind of power I never felt before. “Stevens!” Lee screamed.
Just as quickly I was knocked down the same hand grabbed me by the throat and picked me up like a rag doll.
“Remember me?”
It was the brute on the rail watching us a minute ago. I had no idea who he was. The train doors closed and it began to fade along with Agent Lee. At least she was safe.
I didn’t know who this mountain man was, but he seemed to he hell bent on roughing me up good. I’ll have to catch the next train, I thought.