"Ouch."
A moment ago, the girl was standing inside the laboratory, no, her body was floating behind the thick transparent glass capsule, feeling a tingling sensation running throughout her body. The next moment she felt as if her body had been sucked out of the present, and flung into a black swirl of waves just like a vacuum cleaner sucking the debris off the floor, sending them in the dark of the dust bag. One second came when she was deprived of all the feelings and responsiveness, like her mind going slate blank. It all happened so fast, in the blink of an eye.
"Ptui!", spitting out some particles of what-felt-like dirt and dry grains of something, the professor blew shot puffs of air. Just a short time back she was meandering in the air, now landed on the ground, licking off the dust. Her buttocks were sticking up in the air, her face level with the ground.
"Ahh", a low growl escaped her throat as she pushed herself to sit upright, legs folded on either side. Rubbing her forehead, she looked around, observing the surrounding.
Was she teleported to a jungle?
Dusting her pants off, she got on her feet. Taking in the place she was transferred to, she was glad she opted for sky blue flares paired with a brown-sleeved shirt tucked inside her pants. The sun had dipped beneath the horizon but there was still some light in the sky letting the girl take in the thick forest.
"Let's find on Google maps where the hell I've been dropped at", she pulled the phone out of her jeans pocket and pressed her thumb to the bottom of the screen as it flashed on but not for too long.
"I f*cking ask that faggot to plug it on the charger", cursing under her breath, she clicked on the maps only to have 'Poor or no Connection' displayed in the center of the screen. Then her eyes drifted towards the signals on the top.
"No service? Oh, right I'm in the who-knows-where-on-the-damn-earth-forest", things weren't going as she had planned. They weren't even near to what was imagined by her. Standing tall and high sky buildings, people busied in their normal tracks, singers faces displayed on the Times Square, a leisurely walk the professor had envisioned. The farthest could be driven over by a vehicle if she was teleported as a ghost.
Rather she fell into a forest with trees reaching the sky and no signals. She was wondering how long would she have to walk to make it out to a road where she could hitch-hicked to the main city when her gaze switched to the year on the screen. It was glitching between 2021 and...1420?
"What...how?", the year continued glitching until the battery died and the phone turned off.
Wasn't she traveled to 2020? She had asked Dylan to set it to the said year. How could she be in---no, it must be a glitch. Perhaps the sudden change in the year and all that time travel thing had confused the time system in the phone. It was 2020. It had to be 2020. Dylan set it himself.
Immersed in thoughts making their way into her mind one after the other, the professor slipped the dead phone back in the pocket and scanned around the spot. The forest was deep, a tropical canopy of trees' branches formed over her head as she looked up.
"Standing wouldn't get me anywhere", the girl sighed and was about to walk when two figures appeared from behind the trees.
"I told you. My smell never betrays me", one of them sniffed the air, two pairs of eyes directed at the girl standing at their territory.
"Thank goodness. I thought I'd be spending the night in this--", the professor exclaimed in relief when she saw two boys but trailed off from her sentence when she took in their appearance. They were bare chests. The lower was covered in loose shorts reaching their knees but they had no shirt on the top.
"Jun-gle", her stare dropped at their feet. They were also not wearing any shoes.
"Let's end tonight's round here and take her", the towhead boy said, doing some stretches.
"I wanted to cover the west side too", the one who had light brown hair grunted, teeth clenching, eyes pierced at the girl.
"But we can't leave the hunter here", the towhead replied, clearly not pleased with the professor's presence but less bothered as compared to the one who seemed boring daggers at her.
'Hunter? Did he call me a hunter? If anything, they look like hunters walking around with bare feet and chest!', the girl thought to herself, not saying aloud. The pair she eyed as a sole source of light in the dark unexpectedly started appearing shady, giving off negative vibes. She began retreating herself in tracks slowly. She would find the way herself. It wasn't that she was stuck in some underworld. Well, she wasn't but it wasn't any lesser than that place.
"Stupid, hunters", in a flash of light, the two were standing on either side, holding her from her arms. The first thing to take a mental note of should be that she wasn't a transparent ghost to be passed through. But there was something else to widen the eyes at. They were at a distance from her and she was facing them all the time while taking steps in the backward direction. When did they walk up to her? The fraction of a second when she blinked? That was the point of contradiction. Her eyes were opened wide, eying the boys for any strange movement they would make.
"What are you doing!", she tried to wiggle her way out of their grip but it was impossible to free oneself out of those bulky figures unless they let go themselves.
"Hey! I'm talking to you two! Let f*cking go off me!", being a lose-tempered scientist she was, she continued squirming in their hold, cussing, disregarding their size. Nevertheless, everyone would tend to lose their temper when some strangers would start pulling them along forcefully.
"Where in the f*ck are you taking me!", the boys proceeded on the same crumbly ground, stepping over thick roots above the ground, squeezing out of rough vines, making their way through the branches crackling.
"To our alpha."