A high-speed train filled with people leaving Taipei for a long weekend derailed after hitting a construction vehicle on the tracks.
The train’s first four cars absorbed most of the damage, crumpling inside the tunnel. The train had eight cars total.
Reports have the total number of passengers as nearly 500—of those, 48 have died and over sixty injured.
Turning this into a story, what if there’s an assassination target on the train? The kicker—they haven’t committed the crime yet.
A mix between the movies “Source Code” and “Minority Report.” The target? A young man who hacks the infrastructure of the United States in the future.
The story kicks off with a female Taiwanese agent on the train observing the target and charged with their protection. They know an upcoming attempted assassination will take place, but they don’t understand why or how.
Then, the train derails in the tunnel, and the young man is killed.
After the first chapter, the story goes back in time to the events leading up to the train’s derailment. The agent is explicitly chosen because they already know the target, having dated in the past. The target is particularly reclusive now, and the female agent shows back up in their life, trying to uncover why they’re a target in the first place.
The Taiwanese agent doesn’t know why the young man is a target because Taiwan doesn’t have access to the time technology. They find out because of a mole in the program.
The accident is portrayed again, this time with more emphasis on the relationship between the target and the agent. The agent survives with injuries while the target is killed.
After her recovery, she strikes out on a mission to discover why the target lost his life, despite her own government telling her the case is closed for diplomatic reasons.
Turns out, the mole is a high-ranking diplomat that doesn’t agree with involvement in foreign countries by the United States.
The agent deals with threats against her own life, eventually becoming paranoid about every action she takes.
She survives an assassination attempt, and her resulting unwillingness to leave her house effectively provides the same outcome the United States wanted in the first place.
Then, she receives anonymous intelligence—from the mole—that points to the man pulling all the strings in her own country. It’s her boss.
She convinces him to meet her in the train tunnel, still closed for repairs. There, she kills the traitor and walks away into seeming peace.
The sequel could be about how she’s become the force within Taiwan that does the United States’ bidding, but this time it’s through the mole—a separate faction in United States politics. She succeeds in stopping the other faction’s plans for another assassination.
The third book would have her discover that the “mole” was a farce from the beginning, causing her to question her role in the entire operation.
Other books could see her disavowed from Taiwan’s government forces and highlight what happens when Taiwan gets a hold of the technology themselves—she becomes the first in a series of time agents.
