ydal

A sud­den jolt woke Paul from his slum­ber. He start­led and sat up pro­perly, unsure what really woke him, but couldn’t find anything that should have unsett­led him; and he was quite sure that not­hing phy­si­cally shook him.

The train was rum­bling along bet­ween cities in the Rhein/Ruhr-Megaplex. The whole Ruhr­ge­biet had always felt like a par­ti­cu­larly big city, but since those reforms a couple of years ago after the hou­sing expan­sion, the whole area has been offi­ci­ally mer­ged into one big municipality.

Buil­dings were fla­shing past the win­dows, too fast for the eye to dis­cern any more than flee­ting details. Paul dug in his pockets for his mobile phone, which told him that he was some­where bet­ween Düs­sel­dorf and Duis­burg. Nobody new could have boar­ded since he was awake when they stop­ped in Düs­sel­dorf itself.

Yet he couldn’t shake the fee­ling that someone was loo­king for him, and he could’t just pre­tend this was any kind of nor­mal paranoia.

After all, there’s no such thing as ran­dom para­noia when you know that there really were people out to get you.

All of this could only mean one thing: this pro­bably is a ste­alth grab, and they’re going to get Paul before the train arri­ves in Duisburg.

Again he che­cked the crowd, almost too casually, with an eye open for anyone who might alre­ady be eye­bal­ling him. But there wasn’t even one remo­tely sus­pi­cious per­son around.

But then again, that would make it way too easy, wouldn’t it.

He briefly con­side­red that this was just a see­king ent­an­g­le­ment pro­du­ced by an espe­cially vigo­rous con­duc­tor star­ting his round of che­cking the traveler’s tickets, but no — this felt way too spe­ci­fic for that and this wasn’t like any of the other ticket checks he’d been in. [In gene­ral, most ticket checks were way more intense than air­port secu­rity checks, too — even the employees didn’t seem to think very much of those.]

Besi­des, he had a valid ticket. Luckily for him, these weren’t per­so­na­li­zed yet, or else he’d be in all kinds of shit by now.

Paul came to a deci­sion. It star­ted with stan­ding up.

Shuf­fling side­ways to the aisle came next, and hea­ding down to the toi­let fol­lo­wed suite.

And there the pro­blems began. Paul had to dodge a pair of reti­rees which were sud­denly stan­ding up wit­hout loo­king around or bothe­ring to check if they’ll bump into anyone, as they usually do, and almost kno­cked him over. Next was a pile of bag­gage that he could have sworn was not there before and which requi­red some ela­bo­rate clim­bing to cross. Clam­be­ring down, he barely mana­ged to dodge a stream of puke sud­denly erupt­ing from a child next to him, which had been noti­ce­ably happy and obnoxiously un-sick just a few moments ago.

So. Now he could defi­ni­tely tell someone was on to him, and they weren’t mes­sing with their obstruc­tion field — else going down the aisle to the toi­let, of all pla­ces, wouldn’t have trig­ge­red such a strong reaction.

The toi­let its­elf was stuck — of course — but mer­ci­fully, it wasn’t occu­p­ied. Then again, this might just be the field’s ploy to lock him inside and leave Paul as a nice package for his pur­su­ers, but he had to take that risk.

With a bit of man­hand­ling, he got the door open and locked him­self inside. The almost tran­quil calm of the mostly sound-proof toi­let was­hed over him, and Paul tried his best to relax. Then he opened his sen­ses to the world.

In the first rush, he con­tem­pla­ted the fact that they were put­ting up such an effort to cap­ture him. With such a bla­tantly strong alte­ra­tion active, it meant that they were eit­her very cocky — or very effec­tive. Pos­si­bly both, but let’s not explore that ave­nue. At least they were con­fi­dent enough to assume that they’d catch him before the train arri­ved in Duis­burg and didn’t assume that there’s a need to hide from their prey.

He then chose to actually per­ceive with his heigh­te­ned sen­ses, opening his con­scious­ness to the per­cep­tion. He was floo­ded by impres­si­ons of all kind, with images being the stron­gest due to the fact that he was suf­fe­ring from some­thing cal­led being human. Other thing that were swam­ping his mind inclu­ded that he could feel the thoughts of the people around him, hear their brea­t­hing and their heart bea­ting, smell their move­ment (which was some­thing where he couldn’t even remo­tely figure out how those two are rela­ted) and taste their emotions.

All in all, Paul was hand­ling more infor­ma­tion that any nor­mal human brain could have any hope of hand­ling. The key word in that sen­tence is the “nor­mal”, though.

And wit­hout a doubt, he could also feel the gravity-like pull of the rea­lity alte­ra­ti­ons his pur­su­ers were employ­ing. He still couldn’t believe that nor­mal people weren’t able to feel this.

A mayor pre­cau­tion against being now was to prac­tice emis­sion con­trol. Paul clam­ped down hard on any “signals” he gave off to the environ­ment which would imme­dia­tely regis­ter as irre­gu­lar. There was always a kind of back­ground sta­tic pro­du­ced by him not fit­ting quite into the “nor­mal” rea­lity of the world, but its effects were all but unde­tec­ta­ble from a few metres away.

At the moment, Paul and his pur­su­ers were enga­ging in some­thing which could clo­sely be descri­bed as some­thing like a World War II sub­ma­rine fight, with Paul being a lone sub­ma­rine and the others the cir­cling des­troy­ers above him, hun­ting for any sign of their quarry.

Which means that as long as he wasn’t being obvious, the enemies nee­ded to use some kind of sen­sor to find them, and that sen­sor also gives them away. In his­to­ri­cal cases, this role was fil­led by sonar scan­ners, which worked by sen­ding out sound waves through water and then mea­su­ring where the signals came back ear­lier than expected.

But also, when it hit the sub­ma­rine the sonar was try­ing to find, it regis­te­red with a cha­rac­te­ristic “ping” sound heard in all kinds of submarine-themed movies. And if you heard that sound, you knew that your situa­tion just went from bad to worse, but at least you’d know about it.

And could initiate counter-measures like hug­ging the ground, run­ning silent and simi­lar methods.

Kno­wing that he was being hun­ted kind of stream­lined his opti­ons down to two cour­ses of action. The dra­ma­tic option would be to hide whatever’s giving you away by mas­king your­self with your sur­roun­dings and hoping you won’t be noti­ced. In your run of the mill movie, this is the point where ever­y­thing is tur­ned off, and the hus­hed crew just cowers inside their still water­tight metal tube, wait­ing for the depth char­ges to go off around them — hoping that there won’t be the lucky charge that hits them.

Luckily for Paul, there was no such thing as an ana­lo­gue to depth char­ges that threa­tened him. Unluckily, there was also no kind of depth to hide in.

Option two, of course, is to bolt away as soon as you know someone’s fol­lo­wing you. Against supe­rior num­bers, this is actually the best course of action, since you want to be the one that deci­des where the show’s going to be, not have the choice forced on you. But most of these sce­na­rios do not involve being stuck on a moving train, a fact which is known to exces­si­vely hin­der esca­ping from said scenario.

And if you think about it, that’s pro­bably the rea­son why they didn’t board the train alre­ady scan­ning — he could have just slip­ped out in Düs­sel­dorf and lost them at the train station.

Well, there’s still option three, but from their per­cei­ved level of arro­gance, fight­ing them right out was pro­bably just a crea­tive way of com­mit­ting sui­cide. That and the fact that Paul didn’t like odds along the lines of “there’s quite a lot of them, and I’m alone”.

There might be a few select cir­cum­stan­ces where he could over­whelm then, but if the pur­su­ers are worth their money, they’re pro­bably run­ning a opti­mistic deri­vate gene­ra­tor, which would make it all but impos­si­ble for him to have the necessary kind of luck.

Back to option two, then. And he can alre­ady feel the pull of the searcher’s need get­ting stron­ger, which means he’s get­ting closer.

He sur­veyed the lay­out of the train and then dia­led down his per­cep­tion to a level slightly above aver­age — which still gave him an advan­tage over almost ever­yone he would encoun­ter. Paul got into a slight moment of panic as the toi­let door wouldn’t open, but then it sud­denly bud­ged and he could get out.

Hea­ding back to his seat again, Paul again had to struggle, but mostly with lug­gage this time; no ani­mate objects actively blo­cking him, and even the kid was loo­king healthy again. (That, and ever­y­body seems to have for­got­ten that he just puked all over the place.)

Paul was just lea­ning over to pick up his back­pack as a voice behind him clea­red its throat — sur­rep­ti­tiously, yet unmistaka­bly direc­ted at him.

He froze, and only when he slowly tur­ned around he noti­ced that that con­duc­tor was smi­ling at him. “Guten Tag, die Fahr­aus­weise bitte!” Ticket check.

At pre­ci­sely that moment, the pull hit him full force, and he knew that it came from the conductor.

Slightly flab­ber­gas­ted, he pro­du­ced his ticket from some­where inside his back­pack and showed it to the con­duc­tor, and as soon as she nod­ded and than­ked him, the pres­sure went away.

Why did he just think people were out to get him? Was he actually get­ting para­noid? Why was he being so over­sen­si­tive? He was con­vin­ced the Inqui­si­tion was about to get him, but it was just a bloody ticket check.

Paul rela­xed and sat back down, let­ting his head sink back into his neck and rest against the chair.

“Nächs­ter Halt: Duis­burg Haupt­bahn­hof. Aus­stieg links” the announ­ce­ment robot said, indi­ca­ting that they were close to stop­ping at Duisburg.

He stop­ped sta­ring at the cei­ling, and deci­ded he needs to get out at Duis­burg any­way. The train would drive him crazy if he stayed on any lon­ger. Paul looked ahead, in the direc­tion of the doors.

There were two men stan­ding there. He was still using his heigh­te­ned sen­ses, and he noti­ced that they weren’t just your regu­lar blo­kes wait­ing to get off. They were ten­sed and ready to move at a moment’s notice. And they were carrying.

Paul glan­ced back, in the gene­ral direc­tion of the conductor.

She was hol­ding a fin­ger to her ear, which, he now noti­ced, held a small headset.

And with a sud­den thun­der clash, men star­ted run­ning in his direction.

Their pull became stron­ger than back­ground level and almost tore him apart. They had mana­ged to keep it sup­p­res­sed. They were good.

Paul went into auto­ma­tic mode. He pul­led hard at the iso­la­tion seal of the win­dow next to him, rip­ping it clean off, and with ano­ther decisive shove, the win­dow sprang out of the frame and cras­hed on the track bed.

He grab­bed his back­pack and swung him­self outs­ide. His pur­su­ers were still strugg­ling their way to him, shouting and pul­ling wea­pons. Their obstruc­tion field fai­led to over­power his need for survival.

Paul drew on his powers and enhan­ced him­self — no use being sub­tle now. He grab­bed onto the train and clim­bed up the side with a couple of strong pulls which sent him fly­ing upward.

He looked around and found no-one atop the train. Silly bug­gers were trai­ned good, but not good enough.

Loo­king for­ward, he saw the train slo­wing as it ente­red the station.

Paul broke out into a sprint and with one giant leap jum­ped over onto a small buil­ding next to the track, lan­ding with a roll and lea­ving a dent in the ground. His pur­su­ers took a few potshots at him, but they went wide.

He sig­hed a breath of relief. They had good men, but their tac­tician had sucked balls. Else he wouldn’t have got­ten out of the toi­let alive. Thank crea­tion for small gifts.

Paul jum­ped down from the buil­ding and star­ted run­ning away. The adre­na­lin rush doesn’t float him any lon­ger than it does any nor­mal human, so bet­ter use it now before he cras­hes and starts sobbing.

He had stop­ped coun­ting how often his days ended like this.

In a sense, it never got old.

A sudden jolt woke Paul from his slumber. He startled and sat up properly, unsure what really woke him, but couldn't find anything that should have unsettled him; and he was quite sure that nothing physically shook him. The train was rumbling along between cities in the Rhein/Ruhr-Megaplex. The whole Ruhrgebiet had always felt like ...