Allen walked out of the classroom, his expression blank but his mind whirling with irritation. Freshman geometry. Again. It wasn't that he struggled with the subject—far from it. The problem was that he had already mastered this level of math back in his original world, yet here he was, forced to redo it. If there was one thing he hated more than being controlled, it was wasting time.
He clutched the oversized review paper given to him, which was so thick it resembled a world record book. As he walked down the sterile hallways toward his assigned room, his fingers instinctively tapped against the edges of the pages, his mind occupied with everything that had happened to him in just one day.
The cafeteria, the numbered ranking system, the cold efficiency of the environment—none of it sat well with him. It was obvious now that these people, whoever they were, had no interest in treating them like individuals. They were statistics, experiments, mere numbers in a hierarchy that dictated their worth.
His thoughts drifted to 520, the girl he had spoken to briefly. She seemed around his previous age, perhaps fourteen or fifteen, but what caught his attention was how she spoke about the hierarchy. There was a nagging feeling at the back of his mind, an itch he couldn't scratch, something off about the entire structure of this place. Why were only 1/8th of the total numbers still present? What had happened to the rest?
As he entered his small, minimalist room, Allen dropped the thick review paper onto the desk and sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing his temples. He had seen enough stories—enough tragic, desperate protagonists grasping at the idea of going home, only to die chasing an illusion. He wasn't going to be that kind of fool.
No, his priority wasn't returning to his old world. He knew that path was a wild goose chase that would only lead to his death or to some bitter truth that he wasn't prepared to handle. The only logical course of action was survival. And true survival meant one thing: freedom. Not just the illusion of it, but absolute, undeniable freedom. No handlers, no rankings, no superiors to dictate his life.
The scientist that had healed him—the one who spoke of freedom—was proof enough that even those with power were trapped in this place. If a man with abilities like that couldn't escape, then what made Allen think he could? It was a terrifying question, but fear had never been his enemy. Complacency was.
He exhaled sharply, pushing his doubts aside. If he was going to escape, he needed to know where he was first. What kind of world was this? Was it Earth, or something else entirely? That was his next step—gathering intel, understanding the structure of this place, and figuring out how to navigate it without being crushed under its weight.
His eyes trailed to the digital clock on the wall. He had been given an hour to rest before whatever else they had planned for him. Sleep tugged at his consciousness, but he fought against it. He needed to think, to strategize.
But strategy meant nothing without energy. With a reluctant sigh, he lay back on the stiff mattress, his fingers interlocked over his stomach as he stared at the ceiling.
This was only the beginning.
One year later.