Happy 21st

Chapter 1 - ''Mr. Mystery'' - Her

Beth had never seen this coming; no one could have.

She was on her way home from her journalist internship on the same route as she takes every day. Waiting on the platform at one of the more deserted GO train stations in Toronto, she was starting to drift off with the exhaustion that comes from yet another excruciating day. It didn't take long for her head to be fully leant against the wall behind her while sitting on the bench and she felt sleep trying to consume her. She was almost too far gone to notice the voices making their way in her direction from the darkness around her.

She forced herself to sit upright and to focus on staying awake. Beth was a happy person but she was completely burnt out, and that was impacting every aspect of her life. She used to be so excited while sitting on this platform because she had felt fulfilled after a day of doing work that she loved and was about to go home to relax and spend time with herself. But now all that excitement was gone. Her days in the office were far too long and she didn't make enough money to see her work as fulfilling anymore. Passion wasn't enough and her excitement for life was wearing thin because of this. All she did when she got home in the evening nowadays was sit in the shower in silence before passing out for the night, so when she heard voices coming towards her on this otherwise empty platform her instinct was to feel agitated and annoyed at the disturbance.

Her agitation never wavered, even when she noticed the voices change direction to grow quieter. She leant forward and looked down the tracks to make sure her would-have-been-visitors were leaving and she could return to her quiet brooding, but she caught a glimpse of two men a few platforms down from her crossing to the opposite side of the tracks. She watched for a bit but they never seemed to notice her. They were too far away for her to hear any of what they were saying but she knew they were deeply invested in their conversation. She thought that the men may have been arguing with each other, but she didn't have much chance to investigate as the taller one put his hand up and the speaking suddenly stopped.

This piqued her curiosity, she almost wanted to see the men up close to understand why this dynamic had such an evident power imbalance since the man who had just been speaking had clearly not finished his thought but had shut up at the motion regardless. She rose from her seat purely out of interest in these men but quickly realised why they had silenced and she froze.

A group of four men was approaching them from further down the platforms. It was difficult to see from her distance in the darkness, but she could tell that there was something very off about this situation and she suddenly came to her senses to leave.

Beth was a smart girl, she knew to trust her gut. She was being filled with the overwhelming feeling that she was intruding on something she was not meant to, no matter how far away she was; she needed to be further. But she just couldn't make herself leave for some reason. There was something in her that was telling her she needed to find out more about this tall and mysterious man that had so easily captured her attention.

She could sense danger. Although the urge to discover more about this situation was overwhelming, she had finally and fully come to her senses to get out of there. Beth turned where she was standing and went to make her way down the platform towards an entrance to the underground passages. She had barely managed to take a few steps before she heard the men in the distance get much louder. She couldn't help but try to get one last look, and what she saw confirmed her fears. The men had pulled guns.

The next thing she knew two of them were down and the loud bangs had awoken her to the point where she began to run.

She ran down into the underground to try to make her way back to the main station before anyone saw she was there. She suddenly seemed to notice how severely her autopilot had been taking over these past couple months as when she was fully awake, alert, and panicked she couldn't seem to remember where to go. She felt as though she was lost in those tunnels for an anxiety-filled eternity before she finally found her destination. She ran out to the front of the station and paused in her tracks.