Fen woke up in a comfortable bed. Slowly opening his eyes, he nearly cried from relief when he saw that he was back in his room, and his vision went blurry.
All his stuff was there, with nothing missing. Nothing was out of place, it was all exactly how he left it before he went with Miko. The joy that he felt from realizing that the night's events were just a nightmare finished the job his room started; tears began to fall from his eyes.
His sister even came into his room, telling him to get up and get ready for school. Wiping his eyes, Fen got out of bed to eat.
Mom was at the kitchen, making his favorite breakfast of sausage and eggs on the warm stove. The mouthwatering smell of the food made his stomach grumble in joy at the thought of such delicious food.
His dad then hugged him goodbye before he left to go to work, his familiar cologne wafting towards him.
'I never thought I'd be happy to see this guy's ugly mug' He inwardly smiled while hugging Dad.
Before Fen realized, he was standing in the middle of the kitchen, where his mom angrily told him to get out before she smacked him. If she had threatened him before, he would've ran away in terror but at that moment he only felt joy.
He almost broke down in front of his mom, who's anger quickly turned into concern when she saw the tear swelling in his eyes.
Then it was all ripped away from him when he tried to hug her. Just as his finger tips reached her apron, she fizzed into sand. Starting from where her body fell, the kitchen, and then the house was corrupted and turning to nothing. Like a window being cleaned and polished, wherever Fen looked was the void from his nightmare.
He could hear howls and other sounds he couldn't comprehend all around him, from behind, in front, above him, everywhere. They were getting closer, but he couldn't see them. There was no light, so Fen hoped that they wouldn't be able to find him in the void.
But they got closer, until their terrible sound was the only thing he could hear, and his body was rend apart, adding his screams of agony to the cacophony of noise around him.
He blinked, and he was back in his bed. Another look told him that he was wrong about that too; the bed was completely different from his own. The room too was completely different and bare, with a desk and chair as the only other piece of furniture aside from the bed.
Fen inwardly giggled at his own foolishness, at his naïve belief that he was ok. His mental giggles quickly became a real laugh, maniacal and crazed with sobs mixed in between gasping breaths. He bent forward on the bed, clawing at his skin which felt filthy. Over time however, the feeling passed, and then Fen was alone in the room, tears staining his clean face.
Another look around the room showed that the walls were made from the same material as before, dark stone coloring the walls with veins of energy illuminating the space. The only objects that were a different color were the sheets on the bed, which were an odd red, and the desk and chair. The chair and desk were both wooden, brand new with polish still shining on the material.
There was no pattern in the walls, almost as if the walls were a part of a living organism with small veins to carry blood.
The thought of such an existence might've appeared impossible to him days ago, but now, accepting a thing like that didn't seem so difficult.
The sound of a door slamming brought him back to reality. The noise came from outside his door, which made him realize that there were no windows in the room, just glowing vein walls.
He got up from the bed, realizing that his old clothes were gone. A black uniform fitted to his body was in his old clothes' place, the material stretching with his every movement. The pants of the uniform had a stripe of silver against the black fabric, rising up to connect to a platinum colored belt. The stripes continued up his sides, looping around his shoulders and expanding down to his wrists.
Pulling on his sleeve revealed a crimson diamond emblazoned upon his arms where they connected to his shoulders.
Another thing he noticed was his wounds were gone. The scratches he received last night and the broken nose were gone, the only evidence supporting that he had received them was his memory.
After further deliberation however, Fen wondered if he should trust his memory. The nightmare he had experienced had planted the seed of doubt, and now he was questioning the reality he was perceiving. But if he couldn't even trust his senses, what could he trust?
Putting that thought on hold for further review, he stretched for a couple moments with the new clothing, testing how it felt. Not only did it stretch with his movements (which was already a unique experience), but it didn't get wrinkled, no matter what he did.
'Doesn't feel bad. Wait... how did I put it on?' Embarrassment clouded his mind for a moment before Fen managed to collect himself enough to open the door. He already had enough stress on his plate, no need to add potential embarrassment to it. There was no point to it, no potential benefit.
"Oh. You're up. Hi." The sight that greeted him from the open door was a familiar red haired girl around his age wearing the same uniform as him, standing awkwardly next to a door the exact same as his. Her hand was raised in a partial wave, but Fen could tell she was tired from her gravelly voice.
For a moment, his brain froze; Fen couldn't figure out what he should do.
'Do I greet her in this situation? Damn, there's no social norms for this crap.' He had always considered himself a gentleman in all situations, being capable of reading the room and making decisions based on those observations. But all of those skills were violently thrown out the window, and then burned with napalm.
He settled for a calm hello.
"Hello. So, do you know what happens now?" After the greeting, he stepped outside the room, eyeing his surroundings. He decided to skip the pleasantries and name-giving and just get right into the actually important part of the conversation so he could understand more about his situation.
He was in desperate need to find out how screwed he was. If he was made to kill someone last night, who knew what awaited him in the morning.
'Oh yeah. There isn't a sun here.' He couldn't actually use terms like morning or night; there was no source of light here besides the stars outside the facility and the weird glowing walls.
They two teens were in a hallway, dark and illuminated solely by the veins in the walls. Besides the two doors that Fen and the girl had walked out of, there were two others, and then the hallway led to an open space with a different colored light.
'Oh, awesome. There are different colored lights here. I was worried that the only lights in this place were the walls, but thankfully the psychos that made this place aren't complete nut jobs.'
"Actually, yeah. They already had someone give us directions. You were the last one to wake up; the others sent me to get you out of there." She pointed back at the room Fen had come out of. "What took you so long to wake up? It's been nearly an hour." She appeared to be slightly annoyed with him.
"Long night. So, what directions did they tell you?" The girl narrowed her eyes at his changing of the subject, but she thankfully continued on after sighing.
'Good. I really don't want to relive that nightmare. Especially if other people didn't have to do what I had to.' He shivered at the memory of the tense, grey eyes that stared him in the face after he finished. He quickly corrected his distorted face, but his ineptitude was obvious as the girl noticed his facial features shift.
"Based on how you did with your task, you should have been assigned some number of points. You know what, just follow me." She started walking towards the end of the hallway going towards the open area, while Fen walked behind her.
"There's a big screen and a small screen. The big one shows things you can get with your points, the small one shows you how many points you have. Just put your finger in them."
Her explanation didn't make much sense to Fen until he stepped into the room, where two youths were sitting on a table waiting for them. Behind them was a massive screen that took up most of the wall on that side of the room, made up of the same material used in the holographic projections they used on Earth.
Next to the big screen was a machine that resembled an ATM, with a small screen on the inside of the box-like object.
"Hey. I'm Gray. Nice to meet you!" Before he could get a better look at the machines and the screens, a kid ran up to him and introduced himself.
'Correction: Not a kid.' A closer look revealed that the 'kid' was actually a youth only a little younger than him. Fen had mistaken his age because of how short he was; the guy was quite small with his measly 162 cm (5'3") compared to Fen's 183 cm (6') height.
"That's Qin," Gray said, pointing at the older guy still sitting at the table, "And that's Amelia. We're Squad 42!" The kid seemed proud of the name, but the other youths visually cringed at Gray's enthusiasm.
"Oh yeah!" Fen suddenly exclaimed.
"Aren't you the girl who tried to leave before?"
A tinge of red caused by her embarrassment was the only warning he got before she swung at him, almost clocking him on the face.
Almost isn't enough however, and he quickly stepped back, raising his hands as a sign of peace.
"Sorry, sorry. Didn't know that was a sensitive topic." During the confrontation, Gray and Qin were laughing between themselves on the sidelines.
"Those two already made me aware how dumb that was, alright? I don't need another guy to make fun of me." She said, genuinely annoyed and hurt by their mocking, even if it was good natured. For his part, Fen was also more than a little angry at her attempt to hit him, he didn't see any justifiable reason for taking such action.
"Alright, you know our names. What's yours?" After the group settled down at the table (Which looked like extremely expensive quartz), they exchanged pleasantries.
"I'm Fen, and I'm 17." He said, after learning that the ages of Gray, Amelia, and Qin were 15, 17, and 16, respectively.
"So how are we getting out of here?" At Fen's words, the others shared a look. Gray, in particular, looked uncomfortable and shifted in his seat.
'And of course, they know something I don't. Damn nightmare. Just had to give me a handicap.'
"You don't know, but we can't just get out of here. There's rules we need to follow. We're Opfer. We don't really have a choice about this, no matter how you act or complain."
They weren't lying about living here for a year; the portal thing that took us here is closed" Amelia explained.
"What do you mean it's closed? Did any of you check to make sure, or did you just take their word for it?" Fen firmly believed that the Rift was still open. Even if they showed them an empty room, they were capable of using magic, and were probably able to hide it using magic.
Gray shook his head.
"They won't let us leave the room until they're sure that everyone is settled. I think it's because there's a lot of people like you, who woke up late or something. But I don't think they're lying, they wouldn't lie about something like that."
The others nodded their heads, agreeing with his words. Fen didn't know whether to cry or laugh at their naivety.
'Didn't they go through the same thing I did last night? These people aren't the good guys.'
"Don't take their word for face value, they aren't us. They have every reason to lie and deceive us while we have none to lie to each other." Was what he said instead of cursing them out.
He hoped they would take his words to heart, because if they didn't, they were in for a harsh reality check. Fen would prefer for them to not experience that, but he wasn't a saint. If they didn't take his word for it, he considered it to no longer be his problem.
[Gather up and prepare to leave. All Opfer will be meeting up in 10 minutes.] Another speaker interrupted their conversation, but they used that strange word again.
"That reminds me. What the heck is an Opfer? And why do they call us that?" Fen asked the group.
Amelia answered his question.
"That's how they see us. They call the white uniformed ones Chosen, and us Opfer. It means sacrifice."