Ripples

She was zoned into the book, the science explained and unfolding in neat linear sentences of understanding; fucking beautiful! Knowing precisely how much time passes (on average) between stops, and from her on-point to her exit-point, the reader had every intention of being in the world of pure science for the entire duration.

It was easy to let the world fade away to tribal drums and sounds of rain while her brain soaked in revelations of scientific advances in the human understanding of the most basic elements in the cosmos. It was a routine; a wind-down, a stationary astral-projection into the mind of another writer attempting to convey epiphany of science. For a while, she was in her happy place.

Against perspective better judgment, she ignored the unsettling feelings that tried to urge her eyes upwards, kept reading and thinking right up until a gloved hand reached swiftly into her field of vision. In a split second, her mind perceived the hand as going for her throat, not the ear bud wire where the two halves came together, and reacted on instinct full of self-preservation.

The book was dropped as her legs came down in purposeful kick to the man's inner knee, avoiding the hard shell of a protective knee cap, while her bare knuckled fist struck out like a viper to punch him in his throat. Wham-bam, he wasn't prepared, went down like a clattering (well armed) sack of potatoes growling curses in hoarse coughing fits that brought another man into her peripheral.

With Instinct in the driver seat, there were no conscious considerations, just sensory input and action. She SHOULD have taken the earbuds out, but didn't have a presence of mind to consider it, or why their mouths kept moving but she had no idea what they were saying.

Despite having guns, they didn't use them, let her fight like a hell cat till they could catch hold of her limbs and stop her. By then, they were all panting, sweating, some cursing, some hurting, and a few even bleeding. Her eyes danced at all of them, some masked with black ski-masks, some bare faced, but most of them (reasonably) angry.

Someone had the foresight to take out her earbuds before trying to get her attention again. He was one of the few men left standing and not holding her to the floor, trying to catch their breaths. She watched as he dropped the faint music to her chest and rose to a stand again, but her view of him was upside-down as he stood above her head.

In the moment, she didn't know which side of the train she was "headed" (haha-she laughed at her word choice) nor how long since the fight started. Instinct had a gnarly way of putting her brain on reset. Her expression said she didn't like it, but had enough conscious thought now not to try for round two.

"If I tell them to let you up, are you going to start swinging again?" He asked, fingering his bottom lip for unknown reasons.

She looked at the men holding her down, only a few would look at her in return, but their expressions were the same, 'please don't.' So, she looked back up at the man in charge and took a deep breath. "Not if you tell me who you are and why you cleared everyone out of here." The emptiness was suddenly profound.

The man laughed. The rest of the team didn't seem to know what was funny, but when he signaled them to let her up while he repeated his acronym of authority, they obeyed without hesitation or comment. To her surprise, despite fighting them on instinct, some of them men even helped her back to her feet.

“…which you would have heard had you not been nose deep in pages with your ears in MP3 land.” He went on, unenthusiastically. “You could have saved Xavoir the throat-punch and knee-kick and just let him complete the gesture of ‘remove your headphones’ but no, the book-“

She interrupted him with a ‘huh!’ of defensiveness followed with a retort, "You all could have avoided my survival instinct if you'd just wear insignia-"

"Survival Instinct?" He questioned, like he didn't believe her, took a breath, and confirmed it. "Instinct and some kind of training, right?"

Her thoughts side-lined by question, there was a sudden weight in the room that made her hyper-aware they were all looking for the answer to that particular question after she went violent before they could get a word in otherwise.

It was the man in charge that eventually became saddled with the weight of her gaze enduring theirs; "If you count One-Eyed Bill teaching me to aim for the other side, as in inside of my target as training, sure."

There seemed to be a pause, a flickering need to ask about One-Eyed Bill, but the man countered instead with a list of injuries she just dealt to his team on account of their standing ‘unharmed’ order, "You went for Xavier’s throat, his knee, broke Frankie’s nose-"

"Anatomy." She interrupted again, not wanting to know the exact list, already too aware of her misstep. "I was in fight or flight mode, I didn't know who you were or why he was reaching for me and I struck out with the intent to disable so I could escape, but without thinking in actual terms. I know you need air to breathe and working legs to walk, so on and so on." Her tone was apologetic and explanatory then, rather than defensive.

From across the car, toward the back door, a deeper voice rang out like he was trying to be quiet but failed because his voice carried anyway, "explain this, then..." One gloved hand fingered a neat cut through the underarm of his jacket and shirt with a hint of skin and blood peeking through.

"I have her knife." Another man confirmed, wiggled it in his fingers as proof the incident wouldn't be repeated.

All she had to do was look at the injured man and she remembered what happened and why she did it. However, she took so long trying to think how to explain it, she felt a tingle of a shiver building under their expectant stares and blurted. "Well, artery under the arm weakness in your armor aside, I might have actually tried to kill you...sorry…you're a giant of a man."

There was pregnant pause full of the dull roar and clamor of the subway speeding away on its tracks through the tunnels toward the next stop.

The "giant of a man" was the first to bubble forth a chuckle of mixed understanding and amusement, "I am," he confessed; just like that, the tension in the car popped and more laughter erupted into a choir.

She didn't need to ask to know what was so funny, or why their anger seemed to dissipate with the laughter. Emotional chemicals aside, she could sense they all finally understood her initial over-reaction. Solitary woman, armed men, especially with a giant in the mix, it was all very understandable when the shoe was on the other foot for a moment.

The masculine amusement seemed worth the bruises, besides, it seemed wise to wait for the laughter to wane before she brought them back to reality of now, and what next.

In the waiting, though, she had a foreign thought and said it out loud. "Can't believe I skipped the beach for this."

"I was just thinking that." One of the men standing beside the man in charge responded with an almost sad but cautious admission.

"Too fucking bad," another man barked behind her, "we're here to escort you to our commander so just sit down and shut-up."

Even as she turned around to face him at the forward part of the car, he was reaching a hand to force her into one of the seats and she had an instinctive urge to stop him. As her bruised and bloodied hands came up defensively, he took a step back and the teammate beside him lifted the nozzle of his gun in her direction.

Her mind and body twitched in actions not taken before she quietly requested, "lower the gun, there isn't need for violence anymore, and in at least three other slivers of infinity, this ends quite badly." Her hands went to her sides as she forced them to relax to show she meant what she said, ignoring the bloodstains marring the pristine pink of her pink hoodie sleeves, a Christmas gift from her adoptive Grandparent.

"Slivers of... talking crazy-" the man without his gun aimed at her countered, angrily taking that step toward her again.

The man in charge named him as he intervened, "No, Ace, let her talk."

The atmosphere in the room snapped to attention, the other men looked at their leader with unspoken question; what did he know, that they didn’t?