Pain came first.
Not sharp pain. Not the kind that stabbed in one place and stayed there. This was the kind that sat behind the eyes, spread through the skull, and made every thought feel late. Cylo Dauntless woke with that pain pressing into him like a hand.
He groaned and rolled onto his side.
The floor under him was cold, flat, and too clean in a way that made his skin crawl. It looked like old yellow carpet, but it did not feel soft. The air smelled stale, like a room that had been shut for years. Above him, long white lights buzzed and flickered. Their hum was thin and constant, needling at the headache in his head.
Cylo pushed himself up.
Walls the color of old paper stretched around him in wrong angles, making little halls and corners that all looked the same. No windows. No doors. No sound except the lights.
He stood still for a second, breathing hard.
"…Where am I?"
His voice came back to him weak and flat. No echo. That bothered him more than it should have.
He checked his pockets on instinct. Empty. No phone. No wallet. No keys. Nothing.
When he tried to think back, his head throbbed harder. He knew his name. He knew he was Cylo. He knew he was supposed to know more than that, but the rest felt wet and slippery, like trying to grab at soaked paper.
Then a voice behind him said, bright and cheerful, "Ah. Awake at last."
Cylo spun around so fast he nearly slipped.
A small creature stood in the hall behind him.
It was barely up to his waist, thin as a cane, dressed in a black coat too neat for this place, with little polished shoes and white gloves. On its head sat a white top hat that looked almost too big for it. Its face was pale and smooth, almost doll-like, with wide dark eyes and a smile that felt practiced.
Cylo stared. "What the hell are you?"
The little thing tipped its hat. "A host, for now. A guide, if you like. A witness, if you don't." It smiled wider. "Welcome to the Oddest Place."
Cylo said nothing.
The creature looked around at the halls as if showing off a home. "Ten floors. Floor Zero to Floor Nine. You are on Floor Zero."
"What does that mean?"
"It means," the creature said lightly, "that you have begun."
Cylo's headache got worse. "Began what?"
The creature ignored that and lifted one gloved hand.
Two cards of pale light appeared in the air in front of Cylo. He flinched. The cards turned slowly, showing black letters on white.
Upgrade Granted: Super Luck
Upgrade Granted: Super Seed
In the creature's other hand appeared a small plastic bottle of water and a wrapped cookie. It held them out like party favors.
"Your starting gifts."
Cylo stared at the words, then at the bottle and cookie. "That's it?"
"That is what you received."
"What does 'Super Seed' even mean?"
The creature gave a tiny shrug. "What things mean is often less important than what they become."
Cylo frowned. "And 'Super Luck'?"
"A little nudge, now and then."
"A little?"
"Mm." The creature placed the bottle and cookie into his hands. "Enough to matter. Not enough to save you from being stupid."
Cylo looked past it. Far down another hall, he heard voices rise in alarm. More people.
He looked back. "How many people are here?"
"Participants?" the creature asked. "Enough."
Cylo's grip tightened on the bottle. "How do I get out?"
The small thing's smile stayed the same. "The way forward opens when it opens."
"That's not an answer."
"It is the only one you get."
Cylo took a step toward it. "Who are you?"
The creature tapped the brim of its hat with two fingers. "Call me what you like."
"Fine. I'll call you annoying."
It laughed, genuinely amused. "That works."
Then it was just gone.
No flash. No smoke. No step into shadow. Cylo blinked once, and the thing simply was not there anymore.
His skin prickled.
A scream tore through the halls somewhere far away.
Cylo looked down at the water and cookie in his hands, then at the glowing words still hovering in front of him. They faded after a moment, leaving him alone with the buzzing lights, the stale air, and the old yellow walls.
He drank half the bottle in one go.
The water was warm.
Still, it helped.
By the time Cylo found other people, he already hated the place.
The halls twisted without pattern. Sometimes a corridor that looked straight bent at the end. Sometimes a room opened into three more rooms just like it. Sometimes he was sure he had passed the same stained wall twice. The lights always buzzed. The carpet always looked old. The air never changed.
The first group he found had five people in it.
A big man with a shaved head had flame curling around his fists. A woman in a blue hoodie kept blinking from one end of the room to the other in little jumps of light. Another guy had skin that looked like gray stone from the neck down. The remaining two looked normal, which did not mean weak. Not here.
They all turned when Cylo stepped into the room.
The fire-fist man looked him over. "What'd you get?"
Cylo hesitated. "Super Luck. Super Seed."
The room went quiet for a second.
Then the stone-skinned guy barked a laugh. "Super what?"
Cylo did not answer.
The woman in the hoodie snorted. "That's rough."
"What about you?" Cylo shot back.
"Blink," she said, then vanished and reappeared on a desk across the room. "Pretty good, right?"
The fire-fist man smirked. "Pyro Hands."
The stone-skinned guy crossed his arms. "Iron Hide."
The last two shared theirs too. One had perfect balance. The other had something called sharp hearing.
All of them sounded better than his.
Cylo hated how quickly that thought came.
The fire-fist man glanced at the half-empty bottle in Cylo's hand. "Food?"
"One cookie."
"Water?"
Cylo lifted the bottle.
The man nodded once. "Then don't waste it. We're looking for a way out. Stick with us if you want, but don't slow us down."
Cylo almost told him to shove it. Instead, he swallowed the words and stayed.
For a few hours.
That was enough to learn two things.
First, powers made people bold fast.
Second, bold did not mean smart.
The group moved through hall after hall, turning like they had a plan when really they were just choosing directions. The man with Pyro Hands acted like he was already in charge because he could set things on fire. The woman with Blink was better than all of them at scouting, but she was getting tired every time she used it. The others bickered about whose power was most useful. No one knew where they were going.
Then a hole opened under the sharp-hearing man.
One second he was talking. The next, the carpet under him gave way with a wet crack, and he dropped chest-deep into a dark gap full of broken pipes and nails.
He screamed.
Cylo jumped back.
The others crowded around the edge. The man tried to climb out, then cried out louder when rusted metal tore into his leg.
"Pull me up!" he yelled.
The fire-fist man swore and reached down. The blink woman crouched too.
Cylo did not move.
He was staring at the strip of carpet half a foot to the left of where the other man had stepped. It had dipped for a second before the collapse. Barely. So small he almost had not seen it.
Almost.
He backed up another step.
The fire-fist man and the blink woman managed to drag the injured man out. His leg was a mess. Blood ran onto the yellow carpet in dark, ugly lines.
The stone-skinned guy rounded on Cylo. "What, you couldn't help?"
Cylo looked at him. "I saw the floor dip."
"So?"
"So I didn't walk there."
The stone-skinned guy stared at him like that was the wrong answer.
Maybe it was.
But Cylo stayed alive.
He told himself that mattered more.
The first day passed. Then the second.
Cylo left that group before they could turn on each other over supplies they did not have. He did not know if that was luck or instinct. Maybe both.
He stretched the cookie as long as he could, breaking off tiny pieces and letting them sit on his tongue before swallowing. It only made him hungrier. The rest of the water was gone before he slept the first time.
Sleep itself was awful.
There were rooms with office chairs, rooms with old tables, rooms with stacks of blank paper, rooms with humming vents too narrow to crawl into. He found a room with a couch missing one arm and slept there curled on his side, waking every hour to the buzz of the lights and the thought that something was standing in the next room.
Nothing was.
Probably.
By the third day he stopped trying to count turns and started scratching tiny marks into the walls with a loose screw he found near a broken outlet.
By the fourth, he saw fewer people.
Sometimes he heard voices far off.
Sometimes he found signs others had been through: footprints in dust, empty bottles, burned carpet, blood on a corner wall.
Once he found a man crying in a room full of overturned desks. Cylo asked if he was hurt. The man looked up with hollow eyes and said, "I got Super Memory."
Cylo waited.
The man laughed once, small and cracked. "I remember everything."
Cylo had nothing to say to that. He left him there.
That night he heard a long sound in the halls. Not a scream. Not a voice. Something lower. Wet. Wrong.
He did not sleep at all after that.
On the fifth day, the floor changed.
It started with the lights.
The buzz got louder. Then all at once every light in the hall ahead of him went out.
Cylo froze.
Darkness swallowed the corridor in front of him whole. He could still see the room he stood in, the light above him flickering hard, but beyond that doorway was only black.
Then, from inside it, something breathed.
Cylo ran.
He did not wait. He did not look back. He just ran.
He turned left, then right, then through two open rooms with crooked desks and another hall with peeling wallpaper that had not been there before. His shoes slipped on the carpet. His lungs burned.
Behind him, something hit a wall hard enough to shake the floor.
A woman screamed somewhere nearby.
A man shouted, "This way! This way!"
Then his voice cut off into a choking noise.
Cylo almost went toward it.
Almost.
Instead he kept moving.
He vaulted a low cabinet, hit a corner too fast, slammed shoulder-first into the wall, shoved off it, and kept running. The headache came back full force. His breath rasped in and out. His legs trembled.
A shadow spilled across the floor behind him.
Cylo looked back once.
It was big.
That was all he really saw. Big, low, and moving wrong, like too many parts were trying to lead the body at once. One white eye caught the light for half a second.
Then Cylo tripped.
His foot snagged on torn carpet and he pitched forward. His face nearly smashed into the floor.
At the last second his hand hit something hard beneath the carpet seam. A metal strip. It broke his fall just enough for him to twist sideways instead of going flat.
The creature slammed into the wall where he should have been.
The impact burst drywall and showered the hall with dust.
Cylo stared for one stunned heartbeat.
Then he scrambled up and ran again.
Luck.
A little nudge, now and then.
Not enough to save him from being stupid.
Enough to matter.
He spent the rest of the day hiding in a narrow supply room behind stacked plastic bins while the thing moved through the halls outside. He heard it pass three times. Once it dragged something. Once it sniffed at the crack under the door. Once he was sure it had found him.
It had not.
When the sounds finally faded, Cylo sat in the dark with his hands over his mouth and shook until his muscles hurt.
After that, time became simpler.
Run.
Hide.
Listen.
Wait.
Move again.
He found other survivors twice in the next few days. Once was a pair: a girl with a split lip and a man whose left arm bent the wrong way. They traded no names. Just sat in the same room for a while, not speaking, then split when distant thudding came closer.
The second time was the blink woman from the first group.
Only she could not blink anymore.
Her face was gray. Sweat clung to her hair. "It takes too much now," she whispered when he asked. "I can't do it like before."
They stayed together for part of a day. She wanted to search for an exit. Cylo wanted to stay near safe rooms he had already marked. They argued in whispers until she snapped at him that hiding was not living.
He almost laughed at that.
Instead he said, "Neither is getting eaten."
They parted angry. He heard a short scream maybe an hour later.
He did not go back.
By the ninth day, Cylo had stopped caring what time it was.
He was starving. His stomach cramped so hard he had to sit sometimes. His throat felt lined with dust. His hands were scraped raw. One ankle ached every time he put too much weight on it.
He still kept moving.
He was functioning. Barely. But he was.
Some stubborn little piece of him refused to die in a place this stupid.
That thought carried him farther than pride should have.
On what he believed was the tenth day, he ended up in a narrow hall with only one dead-end room at the end of it. Behind him came the now-familiar pounding steps.
The monster had found him again.
Cylo looked left. Wall. Right. Wall. Ahead. Dead end.
He laughed once, hoarse and angry.
"Seriously?"
The pounding got closer.
He staggered to the end of the hall anyway, because what else was there to do? The lights above him flickered. The yellow wall in front of him looked just like every other wall he had seen.
Then a line appeared in it.
A thin black line, straight and vertical.
Cylo stopped.
The line widened.
A seam.
A door.
No—an elevator.
The wall split open with a soft mechanical chime so out of place it felt unreal. Inside waited a small elevator car with silver walls and warm light.
Behind him, the creature hit the far turn of the hall and shrieked.
Cylo moved.
He threw himself forward. Something slammed into his back and sent him crashing to his knees inside the elevator, but momentum carried him over the threshold. The doors started to close.
A claw, or a hand, or something like both scraped sparks off the metal as it tried to force its way in.
Cylo kicked wildly.
The doors shut on the thing with a heavy bang.
Silence.
Not true silence. The elevator hummed. Cylo's breath rasped. His heart hammered against his ribs. But compared to the endless buzz and the chasing and the screaming, it felt like silence.
He lay there on the metal floor and laughed again, weak and half-delirious.
Then warm light spilled over him.
Pain left him in waves.
The ache in his ankle vanished. The cuts on his hands sealed. The deep bruises in his back and shoulders eased. Hunger stayed, but even that softened enough that he could think past it. His headache, for the first time since waking, loosened.
Cylo pushed himself up into a seated position.
A new card of pale light appeared in front of him.
Upgrade Granted: Super Jump
He stared at it.
Then he looked at his own reflection in the metal wall of the elevator. Hollow-eyed. Sweaty. Pale. Alive.
"Great," he muttered. "Now I jump."
The elevator began to move.
Cylo leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, though not all the way.
He had survived.
That should have felt like enough.
Instead, as the elevator rose into whatever waited next, one thought sat cold and steady in his chest.
If that had only been Floor Zero, then what kind of place had he really woken up in?