Perhaps it was early in the morning, which explained why the platform was so empty. Aside from us ten students, there were very few pa.s.sengers. A couple of old ladies, one of whom was peeling a hard-boiled egg for some reason. A father and daughter, the former who was speaking rapidly into his smartphone while his daughter looked around, bored. A bearded man who looked like an ex-boxer, and his heavily pregnant wife. A business CEO guy with a stiff expression and in a suit. One of the other carriages was taken up by students from an entire school. Unlike us, they weren't combat mages. Instead, the guys seemed to be from a baseball team, and the girls were cheerleaders. They were probably partic.i.p.ating in a regional baseball tournament.

After all, combat magic tournaments weren't the only compet.i.tions in the Federation, or in the world. Normal sports continued to exist long into the future. Yay for sports!

As it was still so d.a.m.ned early in the morning, I was feeling extremely sleepy. I usually slept late at night, so I wasn't very used to waking up early. I stifled a yawn and leaned my head back against the cus.h.i.+on seat.

Given how it was so early and the train station was quite some distance from our school, there was no one to send us off. No entourage of students cheering and waving. The platform was eerily empty, save for a single conductor waving the train onward while the doors began to close. A few of the train stewards were striding through the carriages, making sure we had our tickets and that the pa.s.sengers were all strapped in comfortably.

Almost no one noticed a single panicky shape hurrying across the platform, right when the sole conductor's back was turned, and rush into the train before the doors slammed shut. The train then began moving, even as the train driver's voice blared over the speakers.

I was about to close my eyes and doze off when the motion tracker on my gla.s.ses detected something very faint. I almost missed it. After all, there was movement around me – from my fellow pa.s.sengers, not to mention the bullet train itself was also moving. It was a stray movement at the end of its peripheral edge that caught my attention, and I forced myself to sit up. The conductor was waving at the train, gesturing for it to go, even as it picked up speed and everything turned to a blur.

And then I saw someone dove at the poor conductor amd knocked him over, the duo toppling over the platform and falling into the rail.

The train then shot out of there, and the conductor and his a.s.sailant vanished from sight.

"Did you see that?!" I cried out, jolting upright. Harrison Reed, who was seated beside me, stared at me blankly. Normally, I would be sticking with Dong Fang Yue Chu, but my good friend was currently sitting together with Lily Liam. As I didn't want to sit with Bu Fan, I chose to join Harrison instead. It made some sense, given that I was his vice-captain.

"See what?"

"The conductor…he…"

I magnified the vision on my gla.s.ses, but saw nothing. Probably because the train station was vanis.h.i.+ng into the distance. Was it my imagination?

Unfortunately, I couldn't playback the scene. As this wasn't an official mission, I did not switch on the recording function of my gla.s.ses. It was highly impractical to leave such an energy-consuming device on 24/7, not to mention I would run out of memory s.p.a.ce if I tried to record everything 24/7. Even this far into the future, we still had yet to develop micro SD chips that could store thousands of Terabytes worth of data.

"Wait!" You may cry. "But it's the future! It's inconceivable…"

Just roll with it, okay? Jeez. People wear gla.s.ses in the future. We still hadn't developed microchips that could house a thousand Terabytes worth of storage s.p.a.ce. Or you could just a.s.sume that I wasn't obsessive-compulsive enough to record every single moment of my life, and there were many periods that I would prefer unrecorded. Privacy and all that.

Shaking my head, I decided to go to sleep. It took less than a second for me to lean my head against the cus.h.i.+oned headrest to doze off immediately.

While I was asleep, the lady who had dashed into the train was lying in the s.p.a.ce between carriages, right outside the bathrooms. She was extremely pale, and was trembling violently. A hideous wound marred her exposed leg, but she was wrapping a torn cloth around the appendage, tightening it in hopes of cutting off the blood flow.

It didn't work.

Her eyes rolling back in her head, she toppled over and lay sprawled on the ground, unnoticed by anyone. The train had just barely taken off, and not many people were choosing to use the restroom then. Many, like me, were still drowsy because they were forced to wake up so early in the morning to catch the first train.

The first person to come across the poor lady was the female train stewardess. The train stewards were making their rounds as usual, checking pa.s.sengers for their tickets, making sure everything was in place and not out of order, helping to improve the comfort of pa.s.sengers, etc. This particular stewardess happened to cross from Carriage 7 to Carriage 8 when she caught sight of the injured lady lying sprawled outside the bathroom.

"Ma'am?!" she panicked and rushed over to the fallen lady, crouching down to check on her. It was unfortunate, but she only knew the most rudimentary of firstaid. After all, she was a stewardess, not a nurse or a doctor or a healing mage. "Are you all right, ma'am? What happened? Are you feeling ill or something?"

Callous readers might harshly accuse her of asking stupid questions, but they obviously never placed themselves in her shoes. Seriously, when you saw something out of the ordinary happen, you were going to panic a little, no matter how well trained you were. Especially when it looked as if someone was about to die.

"Sir!" the stewardess quickly activated the com bead in her ear and contacted her superior, who was her senior by five years. "There's a…casualty between Carriage 7 and Carriage 8! I'm not sure what happened to her, but it looks bad! She's…she's lying on the ground and shaking uncontrollably! Going into seizures…"

"Calm down," her superior ordered. Despite his greater age and vaster experience, he was still unnerved by what he had heard. Even so, he was able to stay calm somehow. "I'll proceed there immediately. Help her as best as you can. I'll see if there's any doctor on board the train or something."

"P…please hurry!" the stewardess was clasping her hands so tightly that her knuckles turned white. "She…she looks like she's about to die!"

The male steward pursed his lips, but didn't say anything. He knew that reprimanding his junior would be countereffective, so he merely took a deep breath.

"Hang in there."

Those were the only words he imparted to her before he hastily strode through the carriages to reach her position.

While he did so, he went around asking or help.

"Anyone a doctor? Anyone a nurse? Anyone has any knowledge of firstaid? Healing mage? Anyone?"

As he did that, I was fast asleep, but I ended up waking up abruptly when the father, who was dressed in an immaculate suit, trotted past my seat, speaking loudly into his smartphone.

"Yes, I know! I'll be back in the office later today! I'm just taking my daughter to see her mother, that's all! Deal with the ForEx Corp, hold them there until I return, okay? Give them the Sturen Plans to read for the time being."

He impatiently hung up and glanced around, trying to find his daughter.

"Su An? Where are you?"

Rudely roused, I sat up and glanced around, bleary-eyed. Harrison chuckled as he watched me flounder about.

"We aren't there yet. You can go back to sleep, Richard."

"Oh. Okay."

I was about to, but the male train steward chose that moment to enter our carriage.

"Anyone who's a doctor? Nurse? Healing mage?"

"I'm a healing mage." Pearl Pang raised her hand, looking at the fl.u.s.tered man curiously. "What's the matter?"

"Uh, we have an emergency." The steward was perspiring as he tried to catch his breath. He looked at her, an expression of immense relief. "One of the pa.s.sengers seem to be badly hurt…or very ill. She's between Carriage 7 and Carriage 8. My colleague is currently taking care of her, but we have no idea what is ailing her."

Pearl swallowed, looking troubled.

"I'll inform you beforehand that healing magic is not the same as curing diseases. If it's a physical injury, I can heal it, but diseases are a different type of thing, and require different type of spells and treatments."

"Ah…I see. Could you please just take a look, in any case? We really appreciate it…"

He paused to listen to a burst of voice over the com bead and nodded before turning toward Pearl, a strained smile spreading across his face.

"According to my colleague, the lady in question does have a physical injury…a rather large wound on her leg. As if she was bitten by something."

For some reason, the unease that had been crawling over me intensified at that moment. I shot upward, causing everyone to stare at me.

"We should follow Pearl, just in case."

"…huh? I mean, I don't mind, but…" Harrison was puzzled by my behavior.

"I have a bad feeling about this."

"…if you say so." He glanced at the others, who shrugged.

"Hey, not too many people." The steward wiped the perspiration off his face. "We don't have much s.p.a.ce, and you don't want to crowd around the victim."

"He's right, you know." Pearl nodded. Harrison pondered for a second before he relented.

"Richard and I will go. The rest of you, stay here."

"Okay."

Craig, Sheila, Theodore and Cody were playing cards for some reason, while Yue Chu and Lily were…uh, flirting. Bu Fan had been seated next to Pearl because…you know, the protagonist always got to sit beside a beautiful girl. Unless you were Peter Parker in a Marvel movie that was far from home.

With the male steward leading us, we hurried toward the atrium between Carriage 7 and Carriage 8. We could hear the lady shrieking by now, her voice turning inhuman and guttural for some reason. The stewardess attending to her was panicking, near hysterical by now.

"Where are you, Senior?!" she was almost shrieking. "Her condition is getting worse!"

"Almost there!" he shouted back, trying to have himself heard over the inhuman screams of the victim. "Hang in there!"

"That does not sound good," I murmured, a chill running down my spine when I heard the poor lady. That I could hear her even from this distance did not bode well at all. Already, many of the pa.s.sengers were rising from their chairs and peering across, wondering what the h.e.l.l was that racket about.

Pearl was the first to burst into the receptacle, the three of us guys following right behind her. The lady was jerking and thras.h.i.+ng wildly now despite the stewardess's best attempts to hold her down. She had gone into convulsions, her skin a deathly gray, her eyes dulling into cataracts and her tongue lolling in her mouth.

And then…she stopped.

"Oh G.o.d…oh Jesus, oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d!" the stewardess was moaning, tears welling up in her eyes. "We're too late! She's dead! She's dead, she's dead!"

"Out of the way!" Pearl ordered as she stepped forward. "Let me see…"

"Wait!" I shouted. "It's best if everyone get away from her!"

Everyone turned to stare at me. Pearl scowled.

"Why?! If we don't help her, she might really die…"

I swallowed as I stared at the lady's corpse. The stewardess suddenly got the hint and backed away to safety, scrambling behind her senior. I sucked in a deep breath. "I think it's too late. That lady, I think she had turned into a zombie."

"…huh?"

My friends were staring at me blankly, wondering if they should be taking me seriously. Even the stewards looked as if they believed I had gone mad.

Then…

"I'm NOT a zombie!"

The lady suddenly sat up. She began coughing blood and causing a big mess, to the stewards' dismay. At least they were relieved that she was alive.

Pearl gave me a cold glare, and then proceeded to check on the lady. After casting a couple of spells, she straightened up.

"Viral infection. I'm sorry. She'll need to see a specialist. I don't have the healing spells necessary to cure her."

Yeah, that made sense. Even among healing magic, there were different branches. The most common was the restorative branch, which healed common injuries, broken bones, cuts, bleeding, etc. and allowed healing mages to regenerate organs, limbs or whatever was lost. But it didn't include myopia, nor was it "shapes.h.i.+fting" or "cosmetic" magic, which altered the form of one's body or physique rather than restore it. Those healing mages who specialized in that were rare, which was why they could get away with charging exorbitant prices for their treatments.

And then you had the cure branches, which dealt with diseases. Pearl clearly belonged to the restorative branch, so she wasn't adept in cure magic at all.

"She needs treatment as soon as possible," she was currently telling the stewards, who nodded.

"The next stop is Bu San City," the male steward informed her. "We'll contact the staff there and arrange for her to be taken to Bu San General Hospital from the station."

"Great."

That left me feeling foolish and utterly stupid, but thankfully Harrison didn't rub it in. Feeling sorry for me, he quietly gestured for me to return to my seat before Pearl and the others noticed. Hanging my head sheepishly, and realizing that my ability to break the fourth wall and make references to other media had failed me for the first time, I silently slinked back.

Man, that was one of the most embarra.s.sing moments in my life.