[Day 1 | Earth | School Bus | Time: Unknown]
The bus hums along the highway, the steady vibration of the road mixing with the voices of your classmates.
You're sitting toward the back of the bus.
Around you, your classmates are talking, laughing, arguing, and doing what "university" students normally do on a long bus ride.
You recognize all of them.
Brad is sitting a few rows ahead, talking confidently with another student about something involving school.
Brad: "I'm telling you, if they actually let us organize the event ourselves, we'd get it done twice as fast."
He sounds completely serious.
Don is sitting nearby with his headphones around his neck, listening to the conversation with an amused expression.
Don: "You know what would make group projects easier?"
Brad looks over.
Brad: "What?"
Don: "Just stop caring."
Brad: "That's your solution?"
Don shrugs.
Don: "If someone doesn't do their part, whatever. Do your part, get your grade, move on."
Brad: "That's not exactly a team player attitude."
Don gives a small smirk.
Don: "And yet somehow I survive."
Brad shakes his head.
Brad: "You're impossible."
Don: "Nah. I'm realistic."
He puts his headphones back on, clearly done with the conversation.
Travis is sitting near the back, staring out the window.
Travis: "Uh... dude..."
He points lazily toward the window.
Travis: "There's, like... a lake over there."
Jacki looks over.
Jacki: "Okay?"
Travis: "No, I mean... look at it."
He squints through the glass.
Travis: "That would be, like... a really sick place to camp."
Jacki: "You'd last one night before complaining about the bugs."
Travis gives a quiet laugh.
Travis: "Uh... yeah, probably."
He pauses.
Travis: "But, like... that's what bug spray is for."
Jacki: "That's not what I meant."
Travis just grins and goes back to looking out the window.
Heather is talking with Mia a few seats ahead.
Heather: "I'm telling you, if I get stuck doing another group project with people who are too stupid or lazy to do their own work, I'm just doing the whole thing myself."
Mia gives a small, nervous laugh.
Mia: "Maybe this one won't be so bad."
Heather rolls her eyes.
Heather: "You always say that. Then I end up fixing everyone's garbage the night before it's due."
Mia: "You don't have to do that."
Heather: "Apparently I do, because nobody else seems capable of doing anything right."
She turns back toward the window with an annoyed sigh.
Near the front of the bus, Alexis is talking with another classmate, laughing about something you can't quite hear.
She turns around briefly, looking toward the back of the bus.
Alexis: "Hey! You guys back there alive?"
Travis raises a hand.
Travis: "Barely."
Alexis laughs.
For a moment, everything feels completely normal.
Just another bus ride.
Just another day.
Then you hear it.
## SCREEEEEECH
The entire bus violently jerks sideways.
Someone screams.
The sound of twisting metal tears through the bus.
You barely have time to react.
## CRASH!
The bus slams into something.
The world becomes chaos.
Seats rip loose.
Glass explodes.
People are thrown from their seats.
Someone screams your name.
You see Alexis thrown forward.
Brad reaches for something to grab.
Jacki disappears behind a collapsing row of seats.
Heather screams.
Mia is thrown sideways.
Don grabs the seat in front of him.
Travis is thrown toward the aisle.
Everything happens at once.
Then the world stretches.
The front of the bus seems impossibly far away.
Light floods through the shattered windshield.
You see the other end of the bus.
Then the entire scene seems to rush away from you.
Everything becomes distorted.
Sound disappears.
The people around you become distant silhouettes.
You feel yourself being pulled backward.
Farther.
Farther.
Farther.
Until the bus, the road, the screaming, and everyone inside it disappear.
There is nothing.
No ground.
No sky.
No sound.
No light.
You are floating in an endless darkness.
You cannot tell whether you've been here for a second or a thousand years.
Then...
A voice speaks.
Voice: "You are the only one who reached this place."
The voice does not sound male or female.
Voice: "The others will awaken without remembering this."
Voice: "They will believe they dreamed."
Voice: "You will remember."
A faint light appears somewhere in the darkness.
Voice: "You have been given a choice."
Voice: "Choose one power."
The darkness around you begins to change.
Something is waiting for you.
Voice: "Your choice will become part of you."
Voice: "Choose carefully."
[The player chooses one power.]
Comments 0
See All