In the beautiful country of Canada, inside a small city that was filled with tall buildings and other landmarks blanketed by a thick layer of snow, the roads were filled to the brim with traffic as everyone was returning to their homes during these closing hours, with thoughts of a nice diner with their families and warm beds running through their minds, especially the latter as this day being Friday meant that they would have some extra shuteye the next morning, something they strongly desired after working tirelessly for the whole week before.

Amid all this, in front of a cafe shop beside one of the streets stood a man that anyone walking by him would take a second glance at due to how perfect he looked in his appearance while holding a cup of cold coffee that he just emptied. Even though his hair was coloured green, likely dyed, that didn't distract others from his charming looks and green eyes.

“It looks like there will be a snowstorm tonight”, the man muttered to himself as he gazed at the cloudy sky overhead and wasn't surprised much. It was winter after all, and Canada was famous for its heavy snows anyway.

Pushing himself away from the wall he was leaning on earlier and dropping the empty cup into a trash can nearby, he moved towards the road and crossed to the other side of it, at which there was an airport that was crowded with people entering and leaving with their luggage, some only carrying a small backpack, while others having multiple suitcases, clearly packed for a vacation.

As he was moving through this crowd of people, he accidentally bumped his shoulders with a man in his late twenties with south Asian origins from what he could see. The man had black hair, with slight signs of baldness, a light brown complexion and a face that seemed to be perpetually set into a frown. A frown that further deepened as a person that looked a little too perfect in his opinion bumped into him and made him drop the small carry bag that he had over his shoulder.

“Hey! Watch it!”, he shouted towards the back of the green-haired guy as he bent down to pick up his fallen bag. Not getting a response, he turned his head towards the guy while picking up his bag only to notice that the green-haired guy had his head turned and was looking at him with green eyes that belonged to a reptile rather than a human.

Blinking in confusion, he noticed that the man’s eyes were back to normal green.

“I’m sorry. I was in a bit of a rush and didn't notice”, the green-haired guy said with a weird accent that he couldn't place.

Chalking the previous sight up to his imagination and exhaustion from the long flight, he nodded at him in understanding and walked away without another word, clearly uncomfortable of talking to strangers.

Reaching his destination, Plaza Hotel by taxi, he entered through the automatic doors towards the reception area, following which he went towards the booking counter, behind which a man in his thirties was standing.

“Welcome to Plaza Hotel, Sir. How may I help you?”, the receptionist said in greeting.

“I have a room booked by the name of Bharat Kumar in this hotel”.

“One-second sir, let me check”, the receptionist said as he went over his computer to check the bookings list.

“Bharat Kumar from…India right. Can you provide your identification-”

After completing all the necessary procedures, the now named Bharat grabbed the offered key card and went towards his room, number 308, with his luggage. Opening the door to his room, he gazed at his medium room, with a bed in the middle and a large window on the wall at the other side of the door. Satisfied that nothing seemed wrong, he walked inside and closed the door behind him.

It was a normal day just like all others. In fact, nothing about the start of that day suggested that it was going to be anything else than normal. Except for the fact that it was the weekend, and he was not in his own apartment back home but in a hotel that he had booked for his vacation-slash-job he had gotten a few days back, all paid by his client of course.

So being the normal day that it was, Bharat started it with his usual daily routine, which was to wake up at the break of dawn…

…And pressing stop on his phone alarm followed by going back to his sleep for another 3-4 hours. The best perk of being a free-lancer in his opinion, you choose your own 'office hours'.

But the slight rumbling in his stomach due to hunger rose him from his slumber later in the ‘morning’. The food at the flight he arrived from yesterday was, as expected of commercial flights, worse than shit and the less he says about the food he ordered from room service, the better so he had a lot to catch up to.

‘Stupid Stingy clients only paying for 'coach'.’, cursed in his mind as he tried to get out of the sheets he had tangled himself in overnight. When he finally managed to get out of the sheets, he felt the room was a bit chillier than it should be. Granted it was mid-November and he was not back in his home country where winter only meant slightly colder air if even that. But after considering that he had slept with the heater, he was left in confusion.

‘Maybe I left the window open by accident?’ But looking right side of his room showed him that the window was not opened. In fact, there was no window…

Or the wall the window was situated at…

Along with the entire right side of the room itself that contained his luggage and the right part of his bed…

In his half-lucid half-dead state that was typical of his mornings, the first thought that came to him was a concern for his luggage that held his laptop, the most important thing to him in this world.

But when his mind came on the right track, he finally began to comprehend that the right half of his room was gone, disappeared as if it wasn’t even there a few hours ago. He knew because his phone had been charging on the table on the right side of his bed. And now, he could see the scenery outside from the third floor of the hotel at which his room was at.

“What the fuck?!”

Hastily getting off the bed to enter some semblance of safety, he rushed to the other side of his room and leaned against the wall while staring at the missing side of the room with wide eyes. The next moment, likely due to his sudden movements before, the half-bed finally lost its struggle of balance and fell.

He gulped as he heard something heavy hitting the ground below a few moments later. Feeling confused and unnerved by the situation, he did the only thing he could.

He freaked out.

Exiting out of his room and rushing down the stairs in his pyjamas without any footwear, feeling momentarily relieved that the stairs and exit to his room were on the left side, he fled to the ground floor, hoping to get some answers because buildings just do not disappear like that. He was fucking terrified thinking what would have happened if he by chance was sleeping on the right side of the bed, or, right in the centre of it.

‘Stop it! I don’t need that fucking image in my head!’, Bharat shouted in his head. Sometimes he blamed his overactive imaginations for thinking up detailed images of the things he thought. Sure, it did wonders in his speciality as a creative designer and some unmentionable situations, but that was a quirk he could do without in this scenario!

Entering the lobby, he only noticed in passing that it was complexly empty and walked straight towards the exit.

When the automatic doors opened, his senses were greeted to the scene of pure chaos. Everywhere he looked he could see masses of people crowding the roads and pavements filled with heavy snow. Confusion, panic and terror were only a few expressions he could see at first glance.

Looking in detail at his surroundings made the reason very clear. It seems he was not the only person who got an unusual morning experience today. He remembered from last night that this street was very popular as hotels and restaurants were the most prominent buildings here. Now all of them were in a similar state of devastation.

Some were cut down vertically from top to bottom with their other half nowhere in sight, some had their entire floors disappeared and rest others were similar except theirs were more diagonal.

Suddenly Bharat stumbled forward as he felt someone bump into his back in a hurry. Before he could steady himself, he felt someone holding him and helping him right himself. Turning around, he only got a glimpse of a blond-haired guy with a short beard who was looking left and right in obvious panic as if searching for something.

“Has anyone seen my wife and daug-”

“What the hell is goin-”

“Jacob! Jacob where y-”

“Mommy!”

All around people were screaming, shouting and running around like headless chickens. Some were trying to find their family or friends or even trying to get the general gist of the situation.

“Hello, my friends, as you can all see we ar-”

He looked around for the last one, and sure enough, some idiot was filming all of this and he was likely not the only one either. No matter the situation, some morons couldn’t help themselves out of the disease that was social media.

On the other side of the street, he caught sight of the hotel receptionist from last night, pacing back and forth and holding his phone with a nervous expression on his face. Finally seeing a somewhat familiar face amount this crowd of strangers and hoping to get some answers he walked towards him.

“Mr Anderson?”, he tentatively asked the receptionist, hoping that he got the name correct at least.

The receptionist, hearing his name called, looked up from his phone to see Bharat standing a few steps away. It took him only a few seconds to remember the weird Indian guy that came last night who was very awkward in conversations.

“Mr Kumar, right? Can you give me just one moment? I’m trying to contact the manager, but I can’t get any signal around here.”

“Um sure. But can you tell me if you have any idea of what is happening or better yet how it happened? I was asleep and suddenly half the hotel is just… gone.”

“Oh, you were asleep till now? To be honest, I have no idea what is happening either. I’m as clueless as you are about that. I just know that about 10 minutes ago, sections of buildings just disappeared. I just hope the manager doesn’t chew my head over this. At least all the other hotels are in a similar state.”, The receptionist explained what he could while muttering the last part to himself and went back to his attempts to contact his manager.

Although he expected something like this, Bharat couldn’t help his dissatisfaction at the lacking explanation he obtained. His next attempt would have been to call the authorities around here by asking for someone’s phone, but that idea was dropped before he could even act on it.

Suddenly, there was a commotion on the street. Looking ahead, he saw some people gazing upwards and pointing to the sky all the while shouting at others to bring their attention as well.

When he proceeded to look towards where they were pointing, he couldn’t stop himself from gaping in astonishment. The reason for that being the words written in bold text.

Preparations for the ‘Operation Teleport’ underway…

The operation will commence in:

00:04:55

A Countdown of all things appeared, in the text that seemed, not floating in the air but painted on the sky itself, which was impossible in itself as the sky wasn’t tangible at all. The scene brought even more mystery to the people gathered all around.

‘Operation Teleport? Did America invent a secret weapon and decide to test it on this location? Maybe it malfunctioned which resulted in this devastation?’, Bharat wondered, his imagination working overtime in this freaky situation that looked like something out of a bad science fiction movie. ‘Did Aliens finally invade our Planet? Is this what is going to happen to us now?’

It seemed that the words had cast a spell over everyone because suddenly an unnatural silence enveloped the whole area. Everyone dropped what they were doing and silently watched the timer ticking down. But the spell was broken at the two-minute mark when out of nowhere, sounds of flapping wings reverberated in the distance.

“No fucking way.”

Bharat’s mouth fell open in shock at the sight. Within no time at all, the source of the sound reached the area and crashed into the ground, likely stepping upon a few unlucky people and further destroying what remained of some buildings. The rest of them were too scared to even notice. The creature silencing everything and every one with its presence alone.

A colossal body, reaching up to 50 floors in height, which was covered in black scales the size of a full-grown man. Its reptilian gaze emitting frightening killing intent, daring anyone to even get out a squeak in his presence and its steps shaking the very ground like a walking disaster.

A Dragon.

For a moment there was a deathly silence in the whole area. Then the dragon roared, and all hell broke loose. A shock wave seemed to spread from the source of the roar which shattered all remaining windows in a 10- mile radius, killing the people in its immediate vicinity in a heartbeat and knocking everyone else on their backs, disoriented.

Bharat was far enough that he was not immediately killed but close enough that he was shot backwards into the air and slammed his back against a wall with tremendous force. His eyes lost focus and his world exploded with pain. He could feel something wet running down his ears and a dull ache in the back of his head that made the whole situation even worse.

When he came to his senses, with a faint ringing in his ears, he saw the scene of destruction around him that a simple roar caused. Books and movies really didn’t do justice to the real thing it seems.

After this, he didn’t know if something came over him or if some buried survival instincts inside of him took over, but he ran in the opposite direction without looking back at any of the surrounding people. All around him, he could see people still coming to their senses, trying to get up but he couldn’t bring himself to stop and help them.

Some part of him knew that the next attack of this destruction-incarnate would be the death of him, so his mind went into overdrive, thinking of any method, anyway that he had read or seen in books and movies that had even a sliver of a chance of prolonging his survival.

Running bare feet was a bad idea as he could feel small rocks on the pavement stabbing into his feet, but he couldn't care less about that right now. A sudden idea came to him as he was about to pass an alleyway. Turning to the left, he entered the alleyway and went towards the manhole with its cover already removed. It seems someone was already inside, or it was left opened accidentally.

Entering the manhole, he went down using the ladder with an urgency he had never experienced before at any point in his short life. All he was thinking that if he didn’t get far from here, that would be the end. A traitorous part of his mind whispered that he should not bother, that it would be over in an instant but the sudden instinct to survive, which all living beings were born with pushed it to the side.

In his haste, Bharat, while climbing down the ladder slipped down due to the slippery nature of the rungs and fell the rest of the way down, hitting his head hard on the ground and making him see black for an instant.

“Gah!”

Bharat shouted in pain and frustration while holding the back of his head and rolling on the ground in an effort to alleviate some of the pain.

When the pain turned into a dull ache, he opened his eyes and looked up, seeing the sky through the manhole entrance. The next moment, another roar sounded, just like the previous one but accompanied by something far worse.

In fantasy books, dragons were known for 3 things in general. Their overwhelming strength, that was unmatched except by their own species. Their cool and badass appearance, that brings terror and awe to the hearts of those facing them. And the last one, their ability to breathe fire.

And it seemed that the real one didn’t want to be shown up by his fictional counterparts. It already gave a taste of its presence and strength so how could it leave out the cherry on top.

So, this time, the roar of the dragon was followed by a literal inferno that spread in all directions, roasting anyone that wasn't already dead due to a heart attack or the previous shock wave, and turning them to ash. The buildings were melted down to their foundations, leaving only death and destruction in their wake.

And the last thought that Bharat had before the fire entered the manhole and consumed him was that he should have closed the cover on his way down.

00:00:02

00:00:01

00:00:00

Operation Successful…