"Wake up..."

It started off as a whisper as my senseless body drifted in darkness.

"Wake up, slayer..."

As the words struck my brain in a manner where I couldn't tell if it was heard in my mind or my ears, my senses began to slowly recover.

"WAKE UP!"

My eyes snapped open, revealing the dark screen of the television built in to the seat in front of mine. However, before any recognitions of where I was hit me, a simple sensation dominated me.

Cold

Snowflakes lightly swirled in the air, some gently landing on my skin and clothes before melting from my body heat. The harshly cold air whipped around me, making me shiver despite my sweatshirt. I immediately regretted not having something like a thick jacket on me.

As I lifted my head up, mysteriously unharmed from the crash, and inspected the area around me with a hazy mind.

My eyes drifted over the mangled mass of metal that used to be a plane around me, crushed bodies and burnt flesh galore around me. However, whether it was caused by shock or something else, I remained unshaken.

Rather than being preoccupied with the dead around me, I analyzed my own situation. Looking out the window, it appeared we were on a snowy mountain. The air felt thinner than usual, so I assumed we were relatively high up as well.

As I looked around, I noticed that I was quite simply... alone. This was more than a little disconcerting, as I was sure I'd heard a girl's voice telling me to wake up, but I suppose it was possible I'd dreamed it or hallucinated it considering... well, where I'd been coming from.

I checked the bottom of the seat in front of me for my bag, only to find that there was nothing there.

"Fuck..." I cursed quietly under my breath.

I didn't know if there were any other survivors or how long I'd been out for. Considering I didn't know how long I'd be here, I was planning on relying for as long as possible on the snacks I'd packed with me. If I rationed properly, they should last me for a day or two at the very least.

Two logical possibilities came to mind as to the whereabouts of my bag: one, it had been sucked out of the plane during our fall. I didn't see this as very likely, considering my feet probably would've blocked the bag before it managed to get by.

The second, more plausible scenario was what I hoped was true: that at some point earlier on, there were other survivors that had scavenged the plane for supplies. If that were true, there would hopefully be signs of them leaving that I could follow. If I could meet up with them, I would have much higher odds of survival.

As I moved to unbuckle my seatbelt and inspect the rest of the plane, I stopped for a second to look at an oddly familiar figure.

They wore a bright orange jacket, their body slouched over as their head had caved in. As I pondered just where I knew them from, I felt an odd discomfort. It wasn't at the person, mind you. No, it was at myself.

Sure, I'd always been a cynic, but at the same time I'd been the "gentle" type. Hurting people, even just gore in movies, had never sat right with me. Yet now, I quiet simply didn't care. In fact, as I though calmly and quickly, a small smile spread out on my face.

"Ha..."

A small laugh escaped my lips.

"HAHAHA!"

I bent over with laughter as I realized where I knew this person from. They were one of the people who'd shoved Alice out of the way to get back to their seat. And for what? Just to die? On some level, I saw that it was just their selfish actions ending up being meaningless. However, some part of me saw the irony.

"Maybe karma does exist..."

I quickly grabbed the coat off the person's back and slipped my arms into the sleeves. Looking at the shoulder, I noticed a splash of frozen blood that I silently brushed off.

Looking out through the gaping exit to the plane's rear half, I quickly left the carnage behind. Looking out from the end that leaned down towards the ground, I looked out at the forest around me.

It seemed like we were on the edge of a forest of overly-large evergreen trees. That was probably what had saved us, slowing down our crash. As I stepped outside of the plane and check behind it, I could see a clear path of tree wreckage from rear half of the plane colliding with the trees during our descent.

As I scanned the forest with my eyes I felt an odd, unfamiliar sensation. It was like I wasn't the one doing the observing, but rather like I was being watched. The realization sent a chill down my spine, but no matter how hard I tried to find a sign of something out there, it was completely still and quiet.

I stood stock-still for several minutes before moving, hoping that whatever was out there was either all in mind head or would get bored. However, the sensation never dissipated, and in the end I decided that I had to move or I would likely freeze to death.

I crouched close to the ground after that, moving quietly and sneakily as I mad my way around the plane. Some of the snow layered on the ground managed to worm its way into my sneakers, but I ignored the chill.

I circled the plane once around, hoping to find something. However, with the relatively heavy snow billowing around us I figured that with any real amount of time ahead of me, their footsteps would be hidden.

In the end, I failed to find anything on the first circle, so I did it again. I probably looked like an idiot, squatting low as I inspected every snowflake only to find that the only signs of human activity were my own footsteps.

Dragging my hand along the side of the plane, I was nearly at the point of giving up and simply trying to survive on my own before it happened.

A notch.

The side of the plane was covered in a thin layer of snow, so it was something I had no way of noticing at first glance, or even second. Rather, as I ran my hand over one of the few non-mangled section of the plane, I felt a slight dip.

Unlike the rest of the plane, there was no mechanically clean finish to this scratch. Nor was there the naturally chaotic sensation of torn metal. No, as I brushed the snow rapidly from the surface with freezing hands, it became more and more apparent that this was man-made. Not just that, either. It was crude.

One thought came to mind immediately: survivors.

When my hands came away from the side of the plane, a more gentle smile bloomed on my face.

It was an arrow pointing towards higher up on the mountain, more than likely indicating the direction they had headed.

No, it was more than a simple arrow. It was the start of a new reality, a new life.

It was the start of my survival.