Chapter 2: The Beginning

I woke up for the second time that day. It was completely dark, and it felt like something was being pressed into my face, trying to smother me. I pushed myself up and realized I was face-down in dirt, explaining both concerning factors. Then I realized that it was still dark. I looked up and saw that I was in a forest, in the middle of the night.

I sat bolt upright and started to hyperventilate. I had been camping before, but with a tent, a blanket, and some other freaking people. I was completely alone. I was absolutely terrified. After a few minutes of not dying or being attacked, my breathing slowed down and I started to think rationally. As much as it was terrifying, being alone was probably for the best- the alternative was being mauled by a wild animal, and I think I'd rather be scared than dead.

I took a long look around me. I was sitting in an oddly circular patch of dirt in the dead-center of a clearing in a medium-density forest. Sadly, medium-density gave maximum room between trees for predators to hide and minimum visibility for me. But I could manage. I stood up to look at my strange dirt-patch and noticed that it really was a perfect circle. Around it was grass, interspersed with flowers. It was honestly quite pretty. In my dirt-patch, next to where I was sitting, was a small, dark shape. I bent down and picked it up. It was like a small rectangle with the corners carved out to leave curves, and a tiny display in the middle with a raised circle bordering it and three buttons. It had an antenna and divots in the sides. I pressed one of the two adjacent buttons and the display lit up, but showed nothing. I pressed the other, and nothing happened. I pressed the larger button on the other side and the screen got even brighter and the device started beeping at me.

"Ssssh! Ssssssshhh!" I hissed at it, but obviously it didn't stop its beeping. The screen kept getting brighter and for a second I thought I'd be knocked out and moved again. But instead, a shape appeared on the screen. It was just a circle. Dark, like a shadow. It got darker and darker, I guess to signify that it was getting closer. I didn't get it.

Then it got weirdly naturally dark. No longer did it look like a pixelated shape, it looked like something on the screen. Literally. If I didn't know better, I'd say something were coming out of the device. And then, of course, reality had to throw me a curveball.

There was something coming out of it. Just a small sphere, like a ball. I caught it as it finished coming out, feeling way too surreal. I felt all around the capsule- it was firm, and rough, like an egg, but completely spherical, like a bouncy ball. I figured for now, I wouldn't bounce it to test.

I decided then and there that I should probably give up on my confusion and disbelief. In the past 24 hours I had woken up, been totally alone, discovered my house was no longer really my house, discovered my neighborhood was empty, discovered the police no longer existed, had my computer act in ways it is impossible for it to act, passed out and woke up in a perfect circle of dirt in a forest and just collected a capsule that came out of a tiny, unidentifiable device conveniently placed right next to me. Rational thought: Good. Conventional thought: Probably useless.

While I was accepting the impossible, I decided I should stop deluding myself about what happened with my computer- Regardless of what caused it, the light swallowed me up and I was teleported, not physically moved. My job now was to find out where the hell I was.

Or at least, it was until the bushes 20 feet away began rustling slightly. The panic from earlier hit me again, full-force. I jumped to my feet and then froze, standing completely still, listening and hoping whatever it was in the bushes wasn't listening to me.

At first, nothing. Then, a very soft sobbing. A child?

Or possibly, a predatory animal mimicking a child to lure me in. I think there are animals that do that... Regardless, it kept weeping. It made little wuffling sounds between each sob.

Do I go and check? It could be a kid who needs my help. Or it could eat me... But, if I take this chance to run away, I could be abandoning a little kid. Not to mention, I could get attacked in the forest regardless.

But...If it is a predator, I'd rather take my chances running than guaranteed having to fight an animal.

Apparently, my argument had been solved for me, given that I was taking a step forward.

But even if it is a kid, I'm under no obligation to help them!

Another step.

Why am I doing this?!

Another step. At this point, I gave up. I was clearly going to investigate the sobbing. I don't even like kids that much, but apparently I felt it a moral imperative to help them.

I drew up to the bush the rustling was coming from. The sobbing by now was quite clear. I looked over, and saw the dark and obscured, but unmistakable, shape of a child. I kind of expected it to be a predator, just because the universe wanted to punish me for being a dumbass.

I reached a hand forward. "Hey, w-"

An earsplitting scream assaulted my ears, and the child turned very quickly to face me, continued to scream, and ran away.

"Wait!" I shouted, and began to run after her. "Hold on! I'm not trying to hurt you!"

She'd have none of that, however. She kept running and shouting and crying. She kept running between trees and turning abruptly, causing me to lose her for brief periods before I heard where she was running and could follow again. She was surprisingly fast for a little kid.

Granted, she had an advantage: She was small, so she could fit in small spaces, and I was pretty sure she had shoes, which I did not. And man, was I feeling it. Thorns, twigs and rocks, every step.

I chased her for almost five minutes before she finally tripped. As she started falling, I realized she might hit her head on a rock in the dark. I had ten feet to go and was more or less blind, so it seemed perfectly reasonable to try and catch her. Couldn't be any less rational than anything else that had happened that night, at least.

I put on a burst of speed and almost immediately tripped and flew forward. Instead of guarding against the ground, I reached forward to grab her on my way down. I secured my hands around her waist and pulled her in as I curled my legs in to shield her from the ground. My shoulder slammed into a tree root and I don't think there was a single part of my legs left un-bloodied. I'd say I regretted the decision, but really, if a little kid could concuss themselves or worse and you hurt yourself protecting them, would you regret it?

She yelled and cried and kicked and screamed for me to let her go and cried and kicked and yelled and cried and yelled and cried. I held her to make sure she didn't run off again and attempted, in vain, to convince her that I was safe.

Of course, as is appropriate in the woods at night when screaming, we heard howling. It was far away, but close enough to hear us, and eat us. We both shut the hell up.

I whispered, "You don't have to trust me, but I would hope you trust me more than a wolf. I'm going to carry you up into this tree. You're going to stay quiet. We're going to survive. Sound good?"

She nodded.

I slung her over my shoulder so I could at least use my forearm to brace against the tree to help climb. I felt around for a foothold, and once I located one, I stepped onto it and pushed. I braced with my arm, found a branch to pull myself up on, and started to climb further up. I stumbled because of the darkness a few times, but I made sure not to fall or drop her. After a bit, we made it high enough to stop. I positioned myself sitting on a thick branch with my legs over a slightly thinner one and bracing one arm and the girl on my lap, holding onto my side so as to stay in the tree.

"So, now that you're sitting on my lap eight feet off the ground in the woods in the middle of the night while hiding from animals," I whispered, "What's your name?"

"Susie," she whispered back, "What's yows?"

"Lucy. How old are you?"

She lifted her hand, but it was too dark to tell how many fingers she was holding up.

"I can't see your hand, Susie."

"I'm fow. Almose five."

Jesus christ.

She started crying again. "I downo wew I am... I downo wew my mom an dad aw..."

"Me either... I woke up and my parents were gone and my house was empty. Of everything. And no one was around in my neighborhood."

"Dey wew gone... I walked awound an den the phone started glowin. An den I woke up hew an you scawed me. An I found dis..." She produced another of those devices. This was getting freakier and freakier by the minute.

Accepting the craziness of it all, I told her to press the button on the left. She did, and the screen glowed, first bright, then brighter, and soon we had another capsule.

"Woah..." She muttered. She marveled for a while, and then put them in her pockets. She was wearing a shin-length dress. I thought it was blue, but it was too dark to tell.

I got her talking about her life before this happened, to get her mind off it all. She'd gone fishing a week ago with her parents and loved it. She'd had a playdate two days ago, and it went really well until she and her friend got in a fight over the last popsicle (which she got in the end). Her life was so normal. So was mine. Why was this happening?

We kept talking until she fell asleep, leaning her head on my shoulder. I wanted to sleep, but I couldn't without risking falling out of the tree. I sat there for an hour, the branch digging into my thighs, my arm getting tired from supporting us, entertaining myself with my thoughts and a loose twig.

After that, I started to drift off. I kept forcing myself awake, because I'd be damned if the thing that killed me today was me, but I was getting tired. Really tired.

Really tired...