Lucas was startled to awareness by something warm and soft and distinctly furry shifting on his stomach. He spent a moment stretching out, still half asleep, and the warm thing on his stomach moved in response. Tiny little pinpricks poked into his skin, and he flinched with a yelp, the soft-warm thing falling away with a yowl of its own. His eyes snapped open.

  Cold bit at his skin, seeping up from the hard stone and through the layer of leaves and sticks and dirt and other dead plant bits beneath his back. He scrambled to his upright, shocked and bewildered.

  What the…?

  Sitting before him was a tabby ginger cat that looked distinctly unimpressed with having been disturbed from its resting place. Where a cat had come from and why it decided to fall asleep on his stomach was a mystery that would have to wait for another time, because he had much bigger problems right now, primarily regarding the setting for this mystery.

  Last thing he was aware of, he’d been munching lazily on his breakfast, content to take his time with the knowledge that he didn’t need to be out of the house until lunch at the usual place with Claire, Jamie, Rian, and Aarya. With a sinking feeling in his gut as he took in his surroundings, he got the feeling he was going to be late to that appointment. He hated being late.

  He was in an utterly cavernous room; he suspected his entire eleven-story apartment building could have fit beneath the peak of the looming domed roof with room to spare. It was so high up he couldn’t make out the details of the patterns he could vaguely tell were etched into the grand dome beneath creeping moss, and the room was even wider still, a gargantuan circular space.

  He’d been to Wembley Stadium, once, and he was fairly sure the massive arena could’ve fit inside this place with, again, plenty of room to spare.

  If its size wasn’t intimidating enough, the sheer disrepair it had fallen into was unnerving in itself.

  Like in some post-apocalyptic movie, nature had crept in to reclaim the clearly manmade structure. Greenery from trees and plants had forced their way in through cracks in the white walls, winding and snaking their way up the support columns that lined the edges of the room until they reached the ceiling, with flower-covered vines hanging down like natural tapestries.

  The only areas not covered in creeping vines and moss were the impressively large holes where stone had fallen away from the dome, allowing the sun to peek in and illuminate the giant room nature had reclaimed. Inhaling, a heavy scent of earth and pollen filled his nostrils, strong enough that his eyes watered.

  And all around him, a solid wall of greenery taller than he was and dense enough it was impossible to see through, looming over a circle of clear-ish space maybe a few metres across. A part of him wondered why the plants hadn’t grown in this spot. Most of him was just relieved they hadn’t. This awakening would have been even ruder if he’d found himself under a solid few metres of overgrowth.

  It was plenty rude enough on its own. There was no sign of disturbance in the detritus that littered the clear circle, which made no sense. Someone had to have dragged him or carried him here, and how could they have possible done so without disturbing anything? How had they even got through the plants?

  “Hello?” he called out. His voice sounded scratchy, like he hadn’t spoken in ages. “Is anyone there?”

  His echo bouncing back was the only reply to his trembling query.

  With an irrational dread, he realised he almost certainly wasn’t going to make it to lunch with his friends at all. There probably should’ve been bigger priorities at that moment, but his mind fixated on that point. He could picture Rian rolling his eyes, Claire glaring at him while tapping her watch, Jamie making some pithy comment with a grin, and, perhaps worst of all, Aarya giving him an understanding smile and immediately forgiving him for his tardiness.

  Late late late. The word echoed in his mind as he spun on the spot, desperately searching for a passage through the dense foliage.

  “Hello?” he called out again, hopelessly.

  Nothing once more. Silence hung heavy.

  He looked down at the cat, meeting its feline eyes. “Looks like it might be just you and me here. Don’t suppose you have any idea where the fuck I am?”

  Obviously, the cat didn’t reply.

  Even as he swallowed, even as his heart raced and his breaths came too fast, he still found a kind of haunting, sad beauty to this place. Aesthetically, if nothing else, it was a sight to behold. The white marble peeking between gaps in the patchwork carpet of plant life high above spoke of a venue that had once been grandiose beyond belief. It wasn’t a modern building; in fact it called to mind something more like a particularly impressive mediaeval cathedral.

  The only problem is the obvious question: what happened to the people who built this place, that they’d let it fall into such disrepair?

  Of course, there was actually a related and arguably even more pertinent question.

  “How the hell did I end up here?” he asked aloud, expecting no answer and, indeed, receiving none. The ginger tabby sat to grooming itself, uncaring of his plight.

  Lucas racked his brain, thinking back. Through the dull fog of fatigue, he managed to recall going through his usual morning routine, and there was nothing out of the ordinary he could identify; brushing his teeth, taking a shower, throwing on some pyjamas in anticipation of a lazy morning, frying up some bacon and eggs and toasting some wholemeal bread, plating it up, tucking in, and then… nothing.

  A flash of light, the blink of an eye, and here he was. Nothing that would explain the transition between his bedroom and this unfamiliar, cavernous ruin. Not that there were any familiar ruins he could’ve found himself in.

  The cat just added to the oddity of it all, incongruous to his surroundings. It appeared to be the only life in this place beside him, unless he counted the plants.

  He patted himself down all over, but found no injuries, just a skinny-fit body. His shaggy black hair was still a bit wild—he'd been meaning to get it cut on the way to lunch—but he felt no bumps or cuts beneath the mop. It was dry, too. Last he recalled, it had still been a bit damp from his morning shower.

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  A cool breeze whispered through the room, throwing up little puffs of detritus and zapping a chill through Lucas’ body. He shivered, his arms automatically coming up to wrap around himself. Even at this place’s peak, Lucas thought, heating it must have been a nightmare, if they even bothered at all. Abandoned as it was, it was distinctly bloody cold, and here he was dressed in only his thin forest green PJs as appropriate for a nice spring day with no AC.

  Wherever this was, it certainly wasn’t spring. His breath fogged the air. His poor toes already felt like shards of ice.

  “Can’t sit around here, waiting to freeze to death,” he said, shivering slightly, wishing he hadn’t bucked off the warm and fluffy cat. “Answers are gonna have to come later.”

  That in mind, he spent a few moments fruitlessly searching for an exit to the giant room, trying to keep his frantic breaths under control. It was hard when there was so much overgrowth blocking the view of his direct surroundings, forcing him to get up on his tiptoes and strain his neck, but at least the gaps in the roof illuminated the scene well enough.

  There was nothing in sight, but he didn't let that dishearten him. It stood to reason that there was a way in and out of this place. That was how rooms worked. Everyone knew that. From the fact the sun shining in from a hole in the domed roof, he could deduce he wasn't in a sealed cavern miles underground, at least.

  In the end, he decided to pick a spot on the wall and start moving towards it. Easier said than done with such wild overgrowth surrounding him, but Lucas wasn’t one to be deterred.

  After a little bit of searching around, he found a relatively thick stick and set to using it as a crude bludgeon against the thorny bushes surrounding him. He could only be thankful for this area where the plants, for whatever reason, couldn’t grow. The clear circle where no flora could encroach was about as large as the centre circle of a basketball court, circled by the weirdly uniform wall of bushes.

  They just stop dead at the boundary, he thought, inspecting it with growing bewilderment. That can’t possibly be natural, right? But how the hell would you even achieve that?

  There was no sign of any trellising or fences to keep the flora at bay. As far as he could tell, they were simply being held back by an unseen force.

  When he broke bits of bush away from the greater mass, he took to dropping them in a pile at the other edge of the circle, and he couldn’t help noticing how the pile seemed to be duller in colour every time he went back to it. The ginger cat loafing obliviously nearby, notably unchanged in palette, emphasised that the sensation wasn’t a trick of the light or an artifact of his imagination.

  Naturally, the strange phenomenon raised even more questions, but he’d already decided on his course of action before the oddity registered, so he put it to the back of his mind for now, deciding to just be thankful for the boon instead.

  Time passed. Hours crawled by. Fatigue weighed on him, but he considered stamina his strong point, even in peculiar circumstances, so he pushed through. He wasn’t a fitness freak by any stretch of the imagination, but he’d run a marathon just last year in a somewhat respectable time, and he’d kept going to the gym even after he’d accomplished that goal, so he felt he’d be okay on that front.

  It got easier as he went along and he got a handle of the proper technique. At first he’d struggled and flailed around with little finesse to clear a path, but before long he was felling obstructions with single blows, swinging his heavy stick in wide arcs that seemed to pass through the foliage as if it wasn’t there, almost melting the overgrowth away to form a path.

  It still wasn’t a fast process, but there was something to be said for getting the knack of a task. Trial-and-erroring his way to minimal competence, watching his own improvement before his eyes.

  It was actually kind of nice, if he ignored the fact he was in an unfamiliar, clearly-abandoned place with no idea how he’d ended up there.

  By the time he felt too tired to keep going, the sunbeams had changed their angle quite significantly, shining almost directly in the opposite direction from the holes in the roof as they had when he’d arrived here. That told him it had been morning when he woke, at least, and it was now getting into the afternoon.

  Unfortunately, he hadn’t made it even halfway to the spot on the wall he’d been aiming for. Looking back, he found that he’d at least kept in mostly a straight line, the clear circle visible a distance behind him. The cat still waited there, having shown absolutely zero interest in leaving the circle.

  That was fine. This was all fine. Nothing to worry about or get upset over. He’d just rest for a while, then keep going until there was no light left. Then he’d sleep in his little clearing at the centre of the chamber. No problem. He’d slept rough before, though admittedly with a sleeping bag.

  With a deep breath, he set out once more, wielding his stick with considerably more dexterity than he had when he started out. It didn’t really help much. Darkness started to fall pretty soon after that, and he was forced to make his way back along the tunnel, forcing himself to feel a bit of accomplishment at the day’s progress. He didn’t know if it was actually an impressive feat, but he consoled himself with the knowledge that he was only a beginner in the art of felling foliage with a big stick.

  When he settled down among the twigs and leaves and bits of stray moss, he found it all small consolation. Exhausted and hungry and thirsty, he managed to fall asleep despite his discomfort, dearly thankful that he’d never needed a soft bed to get some shut-eye.

  Even then, he slept poorly. The night was cold and damp, and the moss and leaves he piled atop himself as a makeshift blanket only did a little to stave it off. Even after he managed to coax the cat close enough to curl up with it for warmth like a little space heater, he was still chilly. He woke repeatedly in the night, feeling afraid, lonely, and confused. Questions churned in his head; where he was, how he'd got here, what he was going to do.

  No answers were forthcoming, and he drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

  In the morning he rose feeling stiff and sore and cranky and quite baffled that he hadn't caught a cold; his stomach was twisting with cramps, and he was a little light-headed from thirst, but there was nothing for it.

  Onwards and upwards. Hopefully. With all these bushes there were probably berries and stuff. And surely there was some Bear Grylls-esque method for extracting water from them? He just had to figure it out. Simple.

  It took another day of hacking away to make it to the wall. The work was hard and mind-numbingly boring, but he took some solace in his plainly increasing efficiency. It was barely mid-afternoon when he reached his goal, and he was potentially less worn out compared to yesterday's equivalent work. His stick felt light in his hand, and every swing held more flourish than the last. The bushes seemed much less daunting when his stick was parting branches like butter.

  Just to put a damper on his spirits though, looking left and right at the wall yielded no sign of any kind of exit.

  “Which is fine,” he told himself. “Everything’s fine. I’ll just have to follow the wall around the circumference of the room. There has to be a way out.”

  It would take some time to find it, maybe, but it was starting to look like he had plenty to spare, all things considered.

  With a deep breath, he set out once more, shuffling along the slightly curved wall. Plants blocked his path at times, so thick that slashing at them with his stick was a fool’s errand, so he was forced away from the wall a few times. But he always made his way back soon enough, and before long he found himself at a blockade of plant life so thick that it took him until he’d halfway navigated around it to realise it was spilling out from an arched doorway thrice as tall as him.

  Lucas grimaced at it, stuck between triumph and despair. An exit stood before him, but really it was no exit at all. It almost seemed to mock him, like the dense green foliage was a tongue sticking out from its mouth. He could almost imagine it blowing raspberries.

  Picking a raspberry off a nearby branch and inspecting it, Lucas resigned himself to at least another long, arduous day of labour. Popping the little red berry in his mouth and luxuriating in the sweet explosion of juice on his tongue, he took some small solace in the fact he now had food on hand. (He made a mental note of where those berries were while he was at it.)

  “Alright,” he murmured to himself in a voice raspy from disuse and plain fatigue, squaring his shoulders and hefting his trusty stick. “Time to get to work.”