Chapter 8 I've Seen This Somewhere Before
1466 Words
On her way to the washroom, she stubbed her toe on the corner of the wall, making her grit her teeth with pain. But fortunately, the handle of the mouthwash cup was still facing left.
Toni thought while brushing her teeth, “Why do I pay special attention to where the cup handle is facing? Isn’t it always facing left?”
The chaotic and terrifying event lingering in reality and her dreams for many days not only made her feel anxious, but also put her under a lot of pressure, as if it were some kind of omen. She had coveted the position of General Manager of the North Region for a long time and had been working hard for it, but she had lost it to her most annoying competitor. She wanted to put on a smile to congratulate her opponent, but in the end she failed to do so.
If her opponent had contested the position with her fair and square, she would've admitted defeat and been sincere toward her. But Gina wasn’t a fair person. The relationship between her and Charlotte Hill, the CEO, was complex and confusing. Toni had heard various versions of their relationship. In the end, she decided they were just having a steamy affair.
Early in the morning, she encountered her ex-girlfriend and her new husband on the way to work, who cut in front of her in traffic and teased her about being poor. When she arrived at the office, she found out that she was now her opponent’s deputy. The days to come would surely be very difficult for her. But this enemy didn’t care that the coming days would be long, and she had to work hard to show her efficiency, and took Toni away with her as soon as she assumed her new post, making Toni utterly exhausted from overwork.
Her assistant, Cathy, came in and told Toni that Miss Bailey wanted to go on a business trip with her. They had to inspect counters and meet their business partner in City B for two days and one night.
Could Toni refuse? She naturally couldn't and wouldn’t.
She hung up on her mother, sang songs with Mr. Cook in a karaoke room all night, and drank all kinds of alcohol. But in the end, it was Gina who sealed the deal. After inspecting the counters, she originally planned to take the evening high-speed train back to City L, but unexpectedly, her purse had gone missing, so naturally her ID had been lost.
She was having a really bad day.
Toni found this strange. She had always been careful. Even if she'd drunk a lot, she would never forget herself, let alone lose her purse.
Gina comforted her by saying it didn't matter, and they could just go to the station to get a temporary ID card and buy tickets for another train.
They rescheduled their trip to take the last train of the day to return to City L. When Toni’s head was hit by a suitcase carried by a scruffy middle-aged man after they got into the carriage, she felt like she'd been pounded and awakened by a flying stone from up in the sky, and something dim hidden in the depths of her brain came bursting forth in an instant.
She clutched the back of her head and looked around. The scruffy man who'd walked away, the noisy college students, the pregnant woman, and the dazzling carriage...
She was taking this high-speed train for the first time, but there was a voice in her mind saying...
I’ve been here before.
A sudden and intense dizziness made Toni lean into her seat, causing a black mist to appear in front of her, which only faded away after a long time.
Gina looked at her as she took out her laptop, and said, “Miss Smith, are you okay? Are you low on blood sugar?”
Toni waved her hand to indicate that she was fine, but Gina put down her laptop and poured her a cup of hot water at the end of the carriage after waiting for the high-speed train to start running smoothly.
“Want to drink something hot? It’s cold outside but it's stuffy inside the carriage. Don’t rush to take off your clothes. You might catch a cold."
She didn’t expect Gina to know how to take care of others well, as she was still so young. She had enjoyed success at a young age, and had even became her boss, but she wasn't pretentious, and was instead rather kind and sincere. Toni thanked her, took the paper cup a little embarrassedly, and drank half of the hot water slowly. She did feel much better.
After the train passed a small station, Gina turned on her laptop and looked at the screen carefully. After the fast-paced business trip, she still had enough energy to work overtime on the way back.
Toni leaned back in her chair and planned to close her eyes and rest her mind. Of course, it would be better if she could actually fall asleep.
Just when she was about to fall asleep, while trying very hard to ignore the noise in the carriage, the entire train suddenly shook violently. The lights flashed and the passengers screamed. Toni felt like she was falling off a cliff and reached outwards abruptly, locking fingers with Gina!
“What happened?!” The pregnant woman sitting diagonally in front of them turned and asked her in terror.
Toni herself hadn't calmed down yet, but seeing the pregnant woman’s large belly, she comforted she instinctively, “It should be okay. It was probably just the brake system malfunctioning.”
A man and a woman stood up and walked to the front of the carriage. Toni kept looking at them unconsciously.
Water spilled out of her paper cup onto Gina’s leg, and Toni quickly looked for tissues to help her wipe it clean.
“Miss Smith.” Gina’s throat felt tight. She didn't care about her wet pants, and instead held Toni’s hand while staring blankly into space, saying, “Do you have a weird feeling...?”
“Weird?”
“I feel like I've seen this scene somewhere before.”
This sentence coincided with a certain thought in Toni’s mind. Before she could think about it anymore, the glass door between the carriages was pulled open with a “snap”, and after a second of stillness, a scream full of fear pierced Toni’s eardrums.
“Bang! Bang, bang, bang!” The swift and violent sound of gunfire swept into the carriage!
Toni’s face went white, and Gina grabbed her head and pressed her under the seats.
The seats shook, a crowd of people ran about wildly, and the screams made Toni shudder with fear!
Toni was underneath Gina, so she couldn’t see anything, but the crazy shots, terrifying chaos, and movement of people running for their lives was extremely clear!
“What happened?!” Toni shouted.
“Stop talking!” Gina, who had previously been polite and gentle, yelled at her, pressing her with her arms so that she couldn’t move, and blocking the people who fled over the seats in a state of panic.
Most of the college students who were playing card games were already lying on the seats covered in blood. A tall guy sitting in the innermost seat had been shot in the abdomen. His face was screwed up in pain, but as he glanced at the junction between the carriages, he didn’t care about anything. He swung himself up against the front backrest, stepped on Gina’s arm, and squeezed frantically between the back of the seats and the luggage rack.
Through the gap between Gina’s arms, Toni could see the college student. After just one step, a bullet hit him in the back of the head, which was instantly blown to a pulp like a watermelon. His body collapsed, and he fell straight down into his seat.
The two of them immediately lowered their eyes and hugged each other. Both of them could feel each other’s bodies violently trembling with fear.
“Don’t move. Don’t utter a sound.” Gina tried very hard to calm herself down and whispered in Toni's ear, reminding her again and again in a voice that only she could hear.
Five men in black jackets and leather boots walked into the carriage, wearing white masks with distorted smiling faces. The bright red lips reached all the way up to the eyes, and the combination of feminine faces and strong bodies was intangibly ghastly and bloodcurdling. Each of them held a machine g*n in their hands, kicking the corpses away while walking slowly down the aisle.
“Help... help me...”
- Writer
