They moved as a group down one of the long, narrow corridors that ran between the rows of double-decker red buses. The corridor wasn't wide enough for anyone to walk side-by-side, so they were in a single file line, with John taking the lead. There was no tactical reason for the decision, he'd just worried the Aura system would punish him for being a follower.

And now, more than ever, he really wanted to build up more Aura.

The place was quiet aside from their echoing footsteps. The air was still and stale, the smells of motor oil and petrol mingling. No monsters pinged his Mana Sense, even after they'd been walking for a good ten minutes, keeping quiet so they could listen for any sign of life. But there was nothing.

The lack of activity reassured no one. If anything, it made them more paranoid. They knew from observation that monsters emerged from this portal, so there had to be more of them inside. John didn't believe for a moment that they'd eliminated all the monsters. His experiences in the apocalypse so far didn't lead him towards an optimistic outlook on the world, and he hadn't been much of a glass half full guy to begin with, given how his life had gone before the world ended.

So he diligently maintained his vigilance, even as agonising minutes passed with no changes to their surroundings. He was starting to worry that the bus depot really did go on forever, this red corridor stretching on to infinity.

Naturally, he made sure to show none of this trepidation. His shoulders were squares, his head was held high, and he was trying his best to inject a swagger into his step. Appearances had fallen to the wayside somewhat in the last few hours, and he needed to rectify that—he liked to think it was down to tiredness, but he knew it was more due to the lung-constricting cringe he still felt at trying so hard to act "cool" with multiple strangers watching.

Even when he looked back to peer past his companions at the direction they'd come from and check out how their progress looked—an endless corridor lined by red buses, no different to the view ahead of them, incidentally—he made sure there was a stoic, unbothered expression on his face. Or so he hoped. He'd considered trying to look eager or even bloodthirsty, but didn't feel so confident in his acting skills.

John eyed the buses themselves next. They'd already established just by looking through the windows that all the buses were empty. The doors were locked, and none of the electronics appeared to be switched on. Doug had tried to leap up onto one of the upper decks, but an invisible wall had prevented him from entering, propelling him back down to the ground. Flanking along the front of the bus depot had put them through an infinite loop, always bringing them back to the portal after just a minute or so of walking. The same had been true in either direction.

After that, they'd decided to see if there really was no end to the rows of buses, or if it would just put them back at the start in the same way, and thus had set out into one of the corridors between the buses, picking one directly in front of the portal. At this point, John was beginning to think they'd found their answer. How long had it been? Twenty minutes at least, and there was no sign of the far wall of the garage. This evidently wasn't working.

John came to a stop, swallowing back a groan of frustration. Time to try a different tack. "We're not going to reach the end," he said.

"Doesn't look like it," Chester muttered from behind him. They'd positioned him second in line in case he needed to quickly pull aggro, but he had his Spells inactive for now.

After taking a moment to summon his courage, John added in a dark voice: "If I have to wait much longer to slaughter some monsters, I might do something rash."

Eugh. Even he wanted to roll his eyes at that one.

+400 Aura

Eughhhh. I swear, this Aura system is operated by an edgy teenager. Probably works in my favour, though. If it was an adult system judging my coolness, I'd be in the negative millions by now. Or, well, dead.

Showing off like this felt rather gauche, given the circumstances. They were in hostile territory, after all, and death wasn't out of the question. He consoled himself that there were only going to be blue-souled monsters in this place. It wasn't safe by any means, but it was less dangerous than other places, he supposed.

Silence lingered after John's boastful statement. Doug let out a soft chuckle.

Behind Chester was Lily, with her crossbow ready to fire over his shoulder at anything that jumped out. Needless to say, she hadn't been needed thus far. "So, do we try to break into one of the buses after all?"

"Sounds like a plan," Doug called from the rear of their formation. He'd wanted to go in front himself, but John had convinced him that protecting their rear was equally important. Thankfully, the old man hadn't argued the point. "I'm going to go mad if we keep up this walking along with nothing happening, as if we have all the time in the world!"

John noted the man was grinning, but his eyes portrayed genuine frustration. "We'll check the buses," John said, turning his attention to the nearest bus' doors. "If there are no monsters here, we'll just burn the whole fucking place down. See how these bastards like their home being destroyed."

+400 Aura

There'd been some debate on whether they should try and break into the buses first, but John had argued it would be better to get a lay of the land first, see what they could discover about the garage overall. Now that they'd done so, he had no real argument not to smash their way in.

John felt trepidation that had nothing to do with the portal world, and he hated himself a bit for how ridiculous it was. The sad truth was he had a mild phobia of buses. Not that the buses frightened him in and of themselves or anything, he just had a bunch of bad memories in the things, primarily related to severe motion sickness and being made fun of for puking on himself. Those incidents had always provided his bullies a lot of ammunition.

Objectively, rationally, he knew these buses weren't moving, and thus he wouldn't feel sick on them, assuming he didn't placebo himself into nausea, somehow. But that was right now. Who was to say the buses would remain stationary? He had an irrational fear that the doors would slam shut the moment they entered, and the buses would go tearing out into whatever lay beyond the walls of the false garage. The Underworld portals had set a precedent for such things, after all.

It'll be fine, he told himself. You're super buffed up and badass now, anyway. You won't be sick. There's nothing to be worried about.

John sighed. The best way out of a doom spiral like this was to go straight through it. Stepping forward, he activated a Mana Blade on each arm and stabbed the points into the crease down the middle of the bus' main doors and set to levering them open. It took a surprising amount of effort even with his Level 5 Strength, but after a bit of straining he managed to pry the two halves of the door apart, relieved he hadn't been penalised for briefly struggling.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The doors gave a pneumatic hiss as he pushed them aside. A gust of frigid air escaped from within. Deciding to get it over with quickly before he got stuck in his head again, John wasted no time stepping up into the bus.

Everything changed immediately. All of a sudden, the bus was full of ghosts.

The first one John saw was the driver occupying the previously empty chair. A pudgy man with black hair wearing a simple button-up shirt beneath a fluorescent yellow vest, he appeared less substantial than the bus itself, the driver's seat visible through his semi-translucent form. He was watching John with a raised eyebrow, as if waiting for John to state what kind of ticket he'd like.

John took a slow step back out of the bus, and the moment his foot left the boundary of the open doors, the phantom bus driver vanished.

"Okay," John said. "Guess we've found the porta's gimmick."

Not that it was particularly difficult to figure out. It had been plain from the beginning that the buses would play a significant part in whatever was going to go down here; he'd just wanted to make sure they didn't miss anything about the building itself.

"What is it?" Jade asked. She was behind Lily, with Alissa behind her. "What's in there, John?"

"Passengers," John said, stepping back onto the bus.

The bus driver snapped back into semi-existence immediately as John passed the threshold, but he hadn't moved a muscle. His eyebrow was still arched, staring towards the bus doors, awaiting a passenger's request. Looking further into the bus, John saw similar scenes playing out—or, perhaps, not playing out, to be more accurate. The ghostly passengers were all just as frozen as the driver.

It wasn't as full as he'd first assumed. It had just seemed so in contrast to being completely empty. Maybe a third of the seats were occupied by immobile ghosts, and the variety of people on display caught him off guard.

There was a guy with an Afro who looked like he was on the way to a disco, with white flares and tassels on his sleeves. A woman with puffy hair and a polka-dot dress who would've been fashionable fifty years ago. Even the man in the business suit looked hopelessly out of date in a way John struggled to describe—it was like his suit was blocky at the shoulders, somehow.

It seemed every era was represented here; 50s, 60s, 70s, and so on, all the way up to more modern attire. There even appeared to be people from older eras who didn't seem like they would've actually been around at the same time as buses, especially not the iconic red double-deckers. The only person in anything resembling modern attire was the bloke in skinny jeans and a white shirt towards the back of the bus.

John had to step further in to make space for everyone else to enter, and none of the frozen phantoms reacted to his presence. Once everyone had filed in, silence fell. He didn't look back at the others, enraptured by the passengers. Soul Vision gave him no insight into the ghosts, and Mana Sense didn't detect even a hint of energy in them.

So what are they? What are they for?

"Huh," Doug said. "That young lady over there looks like she could've been born in the same year as me. My sister had a skirt just like that."

"Do you think they're real people?" Lily asked.

"Maybe they were, and these are their… echoes," Alissa said.

"Are your senses giving you anything about them, John?" Jade asked.

John just shook his head. If he'd had the spare Aura for it, he might have been tempted to upgrade Mana Sense and Soul Vision a few times to see if they could pick anything up at higher Levels. He couldn't bring himself to regret experimenting with Combine, but did wish he'd seen more opportunity go gain Aura in the portal so far. He'd have to step up his game.

"Hey, check this out," Chester said from the front of the bus. "If you look closely at the screens, you can see the bus route. X6, Marybone via Hollow Town. That's not real, right?"

"The place names are bollocks," Jade said, her voice drifting towards the front as she moved to join Chester. "But I recognise Marybone from the Underworld."

"It was the terminal stop," John said, glancing back over his shoulder. The others had gathered at the front, peering up at the wide screen that hung above the bus' front window.

"Reckon this bus ends up at the same place, aye?"

"Probably some kind of mega portal. Maybe even the black hole that shows up over Central London at night. Tough to say right now." John looked around, inspecting the ghosts. "Maybe we should see if we can activate the bus. It might take us down to an area with stronger monsters to kill."

+400 Aura

Obviously, that was utter bravado, but the others still gave him concerned looks, save for Doug, who grinned like a maniac. He really hoped the old man wouldn't talk the group into taking him up on that mad idea.

John decided to head it off. He clicked his tongue. "Probably a bad idea with all of you here. Maybe I'll try it later."

+400 Aura

"Sure," Jade said, eyeing him. "You do that, John."

"There's a timetable here, too," Lily said, leaning down to inspect something by the door. There was indeed another pale screen, but it was so faint Lily was having to squint even with her face only a few inches away. "It shows a bunch of different routes. X1 to X10, then Y1 to Y10, Z1 to Z10, and more generic numbers, 130, 141, 163 and such. A bunch of stop names, too. Can't read all of them, but they do sound like the ones in the Underground."

Chester joined her after a nervous glance at John, leaning close to try and read it. "Yeah. They do that same thing where they sound kind of like horror movie parodies of real places." He audibly swallowed. "Charing Crossbones, Slaughtergate, Tower of Dread. You get the picture."

John's heart was steadily plummeting. He was starting to get the feeling this bus really was going to move after all. His stomach was already turning just at the thought of the idea of the prospect of the chance of the possibility of the motion sickness he could potentially be forced to endure.

He eyed the exit. The doors were still open. He was actually kind of surprised they hadn't immediately snapped shut the moment everyone was on board the bus. That seemed like the most obvious time for a trap to spring.

The second most obvious, he reckoned, would be if someone tried to interact directly with one of the ghosts.

Naturally, this thought only occurred to him when Doug was already reaching out to poke at the bus driver. John opened his mouth to call out, only to stop himself. He could already see it was too late. Any sound he made would just be taken as an expression of alarm, and showing fear in a portal populated by blue-souled monsters couldn't possibly go unpunished.

And thus, several things happened at once.

The tip of Doug's finger came into contact with the bus driver's ghostly face. It didn't sink in as expected. Instead, the bus driver suddenly turned substantial. His—no, its—eyes burned a hellish red, and it turned that demonic, hateful gaze on Doug. Reaching down, it pulled a lever.

A hissing sound like a pneumatic snake echoed through the bus. The door slammed shut.

Doug struck like a viper, slamming his fist through the bus driver's face before it could finish unhinging its jaws, showing off multiple rows of serrated teeth. It flopped bonelessly back into its seat.

John could only watch as the spray of the bus driver's lifeblood sailed through the air and landed on several other passengers.

Every one of them turned substantial, too, gaining life and colour and, most importantly, souls.

They didn't stay human for long.

Luckily, it didn't take long for John to swap to Mana Blade, either. Time to gain some Aura, he thought, slipping into Accelerate and going to work.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.