When Mark woke up his head was spinning and everything around him was blurry and indistinct. Knowing that in this state he wouldn't be going anywhere for some time, the only logical option was to lie down and wait for it to pass.
Feeling minutes pass by, he slowly started to feel better, and his vision started to clear. Opening his eyes he saw a small room that looked like it was pulled straight out of a book about medieval times.
There wasn't much in the way of furniture around, just the bed on which he was laying, a wardrobe, table and a singular chair. All of those looked to be created with some outdated, medieval techniques. Anywhere he looked in the room, he couldn't see even a hint of metal. Everything was connected with wooden pegs. The single window in the room was just barely hanging on a single thing. It looked like it was covered with some kind of material at some point in time, though now all that was left were a couple scraps here and there.
The wooden floor looked as if an invasion of termites has gone through them, more sawdust than solid planks. The walls were also wooden with huge cracks between each plank letting in the cool air from outside without any hindrance. To put it simply, the place looked like it has been abandoned for ages.
Mark wouldn't have let his dog live here if it was up to him, or if he even had a dog. His head was swirling with more and more questions. He eased over to the window and saw a forest. A very strange forest, with trees that he has never seen before, shrubbery with vicious looking thorns, and darting through the foliage was an animal that seemed to look like a squirrel but was definitely not one.
Right next to the house was an enclosure with three strange looking animals that ensured him of the fact that he wasn't on Earth anymore. The animals that looked to be an odd cross between a cow and an alpaca, with their big snouts, long necks, large udders of a cow and the fluffy fur of alpacas. Trying to think how he got himself in this situation he, he couldn't remember arriving here.
The last memory he could find in his head was him reporting at the base after the ambush those assassins have set up to kill the Young Miss. He was about to report clearing all hostiles to his commander Daniel Draszer when he felt a sudden jolt of pain in the back of his head. The last thing he saw, was the look of determination on his commander's face.
"Hmph"
Everything made a little more sense now. From the very first moment he could remember he was being trained, forged and molded into the perfect killer, the perfect tool, a pawn that would listen to every order without question, trained to do anything they asked, to die if it was required of him.
Unfortunately, through all his years of conditioning, brainwashing and rigorous training, despite everything they put him through, he maintained a sliver of his inner self, and was capable of making his own judgement, and making his own decisions. They wanted to fix that problem but after trying dozens of different methods, they couldn't find a way to erase that little part of him that wouldn't lead to his untimely death.
So as to not waste all the resources they have already put into him, they decided to still train him for the elite unit he was supposed to be joining and for some extra reassurance chipped his brain, to stop him if he were to ever rebel against them.
Then after training for most of his life, at the age of twenty he was finally assigned to the Protection Unit. He was responsible for guarding the Young Miss with his life. But because he maintained his inner self, the chief commanders responsible for security never truly trusted him. That was why most of the time he was sent on missions that required him to be patrolling and scouting.
A couple of years have passed, during that time there were many attacks aimed at Her life, none of them even close to succeeding, when one day they were attacked by a mysterious group of individuals. They were all experts in their field of expertise. The ambush unit consisted of an amazing tracker, grenadier, diversionist and a marksman that with every clip of his assault rifle took lives of thirty men of the elite unit. Only Protection Unit was able to contend with them. After three hours of battle, Mark was finally able to track the fleeing marksman and kill him, even though he almost died many times trying. He then came back to the safehouse. When he got to the site of the battle, he saw what had been the elite unit just yesterday, being piled up in one place by those who survived. There were about sixty corpses strewn around.
Not paying that any heed he walked into the safehouse to report the death of the last assailant. This was his last memory before he woke up in this place. "Was it because they thought I have something to do with the assault?" No matter how he thought about it he wasn't able to come up with the reason for his death.
And then it hit him.
He distinctly remembered the feeling of an electric impulse traveling through his brain and hands grabbing him from behind. He cautiously looked around in search for any clues as to what could it be that happened to him, when he should have been dead. He even pinched himself to check if he was just dreaming. He stood up and eased over to the window searching for a piece of glass large enough to see his reflection in, he wanted to check for any irregularities. After picking a fairly large piece of glass he looked at his reflection, and once again he was shocked.
The glass showed him a face of a boy that was at most nineteen years old, while Mark was already nearing 25 years of age. The boy was fairly decent looking. With his blonde hair and calm deep blue eyes, straight nose and thin eyebrows with not a single blemish on his skin, you could say that when he grew up, he wouldn't have any problems in picking ladies.
The only small issue would be the dead look in his eyes. They were completely devoid of any emotion. And even though Mark was shocked at the age of the reflected teenager his face was incapable of showing this emotion, it never was, and even though the appearance wasn't what he expected, he was still somewhat relieved, because it was exactly how he looked when he was nineteen.
After confirming that he had somehow traveled in time and from what he could see outside the window he could confirm that he also traveled to another world. Outside the window here was a small pen holding three strange looking animals. Looking at the Alpacows, as he deemed to call them, the only thought at the forefront of his mind was:
"Where in the world am I?"