“Where am I? ” said Zane Callaway as he lay face down across a hilltop speckled with cherry blossoms. His hands were bound with rope, as were his legs and feet. He had just woken up from a sleep of who knows how long, and now he gazed up at the star-riddled night sky, wondering why.

  Around the hill was a mesh of trees—oaks, willows, and young spruces—perfectly secluding it from the outside world, or at the very least, what was left of it, for something had happened; an incident was what most called it, in which, on one random day, the whole world went dark, and nothing was left but a fraction of the populace.

  Zane called for help in one direction, and he was met by nothing but the deafening sound of silence. In fact, the woods were so tranquil that Zane only wondered whether his hearing was impaired or if that was just the current reality playing tricks with him.

  With no response, Zane motioned in another direction and shouted, but the result was the same. He then shifted to yet another angle, and another, and another, but unfortunately for him, each shout was met not with long-lost friends or gentle rescuers; no, instead, it was just nothing. At this point, Zane would have preferred some sign of life, even if it were something as meaningless and as irrelevant as a squirrel climbing a tree branch or perhaps a robin resting in her nest.

  And after a while of emptiness, darkness, and lack of any foreign intervention, there was something. There was still no sound, no echoes from afar, and no sensation of touch or of taste either; there was not even a sense of mind or body. However, from within night’s breath emerged the shadow of a man. This was not just any man; it was a person all too familiar to Zane, an identity from his recent past. He just did not know it yet.

  As Zane squirmed in his place, trying to break his restraints, he briefly jolted his head upward and spotted the shadow. At first, his eyes widened, and his heart dipped from a rapid thumping to a soft canter as he screamed “help”; however, with each impending step from this mystery man, Zane began to become more and more concerned.

  Zane then narrowed his eyes, trying to make out who this mysterious being was and whether he meant Zane more harm or good fortune. At first, he did not care, because after being alone all day tied up, any human spotting was uplifting, even if this supposed human’s intentions were sinister.

  As the shadow man approached closer and closer, the once dark tones of his silhouette exterior morphed into the image of a recognizable body as his midsection transformed into a torso with arms, legs, and a neck. And his legs walked and marched to life; however, there was something off. This man, this once single guide to hope—held a gun—with a pair of fingers tapping on the trigger. This repetitive taping resembled that of the second hand of a clock, in which its conclusion would result in the final tick heard just before its trigger went off.

  From the darkness, Zane noticed the man was wearing a pair of dark shades, too dark, so much so that wearing them was almost inconceivable at this time of night. Although, with a closer look, little graphics and other minor LED-like signals came into view. These additions signified the shades were probably more akin to high-tech night vision goggles as opposed to simple glasses.

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  The man was now fully visible, with his goggles, his gun, and his towering, muscular physique. As he marched forward, he had to duck his head just to keep the tree branches and other low-hanging vegetation above from hitting his head. One last touch that confirmed to Zane who this mystery man was was the detailed, black eye patch that ran across the left side of his face. Despite the size of the covering, a scar still peeked out from underneath.

  “Hello, Zane,” said Commander Rex Gibson, as the grip on his rifle tightened.

  Zane squirmed a bit more, trying to maneuver into an upright position as his eyes were still adjusting to the dark.

  “I know you,” Zane said as he squinted his eyes. “Why did you bring me here?”

  Commander Rex did nothing but shake his head as he loaded a few rounds into his gun.

  “I brought you here because I have to.” Rex pulled back the recoil mechanism on the bottom of his weapon. “If there was any other way, I would have taken that path.”

  Zane gulped as he started to sweat slowly despite the cool breeze and the somber tones of the night sky.

  “What do you mean ‘any other way’? And, more importantly, what do you plan to do to me? You and I are practically family, brothers even.”

  Commander Rex aimed his gun at Zane’s head as his eye looked down the weapon’s scope. “I know. That’s what makes what I am about to do so hard.”

  Zane pressed his eyes closed and ground his teeth, hoping—no, wishing—that he was anywhere but here. Almost as if he believed his conscious effort had any effect on whether he made it out of the woods in the middle of the night, practically helpless—alive. In his deepest thoughts, he began to concentrate, focusing in on the gun in Rex’s hand, trying to telekinetically shift it away from his direction to jolt the blast from anywhere but here. Unfortunately, as he dived deeper in his own mind, in his will to effect what could be, a restraint on his leg began to tingle more vigorously, almost as if it were perfectly counteracting his psychic abilities—in precise resonance with his output but in the opposite manner.

  Rex laughed as he pressed his night-vision goggles down on his face. “Don’t even try it. This cuffing was precisely designed to stop whatever you are thinking about doing.” With that phrase, Rex narrowed his eyes on his target as his back hunched and his rifle veered forward. “Don’t move, or else this will go from completely painless to brutally agonizing.”

  As Rex aimed the tip of his rifle at Zane’s head, Zane did nothing but scrunch up in a fetal position, convulsing back and forth, making all the effort he could to overcome the restraint and stop Rex’s fire. But as Zane ramped up his energy, and as the veins on his head bulged, and the sweat from his face dripped to the ground on this cold winter night—nothing was happening.

  Rex looked up one final time. “I’m sorry, Zane, but this has to be done.”

  Rex now closed one eye and focused the other through the scope of his rifle.

  Zane scrunched upward one final time just to look Rex in his sole beady eye. “You’re making a huge mistake.”

  Bang—just as Zane spoke his last word, a gunshot went off, blasting forward at blistering speeds. However, only the background came into view following the shot, leaving Zane’s fate in a somewhat fractured form of ambiguity.

  A flock of geese in the distance sprung up to life in response to the blast, flying away and screeching for mercy. They rushed on by from all directions in a chaotic panic, resembling Rex’s inner mind as he stood there, blankly staring at what had happened.