Chapter 1: Arrival
Ryan Stone was pretty sure he hadn’t signed up for this.
One minute, he was trying to decide if his leftover pizza was still good for breakfast, and the next, whoosh. No, not even a whoosh. It was more like the world just hiccuped, and he was on the wrong side of the hiccup.
One second, pizza. Next second, not pizza. Definitely not pizza.
He blinked. Then he blinked again, because the first blink didn’t seem to fix anything. He was sitting. That was a start.
It was a comfy chair, which was a nice surprise, considering he felt like he’d been mailed somewhere without a box.
The room, if you could call it that, was small. Very small. Like a fancy new-age closet.
The walls were smooth and white, glowing softly. There were no windows. No door that he could see, either.
"Okay, Ryan," he mumbled to himself, a habit he had when things got weird. "Let’s not panic. Maybe this is one of those escape rooms.
A very, very minimalist escape room. Or perhaps I finally fell asleep during that boring Tuesday meeting and this is a super weird dream."
He pinched himself. Ouch. Nope, not a dream. The ouch felt pretty real.
A soft chime, like a polite little bell, sounded right inside his head.