Claude awoke to find himself cold, his body had been warm previously but it was more like the embers of a fire left over. His senses were sharper, he breathed in chilled air deep into his lungs.

  There was a presence near him, not next to him but his senses had become further enhanced than before. Possibly his mind trying to adapt to a survival situation.

  He considered the mandatory survival training course which all Acqua Foundation employees were asked to attend when they found themselves in either dangerous, unfamiliar or even potentially hazardous situations.

  His body remained cold and a little stiff but the air at least was fresher, far better than what he had previously breathed in. There was a taste to it which he couldn’t identify, old but clean.

  Drops of saliva fell from his open mouth unconsciously as he remembered how one of the trainers had told them of a familiar situation in which he had been forced to survive in a severely hazardous hostile territory.

  Step one. Don’t show them that you’re fully conscious and aware. Try and listen for anything that can be used to your advantage. Snatches of conversation, language, sounds.

  Step two. Keep calm, steady breathing, step three is to show that you’re awake and then try to establish a dialogue with whomever took you.

  The trainer had only taught them for five days of training and hadn’t accepted many question about his own experiences but had described that he had survived somewhere which didn’t exist on Belphus.

  The man simply stood and stared before one of the Acqua Foundation management monitoring the class had taken him aside for a quiet chat.

  Breath Claude. I clearly skipped a few steps when I accepted the invitation to eat and drink an unknown substance. Huh, that trainer would be angry at me.

  He said that he managed to survive with minimal food and water initially. What was his name again? He was the name of a dog. No, his last name was.

  The cold air and environment wasn’t overly uncomfortable to Claude so he simply lay on the floor. His hands were loosely folded under his head as though he had simply gone to sleep but the material on the bare skin of his face was smooth to the touch.

  After the extremely bad smell previously he was tempted to lay there a little longer as he followed his training and breathed deep breaths, his through his nose and out through his mouth.

  There were two phrases which the strange pair had spoken. The overly slim figure in the suit to the point of thinness and the floating backpack had both called themselves Tourism Operatives.

  Likely, they worked for an organisation. Not a terrorist one because they had made no demands nor direct threats to him. Then there had been the words that the hunger something was on.

  He had been hungry and thirst, artificially so, which meant that they had drugged him at some point.

  Claude had broken the other rule of his training at the Acqua Foundation for dealing with difficult events, never to accept food or drink from strangers which he hadn’t prepared by himself.

  So he had been removed from his place of work, or he had been sank on purpose.

  My thoughts are far too varied. Something is seriously...my boat! The tracking system on my boat would have activated. There are contingencies in place, all I need to do is survive until a security team is sent to my last location.

  Kidnapped and taken to a strange location, been drugged, kidnapped, knocked unconscious and then someone was expecting him to wake up.

  All part of the training which the man had described had happened to him. His name came to Claude then. His last name at least, as the man had preferred to be formal when talking or being directly addressed by the student employees in his care.

  Mr Wolff. He had an odd look in his eyes but he took it all seriously. Claude was certain that the man had crushed a pop drink can into small pieces with his bare fingers when one of the other students had asked for the exit to the lesson as a half-joke.

  Nobody else had tried to take the rest of the five day course less seriously after that. Claude continued to breath and strained his ears to listen for sounds with his eyes closed and relaxed as he struggled to avoid moving.

  His hands tucked under his head were beginning to get pins and needles within them as he decided to wake up. There was nothing in the room which was making sounds as far as he was aware but there was the sensation of someone watching him. Or at least the residual heat in his body had awakened something deep within him.

  The smoothness of the floor increased the build-up of saliva in his mouth as Claude opened his eyes or at least tried to. There was a blankness in front of him. Not a darkness but a complete absence of light.

  His eyes didn’t hurt but Claude knew better than to try and rub them. His body froze then, not a paralysis but it simply stopped obeying his unconscious instructions. He didn’t even know if he was breathing or not and worse, he wasn’t even concerned.

  I’m not alone. I don’t know how but I’m not alone inside this room. I can’t see them, can’t hear them but I sense them. Something is there. Familiar. Wrong but familiar. Hot. I’m hot. No.

  I’m cold. Empty. Hungry...itchy…..hungry….itchy..hot...good taste. Want more scones. More tea. Itchy. Itchy. Hungry.

  Frozen as a statue in his same adjusted sleeping position a voice called out. The sound echoed through him, the words were both heard by his ears and inside his mind. He simply knew them and obeyed.

  ‘Claude. Don’t move. You need to adjust. Sally isn’t the only one who can alter a few rules of reality. Your mind is trying to take back lost time, a reality shift will do that to a human mind. I borrowed something for you, a present. I mean...it’s a badly made copy but...you need to adjust first. I’ll be on the ceiling. Don’t...don’t look up. No. Nothing exists outside this room. Forget and become. I’m sorry.’

  Usually when someone heard an instruction they’d instinctively do the opposite. He knew that that he wasn’t going to look up or even imagine the concept of it.

  Like describing the colours of a rainbow to someone who was completely colour blind. Those three words in that order no longer existed in his immediate reality. There was no sense of danger.

  After hearing the voice of the slim figure in the outfit he had met who had...had….he couldn’t remember. There had been a meal. Scones and a type of tea. A bag..a...no.

  Something about his memories warned him that he needed to talk. There was a part of him deep within screaming at him to act, to remember but his memories were like the tides on a beach. Ebbing forwards and backwards, appearing and drawn on sand before being washed away.

  His core was warm, there was a strength within him that hadn’t existed before, a deep hunger but the rest of his body was cold. The blankness that had entirely covered his eyes and the unknown force which had restricted his movements was gone.

  Claude saw a surface which called to him but he ignored it. For all he initially knew it could have been metal plating or plastic but it was smooth and reflective even if he couldn’t make out detail.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  His memory issue and lack of emotional response was a severe concern by this point. Worse, he hadn’t even remembered going to sleep.

  The room was dark, larger than he assumed and there was a distinct chill in the air. The atmosphere was entirely silent and although there was a form of light his vision failed to adapt immediately. His eyes were working but refused to see clearly. He noticed that the floor, despite the darkness had a mild reflective surface.

  ‘Hello? Wait, don’t answer that. Sally? Kamryn? Hello? Myoglobin is...organic? Hello?’ said Claude as his body forced him upright without his permission.

  He sat in a crouched position as his eyes began to rapidly adjust to a red glow. He ignored the pins and needles in his body as his discomfort vanished and left him feeling fresh.

  Claude knew that he had heard the voice of Kamryn but he wasn’t able to recall where they were for him to respond. Or he had imagined it.

  Part of him wanted to hit the floor, to break part of it and stuff it between his teeth as the flow of saliva increased within his mouth and began to drop onto the floor.

  How can I be so hungry if there isn’t a smell?

  His instincts had become further enhanced than before as it reacted without his conscious thought, hands balled into fists as a deep ache came into his abdominal region and left as soon as it had come.

  His clothes, his body were secondary to the mild pain in his stomach. Even his present situation wasn’t an issue. An instinct had taken gripped him and he wanted to shake if off.

  Just minutes ago he had been running through specific training for this situation in his mind and then….then he had lost it all as though his higher level consciousness had been shut off.

  Hungry? Thirsty? I just ate...get it together man. I know that person is here, the backpack isn’t but I need to establish a clear dialogue and assess this situation. The steps Claude. Follow the steps. Step five? Step six?

  Blinking his eyes a few times, Claude wanted to touch his face but resisted the urge. There was something different regarding his vision. The light around him was red but there was a tint now as though he was wearing sunglasses.

  ‘Hello? Uh..Kamryn? Sally? Security rescue team? I’m here. Hello? Did I repeat a conversation?’ said Claude.

  My clothing. My work. Hold onto the real memories. Keep them fresh and real. Keep my thoughts focused.

  He looked down at himself and noticed that his clothes were entirely the same, slapping a hand to his belt he saw that he had a survival pack attached there. The waterproof clothing was too heavy for him as he unzipped the outer layer and peeled it off his body and dropped it on the floor.

  Free of his heavier outfit Claude decided to keep wearing the rest, he wasn’t aware of the environment in this place and until he was taken back to the coast and sent on a boat back to his own then he’d prefer to wear it.

  ‘I’m fine thanks. My mind is a little shaky but...I’m talking to myself into an empty room. Yeah. Uh...no. Yeah, yeah empty. Nothing here.’ said Claude.

  Besides, one of the reasons to work for the Acqua Foundation, was that the man who created it genuinely cared for those who worked for him. His own operational ocean going vessel was equipped with sufficient redundancies to keep him safe, although it had been a little odd that he was the only member of crew along with the basic artificial intelligence.

  He’d been too emotional when he’d applied for the job and then when he’d been working aboard it, too busy or drained to re-consider it. Either way, they would soon realise that he wasn’t there and enable search and rescue operations. Deep Tide Security was the principal security contractor for the company.

  All he needed to do was survive the strange situation until he was rescued. One of his co-workers who he had met early in the program before they had dropped out and opted for an office job said he’d heard a rumour that the Acqua Foundation was trying to discover anomalous events.

  Yeah. Good luck with his office job at one of the subsidiary companies. Mr Acqua wasn’t a nice guy when you chose not to work where he told you. Aside from that he was kind but a little too sad. Shame about his wife.

  He shot to his feet as his hands touched a cold and smooth surface below them. Glancing down he saw the floor was made entirely of lined bones. Thousands of polished bones all covering the floors.

  Not scary at all. Or if it is my nervous system is showing zero response. Phosphoresce?

  A deep red glow lit off each one giving him plenty of light to see with as they had been polished to perfection. The wall was a variation on the theme as it gleamed like bone but showed no signs of individual bone, instead showing a flat surface.

  Above his head, to a considerable distance was the same as the floor. Claude had no real clue on how they had managed to find so any bones and fix them to the ceiling but he was thankful for the red glow. It gave him enough light to see by and even make out his own position inside the room.

  He saw ancient walls to the side were intricately carved with images of figures and monstrous pig-like creatures eating forests of giant mushrooms.

  Dark stuff. How did they manage to carve all of that onto walls of bone?

  The people fed bodies to the pigs which grew in size rapidly at least as far as he could tell but there was an odd scene where a figure ate one of the pigs and transformed into a larger version before it was killed by soldiers in armour.

  All across the walls were other displays, even carved into bone, some were more faded than others. The ones regarding pigs and some type of monkey were far older than the others, the red glow was more faded on those.

  More recent ones worked up with more warfare, vast buildings and…images he didn’t want to understand. Corpses being dug up and stored, humans being force fed some type of semi-liquid as they lay in rows. Then one final image which appeared closer to the open doorway in the room, it was half-finished but Claude was able to make out an image of a larger than life figure towering above a city.

  There was a massive tower in the centre of the city with multiple small figures below, at the very top of the building the giant stood there with hands open and a wide mouth as food or something was thrown into it.

  The degree of detail was surprising but Claude didn’t want to know how many dead corpses or bodies of animals had been used to create such a display. Nor did he want to know exactly how they had managed to make so many colours appear on what appeared to him to be solid bone.

  A short distance from him was an open doorway which was shrouded in shadows but had a single larger than usual grinning skull atop with a pair of eyes.

  All the bones he had seen so far were from his guesses either from legs, or arms that covered all the surfaces of the room. Thankfully he hadn’t seen a single skull aside from the only one visible in the room.

  Then the same voice of the figure in the grey suit called out.

  ‘Claude. Listen to the sound of my voice. There is existence outside this room. You need to calm down and we only have a short time before you have to begin. You can be aware of my existence once more. I’ve managed to shield your consciousness from the worst of the shift without turning you completely insane.’ said Kamryn.

  As his body froze in place, Claude became aware that his memories had been patchy as an ache had washed over and through him. Deep inside him, deeper than he knew there was a hunger.

  He could only talk softly in response as one of the rules of survival trained into him came unbidden once more into his brain.

  ‘My name is Claude Blefusci. Nice to meet you. How’s it working out for you as a Tourism Board Operator? I work as a long-range deep ocean specialist for the Acqua Foundtion. Bit lonely to be honest. You and Sally worked together for long?’ said Claude as he spoke and focused his attention on the red tinted doorway with the single large skull atop it.

  He was certain that the eye sockets had glowed deeper as the only open entrance to the room took in his entire interest.

  Kamryn paused but carried on talking.

  ‘You can look at me but...don’t judge me. Away from Sally I can talk a little more, just...don’t judge me. Please. I’m hungry, ever so hungry and I can’t eat the flesh available. The plant-life is just as bad. The Eternal Empire contaminated this entire land...even the water. They chose to do this to themselves, to release….I’m sorry. I need to eat. The Founder allowed them to build their own demise or worse. I wish I could leave this place. You will soon as well. Maybe you’d like to eat for your first time together? Claude, you can look up now. I’m above you.’

  Wanting to run. To escape. He had little choice. Claude tilted his head backwards and let out a scream which began to rip apart his throat when he saw the form of Kamryn high above him.

  Blood vessels in his eyes broke as blood began to run down into his open mouth. The taste was odd. Wrong. He’d never knew how to drink the colour red until this moment. His molars in his mouth began to reshape themselves.

  ‘Welcome to the . Please confirm your destination to your chosen Seed world or Variant of the planet Belphus.

  All Visitors please register with your nearest available Tour Guide. The Tourism Board is Above All.’

  [This has been a sponsored message from . Choose yours today!]

  Nicholas A. Ostheimer [Original Founder of the Tourism Board and Creator of Fictional Realities.]