Lena's whispered "David?" hung in the air, unanswered, a tiny, fragile thing against the monolithic wall of his resolve.
Their staring contest with this new David was shattered by a frantic, high-pitched scream from the front of the bus.
"Oh my god! Mark! MARK!"
It was Sarah, the bus driver. She'd finally looked in her large rearview mirror, seen the blood on the floor, the terrified faces, and David standing like a statue of vengeance in the aisle. In her panic, she'd taken her eyes off the road.
The bus, still rolling forward, swerved violently.
"Look out!" someone shrieked.
A small figure, a little boy no more than six chasing a bright red ball, had darted into the road. Sarah wrenched the steering wheel, her scream merging with the screech of tortured tires on the suddenly slick asphalt.
The world became a disorienting carousel of screaming metal and shattering glass. The bus left the road, its front tires chewing through the soft shoulder before plunging down a shallow embankment. It rocked violently, threatening to roll, before slamming sidelong into the trunk of an ancient, unforgiving oak tree with a final, sickening BANG.
The impact was a physical thing. Students were thrown from their seats like ragdolls. The sound of cracking plastic, tearing metal, and human agony filled the air, then was just as quickly swallowed by a sudden, profound silence, broken only by the hiss of steam from the ruptured radiator and the soft, relentless patter of snow.
Darkness.
A groan pulled David back to consciousness. Pain, a dull, throbbing symphony, radiated from his temple and shoulder. He was tangled in a heap of limbs and backpacks, the acrid smell of spilled soda and blood filling his nostrils. He pushed himself up, his head spinning. The bus was tilted at a forty-five-degree angle, its front end concertinaed around the massive tree trunk. The windshield was a spiderweb of cracks, and through it, he could see the dark, skeletal branches of the winter forest.
The forest. Already? It happened faster this time.
Memories of his first life's crash were hazy, a blur of panic and confusion. This was stark, clear, and horrifyingly immediate. He could already hear the first of them coming. The scavengers. The things that fed on fresh wreckage.
He climbed over the moaning forms of his classmates, his movements clinical, detached. His priority was egress, a clear exit. The bus doors were jammed shut, twisted in their frame. He spotted a window a few rows back that had completely shattered. He kicked out the remaining shards of glass, his eyes scanning the quiet, snow-dusted pines outside. It was too quiet.
A low, guttural chittering sound reached his ears, a sound that scraped down his spine like nails on a chalkboard. He knew that sound.
He turned back to the bus. Lena was stirring, a thin trickle of blood running from her hairline. She looked at him, her eyes wide, not with horror this time, but with a dazed, childlike plea. "David… my arm… it hurts…"
For a fraction of a second, the ice around his heart cracked. The memory of her, warm and alive, leaning on his shoulder. The memory of her, cold and dead, pushing him to safety. The conflict was a physical pain, sharper than any wound. He shoved it down, burying it under two years of hardened instinct. Compassion was a luxury that got you killed. He had vowed.
"Stay down," he commanded, his voice rough. "And be quiet."
He hauled himself through the broken window, landing softly in the accumulating snow. The cold air was a slap, clearing the last of the fog from his mind. He scanned the perimeter. The chittering was closer now, coming from the other side of the bus.
He crept along the twisted metal shell, his breath pluming in the air. Peering around the crumpled front end, he saw it.
A Goblin. It was smaller than a man, maybe three feet tall, with sallow, greenish skin covered in weeping sores and a distended belly. It was crouched by the driver's side window, its long, grimy fingers prying at the cracked glass. It held a crude, rusty dagger, its blade nicked and stained. Its smell—a mix of unwashed flesh, offal, and damp earth—hit David even from several feet away. It was a bottom-feeder, weak on its own, but they never traveled alone.
The bus driver, Sarah, was slumped over the steering wheel, her head at a wrong, impossible angle. A halo of crimson bloomed on the shattered windshield behind her. She was gone. The goblin wasn't interested in the dead. Not yet. It was trying to get to the warm, living, bleeding meat inside.
David's mind raced. He was unarmed. The rusty dagger was his only priority. He needed a weapon. He needed to kill it fast and silently before its pack arrived.
He felt a familiar pull, a deep, cold well of power sleeping within his core. His Alpha ability. Cryokinesis. In his past life, it had taken him months of struggle and near-death experiences to awaken it as a weak Beta skill, and years of hunting and absorbing orbs to evolve it to its monstrous Alpha potential. He'd once frozen a lake solid to trap a Leviathan. He'd impaled a flying Horror with a spear of ice harder than steel.
It was there. He could feel it, a glacier waiting to be calved. But his body, this soft, untrained, teenage vessel, was an empty battery. The well was deep, but the pump was weak.
He stretched his hand out anyway, a desperate, instinctual move. He focused, pouring his will, his memory of absolute zero, into his palm. He envisioned a shard of ice, a simple spike, forming from the moisture in the air.
Agony. It was like trying to force a river through a pinhole. A searing pain erupted behind his eyes, and a coppery taste of blood filled his mouth. His veins felt like they were filled with fire and frost simultaneously. But through the pain, a miracle.
The air in front of his palm rippled. The moisture coalesced, not into the mighty spear of his memory, but into a jagged, unstable shard of ice about a foot long. It was cloudy, already cracking under its own imperfect formation, but it was sharp. And it was real.
The goblin, sensing the sudden spike of mystical energy, turned its hideous head, its yellow eyes widening.
There was no time for doubt. David acted.
He didn't throw it. He couldn't risk shattering it. He lunged forward, crossing the distance in three quick, silent steps. The goblin raised its rusty dagger with a surprised screech, but it was too slow. David was on it, the product of two years of close-quarters survival.
He drove the ice spear forward with all his strength.
It wasn't a clean kill. The imperfect weapon didn't pierce smoothly. It slammed into the creature's temple with a wet crunch, shattering on impact. Shards of ice and flecks of dark blood sprayed across the white snow. The goblin collapsed without another sound, its body twitching spasmodically before falling still.
A wisp of emerald green energy, faint but tangible, seeped from the corpse. It swirled in the air for a moment, a malevolent will-o'-the-wisp, before darting into David's chest.
The warmth was immediate, a tiny sip of energy that flowed into his exhausted core, soothing the mana burn slightly. It was a pittance, a fraction of what a true monster would provide, but it was proof. The apocalypse has began. The hunt was on.
He spat a mouthful of blood onto the snow, the metallic tang a stark reminder of his current limits. His head pounded. He had maybe one more, slightly stronger ice manifestation in him before he'd pass out from mana exhaustion. He couldn't rely on it. Not yet.
He bent down, pried the rusty dagger from the goblin's lifeless grip. The metal was cold and rough against his palm. It was a terrible weapon, but it was real. It was his.
As he straightened up, a new wave of sound came from the bus. Not chittering. Not monsters.
Crying. Moaning. The sound of people waking up to a nightmare.
"Hello? Is anyone there?" "My leg!I can't feel my leg!" "Someone help!The driver... oh god, look at the driver!"
David turned to see faces pressed against the broken windows. Their initial terror of him had been overwritten by the more immediate terror of the crash. They saw him standing outside, holding a dagger, a dead creature at his feet.
"David! Thank god!" a boy named Chris yelled. "What was that thing? Are there more? You have to get us out of here!"
Their eyes were no longer accusing. They were pleading. They saw a savior again. They saw the David they remembered, the one who would risk everything for them.
He looked at their frightened faces, then down at the crude, blood-stained dagger in his hand. He looked at the greenish corpse at his feet, and then into the dark, silent, waiting woods beyond.
He had his weapon. He had a sliver of his power. And he had a bus full of liabilities who had, in another life, taught him the price of trust.
The snow continued to fall, burying the world, burying the past. David met Chris's desperate gaze, his own eyes reflecting the cold, endless blue of the coming storm.
"Stay in the bus," he said, his voice low and carrying a finality that brooked no argument. "And barricade the windows. The noise will have attracted more."