"Hey, this isn't fair! I still have my Miranda Rights!"
I yelled, shortly after being tossed into the cold, lacquered tiled floor.
The person who tossed me in here, meanwhile, silently locked the door with a key card. With that, he started to walk off without saying anything to me.
"Come on, this is illegal!" Watching him walk off, I grew desperate. I sprang up and began to hit the reinforced glass. "I'm gonna sue you, you know?!"
I hated how much I sound like a typical Karen right now, but I had no choice.
It's because I had just been wrongfully apprehended.
There wasn't any arrest warrant — hell, I wasn't even sure if my capture went into any sort of legal procedure.
I was just captured — well, kidnapped, to be exact — and brought here without my own accord.
Seeing how the person didn't intend to turn around, a stifled groan escaped me.
"Ah... To hell with this..." I muttered, a weary expression surely growing on my face. "As if this week couldn't get any worse..."
"Not only did I transmigrate here... But I also got arrested a week later?"
Indeed, I am not a person from this world. I am but an unfortunate soul who somehow got sent into another world.
This world I transmigrated into wasn't too different from the Earth I know. In fact, besides some obvious differences like cultural shifts or major historical changes, it feels like this world was still the same one I knew.
Aside from the technology, too... Well, nothing really changed.
And this body I transmigrated into, Cecil Graymoor, wasn't so different from me. Both he and I had a normal, loving family, a normal life, and worked as drones for a corporation.
So, for the first few days, it wasn't that hard to settle into the new reality.
Yet, just after a week of transmigration, before I could fully acclimate to this new life, I was kidnapped and sent to who-knows-where.
...like a confused lamb captured by hunters.
'Why was I captured?' I pondered. 'Could it be that... I was discovered? That I'm not from this world?'
If that's true... Then the implications could mean many things. Things I didn't like.
One of them is that whoever kidnapped me might use me as a sort of test subject for some sort of bizarre experiment way above my knowledge.
'Will I be intensely interrogated? Or be subjected to something like MKUltra?' My mind raced, trying to rationalize everything. Trying to find an answer, I started to pace around the small confinement room I was in out of habit.
'Should I just tell them everything I know? No, that's idiotic. But it might save me?'
'Or should I just fake it 'till I make it? There's a lot of merits in that too, but one mistake and it's all over.'
'I'm not even sure if my theories are right, nor am I sure if the solutions I'm thinking of could be used... Agh!'
I stopped and racked my head.
"Damn it, What should I do?!"
As if they had been waiting for me to ask that question, a slightly muffled voice suddenly reverberated around the room.
"Exactly, what can you do, Mr. Cecil?"
I paused immediately.
My eyes dilated and I took a step back, looking for where that voice came from. "Wh-who's there? Where are you? And... What do you mean by that?"
I tried looking at the corners of the room to perhaps see some kind of hidden camera or speaker, but there were none.
In the split moments that quickly passed, my eyes shifted around, but found nothing that could explain where the voice came from.
Then, after a few seconds of silence as if whoever was watching me enjoyed my frantic performance, the voice returned.
"You're quite energetic, aren't you?" The voice, now more clear — more feminine — spoke sharply. "You can relax, Mr. Cecil. Overthinking things would only achieve nothing."
Relax... Did she just told me to relax?
I attempted to smile sarcastically, but only produced a stifled grimace. "Relax... Aha, that's funny. How can a man relax when he just got kidnapped? With no explanations of why whatsoever — and is currently speaking to a mystery person from wherever!"
Truly, how could I calm down? I know panicking was truly useless in this situation — I know, truly — but how else would I vent my frustrations? My resistance and ignorance about all of this are natural.
However, despite my words, what I'm doing does have some merits to it. For example, if I act erratic, that might give them the impression that I'm not mentally sound.
Which means, if they did somehow know that I'm not from this world, then perhaps my supposed mental instability could be used as a cover up.
I sighed with furrowed brows, trying to act like I'm having difficulty calming down. "Look, I don't know who you are or why you kidnapped me — all I want is to go back to my home. Maybe you got the wrong guy?"
"No." The voice responded immediately, her tone somewhat... laced with amusement. "You are exactly who we wanted."
Then, a moment later, she continued.
"Cecil Graymoor, twenty years old. Brown hair, hazel eyes, and a fair complexion. Lives in Sector Nine of the Republic of New America. Studied in a state university and graduated with above-average results. Recently been hired for a symbiote manufacturing corporation with a minimum wage, and is quite satisfied with it."
The voice paused, then quickly added, "And single."
"..."
I couldn't even utter anything during the time she was listing out practically an overview of my life so far.
'...Who are these people?' I felt my throat tighten. I didn't know how to respond. 'They couldn't have found out about all of this in just a week... Right? Then...'
With hesitation, I mustered up the courage to ask a question.
"What do you want from me?"
The voice remained silent for a few more seconds, long enough to make me think she had left.
But just as I opened my mouth to say something again — she scoffed.
"...hah."
An audible, almost amused scoff — sharp and brief, like she found my question humorous.
Then silence.
The room fell back into a heavy silence, the kind that made me aware of my own breathing, and my own heartbeat. Like the pressure had dropped.
"What was that for...?" I muttered.
Then a sound of a click.
My head snapped toward the door as it hissed open with a pneumatic air. Cold air from the hallway spilled in, brushing past me.
And there, a person stood. It was a woman.
She wore a white coat layered over a white dress shirt, teeming with sharp business and sterile precision. She had a clipboard in hand, had black slacks that were neatly pressed, and her brown hair was tied into a practical ponytail.
As for her eyes, they were black as void and just as deep, and they locked onto mine like she already knew me... Like she'd been looking through me this entire time.
I froze. Not due to fear, but in confusion. Or perhaps admiration? Perhaps all of them.
She stepped in calmly. Like this was a regular routine.
Like I was just a routine.
I tried to open my mouth to speak, but she beat me to it.
"What you can do, Mr. Cecil…" She tilted her head slightly, her lips curling upward — but not quite a smile. "...is what we want."
It's her. The one I'd been speaking to all this time. And...
There it was, the answer I'd been asking for. Not quite an answer, really, but the kind of answer that didn't leave me any room for negotiation.
My thoughts scrambled to make sense of it. 'What I can do? What does that even mean? I'm not special. I'm just some guy who got thrown into someone else's body and tried to survive the nine-to-five...'
But her expression didn't budge.
Like she already knew I'd be questioning it.
"I don't understand." I said, voice flat, still stunned. "What do you mean, 'what I can do'? I don't think I can do anything for you."
That got a reaction. Her brows lifted just slightly, clipboard lowering.
"Not yet." She said. "But you will."
She offered her hand — delicately gloved, and outstretched toward me.
"You see, you're one of the unfortunate people to encounter an anomaly, Mr. Graymoor. You just don't know why or how yet. Or what that means."
"But I can assure you that it is by no means a moniker given out of praise."
I stared at the hand, then at her. My instincts screamed at me not to trust her — but also not to refuse.
Not because she was threatening.
But because something in me… buzzed. Like something inside me had just been alerted. It felt almost instinctual, truth be told.
"...Work for us." She added softly, like the offer had always been on the table. "And we'll help you understand."
With that, she retracted her hand and took off one paper from her clipboard and handed it to me.
I reluctantly took it, read it, and, for a moment, I didn't know what to say.
"...Hearth & Vale Pharmaceutical Company?" I muttered while looking at her. "I was kidnapped... By a pharmaceutical company?"
Can this week get any more bizarre?
She kept her small smile and responded slowly, as if I were a child. "Read more."
I did as I was told, looked down, and saw right below...
"The Department of Esoteric Affairs...?"
And right next to it was the insignia of the country's Republic government body — a proof of its cold bureaucratic legitimacy.
After uttering that sentence, I shifted my eyes back to her, and with a weary expression, I asked, "I was kidnapped by the government?"
...I knew it.