CHAPTER 38

A/N: Sup guys, I apologize for not posting yesterday as It was unavoidable. 

This might be unfortunate news for some, but I'm thinking of working on a new schedule during weekend for the number of chapters I'll be posting weekly since school and work are taking quite the toll on my free time. 

And no, this is not a prelude to a drop. 

I'm thinking between 3 - 5 chapters every week, that way I can at least have some breathing space for myself when work and school are done with me. 

With that out of the way, let's proceed with today's chapter. 

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The thick and suffocating scent of fear saturated the air at the subway station, causing the hearts of the crowd to beat faster and harder than they ever thought possible. It was a chaotic scene, with people running in all directions, trying to escape the overwhelming feeling of dread, but they were halted with guns which pointed at them from both sides of the train. 

Many feared for their lives and obeyed every instruction that was given to them. There was no place for ego or human rights when a gun that could snuff out your life with the pull of a trigger was being pointed at you. For some it was just another day over here, while some people have experienced traumatic events like this and now saw it as a new norm. Others never got used to it and are still terrified when such things happen. 

When the train stopped at the station, they asked everyone to get down from the train as they controlled the crowd. Immediately everyone was out of the train, they asked us to get down on our knees with hands behind our heads. 

They had taken control over the subway station's security system, both the security men, communication systems, and the surveillance cameras were under their control at the moment. They acted like they were on the clock and needed to achieve their objective before any help could come from the outside. 

They confiscated everyone's phones, taking extra measures to ensure the police didn't intervene with their mission that day. 

"Quiet down!" One of the goons wearing a Freddy Krueger mask yelled as he swayed his gun around, pointing at no one in particular but threatened the masses all together. 

"No one is coming to save you now. Not the police, not even the speedsters." He let out a wicked chuckle as the faces of the crowd grew pale. They felt the tension in the air increase, and then the rest of the robbers just yelled at them for decorum. 

Tom just kept calm, after all if things went south he was sure to get out of there unscathed. But if he made a move, who knows what would happen to the other hostages. 

Like always, there is always that one idiot who thinks they could voice out their opinions and resolve a violent situation without the need for said violence. 

A man started speaking up and yelling at the robbers that what they were doing was wrong and immoral, maybe the trauma must have made him lose his mind. Why else would a sane person yell at people holding loaded guns and could end the life of anyone present, right there at the spot?  

As the man continued to rant on and on, their captors grew sick and tired of him wanting to voice out his so called human rights. One walked up to him and pointed a gun at his head before pulling the trigger. A headshot which ended the man immediately as his brains spilled out on the cold floor.

"Noo!"

A lady cried out loud as the man who was shot happened to be her husband, she crawled over to his lifeless body and cried bitterly for the loss of her beloved. 

In the midst of the commotion, another man tried making a run for it, a dumb ass move if anyone was asked. He was shot down, an action that seemed to immediately knock some sense into the rest of them. No one was acting like a knucklehead anymore or making stupid decisions as they were all frozen to the spot. 

"The man in the blue suit who's holding a brief case by the side, that's our guy." The head of the robbers stated as he singled out a middle aged man. 

One of the men walked over to the midst of the hostages with a gun by his side, and dragged the target to their boss. 

"You sneaky bastard. We've been looking for you for a while now. I gotta hand it to you, hiding out in Central City was a smart move."

"Please, I don't know what you are talking about. I'm just an accountant." The terrified man made his plea which fell on deaf ears. 

"Come on now, we know you are not just an accountant, but one with ties to the Falcon family. We need some information which we think you might be able to provide us with."

"I swear, I don't know what you are talking about. I'm just an ordinary accountant, please let me go."

As the scene played out right before Tom's eyes, he seemed to find it a little bit entertaining as he just stayed put and watched it play out. 

"Every minute counts boys, bag him up and kill the rest of them. I think they've heard too much already." He ordered his men. 

A true psychopath who didn't care about the lives of the hostages since they were now useless to him. Fear gripped the crowd as they started begging for their lives and the children started crying, holding on to their parents, scared that this was going to be their last moment. 

"Sigh!" 

'It seems this verse is filled with psychopaths who just result to killing civilians for unnecessary reasons. The mass murder would lead to a greater punishment for them once they get caught and arrested, but I guess they never thought that far ahead.' Tom thought to himself, he wondered what kind of logic most DC bad guys worked with, because it was really fucked up. 

He wore his hoodie over his head and stood up, then walked to the front of the crowd as the robbers took note of his presumed bold move. 

"You've got some balls kid, I see you want to go first. Light him up boys before disposing of the rest, then we make a run for it." The leader of the crew ordered his men as he moved to prepare their escape.

The first one shot at Tom, only for the bullet to be deflected back at him in the blink of an eye. The rest were shocked at the sight of their man who fired a gun shot, but yet he was the one who got shot. 

'That never gets old.' The thought crossed Tom's mind while his eyes scanned the rest to see what their next move might be. 

Before they could fathom what had just happened, he disarmed them without making any use of his hands but with a thought, their guns were ripped from their hands and sent far away from anyone's reach. He then lifted them above the ground as they floated in mid air. 

"Run!" He said to the crowd as he stayed focused on the floating men. 

At first they hesitated because they did not know if there were more men ahead, but they suddenly had a feel of courage as they started running towards the exit of the station. They ran so fast that Tom could only assume it was a result of the adrenaline pumping within them as the life and death situation must have probably triggered it.  

"Boss, they are escaping." The men floating in the air shouted as they tried alarming their boss who had just finished preparing for their getaway. 

He didn't want to bother with attending to each one of them, so he slammed them against a wall across the tracks, and one against a pillar, two lost consciousness and the other who seemed to have landed wrongly, dislocated his elbow and was struggling with the immense pain. 

Tom walked up to him with his bone poking out of his hand and blood spilling over. Then bent over so he could take a closer look at his eyes as he looked like he was begging him not to hurt him any further. 

Tom didn't care about hurting him, his only business was with the boss. He stretched out his hand to his face as he bashed his head into a wall he was leaning on. 

The leader came in and was wondering what the commotion was all about, but the sight of Tom standing over his men on the floor and unconscious made him furious and wanted Tom's head for it. 

The look in his eyes was pure hatred as it seemed Tom had foiled his plans even more. 

"You think you can stop me?" He shouted in a fit of rage as he cocked his gun and shot at him. The bullet deflected off Tom and unlike his men, he was quick to evade it. 

"Nice reflexes." Tom commented with a mischievous smile on his face. He saw that as an opportunity to exercise a little more of his powers on a human. 

"You are a meta, well if bullets won't work then I would have to use my fists." He dropped his gun then punched the side of a pillar which scattered on impact with his hand, almost like a warm up. 

"Show off." Tom muttered to himself as he realized the boss was a power type. 

He raced at him, then took a sudden leap which sent him midair as he prepared his fist and launched a heavy blow directed at Tom's face. 

Tom didn't move from that spot as his fist was deflected on impact with the field which surrounded him. The deflected force as a result of the man's punch, threw him a few paces back from Tom's position. 

"Oh, so you are a coward who hides behind a shield. Why don't you drop that shield then come out and play?" He smiled as he taunted Tom to put down his defense. 

"You know the cops will be here in no time right?" Tom said to him as he prepared himself for another attack. 

"That's right, and you would be long dead before anyone gets here." He cracked his knuckles as he slowly approached him, cautious of whatever trick Tom might wish to pull on him. 

"Well, that gives us some time to get a little physical. It's been a while." Tom cracked his neck, stretched his limbs a little, before taking a kickboxing stance. 

One of the benefits of being the only child from a rich home was that he had to take martial arts classes, but he was a bit rusty due to the fact that he hasn't trained or practiced it since he arrived at this verse. 

Tom gave him a hand gesture for him to make the first move. He dashed at him and threw a direct kick to his neck, which Tom ducked then delivered a heavy punch with its momentum tweaked to match the strength of the mad man. But unfortunately his head twisted the wrong way due to the impact from Tom's punch, and he broke his neck. 

"...I guess I miscalculated what he could handle." Tom said to himself as he stared at the lifeless body, in complete shock of what had happened. 

He never intended to take the man's life. Tom just wanted a minor brawl, so he could beat a little sense into him before he landed in jail. Maybe set his head straight with a punch or two, but it was too late.

After staring at his lifeless body for a few seconds, Tom noticed he didn't react like he would normally do. He had just killed a man and he wasn't fidgeting or shaking from the shock of it. 

He knew killing was wrong but he only felt remorse for not more than a second. It only seemed logical to him that if the man didn't die here, the number of lives he would take during his lifetime would be a hulking amount. He was someone who saw people's lives as disposable the minute they cease to be of any use to him.

'The life of one man to save the lives of the masses. I don't know why I was thinking that way now, or since when I started thinking on such thin logics.' These thoughts kept flooding his mind as he overlooked the murder he had just committed, but one thought stood above the rest. And that was to get out of there before the cops arrived and they could do so at any second.

Tom proceeded to the control room where he found the security guards unconscious, then destroyed the surveillance system and erased its memory beyond recovery. He expunged every bit of data in order to cover his tracks before he fled the scene.