The room is rectangular, white, windowless. The light is cold and constant, indifferent to night or day. Along the wall, ten bodies lie still. Not one of them wounded.
Zenon woke first.
His hand went to his face first — eyelids, then jaw, then ribs. Intact. He sat up, back against the wall, and let his eyes adjust to the light before sweeping the room, face by face.
Everyone asleep. No one dead. Yet.
He crawled toward Haïssi, tapped his shoulder twice. Haïssi's eyes opened like he was picking up a conversation that had paused a second ago, no more.
"Where are we?"
"Not sure exactly." Zenon's voice was low. "But I think we've been taken."
Haïssi's eyes widened.
"If what I'm thinking is right," Zenon went on before he could ask, "no one's coming for us."
"What do you mean? If we escape, we can—"
"Call who, Haïssi? They're the ones who took us."
Haïssi went quiet. Opened his mouth to answer.
"Keep your voice down." Zenon cut him off, calm. "The others will hear."
He closed his mouth.
"I still think we're in the Amazon," Zenon continued, his tone closer to self-reproach than explanation. "There were signs from the start. I ignored them. Don't trust anyone here. We'll find a crack somewhere. Not now."
Before Haïssi could answer, the walls lit up.
A face appeared on the white panels, as if screens were built into the stone itself — pale blue eyes, silver hair pulled back, a dark formal suit. The calm on his features was the kind that belonged to someone who saw nothing unusual in any of this.
"Everyone's awake. Welcome."
The voice was smooth, and familiar in a way that unsettled Zenon before he understood why.
"You all know me. I know you have questions."
A young man rose from the far end. Opened his mouth—
"Sit down."
One word, same even tone. The young man froze and sat.
"The rules are simple. First: you don't speak to me unless I permit it, or you die. Second: don't harm yourselves. Third: you may replace one among you — either sacrifice him, or smuggle him out at your own expense. But be careful. He might be a spy."
He paused. Smiled a smile that never reached his eyes.
"This isn't a game. Eat well."
The face vanished.
The silence sat heavy for a few seconds. Then Zenon struck his palm against the floor — not anger, something closer to frustration.
"Damn it. There's too many of us. They'll be dead weight."
Alex, the one who'd almost spoken, shouted, his voice cracking:
"Why are they doing this to us? If there are rules, they should give them to us straight. We're just students."
Average ones. Zenon caught the word and lingered on it.
Unemployed. Useless. Dead weight to be cut. The thoughts came fast, leaving him staring into nothing.
If they'd wanted us dead, they'd have killed us already. That's not the point of this.
Haïssi stood, walked to Alex, put a hand on his shoulder.
"Calm down. We play along until we find a way out."
Alex's shoulder trembled under his hand.
"Haïssi." His voice was low, cracked. "Do you actually think there's a way out?"
Haïssi didn't answer.
"Look around." Alex was staring at the wall, not at anyone. "Everyone's scared. We want to go home to our families. Tell me, Haïssi — could you actually kill someone, if it came to it?"
Silence.
"Answer me."
"We can get out of here without going that far."
Alex pulled Haïssi's hand off his shoulder and turned to face him. Something closer to pity than anger in his eyes.
"Maybe. Or maybe we just give in to them."
"Alex! Could this be some kind of test?" Sofian said from the corner, in the voice of someone who already knows no one will believe him.
"Unlikely," Alex said. "But we can hope."
"Ha-ha-ha."
The laugh came from the other wall. Zenon leaned against it, arms crossed, watching Sofian with a look that carried more exhaustion than cruelty.
Alex turned toward him.
"Zenon. Didn't notice you there." Then, sharper: "Is this really the time to laugh?"
"There's a difference between stupidity and a joke." Zenon pushed off the wall slowly. "Getting out of here takes an idea they won't see coming. You won't find it acting like this."
"You're being provocative."
"But I'm right."
"I volunteer to be the one replaced. Alone."
The voice came from a young man in the corner who hadn't spoken until now. Eddie, knees pulled tight together, eyes on the floor.
"I'll take the escape option. I'll bring back help."
"That's impossible," Alex said.
"I don't think they'll actually let him escape," Zenon said. "But it's worth trying. Losing one is better than losing everyone."
What are you saying, Zenon? Haïssi thought, looking at him. Are you serious?
Their eyes met for a moment. Zenon didn't answer.
"And the rest of you," Zenon said, turning to the group, then stopping on Sofian. "Especially you, Sofian. You know who gets sacrificed if it comes to that, don't you?"
Faces darkened.
"Sacrifice?" Alex repeated it slowly, then looked at Zenon differently. "Why aren't you scared like the rest of us?"
"I might be more scared than all of you combined." Zenon said it without hesitation. "But I won't just accept dying like this. Look at yourselves — arguing about nothing, going nowhere."
Eddie dropped to his knees suddenly, and without warning started crying — the kind of crying a child can't hide.
"I want to go home. I want to finish school. Is this how it ends for me?"
"Get up."
Zenon said it, and there was neither mercy nor cruelty in it.
"Crying won't help you. You're an adult."
Before he could finish, Alex's fist landed on his cheek.
A punch…
His head turned slightly. Haïssi stepped between them.
"Not the time for this."
"I know," Alex said, fist still clenched. "He provoked me."
Zenon wiped his cheek slowly. Didn't move from where he stood.
"That's illogical." He said it calmly. "This whole time I've been thinking about a way out, and all you noticed was that I wasn't crying. Look around you, Alex. Five of us are awake. The rest — drugged? Asleep? Or dead?"
Alex looked.
The other five were on the floor. They weren't sleeping.
Alex ran to the nearest one, shook him hard. No response. Shook again. Nothing. He dropped to his knees beside the body, then looked up at Zenon with eyes that couldn't accept what they were seeing.
"Dead," Zenon said, so quiet it was almost inaudible. "That's good for us. They would've just been dead weight. Five of us left. You, me, Haïssi, Eddie, Sofian."
Then he stepped back from the wall and said:
"Do what you want, Alex. I won't step in again."
Sofian collapsed to the floor, his voice hoarse:
"They're playing with our lives. This is the end."
Zenon lifted his head slowly. He looked toward the spot where the face had appeared on the wall, then said, quiet, addressing no one in the room:
"Enough pretending we've got this handled. Our odds are below zero, and the people with me are already starting to break."
He stared at his trembling hand and finished:
"And even I — I might follow them down."
---
In the control room, the massive screen filled the wall. Two men sat before it in the dark.
"They've figured something out," the first said quietly. "Only half of them are left."
Cypher answered without lifting his eyes from the screen:
"The bonds between them are already cracking. Some of them are close to breaking."
The other man slapped his palms on the table with a delight that was calm and unsettling in equal measure. Metal teeth, white hair scattered every which way, glasses catching the screen's glow. A white coat stained with dark brown patches.
"Look at that expression." He pointed at the screen. "The one with black hair. He's just tense — is he the Chosen One?"
"I don't know. Xavier never told me his identity." Cypher pushed his chair back slightly. "The Chosen One will reveal himself through what he does. This one looks close to the profile, but the pressure hasn't peaked yet."
"Your analysis doesn't interest me," Virüs said, watching the screen the way a child watches a new toy. "This resilience will serve my research well. If you're right, I might finally land on the correct formula."
"Quiet. I'm going to talk to them now."
"I'll go check on Case One Hundred in the meantime. Sarah. She said she wasn't well."
"I'll stop by once I'm done here."
Cypher reached out, cold, and pressed a small button.
The face returned to the wall.
Zenon watched from where he sat on the floor, arms on his knees, no expression to read.
"Welcome back, slaves."
No one moved.
"You'll find cups along the wall. Each of you has your own. Don't touch anyone else's." A pause. "And there's a spy among you. Identify him and swap him out, and you'll all be spared. Fail, and you know what happens. Your survival odds currently stand at sixty percent. Every person you sacrifice raises it by ten percent. But you can't cash in the percentage until you reach one hundred. Good luck."
The face vanished.
Eddie turned to Zenon.
"Thank you," he said quietly. "What you said helped, a little."
"Zenon."
Alex said it in a different tone now — wary instead of angry.
"You're the first one I suspect. But I won't act rashly while the odds still stand like this. Just know I'm watching you."
Five shelves slid out from the wall with a soft sound. On each shelf, a cup of milk — except Zenon's, which had the cup and a small piece of bread beside it.
He looked at it without reaching for it.
Heavy hours passed. Hunger is a different thing from fear — quieter, more patient, but no less merciless. Eddie drank first, then Haïssi, then Sofian and Alex. Zenon slept.
When he woke, the cup was still sitting in front of him. He reached out, took it, brought it to his nose.
Ordinary smell. Ordinary look.
He looked at the piece of bread.
Fake. He touched the surface. Almost like plastic.
Why give me this?
Are they trying to frame me for something?
This will only make things worse.
He looked at the others — all asleep. Turned his gaze to the silent, empty room.
And suddenly — without knowing why — he remembered the dream.
He stopped.
Why remember it now? What is my mind trying to tell me?
The same white space? Don't harm yourselves? Eat well?
Are they trying to make us eat each other?
No — could it be a decoy?
But they already carried out a massacre on the yacht. Repeating it would be easy for them.
He looked back at the cup. Focused. His eyes opened wider than they needed to, tracking something visible only to someone patient enough to look.
Then he saw it.
A small black dot, at the center of the white milk, almost nothing at all. Like something familiar — not always seen, but seen now.
He stood.
"That milk can't be safe.
Did any of you drink it?"
His voice filled the room.
"Don't trust them — the milk could be poisoned!"
He looked at the four cups.
Empty.
To be continued…