‘How long was I away?’ – Myke wondered awaking slowly.

While still laying on the floor a smile appeared on his face.

The pain was gone, and his breathing normalized. Rejuvenated from the sleep everything was great again.

A gurgling sound came from his belly.

‘Oh, I’m so hungry!’

He thought for a while, but he couldn't remember the last meal he had eaten.

‘I have to get some food’

He suddenly twisted his face recalling all the events up to this moment and the fear started building up again.

At least this time there was no immediate danger to his life.

His priorities changed from food to assessment of the current situation.

With half-closed eyes, he looked at the blinding light. It was the moon shining brightly through the broken wall.

‘I never thought that the moon can be so bright.’

He rose to his elbows and winced. His muscles were sore from sleeping on the floor, but what shocked him the most was the sight of his naked body.

This was a perfectly trained young body. Every muscle was visible like a statue of a Greek god.

‘Is this my body?’

There were no traces of his overweight and hanging belly.

‘If my ex could see me now, she would be so sorry that she left me’ – a thin smile appeared on his face while thinking about this.

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Curiosity slowly took over the fear.

There was no time to get excited though.

This place looked like his apartment, but it was wrecked. Dust and rubble covered the floor and the furniture was mostly smashed to pieces.

He looked at the big cocoon in the middle of the room. This thing that he broke out of.

It was attached to the floor and the ceiling and looked like a meat egg with big veins covering it like a spider web.

There was a big opening on the side Myke busted out of and the infill slime was scattered all over the floor.

His face twisted with disgust.

‘For how long was I in this thing? And how did I get inside there in the first place?’ – he wondered looking at the cocoon.

Regardless of how much he strained his brain, he couldn’t remember what happened.

The last thing he remembered was the pressure from his work. The release date for the new vector processor his team was developing was just in two weeks.

As usual, he worked until late and just got home with some Chinese food for dinner.

He was overworked lately, but with the nearing release, it couldn’t be helped. His team was building a unique custom-made vector processor for the AIs of the company’s latest cloud game platform.

The next day was the last meeting before the release of the new AIs. This was the first release with support of the new vector processor, and he had to be well prepared for it.

The plan was to eat in front of the computer while preparing the final details for the meeting.

‘I placed the food on the desk and started the computer, but what happened afterward?’

His memory between this event and the time he woke up in the cocoon was blank.

Gathering more information was necessary.

Myke tried to stand up, but the strength in his arms and legs wasn’t enough. On top of that, the floor was extra slippery from all the slime.

He pushed himself with his arms and tried to stand again, but he slipped right away back to the floor.

Then, he started to crawl towards the wall. He thought he will be able to stand up using the wall as support.

Slowly crawling on all four he finally reached the wall.

With the right hand on the wall, he pushed his body up with his left hand and the legs.

Slowly he was able to stand up.

He looked at his shaking legs.

‘They look so strong and yet they are so weak as if I never used them before.’

Looking at his apartment Myke had a bad feeling about the world outside.

Using the wall for support he slowly started walking toward the broken wall. With every step, he took walking got easier and more stable. It was like learning to walk all over again but in a turbo mode.

When he reached the broken wall, he could already walk on his own.

He took a look outside and frowned.

‘What the hell happened here?’

He looked at the ruined city outside and felt goosebumps all over his skin.

The moon and the stars lit everything. Although it was in the middle of the night, he couldn’t find any lights coming from the city.

‘This is a dead city now’ – he frowned from this thought even more.

His legs gave up and he fell on his knees thinking about all the lost souls that lived here.

His stomach ached and he felt the urge to throw up again.

‘They are all dead!’ – a desperate thought came into his mind

‘This can’t be real! This is just a nightmare.’

‘This is from overworking. I’ll wake up soon in my bed and will laugh about it.’

He tried to convince himself that this isn’t real. That everything is just a dream.

But deep inside he knew the truth. There was no going back to his convenient old life. A life he lived just until yesterday.

He felt dizzy, but then his stomach gurgled again.

He decided to search for food first. Concentrating on one thing at a time was the way to go now. Thinking about only one thing can take his mind off the helpless situation.

First things first. He looked at his naked body and thought about the wardrobe in the next room.

It was a small closet room without a window, so there was a big chance that it was still whole and intact.