Nick’s body felt like it was forged from lead, every muscle locked tight, screaming with stiffness. His mind slogged through a dense, syrupy fog—thoughts sluggish, disjointed, as if wading through thick molasses. He tried to move, but his limbs resisted, heavy with an exhaustion that didn’t make sense.

  A nightmare, he told himself. Sleep paralysis. That’s all this is.But then the world sharpened. The damp, earthy tang of soil flooded his nose. The ground beneath him—cold, rough, unforgiving—dug into his bare skin. His breath rasped in uneven bursts, and the thud of his heartbeat pounded in his chest, too real to dismiss.This was no dream.

  A shiver clawed its way up his spine, slow and icy, as his mind latched onto a single, jagged memory: the box. That strange, warm, skin-like box back in his apartment. The one that had pulsed faintly under his fingertips, almost alive. His pulse spiked, but he clamped down on the rising panic. Breathe, he ordered himself. Think. Panic won’t help.He forced his eyes to focus. He was sprawled half-naked on a slab of something hard—cement, maybe?—his clothes gone. No wallet, no phone, no watch. Nothing to tell him where he was or how long he’d been here. Robbery seemed the obvious answer, but why strip him of everything external and leave him intact? A quick mental scan confirmed it: no pain, no cuts, no signs of surgery.

  His organs were still his own, at least. Small mercies.Still, the truth gnawed at him—he’d been dumped. Abandoned in some desolate nowhere, far from any hint of civilization.He tilted his head back, searching the sky for answers.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  The moon glared down, swollen and unnaturally huge, its pale light casting long, twisted shadows. His stomach lurched. An illusion, he reasoned. The moon plays tricks near the horizon. But the excuse felt hollow. Something was wrong here—deeply, fundamentally wrong.The air hung thick, suffocatingly still. Then the sounds crept in: the high-pitched whine of mosquitoes, the relentless chirping of insects, a rustle in the underbrush—something bigger, something alive. His heart stuttered.

  He didn’t know what was out there, and in this pitch-black void, stumbling blind was a death sentence.No Choice but to WaitWith no light, no bearings, Nick curled into himself on the hard ground, hugging his knees to hoard what little warmth he could. Time stretched into a torturous limbo.

  Mosquitoes swarmed, their bites searing his skin like tiny brands. Something skittered too close—a sharp snap of twigs—and a low, guttural sound rolled through the distance. Animal? Wind? His imagination? He didn’t dare guess.His body throbbed, his skin burned, and sleep—God, he needed it—stayed maddeningly out of reach.Then, at last, the sky shifted. A faint, blood-red glow bled across the horizon.

  Twilight. Relief flickered in his chest, fragile but real. The night hadn’t claimed him. Daylight was coming, and with it, answers.But the sounds didn’t fade. They grew—sharper, more insistent. The rustling in the underbrush swelled, deliberate now, closing in. Nick’s breath hitched as he squinted into the dimness.

  Lets see how it all started