Chương 6: Chapter 5 - The Cage (II)

He woke up feeling strange, his body heavy and sluggish. His arm throbbed with pain, and he was terribly hungry and thirsty. He looked at his arm and saw marks from a nasty injury that had stopped bleeding not long ago. The memories flooded back, and he jolted upright. The fight with the creature, the excruciating pain, and the blood—he remembered it all. He looked around frantically, but the creature was no longer there. He recalled those last moments, the creature had disappeared just like the cage, and then…

then the orb on the floor. He scanned the room but couldn't find it. His mind was too foggy to dwell on it. He needed sustenance. Staggering to his feet, he walked over to the barrel and the fruits. With shaking hands, he grabbed a piece of fruit and bit into it ravenously. The sweet juice flooded his mouth, and he devoured it hungrily. He reached for another and another, barely pausing to chew. His body craved nourishment, and he fed it desperately, his hunger overriding all other thoughts.

He then moved to the barrel of water, cupping his hands to drink. The cool liquid soothed his parched throat, and he drank deeply, gulping it down as if it were the most precious thing in the world. He continued to eat and drink, the immediate relief washing over him, dulling the pain and fear momentarily. As he ate, his mind began to clear. He couldn't ignore the questions racing through his head, but they could wait. For now, he wasn't in a rush.

After he consumed all the available food, he collapsed onto the floor, dirty and smelly. There was still plenty of water left in the barrel. He took off his shirt, stained by tears, sweat, blood, and fruit juices, and threw it aside. He then scooped some water and poured it over himself. It felt good, the temperature of the place and the water was perfect. He noticed that he had forgotten to take off his pants, now soaked and uncomfortable, but not too much. He took off his camping boots and froze.

He looked again, unable to believe his eyes. He touched it and felt it. He moved it. All the sensations were there. His leg was back! He looked around, seeing no trace of his old prosthetic leg. What the hell was this? The situation was becoming stranger and stranger, more inexplicable with each passing minute. He let his head fall back and lay on the floor, his mind utterly exhausted. He would think later. For now, he just wanted to rest. He closed his eyes and drifted into a deep, much-needed nap.

July 29, 2024 - Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas"Any response from any other station?" Chiara asked.

"Nope, but hey, the day is long," Stephen laughed and sat down.

"I told you to take a nap."

"A nap on the day that could change mankind forever?" Chiara mused, though she couldn't quite hide her tiredness.

"Sleep is overrated anyway."

"You're starting to sound like a teenager," Stephen said with a grin.

"Considering you're the youngest ever to work here and earned your PhD in astrophysics from MIT at 20, I guess your teenage years aren't that far behind you, right?" Chiara looked at him strangely.

"That's an odd way of asking a girl her age." Stephen coughed and quickly changed the topic.

"So, want to bet on whether it appears or not? They have a betting system going on in—" He blinked and looked again. Chiara was no longer there.

"Chiara?" Stephen called out, looking around the room in confusion. He thought it might be a prank, but the disappearance was too fast, and the room offered few places to hide. The door was electronic and made a sound when opening, and he hadn't heard anything. He didn't want to believe it, but he had to accept that his colleague had been teleported out. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"The Tower?" He quickly verified that Chiara was indeed gone, then rushed to the main center, his heart pounding. Bursting in, he yelled at the technicians, "Check the satellites! Any feedback from other stations?" The room buzzed with activity as the technicians scrambled to follow his orders. Just then, they noticed someone else from the lab was missing too. Fear spread like wildfire through the team. Stephen moved around, overseeing the satellite feeds, but saw nothing unusual.

His anxiety grew with every passing second. Suddenly, his phone rang. He grabbed it, and a voice on the other end spoke briefly.

"-2. 08520, -152. 3518," it said, then hung up. Stephen was momentarily stunned but quickly scrambled for a pen and paper to jot down the coordinates. His hands trembled as he wrote. He then relayed them to the satellite team.

"Check this location, now!" The technicians typed furiously, their faces pale with tension. Within moments, the satellite images came up on the screens. The entire room fell silent, everyone staring, mouths agape, at what they saw.

"Is… is that?" one of the technicians stammered. Stephen gulped and fixed his gaze on the screen.

"The Tower." When he woke up this time, he felt an unusual lightness. His body was still aching, but there was something different. The first thing he did was check his leg. He stared in disbelief. It was perfectly fine. He touched it, moved it, and it felt completely natural, as if he had never had a prosthetic leg before. He stood up, jumped, and ran a few steps. Everything was perfect. Heck, he even felt better than ever before. He then looked at his arm. The wound from the creature was already forming scars.

The healing process was happening far too quickly. What had they done to him? It was becoming increasingly difficult to treat his current situation as a human-controlled environment, but he didn't want to deviate from that line of thinking. He knew humanity did not have the resources to do this, either in reality or virtually. It was still way too early. But if it wasn't human technology, then what was it? Afterlife? Something like a fantasy reincarnation from the web novels he used to read?

He didn't want to fall into any of those fantastical explanations. He had to keep his mind rational, as hard as it might seem in this scenario. He looked around the room and noticed a staircase leading up.

"Again?" he thought. He searched for the staircase he had used to come up but couldn't find it. The way he had come was gone. After taking care of his basic needs in a corner again, he put his shoes back on but decided to leave his shirt behind. It didn't smell good. He pocketed the knife, which showed no sign of the blood from the creature. Now that he thought about it, the only blood on the floor was his. Everything about the creature had disappeared.

He drank a bit more water and decided to carry the barrel with the remaining water with him. Surprisingly, the barrel felt lighter than expected. With a deep breath, he started to climb again.

"Stephen?" She glanced to the side, but everything had changed. She was no longer in the office back at the space center. Instead, she found herself in a white room. Fear mixed with a smile that crept onto her face.

"So this is how it is? This is… The Tower?" She examined her hands and body. Everything was intact, perfect. No odd feelings, no dizziness. The process had been incredibly smooth.

"Entanglement? Wormhole? No… this seems like… something else. Simulation theory? But then the invitation makes no sense… interesting." She began to pace the room, her footsteps echoing in the stark silence. She ran her hands along the smooth, cool walls, searching for any imperfections or clues about her surroundings.

"So this is the first test? If you call it a tower, it means we have to climb, right? Do we have to pass tests to keep climbing? Is worthiness measured by how high we reach?" She pondered the number of participants. Was it all of humanity, a random assortment, or a chosen selection? So many questions without answers. This felt… this felt nice. As a prodigy since birth, she had always been ahead, often pushed back by a society that saw her as an anomaly.

Science had given her a place, a world with many questions and few answers. Yet, technology only allowed so much discovery within her lifetime. She stared at the perfect white walls, feeling awe and excitement. The room was pristine, almost otherworldly in its perfection. She moved closer to one wall, examining it for seams or hidden mechanisms but found none. It was as if the room was a single, unbroken entity. This was different. This went beyond.

A civilization with knowledge from thousands, maybe even tens or hundreds of thousands of years in the future, had invited them. They would be put to the test, as the message had said. And she had been selected. Taking a deep breath, she centered herself, ready for the challenge. Chiara smiled.