He stepped through the door.
It opened without sound—just a slow, silent retreat of metal into the wall, revealing the space beyond.
No light greeted him. Just the same faint pulse of red from a single overhead diode, stuttering like a dying heartbeat.
The room was wide. Wider than any he'd seen so far.
Rows of metal shelves lined one side, most of them empty. A few overturned crates lay scattered near the far wall, their contents long gone—or never there to begin with. Dust clung to every surface in soft, uneven sheets. No signs of recent movement. No footprints.
Just stillness.
He stepped inside, breath catching on the stale air. It smelled like rust. And something else. Oil? Plastic? Maybe age itself.
He paused halfway in.
That's when it hit him.
The hunger.
Not a dull ache, but a gnawing in his gut—sharp, insistent, primal.
His legs weakened. His knees almost buckled.
It wasn't just emptiness. It was depletion.
His body was running on fumes.
He swallowed hard, hand tightening around the metal bar.
How long had it been since he'd eaten?
He didn't know.
But now that the adrenaline had burned off and the cold had dulled, his body was screaming for fuel.
He looked around desperately—half expecting, half hoping—anything. A ration pack. A water tube. Something tucked behind a crate.
Nothing.
The silence pressed in.
His mind spun.
This isn't normal. This isn't right. This isn't… how I should've woken up.
He remembered things.
Cafés. Parks. People. Voices. Screens. Laughter.
His life.
Not in sharp detail, but enough to know that this—whatever this was—did not belong.
And that's when the fear started whispering.
What if someone put me here?
What if this isn't an accident?
He turned in place, scanning the shadows. No movement.
Am I part of an experiment? A prisoner? A test subject?
His breath grew shallow.
And then another thought, colder than the air:
What if I never get out?
He moved faster now.
Not with purpose—but with desperation.
The hunger twisted inside him like a knot, every step feeling heavier, every breath a little more labored. He staggered toward the nearest overturned crate and dropped to his knees beside it, hands shaking.
He pried open the lid—cracked plastic, brittle from age—and found… scraps.
Shattered fragments of synthetic casing. Metal fasteners. A torn strip of rubber insulation.
Nothing edible. Nothing useful.
He shoved it aside and crawled to the next.
His fingers dug under the edge, pried it open with a grunt.
More debris. Tools maybe, once. Now just rusted shapes and shattered composite.
He leaned back, panting.
His stomach growled again—louder this time. A deep, animal sound that echoed in the silence.
He clenched his jaw.
Focus.
He scanned the room, trying to calm his mind.
There—against the far wall—another container. Bigger. Sealed.
He stood, knees trembling, and crossed the floor in staggered steps. Droplets of sweat slid down his back despite the cold.
He reached the container. Gripped the handle.
Pulled.
The seal cracked.
The lid rose with effort—and then he froze.
Inside: vacuum-packed packages. Faded labels.
No lights, no screens, no sound—but food.
Or what looked like food.
His hands dove in.
He pulled out a rectangular pouch. Pressed it. Soft. Heavy.
He turned it over—no writing he recognized. Just a red triangle symbol and a long serial code.
He didn't care.
He tore it open with his teeth and squeezed the contents into his mouth.
It tasted like dust and salt and chemicals.
But he swallowed. Again. And again.
His body didn't protest.
It welcomed it.
He sank to the floor, back against the crate, and kept eating.
Only after the third pouch did he stop—just long enough to breathe.
And think.
What the fuck is this place… and why is it stocked for survival?
His breathing slowed.
The pain in his stomach dulled, replaced by a heavy warmth that settled deep in his core. Not satisfaction—but relief. The kind that came after hours on the edge.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm and leaned back against the crate, letting his head rest against the cold wall behind him.
Silence returned. But this time, it wasn't hostile.
It gave him space to think.
He looked down at the empty ration pack in his hands. The material was some kind of synthetic polymer—tougher than plastic, smoother than foil. It crinkled as he turned it over.
He examined the symbols again.
Still the triangle inside the circle. Same as before.
And that long string of alphanumerics printed down the side.
But no words. No language he recognized.
And that was wrong.
Very wrong.
His memory wasn't perfect—but it was intact.
He remembered the army.
He remembered rations.
He remembered labels in block text, storage codes, expiration dates, logistics stamps.
This wasn't that.
This wasn't military surplus.
Wasn't humanitarian aid.
Wasn't anything he'd ever seen.
He stared at the triangle.
It meant something. It had to. It was everywhere—on the food, the walls, the door panels.
But he didn't know what.
And that terrified him more than the hunger had.
He sat there, ration in hand, heart slowing, mind spinning.
"Where the fuck am I?''
He muttered it aloud, the words tasting foreign in his mouth.
He looked around again—not searching for food this time, but for meaning.
"What is this place?''
His voice was hoarse, dry, thin against the metal.
He turned the empty ration pouch over in his hand once more. Rubbed a thumb along the seal. The triangle stared back at him like an eye.
"Who put me here?''
Silence answered. The same silence that had clung to every corridor, every wall, every breath since he'd awakened.
He shook his head.
None of this made sense.
If this was a base—whose?
If this was an experiment—why him?
If this was survival—why alone?
He let the pouch drop. It hit the floor with a soft, crumpled tap.
"Was I taken…?''
He stared at the floor.
Kidnapped? Drugged? Frozen?
He remembered the army. The discipline. The days under pressure, the routines, the training. He wasn't a civilian. He wasn't helpless. He should have seen this coming.
But there'd been no warning.
No memory of how he got here.
Just a pod. A scream. And hunger.
How long have I been asleep?
He didn't even know if time passed the same way in this place.
His hand clenched involuntarily.
What if this isn't even real?
The thought struck like a cold wind through his chest.
What if this was a simulation? A prison? A hallucination?
He ran a hand through his damp, tangled hair.
"Okay," he whispered to himself. "Okay. Stay sharp. Don't spiral."
But the questions didn't stop.
And somewhere behind them all, a quieter one pressed forward:
"Am I the only one here?''
The words echoed in his skull as he pushed himself up from the floor.
His limbs still ached, but his mind was clearer. The food had dulled the edge of panic, just enough to let thought return.
Cold, focused thought.
He picked up the metal bar, now slightly sticky from his earlier grip, and stepped cautiously into the next corridor branching off the room.
The lighting here was the same—dim, pulsing red. No natural light. No open vents. Just corridors, like veins, feeding deeper into a body long asleep.
He slowed his pace.
Started to analyze.
The walls were smooth, modular—slotted plates screwed into metal supports.
Familiar, but… not standard.
The pattern was off. The rivets were wrong. Too small. Too uniform.
He knelt beside one panel and touched it.
The texture was strange—like ceramic fused with alloy. Not a material he recognized from his training, or his deployments.
Not military-issue.
He kept walking.
A box embedded in the wall caught his attention. He opened it: wires. Lots of them. All black. All braided in tight, intricate bundles.
Again, unfamiliar.
He'd done equipment checks. He'd opened power relays, broken down field kits, cleaned the internals of auto-rifles and uplink cores.
But this… this didn't match.
He passed another open crate. Empty.
Then—something on the ground.
He crouched, picked it up.
A metal bracket. Smooth, black. Lightweight. With a magnetic locking system on one end.
He turned it over. No serial number. No label. Just that damn triangle-in-a-circle etched faintly into the casing.
He swallowed.
It wasn't just old.
It was wrong.
Everything he touched felt off by a few degrees, like someone had built a world based on blueprints from memory, but got the scale slightly wrong.
And the thought crept in again, sharper now:
What if this wasn't his world at all?
He kept walking.
The corridor narrowed, then widened again, opening onto a short landing that overlooked another sealed bulkhead. A catwalk ran overhead. Pipes hissed softly in the ceiling.
But he wasn't looking at the structure anymore.
His mind was somewhere else.
Turning circles.
Trying to fit everything together.
The pod. The cold. The silence. The food. The symbols. The technology. The architecture.
None of it matched what he knew. And yet—he did know things.
His memories weren't blank. They were solid, sharp in places. Not just fragments. Context.
He wasn't hallucinating. He wasn't amnesiac.
He wasn't broken.
So how the hell did he get here?
He stopped walking. Rubbed his temples with a shaky hand.
And then, the thought hit him.
What if I died?
The idea settled like a cold weight behind his eyes.
What if I died… and woke up in another world?
It sounded stupid. Ridiculous. Like something out of the web novels he used to read on long nights during deployment.
Guys hit by trucks. Girls collapsing from overwork. People falling asleep and waking up in fantasy realms with magic, monsters, and quests.
He'd laughed at that stuff.
But now?
He looked around.
Alien corridors. Unknown symbols. Technology that felt familiar yet wrong.
No bodies. No windows. No Earth.
Maybe this wasn't Earth at all.
Maybe I really did die.
He let out a dry laugh.
"I got isekai'd," he muttered.
The silence swallowed the words.
But the thought stuck.
And for now… it was the only thing that made sense.