Nautilus: Chapter 3 - Under Survailance

Using his peripheral vision, Alex looked at Sarah, she was visibly shaking and she was tearing up. “Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit!” Alex thought to himself, cursing his luck. “Well!? Is this broad you’re girlfriend or not?” the gunman said pointing his rifle at Sarah. “A-And if I am?” Sarah asked mustering up all the courage she could. A sadistic smile emerged from the gunman’s lips, “Then that makes this oh so much more fun!” he said as he pulled the trigger firing a few rounds into Sarah’s abdomen. The man let loose a hideous laugh as Sarah fell to the ground clutching her side tightly. “S-Sarah!” Alex screamed dropping down to a knee, holding her in his arms. The man kept laughing and aimed his rifle at Alex. “Don’t worry, you’ll soon join her” the man announced, but something was weird, Alex noticed that the man’s words became tuned out and slowed down, as if time was slowing down around him. “Now’s my chance!” Alex thought to himself and with that thought, he swept the man’s legs causing him to fall on his behind.

Wasting no time, Alex kicked the rifle away from his enemy’s hands and stomped with all his might on the man’s neck. He could hear the man struggling to breathe and he watched the soldier breathe his last breath before turning and applying pressure on Sarah’s wound. “Sarah I’m so sorry! I should have done something sooner! I should have-“ Alex silenced himself once he saw his friend open her eyes and place a finger on his lips. “Quit being so melodramatic Alex, the idiot missed vital organs and the bullet passed clean through. It hurts, but I’ll be fine” she told him smiling. Alex did not look her in the eye, he was too ashamed of himself for not acting sooner; he quickly looked through the deceased soldier’s supplies and scavenged a medical pack.

“Alright bear with it for a little while, it’s going to sting” Alex told Sarah as he disinfected the wound with alcohol; Sarah breathed in sharply due to the sting and soldiered through the first aid until Alex finished wrapping gauze around her midsection. She smiled at him when he finished, thanking him with a kiss to the cheek and then laughed when his face turned red, she soon winced from the pain and gripped her right side. “..Idiot” Alex whispered to her and he helped her up placing her left arm on his neck and then he bent down to pick up the dead soldier’s rifle.
“The Nautilus Patrol should be here soon, so all you gota do is get us outside to the station and away from here” Sarah said to Alex as they walked up the train.

“Yeah that sounds easy, but remember that there are two more soldiers up there, and I’m not exactly a sure shot” Alex replied walking at a snail’s pace to accommodate Sarah’s injury. Sarah began to say something but Alex shushed her silently; the two remaining soldiers were searching the corpses of the unfortunate passengers and did not notice Alex or Sarah. “Stay here” he whispered to her and was about to sneak around to get a better firing angle but stopped because Sarah was tightly griping his blazer.
“I’ll be fine…” Alex said looking into Sarah’s worried eyes; she let go of his blazer and he crawled his way up a few seating compartments, slowly inching closer to the two gunmen. Alex stood still for a moment to collect his thoughts

“I’m pretty agile… so I might be able to close the gap between us pretty quickly and take them out in close combat, or I could try a run and gun technique, but I might miss and blow my cover... hmmm” he thought to himself, trying to formulate a plan. “Screw it,” he whispered and stepped out of cover. He sprinted down the train and maintained his speed even when he started to zigzag. In an impressive display of agility, he was able to silently sprint towards the soldiers and smashed the butt of the rifle into the back of one soldier’s head, killing him instantly; he then opened fire and emptied the entire clip into the remaining soldier.

Alex tossed the rifle away like it was something infected with disease and looked at his hands. “Why is everything moving so slowly…? Adrenaline usually doesn’t last this long…” he thought. Casting his thoughts aside, Alex returned to Sarah, who was now whiter that her usual caramel colored skin. “Are you okay?” Alex asked, Sarah nodded slightly and just looked at him in awe.
“I didn’t know you could move that quickly” she told him as he helped her walk.

“Neither did I” he replied helping her out onto the light train station. “They should make me an NP, I just did their job” he said jokingly

“So there you have it” announced a voice. “Quick, agile, precise, deadly; a perfect candidate for a Nautilus Samurai” The voice belonged to a man, possibly in his late forties, his facial features were shrouded in the shadows of the room, in fact, the only light in the room was a large holo screen that seemed to have been playing a recording of Alex taking down the two soldiers on the light train.
“That’s assuming he even passes his classes at N.A.P” said a second voice; this one seemed like a female, probably in her early twenties. “Of course he will pass!” yelled out a third voice; this last voice belonged to an elderly man, quite possibly in his late sixties. “He is his son after all.”

“Yes, that is the truth” said the middle-aged man. “But that is of little importance. What matters now is that he keeps that hostile disposition towards the soldiers that harmed his friend and killed all those innocent people, Syndicate of Spheres. If he does that, the he will gladly jump at the offer to fight for the Imperial Union against them.”

The room was then plunged into darkness.