Chapter 3: The First Passenger

Leo's world began fracturing at 2:30 PM.

It started small—a flicker in his peripheral vision as he drove toward the Morrison Bridge, like a dead pixel on reality's screen. Then his radio cut to static for exactly three seconds before resuming mid-sentence, the DJ's voice now speaking words that made no sense: "...and remember folks, the toll booth is always open for business..."

Leo's hands tightened on the steering wheel. The Homebound app on his passenger seat pulsed with that familiar red glow, the countdown timer now reading 16 hours, 52 minutes. Clara Hendricks' abandoned car had been found exactly where his coordinates pointed—but there was no bridge there, just open water and the lingering scent of something wrong.

A semi-truck passed him on the left, and for one impossible moment, Leo saw through its trailer walls. Inside, rows of empty seats stretched into infinity, each one bearing a small receipt like his own. The driver turned to look at him—Leo's own face, wearing that too-wide smile—and mouthed the words "Almost time."

Leo swerved, his sedan's tires screaming against asphalt. When he looked again, it was just a normal truck carrying normal cargo, already disappearing around a bend. But his hands wouldn't stop shaking.

The Morrison Bridge loomed ahead, its steel frame cutting harsh lines against the gray Portland sky. Leo parked where Clara's car had been found and stepped out into air that tasted of rust and ozone. The coordinates from his receipt led to a point roughly fifty feet out from the bridge's center—just empty river water that reflected nothing but clouds.

"Clara Hendricks," he called out to the wind, feeling foolish but desperate. "I know you're here somewhere. I know you got a receipt too."

The river answered with silence, but Leo's phone buzzed. A new message from that unknown number: Look down.

Leo approached the bridge's railing and peered into the dark water below. At first he saw nothing but his own reflection wavering on the surface. Then the water began to change, ripples forming patterns that defied the current, and suddenly he was looking down at something impossible.

Asphalt. Cracked, weathered asphalt stretching away beneath the water's surface like a submerged highway. And walking along it, her clothes dry despite being underwater, was Clara Hendricks.

She looked up at him through the liquid barrier between worlds, her mouth moving in silent screams. Behind her, something crawled on too many limbs—another Clara, but wrong, her face a melting mask of hunger and malice.

Leo stumbled backward from the railing. "This isn't real," he whispered, but even as he said it, the world around him began to shift.

The bridge groaned, its steel frame stretching and warping like taffy. The river below faded to black, and suddenly Leo was standing not on the Morrison Bridge but on the endless span from his dreams. The same cracked asphalt, the same tar-black ocean stretching to every horizon, the same sound of rusted spoons chiming in a wind that came from nowhere and everywhere at once.

"Oh God," he breathed. "Oh God, it's real."

A scream echoed across the impossible landscape, high and desperate. Leo ran toward the sound, his bare feet—when had he lost his shoes?—slapping against asphalt that felt warm and organic, like skin stretched over bone.

He found Clara fifty yards ahead, pressed against the bridge's railing with nowhere left to run. The thing pursuing her wore her face but moved with predatory grace, its limbs bending at angles that human joints shouldn't allow.

"Stay back!" Clara shouted when she saw Leo approaching. "Don't let it touch you! It's been trying to—" Her words cut off as the doppelgänger lunged.

Leo acted without thinking, tackling the thing that wore Clara's face. His hands passed through it like smoke for a moment, then suddenly it became solid, writhing in his grip with inhuman strength. Its skin felt wrong—too cold, too smooth, like plastic wrapped around something that definitely wasn't bones.

"Run!" Leo shouted, grappling with the creature as it snapped at him with teeth that were too sharp, too many. "Get away from—"

The doppelgänger dissolved again, flowing like liquid shadow toward Clara. But she was already moving, sprinting down the bridge with the desperate speed of someone who'd been running for far longer than should have been possible.

Leo chased after them both, his lungs burning in the strangely thick air of this nightmare realm. Behind him, he could hear more sounds—footsteps, breathing, the soft whisper of something dragging itself across asphalt. His own shadow-self was coming, he realized. In this place, everyone's reflection eventually found them.

"Here!" Clara had stopped at what looked like an intersection—impossible on a bridge, but nothing here followed normal rules. A narrow walkway branched off to the left, leading to what looked like a small shelter. "I've been hiding there, but it keeps finding me!"

They reached the shelter together—a ramshackle structure that looked like a bus stop crossed with a lighthouse, its walls covered in receipts identical to the one Leo had found under his pillow. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, each bearing different coordinates but the same ominous message about payment pending.

"How long have you been here?" Leo gasped, pressing his back against the shelter's door.

"I don't know." Clara's voice was hollow, exhausted. "Hours? Days? Time doesn't work right here. I went to sleep in my apartment and woke up walking on this thing." She gestured at the endless bridge surrounding them. "My car, the bridge where they found it—I don't remember any of that."

Leo pulled out his phone. The Homebound app was still running, but now it showed two dots on the bridge display instead of one. Clara's status appeared when he tapped on the second dot: "Passenger Class: Novice. Passages Completed: 0/3. Toll Balance: -1. Warning: Collection imminent."

"You have the app too?" Clara leaned over to look at his screen. "I've been trying to figure out what the rules mean, but every time I think I understand something, it changes."

A sound like breaking glass echoed across the bridge, followed by laughter that used both their voices. The doppelgängers were getting closer, and Leo could see his own twisted reflection shambling toward them in the distance, its movements jerky and wrong like a marionette controlled by a drunk puppeteer.

"The forum posts mentioned collectors," Leo said, scrolling through the app's menu. "And payment. Whatever this toll is, we're supposed to pay it or—"

"Or they collect us instead," Clara finished, her face pale. "I've seen what happens to the others who don't pay. There are places on this bridge where the asphalt is soft, and you can see them underneath, still moving, still trying to scream."

Leo's blood chilled. The app's timer continued its relentless countdown: 15 hours, 23 minutes. But Clara's timer, he noticed, was different. Hers read: 7 minutes, 14 seconds.

"Clara," he said quietly, "what happens when the countdown reaches zero?"

Before she could answer, the shelter around them began to shake. The receipts covering the walls started peeling away, carried off by a wind that tasted of copper and regret. And in the distance, growing louder by the second, came the sound Leo had been dreading—the musical chime of rusted spoons, but underneath it now, the rumble of an engine.

Something was coming down the bridge toward them. Something big enough to make the entire impossible structure vibrate with its approach.

"The toll booth," Clara whispered, her eyes wide with recognition and terror. "Oh God, it's time. The toll booth is coming, and I don't know how to pay."

Leo looked at his phone one more time. The Homebound app had opened a new screen automatically, displaying a simple message: "Payment options available. Passenger exchange authorized. Collector recruitment active."

The rumbling grew louder, and in the distance, Leo could see lights approaching through the perpetual twilight of the bridge realm. Not normal lights—these pulsed with the same sickly rhythm as a dying heartbeat.

Whatever was coming would be there in minutes. And somehow, Leo knew that when it arrived, one of them wouldn't be leaving as the same person who'd entered this nightmare.

The countdown on Clara's phone hit six minutes. Leo's still showed over fifteen hours, but he suspected that meant nothing now. On the bridge, time belonged to the collectors.

And they were almost here.