Momo's POV
I dove into the portal as it sucked me in, closing up behind me. I could feel the force of it pulling me, my skin tightening, my eyes about burst out of their sockets. It felt like my whole body was shrinking, something was dripping tightly onto me, and I couldn't even scream as my mouth stayed shut. I used all my might to shut my eyes.
Suddenly, I was standing on solid ground. I hadn't even realized it. I felt no sense of time. I could have been standing there for days, my eyes just shut, standing like a sim.
I could barely remember the portal, what it looked like, but I could still feel the immense force pulling me. My skin crawled with the feeling of someone gripping tightly onto my arm. I shuddered.
My senses came into place. I observed my unfamiliar surroundings. I stood in a square room, fairly large, wide and spacious, but there was nothing in it. Nothing but the object that stood behind me: the vortex I had just come out of. If it got within a 3 meter range of it, the force would appear again, the spine crawling pulling that had once engulfed me. I didn't necessarily want to experience that again, so I kept my distance.
The ceiling was high above; maybe 3-4 meters above the top of my head. The walls were dark grey, a circled pattern engraved on it, like you would see on a speaker. The floor seemed to be made of metal, and every step I took produced a clanging sound, and that's when I realized I was barefoot. The cold metal stung the bottom of my feet.
I was in my pyjamas too, and I got goosebumps when I could finally feel the air conditioning hit my sensitive skin. Hello Kitty's head was dotted all over my shirt and pants.
Even my hair was a mess. This is what I get for opening the door to figures in black robes in the middle of the night.
I could hear faint murmuring, casual conversations. Knowing that other people were around slightly put me at ease. But they weren't in the room.
Staying in this room made me uncomfortable. The presence of the portal behind me was eating me alive. I could almost hear it whispering, Come in...dont be afraid...you'll love it in here... Yeah right. But as time passed, it almost seemed to be convincing me, and when I started to actually consider going back in, that's when I realized I had to get out of this room.
The only way out stood in front of me: a large, steel door, like one to a freezer room. There was no handle. On the wall beside it, a red button.
That should activate the door right? I mean, it's literally right next to the door. But it's red. According to literally every meme that exists, if I pressed that, I would blow up the world. I took my chances. I pressed the button.
To my surprise, the door began to slide open. I, who had thought my chances of blowing up the world was higher than opening the door, was relieved. It opened slowly to the left, but luckily, I was small enough to fit through a gap before the it was fully open.
I stood at the end of a long hallway. The ceiling, walls, and floor were all white. A fluorescent blue light lined the sides of the ceilings through a gap to light up the area, as if it wasn't bright enough to blind me already. The area looked so pristine and sanitary. Despite everything being white, there were no signs of smudges or anything dirty. I was kind of nervous and afraid to walk, thinking I would leave marks.
At the end of the hallway there were two ways to turn as it extended to the left and to the right. No one was around. I assumed this wasn't the only floor in this building as I could still hear the faint conversations of people talking, but it sounded as if it was coming from both above and below me.
There was nothing I could do except walk forward, so that's exactly what I did. It seemed there was a heater beneath the floor. It was warm. The sensation of me feet caressing the floor sort of brought me into a state of tranquility, and I felt I was in a spa.
However, the fact that I looked like I was in a dentist didn't really calm me. I might've just been about to get my teeth taken out.
As I neared the end of the hallway, I could hear voices, but they were slowly getting louder, and I soon realized that they were right around the corner. If they walked any further they would see me. I looked around but there was no escape. I froze, not knowing what else to do. All I could do was hope they wouldn't see me.
The owners of the voices appeared from behind the corner: they were figures in black robes, just like I had seen before. I still couldn't see their faces, but their voices weren't so deep this time. They sounded like normal people. There were two of them.
'Why didn't we get her before? I mean, she literally saw us. It would be common sense to take her.' One spoke.
'Right? And none of us thought about that. It doesn't make sense.' The other replied.
They walked straight ahead. At one point, the one on the left had looked straight down my hallway, straight at me. But nothing happened. The figure didn't even take a second look. I stared in disbelief as they just walked straight past me.
'He was so mad. We're lucky we didn't get exiled.'
'I won't be surprised if he changes his mind later. Might as well start packing my stuff in advance.'
They disappeared around the corner.
Still confused, I stood still. They saw me. They didn't do anything about it. My confidence levels suddenly rose, and I felt a lot less scared as I ran down the hallway the figures had come from.
I ran straight into a large, rectangular room. And by large, I mean large. Colossal. Bigger than you could ever imagine. Any big room I'd ever been in couldn't compare to this.
There were several floors. When you looked up, you could see about seven floors above, each floor with a rectangle in the middle, lined by a railing, like in a mall. A spiral staircase wound up from the center of the ground floor. Everything was still white, with the same fluorescent light lining the ceilings. The staircase was white too. A simple staircase, no design. Not even a railing. It looked like a staircase to hell, you would die if you fell off, but people walked on it without a problem.
Each of the upper floors were lined with doors. The doors were steel, the same like the room I was in before, but they were slightly smaller. People came in and out of the rooms using a keypad, with a passcode. No one bothered to cover their passcode, but when they put it in, you couldn't see what it was. It was in plain sight but the area around it seemed to shift, and all the numbers were blurry.
All the upper floors were the exact same. Copy and paste. The ground floor was basically the same, but the floor design was slightly different. Rather than being plain white, it was white marble. Still clean. Still no smudges. Steel doors lined the walls, just like the other floors.
Everything was ordinary. Except for the people themselves. There were many black robed figures, and other creatures I had never seen before. Nobody took a second glance at them. They walked around as normal people. I felt like I was in a Star Wars movie.
Despite the crowded atmosphere, I felt a force tugging at me, telling me to look to the left. It was like the same force I had felt at the portal, but not as harsh.
I glanced to the left. Someone was coming out one of the doors, but they looked normal. It was a boy. A human looking boy. And I had seen him before. It was the boy who was in my house. He glanced up at me and his eyes widened.
