//------------------------------//
// Strengthened Security 
// Story: Equus' Unexpected Future 
// by Robert Emerald Fountain 
//------------------------------//

Until he reached the prison facility at 6:15 the next morning, Harold was unaware that Mayor Goodway had been rescued. Upon arrival, the guards asked where she was, which confused him.

“What are you talking about? She’s in the back car.”, he said.

“No she’s not. The rearmost car is filled with frozen rations. Also, your uncle said the train would have five cars. We only see four, and it appears that the camera footage from the back car is frozen to fool you into thinking the car was still present.”, said the warden.

When Harold looked at the coupling and saw it had been cut, he became angry and immediately contacted his uncle.

“Uncle, we have a problem. Mayor Goodway has disappeared somehow. The car has been cut off the train.”, he explained.

“What do you mean the car has been cut off?”, asked Humdinger.

Harold sent him a picture of the connection, which rendered him speechless.

“You’re not kidding. I also see what looks like boot prints on the floor. Someone must have boarded the train in order to cut the car loose.”, said Humdinger as he looked at the snapshot.

Harold reviewed the camera footage from the front of the train and spotted a critical clue.

“Uncle, I have a lead. At 9:50 PM last night, the front external camera spotted a cable that had been shot into the rockface on the left side of the train. Whoever cut the car loose had boarded from a ledge above the tracks by using a zip-line. Also, the warden here said that whoever did this had paused all of the cameras in the rear car to make me think nothing was going on.”, he explained.

Upon hearing this report, Humdinger called out to the mean patrols he had brought in.

“Your attention please. All officers must double their searches for anyone and anything suspicious. Mayor Goodway was rescued last night, and I don’t know who did it. If you see anyone you don’t recognize, open fire on them. Also, shoot down any unidentified aircrafts you see. This is Mayor Humdinger, signing off.”

Little did he know that Octavio had tapped into his radio frequency.

“This is not good. He’s clamping down on security.”, he said to Ryder worriedly.

“You’re right. Now we need to be more meticulous when going in to take out his impostors.”, Ryder replied.

Everyone realized at this point that their mission had just gotten harder. Their plans were to use stealth planes to get into the area undetected, but now they needed to be more careful. Even the slightest wrong move could result in disaster.