The water continued to boil astern, and I suddenly realized that it didn't matter what we were doing, it didn't matter where we were going. We weren't just in a boat, we weren't just on a lake. We were in the middle of this thing, and it seemed to have brought us there for a reason.
A gust of wind made us lean over, and I felt the boat moving further and further into the fog without stopping. There was more than just darkness around us - it was an emptiness that swallowed everything. Everything that had been before, everything that seemed important, suddenly disappeared, dissolved into this world where there was only us, the boat, and this strange force that was pulling us further and further.
"Robert, what's going on?! Answer me!" I shouted again.
But his face remained motionless, and only his strained breathing in the silence of the night confirmed that he was still there. I felt the bench beneath me seem to be torn from the ground, and then a cold wave struck me and threw me aside. In an instant, everything around me became an explosion of water. The water enveloped me, and I, losing all orientation, swam, unconsciously trying to stay on the surface. Panic rolled in with each passing moment, but my strength was fading, and I felt myself weakening. My heart was beating in my chest with such force that it seemed about to burst out. I tried to breathe, but thick, cold water filled my lungs.
Somewhere in the darkness, amid the roar of the waves and the noise, I lost sight of Robert. His cry, his words, may have disappeared in the noise of the water, or maybe they had never been there. I didn't know. All I knew was the pain, the cold, and the pressure of the water, which with each passing moment was drawing me deeper into itself.
I was flying along a black, steeply falling arc, in the embrace of water that seemed to want to take me with it into its endless kingdom. From all sides, streams of water rushed into the seething funnel, its cruel center was getting closer and closer. Only shadows and light, sparks flickered around - all of this was somehow distorted, devoid of meaning. I was sucked in, my entire body, from head to toe, was absorbed by the power of the water. I felt how it pulled me deeper and deeper, absorbing my fear, my struggle.
Gasping for breath, I struggled to rise to the surface, but my strength was leaving me. The darkness around me was thickening, covering me completely. I felt the ground slipping away from under my feet, pulling me, as if the universe itself was sucking me in. My chest was burning, and even the air was becoming unbearably heavy. I tried to call out to him - Robert, but my voice would not come out. I was losing control, losing the ability to think. Suddenly, pulsating red lights flashed before my eyes, like beacons flashing in a fog cloud. I wanted to scream, but I couldn't. Those lights were the last thing I managed to see before I lost consciousness.
I came to from vomiting, and everything around me was blurry. I felt water escaping from my mouth, heavy and cold, seemingly never ending, as if life itself was leaking out of me. I was lying on my stomach on something tight and elastic, remembering how everything had seemed normal recently. There was no more water in my lungs, but they would not give me peace, escaping again and again. I spat it out and coughed it up until I finally felt relief. But the feeling was unbearably strange, and I still did not understand what had happened. Where was I? Why couldn't I remember?
I lay there for a long time, perhaps minutes, perhaps hours, trying to collect myself. But then something flat, slippery, like rough cloth, struck me in the side. The movement was quiet and insistent, repeating itself over and over, like the fluttering of a living thing. At first I didn't know what to think. My strength was leaving me, and I was on the verge of losing consciousness again. But the feeling was so real and strange that it couldn't have been a figment of my imagination. I felt a chill creeping through me, and then suddenly - instantaneous awareness. I was not alone.
My brain got stuck in this thought, and everything around me instantly changed. This wasn't just an illness or a terrible dream. This was something alive, real. I clenched my teeth and gathered my last strength. Raising myself up on my hands, I felt an elastic surface beneath me, as if I were lying on something soft and alive at the same time. This sensation was familiar and alien at the same time. I sat up, not immediately understanding what I was doing. My legs were weak and my head was swimming, but I looked into the darkness, trying to make out at least something.
The sky. The water. The distance. It was all on the edge of my understanding. I tried to figure out what was happening, but everything seemed foggy. I looked around. There was something beneath me that definitely couldn't be the ground. A fin? Or was it part of a larger creature? Shocked, I struggled to my feet, listening to the unnatural noise echoing off the surface.
"What is it?" I asked out loud, but my voice seemed alien, weak and muffled, as if it did not belong to me.
The object lying nearby was Robert. His body was motionless, but despite this, his skin shone, as if it had its own light. It reflected the dim light filtering through the fog, giving the impression that he was not merely human, but something timeless, like an angel who had lost his way. For a moment I stood there, unable to comprehend what was happening, and then with great effort I pushed myself up, feeling my muscles refuse to obey, and crawled on my knees toward him.
I shook his shoulder, first once, then again. His body was cold and strange, as if it had been dead for a long time, but then suddenly his eyelids fluttered. Robert woke up. A weak, unclear gaze met mine, and I felt something cold and restless envelop me from within.
His eyes did not glow as they had before, and there was something frightening about the darkness they emitted. They seemed like dark spots on his face, motionless, as if he were not here, but somewhere far away, beyond this reality.
"Robert..." I exhaled with difficulty, trying to stand up, supporting him. But he didn't answer.
Panicked, I realized that time was short. Without thinking, I began to give him artificial respiration. My lips barely touched his, but the gesture was not so much an attempt to save him as an intuitive attempt to bring him back to life. Almost a kiss, but not a kiss. It was something more, an attempt to revive not only his body but his soul, to bring him back from the world into which he seemed to have fallen.
I continued, ignoring the cold and the fatigue, feeling something deep and meaningful connecting us in this moment. This was more than just salvation. This was something we both might have been searching for-maybe this whole experience, this whole night, everything that had brought us here, had brought us to this one act.
His breathing slowly began to return to normal, and I felt his body relax a little. It was a relief, but also a tension, as if everything that was happening to us was on that fine line between life and death, between what could have been and what never was.
"Robert, everything will be fine," I said, although I wasn't sure about these words.
But something in that fog, in that gesture, made me believe that I was right.
"What is it... Anton? Where are we?.." he finally spoke hoarsely, while I continued to rub him, trying to bring back at least some sense of life to him.
His voice was low and hollow, as if he had just emerged from a deep, foggy void, and it was hard for me to tell what he was aware of and what he was not. I paused for a moment, listening to his words, but found no answer. Only the empty, meaningless murmur of the water, which seemed deafening in this silent night.
"We're safe," I said, although I didn't know if it was true.
My voice was firm, but inside I was seething. There were too many questions spinning in my head, all demanding answers right now. What was wrong with him? Why was his face still pale, his breathing so weak? I wiped his forehead again, feeling his muscles tremble, the cold filling the space around us.
Robert seemed to be trying to gather his strength. His eyes, initially full of panic, began to slowly focus. I saw his consciousness gradually returning, but it seemed to be resisting, not wanting to leave the world he had been transported to. He moved his arm weakly, but quickly returned to its original position, stretching it out along his body.
"We're... somewhere... not here..." His words still sounded disjointed, and I realized that he couldn't fully understand what had happened and where we were.
I glanced around. The sky above us was covered with grey clouds, the pale blue horizon was just beginning to glimmer dimly in the early morning light. In the distance, an old, rickety pier was visible, and behind it, dimly shining in the darkness, hidden in almost complete shadow, was our boat. It was the moment when everything around us began to take shape, but the questions multiplied, and the answers still did not come.
"Are you okay?" I asked, and felt my voice waver with worry again.
He turned his head slowly towards me, his eyes trying to focus. The silence between us was heavy. And even though I tried to hold on, I felt his gaze piercing me. I couldn't hide the fear that settled inside me.
"I... don't know, Anton," he whispered, "I don't remember anything... how did I get here?"
I fell silent, unsure of how to respond. We both knew we had no answers. All we could do was try to survive and make sense of what had happened and what might yet happen.
I took him by the shoulder again, helping him sit up. In his eyes I saw not only concern, but also despair - despair from the fact that he did not know what to do, how to be. In that look there was everything - passion, and helplessness, and a silent request for help.
"Don't worry," I said, trying to sound confident. "We'll get out of here. I won't leave you."
Robert looked at me, but I didn't know if he believed these words. Everything in this world seemed to be losing its meaning. Time and space had no meaning, and only the two of us, in the endless shadows, tried to figure out what to do next.
"Let's go," Robert said suddenly, and his voice was quiet but confident.
He peeled the wet shirt off his chest, and the material fell to the ground with a crunch. He ran his fingers over his glowing thighs a few times, as if trying to comprehend what was happening, and muttered:
"What could this be?"
I froze for a moment, feeling the cold run through me. Everything was strange, alien, and despite the obvious danger, Robert seemed calm, almost indifferent. His movements were confident, and there was something ominous about it, as if he had been here before, as if this place was familiar to him.
I set off, stepping into the empty darkness before me, not knowing exactly where I was going, but having no choice. We moved almost by touch in the deep darkness, barely illuminated by the gleam of our bodies, which seemed to glow on their own, as if this world we had entered was made of something else entirely. There was a strange smell in the air, damp and spicy, unlike anything I had ever smelled.
Robert walked ahead, confidently, like a man who had long been accustomed to what was happening here. Sometimes his silhouette almost disappeared into the darkness, but I always managed to catch up with him, following the dim light of his skin, which became the only landmark. We were moving into the unknown, and this path seemed endless.
"Are you sure you know where you're going?" I asked, almost whispering. My voice sounded muffled, as if everything around me was swallowing it up.
Robert didn't answer right away. He stopped, turning to me. There was something strange, elusive, in his eyes. He smiled slightly, but it didn't bring relief.
"I don't know anything," he replied, and there was something frightening in his voice. "But if we're here, then we need to move."
I felt his words sink into me. He was right. We couldn't just stay, we couldn't just go back. This world wasn't what it was supposed to be, and its rules were foreign to us. But we were here, and we had to move on.
We started walking again, and I felt something changing under my feet, the ground becoming more and more viscous, as if it were resisting our movement. Everything around us became quiet, but this calm, as if frozen, world pressed on us with its unnaturalness.
"You feel it too, right?" I asked, trying to read some kind of reaction on his face.
Robert was silent, but I knew what he was feeling. His face was stony, but his eyes, though not showing fear, were beginning to narrow, as if he were searching for a way out, some trace, some sign that we were not lost forever.
And then suddenly he pulled out a folding knife, his movements were fast, almost mechanical. Before I could even react, the blade was already pressed against his skin. He pressed down, and the knife sank almost to the hilt. I froze, feeling the blood begin to freeze in my veins, watching as he pulled the blade out with difficulty, leaving a long, red streak behind him. There was no pain in his eyes, only emptiness. There was something frightening about that.
He jabbed the knife into his own hand again, in a fit of senseless rage, but there was no reaction. No blood, no pain. It was as if his body were not flesh and blood, but some cold material, plaster or stone. I felt a strange uneasiness come over me, and then anger. I stepped toward him, grabbing his wrist, trying to pull the knife away.
"Leave it," I said, almost without thinking, angrily. "This is ridiculous."
Robert turned to me. His face was unreadable, his eyes emotionless, as if he were in another world. He said nothing, just quietly, effortlessly put the knife back in his pocket and with feigned calm continued walking, as if nothing had happened.
"Okay, okay," his voice was even, almost tired. He didn't apologize or show gratitude. He just kept moving, and I followed.
We were silent, and the silence stretched between us like an invisible web, saturated with despair and unsaid things. I didn't know what made Robert do these things, what drove him to these senseless attempts at self-harm. But it was hard to watch. It was more than just odd behavior. It was something that came from deep within him, something he seemed forced to fight. But I couldn't figure out what it was.
We continued walking through the dark forest, this time in silence. Our footsteps echoed in the emptiness of the night, but now it seemed to me that we were both somewhere in limbo - between reality and something irrational, and maybe Robert had long since lost himself in this labyrinth.
"Do you know where we are?" Robert said quietly, his voice almost a whisper, as if he was afraid to break the silence that surrounded us.
"I can guess..." I answered, not entirely sure of my words, but I couldn't think of anything else.
He stopped, and I felt his gaze piercing me, as if he wanted to find something I hadn't yet realized. I didn't answer, knowing that perhaps I didn't understand the whole picture. It was dark all around, and the air seemed thick, full of strange vibrations, as if nothing in this world mattered, but still existed.
"Inside... the meteor..." His words sounded like a terrible secret, quiet and terribly real, like a confession. He didn't turn to me, but I felt his fear, felt his tension in his every word.
"It's not a meteor..." I said, but the words sounded absurd in this darkness, in this alien place where everything seemed upside down. I wasn't sure what I was saying.
"No," he sighed quietly. "It's some kind of...
He didn't finish. Everything he said dissolved into the silence of the night, and I was overcome by a strange feeling, as if I myself had become part of this vast, confusing void. We both stood in this darkness, not knowing where we were, but feeling that somehow we could not get out.
I was silent. This crazy thought took hold of me as soon as I opened my eyes. We were somewhere where time did not exist, where there were no familiar landmarks. Where the sky was not the sky, but an unimaginable fog, where the ground was not the ground, but something that slid and changed underfoot, like water that had no shape. And although I did not know what it was, at some point I realized that I would not be able to get out.
I tried to find the words, but they stuck in my throat, like they didn't make sense. We were inside this... object, this anomaly, whether it was a meteor or something else. And if Robert couldn't find the words, then one thing was clear to me: we were far from the world we knew. Inside something we couldn't understand.
Suddenly Robert spoke again, but his voice was distant, as if he was speaking not to us, but to someone who was hidden in this void.
"Do you understand?" he asked. "We're not just here. We're inside something. All of this... me, you, this forest. All of this... not ours.
I closed my eyes, trying to push the thought away, but it haunted me. And then suddenly Robert touched my shimmering chest, my chest, with his fingertips, and I felt the cold penetrate the fabric. His touch was light, almost weightless, as if he was afraid he might destroy something fragile. He whispered, barely touching me:
"Cold."
I didn't answer. Instead of words, I felt this coldness pierce me, as if I had actually become part of this place, this strange world. Everything that was happening seemed unnatural, lacking normal boundaries. It was impossible to tell where I ended and this new, alien world began.
Robert pulled his hand away, but his gaze remained on me, and I felt a strange uneasiness growing in him. We lingered again, as if waiting for something, not knowing what. This silence in our silence became thick as air, and I felt it pressing, as if we were not in the forest or on the ground, but somewhere where nothing made sense.
"This is not the place," he said, his voice soft now, but there was a hint of worry in it. "There's something wrong here, and you know it."
I was silent again, because I didn't know what to say. He was right, of course. I felt it too, but I didn't know how to explain it. We were both on the edge of something, and that something was much more than just a strange feeling or a strange place. It was something that was consuming us, giving us no way out.
I looked at Robert, his face pale in the light, and I felt something starting to nest in my chest. This fear, this loss, as if we had both forgotten how to breathe in this new world.
We didn't move. The dark branches of the trees moved against the dim glimmer, and the air became thicker and denser. It seemed that we had become part of this night, part of this mysterious force that did not let us go, not allowing us to leave.
Robert touched my chest again, this time to feel, if not warmth, then at least some movement of life. But his fingers slid over me, and all I could feel was cold.
"I think... we're captured," Robert breathed right into my ear, his voice tense, almost ingratiating.
I quickly responded, not wanting his words to find even the slightest echo in my head:
"Nonsense," he whispered, so as not to disturb the silence, but he himself had already noticed how something in Robert's words was beginning to sway inside.
"I'm telling you," he continued, his breath hot on my skin, and I felt it tremble, as if his words were beginning to become more real than everything that was happening around us.
"How do you know?" I asked, although deep down I already felt that something was wrong.
It was as if there was an answer hidden in those words that I couldn't find. Robert was silent for a moment, and I finally realized that his silence wasn't empty. He wasn't just worrying, or just asking questions. He was actually feeling something.
"Think," his voice was low, as if he were talking to someone who couldn't understand the obvious. "We can breathe."
These words struck me. I suddenly felt everything inside me freeze. Robert was right. We could breathe. Exactly. It was strange, incredibly strange. But the air around us was so heavy, as if there was no life. As if we were in some kind of vacuum, and yet we could still breathe. We didn't feel hunger, we didn't feel thirsty, there was no wind, no noise. Everything was... motionless.