"Play it again."
With Winter Russel hanging over him, the poor security guard had no choice but to obey and replay the same snippet of security footage for the seventh time. However, no matter how many times he played it, the scene wouldn't change.
Dig and Arker stepped into the elevator. The doors closed after Arker pressed the button. When the doors closed, the screen flickered for a brief moment. During that brief moment, Dig disappeared. There were no signs of where he went or how he disappeared.
One moment, he was in the elevator with Arker, and the next, he was gone.
"Should I send out a search team?" Arker asked.
Russel straightened up and finally looked away from the screen, meaning the security guard could finally breathe.
"No need," Winter said. "I'm sure he'll be fine. But bring someone with investigative Boons. I want to know how the fuck a Curse got into this building." A storm cloud swirled inside Winter's eyes as he stalked off.
He had spent a fortune to prepare a safe space for his family, a place where they wouldn't have to worry about the Curses brought about by the Chaos Descension twenty-three years ago.
But now, a Curse had infiltrated that supposedly safe space and abducted his son. Someone or something was going to pay.
While Dig's disappearance slowly but surely unleashed a noisy chain of events up above, Dig himself didn't even realize he had been kidnapped at first.
For him, it was Arker who suddenly disappeared after the lights in the elevator flickered for a moment. The elevator remained, but Arker was suddenly nowhere to be seen.
He hadn't turned invisible, either. Dig double-checked by waving his arms everywhere in the elevator. It wouldn't be the first time one of his dad's guards took him literally when he said he didn't want to see them.
Dig got more confused than worried since he knew nothing bad should happen inside his dad's building.
That changed when the elevator started sinking instead of rising.
There was a basement-level parking garage at the bottom of the building. But there was nothing below it. And it wouldn't take the elevator more than twenty seconds to reach the garage.
Even if something had gone wrong with Arker and the elevator, it should have stopped already.
Instead, it just continued to speed up.
Dig felt his insides start to crawl up through his chest and throat. His feet started to lose connection with the elevator's floor. His heartbeat was so loud that he couldn't tell if the pounding he heard came from within him or outside the elevator.
A sudden realization that he was about to die flashed through his head.
The elevator shaft had crumbled, and a sinkhole had opened up beneath it, leading straight to the center of the world. He was free-falling through nothingness, and he would continue until he met resistance, after which, he would stop falling. Immediately. Suddenly becoming stationary after falling quickly enough to float in the middle of the air inside the elevator would kill him. Without a doubt.
If anyone were to ask about it afterward, Dig would say that he stayed composed. There was nothing he could do about it, after all. What use was there in panicking?
In reality, he screamed his lungs out.
He panicked.
It was only after several minutes that he realized that he was sitting on the elevator floor instead of floating in the air. Once he realized that, he also noticed that the elevator was slowing down. The air pressed down on him like he was deep under water as it did.
A few moments later, the elevator came to a complete halt with a soft thud, and the doors opened to a golden wheat field.
'Is this what heaven looks like?'
Dig could not leave the elevator any sooner, and he scrambled out instantly, embracing the soft soil before turning around and looking at the elevator with hatred.
The elevator box stood there in front of him in the middle of the field with nothing to support it or slow its descent. There were no wires or anything. There was nothing to logically explain what had just happened.
And before Dig could think any further, the elevator slowly started to ascend after its doors closed with a ding.
"A Curse? In Dad's office?" Dig frowned and followed the elevator into the sky with his eyes until it was too small to see.
"Your dad has an office?" A man's hairy face replaced the sky as they looked at Dig from above.
Dig slowly raised his fists, ready to fight. But he was still lying down, so the man raised an eyebrow and held out his hand to help him up.
Once he was on his feet, Dig raised his hands again. The man finally realized what he was doing and gently put his hands on Dig's and pushed them down.
"There's no need for that. I don't know where you're from or what you were doing when the Shuttle grabbed you, but there's no fighting here," He said in a soothing voice like he was talking to a scared fawn.
'Is it actually the afterlife or something?'
Dig's eyes narrowed. He was suspicious. He had a lot of questions. But the first one was simple.
"What just happened to me?"
The man breathed out a sigh of relief.
"I was scared for a second that you were going to say something strange. But that's a good question, one that's easy to answer. The Shuttle," he said, pointing at the sky where the elevator disappeared.
"...Kidnapped you down here to this little place we call the Underbelly. As for what the Shuttle is, we aren't completely sure. But it's a Curse that takes over any box-shaped mode of transport and grabs one person."
At the man's short explanation, Dig looked around. At first, he only saw the golden wheat, but then he saw what looked like a few buildings. That brought him to his next question.
"Where is this place?"
"Ah. That's one of the hard questions. We have no idea." The man shrugged helplessly.
"How do I get back?" Dig cupped his hand over his eyes and squinted up at the blank sky.
"Ough. That's a…Well, there's an answer, but I'll take you to the village first and get you settled in. It's not an easy answer to hear."
"Are you telling me there's no way back?" Dig asked, a lump in his throat.
"No!" The bearded man hurriedly answered before hesitating.
"It's just a little more complicated than that." Refusing to answer, the bearded man managed to get Dig to follow him to the village.