fight
As soon as the woman had taken care of the rogue fan, another man with curly hair from two seats behind Agatha surged forward towards her. She kicked him, withdrawing her gun from a holster that Agatha had failed to notice earlier. As the first man scrambled back up, she took hold of his neck and slammed his face into a tray table. She shot at a third man racing toward her before delivering a few blows to the curly-haired assailant. She paused, looking around at the sprawled-out attackers, and raised an eyebrow at Agatha. “See? I wasn’t lying.” One of the men rose up again, and the woman shot him in the head faster than Agatha could blink. Spotting Agatha’s bewildered expression, she smiled. “He’s not a real fan, don’t worry. I have it all under control.” She held up a comforting hand, which she used to strangle a fourth man a few moments later.
This was going way too fast for Agatha, who’d been clutching her backpack the whole time. She was convinced this was all a random dream that would somehow make it into her next chapter. (The fight sequence was kind of nice.) She yelped as she noticed the woman being tackled into a seat by another man who came out of who knows where yanking Señor Scratchy’s carrier a little closer to her. She watched as the woman rolled her eyes, presumably at the audacity of the man, before sighing exaggeratedly and briskly pulling the trigger on him.
If Agatha didn’t know better, she’d think the woman was putting on a show for her. The woman quickly scanned the rest of the train car. It was then that Agatha realized that every person in the train car, except the crazy woman, had attempted to come at her. Someone ran toward the woman and kicked her in the back, and Agatha was surprised to note it was a blonde woman this time. The blonde had a gun and aimed it straight at Agatha. Before she could even clock the presence of a gun at her, the brown-haired woman tugged her out of her seat. Agatha glanced back at the seat and grabbed Señor Scratchy, not wanting him to be subjected to the bullet holes the seat was now pocked with.
Agatha had the sense to duck behind another seat as the woman took care of a few more people in front of and behind her who had rushed into the train car. She watched as she kicked, punched, and shot most of them, even going so far as to kick their dead bodies out of the aisle. When a man had managed to knock her gun out of her hand, Agatha let out a scream as she witnessed the woman twist joints that should not bend in that direction, tossing his limp body some seat in front of her. She gasped as the woman kicked her gun towards Agatha right before grabbing her Darkhold copy and bashing it into some other guy’s skull.
Agatha’s hands trembled as she picked up the gun in front of her, shakily attempting to aim it at the new man the woman was now brawling with. But before she could even think about pulling the trigger, the woman had him cornered in a seat and strolled back to Agatha, gently taking the gun from her. “That’s nice of you to hold on to it for me. Thanks, princess.” Agatha’s eyes widened further, if that was possible, when the woman shot a man in the neck, his twisted body landing right in front of Agatha. She gasped again.
“Come on,” the woman grabbed her backpack and started walking to the next train car. “Isn’t this fun?” She smiled at Agatha, vaguely giving off psycho vibes. Agatha glanced between the dead man in front of her and the retreating woman before scrambling up and grabbing Scratchy before hurriedly running after the woman. She followed behind closely, gasping when on the way, the woman reloaded her pistol and shot a few people. When she got bored of that, she shot at a window, broke the glass, and shoved a few men out of the train.
A few people got close to her, but the scary woman shot at them before they could even touch her. When everyone had seemingly been dealt with, the woman gestured for Agatha to follow. “Okay, I think it’s time to leave, don’t you?” She held out her hand for Agatha to grab. “Follow me.”
They ran through a few cars with real civilians instead of killers in them for a change before reaching the end of the train. Just as Agatha caught her breath, she heard a gun cock. She looked in front of her to see a few men staring at her. And in the front, there was the man from the book launch. Agatha briefly remembered him asking something about how she predicted events and joked about her being a spy. She felt like waving, but something told her that wasn’t the way to go, especially with the gun he had in hand.
Agatha managed to find her voice to stop him. “Wait! Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, please. I don’t know this woman, I have nothing to do with her, please just don’t shoot! ” She sputtered out.
Surprisingly, the man laughed, as if he knew she’d say that. He addressed the woman behind her. “Vidal, don’t make me kill both of you.”
“Psst, Agatha,” the woman whispered from behind her. “It’s bear hug o’clock,” Agatha screamed as the door behind them was ripped away and the woman engaged a parachute from her backpack. Agatha clutched onto her for dear life as they floated away from the train and down the canyon they had been passing through. Agatha screamed and panted as they floated down, down, down the canyon. The last thing she saw before her vision faded to black was the greenery of the mountains around them.
***
Agatha opened her eyes to the inside of a cozy log cabin. A fireplace crackled to her left, a large TV mounted over it. The floors and walls were all oak, but the furniture was oddly modern. Agatha looked down at the chair she had been asleep in, which was a big white plush chair. Across from her was another similar chair, with a small, round table between them. A lamp was on a half-moon table a few feet away, providing some light. The cabin seemed to be big, with lots of doors and a library she could see a few feet away. A window was on her right, and most of the floor was covered with a plain rug. She looked around, wondering what had happened between the impromptu parachute ride and now.
Then, a door opened across from her, causing her to jump. “Oh, good, you’re up. Hey,” Agatha gasped and curled up under her blanket. “Okay, it’s me. It’s just me.” The voice came closer, and Agatha realized it was the woman from the train. Her hair was out loose and was a little longer than Agatha imagined it would be. She had changed into a baggy T-shirt and leggings, and her voice seemed a little raspier. “Remember?”
“Yeah, I know, I know. I recognize you.” Agatha relaxed a little.
The woman tilted her head at Agatha as if she were studying her. After a few seconds, she cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, I’m being rude. I apologize. We haven’t been formally introduced.”
Finally. Agatha was tired of calling her “the woman” in her mind.
“My name’s Rio Vidal.” She took a step toward Agatha, and she yelped. As much as she wanted to get to know the woman, Agatha didn’t know anything about her, except for the fact that she could maybe crush Agatha in a few seconds. She knew nothing about her age, motivation, or past; she could be tasked with killing Agatha herself, for all she knew.
But Rio just chuckled like she’d seen this reaction before. “Relax,” she held her hands up. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Where’s my rabbit?” Agatha tried to keep her voice still.
“Señor Scratchy’s right over there in the kitchen, snacking on lettuce. Just like Mom feeds him.” Rio pointed to the window. Agatha clambered up to look through it, seeing Scratchy content in his carrier. “He’s fine,” Rio assured. “But you’re not.” Her voice went lower.
Rio hit something on a remote, and the TV flickered on, showing a CCTV tape. Agatha was horrified. It was showing the inside of her house, currently being ripped apart by random men. The bulletin board she had in her office with plotlines was being torn down, paper by paper. The papers she had organized on her desk were scattered all over it and on the carpeted floor. Tables were overturned, monitors were screwed open; what was going on?
“You’re in big, big trouble.” Rio’s voice came from beside her.
“You…You have cameras in my house?!” Agatha pointed an accusing finger at Rio. She took a step back from her. “You’re not a spy; you’re a pervert.”
Rio chuckled, which was starting to get annoying. Why did she have to laugh at every serious thing Agatha said? “No, not a pervert, darling. I’m a spy.” She withdrew a bottle of whiskey from a drawer and opened it. “I’m just doing my job. I’m not a pervert. That’s the bad guys’ feed that we’re tapped into.”
Agatha glanced at the screen again. “Well, then, who—who are these people?” Agatha was starting to lose her mind, and if she didn’t get answers soon, she was about to defenestrate this hot spy.
Thankfully, Rio had her back. She poured herself a glass of whiskey, pointing to where the CCTV tape had zoomed in on the man from the book launch. “See that guy right there?” Agatha looked. He was clearly searching for something important, sorting through her papers with angry eyebrows. “The one from the train? His name’s Ralph. He works for the Division, the real-life version of those bad-guy spies in your books.
“The Salem Seven.” Agatha clarified.
Rio nodded. “And the head honcho, she doesn’t have a name, unlike the book. At least, to us. She goes by the alias ‘Witch.’”