(AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN…) SURVIVAL II

The plan was, objectively speaking, a very stupid one.

Taylor understood that from the moment the thought first settled into place, recognizing it with the same distant clarity she had come to associate with certainty rather than doubt. It was reckless in a way that bordered on absurd, dangerous in ways she could list far too easily, and dependent on far too many variables that could go wrong in spectacular fashion. It was the kind of idea that made her want to laugh hysterically at the sheer audacity of it, or else curl inward and wait passively for the reset to come and erase the fact that she had ever been capable of thinking it up in the first place.

After everything she had already done in her attempts to escape the death loops, and that was a long, humiliating, and deeply troubling catalogue of poor decisions, this still managed to stand out. That alone should have been enough to stop her.

It was not.

She would never tell her dad about this. Even imagining the conversation made her feel light headed, as though the words themselves would steal the air from her lungs. This plan crossed a line she would once have sworn she was incapable of approaching, let alone stepping over, and the fact that she could contemplate it now with grim resolve was perhaps the most unsettling part of all.

And yet, she was going to do it anyway.

She had ridden this bus enough times to know it intimately, every rattle and sway of its aging frame, every place where the road dipped just enough to make her stomach, and every second that passed between the woman’s first trembling warning and the moment everything ended. She knew, too, that the meeting with Jessica Yamada was long overdue, and that when she finally sat down across from the woman, she would be bringing an entirely new collection of horrific experiences to trauma-dump.

Assuming her mind just didn't decide to give up and break midway through.

The plan itself consisted of two steps, which only made it sound more reasonable than it actually was. First, she would break a window. Second, she would throw the unwilling suicide bomber through it. She really needed to learn the woman’s name at some point, if only to stop reducing her to that, but for now the label would have to do.

It was still a terrible plan.

But Taylor did not give herself time to second guess it. She had learned, over and over again, that hesitation was dangerous, and that waiting for courage to feel comfortable was just another way of never acting at all. If she paused now, even for a second, fear would catch up to her and she doubted her resolve would remain intact, so she moved before the fear could fully catch up with her.

She leaned awkwardly over the seat of an older man, close enough that he startled and let out an indignant protest, and reached for the emergency hammer mounted on the panel beside him. Her fingers closed around the handle, and she wrenched it free of its plastic housing with more force than was strictly necessary.

The man’s confusion gave way to alarm almost immediately, and nearby conversations died off as though someone had flipped a switch.

She could feel eyes on her as she turned toward the window, could sense the tension blooming through the bus as the passengers tried to reconcile what they were seeing with their assumptions about what was happening. She ignored all of it, focusing instead on the glass in front of her and the reassuring weight of the hammer in her hand.

Her grip tightened around the handle, knuckles whitening as she raised the hammer and brought it down with as much force as she could muster, aiming for the lower corner of the window the way she vaguely remembered being taught in some long-forgotten safety video from middle school.

The pointed end struck true, and the tempered glass burst outward in a spray of small, comparatively less dangerous shards, scattering across the pavement in a rush of sound that drowned out the first wave of shouting from the passengers. It was not the jagged, lethal break she might have expected, but it was still violent enough to make her flinch as shards struck the ground and crumbled into glittering dust beneath the moving bus.

She did not stop.

Ignoring the rising panic behind her and the shouted demands for an explanation, she reached out with her bare hands and knocked away the remaining pieces clinging stubbornly to the frame. The edges bit into her skin, drawing blood, but the pain registered only distantly, an inconvenience rather than a deterrent, as she cleared enough space to form an opening wide enough for a person to fit through.

Only then did she step back.

For a moment, absurdly, she felt a grim sense of accomplishment as she took in the hole she had made, the cold air and sounds of the road rushing past filling the bus. She nodded once to herself, a small and almost unconscious gesture, and then she turned.

Her gaze locked onto the woman.

The intensity of it, combined with the sudden violence of Taylor’s actions, caught the woman completely off guard. She took an involuntary step back, eyes wide, caught between confusion and fear. Taylor had seen that expression countless times by now, and even so, it nearly broke her resolve all over again.

She forced herself to move before it could.

“You will not kill me today,” she shouted, her voice carrying over the noise of the bus with a force that surprised even her.

The words thankfully had the exact effect she needed. Recognition flared fully in the woman’s eyes, followed immediately by fear so intense it rooted her to the spot. Taylor did not give her time to scream or beg or collapse. She crossed the distance between them quickly, heart hammering, and seized her by the arm.

No one tried to stop her.

Whether it was shock, fear, some instinctive understanding that something wrong was happening, or simply the bystander effect in motion, the other passengers remained where they were. They were content to watch in horrified silence, some exchanging glances as if to ask if they should do something—though that ultimately went nowhere—as Taylor dragged the woman toward the shattered window, her feet skidding against the floor as she resisted weakly, sobbing under her breath.

Some part of Taylor noted, with detached surprise, that the bus was still moving. She would have expected the driver to slam on the brakes or shout or do anything at all, but apparently not. She chalked it up to Brockton Bay being Brockton Bay. For all she knew, the driver simply did not care what happened to a city-owned vehicle, or maybe he was paralyzed by the same disbelief gripping everyone else.

Either way, it worked in her favor.

They were passing through a relatively abandoned stretch of the city. Taylor spared a fleeting thought for the possibility of someone being below, a homeless person or an unlucky pedestrian, and pushed the concern aside. There was no time to weigh every possible consequence, and the area looked empty enough. Waiting for the woman to regain her composure, or for Taylor herself to lose hers, would only lead to one outcome.

Before the woman could scream, or beg, or meaningfully fight back—though she doubted that; the woman seemed oddly cognizant of what was happening, and all her struggles seemed performative more than anything else—Taylor shoved her through the opening.

Still, the woman screamed as she fell, the sound tearing free of her in pure terror, and then she was gone.

For some time, long enough to turn awkward, no one on the bus spoke.

They stared at the empty space where the woman had been, at the broken window, and finally at Taylor herself, standing there with bloodied hands and a hollow expression on her face.

Then the explosion came, far enough away to spare everyone still inside.

It did not arrive as fire, but as something stranger and far more terrible, a rapid crystallization that spread outward in an intricate, glittering bloom. The structure caught the light as it formed, beautiful in a way that made Taylor’s breath catch despite herself, a frozen moment of lethal artistry consuming the space where the woman had rolled to a stop.

Pandemonium erupted immediately afterward, shouts filling the air as people realized what had almost happened, what had been prevented, and what Taylor had just done to make it so. Relief, horror, and disbelief collided in a chaotic rush, and even the bus began to slow as the driver finally reacted, though by then it hardly mattered.

Taylor sagged against the nearest seat, the hammer slipping from her fingers to clatter onto the floor.

She exhaled slowly, shakily, and let her eyes close.

Once more, she had survived a death loop.