I somewhere knew that I’d been fed to lie since I was seven. They lied about my parents' death, they lied about beliefs, they lied about life being a garland of roses, and they lied about not lying to me.

Tell me something my subconscious, are we satisfied with discovering the truth? I wait for my thoughts to spiral in a tight coil but they kept on shrinking to a dot, a dot which I couldn’t connect to anything. It’s just a dot, a pointless point invading the space, indicating its presence by differing in color from the rest of its vast background. It is up to me to expand the dot into a line, a curve, or a circle. A line of thoughts will lead to nonstop sentences like headlines of the news, a curve of thoughts with be flexible to comprehend but it will end at a certain point when it will reach its utmost flexibility, and a circle of thoughts will lead me back to the start, again and again asking me to remember and expand the circle.

With utmost care, I expand the dot into a circle and it started appearing in blue and gray. I remember the blurry smiles of my parents leaving me with my aunt till they return from their trip, their smiles were fake. I struggle to pierce through their mind to witness the fear and anxiety. “Will be back in a month”, mom said as I ran into her arms, being unaware that this was my last. Her voice I can’t remember to listen. “Aunt’s scary”, I whisper in her ear and she laughs. Her laugh is long forgotten by my ears. “She won’t feed you broccoli so she’s not evil”, dad whisper and tickles me to make me laugh. His voice too is foreign for me to recollect. This was the first time when this all started and the last time for my perfect start. This is my first dot.

The second dot of a circle is the reports, the reports that were altered intentionally. The third dot is the cops whispering to my aunt, the truth they couldn’t tell to a seven-year-old orphan who was listening to their mumbles through the closed door but couldn’t understand and couldn’t remember. The fourth dot is Zed telling me about the secret investigation carried out in 2007 with three unknown passengers, the third being unknown. The fifth dot is the files of confidentiality I read. The sixth dot is Zain filling me in this matter. The seventh dot is Ayan confirming Zain's truth and the eighth dot is Ayan supporting his idea of them being humanoids.

The fifth dot and eighth dot connect to form a chord and it explains why there were numbers inscribed besides my parents' names. They work for Arbmtys now, they became killers.

“I’m sorry for your parents”, Xavier spoke up taking the lead to make this silence less painful for everyone. Sorry, what sorry? It was not on their to-do list to leave their daughter all alone in this world. “Why sorry? It was not like they were faded with living so they decided to fall to death into Arbmtys”, I say in a dry tone. They might be unaware of the unknown threat too or else they won’t jump into this mess. You did, my subconscious mocked. I did because my paranoia wasn’t confirmed before I walked into here. Oh, I see, I got it from my parents, they got some hints too but they still walked in thinking of those hints as to their paranoia.

If I’m to expand this circle then I need to fill in the rest of the details from Arbmtys. This circle of thoughts will fill the blanks. For my circle to expand, I’ve to focus on the present and let Ayan finish his storytelling.

“Your journal entry?”, I ask to keep his words running in the air. It seemed like Ayan zoned out for a moment, thinking about nothing but everything that he literally came back into Merlin of Heather and hummed to show his complete presence.

“The torn pages that Xavier told me about. Were the writings in italics?”, he asks contemplating onto something. Xavier nods and Ayan sighs. “I just realized that there is no network here. Our phones do not work and the dinner seemed a little sus with all those royal dishes that staff members were forcing everyone to eat. From your entry”, I force his brain to remember his entry, recollecting his words to support Xavier's nod. Ayan became confident about whatever theory his mind has created. “They took my journal away for the starters. It was on the day when we went for the run of survival. I somehow made it to security but they snatched away my journal and bag on the way. I guess they planted my journal like their warning of No one leaves”, he clarifies.

Explains how the major information went missing out of pages. Why though? Create these suspicions so that we skip dinner? I’m smart enough to understand that he survived after jumping from the security room because of lack of gravity at that time too.

“How did you survive after jumping from the security room?”, Xavier shoots Ayan with another question. “I think you all experienced it too, the lack of gravity. It happens whenever they are on their hunt for bodies”, he supported the assumption my subconscious made.

“The bodies, they need to create humanoids. I don’t know how or why they do this but they make humanoid in the body of the human they killed”, he deciphered half of the unknown mystery by this one sentence of his. That’s why they bleed and have wires. They lack emotions, and they are mere killing machines. Are they making Ultron or Vision? More like Vision but its brain is Ultron. It’s sick to see a movie coming to life. My parents are them too….

“All I know is that new tourists visit this island after every week, and in case of a plane crash, after a month, during the first night of their stay, the gravity disappears then reappears soon after midnight. Mostly everyone gets killed because they dine on poisonous supper and the ones who skip the dinner are on a run. I guess all of the people who were on a team with me got killed because their walkie-talkie stopped working, this concludes as a death for us so that we can count on living bodies. Food from the facility is unadulterated because the killers dine on that. Even after a month if you try to run away via the plane that brought new travelers, it’s all in vain because they check thoroughly onto the plane and if not enough for their satisfaction they send the plane for assistance that takes three days and then plane fly away directly to Russia. Rumors are the head of the killers is from Russia and so Russia is filled with killers, not humanoids though, no chances of surviving and Zean, your parents, I heard they got killed trying their way on the plane”, Ayan poured out his knowledge to us and I got the ninth dot that they were trying till their last breath to come back home. How frustrating they must've felt, they were almost there and they died when they saw the shore.

Ayan made it clear that waiting for the plane is off the table and waiting for a month ain’t doing any good. The mystery that still remains is why and how. “And we are running out of food supply”, Ayan brings our focus on the major problem. No, the major problem is of survival, this food storage and killers are the minority of them, major is returning home.

We are on a fucking swing. We swing away from the troubles only to swing back at them. We can stop the swing and be still like the minorities under the tree did or we can jump from the swing to get injured. You can use sand sheets to not get injured while jumping from the swing, my subconscious used this tricky way to tell me that I have got a group, they are the sand sheets, we together are sand sheets.

“I have got a question. Xavier told me about the last group you met. Unlike them you won’t be willing to not risk your life for food, right?”, Ayan asks to check on something I guess. He needs to check on the courage, intellectuality, and loyalty of the new group he found not so long ago. “We got wits”, I say keeping it short for him to understand that food makes us bloom.

“Zean, all are not like them”, he defends himself. “They were outraged that you had someone follow after you, they were offended because their following you was not a gesture but an emotion”, he consoles my hurt part by applying the remedy of emotions. Their following me was not an emotion but the probability they calculated. Maybe Zain followed me out of emotion, maybe Silver too but not others.

I nod unwillingly to satisfy Ayan that he’s good with words while he really is not, or maybe he is. I nod and do not argue because if I do then this will commotion into trust issues and that’s the last thing we want.

“And now, the recorder at Ulna and the air pod?”, I ask bringing him back to his track of storytelling.

I need to not look at him directly because he radiates out these weird positive vibes from him that sting my eyes. I look around and find that there ain’t nothing worthy of awe in this room. Just timber and humans. Getting disappointed thrice, I had no choice but to look at him while he speaks.

“Recorder planted in Ulna is highly sensitive so it is to listen to movements around a kilometer of Heather to be aware of killers. And air pod, I’ll better show you. Before that, you can eat from the remaining tin if you want. We can discuss the facility and breaking into it later and can I have the blueprint if you don’t mind?”, Ayan asks holding out his hand and Keit thinks for a while then hands it out to Ayan. He decided to trust him. Well, after he explains air pod, I might trust him too.

Ayan senses like a leader and he should be the leader for he’s experienced in this surviving far more than we are. All I know is that experience gave me skepticism.

For I was hungry and my stomach started rumbling for me to feel those microbes in my stomach making weird noises and demand for food so that they can continue on their work of breaking food and making them into proteins or whatever, I had to accept Ayan's kind invitation to dine on his sustenance.

Taking baby steps I crawled my way to the tins and picked up one which made some sort of noise when I opened it to attract Ayan's attention unintentionally from whatever he was talking about Keit regarding the map.

“Should I eat it first?”, he asks with a satirical laugh. I fire back a sarcastic smile to his satire while eating a spoonful of beans.

Eating should be done without talking, my dad used to say that. I didn’t know the reason back then, now I do. It’s because if we talk, we breathe and it opens up the windpipe and we are eating and swallowing so our food pipe opens, alas if food by mistake enters wind poor then RIP. My point is there ain’t no rule to shut off thinking too. I ain’t suffering from OCD but my subconscious sometimes does keep on tightening coil of thoughts.

Why Zed preferably approach me? Did he want me to stay away from Arbmtys or was he trying to attract my attention to it? How does this all-humanoid thing work? It’s like they are creating new species for unknown reasons. 

In all this thinking I forgot to savor the beans and ignored the hard-working those microbes were putting in my taste buds. “What’s wrong with seasons here?”, Kiet asks doubting on figs which frugivorous fed on. He gave me another thing to think about, not long till Ayan opened his mouth to reply with, “They control everything here. Seasons, gravity, and everything. If seasons are preferred then here in Heather and Catalyst it’s summer, the way to Ulna is Spring, Bexuca and hotel are moderate, West Vuna is humid, Yrizit hills are covered with snow and Maple is Autumn. I don’t know about Miejuba, Ilayah, Panther rock and Barnlocks”, Ayan refers to looking at the blueprint. It says that he’s been to most of the places on the map. 

While landing here I didn’t notice any difference in seasons from the sky view. I did notice some white colors spread on the far far mountains but other than that, nothing.

This dummy time is lasting longer and to my surprise, it’s quiet, informative, and relaxing. In the past two, three, no two, I forgot the number of days we’ve been running around, so in these past days, it’s never been an agreeable dummy time to my ideals.

We ate, we asked questions, we even got to close our eyes and relax for some good amount of time and we internally mourned for the dead ones. This period lasted for maybe two hours after when Ayan finally agreed on confessing about the air pod. “Just follow me”, he instructs.

From I’ll show you instead he meant showing us a place maybe. By this time I inferred my confidence in him to support his instruction in a second or maybe because I was curious.

This climbing up, climbing down, I hope I won’t have to adapt to it too. It’s fun but exhausting. If a killer appears in Heather from nowhere then I can either climb down and believe me this climbing is slow, risky, and there are 99.98 percent chances of three to four bullets stuffing in my body in that period so a better alternative is jumping meant amputating my limbs after Harry Potter puts a spell on me that I can run for my safety to survive from killers to cut off my broken legs.

“Why are we bound to suffer in this nightmare”, Kiet mumbles and curses under his breath which made this quiet walk on the flowery ground a little disturbing.

This question is long forgotten by me because I am better off taking responsibility for my choices. We can’t blame our belief AKA God because he won’t be bored to throw us in a pit of Hunger games.

“Everything happens for a reason”, Kelly fake comforted Kiet with her words.

These expressions are meant to help humans feel less miserable. Do you need to console your subconscious? Here I provide you a good expression, console your brain, blame everything on your fate and keep moving. It’s pitiful. Are humans that glass-hearted that they can’t take responsibility for their choices?

“That’s a satisfactory way of not taking responsibility for your choices”, I spit in disbelief that she’s that optimistic.

“You mean to say there ain’t any reason we are here? Then why are we stuck here?”, Kelly asks questioning the principle she’s living on.

“Accept the truth. You are here because you choose to be here. You choose to spend your vacations here in Arbmtys, that’s why you are here. There ain’t no destiny”, I defend my principle.

“It is destined”, she insists for me to agree with her.

“Then destiny is brutal and dominating. You say destiny I hear lack of free will”, I mean and believe my pessimistic nature. I’m logical that’s why I’m tagged pessimistic. And Kelly lives in her delusion that’s why she’s optimistic. We are opposite which could make us a great duo for debate. Kelly, unfortunately, didn’t want to argue more with me so she exhaled a breath of dissatisfaction and ended our debate.

The leaves of Heather started dimming its radiant because the sun started setting announcing the arrival of the night of hunt and haunt. This scenery which seemed so beautiful in the evening looks haunting because of the lack of light of hope. Pain, fear, love, anger, and all other emotions are better explained and understood through metaphor. Sun ain’t spreading hope, it’s just a hot ball of gas converting its hydrogen to helium, helium to lithium, and it continues till it reaches its goal of carbon then it will rest because it reached its goal of becoming a red giant. It’s hope for now and in the next billion years, it’s going to be the reason for the destruction of the planets. My point is metaphors are helpful.

“Beneath here”, Ayan mumbles pointing at the cobble marbles of Ulna.

I guess there’s another secret passage. Underground passage.

Ayan bent to reveal that cobble marbles could be easily picked up without using any tool to break them apart from other blocks. He picked up a hexagon metallic ring that had some symbols embedded in it. After getting his key, he placed the blocks like before. He looked sideways getting alarmed and when he was satisfied by his search for nothing, he went to the back to the faceless statue and tapped thrice on its head. Then he went to the wall behind the faceless statue by removing the veins from his way and revealed the hexagon gap at the left corner of the ruined wall.

Placing the hexagon metallic key of his into the gap, he signaled for us to stay back. Soon the ruined wall started separating into two just like the sea that split into after the shaft showed its power. “Another hideaway”, Silver gasped with shock, more like with excitement.

“One of my friends is beneath. The one who warned me about you through air pod”, Ayan finally explained the air pod and revealed his friend who did not exist not long ago.

He took the lead and guided us down the slippery, covered with mosses stairs. The walls were greasy, wet, covered with mosses that oozed water from the atmosphere which made the wall wet and dirty. It smells like lime and rusty blood if that makes sense. The stairs led us down and down to the part where I had to take out the torch from my bag to see clearly. “It’s the torch”, I explain the reason for the sudden appearance of electricity in these woods to the ones who were covering their eyes due to the sudden reflection of artificial light on their cornea.

The way to under the underground was the same, greasy, mossy, wet, dirty and then the floor finally came to our view. The floor spread out lights, there was electricity, the electricity that I thought I'd never be seeing in Heather. We hurried our way to the marble floors which were neither wet nor mossy.

Making it safely without slipping once to the marble floors I was astonished and was wondering where to look first. There were two computers, electricity, covers, blankets, five to six lamps, a huge and wide underground room, and an Asian woman in her mid-thirties standing near the stock of tins of liquor.

“Wakumi Miyazaki”, she introduced herself by waving in the air.

I was stunned by the underground modern chamber made of limestone walls that after hearing Wakumi giving her brief introduction, I went back to gawking at the room.

A monitoring network for ground settlement of Heather is established at the foliage tunnel, and regular monitoring is being carried out to master the rescue of the incoming threats, the room itself is packed with multiscreen monitors showing the hacked CCTV of the facility.

“Whoa”, Kiet exclaimed and I thought he responded unhurriedly after examining the room whereas when I turned around, I saw him standing beside a limestone rock witnessing another cave that is followed by the modern chamber.

“I believe that this was supposed to be their burial chamber but it’s left unfinished for they died before completing it. My dad and I refurnished the half-finished room a little and welcome to the future”, Wakumi explains on behalf of Ayan about the modern room. Her dad? “And this?”, Keit asks gawking at the unknown view. Giving attention to my curiosity, I started taking big steps towards the limestone wall. When the view filled my vision, it was so spectacular that I was bound to be speechless.

It was the cave of stalagmites grown upward from the bottom of the cave generally as a result of water dripping from overhanging stalactites. Somewhere a column develops where a stalactite and a stalagmite grow until they join. A drapery starts to form on a likely canopy covering the precious crystal-like minerals when the drops of water trickle along a slope. A minute drop of water hangs down stalagmites and it will take an hour for it to drop down on stalactites.

“Keit, it’s just like the cave we used to imagine while playing in The Cynsa caves”, Kelly slapped Keit's back in enthusiasm. Used to play?

“I know, right?”, Keit aggress rubbing up and down on his shoulder to soothe the pain from Kelly's slap.

“You two knew each other before Arbmtys?”, Silver asks out of curiosity.

“We were best buddies”, Kelly smiles resting her hand on Keit’s shoulder. She might have felt uncomfortable that she quickly removed her hand and at the same speed her smile disappeared.

I guess they were best buddies then they drifted apart, no contacts whatsoever. You grow up to grow apart.

“This is almost 35 kilometers long cave and it leads its way to the underground entrance of the facility”, Wakumi explains. “Not the way we would use to enter there though”, Ayan confirms my doubt.

I turn back from stalagmite to the future. There is a huge rock pillar standing proudly in the middle of the room. It has a lot of inscription on it, all in the language that is unknown to me. A cylindrical pillar supporting itself into the muds of the cave from above and below is greyish and Calcium carbonate. Taking a tour around the pillar I realized that even trying to understand the inscriptions is a waste of time.

“This is my home. Has been one for past sixteen years and two months”, Wakumi interrupts my wandering eyes to her admission.

16 years? She’s stuck on Arbmtys for 16 years? Now, this is a really astonishing thing.

“Why? You never even tried to return?”, Zain asks in surprise.

“You return to home if someone is waiting for you. I don’t have anyone waiting for me”, Wakumi confessed in her monotonous unhappy tone. She’s been far from her home too long that she forgot what home feels like.

I don’t have anyone waiting for me either. No, I’ve something for not someone, that 12-floor tall building waiting for my appearance on its terrace.

Home ain’t a place, it’s all about feelings. This can never be my home.

****