Rain on Glass
The rain has been tapping against the bus windows for so long that it's started to sound like background noise in an old video. Not a storm exactly—just steady, persistent rain, as if the sky had been holding it in all day and finally decided to let it all out. I'm slouched in my seat halfway down the aisle, cheek resting on my palm, watching the drops race each other down the glass. The lights inside the bus are dim, and there's that weird mix of damp fabric, snacks, and faint gasoline smell that comes with school trips.
Around me, everyone's either sleeping, chatting in hushed voices, or scrolling through their little handheld game devices. The hum of the engine and the occasional bump of the tires hitting a pothole are the only interruptions to the rain's rhythm.
My notebook is open on my lap. The page I'm on is already crowded—half-formed ideas in cramped handwriting, arrows pointing to nowhere, and underlined words that I probably meant to come back to. This book isn't my only one; I have a small stack back home. Each one is full of… stuff. Ideas. Theories. Half-memories from my old life that are too hazy to trust completely but too persistent to ignore. Things from stories I think I might've read or watched before, only… maybe not exactly. Maybe my brain is filling in gaps that never existed.
I tap my pen against the page and look at the last few lines:—Speedster??—Super Soldier Serum??—Thanos???
I remember writing "Anti-Life Equation" somewhere earlier in another notebook, but here it's just a scribble about "absolute obedience." It feels safer not to name things directly sometimes. Like if I put the whole name down, I'll make it too real.
I glance out the window again. The glass is fogged where my breath has been hitting it. My reflection looks a little older than I feel—dark eyes, messy black hair, an expression that seems too calm for a nine-year-old. Then again, inside, I'm still me. Just… four years deeper into this second life.
We'd left the museum about an hour ago. It was one of those trips that felt way too long while you were in it but now, looking back, is already kind of blurry. I flip back a couple pages in the notebook and start jotting down a few things I remember, letting my thoughts drift back to the morning.
The day had started gray but dry. My mom fussed over my jacket, making sure I had an umbrella "just in case," which of course made me the only kid carrying one. At the bus pickup, my classmates were buzzing with the kind of hyper energy you only see when school is about to happen somewhere else.
The museum itself was… fine. Mostly history, with a section on "global myths and artifacts" that ended up being more interesting than I expected. A lot of strange masks, carved stones, old scrolls under glass. One display had a chunk of weathered metal with an inscription no one had translated yet, and I remember staring at it longer than the others. Not because I understood it—I didn't—but because something about the shapes of the symbols tugged at a part of my brain I didn't know was there.
Our guide told some story about how it had been found in a collapsed temple and might have been part of a larger object. My classmates lost interest halfway through, wandering to the more colorful exhibits. I lingered until the teacher gently herded me along.
The other parts of the museum blurred together—paintings, old coins, preserved clothing from centuries ago. I half-listened to the explanations, filed away bits that seemed useful, ignored the rest. The only other thing that stuck with me was an ancient-looking diagram tucked into a corner display, covered in spiraling lines and annotations in some faded language. I didn't remember walking over to look at it, but suddenly I was there, standing in front of it, as if my body had moved without telling me.
It wasn't familiar. Not exactly. But it felt… adjacent to something in my head.
A bump in the road jolts me back to the present. Someone in the back laughs. The driver mutters at a passing car. I keep my head down, pen scratching faintly against the paper.
My mind drifts back over the day in fragments: the clatter of footsteps in the museum's marble hallways, the smell of dust and cleaning chemicals, the muffled voices echoing off tall ceilings. The gift shop near the end, where most of the kids swarmed for keychains and postcards. I didn't buy anything.
Instead, I just kept turning over the images in my head: the symbols on the metal shard, the strange spiral diagram. It's not that I think they're special—it's that they're exactly the kind of thing I'd have tried to connect to a bigger picture in my notebooks.
Which is what I'm doing now.
The bus hits another shallow pothole, and I steady my notebook. My notes jump between wildly different topics
My notes scatter all over: words like "speed echoes," "time tunnel," "tap into the invisible." It's messy, yes, but feels important. Like a glow in a dark room—you can't see its shape yet, but you know it's there.
Most of it's incomplete. Some of it is probably nonsense. But the act of writing it down makes me feel like I'm… keeping something alive. A thread of my old self.
I start a new section, carefully labeling it at the top in smaller letters: "Potential Energy Transmission Mediums." I'm not sure where the idea came from—maybe a story, maybe something I actually read once—but I can't shake the thought of a "field" outside normal reality that certain people could tap into. Like a highway nobody else could see. I jot down comparisons: electrical conductivity, light refraction, mythic "paths" described in folklore.
Then I stop, tapping the pen against the paper again. There's something else I've been avoiding writing about. Not because I think it's dangerous, but because… it feels too big. Too connected.
The phrase "Speed Force" hadn't been in my notes anywhere. But I've been circling around it for years now, coming at it from angles, never naming it. Maybe today's the day I finally try.
I cross to a fresh page and write at the top: "Speed Force". Write it big because it means so much. Not because I understand it, but because it's the idea that stuck through everything else. Comics, dreams, memories, static.
The rain outside picks up, the patter turning into a steady hiss. The windows are streaked with lines of water, blurring the glow of streetlights outside into smeared halos.
I glance around the bus. Most kids are asleep now, heads lolling against the seats. The teachers up front are murmuring to each other. It feels… separate from everything else. Like the bus is its own little bubble moving through the rainy night.
I turn back to the page, my pen poised above the blank space under my last note. My mind runs through the pieces I've been collecting: the concept of an extradimensional field, the idea of velocity linked to energy states, the possibility of tapping into something infinite if you hit the right resonance. It's all half-remembered fiction, but fiction that might have roots in… something.
I scribble the exact line I barely remember from a comic once:
3X2(9YZ)4A
It means nothing literal. Just a mantra, something people—speedsters—used to say to wake the world up around them. Or maybe just make it slow down for a second. I underline it, shaky, and trace it again with my finger, like it'll disappear.
For a moment, I picture the spiral diagram from the museum again. The way the lines seemed to twist inward, then outward, like a loop that fed itself forever. It would make sense if—
A sharp flash of light sears the corner of my vision.
First, the sound dies. Bus engine gone. Rain vanished. All I hear is my own heartbeat, loud enough to echo.
My fingers tingle like pins and needles. Air tastes… wrong. Like copper. My mouth fills with it.
I look out: raindrops are frozen, suspended in mid-fall. The trees are stretched, lazy and melancholy.
Then the light. It doesn't flicker. It flames. Pure white, like someone turned the world into a sheet of white paper.
The smell hits me—too strong. Ozone, metal, and thunder. My heart pounds and every second stretches. I can't move. Can't breathe.
That final note I wrote—"3X2(9YZ)4A"—flickers gold for a heartbeat, just before I go black.
—black.
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