Point Of No Return

The disorientation was almost overwhelming. Someone was shaking him awake and he reacted with instincts only, punching and kicking, to get the threat away.

"What is wrong with you?! "someone cried out, which brought him back closer to reality; he crawled away at full available speed until he was safe next to a wall. The cold metal helped him feel more secure, as he had problems seeing , everything was a blur.

"Jerry, are you okay?"the woman voice asked, not addressing him.

"He hits like a prizefighter, motherfucker! "a man's voice grunted from the floor, gasping for breath.

Vibrations. The floor wasn't steady, he wasn't in a building but in a moving object, a vehicle of some kind.

Images fleeted in his mind, different cars, buses, submarines, airplanes, space shuttles, tanks, ATVS, trains, as though he was going through an encyclopedia of vehicles. The whole exercise gave him a blinding headache but he still identified what he was in, a train, without a single doubt. A fast one, most likely passenger train going at super speed, from the tremors he was feeling.

But his vision was so blurry and his head hurt like hell, he could only see vague objects, people shapes, not anything clear and concrete and that was terrifying him.

A woman figure, dressed in dark blue, approached him slowly.

" Careful, he's nuts! " the man warned, still groaning and out of breath.

" Sir, what happened to you? What's wrong? What happened? Who are you? "

The question provoked another flurry of activity, who was he? Dozens of names flashed in his mind, an encyclopedia of names, alphabetically classified, but which one was his?

Blank. Utter, complete, blindingly painful blank.

" I can't, I - " his voice was so slurry, he could barely form words. His mouth hurt and as he regained a bit more lucidity, he realized why he was so sore, why everything was so vague. Half his face was swollen, as though he had been rammed into a wall.

Repeatedly.

He was mortified by this, who had hurt him, why? Somehow it seemed important to remember...

" Do you know where you are? " the woman asked as gently as she could.

" T-trh-train, " he finally managed to spurt out around the swelling.

" Yes that's right. You are on the fastest train in the world. Do you remember climbing aboard? Where is your ticket, do you know? "

He checked his pockets, finding nothing at all. As though he had been stripped clean not long ago.

" Maybe someone knocked him out and stole from him? " the woman suggested to the man.

He had finally managed to stand back up but looked apprehensive at approaching their savage passenger ever again.

" What am I? Who am I? What-what - ? " he hesitated, trying to think past the blinding headache.

" You are asking us? the man snorted. We are asking the questions here! "

" Look at him, Joe, the woman said reasonably. He looks lucky to be alive. "

" I know, Geena, but the guy is dangerous, trust me on that! " Joe answered resentfully.

Their voices were piercing in the fragile fabric of his mind, but as much as he tried to get answers from his reluctant brain, all he got was more pain.

" Do you know what you are doing here? Do you have a wallet, a phone? Do you mind if I check? " the woman asked.

" Geena, " the man said warningly.

He raised his hands at mid-level, trying to sputter:" Okay, " but it came out all blurred, why was he hurting so much?

As she approached him cautiously, his vision cleared a bit and he was able to see his reflection in the window pane that showed only the Stygian darkness of the outside.

His face was a mess, swollen, one eye shut, covered in crusted and fresh blood. He was terrifying to look at, and it was almost hard to accept that this was him, who he was, in this pitiful condition.

" What happened to me? " he worried, putting his hands to his face, his hands also chafed and bloodied and very sore; looking at them more closely, he thought at least one of his fingers was dislocated or broken.

" It looks like you were in a fight, frankly, the woman said. A bad fight. "

" Looks like you were shot, " the man added , still resentful.

He let the woman prod him gently, trying to find some kind of identification on him but apart from a lot more very sores places, he was completely clean. No phone, no wallet, no hospital bracelet... The only thing he saw, pulling up his sleeve over a scrape that had just begun crusting over was a tattoo that seemed vaguely familiar and significative... but his brain sent him a succession of images that made him dizzy, dozens of other designs that were related to this tattoo, nothing personal that he could link to himself and clear up where he came from and what he was doing there.

"No ticket, huh? the man said. In the golden days, do you know what we did to people who had no tickets to show? "

"Joe you're hilarious, "Geena sighed.

He could only stand there and gaze at the pitiful sight that was himself. How had he come to this? Blinding pain in his head, but 'Joe' made a good point.

It did look as though he had been grazed by a bullet, among many other things...

"Well we are going to have to clean you up, and clear this up. I'll look at the passenger manifest, ask Terry to contact the station, see if there is any way to identify you. You are a mess... John Doe.

"So lame to call people like this, " Joe said.

"You got a better idea maybe? " she grunted.

"For a name, no, but we could just throw him out, that'd be just desserts, " Joe said with a chilling smile.

" Don't mind him, he's always this way with new people, makes him a great deterrent for ladies who hog the toilets, Geena said in a poor attempt at humor. Can you move on your own? Do you need help? "

"Not helping! " Joe warned.

"I'll be okay, 'John' said. Sorry about hitting you. "

"We'll get you to our compartment, we have first aid kits there, we'll clean you up... maybe try a face scan? " Geena suggested, looking at her colleague.

"I am not cleaning him up either, "Joe insisted.

Geena sighed and ( a little apprehensively herself) helped guide their mysterious stowaway out of the hallway to bring him somewhere with a bit of equipment.

He thought he looked worse all cleaned up. The swelling more obvious, the red scrapes and scratches... and especially the trail along the left side of his head that was causing him such agony.

It looked like a miracle that he was still alive.

Strangely he wasn't feeling fear because of his appearance, no fear of dying or having been in such a violent confrontation.

He felt a flutter of terror because he had not a clue who had done this to him... and mostly, where they ( he/she/them) were now.

That was the scariest.

The two train attendants didn't seem to mind or care, it didn't seem to matter to them. They didn' t realize the potency of the situation.The possible danger they were in.

It was all he could think about.

" Okay we' ll just take a picture? To compare you in the databanks, maybe find your name? " Geena asked, sounding apprehensive, as though he would turn rabid on her.

He wanted to say he was the last thing they should be afraid of, but that was actually showing some common sense.

They didn't know him, he could be dangerous. Take all precautions necessary.

But he wasn't the problem, he knew it. In his gut, he felt that they were about to get a nasty surprise, and felt even more apprehensive... which did not help the raging headache he was crippled with.

Geena wanted to talk to the train conductor right away but Joe was hesitating, not wanting to bother them for something that wasn't quite their purview. However as they attempted a search in their databanks to try and identify him, something went wrong.

Nothing yielded any results; there was no connection.

" I don' t get it, this never happened before, " Geena worried.

" The time we had a fried relay box, " Joe reminded.

" I have to talk to Jerry, " Geena said.

It was clear from her tone and manner that she expected to go to the control hub alone, but pushing past his ailments, 'John' followed her and Joe, sputtering in panic, not risking to hold their 'prisoner' back, closed the rear.

She didn' t realize it until she had slid open the door to look at the engineer. " Jerry, we found a guy in one of the rooms and he doesn' t seem to have a ticket or- "

" Now is really not the time," he warned, looking stressed.

Confirming 'John's ' gut feeling, it was going to get bad very quickly.

" What's wrong? " Geena worried immediately.

" I can' t talk right now, I need- "

John pushed past Geena without even realizing he was jostling out of the way with no regard whatsoever.

What mattered was getting to the bottom of things, even if the headache was blinding him with torture.

" You can' t hail them, you can' talk to anyone anymore, instruments are not reliable and... we are gaining speed. " he declared, stunning the conductor.

" You don't have the right to go in there! " Geena protested at the same time, making a ruckus, but 'Jerry' heard him speaking perfectly. Probably because every word mirrored their present situation.

" Who the hell is this?! " the train conductor cried out in near outrage.

" We don't know, he has no ID... and doesn't remember who he is, " Geena explained.

" Or so he claims, " Joe slipped in.

" How come you know all this and what happened to you? " Jerry demanded.

"I don't know, and I don't know, John said. But I am right? "

Jerry looked at his two crewmembers a little uncomfortably. " I lost comms, yeah. Not sure about the radars, I've got no control over the speed and we are accelerating if I can trust the gauges. But I don't know what to trust anymore. "

" Your gut, John said. I can feel we're going faster... May I? "

Jerry looked at him as though he was completely insane. " Look, buddy, as far as I know, maybe you did all this, I should keep you as far away from my controls, in fact you should get the hell out of here! "

" De Oppresso Liber, " John said in a mutter, looking at the engineer with something like hope. He wasn't even sure what the words meant, another language surely, but it was the only thing he could think to make the man listen.

" What? What was that? " Geena questioned.

" Where did you find this guy? " the conductor asked in shock.

" He was unconscious in the last car, we were just checking because there was a red light, an open door alarm malfunction. " Joe said.

" No malfunction, " John whispered under his breath but the images were too chaotic and only ended up hurting him. He couldn't take those memories right now... but he needed to get a move on, because it was happening. Whatever it was, it would not end well if they left it unchecked.

" He was lying on the floor, like this, messed up, no ticket, no wallet, no memory, and looking as though he's been beaten half to death " Geena added.

" It' s a virus, John said. Your program has been overrun, you need to purge it, I hope you have good firewalls and redundancies, "

" I have tech support, Jerry said with a grimace. When I can contact them, that is... You're Special Forces? "

John tried to get the words out, some kind of reassurance but all he had in his mind was a blank. " Please let me take a look, " he said.

Jerry must have been at the end of his rope because after a brief hesitation, he nodded towards one of the consoles.

John realized as he started typing how stiff and unresponsive his fingers were, he had trouble hitting the keys correctly, especially since he wasn't sure he knew what he was doing. How could he know how to do anything when he couldn't even remember his own name?

And yet he rapidly accessed the grid and found the evidence of the virus invading the navigation system. But there his hands started trembling, he didn't remember what to do next, how to change anything to what he was seeing.

" What is it? " Geena worried, seeing his expression.

" Speed increasing, I can' t stop it, there's a 45 per cent chance we will jump tracks near the Tuckerson bridge... otherwise no doubt we will crash into the Stadium once we reach the city... " John said.

" You can' t help? " the train driver questioned.

" The virus has taken over, I would need to be a real nerd to rout it out and restore the systems... " John said, biting the one part of his lower lip that wasn't swollen.

Obviously, although he didn't remember much about himself, he was not the kind of man who liked to admit defeat.

And there was more to this than met the eye, he was sure of it, but the crippling headache wouldn't abate every time he tried to concentrate.

But just this news was enough to make the two train attendnats panic.

" You mean we are going to crash right into the Stadium? But it will probably be filled to the brink! " Geena cried out.

" You're saying we're going to crash, we have no brakes, no control whatsoever?" Joe said at the same time.

" Comms are down, Jerry said in defeat. I have been trying to regain control for the past 20 minutes, I thought it was just a glitch... but if we can't call for help... "

" But they'll see us rushing in, Joe argued. They'll send help then. "

" It'll be too late then, John said realistically. How many passengers do you carry? "

" Who would want to do this? Some hacker? But why? " Geena said in despair.

Jerry started shaking his head in incomprehension. " Why not? he retorted. Fame, gory glory, what else? Make a name for himself, impress and then work for the higher bidder... We carry 667 passengers today, " he answered their stowaway.

" What are we gonna do? Geena worried. Can't we do anything? We need to fix the comms! Get help on this! Warn everyone! "

" He made sure it wouldn't help, he made sure it was foolproof, John said, fighting the blinding headache. Help is already here... " he snorted. But some help he was turning out to be.

What could he do now? He had utterly failed and he didn't even remember how or why. No backup allowed, one chance to set things right, had they gone past the point of no return?

But... there was more, wasn't it? He wouldn't have been called in if the loss of life was below 1000.

He was almost appalled by his own ruthlessness. How did he know this, how could he evaluate like this? And super job he had done to save more lives... more lives.

" Where did you find me? " he put to the attendants, cutting short the turning desperate conversation.

" Last car, why? Joe said resentfully. You forgot a super gadget there? Something that can actually save us right now? "

" No, he took everything with him, never leave anything to chance, John retorted. I think we may be in more trouble than we think. I gotta go. "

He left the cockpit as quickly as his head allowed him to, which was not very impressive at all. But determination kept him going, that gut feeling that they were sitting on a powder keg... a much bigger one than they could imagine.

" Where do you think you're going? Geena cried out, following him. What do you know, what aren't you telling us? What-? "

" Geena, don't panic the passengers, not a word! " Jerry ordered.

" Oh goody, they get to stay blissfully ignorant, she grunted in anger. Where are you going, I ain't letting you out of my sight! "

" Gotta check something, " he muttered, barely noticing her presence. He had two enemies: Time and his reluctant head.

He had no time and his head was killing him. But his comfort was the least of his concern.

He wasn't sure who he was or what he did, but the flashes that wouldn't leave him alone made him believe this was much more serious than a train derailment. Much bigger... and he could not allow himself to fail again.

The last car had the least passengers, most looking bored, some asking Geena what was wrong with the wifi signal; she smiled at them and continued walking, not wanting to let John out of her sight.

The last car's final door to the baggage compartment was a bit tough to open and he felt all eyes on him. The tension... what was beyond?

" Some passengers complained about weird noises, Geena said. Then there was the door alarm, but nothing, nothing except you... You were right over there. "

Although the events were very recent and should have been fresh in his mind, all he remembered was darkness and tension, the feeling of tiptoeing around, of being aware of danger but not knowing where it would come from...

And then a blinding flash.

He swerved and went deeper, forgetting about 'where' he was found. He had dragged himself there blindly, in the haze caused by the bullet wound... but that was not where he had fallen.

Geena looked more and more alarmed as he tore open a panel that should have been firmly in place; that panel had fresh but drying blood on it. His blood.

" He placed it back, John explained. So you wouldn't see, so you wouldn't investigate, so you wouldn't find this... " he said, ducking under the manhole access and crawling inside.

He heard Geena whimpering in fear - but she followed him after only a few seconds' hesitation. Not a bad thing she did because the baggage compartment was dark and the lights refused to work.

She only had a pen light but he used the faint light to track the droplets of blood his wound had left as breadcrumbs, and reached a place where the secured baggages had been strewn around, attesting to the violence of the confrontation that had taken place.

He pushed and kicked the cumbersome baggages aside until he found what he knew was there, what he was looking for.

And felt his stomach sinking at the sight.

It was worse than he thought, so much worse, although he couldn't claim he knew what he was expecting.

He hunkered down and took a moment to try and think.

Think, options, lack thereof, what could he do?

He felt heat all over his body, followed by a lasting chill. What could he do now, to get the people out of harm's way?

The lives of several thousands people depended on his brain coming up with a sort of solution to this quandary.

And all he could hear was the pounding rush of blood in his veins. He couldn't think of a single contingency. He was a complete failure.

" What is that? " Geena demanded once her eyes had grown accustomed to the dark.

" A tactical nuclear warhead, " he said in a quiet murmur that did not express the turmoil inside at all.

" A - WHAT? " Geena squinted in the semi-gloom, incapable of believing what she was hearing.

" A dirty bomb, maybe 1 kiloton, it will leave a crater out of the city, nothing will be left and no one... He came to place this and I was sent to stop him, but I failed... He got me first, and now there's nothing to do... what can I do? Comms are down, he made sure of that . They don't know where and when he will strike, only I knew... I screwed up, I screwed up... The bomb will explode in 55 minutes, time to reach the city... "

The weight of his failure was creating an even worst buzzing in his brain, making it even harder to think.

" Can - can you disarm it? " Geena asked after dry-heaving a few times. He had to admire her spunk; she was tougher than some of the best soldiers he knew.

If he could trust his gut instincts in the matter.

" I can render it less potent, I could maybe throw it off the train , I could... " the idea popped into his brain and he took the pen light to look at the circuitry around the weapon a bit more carefully. This was also the virus' origin, so was there a chance? Just one?

" Give me a minute! " he said, running off before she could protest.

The engineer was a little surprised to see him coming back at full speed, especially with that strange look on his face. Pure fear, but also determination the likes of which he had rarely seen before.

" What's going on, did you find something? "

John went directly for the maps that displayed the train's route. The bridge, that was the key, the one chance they had.

If he missed that point of no return, he would have failed completely.

"We are going to need to get the passengers out of the last car, John said. The last car is carrying a tactical warhead in the baggage compartment. It will blow up and destroy everything in a 30 mile radius. I need to make the last car derail at the Tuckerson bridge so that it blows up there, causing the least damage and loss of life possible. I need your help, can you help me do that? We have less than 15 minutes to make it happen. "

Jerry looked completely overwhelmed. Under the shock. His eyes glazed over with the news. He wasn't one to refute uselessly but that didn't mean he could handle all of that stress easily.

"Now, " John insisted, having no time for shock, although justified.

"How? "Jerry asked, after coughing a bit to find his voice again.

"I will remove some of the explosives on the head, you will evacuate the passengers to the other cars. The computer that contaminated your system is there as well, I am hoping it will be destroyed and at least release the comms so you can call for help. We have to act now, once we are past the bridge, the road is too straight, we won't be able to make the last car derail... and they will have won. Can I count on you? "

"Yeah of course, let's do this, "the man said after swallowing a lump of bitter-tasting apprehension.

From mere annoyance to apocalypse... it was very difficult to remain sane confronted to this. Even harder to think clearly and productively.

Best not to alarm the passengers unduly but they were getting a bit suspicious with all the running around.

John let the attendants do their job; he had his part to complete in all haste.

Taking apart a nuclear warhead was not a piece of cake. He assumed his counterpart had not bothered to boobytrap and cut corners to get to the center of the bomb, the perfectly configured explosives that would compress the plutonium to create a deadly inferno.

Remove a few and the detonation wouldn't be quite as powerful. Still dirty and nuclear, but nowhere nearly as destructive. Give everyone a chance to get out of this alive.

"Even with all this, what do you plan to do? We can't uncouple the cars like this, there's no way of doing it, "Geena argued when he emerged from the baggage compartment with the explosives in his hand.

"I never expected them to go quietly, John answered grimly. Is everyone out or not? "

"We got them to the next cars, but... what can you do? We are about to cross the Tuckerson bridge. "

" Point of no return. You have what I asked for? "John questioned. No turning back now, he had to go through with it, with everything.

"I don't see what you want with this, how can it help you? "

His hands weren't even shaking, as he took the pistol flare she handed him: he had made up his mind. Only thing left to do in any case.

"Wish me luck, and get as far away from here as possible, "he told Geena and went for the access door.

It would lead to the roof, to the outside, to the inevitable.

But he was ready.

He didn't give her the time to respond, he was already out, uncaring of the alarm that was blaring, announcing the end of the world.

The wind from the speed nearly sheared him off the body of the train but he held on through sheer determination only and managed to get down between the train cars, just enough space to squeeze through and allow him to work unhindered.

The track swerved a bit next to the bridge and he could feel the speed threatening to throw them off and derail them...

They had to hold on a little longer...

He placed the explosives on the connection between the cars, the weak spot... and took one deep breath.

It was dark outside but he thought he saw a glimpse of the Moon. Just enough light to aim.

The blast tore most of the train car off and pulverized anything alive in the immediate vicinity.

He would never know if he had saved the train passengers or the city, but he had done his best.

THE END