The morning was gray, as if the sky regretted its brightness of yesterday.
In a corner of a cramped apartment barely large enough for an old bed and a small desk, "Lloyd" sat before his computer screen, his face pale and eyes sunken as if he hadn't slept in days. The blue light from the screen reflected on his swollen eyelids, while his fingers moved slowly, as if his body functioned only because his mind hadn't given it the option to stop yet.
There was no sound but a faint hum from the dilapidated air conditioner and the clicks of the keyboard. At that moment, his entire life was condensed into these sounds.
Lloyd, twenty-five years old, without a degree, without a job, without a plan. University had rejected him after two years of poor performance and repeated deferrals, and his family had stopped asking questions since he decided that "isolation" was the only solution that gave him some control.
He only went out to buy food, returning quickly, as if the street was foreign to him, as if he were an unwelcome guest in this world.
In the evening, he would stare at the ceiling, counting cracks in the plaster, imagining them as maps, inventing names for them... He was trying to survive loneliness with trivialities. Sometimes, he felt his day was just a "reload" of the day before, nothing new, no event, not even a desire for change.
And in the middle of the night, as he opened a new game on his computer, he suddenly stopped. He didn't know why. He felt something inside him close off. Not hunger, not fear... but something deeper. As if life, suddenly, became hazy.
He left his room without a destination. The street was still, the grocery store a few meters away, but his steps were unsteady. It was as if he was walking towards something he didn't understand, didn't want, but was forced to.
That night... he didn't know everything would change. Lloyd exited the old building, his steps slow as usual, with no clear purpose. The city was unusually quiet, as if breathing calmly before a storm. The street stretching before him seemed longer than usual, everything in it still, enveloped in a heavy silence... even the cars lined on the sides seemed petrified.
He walked... not knowing where, and perhaps it didn't matter. Inside him, a strange feeling grew, an unnamed sensation, but it crept slowly, pressing on his chest, choking his breath.
Then suddenly...
A bursting headache.
Lloyd stopped, hand on his head, eyes half-closed from the pain.
Strange sounds began to echo in his head — sounds without words, just vibrations. His body's balance faltered, and everything before him began to fade... colors, shapes, faint distant noise, all melted into a black vortex.
He tried to scream. But his mouth wouldn't obey. He felt nothing after that.
A fall.
When he regained consciousness, he was lying on soft ground, strange to the touch, like a mixture of sand and clay. The air was different... clean but heavy, saturated with an unfamiliar scent of algae. He slowly opened his eyes, the light above was dim, bluish, and the sky... it wasn't a sky.
He sat up, panting, staring around him in shock. Huge trees, with twisted trunks and graying leaves, surrounded a place resembling a circular clearing. And before him, there were five people, looking at him with similar astonishment, as if each saw the others for the first time.
Silence reigned for a moment... until it was broken by one of them:
— "Where are we? And who are you, anyway?"
But Lloyd interrupted him quickly, with a sharpness born of panic:
— "Who are you? And how did you get here? The last thing I remember... is feeling a severe headache, then I passed out. Nothing after that."
One of the men replied, in a calm but confused voice:
— "Exactly the same for me."
The others raised their heads, and similar nods began. All of them... had the same experience.
One of them, tall, with sharp features and blue eyes, said:
— "First, we should introduce ourselves. There's no point standing here like strangers. My name is Leon."
Lloyd took two steps forward and said quietly:
— "Lloyd."
The third, with a calm tone and a somewhat cold face, said:
— "Frank."
The fourth, who appeared to be in his twenties, spoke:
— "Kai."
As for the fifth, he had a strange presence, long black hair, and a look that held something dark behind it, and he said in a low voice:
— "Zeldris."
Leon looked at all of them, then said:
— "Okay... we know the names, but does anyone have an idea where we are? It seems to me we're on an island... Can any of you send signals or know how to call for help?"
Lloyd mumbled, staring at the strange trees surrounding them:
— "I don't think this is an ordinary place. There are no signals here. Maybe... maybe we've been kidnapped."
Kai laughed sarcastically:
— "Kidnapped? That's impossible! No one kidnaps a group of people this way and puts them on an island... This is like a cheap movie."
But Zeldris interrupted him coldly:
— "And why impossible? Anything is possible now. We don't know each other, and we don't know how we got here. Don't rule anything out."
Frank nodded and said:
— "True. We have no evidence of anything. We need to move, search, explore this place... maybe we'll find something that explains what's happening."
Silence fell again, but this time it was a silence laden with decision.
They decided to move.
Each carried doubt and fear within them, but curiosity and the desire to understand pushed them to walk inward... into the depth of the island. Towards the unknown.
And none of them knew that what awaited them... was bigger than just a kidnapping