Chapter 2: The Soulless Commute

Chapter 2: The Soulless Commute

A violent jolt snapped Alex back to consciousness. The oppressive, absolute darkness of the elevator was gone, replaced by a dreary grey light filtering through a grime-streaked window. The air no longer tasted of dust and cold stone, but of diesel fumes, wet wool, and cheap air freshener. He wasn't on the floor of a bronze cage; he was slumped in the stiff, scratchy fabric of a seat, the rhythmic vibration of a heavy engine humming through his entire body.

He was on a bus.

The realization hit him with a wave of dizzying relief so potent it made him nauseous. A dream. It was all a dream. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, his breath coming in ragged, shuddering gasps. The impossible building, the vanishing friends, the elevator from hell… a nightmare. A horribly vivid, terrifyingly detailed nightmare, brought on by… what? Stress? Too much coffee? The gloomy weather?

It had to be. The alternative was unthinkable.

He sat up straight, forcing himself to take in the mundane reality of his surroundings. The bus swayed gently as it navigated a turn, its air brakes hissing periodically. Raindrops chased each other down the large windows, blurring the familiar city streets outside into a watercolor wash of traffic lights and neon signs. A handful of other passengers were scattered throughout the bus, lulled by the motion. An elderly woman with a floral hat stared blankly out the window. A man in a business suit had his head bowed, seemingly asleep. A teenager with oversized headphones nodded slightly to a silent beat.

Normal. Everything was perfectly, blessedly normal.

Alex let out a long, slow breath, his pulse beginning to recede from its frantic tempo. He ran a hand through his damp hair, the chill of the rain still clinging to him. He could almost laugh. He had gotten so worked up, so completely lost in his own head. Max would have a field day with this when he told him.

But as the initial flood of relief subsided, the details of the nightmare refused to fade. They clung to the edges of his mind like burrs, sharp and persistent. He could still feel the phantom sensation of the elevator lurching sideways. He could still see the silent, beckoning maw of the bronze doors.

And he could still see their eyes.

The thought sent a fresh spike of ice through his veins. In his mind’s eye, the image was as clear as a photograph: the reflected faces of Max and Chloe, their features placid and smooth, their eyes replaced by pits of polished, endless black. The memory wasn't hazy or dreamlike. It was a brand seared onto his brain. The soulless, observing emptiness of those eyes… it felt more real than the comforting rumble of the bus engine.

A knot of anxiety tightened in his stomach. He needed to get off this bus. He needed to call his friends, to hear their voices, to confirm that they were okay, that they were real and whole and hadn't been replaced by hollow-eyed doppelgangers in a bronze mirror. He fumbled for his phone, his fingers clumsy and slick with a cold sweat.

As he looked down, his gaze caught on the reflection in his phone’s dark screen. He saw his own face, pale and wide-eyed. And behind him, reflected in miniature, was the elderly woman with the floral hat. She had turned her head slightly, away from the window.

In the distorted reflection, her eyes looked… dark. Too dark.

Alex’s breath hitched. It's just the reflection, he told himself, his heart starting to hammer again. The screen is dark, the lighting is bad.

He slowly, cautiously, lifted his head. He didn't look directly at her. Instead, he angled his vision to catch her reflection in the rain-streaked window beside him. There, superimposed over the blurry cityscape, was her profile. And her eye, the one visible to him, was not the soft, watery blue or brown he would have expected. It was a perfect circle of solid, depthless black.

A silent scream lodged in his throat. It couldn't be. Not here. Not again.

His head swiveled, his gaze snapping to the businessman who was supposedly asleep a few rows ahead. The man’s head was still bowed, his face obscured. But he shifted, just slightly, as if adjusting in his sleep, and for a single, heart-stopping second, Alex saw under the brim of his hat. Two orbs of polished obsidian stared down at the floor.

Panic began its frantic ascent up his spine, cold and sharp. His eyes darted from passenger to passenger in a desperate, horrified survey. The teenager with the headphones… his head was tilted back, eyes closed, but the lids didn't fully cover the unnatural blackness beneath. A woman near the front, holding a grocery bag, turned to glance at a passing building, and her face, for a brief moment, was fully illuminated by the streetlights.

Black eyes. Black, empty, soulless eyes.

They all had them.

Every single person on the bus. They were the people from the elevator reflection. The Un-people. Placeholders. He wasn't waking from a nightmare; he had woken up inside of it. The bus wasn't a vessel of escape; it was a cage, and he was trapped inside with the monsters.

He had to get out. Now.

He lurched to his feet, stumbling into the aisle. He fumbled for the stop-request cord, yanking it with a desperate pull. A pleasant chime echoed through the cabin, a sound so ludicrously normal it felt like a personal insult. He scrambled toward the rear exit, his back to the other passengers, his skin crawling with the feeling of their unseen gazes. He didn't dare look at them again. He just fixed his eyes on the doors, praying for them to open, for the bus to stop, for escape.

The bus slowed with a pneumatic hiss, but it felt like an eternity. The world outside the window was a tantalizing blur of freedom. Just a few more feet. A few more seconds.

Then, the low hum of the bus changed. The subtle noises of a dozen individuals breathing, shifting, and existing ceased. The quiet rustle of the businessman’s newspaper stopped. The faint, tinny beat from the teenager’s headphones went silent.

A profound, absolute stillness fell over the bus. It was the same dead, sound-absorbing silence from the lobby of the wrong building.

Alex froze, his hand hovering over the push bar of the door. He could feel it. The weight of their attention. It was a physical pressure on the back of his neck, a chilling certainty that he was being observed.

Slowly, against every screaming instinct for self-preservation, he forced himself to turn.

One by one, in a smooth, synchronized, and utterly inhuman motion, every head on the bus was turning to face him. The elderly woman, the businessman, the teenager, the woman with the groceries—all of them. Their movements were fluid and unnatural, like puppets being pulled by the same invisible string.

Their faces were blank, expressionless masks. And their black, vacant eyes, every single pair, were fixed directly on him. They weren't angry or menacing. They were simply watching, their collective, soulless gaze pinning him in place, branding him as the anomaly. The intruder. The one thing on this bus that was wrong.