A sharp, stinging pain burned in his chest as the half-unconscious man opened his eyes. Grimacing in pain, he tried looking around. The world around him appeared blurry and his eyes tried adjusting to the darkness.
Cold seeped into his cheeks as he found himself alone, lying on the rough surface of the stone.
"Ahh!!..."
A grimace of pain left his mouth as the wave of pain returned. Grabbing his chest, the man squinted his eyes, focusing his vision on his surroundings.
Instead of answers, his effort only brought more questions to him. He could find nothing around him that could explain his situation even a little.
Ahh!! what?... where am I?.. he asked himself before clutching his head in pain.
His mind appeared to be blank like a sky without any clouds. Despite his effort he couldn't remember who he was or what he was doing here.
Grimacing in pain, the man tried to remember, and to his success a few moments came to his mind. They played like a broken tape of which he was trying to piece some meaning together.
noo... ho-how wha-what had!!... He was on the verge of piecing some information together when the same stinging pain disrupted him. It was coming from the area around his heart.
Hhk!!.. The pain was so bad that it left him gasping for air. Before he could understand why he was in such intense pain, it was gone.
'Am I dreaming.. what is happening to me...' Thinking so, the man slapped himself and the returning pain reminded him that he was in fact not asleep.
Shaking his head, the man first tried to calm himself down. It wasn't easy, but it was the start he needed at the moment.
And, now that his eyes had adapted to the dark enough, he could see things a little better. So, the first thing he decided to investigate was, 'Where exactly am I?'
Sitting down, he looked around and all he could see was the rough surface of stone. He was surrounded by stone walls from all sides.
"A cave? A prison?" Thinking so, he tried putting his hand on the ground for support to stand up when he noticed something.
His hair stood on end when he noticed his hands were painted in a crimson hue. It was blood that had dried long ago.
'Blood... how?' Confused and now with a hint of fear, he quickly checked himself for wounds. The man's hands moved in panic, but there was nothing... well, not any wound at least.
There was a hole, barely the size of a penny, in the clothes he was wearing.
"A hole!?... ahh!" He blurted out instinctively and the moment he did, the pain returned. Letting out a pained cry he grabbed his head. It felt similar but something was different this time.
Along with the pain something else had come. As he looked at the hole, something stirred inside his head. The fog surrounding his memory had begun to clear up.
So, I was shot by?!... He thought to himself, solving the puzzle from his memory.
The past flashed before his eyes and the man remembered being chased by a gang because of that item. After much sacrifice he had gotten away from them and still...
'I was shot... but by wh--' he was about to ask this question when something clicked inside his head. It was them. When he had refused to give the cube, they decided to shoot him...
... and in desperation, I pressed the button of the item, the man thought, remembering what the item was. It was a black box, barely the size of a normal Rubik's cube. There was one button on all the sides of the cube, but no matter how hard he tried, it wasn't getting pushed until,
... my blood got on it... ahhh!... He screamed in pain as his brain got filled with information. The fog had mostly cleared up, leaving little to no gap in his memory. Except for that incident he remembered every other thing about his life.
Collecting his thoughts, he moved his hand and clutched the pendant that was hanging from his neck. On it, a word was written with five syllables on it.
"Dhruv." Reading it aloud, he understood what it meant.
It was his name.
With the recollection of his name he remembered everything. Everything about his life and everything about his death. He remembered what had happened during the incident.
Dhruv remembered how he had gotten his hands on that item, and why those people were chasing him for it, but before anything else, one thing was clear — the people that had shot him didn't belong to just any gang.
No, they were members of his own gang. The gang he was a part of. The gang he led. And the gang he had thought of as members of his own family... but in the end, they had betrayed him.
For a single item that same family had mercilessly shot and killed him.
Dhruv's expression turned grim as he remembered the incident, why and how it had happened. Like every other mission, his group was assigned to steal the item. At first, he thought nothing of it.
But as the mission continued, he realized the gravity of the item he was stealing. And by the time he had realized it, it had already been too late to back down.
He had lost quite a few members of his team, and even after their deaths, if the item wasn't stolen, it would be a total failure. Their deaths would have been in vain, which would be an unacceptable outcome.
No matter the cost, he couldn't back down, and thus Dhruv had decided to continue moving forward.
And after an even greater sacrifice, when he stole that mysterious cube and was about to hand it over, the rest of his members decided to betray him. And their reason?
In the end they decided that it wasn't worth the effort to return the item. The reward wasn't good compared to their effort, and they would rather fetch a much better price on the black market.
It was truly a stupid idea considering who had commissioned the steal, but they didn't know that. Being the leader of his team, he had the knowledge and tried to pursue it. But, in the end, nothing mattered.
Greed had clouded their judgment.
They continued their plan and the result...
I died. Or, at least that was how it was supposed to happen. He thought, looking around his body, h-how am I still alive? I remembered my heart being shot at point blank. But how am I still alive... did something happen?
Did they save me!? Healed me and trapped me inside this place... but why go to that length... what am I saying... Dhruv tried making sense of the absurd situation that he was in.
He could have believed it if it weren't for the fact that not only was his heart completely healed, there wasn't even a mark on his skin. On top of that, everything else was healed as well; there wasn't a single scratch mark on his body.
The cut mark on his eyebrow. The pinky finger he was missing and many more such wounds were healed as well.
Let's not worry about how I'm alive and focus more on getting out of here... Thinking so, he stood on his legs and began moving around, inspecting every nook and cranny of the area he was trapped in.
What... there is nothing!?... Confused, he moved around the room and yet again the result was the same.
The room was sealed, completely sealed, there wasn't any entrance. Forget about the entrance, there wasn't even a hole for air to enter the room.
How did I get here... there is no entrance... if they had put me here then how are they supposed to keep an eye on me, there is no camera around it... Confused, Dhruv tried explaining his situation but until the end he couldn't find one that could make it make sense.
Moving around, he was looking about when suddenly he stopped in his tracks.
'That cube...'
As he remembered his last moments, he remembered that after getting shot in his heart, he had felt something liberating. As if he had become weightless and was floating in the sky... which he had previously attributed to experiencing death.
Maybe... I didn't die... and instead got... No matter how absurd it sounded to him, that was the only plausible answer he could think of.
But... n-no! That can't be... I mean, why would he commission our small gang to steal the item if it could teleport someone… As Dhruv thought, it didn't take long for him to figure something was out of place.
... wait a minute! Could it be that they commissioned us because we were a small team? He thought, and was about to figure something out when a screen popped up in front of him.
Looking at the strange letters, he read the sentence out loud.
[Dhruv, Welcome to the New World.]