He stood at the edge of the stairwell.
The metal steps spiraled down into darkness, swallowed by the same rhythmic red light pulsing from hidden sources above. A faint draft blew upward, dry and cold, brushing against his skin like fingers he couldn't see.
He tightened his grip on the bar and began to descend.
Step by step.
The handrail was slick with condensation. The air grew denser. Not humid—just old. Like the breath of a place that hadn't exhaled in centuries.
His boots—bare feet, still aching—touched each rung with care.
And all the while, the thought looped in the back of his mind.
I died.
This is another world.
I died, and this is what came after.
It still felt absurd.
But it fit.
Nothing else did.
He'd seen post-war zones. He'd walked through abandoned tunnels, underground barracks, fallout shelters built during the old panic years. But this?
This wasn't ruins.
It was something else.
Alien. Sterile. Designed with purpose—but not by people he recognized.
The triangle symbol kept showing up. On pipes. On corners. On structural joints.
A language without letters.
A world without context.
The stairwell ended in a low corridor. The ceiling was lower here. Support beams thicker. Cables ran along the floor, sheathed in dust.
He moved forward.
His steps were slower now, more cautious.
Not because he was afraid—but because he was watching.
Every wall. Every corner.
Looking for confirmation.
Looking for something—anything—to tell him he was wrong.
Nothing did.
The corridor ended in a sealed frame.
Unlike the bulkheads before, this one wasn't locked or jammed. It stood slightly ajar, its locking mechanism exposed—damaged, maybe, or manually overridden long ago.
He slipped inside without a sound.
The room was larger than he expected. Squared, maybe ten meters across, lined with dark panels. Raised platforms formed a U-shape along the perimeter. A console stood in the center—dead, dark, its interface cracked.
He approached it cautiously.
It looked like a command terminal—if that word still meant anything. A flat surface, sunken slightly, with inset touch zones and an angled armature for a display. But the layout was wrong. The geometry was… off. Clean. Alien. Efficient in a way that suggested purpose—but not familiarity.
He touched the side panel.
Cold. Inert.
A faint static hiss responded—nothing more.
He pulled back.
Across the room, a row of sealed lockers lined the wall. Thick plating, no visible handles. Each had a glowing dot at its center. Faint green. Almost imperceptible.
He stepped closer.
Symbols were etched beside each compartment. More of the same triangle-in-circle motif—this time accompanied by smaller markings, like identifiers.
But no language.
No alphabet.
He ran his fingers along one of them.
Smooth. Warm, this time.
Was there still power running through these?
He leaned closer, eye narrowing, trying to detect the mechanism.
No buttons. No switches. Just… a line of contact points beneath the panel.
He hesitated.
Then pressed one.
Nothing happened.
He tried another. And another.
Still nothing.
He exhaled.
But it wasn't frustration this time.
It was confirmation.
This isn't my world.
The thought hung in the air.
He stared at the glowing locker panel a second longer, then let out a dry, humorless breath.
"Good thing there aren't any dragons or goblins, I guess."
His voice echoed faintly against the walls.
The silence didn't laugh back.
Still gripping the metal bar, he turned away from the lockers and swept his gaze across the room again.
The ceiling was reinforced with an angular framework—thin metallic ribs converging toward a circular point overhead. Some kind of sensor hub? Ventilation core?
He didn't know.
He walked slowly, tracing the perimeter, inspecting each wall.
One corner had collapsed slightly—metal plates bent inward, crushed by some long-forgotten impact. Dust pooled there in uneven layers, undisturbed.
No footprints. No drag marks. No sign of movement.
This place had been still for a very long time.
He approached another console—this one flush against the wall. Smaller. Built into the surface. It had a narrow slot beneath it, like a card reader or access chute.
He ran a finger across the edge.
A faint shimmer followed his touch—an afterglow of energy, like static clinging to the skin.
His pulse quickened.
Power.
Still here. Somewhere.
He crouched, inspecting the base. The wiring was exposed—bundles of cables trailing into the wall and vanishing beyond reach. No color codes. No labels. No standardized components.
He knew what a secure facility looked like.
This wasn't it.
It was clean. It was advanced. It was functional.
But human?
That was still up for debate.
He kept walking the perimeter, slower now.
Not from fatigue—his legs had recovered enough—but from observation.
Details began to stand out.
The height of the ceilings. The spacing between the steps on the ladder earlier. The width of the corridors. The reach required to open the crates.
All of it… made sense.
To him.
Not exaggerated. Not shrunken. Not alien in scale.
Human.
Or close enough to pass.
He ran his hand along the edge of a doorway as he moved through it—just high enough to avoid ducking, just wide enough for a person his size to pass without turning sideways.
If this place was built by something non-human, then whatever it was… had very human proportions.
He stopped in the next chamber, pressing his back to the wall.
It didn't prove anything.
But it ruled a few things out.
No towering beasts. No goblins or dwarves. No winged insectoids with triple-jointed knees.
Whatever had made this place, or whatever had used it, moved like a man.
Stood like a man.
Sat like a man.
He looked down at his hands.
Still his.
Still flesh and bone.
Still human.
But the pod… that cryochamber… That was another matter.
He'd never seen anything like it. And he knew tech.
He'd trained in containment protocols. Knew atmospheric seals, decontamination chambers, field med units.
But that thing he'd woken up in?
It wasn't from Earth.
So either…
He was on an alien world built by humans who had somehow left no trace.
Or—
He was in a place built by something else.
Something close enough to humanity to mimic its scale, its ergonomics… its comfort zones.
And that begged one more question.
Why would they give me a human body?
He sat on the edge of a raised platform, the metal cold beneath him.
The silence settled again—less hostile now, but just as heavy.
He looked at his hands once more. Flexed his fingers. Pressed his thumb against his palm.
Everything felt right. Familiar.
But that didn't mean it was.
He glanced back toward the corridor, half-lit by that steady red pulse, then let his gaze drift upward to the blank ceiling above.
Why a human body?
If this was another world… if he'd died and ended up somewhere new, somehow reborn or rebuilt—
Why this shape?
Why not something else?
He wasn't special. Wasn't famous. Wasn't gifted with anything that made him worth copying.
And yet here he was.
Alone. Awake. In a place that fit him like a tailored cage.
Was this really my body?
He tried to recall details. Scars. Tattoos. Birthmarks.
Nothing came.
Not even a clear image of his face.
He swallowed.
He remembered knowledge. Context. Training.
But not himself.
No name. No family. No exact age.
No memory of lying down inside a pod, or being frozen.
So… what if this body had been grown?
Or worse—built.
The idea made his skin crawl.
He rubbed his forearms, suddenly aware again of how cold the room was.
If I didn't wake up here on purpose… who decided I should?
He stood again, stretching his back with a quiet wince.
The platform beneath him creaked softly.
He moved toward the far end of the chamber, scanning the walls. His eyes followed the contour of a narrow panel, darker than the rest. It didn't glow. It didn't pulse.
It just sat there.
Different.
He reached out—hesitated—then pressed his palm against the surface.
At first, nothing.
Then a soft click.
A faint vibration hummed through the floor beneath his feet.
His pulse jumped.
He stepped back quickly, watching as a thin vertical seam lit up down the middle of the wall. No sound. Just light—cold, white, sterile—bleeding from the edges.
Something inside was waking up.
Not all at once.
But enough to make him take a step farther back.
He gripped his bar tightly.
The silence returned.
But it felt… less alone.