Pressurized

Chapter 1

You're in a void. A deep black void. Your body is quietly waking itself up, yet your eyes are still heavy. You hear around you, faintly, your local train. It shakes your house. You feel the warmth of your comforter. Finally, you see the light shine in your eyes.

You feel strong enough now to open your eyes and adjust yourself to your surroundings. The bare walls. The black and white. It's so...pale. Too modern. Too...bland. More than usual. It seems from your eyes, the world is losing its color. It used to be so bright.

Suddenly you feel the need to stretch. You sit up and stretch your stiff body. It's cold. You need coffee. Your legs feel better than usual. This concerns you. You can't help but sigh at the fact you need to be active more. You glance at the treadmill near your bed.

After moments of contemplating, you finally remove your blanket and reveal your legs. It's cold. You sit there, wondering if you should get up or not, but in the end, it's not your choice. You end up getting up and walking groggily to your door. Each step, you're used to agonizing pain, but it doesn't hurt now. You haven't been working since that incident at your job though.

You've memorized the steps. The creaks, and the squeaky floorboards moving as you take each step, counting them, simultaneously, in your head. 1...2...3...4... You get to the door and open the freezing door nob. You open it up to a hallway that looks similar to your room. So..cold.

As you walk down that hallway, you start thinking about your job, and the certain incident. Your job has always given you some weird mindset about things. It's like a parasite, it's taken over everything about you. It's torn your family from you. Your relationships. Your life. All of it. It was never your choice.

After thinking, you find yourself in the same hallway. It seems you've barely moved. Focus on your task. You take your steps into the kitchen. You look over at the coffee pot, turn to it, move the lid up, put four spoonfulls of coffee grounds, and a lot of water. You don't need that much, do you?

You turn the coffee pot on and wait. You walk around your extremely modern kitchen for a while, wondering what to do today. You could go for a run? Check the mail? Do the things you would regularly do? You notice and envelope sitting near your door. You see a symbol on it. Your job...

You walk over to the envelope and pick it up. "Open Immediately" it says at the top. You open it up, and you see at the top of the folded side, it says, "confidential." You continue reading. sigh. A "special" suprise from work. You start up again...Today. Except it's just you.

You read the note some more. It's mortifying. You look over at your coffee pot and turn it off, waiting for it to cool down to your favorite temperature. Going back to the envelope. No one at work has told you the incident, and ironic enough, all your coworkers don't text you anymore.

Your thoughts go wild in the last few sentences. "We need you back at Nadal. To find all of your missing coworkers. You cannot back out of this case. Good luck, Z-45." Signed, your boss, and some...red..smudge?.. Missing? Whatever could've happened? Worse? It's now YOUR job to sacrifice your life to find your coworkers.

The panic starts to set in, and all the realization hits. You work on a large submarine site. Thousands of feet underwater. Why did you accept the job? It wasn't your choice.

Suddenly your breathing gets heavy. Stage 1. Your vision starts to blur. Your getting warm Stage 2. Your breathing gets faster. Your eyes get dark. Your gonna die. Stage 3. Snap out of it.

Moments later, you calm down, and it all comes to you slowly. You're working underwater, and someone (something) attacked the submarine you work for. Your the only one who had survived and you need to investigate.

You feel this urge to grab the letter again. You notice words you didn't see before. "You are expendable. Your not expected to return." Good thing there absolutely nothing you can return too.

What would you even go back to? You family? They're gone. Your pets? Taken. Your entire life? absolutely nothing. It's not your choice. It never was. Everything was taken from you and you can NEVER get it back.

You sigh. Get over yourself. You drink your coffee and sit in silence, finally grabbing a book, don't even think about it. It's just a stupid book.