~Leo~

Slinking on marble floors is hard.

First of all it's slippery, and second of all, when my claws came out to try and grip the shiny surface, they echoed loudly in the seemingly deserted bowels of the huge station. Every little scratch and scrape seemed magnified.

Raven perched on my mane, her wings partially spread for balance as I padded along as quickly as I could without running or slipping and falling. Off in the distance, I thought I heard voices, but where we were, it was deserted.

We had encountered very few actual living people, and the ones we did were either too scared to notice us as they ran past, or didn't care. There were plenty of signs of panic, however. Toilet paper littered the ground in a large radius around any bathrooms that we passed. Bits of broken jewelry, the occasional thermos of spilled coffee, a purse or a wallet here and there, a half-eaten doughnut... we had to skirt around several puddles of unknown substances, including one that my nose told me was probably baby food.

From time to time, Raven would take to the air, making her way up the hallway or back behind us to scout for danger or trapped people. So far, it was mostly quiet.

BOOM.

Dust rained from the ceiling, and a few tiles fell and shattered on the floor - or slid around in the baby food.

Raven and I glanced at each other, then took off running toward the noise, which seemed to have come from below. "Fiona? Duncan? Dane, answer!" My earpiece buzzed a little, but nothing came through. "Raven, comms are dead! We're on our own." She dipped in flight to show that she understood, then continued onward.

We skidded and flapped our way up a ramp of marble, which opened into a huge, cathedral-like hall, with a clock in the middle that had the readouts of all the train departure and arrival times beneath it. Huge wooden benches sat in various arrangements, and though they looked like pews, they were clearly for weary travelers to rest on. Which is what we thought the people in the room were doing... until we saw the device wired into the central clock.

Raven disappeared toward the ceiling as I slid to a halt, just inside the entrance to the T-shaped room. Lining the stem were several small restaurants and curio shops, so I slunk behind a rack of scarves, and crept toward the middle of the room.

As I wove around fallen chairs and spilled drinks, I could hear voices from the corner, where I could see in the light from the glass ceiling a small crowd of people, huddled together in the far left corner. A man with a rather intimidating machine gun stood over them, his dark blue bullet-proof vest reading 'USANHD'. I paused, wondering if we had gotten it wrong, and these men, more of which were standing near the clock, were actually government people, here to help. However, the one brandishing his gun over the twenty-or-so people in the corner was clearly keeping them hostage, and nobody in the middle of the room seemed the least bit concerned that there was a bomb strapped to a gigantic countdown timer.

As I slunk closer, one of them men bent over the explosive device, tapping at a keypad, before the panel of the mass of wires came to life, lighting up and displaying the same time that was on the clock - five 'till twelve. I figured that it meant we had five minutes to avoid dying a painful death.

I spotted Raven, far across the room, perched on one of the golden lamps that were scattered around the cross-section of the T. Huge and heavy, they looked like they would take a small crane to move. She was eyeing the men near the clock with her head cocked. As soon as she realized I was looking at her, she nodded towards the bomb, and motioned toward herself with a wing. Then she nodded at the people in the corner, then at me. I nodded back to show that I understood, and crept up to the edge of the last batch of tables and chairs.

The men who had been gathered around the central clock had spread out through the room, some facing the exits, some closer to the bomb, with their backs to it, protectively. I growled under my breath. This isn't going to be easy.

Without giving myself any more time to doubt, I sprinted out from cover toward the man holding a gun to the hostages.