Parallel Illusions

Chapter 3

Umbreon opened his eyes, noticing him and his brother were no longer home. He looked around at what seemed like the setting for a zombie apocalypse movie.

"Sunny, you good?" he asks his brother who's laying face first into the ground.

"Yep" his brother replies, his voice muffled and slightly irrigated.

Sunny lifts his head off the floor, looking around at his surroundings.

"Where are we? There's a way home, right?" Sunny blurts, his voice beginning to tremble and his breaths increase in speed.

"We're fine!" Umbreon says, putting his hands on his brother's shoulders to calm him down.

"But what if–"

"No 'what if's', I'll find a way out of here I promise" Umbreon interrupts.

The sun was beginning to set and if this dimension was some sort of 'zombie apocalypse' like their surroundings suggested it was, they didn't want to be someone else's dinner.

There was an old building ahead with lights shining through one of the windows, which suggested there were other people here.

"We may find people in there that could help us get home" Umbreon says, pointing to an old building. Sunny gets up, and the two walk over to the building, hoping to find at least something! Cautious of their apocalyptic surrounding, they made their way inside.

The air inside the building was stale, thick with a chemical musk that burned Sunny's throat. He glanced around, his eyes darting from one odd structure to the next. Enormous glass cylinders stood along the walls, the kind he'd only seen in sci-fi movies. Like something meant to hold alien creatures or experiments. Umbreon's footsteps echoed beside him, deliberate and calm, though Sunny could feel the tension in the air between them.

"This place is... something," Sunny muttered, his voice barely breaking through the silence.

Umbreon hummed in agreement, his eyes sharp as they scanned the room. Too curious. The building felt alive somehow, like it was waiting for something to happen.

From the shadows, a figure stepped forward. He moved with the slow, assured grace of someone who didn't need to rush—someone who knew he was in charge.

"Welcome." The voice was low, controlled, but there was a sneer behind it. The boy before them couldn't have been much older than nineteen, though he seemed far older. He looked them up and down, like they were nothing but interesting specimens.

"You must be from another dimension, everyone else in this ones dead" the boy said. "I'm Abaddon."

Sunny swallowed hard. There was something unnerving about the way Abaddon spoke, the casual way he mentioned how everyone was just, dead. Umbreon, however, kept a straight face, but was panicking on the inside.

"You could say that," Umbreon replied coolly, folding his arms across his chest. "And you're the one who runs this place, I take it?"

A slow smile crept across Abaddon's face. "Something like that."

Before Sunny could respond, two more figures appeared—twins, by the look of them. The first, Arlo, wore a dead-eyed stare, his movements almost mechanical. Niko, on the other hand, bounced on his feet, grinning with a kind of chaotic energy that sent a shiver down Sunny's spine.

"Oh, we're going to have so much fun with you," Niko practically sang, his accent thick and his eyes gleaming. "You look like the type that would bleed just the right way."

Both Sunny and Umbreon took a step back, thinking, What the actual fuck.

"Chill, Niko," Arlo said flatly. "We don't need a mess. Not yet, anyway" he said with a small smirk creeping onto his face. He had short hair with black roots, a black and red striped shirt and black patched up pants.