"Don't worry, child. A well-intentioned warning isn't a crime. Even if you turn out to be wrong, that's perfectly fine. We don't punish people for caring about others' safety."
The round, white-haired, white-bearded old man sitting beside Bella spoke gently, offering her a business card with steady hands.
John Grey, Professor of History, Bard College, New York.
Bella didn't have a card of her own, so she introduced herself directly.
"Isabella Swan. You can call me Bella, Professor."
"Hello, Bella. You look deeply unsettled. Are you afraid the government will hold you responsible for all this chaos? Don't be. I still know a few people in the right places—I won't let you take the fall alone."
Bella was terrified. The adrenaline rush of saving lives had completely faded, leaving only cold, creeping dread. She knew better than anyone what she was up against now—forces that beauty, money, and social status couldn't even begin to fight.
"You... actually believe what I said? My rambling?" she asked carefully, studying his expression.
Most passengers believed her halfway—or operated on superstition, the better-safe-than-sorry mentality. Very few genuinely, truly believed her.
The professor's gaze drifted toward the rain-lashed windows, his expression tinged with something like sorrow.
"You're in high school, aren't you? Have you studied American history?"
Does America even have history?
Bella barely suppressed a sneer. She vaguely remembered "Washington the cherry-tree chopper" and "Lincoln the vampire hunter"... and absolutely nothing else of substance.
She hadn't inherited much concrete memory from the original Bella. She'd only been conscious in this world for three days. No time to read textbooks or absorb local knowledge.
She improvised smoothly. "A bit."
"In our history, there's original sin woven into the very soil of this land. This ground isn't truly ours. This sky resents us for what we've taken."
He paused, voice lowering.
"In 1821, in Idaho Territory, every single resident and prospector of a small mining town died overnight—no wounds, no signs of struggle, no rational explanation. Five hundred people, gone in an instant. Cases like that exist scattered across this country. The government always blamed Native tribes. I believe it was nature's retaliation against those who stole what wasn't theirs."
Bella thought the old professor was closer to the truth than he realized. Whatever "Death" from the movies truly was—whether a force, an entity, or something else entirely—no one could properly explain it.
"I think—"
She didn't get to finish.
A massive fireball erupted across the distant sky, tearing through the storm clouds like a wound in reality itself.
Two seconds later, the shockwave slammed into the terminal windows with a deafening BOOM. Several passengers standing too close to the glass were thrown backward. Newspapers, coffee cups, hats—everything became projectiles flying through the air.
Rain was violently sucked inside through the shattered panes, blasting across the polished floor and turning it slick and muddy within seconds. Bella wasn't sure if it was her imagination, but she swore she caught the faint, metallic scent of blood carried on the wind.
The temperature in the terminal dropped several degrees in an instant.
But no one cared about broken glass—or the rain pouring in.
Every single person, Bella included, stood frozen in stunned silence, staring through the jagged windows at the fireball burning violently as it spiraled toward the earth.
Men abandoned their pride entirely, clutching their heads and sobbing.
Women hugged their children tight, trembling as they whispered comfort they didn't believe themselves.
"Oh God..."
"Mom, I'm scared!"
"It's okay, baby—mommy's right here, mommy's right here!"
The terminal descended into absolute chaos—fear, relief, hysteria all bleeding together.
Some passengers kissed crosses with shaking hands.
Some collapsed into seats, legs giving out completely.
Couples clung to each other desperately, trembling at how narrowly they'd escaped death.
The strict teacher who'd earlier apologized profusely to the airport supervisor—practically begging to still board the flight—went absolutely paper-white. Relief warred with crushing regret across her face. If she had another chance, she would've dragged every single student off that plane herself, consequences be damned.
"You said the plane was FINE! You said it was SAFE! This is murder! You're a murderer! You corporate PIG!"
She grabbed the supervisor by his tie, screaming directly into his terrified face.
He hadn't been the one who swore the plane was airworthy. The pilot had—
—and the pilot was almost certainly dead now.
The dead couldn't be punished.
The living supervisor was absolutely, thoroughly screwed.
"I saw it! I saw everything! Exactly the way I remembered it happening!
The left engine caught fire first, then the explosion blasted flames straight into the cabin—
I saw you, and you, and you—
You were all dead! Every single one of you was DEAD!"
Alex—the skinny, wild-eyed student—kept shouting his visions to anyone who would listen. Bella found his ability genuinely bizarre. It felt like he'd somehow lived through the entire sequence once, then rewound his personal timeline. The way he described events was far too vivid, too precise—completely different from her own death-sense.
Hers was pure intuition. Emotional. Psychic.
His was like... a temporary glitch in causality. A cheat code that let him preview the outcome.
If he wanted to absorb all the suspicion and media attention, Bella sure as hell wasn't going to steal his spotlight.
Over a hundred people had just died. Bella could still picture many of their faces clearly—
The girls who'd mocked her cheap outfit.
The businessmen who'd called her delusional.
All gone. Vaporized in an instant.
At 9:25 a.m., the plane had taken off.
Moments later, it exploded mid-air.
Even with rescue teams already mobilizing despite the storm, everyone knew the brutal truth: survival was impossible. At that altitude, in those conditions, with that kind of explosion—no one was walking away.
Global Airlines had already been struggling under crushing financial pressure. Flight 180 was the final, killing blow. Whether the cause turned out to be engine failure, fuel explosion, or sabotage, nothing could stop the company—founded all the way back in 1925—from collapsing into bankruptcy.
Police. Firefighters. FBI agents. Journalists.
They descended in waves, one group after another, bombarding the survivors with endless questions.
Topics ranged wildly from religion to human rights, from political affiliation to favorite sports teams, from dietary restrictions to childhood trauma.
Bella, Alex, the black-haired young man named Sam, and the brunette student Claire Redfield became the primary interview targets—the four who'd most publicly and dramatically warned others.
A man in a long wool coat flashed his badge with practiced efficiency.
FBI, Phoenix Division. C1 Field Supervisor.
He introduced himself with a name so painfully generic it had to be fake: Agent Henry.
Claire Redfield—the least suspicious of the four—was questioned first.
"Miss Redfield, I didn't see you interact with Miss Swan before the incident. Why did you choose to support her claims?"
"A very strong sense of dread. If I'd boarded that plane, I would've died. That's all there is to it."
"Premonition? Nothing else? You don't mind if I document this as your official statement?"
"Go ahead. Write it down."
Claire didn't flinch. She said it like it was the most logical, reasonable thing in the world—as natural as describing the weather.