*Click* I open my eyes and am blinded from the bright lights coming from over me, I close my eyes and try to sit up, but my arms are stuck in place. Tilting my head to my right I can see a girl staring straight at me with a wild look on her face. Her dull green eyes are wide, her blonde hair frizzy, tangled and sticking up in multiple directions, face pale as snow. Her body is strapped onto a flat shiny table. Her jeans and coat have been replaced with a white suit. I blink a few times before I realize that she is me, I’m staring at myself.
I don’t know where I am, my mind is blank. I take a breath and try to recall what happened, then it all comes back in a rush. It overwhelms my head, and everything goes black.

I remember walking down the abandoned streets near my house. Trying to take a relaxing walk, and get my mind off things. I find a bench and decide to take a seat, I’m staring into the distance at the street sign that read, Tipperary Hill, when I see a nearby bush rustle. What I witness next happens in the span of a few seconds, I see a bright blue light strike up from the ground in an arc. I listen to it make a sizzling sound as the light becomes brighter, then there’s a ZAP as the arc fills with sparkling blue light. There’s ringing in my ears and the ground is smoking as I slowly approach where the light arc. I’m feeling a little dizzy and everything’s a little blurry, but I want to see what had happened. Hiding from behind the bush that was rustling, I took keep staring at the arc sizzle and waver. Staring at the empty space, confused, I got knocked over by a heavy weight. It pushed me to my left and made me hit my head against the ground.
I can’t feel anything as I see that it was a guy, a young man of about 18, with dark hair and light eyes, that had knocked me over. He’s got a grip on my arm and drags me, as I try to keep up, running towards the blue arc. Before I can think, the guys pulls me along through the blue arc and I’m blinded by white light.
We pass out of the bright light and onto a dry, grassy deserted land. I don’t feel numb anymore, I can see clearly now, and I’m pretty sure my head and mind are working alright. We stumble and fall on the ground but don’t stay down for long.
“Run!” says the guy, he keeps his grip on my arm and pulls me behind him running again. We don’t run far until I can see some tall buildings in the distance through the blazing sun. I’m starting to become out of breath when the guy pulls us behind some giant rocks and collapsed on the ground, resting his back against on one of the rocks. He’s covering his face with his hands, but he still has his steel iron grip on me.
“Let me go!”, I shout at him, struggling to get free, and he does but I land on my back when he lets go. I’m gasping for air as I sit up and ask, “Who are you!?”
They guy doesn’t answer, I can’t see his face but I can hear his slow, heavy breathing. “I didn’t want to do it, okay! I’m sorry!”, he muffles out. I stand up even more confused and look around, then it hits me that I have no idea where we are.
“Where did you take me!” I yell at him while he’s still covering his face, he’s got control of his breathing now and stood up to look at me. I can see him a lot better now that I can see clearly and he’s standing still. He’s extremely tall, at least 6’2, with dark brown hair close-cropped to the side of his head, and his eyes are a light hazel color. He’s wearing light brown cargo pants and loose black t-shirt that had, there was dirt all over his clothes, including the black shoes he wore.


He took a step closer to me, took a breath, and explained himself: “Okay look, I didn’t want to do this, I didn’t want to take you from your world, but I was forced to, by…” something behind me catches his eye,“by them!”. I turn around to see he’s pointing out to a big truck that is coming towards us from the direction of the many tall buildings in the distance.
We just stand and stare at the trucks as they get closer and closer to us. Before they are in front of us, they guys puts his hands around my wrist and holds them together with his strong grip, but I don’t do anything, I just stand there. I look back at this face, but it’s emotionless and serious, just staring ahead. The trucks pulls up next to us and a big bulky man in a black suit climbs out of it. When the man approaches the guy says, “I got someone just like you requested sir.”

“Ah, yes, that was quicker than I expected..” The man said as he came closer to me and took a good long look at me. “You picked out a good one, young, fit,”: He gripped my arm and then released it,“Strong,”and did the same with my jaw as he stared me in the eye, “pretty too.”. He released me and took a step back. I couldn’t move due to the strong grips that both of these people had, so again I just stood there not saying anything.


The next thing I know, there’s a heavy sack over my head and I’m thrown into the back of the truck, hitting my head on it’s inside so hard I black out.



I wake up in the room again, feeling the cold metal table underneath me, I was still only wearing a thin white suit, making me even more cold, but there’s nothing I can do about it. The lights were brighter than ever so I had to keep my head tilted to the side and when I do, I notice that there’s a strong synthetic smell in the air. To my surprise, a portion of the white wall in front of me moves aside, I tense up as I see a grown man enter the room. The man is tall and thin, with thinning gray hair, a slightly wrinkled face and he's wearing a clean white lab coat, carrying a gray folder. He approaches me with a small smile, eyeing me head to toe, I shiver in discomfort.
“Hello.” he says while removing my arm and leg straps that were pinning me down, he left the one on my waist on though, which gave me enough room to sit up and lean my back on the left wall. I stay quiet, just staring at the man.
“Do you know why you’re here?” he asks, I don’t say anything.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” giving a low chuckle.
“Well first of all, you’re not on your normal planet, here we call our planet ‘Kepler’-”
I interrupt him in a quiet and croaky voice,
“Where is ‘here’?”, he smiles at my lack of knowledge.
“Kepler is about 5.3 billion years old, we humans have been around for about a million years. Our planet is tired of us here, its tried to get rid of our population with many natural disasters and tragedies. Almost two thirds of our population was killed, we went from 12 billion people to 4.2 billion people. That time was truly tragic, because it also did kill most of our wildlife and many of our supplies. Scientists have been working to try and find something that could help us live longer. Not long ago our Scientist were experimenting defenses against toxic chemicals during a hug storm of acid rain. When they saw a circle of blue flickering light appear in front of them, thinking quickly they sent a team of men to investigate it. Scientist watched the team lose control of themselves and get sucked into the blue light. Nobody knew what had happened but we were directed to stay away from the light, which stayed where it was. It was a few hours later when Scientist saw that the team was coming out through the blue light. They reported that they were in a place that felt and smelt of fresh and clean air, with a beautiful bright sun in a clear blue sky, and vivid green grass all over. We believe that they had found a rip in the space time continuum, a portal into another dimension. We excited ourselves thinking of all we could do, we could find out what made that place alive and use it to help Kepler. We could also experiment on the humans to see what their bodies had that we didn’t. So we to got the idea to capture a human from that place and get it to tell us information.”
This time a gives me a wide smile, looking at me like I had the solutions to life’s problems, which he thought I did.
“And that’s where you come in! You were the one that Cecil chose to bring and now you are going to help us!”
I must have looked frightened because he said not to worry, I wouldn’t be the only human from my world here, soon they would bring more over.
I couldn’t exactly process everything he was saying, another dimension? Those were in books and movies, they weren’t supposed to be real. The men's white watch beeped snapping me out of my thoughts.
“I have to leave now,” he said, “ but don’t worry Cecil will be here soon to give you necessities.” he started to walk out of the room but before he left he said,
“By the way, I’m Dr. Meyers, nice to talk”, and with that he was gone.

I guess I had fallen asleep again, because the next thing I know I opened my eyes to see the guy who captured me and took me here, right in front of me, Cecil? Was that what the doc said his name is? Cecil was fidgeting with something on a small wheeled table, I cleared my throat loudly and he looked up in surprise.
“Hey,” he said carefully, “I’m Cecil”
“I know.” I said back.
Cecil got closer to my face and began to whisper, “Look, I feel bad for taking you away, it wasn't my choice. But now I want to help you escape, do you trust me to help you?” holding out fresh clothes for me.
I nod and take the clothes while Cecil exits the room.
I quickly get changed and then go out in the hallway to where Cecil is. The hallways are dark and hard to see through, but Cecil seems to narregate them easily as I follow him. We arrive at a door with s stairwell behind it, we quietly close the door and go up the stairs.
We keep running up the stairs until we come to something blocking our path, we find out it’s a huge heavy metal door when Cecil pushes against it and it moves aside. Cecil exits the door first and then I follow Cecil out. Around me is mostly desert sand, the tall buildings I saw earlier today, are farther behind us. I don’t have much time to examine everything because Cecil pulls me next to him, and we run towards a truck.
“Get in!”, Cecil tells me, so I hop into the passenger seat as he gets in the driver's seat, starts the engine and drives off, towards what I assume must be the direction of the portal.
Cecil drives quickly, in lightning speed and in a matter of minutes the portal is in viewing distance. It’s still blue and crackling white light, but it looks dimmer and smaller. Cecil slows down enough for me to jump out of the truck and go running towards the portal, anxious to go through and forget everything that happened. I’m only about 10 feet away from the portal when I hear a sizzling zap and suddenly the blue light is gone. I stare at the empty space in confusion.
“What happened?”
“The portal… closed. It's gone now.” replies Cecil who is now by my side.
“No! No!”, I fall onto the ground screaming out hysterically, tears streaming down my face in heavy flows, my body was shaking.
“No, No!”, Cecil is trying to calm me down, maybe to not draw attention, but I don’t care I just want to go back home. I stagger to stand up while I pick up a huge rock and throw it at where the light used to be,
“Come on! Stupid portal! Open up!”, I scream in a growly voice.
Cecil is grabbing my hands and trying to pin my arms to my body, but I try to resist and push against him.
“Open it again! How am I going to go home now!? There has to be a way back!”
“Look, calm down!,” he harshly grabs my face to force me to look him in the eyes.
“There is another way, this portal will open up eventually, we’ll just have to wait until it does, then we can try again. I’m sorry.”
I stop struggling against Cecil, breaking down into more tears than I ever thought I had in me, letting Cecil wrap his arms around me as I continued sobbing and trembling into his shirt. Cecil suddenly stands up, pulling me up as well.
“Come on, the security must know somethings up by now since we’re not in the examination room, we have to leave. You won’t have a chance to ever escape if we go back.” He helps me get into the passenger seat of the truck. I’ve stopped sobbing enough to ask a question,
“Where are we going?”, I ask followed by continuos sniffling.
“Groundtown, the closest city. Near those tall buildings you saw earlier.” Cecil starts the truck and we drive in the opposite direction of the lab. We’re going on a long route, around the lab, and we’re going to enter through the back of the city. It may be longer till we get somewhere safe, but at least it’ll be harder for anyone to find us.

So now I’m here sitting next to Cecil in the truck, about to enter the city. Wondering what I’m going to have to be doing with my life. Thinking about how my life was taken away from me in an instant and now I’m in a game for survival, stuck in an alternative universe trying to get home.