"Am I dead?" Rhys opened his eyes and looked around in confusion. His gaze wandered, half-expecting familiar laboratory walls to snap back into place.
The last thing he remembered was lying on a table, with countless machines surrounding him and beeping in uneven rhythms. His mind and body had been in unbearable pain, the kind that flooded every breath.
Then, in the next moment, he was somewhere else, inside a world he had never seen or experienced before. There had been no clear transition, no doorway, no falling. There was only a sudden arrival.
He glanced down and saw a red liquid covering his feet up to his ankles, thick enough to cling to his skin. It rippled slowly around his legs whenever he shifted.
Lifting his head, he tried to find where it was coming from, and that's when he understood it wasn't a puddle or a pool.
It was an ocean.
