The pull was ridiculously strong, even for Snow to comprehend. All his efforts felt useless against the continuous gravitational pull of the wormhole. Even while he tried to thrust himself away from it by swimming, it was to no avail.
At some point, it almost felt like the more he struggled, the faster and stronger the pull got. Dragging him farther away from the doorway through which he came.
His body felt weightless against the void. He couldn't feel anything around him. His vision and sense of smell were gone as well. He was covered in complete darkness with nothing to hold onto.
With his ear, all he could hear was a low hum in the background, either from his wormhole machine, which was still activated, or that was the normal sound of an active wormhole.
'If I don't do something soon, I might be stuck here forever!' His heart panicked, a single tear drop rolling down his face for a second.
Due to the high rise in cortisol and adrenaline release, his focus and attention weren't on how to get out but on how to be alive and survive whatever was happening to him.
He kept moving in the infinite void of darkness. Every form of light was swept to the end of the vacuum. Even the nearest light was sucked away. It felt suffocating.
Even though Snow could still breathe a bit, the continuous void of darkness made him forget how to. He slowly lost breath, causing his vision to blur and his strength to deplete drastically.
"Help, help." He murmured to himself, trying to scream his lungs out.
Slowly, he lost his vision. The more he tried to stay awake, the faster he lost consciousness.
'If only I had listened to Joe, stopped the experiment right there and followed him, all this would have been avoided, but as stubborn as I was, I didn't listen. Now I don't even know where the hell I am or if I'll even survive it,' his last thoughts as his consciousness slowly slipped away.
With one last struggle to escape this unending void before he fully lost consciousness, the last atom of strength escaped his body, and his eyes fell shut.
– –
Snow's consciousness slowly returned to his body. He took in deep breaths, each one deeper than the last, like he was out of breath.
His eyes blurred open to the neon blue lights around him, though it didn't seem right to him at first due to the disorientation from the void.
"Man, what the hell happened? Was that all a dream?." He sighed, trying to sit himself up on the hard surface below him.
His hearing was still gradually recovering, at least until he heard a humming sound moving toward him, and he glanced at an incoming surf board.
Snow stood up and hurried out of the way and watched the teenager atop the surf board zoomed past him seconds later.
"Kids these days hardly respect their elders." He sighed again, his annoyance growing by the second.
He dusted off the dust particles on his shirt and raised his head to the neon city around him. Everything felt surreal and unreal, like the kind of cities you see in sci-fi books.
Futuristic and different from the normal city he was used to. There were billboards all over the place, advertising different products, most of which seemed to be of use to androids, which felt confusing to Snow.
He was aware that androids hadn't existed yet, and everything he saw on the billboards were still prototypes fellow scientists like himself were still working on, so how the hell were they being advertised for sale?.
Also, he noticed the use of flying cars and bikes, which he was aware was still in productions and hadn't been realised yet.
If anything, nothing around him made sense. It felt like he was in the future. The more he stared, the more amazed he got.
'The air around these parts feels suffocating, I need to get out of this place and find my lab.' He coughed terribly, covering his lips as he coughed more.
He held his stomach as he stumbled out of the roadside, trying to find his way around a city he knew little about.
He glanced at a burger shop and staggered towards it, still clutching his stomach due to the pain he felt from inhaling the air around him.
It felt like he was inhaling sharp razor shards, and they were tearing through his lungs, making it harder for him to breathe by the minute.
Inside the burger store was an unusual creature he hadn't seen before or knew was in existence. It hard horns jutting out of its skull, with purple scales for skin.
A tail stuck out from its back, and from its body build, it was definitely a male.
'Where the hell have I been drawn to?, was it not all a dream? Or I'm I still dreaming?!' He questioned himself of his own reality.
Still in confusion, he still carried on to ask the weird looking alien inside the store about his whereabouts and how he could get back home.
"Excuse me," he raised a hand to grab its attention, still clutching his stomach and controlling his breath.
"Where I'm I? And what is this place called?, any chance you know how to get back to blue city?." He asked all his questions in one go, to avoid him having to inhale more air than he has to.
The creature turned to him after attending to another creature like itself and was immediately startled.
"A human?!," it yelled out, unknowingly drawing attention to his store.
Everyone within the vicinity turned at the sound of his words, and all of them had the same expression of shock on their faces.
'What?, what the hell just happened?. Why do they all seem shocked to see me?'
He glanced at everyone, staring at him with cold gazes, but none of them approached him or reacted.
He turned to the store owner, his confusion growing more and more as the minutes went by.
"What about me being a human?!, can you at least answer one of my questions?!" He asked angrily, with folded eyebrows and an expressionless face.
The creature gestured for him to come into his store immediately.
"Come in quickly before they find you." It said, sounding hasty.
"Before, who finds me?" Snow asked further, not moving from where he stood.
"Tsk!, just come in, then I'll answer your questions. You're in danger if you keep standing out there, they'll know soon enough!" The creature yelled back at Snow with a worried expression on its face.
'Hell no, this is not happening!'
He carefully went into its store, still being vigilant as he moved, in case of any sudden hostile movements from the weird, unknown creature moving ahead in front of him.
'But what I'm I hiding from? What I'm I in danger of, and where the hell I'm I?!'