Cold.

Liam shivered; the hairs on his arms stood up as an icy breeze brushed by him. It felt as if all his body heat was being sucked out by the air around him. In nothing but a t-shirt, sweatpants, and socks, his apparel was far from appropriate considering the current climate.

His breath formed a white cloud, indicative of the bone-chilling temperature. Bringing his hands up, he cupped his mouth, causing the short bristles of his dark brown beard to prickle against his raw skin as he blew into them, trying to capture the warmth. Knowing that the appendages furthest from your core were the first to succumb to frostbite, he wanted to keep them warm.

His eyes narrowed as he scanned the unfamiliar environment.

‘Where am I?’

The room was dilapidated. It felt forgotten, abandoned by the creators that had once loved and cared for it. Holes left by dislodged bricks in the walls, and the collapsed roof allowed the cold to find its way in. Many years of neglect had made the once sturdy structure unable to offer even the smallest bit of protection from the elements – it was impossible to be considered a proper shelter.

Liam knew he couldn’t stay here. As if the temperature wasn’t indication enough, a thin layer of frost rested atop the debris scattered on the rotten wood floor. All that was awaiting him here was a cold end as his body heat was slowly sucked away by mother nature.

Before leaving, he needed a plan. Being prepared before tackling a problem was common sense – anyone could tell you that. However, for Liam, it had a bit more meaning. It was an essential part of his life, part of an ever-growing list of guidelines he tried to live by.

1. Be prepared.

2. Don’t make friends.

3. Don’t stand out.

4. Follow the rules.

Be prepared.

Obvious – would be the first thought that comes to mind if anyone were to hear Liam’s list, and they aren’t wrong. From a young age, people are taught to be prepared. In school, students are encouraged to study for tests and do their homework, failing to do so can result in consequences. By adulthood, there’s a general consensus: it’s common sense to be prepared.

But is that true? Liam didn’t think so. At least in practice, people are less prepared then they claim. He had encountered too many incidents in his life to make him think otherwise. Therefore, he tried to make informed decisions and proper plans whenever possible, and part of that meant keeping a cool head. He couldn’t make logical choices if let his emotions get the better of him.

Don’t make friends.

Friends? What are those? The last people Liam called “friends” were the same two-faced sons of bitches that threw him under the bus. If it wasn’t for them, then a lot of things could’ve been… well, it doesn’t matter now; he had long since moved on. The past couldn’t be changed. The best you could do was look back on it as a learning experience.

All in all, Liam wasn’t planning to make friends with anyone anytime time soon. From this and prior experiences, he had concluded that people couldn’t, or rather shouldn’t, be trusted. It wasn’t to say he thought that every word that came out of people’s mouths was utter bullshit; it was better to say he wouldn’t trust someone to watch his back. 

People looked out for themselves above all else. There are some altruistic people in the world, but you don’t know who until you’re in a life or death situation. The one’s who can sacrifice themselves are a special type of people. Liam already knew he wasn’t one of them, and he didn’t see anything wrong with that.

Don’t stand out.

Why? Because it’s troublesome. Standing out, be it for good reasons or bad, would always attract a few with ill intentions. Liam would rather keep his head down, he didn’t need the extra attention, nor did he welcome it.

Follow the rules.

When eight years old and still naïve, not yet aware of how cruel life can be, his world of sunshine and rainbows was shattered when his mother murdered his father. To this day, he still couldn’t shake the memory of waking up to find his mother standing over his father’s dead body in the kitchen, the blood-soaked knife still in her hand. It was an experience no eight-year-old should live through.

With his mother on trial, he found himself living with his father’s parents. It was a dysfunctional household, not the place that an emotionally distraught child should be dropped into. His grandmother was still grieving the loss of her only child and was distant. Any time he tried to talk with her, he was met with the same response, “Go ask your grandfather.” That’s where the issue was.

His grandfather was an alcoholic and a violent drunk; the loss of his son only served to intensify this. Whether Liam was crying to himself, looking for comfort, or simply asking for food, it was all met with the same response – the belt. Liam quickly learned to shut up, be quiet, and do what he was told. Perhaps that was around the time he stopped crying, at least it was the last time he remembered crying in front of others.

Liam continued to look around the room; he needed information.

There were two vertical rows of four wooden benches which formed a single aisle. Running the length of the aisle was a faded red carpet. Its vibrant color was lost from the dirt and mold that had accumulated over many years.

Liam found himself seated on one of the benches at the front. The center of it bowing as the rotten wood strained to hold his weight. If he applied a bit more pressure, it would collapse to the ground, taking him along with it.

Behind him was a wooden door that marked the exit, and with no other windows or doors inside the room, it seemed to invite people to open it.

Among the piles of rubble, a single object remained untouched by the elements. It was a marble statue directly in front of him. The statue depicted an androgynous being standing in a neutral position with its arms by its sides. Its lack of facial features reminded Liam of a mannequin – a blank canvas.

From the once beautiful decorative cloths and wood furnishings surrounding the statue, which were now no more than rags and scraps of rotten wood, it was clear that this building was once a place of worship. Now, it could only be called a relic of the past.

Liam didn’t dwell on this; there was something else that caught his attention – he wasn’t alone. Including himself, there was a total of eight people here, the same number as there were benches. Exactly half of them were male and the other half female.

On one bench, there was a tall man in his early thirties. Despite the unnerving situation they were in, there wasn’t a hint of worry on his face. From beneath his glasses, his sharp eyes were calmly surveying the room, just like Liam.

He had a wedding band on his left hand and was wearing a uniform, which consisted of a pair of navy-blue pants and short sleeve collared shirt with a white logo over the left breast. Judging from his lean build and toned arms, he was undoubtedly someone who took care of his body by exercising regularly. However, the same couldn’t be said for man adjacent to him.

Wearing a suit and tie, he was sitting hunched over with his belly hanging over the edge of his belt, fully engrossed in reading the documents in his hands. So much so that he apparently failed to notice the change of scenery. That, or he didn’t care. Maybe the content of the documents was too important for him to worry about where he was. 

On another bench, there were three college girls huddled together. In the center, the blonde’s eyes trembled as she looked at the unfamiliar room. The redhead hugged her and quietly whispered in her ear, peacefully, much like a mother attempting to ease a child’s anxiety. As if to protect the two girls, the brunette sat up straight and pushed them behind her. Her ponytail flipped in the air as she searched the room. The intensity in her eyes gave a glimpse of her fiery personality. If they were a family, the blonde would be the child, the redhead the mother, and the brunette the father, a protector.

In the back of the room there was a girl that appeared to be in high school. Her wavy blonde hair was draped over her right shoulder, brushing against her fashionable clothes. With her slightly downturned lips and annoyed eyes, she had a perfect face of discontent. It was evident that she took great care when it came to her appearance, but at the same time, her expression hinted she was someone with an attitude.

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Sitting across the aisle from her was the last person. It was a man that had a tall and muscular body. His thick arm muscles and bulky chest stretched the fabric of his university football sweatshirt. With rapidly blinking eyes, he looked around in a daze.

Liam frowned; being stuck in a frozen ruin wasn’t how he imagined spending his long-awaited day off. He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked up. Above him the roof was missing, exposing an endless ashen gray sky. It didn’t look like the sun was going to break through the clouds any time soon.

‘How did I get here?’

He recalled the events of the previous night. Exactly how he spent every night after he got off shift, he went to the bar. He had drunk a bit more than usual, but it wasn’t enough to explain waking up in the middle of nowhere.

‘After my shift ended at midnight, I headed straight for the bar. It was around 3 A.M. when I finally left and took a cab home. The last thing I remember was crawling into my bed…’

He was sure of it now unless he had started sleepwalking for the first time last night, he hadn’t gotten here himself. Even if he had been drunk enough to stumble off somewhere, that didn’t explain the change in climate. Right now, it should be the start of autumn; it was too early for frost to appear.

‘It looks like I was kidnapped…’

Liam couldn’t understand why someone would want him, but ignoring the possibility would do him no good, so he thought.

‘Why me? Is there any reason someone might want to kidnap me?’

If there was, he couldn’t think of it. He wasn’t wealthy. In fact, he was far from it, he barely made enough to cover his expenses as is. Last month his checking account had a negative balance and that was only from buying necessities. As for a savings account, there wasn’t one. So, unless these kidnappers were looking for debt and not ransom, money wasn’t the motive, meaning – it was someone who knew him.

But who?

‘Family?’

Liam shook his head; that was impossible. The only immediate family left was his mother, but she was locked up in a mental institute for murdering his father. 

Liam hadn’t seen her in over nine years. The last time he visited was when he was fourteen. She had broken down and latched onto him, crying about how his father was a devil and that God told her to free him. That was the moment he realized his mother was insane, so he stopped visiting.

To this day, she still sent him birthday and Christmas cards. One time, on a whim, he decided to read one and immediately tossed it in the trash. She hadn’t changed; she never would. Unless she had broken out of the facility, it couldn’t be her.

As for his other family, they were either dead or he hadn’t seen them in years. They hadn’t wanted him when was a kid, so why would they want him now?

‘Revenge?’

That was possible. In Liam's short twenty-three years of life, there was a long list of people that hated him. When he was younger, he had done a lot of stupid and petty things; sometimes, it was seeking attention, other times out of anger or frustration. But…

‘No – I don’t know these people.’

Everyone here was a stranger and it was unlikely that they all incurred the wrath of the same individual.

‘Terrorism? Mass kidnapping? Human trafficking?’

None of those sounded good, especially since that would mean Liam had no connection to the kidnapper. Not only would it be harder to find him, but it eliminated the possibility of negotiating with them. If there was an upside, it was that the police were probably already investigating. While he might not have anyone that would report him missing, that wasn’t true for everyone here. Plus, it wasn’t every day that this many people suddenly went missing. Still, assuming this was all true, some oddities couldn’t be explained.

‘Why aren’t we bound?’

Liam wasn’t going to complain, but it was strange. What kind of kidnapper left their captives to walk around freely? It wasn’t logical; all it did was create unnecessary risk of the captives escaping or rebelling. However, there was something even stranger…

‘It hasn’t gone away.’

Liam looked at the thing in the corner of his vision and sighed internally.

‘Ha, maybe insanity runs in my family.’

Ever since he opened his eyes, there had been a digital screen in his vision. At first, he ignored it because of its sheer lunacy and figured his mind was playing tricks on him. It would go away as soon as he forgot about it.

It didn’t.

Accepting that it wasn’t going to disappear, he focused his attention on it. It was a familiar screen, even as someone who didn’t play video games frequently, he still recognized it.

----------------------------------------

[Status Window]

[General]

Name: Liam Harvell

Age: 23

Class: Unassigned

Sub-Class: None

[Skills]

None

[Stats]

Strength: E

Stamina: E-

Agility: E+

Endurance: F

Magic Power: C+

[Personal Traits]

Distrusting – Does not trust others.

Cold – Hard to approach, unfriendly.

Loner – Prefers to be alone.

Levelheaded – Maintains calm.

Fast Learner – Improves quickly.

----------------------------------------

Liam stared blankly at the screen. While he didn’t want to believe that he was insane, he was starting to wonder if he needed to check himself into the same mental institute as his mother.

‘Okay, okay. For the time being, I’ll assume I’m not insane.’

Liam took another look and skimmed over the status window, skipping his class, sub-class, and skills, which were all blank until his eyes fell on his stats.

‘Shit… My stats are terrible.’

He didn’t need to be an avid gamer to know that. An F rating, on any scale, was undesirable. As he didn’t know any scale where F stood for fantastic and not failure, he had to accept the truth – his stats were the lowest of the low. While he didn’t exercise at all, he still wasn’t overweight or even underweight and wanted to believe his fitness level was at least average.

Liam turned his attention to his personal traits.

‘What the fuck is this shit!? Who wrote this garbage!?’

The descriptions of them felt like a personal attack against him, portraying him as a cold and logical robot. Certainly, he couldn’t deny the validity of them, but the maker should have made an effort to make him sound a bit more human.

[Would you like to close your status? (Yes/No)]

Following the prompt, he closed his status. When he thought to close it, the status disappeared as if it was never there in the first place.

Liam read the new message that appeared before it faded away.

[You can open your status by thinking ‘status.’]

Giving it a try, Liam opened his status again. While he was familiarizing himself with the status’s operations, an icy breeze brushed past him.

Liam shivered. His attention returned to the current situation. Despite knowing a bit more information than a few minutes ago, it still wasn’t much. As he saw it, there were two options. One, he could stay here and hope that help arrives before he froze to death. Two, he could walk through the door in the back of the room and look for proper shelter.

Without any hesitation Liam stood up; the only viable choice was option two. Immediately, the coldness of the ground permeated his socks; it felt like pins and needles pressing on the soles of his feet. He walked to the door, brushing past the strangers in the room and grabbed handle. Before he could open it, an aggressive voice, akin to a store clerk yelling at a shoplifter, came from behind.

“Hey, you! Stop!”

The brunette from the group of three girls was standing behind Liam with her arms crossed, impatiently tapping her foot on the floor.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

She glared; her eyes were sharp as if she was trying to dig a confession out of him.

“Hello? Did you hear me?”

Liam finally spoke up.

“Uh, I was going outside to look around. Is that a problem or something?”

“Tsk.”

She clicked her tongue. Fueled by the stress of the situation, her temper was beginning to show. In an irritated voice, she spoke.

“Listen here, dumbass. In case you didn’t realize it, this isn’t a situation where you can be acting all carefree. I don’t care what happens to you, but your little exploration might start shit that gets us in trouble. I bet a stupid bastard like you didn’t think of that, huh?”

Liam frowned; he didn’t know how to respond to her. Behind her, the two other girls had turned their attention towards him. Putting aside her wildly inaccurate accusations, he didn’t want to team up with a bunch of strangers, especially when it looked like the girls were already acquainted. He also didn’t imagine himself having much of a say in the group when the brunette’s statement roughly translated to, “shut up and listen to me”. While he was trying to come up with a response that wouldn’t cause the brunette to wildly blow up in his face in a fit of anger, someone stepped in.

“Hey, hey. Let’s all calm down. There’s no need to fight…”

Stepping between Liam and the brunette, the man in the football jersey waved his hands in the air, trying to dissipate the tension. Giving an awkward chuckle, he continued speaking to Liam.

“Sorry about that… If you want to go off by yourself, we won’t stop you. But if you happen to change your mind, feel free to come back and join us, okay?”

Seeing that the other two girls were quietly talking to the brunette, working to calm her down, it looked like the situation had resolved itself.

“I’ll keep that in mind… Thanks.”

Liam nodded at the man, but as he turned around to leave, the brunette shouted at him.

“Hey, asshole! Don’t just-mmmphh!”

Before she could finish her sentence, she was subdued by her friends. The redhead had quickly covered her mouth while the blonde wrapped her arms around her, holding her back. From the girl’s quick reaction and skillful execution, they appeared to be experienced at this.

“Mmmphhh!"

The brunette’s eyes bulged as she twisted her body, struggling to break free of their grasp. The redhead lowered her head in apology.

“Sorry about Claire. She can be a bit of a hothead sometimes…”

Raising her head, she looked at Liam and spoke softly.

“Um, are you sure you don’t want to work together with us? I can promise you that Claire won’t be causing any more issues.”

Liam shook his head.

“No, I’m fine.”

“I see. Well, good luck.”

Giving up any attempt to persuade him otherwise, she returned to the more pressing matter of dealing with Claire. Shaking her index finger in front of Claire’s face, she began to lecture her. Gradually, Claire’s struggle to break free lessened, and she drooped her head, reflecting on her actions.

With no more distractions, Liam pulled the door open and…

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr – Slam!

He immediately slammed it shut. 

‘What the fuck was that thing!’

He broke into a cold sweat, trying to understand what he just saw.

A large back dog with two heads and a chain around its neck was waiting outside. With its patchy fur and sharp yellow teeth, the dog looked rabid. Upon seeing Liam, saliva had begun to spill from its mouth as if it was eyeing a juicy steak.

Liam briskly turned around and walked back to the others. He just remembered something important.

‘In times like this, it’s best to work together.’