Kael was running — breathless, desperate — weaving through a maze of narrow alleyways, his shoes slapping against wet concrete as he darted from one shadow to the next, his head snapping back every few seconds with the panicked certainty that someone must be chasing him. Just minutes ago, he’d been lounging at the bar, surrounded by friends and laughter, the low hum of music humming lazily in the background — until the door burst open and chaos stormed in, armed and in uniform.

  They weren’t police. They weren’t anything he could name. Their faces were hidden behind visors, their movements too precise to be anything but military. And they called his name — clear, loud, deliberate — slicing through the panic like a blade. That sound alone was enough to paralyze him, to make every instinct scream: Run.

  He barely remembered how he slipped away, but he knew it was through the fire exit, the handle cold and rusty in his sweating hand, his feet pounding the pavement as he vanished into the night like smoke. But no matter how far he ran, the question chased him, gnawing at his mind with sharp, merciless teeth: Why? Who were they? What could they possibly want with someone like him?

  He had no family. No history. No enemies — at least none worth kicking down doors for. Raised in orphanages, shuffled through the state’s indifferent system like a forgotten file, Kael had spent his life trying to be invisible. He never joined a gang, never picked a fight, never stepped out of line. He lived modestly, studied hard, and stayed out of trouble. His life was as ordinary as a chipped mug left too long on a kitchen shelf.

  Well… almost.

  There was that recent scuffle with some drunk jerk outside campus — a filthy, staggering man harassing a girl who clearly wanted none of it. Kael stepped in, gave him a shove, exchanged a few angry words. That was it. Not even a proper fight. The man looked homeless — disheveled, reeking of alcohol, lost in his own haze. Could that brief encounter really have triggered all of this? No. It was impossible. No one would send a fully armed squad after a student over a drunk scuffle. Would they?

  The city finally began to look familiar as he reached the edge of the neighborhood, lungs burning with cold night air, body trembling not just from the run, but from something deeper — fear, confusion, the sour taste of adrenaline that still clung to the back of his throat. His dorm building loomed ahead like a worn-out fortress — grey, crumbling, paint peeling from the corners of its concrete face. It had never felt particularly safe before, but now it looked like salvation.

  He slipped past the dozing security guard, who barely looked up from his flickering television screen, and began climbing the stairs, wincing as each footstep echoed loudly in the stale silence of the stairwell. When he reached the third floor, he fumbled his key into the lock of his door — the old one with the sticking bolt and the faded number that looked like it had been scratched by time itself. He stepped inside, breath hitching, heart still pounding.

  His room was no more than a worn-out box — a single, cluttered space that smelled faintly of dust and old coffee, its walls lined with yellowing posters and a single heavy curtain that kept the city’s glow at bay. The moment he shut the door and turned the key, something in him sagged — as if, at last, the nightmare might pause long enough for him to breathe.

  But then he turned.

  And everything stopped.

  There, in the shadows of his own room, stood a figure — still, composed, and pointing a gun directly at his face. The barrel loomed before him like the eye of some cold mechanical god, and behind it, a pair of eyes studied him with icy indifference. No rage. No fear. Just the calm resolve of someone who had come with purpose.

  Kael froze, his breath caught in his throat, his thoughts scattering like leaves in a storm. His hands rose of their own accord, a slow, instinctive gesture of surrender — and all he could muster, all the words that came to his lips in that moment of unthinkable clarity, was a single, hoarse whisper:

  “Shit…”

  "Kael Johnson?" the voice asked — deep, low, and resonant, as though it rose from beneath the ground itself, devoid of emotion yet charged with a predatory tension that made the air feel heavier.

  Kael, still frozen in place within the dim, stuffy room, with a gun barrel inches from his face, swallowed hard, trying to summon a voice that trembled with fear that had already seeped into every cell of his body.

  “Y-yeah… and who… who are you?” he stammered, cursing himself internally for the quiver in his words.

  The stranger didn’t answer. Not a single word. He just began to approach slowly, methodically, like a hangman who felt neither pity nor malice — merely a man fulfilling a duty written in someone else’s hand. Driven by a pure, primal fear, Kael instinctively stepped back until his back hit the solid, unyielding door — the very one he had locked moments ago in the na?ve hope that it would offer safety. His fingers twitched, seeking the handle or the key, any chance of escape — but his mind already knew: he wouldn’t make it.

  The stranger drew closer, step by deliberate step, until he was close enough that Kael could see every pore in his weathered skin, every coarse strand in his stubble, and most vividly — the jagged scar that carved a path across his face from brow to cheek like a relic of some war-torn past. One eye was as black as night, the other framed by the disfigurement. His expression was void of threat or rage — it was the silence of someone who had seen too much and felt too little.

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  Kael felt the cold press of the barrel beneath his chin, the metal biting into his skin like a promise of death. He kept his hands raised, aching now from tension, but dared not lower them — just in case. Just in case this tiny gesture could make the difference between life and the end.

  Then — a creak behind the door.

  Before Kael could react, the man grabbed him by the back of the head and slammed them both to the floor, dragging him away from the entrance just as an explosion shattered the air. The door burst open with a thunderous blast, the walls shuddered, and dust swept through the room like a storm. His ears rang with a piercing, shrill noise; his lungs fought for air thick with ash. He realized, dazed and pinned to the floor, that the man who had threatened him moments ago now shielded him with his own body.

  But the fear hadn’t lessened.

  The stranger rose first, unshaken, brushing dust off his coat with practiced ease. With a quick motion, he rolled up a sleeve, revealing a sleek, embedded device glowing with blue light. A hologram appeared in midair, flickering with alien symbols. He tapped something, and in the next second, he seized Kael’s wrist.

  “What the he—” Kael started, but reality folded.

  The world around him distorted, twisted like liquid through glass, then collapsed into a single point and burst open again into something entirely new.

  He was no longer in his crumbling, dust-laden apartment.

  Now, he lay on grass — soft, foreign, cool to the touch — beneath a blood-red sky glowing with the hues of a dying sun. A surreal calm lay over the place, broken only by the pounding in Kael’s chest. Still pinned beneath the man’s weight, he couldn’t tell if he was alive, unconscious, or already dead and cast into some bizarre dreamscape of heaven or hell.

  “Oooh, lovers already getting frisky?” a teasing female voice rang out nearby, laced with amusement.

  The man stood, unbothered, brushed himself off, and stepped over Kael without a glance, as if he were nothing more than an object on the ground.

  Kael remained sprawled in the grass, too stunned to speak, breathe, or even comprehend what had happened. His eyes widened as they scanned the alien surroundings. Trees encircled the meadow like silent sentinels, and not far away loomed a monstrous machine — part vehicle, part tank, twisted together in a way that defied logic. He saw two others near it: a woman with silver-streaked hair and a man who looked carved from stone. They were speaking in hushed tones.

  Kael forced himself up on shaky legs, every breath shallow and rapid, his mind a storm of disjointed thoughts that collided and scattered like birds under gunfire. His voice, barely more than a whisper, emerged:

  “Excuse me…”

  No one acknowledged him.

  “Excuse me!” he repeated, louder this time, stronger. Their heads turned slowly, faces blank.

  “You… this…” Kael’s breath hitched, his chest rising and falling erratically. “What the hell is going on?!”

  All three stared at him. The woman chuckled softly, a sound like wind brushing broken glass.

  “In the car,” the scarred man ordered without looking at him, voice hard and resolute.

  Something inside Kael snapped.

  “The hell I will!” he yelled, fists clenched, his voice cracking with fury and panic. “Not until someone tells me what the hell is going on! Who are you people?! Where am I?! What is this?!”

  The others turned to board the machine. Only the man with the scar reacted — not with words, but with action. He slammed the vehicle’s door so hard it echoed across the clearing, then turned on his heel and began striding toward Kael with fast, heavy steps.

  Kael’s breath caught. His words died in his throat as the man drew near. That same unshakable presence — colder than steel, darker than shadow — settled over him like a wave.

  The man stopped inches from him, eyes burning with intensity.

  “Get in the fucking car,” he said in a voice like gravel sliding over ice.

  Kael, eyes wide, throat dry, nodded slowly, barely able to speak.

  “…Okay.”

  Kael stepped into the vehicle with the numbness of a man who had finally lost all control over his fate, like a prisoner led through a hollow, echoing corridor that ended not in a door but in a gaping nothingness. Inside, the space felt alien — not just technological but as if it had been assembled from fragments of another world: the seats were covered in dense fabric stitched with unfamiliar symbols, the panels flickered with a dim, reddish light, as though reflecting the anxiety of the blood-colored sky pouring through the barred windows, under which the horizon burned like a distant wildfire.

  The vehicle purred softly, like a beast roused from sleep, and began to move — smoothly, yet with the kind of force one could feel in every bone. Outside, trees rolled past — their trunks scorched and twisted, as if struck again and again by lightning — and Kael, watching this strange, silent landscape, suddenly realized just how far he was from the life he had once known, that ordinary life he had considered dull but safe only a few hours ago.

  Now, inside this metallic womb, squeezed between two strangers who clearly had the power to decide his fate with a word or a glance, he finally dared to ask the question that had been burning inside him like a brand.

  “Are you… are you going to kill me?” he asked hoarsely, his voice a blend of disbelief, desperation, and a faint childlike hope that maybe this was all just a mistake — a dream gone on too long, a hallucination, the result of a blow to the head or a complete mental breakdown.

  The response wasn’t a grim silence or a threat, but rather a sudden, ringing laugh from the woman seated across from him — a laugh that sounded sincere but carried a disturbing note of mockery at his naivety.

  “Would we take you to a special place just for that?” she said, wiping the smile from her lips as if it had been a sip of something hot and bitter.

  Kael, not sure if that was a denial or a dark affirmation, felt a sharp pang in his chest. His heart was still pounding, sweat beading on his forehead and sliding down the back of his neck, and in his mind, faces began to rise — friends, professors, even the librarian from the third floor — everyone left behind in a world that already felt like a distant dream.

  “Who are you?” he asked, barely able to form the words, dragging them from the depths of his panicked thoughts.

  “You talk too much,” came the reply, low and rough like distant thunder, from the scarred man whose face remained carved in stone — until he turned slightly, casting Kael a look that was not angry, not cruel, but something far colder: the expression of someone accustomed to immediate, unquestioned obedience.

  Kael fell silent at once, biting back the next question, feeling fear coil around his throat like a serpent. Though his mind screamed for answers, demanded logic, structure, even the illusion of control — his body had already learned the wisdom of silence.

  He turned again to the window, trying to focus on the scenery outside, which had now shifted to rocky hills and strange, metallic structures rising in the distance — none of which resembled any architecture he knew. The sky was growing darker, washing the ground in blood-red hues, and from far off, he could hear low rumbles — whether thunder or something more ominous, he couldn’t tell.

  Inside him, a storm was growing — fear, anger, confusion, loneliness, the sheer sense of being utterly lost — all of it crashing against the walls of his mind like birds trapped in a glass cage. He didn’t know who these people were. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know why he was here. All he had was his racing heart, and his eyes, still reflecting an alien sky.

  He thought of the bar. Of the voice that had spoken his name. Of the hands grabbing him. Of that scar — the vivid, jagged line now far too close. It all fit together into a mosaic that still didn’t make sense. The only thing he knew for certain was that he had been pulled into something much bigger than himself. And that the way back, if it even existed, had long since closed behind him.

  The vehicle slowed. In the distance, beyond the trees, lights began to flicker — not like city lights, but pulsing, yellow and blue, like beacons or signals. A massive metal structure ahead opened like a giant maw, letting them pass, and Kael, for the first time, saw the “special place” the woman had mentioned. It resembled a cross between a research station and a military outpost — everything around him exuded technology far beyond anything he recognized, unfamiliar and alive in a way that unsettled him deeply.

  Kael drew a deep breath, hoping to ground himself, but his lungs only filled with tension that crackled in the air like static.

  He didn’t ask any more questions. Not because he didn’t want answers — but because, by now, he understood one thing with absolute clarity: only the others got to ask here.