The snow began to fall gently around Sugawara Itsuki, catching his breath as he trudged up the mountain. He was far from the recommended paths, climbing in the dead of night so he could be alone. The goal was to climb high enough to see the city of Fujiyoshida down below, but as he looked behind him for the first time he saw the error in his plan. While he was sure he was way above the city, he was not tall enough to see past the treeline. He slumped down against a pine tree, feeling his breath collected against the scarf and his ears numb from the cold.

Sugawara pulled out his phone, the factory setting background polluted the darkness with its presence, burning the time into his eyes and mind.

02:12, 16/01/05.

Eight hours of walking in the freezing cold, only to come up short.

No, he wasn’t going to give up just yet. He pulled out the rope from his one-man tent, slinging it around the trunk of the tree and tied it at his waist.

He would see the lights below this night, after all he had been through in the past few months, climbing a tree in the dark was nothing.

He shimmed his way up the mature trunk, careful with his footing and angle with every step, tying and untying the rope at every branch, until finally, he broke the canopy. The waning moon provided little light, clouds covered the sky and dusted the trees in snow.

Fujiyoshida glittered in the distance.

Suguwara pulled out his phone to record his accomplishment, the flash blinked light to the forest around him.

‘I did it…’ he thought to himself.

He took one last deep breath and admired the view, before a cone of light blinded him from above. It was so sudden and so bright it caught him off guard, he dropped his phone, and his grip on the tree.

Sugawara screamed as he fell, desperately grasping at the branches on his way down. His stomach flipped and his feet pulled him up into the sky, screaming as he desperately reached for branches to keep him from flying off. He struggled to hold on, the pine branches broke in his hands and floated up alongside him, into the light and into the unknown.

The light never faded.

His body was heavy and flat on his back as he stared into the ceiling lights of his new prison. White-tiled ceiling and walls, ambient stale air and stinking of disinfectant, his confusion only amplified by the fact he was naked. Everything was aching and stiff, it took him a minute to even roll to the side so he could sit up.

‘Am I dead?’ The first thought that ran through his brain, he could have died from the fall, or knocked unconscious and succumbed to combination blood loss/hypothermia. Sugawara then came to the conclusion that he should have been dead, but clearly wasn’t, which considering his current condition may have been a worse fate.

He crossed his legs to think and discovered the next disturbing discovery.

He had been shaved from head to toe, including eyebrows and other places.

‘What kind of sick perverted fuck?-’ he ran his hands over his head, feeling the unfamiliar texture of a smooth scalp except for strange raised bumps on the right side over his ear.

This was wrong, everything was wrong.

Sugawara jumped to his feet and began to pace, looking for a way out. The room was almost completely bare, there was no door, two clear pipes in one corner, a grate in the floor underneath them and in the opposite corner, while a giant black blob protruding from the middle of the ceiling watched over everything.

‘A camera?’ he thought, backing up while staring at its ominous presence. The clear tubes provided more answers, they ran up to the ceiling and opened about a foot from the floor, he waved a hand underneath them not sure what to expect.

The whir of a quiet engine stirred the air before water and food were funnelled through the tubes. The water fell through the grate while brown cubes of something piled up on the floor.

It smelled of dried meat, and his unsettled stomach tightened as he realised where he knew the smell.

Dog food. Ryo’s mutt ate similar stuff.

Sugawara backed away and his heart began to race.

He really was a fucking prisoner, forced to be naked, fed by an automatic machine and to piss in a corner… In what kind of fucked up scenario was this legal? Was he being held to be experimented on? He decided he didn’t want to find out, there had to be a door, there had to be a way out. He scrambled on his knees, pulling at the grate, his fingers slid in through the gaps but the metal wouldn’t budge. He ran to the other side but the other grate was exactly the same,firmly embedded in the concrete.

Panic began to cloud his mind, pounding his hands against the wall stamping his feet on the ground in search for a hidden exit switch, but there was nothing.

“No” he whispered out loud, resting his hands and head on the tile.

What did he do now?

He balled his palms into fists, dragging his nails along the tiles and then something caught his eye. The scar that marked his left hand was completely gone, he ran his fingers over the unblemished skin. The burn mark across his belly, the faded surgical scars from a childhood broken leg and the cuts and bruises that should have littered his body were healed too. That was impossible.

He finally slumped down burying his head in his hands.

'God I'm an idiot…' Why hadn't he thought of it sooner? It had probably been hours since he last took his medication. He was probably suffering an attack, he wasn't a prisoner, he was probably in hospital after being found unconscious in the woods.

It wasn't real, none of this was real.

For a moment he could breathe a sigh of relief, it would all be over soon.

He knocked on the tiled floor, it was convincing as hell though and it didn't line up with the usual symptoms.

'I've finally lost it,'

No amount of screaming or fighting was going to solve anything, he would simply have to wait until either it went away on its own or he got a visit from the doctor assigned to him to give him fresh medication.

He didn't have to wait long.

The front walls opened up from the seamless tiles, popping forward and opening from the middle, sliding to the side.

Two giant bugs in power armour entered the room.

"What the?!-" Before he could even reach one of the grasshoppers raised his baton and an extending needle speared Sugawara in the shoulder. He let out an emasculated wail as he flailed on the floor, only to be electro-shocked for his outbursts.

It was like being tazed times a million. His body, already sore and aching now limp, bleeding and paralysed, it took everything he had to breathe steadily.

The alien grasshoppers, now satisfied he was incapacitated, stepped aside and allowed their companions to walk in carrying another, naked prisoner with them.

Sugawara's voice cracked and whimpered as a naked, shaved, unconscious black man was unceremoniously dumped in the middle of the room.

His whisper of desperation had caught the attention of the Grasshopper guards, the artificial whines and clicks of the power armour grew louder as the guard approached. One of the four available arms reached out, jamming a steel coated finger into the open wound.

Sugawara yelped, struggling to pull away as the guard chittered and whistled amused at the blood pouring out. Another guard shoved his captor, Sugawara dropped to the floor as the leader screeched at his subordinate in a series of unintelligible clicks and high pitched squeals.

The guard then left him to bleed on the floor, disappearing after the others into the concealed exit along with his brethren.

Once they were gone, Sugawara summoned all his strength to roll on his back and use his right hand to stem the bleeding. Closing his eyes from the pain, water falling down his cheeks.

He had read so many stories about those on the verge of death, given the chance to redeem themselves in another dimension, where their skills could give them a heads up on the life they once had.

But those stories were comfortable fantasies, and even in his darkest moments on Earth he had never felt as pitiful as he did now. Were these hallucinations or reality?

'Does it really matter? I’m screwed either way,' he thought sardonically, hoping that his new cellmate would wake up soon, he was losing quite a bit of blood…