My mind is on the verge of collapsing underneath the weight of quantum uncertainty. 

I'm ready for the Heisenberg principle to jump out of the page and strangle me to death. Asphyxiation may be a painful way to go, but if it were to free me from the cold clenches of physics homework, I would welcome death with open arms.

Olivia says that I'm too dramatic, but I think I'm being perfectly reasonable, thank you very much. Physics is a cruel villain possessing an intense determination to unravel the very fabric of my sanity.

As I underline my answer, only one final problem remains. I bite my lower lip in concentration, and copy down the question in loopy, but not quite elegant, cursive. A soft breeze blows in from my bedroom's opened window, and I debate just ignoring the rest of my homework to go outside.

The temptation is strong.

But I will not cave to it, as Pandora did when she unlatched the box forbidden to open. I will not become a cautionary tale of What Happens When You Ignore Responsibilities. That would be Olivia, who forgot to feed the cat two days in a row.

And who is also entering our shared apartment, interrupting my thoughts. The front door creaks open loudly, startling me.

And of course just when I'm on the verge of figuring out how to use the Boltzmann factor without my calculator throwing a fit because the numbers are too small for.

"Hey Olivia!" I call out from the desk positioned against the wall in my bedroom. "The cat's angry and a wee bit sad that you didn't feed him!"

Her footsteps echo from the foyer. She's probably dumping her bag directly in front of the door again. Her messy habits are frustrating, but somehow she's still my best friend.

When no response comes, I sigh and stand up from my chair, making my way to the front. "The cat won't accept your pleas for forgiveness this time, Miss Davis!" The cat barely accepted them the first time. His favorite part of the day is mealtime.

By the time I make my way to the kitchen, Olivia's still not responding to my well-mannered criticisms of her pet-care skills. A tad strange, but not unusual. When she's tired, she's the quietest person on planet Earth.

Nevertheless, I continue. "He told me meow meow meow meow meow, and since I'm somewhat of a feline whisperer myself, I know it translates to I want food! in English. You should hire me as a cat translator."

Still, no response. I slide into the foyer, dragging my sandals against the ground, making them go squeak against the hardwood. To my surprise, there is no one here. That, nor any signs that Olivia's even come in. Only my blue spring jacket is hung from the hook adjacent to the door, and my navy sneakers are on the shoe rack all alone.

I furrow my eyebrows. I could've sworn I heard her come in, yet no signs of Olivia's mess mars my organization. The door remains locked.

"Olivia? Olivia, are you here?" Nothing. Still.

Aside from the echoes of my own footsteps and the soft buzzing of the lights, silence fills the apartment. A hush envelopes the air, and everything else is so still that it could almost be ethereal. I shiver, a chill coursing through my body at how sudden the warm inviting atmosphere of my college home has turned into an eerie scene. It feels empty, like an abandoned dollhouse.

But the sensation that someone else is here tugs at the back of my mind.

On tiptoes now, I creep around the corner and into the living room. The overhead lights aren't on, but the sunlight trickling in through the window illuminates the worn plum purple couch. The television hands on the wall. The painting Olivia started rests in the corner, dejected.

Brushing my hair out of my face, my hand meets the skin of my forehead. It's slick and sticky. With a start, I realize I'm sweating.

Even though it's probably nothing, perspiration drips down my skin. Olivia probably came in here and grabbed something she forgot. Then left. Without saying hi.

Under my feet, the floorboards creak as I shift weight onto each foot. A tingling sensation crawls up my spine, like a little mouse climbing to whisper a warning in my ear.

And then I turn around because it's nothing, really, nothing, when a harrowing crash! reverberates from Olivia's bedroom. My shoulders tense and the pace of my breathing quickens. I'm a bunny rabbit who caught sight of a gray wolf's vicious snarl.

I rush towards her room, subconsciously ready to retreat into safety at a moment's notice. Inside my chest, my heart beats furiously against my ribcage. Beads of perspiration drip from my forehead. Gripping the doorknob, I turn it slowly, then push it open with bated breath.

One obvious anomaly mars the room. Everything else is normal. Olivia's blue bedspread is jostled, a tapestry of an orange mountain dangles from the wall, a brush filled with red hairs sits on top of a wooden dresser. In the middle of it all, a spotted tabby cat licks his paws. The contents of a utensil container sprawl out on the floor next to him.

I exhale and any tension I was holding deflates from my muscles. It was just the cat.

Just the cat!

It seems he's mastered the fine art of deception and making me paranoid.

I hold out my arms to him as an invitation, but he glares at me, so instead I grab him by the torso and swaddle him like a baby in my arms. He shoots me a look of disapproval before meowing a demand to put him back down.

"I'm just moving you so you aren't in here by yourself kitty."

"Meow!"

Crash!

I nearly hurtle him into the wall.

Oh no.

I look down at the fur ball in my arms. Accompanying the rattling crash is the realization that he's supposed to be at the vet right now. Olivia was supposed to take him.

As carefully as I can– my hands are shaking– I set him down on Olivia's bed. Without shutting the door behind me, I tiptoe through the apartment, towards where the deafening bang came from. The worn out carpet of the bedroom cushions my toes. The hard-wood of the hallway groans under my weight. It's louder than I remember.

Each step through the hallway echoes against the drywall, as if the apartment is trying to warn me. The resonating silence that follows my footfall is a blanket, heavy enough to stifle flickers of fire.

With careful steps, I approach the kitchen. I don't know what I'm expecting to find. Olivia? An intruder? Another cat?

A pot on the ground, inexplicably flung halfway across the room from the cabinets is what. I take a wary breath and step over it. A quick inspection of the surroundings reveals no one. The dull refrigerator buzzes on. The broken light bulbs flicker. The worn linoleum tile supports my weight. Two thresholds still lead to two hallways. Hushed paranoia emerges in my bones.

And it comes when I'm least expecting it.

Before I know it, a body pushes up against the back of mine, an arm wraps around me like a snake, and a hand presses into my mouth. I struggle, shoving my elbow into their chest. 

Simultaneously, I grasp onto their arm with my free hand. A jolt of adrenaline surges through my body, and I pull with as much force as I can muster.

The instinct to protect myself takes over so instantaneously, yet completely, that everything else besides our two bodies fades into the background. So much so, that I almost don't realize.

I almost don't realize that there, in fact, is no one there at all.

The body holding onto me has no heat, and the arm around my torso is invisible. Yet, it's undeniable that there is a force there, restraining my movement as any tangible human could. The unseen weight clinging to my limbs exerts a very real pressure on my figure.

Still, I continue to struggle with a determined, yet weak push. It does nothing, and the invisible assailant merely drags my body backwards.

From out of sight, a separate set of footsteps clicks against the floor, before stopping almost directly behind me.

"You don't need to fight. It'll be much easier for you if you don't." It's a feminine voice, and the words are spoken in a soft, melodious tone. Nonetheless, it overflows with confidence. It holds an air of superiority, casting shadows of arrogant self-importance in its wake.

In response, my body erupts with an uneasy tingling sensation.

However, I don't listen to the voice. I continue my attempts to twist out of the invisible body's grip, aiming another elbow jab at where the rib cage would be. I try to scream, but the force of a hand buries itself in my throat. I'm just writhing in a firm grasp.

"Hmmm... I think it's time to go nighty night."

When the last word passes their lips, the sensation of a hand wrapped around my neck squeezes my trachea. My lungs burn immediately, lacking air. I want to gasp, but the hand pressed to my lips holds me prisoner.

Maybe I will die of asphyxiation.

════ 𓆩☻𓆪 ════

The next time I feel anything, darkness clings to me like a tightly wrapped sheet. My eyes, shut tight, can't open, and no signs of light penetrate the backs of my eyelids. I'm swallowed in an endless and untraversable abyss.

As consciousness seeps in, I become aware of the suffocating feeling of fabric encapsulating my body. My legs are stuck next to each other, and my arms are trapped behind my back. My fingers are confined to narrow holes of stifling cotton.

With a jolt, I realize that I am corporeally, physically, held in place by ropes, and suffocated by cloths. A rough cutting of fabric is bound around my head, pressing into my eye sockets. Wrapped around my wrists, a bulky cord restrains my arms to my back. Another rope twists around my legs. A gag is squeezed in my throat.

This really can't be real, can it. No. It must be a dream of some sort. I must be caught in the grip of a hellish, lucid nightmare. One of those where you can't move. You can't see anything. You're paralyzed and you're twitching in the silence of your own breaths.

It's one where you think you're alone, but then something else takes a breath next to you.

The sound echoes. You're not sure if it's a creature coming for you, or someone stuck in the same unreality as you. An unreality that is becoming more real every and every second. I can't deny that the coarse fiber of rope feels all too genuine against my skin, or that the abrasive blindfold wrapped around my eyes doesn't make me want to itch my corneas until no pupil remains.

A flicker of pain flashes through my finger when I flex my thumb against the bindings, the fleeting feeling intolerably real.

The vile taste of bile assails the back of my throat as it hits me, like a hammer to my head, what's happening. Someone broke into my apartment, kidnapped me, and knocked me out with the use of some invisible forces that we definitely didn't learn about in physics. Something that shouldn't exist.

But does.

Allegedly.

The supernatural exists?

Or I'm just having a trippy hallucination brought upon by the ingestion of heavy drugs.

Which is out of the question, because I haven't touched anything close to that since high school.

It seems, still, to be the more probable situation; having no memory of swallowing an edible whole is more likely than observing reality-breaking phenomena unfold before my very eyes.

Regardless, I am shackled and seem to be not the only one. From my right, or perhaps my left– the impenetrable void swallows all sense of direction– even breaths echo against the walls of the prison, whose characteristics are obscured under the pitch black mask. The cadence is calm, indicating an illusion of peaceful sleep. Yet, it is muffled. Their mouth is bound by the constraints of cloth and rope, as is mine.

Positioning my bound legs so that the bottoms of my bare feet are against the cold ground, I push in an attempt to propel my body towards the other set of breaths. When my body begins to move, a force jerks it back into place with a clanging noise.

Oh god, I'm chained to the wall.

════ 𓆩☻𓆪 ════

I don't know how much time passes, but it feels like an invisible clock has ticked away five lifetimes. Each effort I make to escape my confinements goes awry. A chain holds me close to the wall. My screams are silenced. The rope is too thick to break through. No help is coming. My phone is absent.

I wonder if Olivia has found it laying haphazardly on my desk yet.

My heart sinks to the bottom of my stomach. What if she's kidnapped, too? Hurt? A scene in my mind plays out on the backs of my eyelids: Olivia enters the apartment after a long day of work and classes. Her curly red hair is pulled into a ponytail, but it's messy now because little strands fell out of it during the day, and she never fixed it. She's wearing a green flannel. I call her a walking Christmas display when she wears it.

Olivia calls out that she's home, and doesn't hear me respond, but she doesn't worry because that just means I'm not home. The cat bounds up to her, and she gives it a scratch behind the ears. He doesn't purr like usual, instead shaking under her touch. It's weird, but my roommate thinks nothing of it.

When she goes into the kitchen, a stainless steel pot is on the ground. The cat must've knocked that over.

When she enters her room, stationary is spread all over the ground. Must've been the cat too. He's just been knocking everything over today.

Then, a ringing comes from my room. The melody of a famous pop song played on piano fills the hallway. Olivia goes to shit it off because Helena must've left her phone here. The screen reads 20 missed calls from MOM, over the course of the past eight hours.

Next, she hears footsteps from behind her. It must be the cat, but she knows it's not him. That's when an invisible hand–

A jarring creak of a door snaps me back to reality. I tense and dare not to move even an inch.

Besides me, someone takes a sudden, sharp breath in. It's muffled. A burst of muted coughs follow. Chains rattle.

A frantic cadence of footsteps echo against the cold floor. Another set of breaths in and out accompany it. More rattling of chains.

The cadence of steps gets louder. Gradually each fast thud of the shoe against the ground becomes more distinct. With each passing moment, it draws nearer, until I can feel the radiation of body heat brush up against my skin. My muscles stiffen, and I concentrate on regulating the flow of my breath to be a steady in, out, in, out.

Images of what this person could look like flick through my mind. They might be well-toned and holding a knife. They could be tall and pointing a gun at me, about to pull the trigger. Maybe they're a man who's about to shove a razor blade through my heart. Or he could be about to slam my head against the ground ten times.

A metallic rasp of unsheathing hisses, and that's when I stop pretending to be in my peaceful slumber. I writhe against the restraints, against the rope around my legs, against the chain tethering me to the wall, against the dense gloves. The gag mutes a cry for help. My eyes still find nothing behind the blindfold.

I'm going to die. I'm going to die by a sharp object piercing through my chest after they drag a blade down my body and force me to understand the intricacies of pain. My skin will be cut into and fall apart like a million shards of glass, shattering. Perhaps fingers will be sawed from my hands one by one by one, my screams of agony restrained.

I'm utterly helpless. And the worst part is that I won't even know whose hands I perish by.

This must be what true fear feels like. Knowing that you are soon to meet your doom. All voices in your mind gutturally screaming, YOU WILL SOON CEASE TO EXIST! YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS WILL BE DRAINED FROM YOUR BONES! Yet there's nothing you can do about it because you are utterly, irrevocably, perfectly, powerless.

My chest restricts. The fear holds my heart in its grasp, squeezing, relentless. Constricting it, preventing it from sending blood to each organ.

So my hands tingle like a thousand needles press into my palm. My spine goes rigid, and I can't even bend myself at my own will. Each muscle is unresponsive, the primal instinct to freeze permeates every miniscule fiber of my being.

The tumultuous symphony blaring a cacophonous melody in my brain augments to a thousand decibels. Trumpets shriek, pianos shout, violins screech, at the top of their lungs!

It grows and grows and the shrieking and the yelling and the wailing all gets louder and louder because there's a hand and it's touching my face and untying the blindfold and it's loose now and it's falling and it's still so so dark and–

"I know this is a lot, but I'm here to help."

I strain my eyes, adjusting. The darkness remains. It penetrates the space with its intangible presence. But this time, I can make out shapes. A figure enveloped by shadows kneels next to me. Their features are obscured, leaving their face but a silhouette in the murk.

But what matters more is their voice. It's a deep pitch, and has a distinct roughness to it, like their vocal cords have been violently torn, so excess air flows through the tissue. With it, urgency is carried by an uneven tone. Each word is accompanied by a doubtful quiver.

These details aren't what permit my fleeting moment of relief, however; this voice is different from the one in my kitchen, which alone is enough to bring me brief comfort.

Holding onto the hope I've been given, I nod in response. My rescuer's gloved fingers brush up against my face, and before I know it, the gag has fallen to the floor.

"Thank you," I gasp.

The silhouette nods and continues their work.

They slip off the ropes, the gloves, the chain tethering me to the wall, until I am free to move again. Such a strange sensation after being restrained for so long, yet welcome all the same.

The figure offers me a hand, and I take it, pulling myself off of the ground. A glove encases their skin, but it's thin and rubbery, so I can feel their body warmth. It's the type meant to be worn by a medical examiner, and it's almost as if I can feel each individual tendon in their hand as they grasp onto mine.

"I'll explain everything to you soon. Just... be as quiet as you can. And help." The shadow seems to nod to its right, where I can make out a mass resembling a body with chains wrapped around it. Must be another captive, just like I thought.

Tentatively, I follow the figure towards the body. I work alongside them to loosen the restrainants as best I can, my hands shaking. But between the darkness and my trembling fingers, all I manage is to shift the rope tied around their thigh a little bit to the left.

Soon, they are freed. Their outline trembles against the ground. Mirroring their shaking, a cold shudder washes up my back.

Our rescuer offers a hand to them, and a subtle rustle of fabric indicates that they're shaking their head.

"Suit yourself," the figure whispers. "Follow me."

Not without loose chains clanking, the fellow kidnapped rises. They stick close to me, and I follow close behind the shadowy figure. With each step, the air grows heavier. It carries an otherworldly weight of uncertainty; I have not a clue where I am going. For all I know, I could be a lamb stumbling to its own slaughter.

Still, it's not like I have another choice. It's asking for certain death to stay where I was tied up. I was like Prometheus, who was chained to a rock and had an eagle eat his liver every day.

After what feels like– or perhaps is– an indefinite amount of time, and a myriad of twists and turns through the chilling atmosphere, the figure comes to a stop. My feet are pounding, my breathing is heavy, and my limbs are coated in a thin layer of numbing sweat. In front of me, the figure rustles around.

Wood rattles against stone, a door creaks out a protest, and in between one moment and the next, I am flooded with a radiant glow. Light envelopes me, and I have to shield my eyes so the brilliance doesn't pierce through my corneas.

"One egg. Two cups of flour. A teaspoon of salt. A teaspoon of baking soda. Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl..." A new voice echoes from in front of where I'm standing with my hand over eyes clamped shut. It continues the recipe in a hushed murmur, ignoring our entrance.

"So here we are," the figure says, closing the door behind them.

Adjusting to the light, I blink, and can finally see their face for the first time.

They're a boy who can't be much older than me, with a pair of wide-set eyes and a small but broad nose. His lips curve downwards, yet it's less of a frown and more an expression of deep thought. He's wearing a pair of light navy jeans, and a plain black t-shirt. Sure enough, there's a pair of bright blue gloves on each hand.

However, the clothing is the only aspect of his appearance which resembles that of a normal human's.

My eyes grow wide as I register it; to put things simply, he is missing a lot of skin. Where a bare complexion should remain is only a jumbled combination of muscles and veins. Tendons shimmer like silvery threads, and delicate ligaments wrap around bone tissues. With every beat of his heart, the delicate veins enlarge ever so slightly with blood, before another pump pushes it away.

Where there should be eyelids and lashes, there are only bright hazel eyeballs shifting in sockets. They flicker, as if to scan the area. They settle on me for a mere millisecond before shifting their gaze. Yet in that moment, the eyes bore into mine, with nothing to separate his stare from mine.

I shudder at the sight, and it doesn't go unnoticed. The boy raises his eyebrow muscles. "I guess I'm not something you see everyday, huh."

I open my mouth to apologize for gaping, because oh my god, that's rude, even if the person has no skin, but I'm cut off by a loud shriek. It resounds directly from next to my ear.

The boy cringes and immediately puts a finger to his lips. "Shhhh.... I don't mean to scare you, but look, you've really got to be quiet. I mean, I don't think she'll hear us, but she could really be anywhere, and it's not the best idea to be screamin-"

"SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME!"

I twirl on my heel and come face-to-face with a dark-haired girl, a look on her face that could be described as nothing short of sheer horror.

The boy holds his hands out in front of him like he's about to try and reason with a baby. "Please, just be qui–"

"HELP ME! HELP THERE'S A CREATURE WITH NO–"

Panic crosses his face. In one swift motion, he punches her in the gut. She stumbles backwards and lands on her butt.

"I... I'm sorry. I panicked. But... I freed you, didn't I? Just. I don't know. Have some trust in a stranger every now and then." He doesn't raise his voice. Instead, his tone is shaky.

The girl looks up at him, stunned. Her eyebrows furrow, contorting like she's in a silent debate with herself. To run or not to run?

"Yeah... I should explain some things to you. Probably."

"That would be appreciated, yes," another new voice chimes from inside the room. Like the dark-haired girl on the ground, it's also filled with fear, but the trepidation hides behind a veneer of composure.

I shift my gaze to look at this person, and take in the details of where we are now. We're in a small cave-like space, albeit with a tall ceiling. The walls are formed of a jagged gray stone, and the points on opposite sides of the room reach towards each other. On them grows moss clinging to crevices.

A weathered lantern is perched on a piece of rock that juts out from the wall. It emits a soft, yet bright glow through the space.

The ground, for the most part, is a smooth stone, yet some cracks are dispersed throughout.

Aside from me, the skinless boy, and shrieking girl, there are three other people here. They all seem to be my age. A boy wearing a shark-tooth necklace sits next to a particularly big crack in the ground, and a blonde girl with glasses stands idly, brushing her hands through her hair. Another boy is curled up into the fetal position in a corner. His mouth moves. I can just hardly make out the muttering of a recipe underneath his breath.

Shark-tooth necklace boy continues. "It would be nice to know why I was chained to the ground in a cave. Or why we're still in a cave, for that matter."

"Yes, yes," skinless boy whispers. "So my name is Lux and oh god, where do I start," the boy– Lux– rubs the bridge of his nose. He pointedly avoids making eye contact with me, or anyone else for that matter. Though he tries to hide it in his upright posture, an obvious flicker of tension ails his limbs. His gaze wavers, his brow muscle furrows, his fingers twitch.

"Well. Ok. A good way to start off is by saying, my twin sister is an absolute twat, as the British would put it. To put it in simple terms, she is why you are all here."

"She's why we... or presumably, all five of us, were tied to the wall?"

"You are correct... You see, she has some... issues." Like that wasn't obvious enough. "But here's the thing," Lux continues, "her issues are a lot different from your typical issues. She was troubled at an extremely young age. Our parents passed away, and then our aunt took her in, and our grandparents, me. But our aunt... wasn't exactly good to her.

"And you would think, so what? Lots of people don't have a good upbringing. Lots of people have been abused, but they don't go around kidnapping people. For my sister, she's got a lot of anger at the world because of it all. The key difference here is that she can actually destroy it."

The instinct in my brain tells me it's not actually true. But then again, Lux is a living man without skin, and I didn't think that could ever happen either, so I just nod my head.

The others stay silent, except for the boy curled up. One egg. Two cups of flour. A teaspoon of salt. A teaspoon of baking soda.

Lux continues. "She has a sort of supernatural ability set. Was born with it, discovered it at fifteen years old. The same day we discovered our aunt dead in the living room with sixteen puncture wounds up and down her throat.

"Of course, soon after that, she starts having dreams. She told me about that, and how she'd seen herself destroying the world. Claimed it all freaked her out, but I don't think it ever truly did. I mean, she said she's never felt remorse for killing our aunt.

"And so I knew there was a part of her that wondered if she could actually do it. After all, a murderer's first kill is always the hardest. What's another one, especially if it's deserved?"

Lux is now pacing, from one end of the cave room to the other.

"Somehow a part of me ignored it. Looked past it, wholeheartedly believed that my sister wouldn't lash out with her abilities ever again. I think you all know that's not true, though."

"And so that's why we're here," the shark-tooth necklace boy guesses.

One egg. Two cups of flour.

He sticks his chest out, no doubt in an attempt to be intimidating, but it holds the same effect of a feeble sheep stomping at the ground.

"That's a reason, yes. You see, my sister is scary. She could kill you with her pinky finger, nevertheless end humanity with a simple touch against stone. Which... is where you five come in.

"You five have more power than you would've ever believed you had in living a mundane life. My sister can't kill you, and you can kill her, by simply touching your skin to hers. And since she is utterly hell-bent on bringing Earth to shambles, you're the only ones who can stop her.

"Which leads me to the next thing... I guess I'm about to ask a lot of you. But..." Lux stops his pacing in one sharp movement. "Basically I'm asking you to save the world."