I stood there with the CEO badge in my hand, my own name staring back at me like it belonged to someone else. My mind kept looping the same question if I'm the CEO here… then where is the Denny of this world? Did he die? Did he disappear? Did he step into the chamber too? Or was he erased the second I arrived?
Oliver paced near the glass window, running his hands through his hair. "Bro, I'm telling you… this place is way too clean. Way too perfect. Way too… you." Abel tapped the edge of the polished desk and whispered, "Denny, I don't know how to say this but… if we keep walking around like we're lost, someone will notice. You're the CEO here. Everyone's watching you. So whatever we do next, you need to act like you run this entire place."
His words sank in slowly. He was right. Back in my real world, I could wander around RedTie without anyone caring. Here, every step mattered. People were looking. People expected something from me. And if the real Denny of this world was missing or dead, then I was standing in his shoes… whether I wanted to or not.
But the answers weren't in this cabin. They weren't in the shiny walls or the flawless desk or the life I never lived. Everything began in one place: the basement. The golden door. The hidden chamber. The moment reality snapped.
I exhaled. "We have to go down. To the basement. That's where all this started."
Oliver looked at me with wide eyes. "Bro… if we go down there, what if the chamber looks different? What if someone's guarding it? What if it doesn't even exist in this world?"
I shook my head. "I don't care. Whatever is happening… that room is the only constant between both realities. If anything here can tell us where we are or what happened to the Denny from this world it's down there."
Abel stepped closer and whispered, "Then you better start acting like the CEO from now on. No fear. No confusion. No hesitation. If anyone sees your face right now, they'll know something's wrong."
I straightened my shoulders. Fixed my voice. Forced my breathing to steady.
I had to pretend to be a version of myself I had never met.
We walked out of the cabin, and instantly a few employees looked up from their screens. One of them stood straighter. "Good morning, sir," she said with a sharp smile. I nodded back confidently, and she immediately relaxed like everything was normal. Abel leaned in behind me and murmured, "See? If you act like the boss, they'll believe you."
But beneath the confidence I was faking, a darker question kept gnawing at the back of my mind: if this world has its own Denny… and I'm standing in his place… then what the hell happened to him? Did he vanish the second I arrived… or is he somewhere in this building right now… looking for me?
That thought alone made the elevator ride to the basement feel like the walls were slowly closing in.
The elevator doors slid open with a dull metallic chime, and the cold basement air hit my face like a warning. B1.
In my real world, this floor was simple rows of old robot models, prototypes we built, prototypes we scrapped. A graveyard for half-finished ideas. But here… this wasn't a graveyard.
It was a future.
Sleek chrome bodies stood polished under bright white lights, eyes glowing faint blue. Some machines had exo-frames I'd never designed. Others had neural node connectors so advanced they looked like something from a decade ahead. Abel walked forward first, his breath catching. "Bro… look at this joint system. This is the one we pitched two years from now." Oliver ran his hands across a polished arm. "This is insane. These are our ideas but… finished. Perfected."
Everywhere we looked, there were answers to problems we never solved. Completed sketches. Finalised circuits. Polished blueprints. It felt like walking into the version of RedTie where our dreams weren't crushed, where we had time, money, resources everything.
But none of that mattered. Because this wasn't my world.
We moved to the far end, where the B2 access door sat behind a security panel. My ID - this universe's CEO ID - opened it instantly.
A gust of cold air rushed out. B2. The inner basement. The place where, in my world, everything started. The place where the hatch had appeared.
The three of us hurried down the long metal steps, flashlights cutting through the darkness. Abel checked every corner. Oliver pushed crates aside. I scanned the floor for any sign of the hatch lid.
Nothing. The ground was solid. No cracks. No seams. No hidden lines.
"Bro… it should be here," Oliver whispered. "It SHOULD be."
Abel kicked the floor once. "Did this world not get the door? Did it never open here?"
"We're missing something," I said.
And then I saw it. A small metal door on the far left wall. Store Room. It shouldn't exist. It wasn't there in my world.
But the moment I saw the dusty doorknob, my spine tightened. "Check inside," I said.
We pushed the door open. A gust of stale, warm air rushed past us. Inside was chaos — piled cardboard boxes, rusted prototype arms, tangled wires, discarded circuit units. It looked like a junkyard. But as we stepped in deeper, Abel froze.
"Denny… look."
Some boxes were shoved aside. A narrow pathway carved between the junk — like someone walked through here every day.
My heartbeat spiked. I followed the path, pushing cardboard aside.
And then a faint metallic glint.
"There!" Oliver yelled.
A latch. Hidden under boxes, dust, old cables.
We pulled everything away, cleared enough space, and I gripped the cold metal handle. With one heave, the hatch opened.
Warm golden light leaked upward from below exactly the same as in my world.
"Holy Moly…" Abel whispered. "It's the same. It's actually the same."
We climbed down the ladder one by one. My feet hit the ground first. It was identical — the same pipes along the walls, the same humming warmth in the air, the same metallic scent.
And at the end of the tunnel… the golden door. Slightly open. Light spilling out in a soft shimmer.
My throat tightened. "Someone's inside."
We approached slowly, breaths held, hearts pounding. I pushed the door wider.
Inside the chamber, a man stood near the shelves, flipping through files. His back was turned. His outfit was completely black boots, gloves, coat, everything. But what froze me wasn't the outfit.
It was the mask.
A mesh-black face covering with thin red lines glowing around the edges. The lights pulsed with every breath he took. And when he spoke, his voice wasn't a voice it was electronically stiffened, distorted, deepened.
"Accessing sectors… incomplete…"
Abel whispered, "Denny… who the hell"
I stepped forward. "HEY!" My voice shook. "Who are you?"
He froze. Turned half an inch. Red lights across his mask brightened.
"Identity anomaly detected," the distorted voice growled.
I stepped closer, anger ripping out of my chest. "Why are you here? You know this place. You KNOW this room. Tell me what's going on. Tell me where Lucy is — where Diana is. Tell me what world this is. Is this even Earth?! ANSWER me!"
For a moment, he just stood there still, silent, unreadable.
Then, just like the rooftop man his body cracked. The red lights flickered violently. The air around him wavered.
Abel screamed, "Denny — MOVE BACK!"
But before I could move, he dissolved. Right there. Right in front of all of us. Dust. Black dust with crimson sparks.
Oliver choked, "We saw it. We saw it with our eyes, what is he?!"
When the dust faded, something dropped onto the floor with a soft thud. A file. The exact file he was holding. It didn't dissolve with him. It didn't vanish. It stayed.
I crouched slowly, heart pounding, and picked it up. Thick. Heavy. Holding two separated internal book folders inside.
Abel swallowed hard. "What's inside it?"
Oliver whispered, "Denny… whatever's in that folder might explain everything."
I stared at the cover. Not ready to open it. Not ready to breathe.
The folder felt heavier than it looked, like whatever was inside it wasn't meant to exist in our hands. We sat on the cold metal floor, the golden light brushing against our faces as Abel and Oliver kept pushing me, practically begging me to open it.
My fingers shook as I unlatched the cover. Inside was one single large folder holding two thinner book folders. I pulled them out slowly.
The first one had a word on the cover — NAUDREM.
The moment we opened it, our confusion hit like a punch. The pages were filled front to back with writing and diagrams, but none of it made sense. The letters weren't letters… more like dots, broken lines, crooked symbols, fragments that formed shapes but no words we could understand. Abel flipped through faster, his breath unsteady. "This is not any language I've ever seen," he whispered. Oliver said, "What if it's encoded? What if the mask helps them read this?" And the more I looked, the more I felt that the masked man wasn't reading with eyes he was decoding it.
The second book had my own name on the cover: DENNISON.
The second I opened it, before I could even register a single word on the page, someone shouted my name from the entrance.
"Denny!"
The voice echoed into the chamber, sharp, trembling, familiar. I spun around — and there he was.
A figure stepping into the golden light, holding a gun. Not a normal gun. Sleek. Metallic. Circular vents glowing faint blue. Something from another world.
And as he stepped closer, the light hit his face and my heart nearly stopped.
Christopher.
My neighbor. Christopher.
But I just met him at my door. Returning the bowl. How can he be here already?
The man who gave Diana chocolates on weekends. The man who found her doll. His eyes were wet and broken as he whispered, "I'm sorry, my son… there's no other way."
Before any of us could even stand or speak, he lifted the gun with hands that trembled like he hated himself for what he was doing and he fired.
The blast hit Abel first. He collapsed instantly. Oliver screamed but the second shot caught him before he could move.
My breath froze.
I turned toward Christopher, my voice stuck in my throat, but the third shot hit me square in the head.
And everything every light, every sound, every thought went blank.