A Prompted Story by /u/prompted-writing
A young man survives to a plane crash. He should’ve gone on vacation with his friends. He’s the only one survivor, and is rescued on an island. He knows that someone has caused and planned the accident,and wants him dead. He wants to understand who is the responsible.
(reddit link)
"Well, you've got balls kid, I'll give you that." Morgan Elias had picked himself up from the back of the train car. He was dishevelled and covered with pens, bits of paper and other knick-knacks that had been sent flying from his desk, but otherwise he seemed unharmed.
For a moment, despite everything that had happened, I felt star-struck. The Morgan Elias is speaking to me. It's strange how the mind works in moments like these. Even though I was strapped in, maybe I'd gotten a concussion from the sudden jolt when we brought the final hyperloop car to a violent halt. It only took a few seconds for my confused awe to be replaced by the seething hatred that had been my decade-long companion.
"You killed my friends, you arsehole," I repeated. I'd practised this moment so many times, lived it in my head again and again. Yet now I was here and all I could do was repeat that one thing. I could hear the scorn in my own voice. I hoped he could too.
"I'm sure I did kid," Morgan Elias said. He took his phone out of his pocket, hit a single button on the side and lifted it to his ear. I didn't say anything else, I just watched him.
"But I have no idea who you are and I don't care either." Morgan Elias said, phone still pressed to his ear. "It makes no difference. You're gonna pay for messing up my train. I'm going to get on with my life and you're going to be slowly tortured for as long as my guys can keep you alive. Months, hopefully. And ten minutes from now, I'm never going to think about you again." It was only now that he took the phone away from his face and looked at it.
"Signal jammer, arsehole!" I told him. It had taken four years of planning and preparation, two more years of waiting and waiting for the right opportunity, for Morgan Elias---billionaire, celebrity hyperloop builder, murderer---to take his private train on just the right line at just the right time. Everything had needed to be perfect and it had been. The explosion had decoupled Morgan Elias' private study car and triggered its emergency brakes. The brakes had been perfectly engineered. The train had decelerated at exactly the rate it had been designed to, as rapidly as possible without killing any people inside, and stopped beside the signal jammer they had positioned years ago.
"You're wrong," I told Morgan Elias who was now furiously tapping at his phone. "It won't be ten minutes. The the train won't even be able to start decelerating until they've figured out what happened and contacted HRA-Central to remotely trigger the controls. By then it will be at least sixty kilometres away and it's not like the hyperloop can reverse." Morgan Elias had put his phone down now and was looking directly at me. His eyes narrowed. "The nearest town is 63 kilometres away. Depending on how quickly your people get their act together and contact the authorities there, we have at least twenty-seven minutes, possibly up to an hour."
Morgan Elias didn't bother to explain himself. His mouth twisted into a snarl as he launched himself, full bolt, directly at me. His legs were long. It would only take a few strides for him to reach me, still strapped into the guest seat at the other end of the train car. My right foot was crushed and crippled from the plane crash. I could barely stand at the best of times, let alone get up and fight this fit, rage-filled man.
"Annie, now!" I screamed. It took one stride to say the words and he had already accelerated into the second. Third stride, nothing happened. Fourth, he was almost on me, his fist pulled back and flying towards my face with all his rushing body weight behind it. I was strapped in and couldn't move. I shut my eyes.
BAAAAM!
The shock wave from the explosion jolted the train. It must have knocked Morgan Elias from his vicious trajectory, because I did not feel his fist hit my face or his body crash into me. Instead, I felt the disconcerting sensation of being turned upside down. The explosives had broken the pylon supporting the raised hyperloop tunnel. The tunnel, the train car, Morgan Elias and I were about to fall thirty meters to the rocky, barren desert beneath.
--- TO BE CONTINUED ---
(later tonight or tomorrow morning, got evening commitments for the next few hours)