A/N: And so it begins.
"I haven't got time for this," The businessman complained. Michael Letterman was one of ten people in the police questioning room. The other nine being: Harry, Lucy, Jenna, David; The nerdy kid, Ed King; The couple, Jonny Redford and Maria Hernandez; the ticket collector, Brian Fields and Officer Jay Gibson. They were all sat down around a table, apart from Michael who was tapping his foot impatiently in the corner. Officer Gibson had been assigned to the train crash survivors case simply because he was on duty at the time.
"The faster you let me get on with this, the faster you can go, and trust me, I want to get out of here almost as much as you do," he reasoned and the Mr Letterman fell silent, Officer Gibson sat down on the table next to Harry, "Now, finally, Mr. Murphy, what exactly happened?"
"I don't know..." he started to answer, trying to think of the easiest way to explain it, "it was like I was there, in the crash and everyone died, but when it came to my death..." Ed gulped at the word 'death' "... I was back on the platform about to board."
"When you say 'my death'...?"
"I was last to die in what I saw."
"Right." Officer Gibson straightened up and addressed everyone at once, "To be honest, I can't see anything illegal here and quite frankly, I think you're lucky as hell. You're all free to go."
"At last..." grumbled Michael Letterman and left the room quickly and all the others filed out slowly afterwards.
Once outside the police station, they headed towards the station car park. The businessman clearly had shifted as he sped past Harry and the others in his saloon the opposite direction as they reached the pathway, passing a young woman pushing a pram. The baby occupying it was playing with a toy helicopter and tried eat it.
"No, no, no," the mother reprimanded the child and took the toy away , "you could hurt yourself on that."
"Hey!" Darren shouted at Harry. There was something that seemed awfully important about that exchange that he'd stopped walking to stare at the child and his helicopter.
"Sorry... I was miles away, what?"
"I just wanted to say, thanks for saving our lives back there, even if you're insane." That was followed by an acknowledging nod from both of them, "Now come on, you drove us here, remember." They made their way back to the car. The black man and his Hispanic girlfriend drove past them as they reached their own ride. For some reason, the nerdy looking kid, Ed, was waiting at Harry's car.
"Um, hi."
"Hi...?" Harry responded, question why the kid was there.
"Thanks for saving my life." Ed replied and added much in a much quieter tone, "... for now."
"It was nothing."
"It wasn't nothing. Trust me." Ed attempted to state profoundly, though he stuttered a bit.
"What do you mean by that? And why did you say 'for now'?" Harry asked him seriously, the others were paying the kid their full attention now too.
"It's not the first time this has happened. I need to show you something, I've got my laptop in my car," Harry looked at his friends and family for their response, it was shrugs all round.
"Haven't got anything else to do, I suppose."
Back at the Police Station, Officer Gibson sat down at his desk to do some finishing up. He was about to shut down the computer and get ready to go when he got an E-mail. An E-mail from someone he hadn't seen in years...
Harry, Lucy, Jenna and David found themselves at a nearby coffee shop with Ed. Sat round a circular table with Ed in the middle, they huddled around the laptop. Ed tilted the screen to avoid the glare of the afternoon sun that was streaming through the window.
"So, what is it you wanted to show me?" asked Harry, sipping his coffee, which he desperately needed after the events of that morning.
"One moment..." He clicked a link... "There." It was a blog.
"What the..." Harry exclaimed and Ed passed control of the mouse to Harry. He scrolled down the page. There were photos of McKinley raceway, someone had captured the moment a rollercoaster had derailed too. There was also, clearly taken by a phone, a photo of a window falling on what could have been a teenager, though it had been taken after the kid's head had been squashed, blood spraying everywhere. The rest of the blog was much the same. "What is this?" He asked, finally.
"You're not the first. Ten years ago, a student had a premonition, that what you had, a 'premonition', of the plane he was on blowing up, he managed to get a few people off. It blew up. It happened again, a woman called Kimberly Corman foresaw a horrific traffic accident and prevented a few people from getting on the interstate. Then, four years ago, another student had a premonition of this..." Ed pointed at the rollercoaster picture "...and again saved a few people. Finally, last year, the McKinley Speedway disaster, you read about that?"
"Yeah..." Harry replied quietly, the other were dumbfounded too, even the sceptical David.
"Another student saw that coming and got some people out." He finished. The next minute or so was utter silence.
"Erm, what is the point of showing us this, just because Harry here's the fifth to do this? Besides, we've survived..." David asked.
"That's the problem. It seems that Death doesn't like people cheating him... and eventually gets the survivors one by one, usually in freak accidents. That poor teenager under the glass? He was saved from that interstate incident."
"You're saying that Death will pick us off now, like it's an living thing?" Lucy asked Ed, looking terrified.
"Unfortunately."
"How do we know it will happen to us though? What makes you so sure?" David asked, trying to fight uncharacteristic fear. Right then, the shop's owner turned the television on, with blasted out at a too high volume for a moment before he righted it. That made the five of them flinch and caused Ed to accidentally scroll down the page. All eyes were on the television though.
"...where a horrific disaster occurred when the 180 Train for currently unknown reasons failed to slow and an mechanical issue stopped it from changing tracks, causing it to collide with a stationary train, killing all passengers. However, apparently a young person freaked out and prevented his friends from getting on and a few others didn't get on it either. The names are currently confidential, but they should count themselves lucky. This Miranda Page..."
The owner changed the channel to a music channel once the report was over. All five of them were still staring at it though.
"180..." David breathed, now believing the story. "The train was 180... that flight that Alex kid got off was Flight 180 wasn't it?"
"Yes." Ed replied meekly and turned his attention to the laptop again, "Oh!" The other four looked at the cause for the exclamation. When he'd scrolled, he'd finished on an entry called 'The 180 Curse?', which contained a load a photos relating to the disasters where '180' featured, like the 'Next 180' sign. Ed then simply asked, "Who was first to die?"
"What?" Harry asked forcing himself to look away from the laptop, "Oh, why? Does it matter?"
"Apparently, Death will come for us in the order we were meant to die originally," Harry simply nodded and racked his brains.
"The businessman was."
Michael Lettermen at that time was waiting in an airport lounge. He was on the phone again, explaining to his boss about that morning's disaster and the fact he was now taking a flight instead.
Outside, a helicopter started it's motor and the blades began to spin, faster and faster.
A lady with pram approached Michael.
"Could I possibly have this seat?" She asked, smiling.
"One moment, Bob" He said to his boss and took the phone away his ear and placed a hand over it, "Yeah, sure..." He stood up and ambled down the corridor, one wall of which was just glass from floor to ceiling. "Sorry about that... where were we?"
The blades of the helicopter outside rotated faster and faster. The pilot was completely unaware that the bolt holding the tail rotor in place was wiggling gradually looser until...
Michael Letterman was still pacing up and down the corridor on the phone to his boss, when he had a gut feeling to look out the window. He was just in time to see a rotor blade come crashing through the window, which continued its journey by splitting the unfortunate businessman and his black suit straight down the middle and embedded itself in the far wall. The two sides of Michael Letterman toppled away from each other and the phone fell from his lifeless hand.
"Michael? What's happening?" Bob's voice asked through the phone, in response to screaming that followed Michael's death, as his blood pooled around it.