Jason lay in his bed, his mind puzzling over the events of the day. He pondered the strange man who gave him the odd piece of advice. Or was it a warning? The words kept playing through his head.
"What did he mean?" He murmured to himself.
Unable to sleep he instead got up and went to open his computer. The soft glow of the screen gently lit up his darkened room. He decided to visit the article that troubled him so much earlier. He couldn't tell what, but something just wasn't right. He skimmed through the article and noticed something he didn't before. The article stated that 179 people were working at this government site. All of them were found dead, autopsy reports claiming an unnatural death.
All the workers found, rather than having burn marks, were… twisted in on themselves, mangled and mashed like some giant’s botched attempts at pretzels. Some had even been found inside walls like a wall walking ghost that suddenly turned solid halfway through. Allegedly, there was one victim that survived 3 hours after discovery. However, the victim was unable to speak and was soon put out of his misery.
This wasn’t the only article either, it was just one amid a storm of other headlines including a more dubious one claiming that the “Government is allegedly investigating a new form of torture and enhanced information extraction.” Underneath, the tagline quote, “Geneva's not going to like this.” Other headlines included: “The dangers of teleportation”, “Star Trek Debunked”, and “TRIBBLES IN YOUR DRYER?! IT'S MORE LIKELY THAN YOU THINK!” with an attached picture of bigfoot sighing in front of his dryer.
"What could have caused that?" Jason asked, repulsed by the graphic descriptions of so many innocent people’s deaths.
As he spoke, his computer softly dinged, giving him a notification that he had received a message.
That’s strange... it's from an email I don’t recognize. And it's marked urgent.
He opened the email and was greeted with two words. If it weren’t for the timing of the message he would have assumed that it was a prank, some kind of sick joke, but somehow, he knew this was real, and it shook him to his core. He walked away from the screen, body trembling. On his screen were the words: “IT'S STARTED.”
...
Olivia lay on her bed, crying. She wished more than anything that she had someone's shoulder to cry on. That shoulder used to belong to her mom, after which belonged to Violet. But now she had no one. She felt truly alone in the world, crushed by the weight of the realization that she would likely never see her closest friend again. It was then that her phone dinged. It was a message from an unknown number. Confused, she picked up her phone. The message consisted of just two words, the same two words as Jason's mysterious email. “IT’S STARTED.”
…
Jason stood, looking at his screen when he heard shuffling behind him, his door opened ominously, and then someone spoke.
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"Who are you and what are you doing in my house!?"
Jason whirled around, looking for the source of the voice. It was a girl standing in the doorway, her hair all messy and her eyes red and puffy as if she had just been crying. She looked like a mess. He took all this in while trying to find his voice.
"W-what do you mean your house? This is my house! What are you doing here?"
The girl looked like she was about to start crying again when she saw the computer behind him and the ominous-sounding message.
"You- you got it too?" she said in a shaky voice, her hand trembling as she pulled out her phone to show him the message. "What's happening?" She said.
"I... have no idea," He said, getting out of his chair and crossing the distance between the two, "But whatever it is that has started, whatever is happening, clearly we're both involved.”
...
Olivia was confused and scared. With all the strange things happening today, she thought that it couldn’t get much weirder, but walking out of her room to see a boy in a room that most definitely was not there before, she realized that she was clearly wrong.
"How did I end up here?" She asked, trying her best not to hyperventilate.
"Well... uh... what happened before you came here?" The boy responded looking visibly shaken.
"Well, I read the text, and I got up to show my… my dad the text and instead opened my door to find... well... you"
"That’s odd, it seems almost like the two doors, I don’t know, combined... T-to send you through... space... Or something..."
Just then the other door in the room creaked open of its own volition, seemingly leading to what appeared to be a long white hallway with hundreds of doors.
"Where do you live? A mansion?" Olivia asked, bewildered.
"Sadly, no... I'm afraid that the hallway was not there before." Jason replied his eyes narrowing in suspicion.
"I.. I uh... feel like we should really go through this door," Olivia said slowly, unable to draw her eyes away from the doorway.
"Its almost as if… it’s calling to us," Jason droned in response, his voice void of emotion.
Unable to resist, they started lurching toward the door, each step easier than the last. Then they were through.
...
Jason's desire to cross the threshold of the door was a strange yet not unwelcome one, which immediately disappeared after he was through. What he had previously mistaken for electric lighting on the hallway wasn't electric at all, but just seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. There was also a low hum that permeated the room and the hallway seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see. He also noticed that the doors in the hallway seemed to have no handles, no discernable way of opening them.
As Jason’s eyes adjusted to the all-accompanying light, he realized they were not alone. Multiple other people were stepping through the other doors simultaneously.
Olivia gasped, "Some of them aren't even human!"
Looking around, Jason could see that the strange group of people consisted of: A tall man in a blindingly shiny suit of armor, a person that resembled a red fox wearing what could only be described as futuristic clothing, another animal-like person, this time a cat wearing much the same as the fox, and of course Jason and Olivia.
Jason and Olivia gaped at the very odd assortment in front of them wondering just exactly what they were.
It seemed some of the others not so subtly mirrored the two’s sentiments, as immediately after seeing where he was and the unnatural animal people, the man in armor jumped backward, as gracefully as someone in armor can feasibly jump, and screeched. "What manner of creature are you?! And where on earth are we?"
"I-I have no idea," Jason responded, flustered.
Olivia nodded in agreeance, hiding behind Jason and using his body as a meat shield.
"We appear to be in some kind of... interdimensional hallway." Said the strange fox person gruffly.
"Indeed you are, my fine furred friend," came a voice. Everyone whirled towards the sound of the mysterious voice to see a middle-aged man with brown spiky hair, magenta eyes with a scar over his right one, and a fur-lined ancient leather jacket.
"Welcome... to the INTERVERSE."