Haw… there really was nothing better than a nice comfy bed. The way it envelops you, as if a nice warm hug, is comparable to none. Quinn had always loved beds. Sure the occasional nightmares could harm the experience, but the countless dreams were worth the potential night terror.

Not only that, they were just so dang comfy. Even the straw mats she had to use on occasion weren’t too bad once she got used to them. Truly, there was no such thing as an uncomfortable bed.

Well, that's what she used to think, but now? She wasn’t so sure. She was laying on a wooden bed. That's right, just straight wood. It hurt her back like hell, but she at least had a pillow to rest her head on and a blanket to keep her warm. Although their sense in beds was terrible, at least they tried to make her comfy with the pillow and blanket.

How she got here was a mystery. A mystery hidden behind the flashing moments of her memory. It was nary a moment of concentration before her scattered memories began to slowly fill her back in.

After she had fallen, she had flashes of awareness before falling back to blissful sleep. Quinn remembered someone carrying her - a man with pale skin and long blonde hair. Then she was in a building that reeked to the heavens of crushed herbs and medical sharpness. The building was made of thatch and wood, like what she might have seen in a poor village or tribal community.

She woke up there a few times but fell asleep in fevered fits of dreams. She was in and out for a while, shifting from side to side in the medicine hut as her body felt like it was burning up. Then something changed. She awoke the next time out in the woods, gently swaying as several people walked around her, carrying her on a stretcher.

And then she was here, in this new place with the wooden bed.

Quinn pushed off the blanket -oddly made of some kind of canvas- swung her legs over the side of her resting place, and sat on the edge of the bed as she looked around. A sharp twinge of pain arced through her ribs, withdrawing a groan from her lips. She held her side and waited for the pain to fade.

In an attempt to distract herself, she idly glanced around her new location. She was in a small stone room, with just barely enough space for some furniture and the bed she found herself on. A door was on the wall opposite where she sat.

The furniture and door seemed kind of low quality as if they had been hand-made instead of produced in a factory. She had seen something similar when she traveled to out-of-the-way villages back when she still traveled. Ah… how long had it been since she last saw the world? It would have to be before her… well, it's been a while, to say the least. Maybe this was a good opportunity for her before she dove back into research.

Speaking of opportunity, how was she given this one? What exactly happened to her? She struggled to get her thoughts in order. The last thing she remembered was… was… the meeting with Daniel. That's right, Daniel woke her up and they met with the military to garner an investment. And then she messed with the portal in hopes of gaining a higher approval.

Her eyes widened as her memory fully returned. She had been sucked into the depths of the portal when it imploded. The pressure had been horrible as she was helpless to the portal’s suction. It was as if she was caught in the event horizon of a black hole, bound to be assimilated into its core.

And then she was in the forest. She tried to remember what it was like traveling through the portal. Was it just an instant travel from one hole in space to the next like what they thought? Like hole-punching a folded piece of paper?

No. It couldn’t have been. Quinn was a hundred percent sure there wasn’t another PM-1 set up anywhere else than the viewing room. She had been the lead creator and designer, so she knew better than anyone that only two working prototypes were made. So how did she get… wherever here was?

Did it just randomly teleport her to a forest inhabited by tribal people? But they obviously couldn’t have been tribal since she was in a stone room… was she in a poor country? She had heard and seen that the housing in some of the less fortunate countries wasn’t very good. That would explain the lack of commercial goods so far.

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Truly, Quinn was just taking shots in the dark. To most, it was simple guesses, but they were hypotheses to her. Just like she had been trained, use observed events to formulate a hypothesis and either prove or disprove it.

The door opened up and a woman walked in. She held a couple of towels and a bowl filled with what looked like water. What really caught Quinn’s attention was the lady’s attire. She was wearing a long blue tunic and trousers, and the oddest part was the cloak around her. It looked like a crossbreed of a full-body cloak and a poncho, covering almost all of her upper torso, entire back, and sides. She also, peculiarly, had a face mask -a seemingly simple neck gaiter- down around her neck.

It wouldn’t be that odd, but the materials were quite out there. The tunic, just like Quinn might have expected from a poverty-stricken area, was seemingly handwoven wool. This all but confirmed her theory of being randomly ported to a poor village.

The cloak thing was what really caught her attention. It was made out of a fabric she had never seen before. It had the sheen of plastic but seemed to flow like a fine silk. It didn’t have the usual clunkiness associated with the thicker fabrics, and -considering that the woman wasn’t sweating at all- seemed quite breathable. It was dark gray in color.

The woman exclaimed happily once she saw Quinn was up. She started to speak in an unknown language. Quinn looked confused by the language. It wasn’t any she had heard before, and she had proficiency in 7 and fluency in 2.

The woman noticed her confusion and stopped talking. She set the items down on the only table in the room and looked at Quinn for a moment, scratching her head. She once more asked a question but got nothing more than a shake of Quinn’s head. Nodding and mumbling to herself, she held up her hand in a universal sign to wait before walking back the way she came.

Odd. Quinn didn’t really know what to think about the interaction. Almost nothing about the woman really helped pinpoint where she was either. The woman was super pale like she hadn’t seen the sun in a while. Maybe she was somewhere north? It was kind of cold…

Quinn looked down at herself, wondering what had happened to her clothes. She hadn’t noticed before, but she had an entire wardrobe change at some point. A flush of embarrassment rose to her cheeks as she realized someone had undressed her. That flush quickly faded when she remembered the state her clothes were in. She was barely covered to begin with.

She was now wearing a tunic just like the woman. It was also dyed blue, but the dye was extremely faded. It was a little rough on her skin, but at least her modesty was protected. Unlike the woman’s, her new tunic stopped at mid-thigh. She also wore a pair of trousers. The roughness of which really made her miss her jeans.

The woman returned, followed by a short old man. His face looked haggard and he wore the same cloak-poncho thing though his was a faded yellow. His white hair, which was shockingly lush, was pulled back. Not combed back mind you, but pulled back as if he ran his hands through his hair frequently. He, just like the last two people she had seen, was quite pale. Was she surrounded by vampires or something? If Quinn was honest, the elder man kind of reminded her of the last time she saw her grandfather, may he rest in peace.

The man talked to the other woman in a hushed tone using the odd language. The women spoke back, and this continued for a short while. Quinn tried to follow along, but it was quite difficult to understand purely based on facial expressions. From what she could understand, the older man was in charge. He was giving directions to the woman, and the woman didn’t like them.

The woman threw her hands up and left the room.

The man deeply sighed before looking at Quinn. He pointed to himself slowly as he eyed her, “Alwin. Alwin.” The man then pointed at her.

She quickly understood what he was trying to do. Something similar had happened to her when was first learning other languages. She repeated his motion, “Quinn.”

“Quinn.” The man muttered and then nodded. He grabbed his chin lightly as he stared at her. It was obvious he was thinking about something, but she couldn’t quite tell what. The language gap was quite annoying. If she could understand just a few words, she might have been able to figure out what was happening and where she was.

Quinn saw his expression change slightly, seemingly coming to a decision. His eyebrows tightened in focus as Alwin pulled a chair up to her and sat down on it. Then he reached out his hand. And waited.

Did he want a handshake? She returned the gesture, expecting nothing more than a friendly greeting. What she wasn’t expecting was her vision to blackout as soon as they made contact. With a slight pain in her head, she felt like she was being whisked away. Different from the last couple of times she lost consciousness, this time felt unnerving. Almost unnatural.