L I R A

The bus fishtails hard, tires shrieking on wet pavement. Ida’s rosary snaps off the mirror, beads scattering across the dash. My teeth clack together and I grip the seat bar so tight my knuckles ache. We’re skidding toward the crossing, and a semi’s headlights flare through the rain. Too close. Way too close.

“Hold on!” Ryke shouts from the back.

The brakes catch at the last possible second. We lurch to a stop, perfectly squared on the crosswalk lines, like it was measured. Nobody screams, not even me. My breath fogs the glass in a shaky question mark.

Then it comes. The bell.

A deep, rattling GONG that doesn’t belong to any church schedule. It scrapes straight through my bones, and the windows fog, then clear, like the bus itself just inhaled. My stomach drops. That sound isn’t supposed to exist.

Another GONG rolls through, louder.

Something taps the roof. Tink. Tink. Every head snaps up. The emergency hatch clicks open on its own, and a sliver of cold air snakes inside. Something metal slips through the gap and clatters down the aisle, spinning.

It stops at my feet.

A thin strip of steel, stamped deep with letters.

LIRA.

The frost spreading around each groove makes my skin crawl. My hand hovers, but I can’t touch it. I hear my name again, this time from the bell itself.

Ida’s voice shakes as she turns. “Everyone stays seated. I’m calling this in.”

No one listens. Phones are out, kids standing on seats. Someone mutters, “Prank?” Another, “Who even is Lira?”which is rich, because she sits behind me in chem.

Ezra’s the first to move. He nudges the strip with his shoe but won’t touch it. “Don’t say her name again,” he warns, eyes flicking to me. “Just… don’t.”

Ryke leans over a seat, wide-eyed. “So the bus just dropped a murder bookmark? Nah. Toss it.”

Mara’s camera is up, lens glowing. “Look at the frost,” she whispers. “It’s crawling.”

The letters shimmer like veins spreading outward. My skin goes cold.

Ezra straightens, voice steady. “No one touches it until we know what it is. Names carry weight. Just… don’t make it worse.”

The radio at the front spits static, Ida shouting into it like no one’s on the other end.

Ezra raises his voice: “Everyone off. Front door, slow.”

I try to follow, but my sneakers stick like the bus floor doesn’t want to let me go. Ezra’s hand steadies my elbow, careful. “Don’t touch it, Lira. We’ll figure this out.”

“We?” I ask.

“Us,” he says. And for the first time, I believe him.

The first time I saw Callen Roe, he was standing in the rain behind the bell tower like the storm forgot to wet him. People tell stories about him: dropped out, doesn’t go here, shows up where trouble is, leaves before adults can get a quote. I never believed stories. Stories don’t grab you by the wrist.

“Move.” The voice is low, right behind me. Not Ezra’s.

A hand closes around my wrist, not tight, but final. Heat inside the cold. I turn and there he is: hood up, rain clinging to the edges, eyes like the space between thunder and lightning. He doesn’t look at my face; he looks at the strip like it might bite me.

Ezra steps between us on instinct. “Hey. Who are you?” He’s all logic and protective posture.

Callen’s gaze flicks to him, uninterested. “You don’t have time for introductions.” To me: “Lira, right?”

My name in his mouth is not a question. It’s a confirmation he’s been holding onto.

“How do you.. ” I start.

He tugs once. I stumble down the last step with him, out into the rain. The crowd parts because he looks like a knife walking. Ryke whistles under his breath. Mara’s camera catches on his profile; the lens flares like it met a sun.

“Let me go,” I say, but don’t mean it.

“Two seconds,” he murmurs. His hand is warm and callused. A metal band glints at his wrist, not quite a bracelet, not jewelry. “When the frost spreads, it spreads fast.”

“What frost?” Ezra says, behind us, his voice sharp.

Callen’s eyes lift to the bus windows. “That frost.”

It starts like scribbles, ghost-fine lines sketching nothing. Then the lines connect. Letters form in the fogged glass, thin white, writing themselves backward like the bus is a page being read from the wrong side.

LISTEN, it writes, and my chest caves in. Then the word smears and starts again, like a pen refusing to lift.

“Why are you here?” I ask him. My voice should shake. It doesn’t.

“Because you are,” he says, like that’s simple. He shifts, putting himself between me and the bus. “Back up.”

Ezra hooks an arm around my shoulders, steady and familiar, pulling too. I’m held by both gravity wells at once. “You don’t decide where she goes,” he tells Callen.

Callen’s mouth tips in the smallest not-smile. “Neither do you.”

The glass blooms with ice scripts. The first web of frost touches the inside of the frontmost window and spiderwalks. The crowd gasps; someone screams. Ida pounds the dash, swearing at a climate control knob that means nothing anymore.

Callen’s fingers tighten, then loosen, like he’s forcing himself not to touch tighter. “Lira, look at me.”

I do. There’s a lower note under the bell when he says my name, like he’s tuned to it. My heartbeat obeys his count.

“On three, we move,” he says quietly. “Away from the glass. Away from your name.”

“Why would moving matter?” Ezra demands.

“Because sound chases echoes,” Callen says, with this tired certainty that sounds older than any of us. “One.”

“Wait..” Ezra objects.

“Two,” Callen says, eyes on mine.

I nod before I can think. “Three.”

We step back together. Ezra swears and moves with us anyway, protective gravity refusing to let go. Ryke and Mara follow, hands out like we’re balancing on something thin.

Behind us, the frost finishes the word it wanted.

I don’t want to turn around. Then I do.

The bus windows are white with words. They layer over each other, overlapping scripts like the bus took dictation from a choir of ghosts. One phrase pushes through the rest, clear and razor-precise. It writes like it’s been waiting.

DUE / 3

The slash is neat. The three look like it was carved.

My name on the floor. The countdown on the glass.

“Three what?” Ryke says, voice small for the first time. “Days? Hours? People?”

No one answers.

Ezra’s fingers tremble against my shoulder. He drops them like he’s ashamed of the shake. “We’re going to get you somewhere safe,” he says, almost to himself. “We’ll figure out what this… is. We’ll make a plan.”

Callen’s jaw tightens. He looks at the metal band at his wrist for half a second and back at me. “There isn’t ‘safe.’ There’s only ‘not here.’”

Mara lifts her camera again and the lens shows something I can’t unsee: the frost letters aren’t just letters. They’re veins, branching. Reaching.

The bell tolls once more, quieter, like a promise whispered through metal.

“Three,” I whisper. It feels like I just agreed to something.

The strip at my feet vibrates, barely and skids an inch toward the door.

I step back.

Callen steps forward, between me and the bus, between me and everything.

Ezra moves too, ending at my other side. The three of us make a line that feels like the wrong kind of prayer.

The frost on the glass thickens until the world becomes white noise.

I hear my name again. Not spoken. Tallied.

DUE / 3.

And somewhere underneath, the bell waits like a book itching to be opened.