Artemis - Art - was on the bus when the apocalypse happened.

One tiny metal tube, twenty-seven passengers, and a message.

 

 

The screen blipped into existence in front of his eyes, a tiny blue window into the completely impossible. All around him people were frozen in stunned silence. His first response was to laugh, to reach out and touch the window, to prove it wasn’t real. 

And the driver, for one fatal second, couldn’t see the road. The bus swerved onto the sidewalk, a wheel slipped, the world twisted, and everyone was thrown forward and sideways as it smashed into a building.

Art flew forward from his seat, cracking his head against a handrail. He slumped on the floor, blood trickling from his head.

The screen floated above him as his vision faded in and out of focus. He reached for it.

Art’s fingers passed through the sky blue screen with a ripple. It felt like warm buzzing static had enveloped his hand, and his fingertips brushed over something smooth.

Grasping it, Artemis pulled a mask out of thin air - the window rippling and dissolving as the object was pulled out.

It was a smooth, mouthless mask of blue stone, with a series of three runes where the lips would be. A fourth symbol sat between the eyes.

All around him, people were groaning, fighting their way back to their feet, massaging their bruised bodies. Only one other person had found their mask before Art did.

He saw them, across the bus. A woman in a tall, tan-colored trenchcoat, with a black ponytail. She held a painted wooden mask, with four tusks stretching the mouth into a leering grin; a devil’s mask.

She put it on.

There was a ripple in the air, a secret power unfolded outwards, and the masked woman was holding a knife. A long, sharp kitchen knife.

There was barely even a pause to think before she shoved it through the throat of the man next to her. Blood sprayed out in a wet red arc as she ripped the blade back out, sending the innocent bystander toppling to the floor. His hands clawed along the bus’ seats, fighting to get back on his feet, trying to drag his way up again.

The knife came down in the center of his back, and he sunk, crumpling inwards. There was a wet sound, blood coming up instead of air.

Everyone started to scream.

Artemis put his mask on.

 

 

Immediately, the world blurred. There were clouds of color surrounding everything, everyone.

But by far the strongest was the cloud emanating from the masked woman. It billowed outwards, an angry red, drops of ruby hovering in the scarlet miasma. When he looked at her he smelled copper and blood, an ugly metallic reek. 

She looked back at him.

Shit.

The devil-mask advanced on him, intent on removing the threat of another mask, but a woman swung her briefcase into the murderer’s face, screaming. It barely knocked the killer back; the devil-mask raised her arm to stab down, and the woman blocked it with her bag, twisting, ripping the knife free and throwing it down impaled through the leather case.

The devil simply flexed her fingers, and pulled another knife from thin air.

She slammed the woman against a handrail, pinning her with an arm across her throat, and slammed the knife into the woman’s belly once, twice, three times-

Someone had just died in front of Art’s eyes, trying to help him.

A fat man tackled the masked killer from behind, slamming her against the floor of the upturned bus and sending them both tumbling over the back of a chair. There was a flash of bloody metal, a scream, and she managed to rip his belly open and crawl out from under him.

She was a gore-splattered demon. A monster. The aura around her was thicker than ever, taking the form of a rain of blood.

“C’mon kid, run!”

Turning back, he found that the crowd behind him had managed to get the emergency door open, sunlight lancing into the bus. Somehow, despite the carnage inside, the sun was still shining brightly. Dizzy, blood-dripping into his eyes from the wound on his head, he stumbled over the chairs, fighting his way towards the exit.

The demon was just behind him, but somehow he made it through.

His head was working better now, cleared by the rush of air. Fear gave way to cold, hard clarity. Reaching into his backpack, he took out the long, heavy flashlight he kept around in case he got mugged on the way to his apartment. Wrapping the backpack straps around his other arm, he hoisted it like a shield.

The people around him weren’t going to do anything. Half of them were running away, others desperately yelling at their phones, but- they couldn’t do anything and the ones who had tried had all gotten killed. None of them had even retrieved their masks.

He had to.

She lunged out of the bus, taking an overhand swing of the knife. He lifted his shield and let the three hundred dollar school textbooks inside take the blow. Pushing forward, keeping her from ripping her knife back out again, he swung the flashlight into the side of her knee. There was a metallic cracking, she twisted, and the knife ripped down the backpack’s side. 

She stabbed again, and this time the knife punctured through and scraped across his arm. Screaming, he smashed the flashlight across her skull. Her head jerked sideways, fingers letting go of the knife. It was gone as soon as it left her hand.

Vanished into thin air.

And a new one appeared in the opposite hand, darting around his shield to scrape his ribs as it pierced through his kidney. He gasped, all the air leaving him with that same choking, that wet rattle he’d heard before the first of her victims died.

And he lifted the flashlight, bringing it down - over and over and over again.

Until she was a corpse and he was alive. On his knees, splattered with blood, in horrible pain- but alive.

The next few minutes swam in and out of focus. Strangers helped him to the floor, trying to bandage him up. Someone tried to take his mask off but it wouldn’t leave his face. He felt wet hot blood welling out of him, oozing thickly through their attempts to tie a tourniquet. Suddenly a masked face loomed above him, replacing the blue sky. The mask covered only the upper half of the face, and had six eyes, four of them closed. Little trails of tears descended from the sealed eyes.

She pressed her fingers over his wound, and a blue light erupted from her cupped palm. The world came back into focus. He gasped.

Breathing didn’t hurt anymore. Reaching down, interlocking his fingers with hers, he found the flesh where the knife had entered him was whole again.

She grabbed his hand and hauled him onto his feet.

“Hey-”

“C’mon, let’s get out of here before someone else goes psycho.” She was pretty. Short-cut golden curls spilled out behind the weeping mask. A golden aura surrounded her.

Pausing, he turned back to the devil-woman, thinking he should take the mask to keep anyone from putting it on. The mask was gone. It had dissolved into embers, the flesh underneath burning. Which solved that problem. Art ran after the girl, leaving the crowd to shout at him in confusion. She was right. Most of these people were hopeless.

She led him into the dark of an underpass, cars parked, their owners climbing out. Accidents stopped up the road, cars tangled together in shapeless crumpled balls of metal where the appearance of the blue box had caused accidents. The real panic was only just starting to set in.

The sunlight shone through the pillars of the underpass, and she turned to him, half in and out of shadow. Her smile was illuminated, her eyes were in the dark.

“Okay, so what’s the plan?”

And suddenly the knife was at his throat.

“Give me your mask.”

He froze, and that calculating coldness swept over him again. It was like danger compressed his mind into diamond. She was mugging him- she had saved him to keep his mask from dissolving like the devil mask had.

“I don’t want a stupid power like healing, and I only have ten hours, soooo…” The knife was at his throat, and she grabbed his collar, shoving him against the pillar. Nobody could see him but an old street derelict huddled in the corner of the underpass. “Gimme gimme.”

The cold point of the blade sat above his Adam’s apple, digging in with every slight breath.

Reluctantly, he pulled the mask from his face, discovering that a slight force held it to his skin. It came away with a strange sense of loss, and the colors faded from the world. 

He offered it over, and she carefully, keeping an eye on him, peeled her own away. A jagged scar ran across one eye, turning it milky and pale. Blind. Dropping the healing mask to the cement below, she took the mouthless hermit mask and set it in place.

“Nice! It looks like these are based on the Tarot.” She stepped back, twirling the knife happily through the air. “So getting a Major Arcana is real luck for me. Thank you, citizen, for your kind contribution!”

And she took off, footsteps echoing down the underpass.

“Hey man, at least she didn’t take your phone.” The old vagrant said, finally finding his voice.

Art was just about to answer when another window popped into view-

 

 

He paused, and a vicious impulse seized him. Reaching into the window, he drew out the long, sleek rifle-stock and gleaming spear of a harpoon gun.

He waved the window away, turned towards her, aimed at her retreating figure, and fired.

The spear sailed through the air, and she tumbled as it pierced her leg. The shot was so clean, so perfect, that Art could only assume it was the rifle and not him. He watched her tumble over, with the glinting spear stuck through her leg and turning red as it emerged.

And then the screaming hit him, and he felt a little guilty.

A little.

“You fucking bastard!” the girl wailed as he approached. People were staring, but they edged back as he stalked over to her. Nobody was going to help. “You assholes, get over here and stop him!” She wasn’t taking it well.

“Shut up and take my mask off, or I won’t heal you.” Art was really, really done with being stabbed today. He kicked the knife out of her hand. Turning the girl over, he watched her reluctantly remove the hermit mask, lifted her weeping mask onto his own face, and shuddered at the sudden dizzying shift in perspective.

 

 

If the Hermit mask made him cold and calculating, this mask induced a different kind of cunning. It made him see people without the slightest hint of affection or sympathy. As he looked down at her, it was hard to see anything but a stupid animal.

Art shook his head.

Wrong. Bad. Not him.

He leaned down, gripped the spear, mumbled something along the lines of ‘this is going to hurt’ and pulled.

Her scream echoed through the underpass, bouncing back and forth. Someone came forward carrying a bottle of mace, but he calmly chambered the spear into the groove of the gun and aimed the bloody implement at them.

There must be some way to dismiss the blue boxes without retrieving the prize, he thought, seeing the world from behind a veil of tears and cruelty. That’s why so many of these idiots never got their masks.

They’d given up a chance at actual magic out of fear and confusion. Cattle.

He forced himself - fighting the mask’s inherent coldness all the way - to lay his hand over the wound. Unsure of what to do, he simply muttered ‘Healing Touch.’

Blue light flared between his fingers, and her tensed body relaxed slightly. She gasped, breathing hard, but he pulled his hands away before the light dissipated. Most of the damage was fixed, but enough remained to stop her coming after him.

As soon as it was done, he ripped the cursed mask off his face, shoving it into his backpack.

He had enough of magic screwing with his head. Even if he couldn’t blame the masks for making him pull the trigger of the speargun. Even if he had to shoulder that one all by himself.

But he couldn’t bring himself to be totally sorry.

Artemis had seen the possibility of magic almost escape him. All he knew was that whatever was happening to this world, it was his chance. His chance to escape the dull, boring life he’d known. His chance to see something other than a world where all the maps were filled in, all the discoveries made, a world shrunk to the size of a marble by digital communication and news media.

The sad thing is, the girl probably felt the exact the same way. She was maybe the one person seeing this strange day the same way Artemis was; she saw all this magic and strangeness as a shining chance in the dull, gray world, a breach through which they could wriggle to escape boring lives. A crack in reality. That was where her desperation and her scheming came from.

Art understood completely.

Stuffing the Hermit mask and speargun into his backpack, he took off, jogging. The girl called out to him, but he ignored her utterly.

As he cleared the shadows of the underpass, he saw golden lights shining in the sky, daytime stars. As he watched golden lines stretched through the blue horizon and connected the stars into constellations, slowly dividing the sky into segments.

People had abandoned their cars, had abandoned the hope of getting to their jobs on time, and were staring up, wondering what had happened to their everyday sky.

And then there were the people in masks. The people moving, running, possessed by their own momentum.

He wanted to be one of them.

One of the people running towards something.