Colombia, May 6, 2017
A quiet, cold night in a remote settlement.
Aiden Locke, brown-haired, 27 years old, freshly promoted into the U.S. Special Forces, was deep in enemy territory on his first real mission to rescue a high-value hostage, the U.S. Secretary of Foreign Affairs, who had been abducted while on diplomatic duty in Brazil.
Twelve men had been deployed in groups of three, each unit assigned a specific route to infiltrate the target location undetected. Aiden's team, codenamed Falcon-4, had been designated the final execution unit, the ones who would storm in only if everything else failed.
"Thor, are you there?"
The voice crackled softly through Aiden's comm. Thor his callsign. One he barely felt he'd earned yet.
"Yeah, I'm here," Aiden replied, voice low, breathing steady.
"We've got movement near the northern hut. Looks like three armed hostiles patrolling. No sight of the package yet."
"Copy that. Stay low. We move on Commander's signal."
Aiden glanced to his left. His two teammates, Vega and Cooper, crouched silently beside him in the brush, their faces barely visible under their helmets and night-vision goggles. Even through the stillness, Aiden could feel the tension. Every shadow looked like a gun. Every rustle in the trees could be a signal of death or discovery.
He tightened his grip on the rifle.
The minutes ticked by like hours.
Then... "Green light."
The message came through. The other teams had cleared the outer perimeter. Falcon-4 was up.
Vega made a silent gesture with two fingers, 'Move in'. Aiden nodded and followed, creeping through the tall grass, footsteps careful and deliberate. Every breath was measured. Every movement precise.
They approached the outer edge of the main hut old, wooden, partially lit from within. There was muffled shouting in Spanish. One voice sounded more panicked than the others.
Aiden pressed his back against the wall, heart hammering in his chest. He could hear his pulse in his ears.
Suddenly gunfire.
It erupted in the distance, sharp and fast. Then, chaos. A voice screamed through comms:
"They're moving the package! Hostiles are breaking from the south road. Dammit, they're running!"
Vega cursed under his breath. "They're extracting."
"Orders?" Aiden asked, barely able to keep the tension out of his voice.
"Pursuit. Now. We cut them off before they reach the river."
Without hesitation, Falcon-4 broke into a sprint. The forest swallowed them whole, branches slapping against their gear, leaves crunching beneath heavy boots.
But the jungle wasn't just dark it was shifting.
The deeper they ran, the more unnatural everything became. The air grew thicker, colder. Fog began to seep between the trees, glowing faintly at the edges like it held light within. The night-vision goggles flickered.
"Something's wrong," Cooper muttered. "This isn't..."
A blinding white burst of fog exploded from the ground ahead. Aiden's vision went white.
Then..
Silence.
No gunfire. No shouting. No comm static.
Just... nothing.
Aiden staggered, coughing, blinking rapidly. The jungle looked the same..but felt completely different.
He turned.
No sign of Vega. No Cooper. No enemy. No footprints.
Just trees..taller than before, older. The moon above was bigger. And the stars were in the wrong place.
"What the hell..." he whispered.
He checked his comm. Dead. No signal.
His heart thudded in his ears.
He was alone.
Truly, utterly alone.
Without wasting time, Aiden reached for the radio on his shoulder.
"Thor to Falcon-4, do you copy? Repeat, this is Thor. Does anyone read me?"
Silence.
He switched frequencies. Then again. And again. Cycling through every channel he knew.
Still… nothing. Not even static. Just dead air, like the device had become nothing more than a piece of dead metal.
He frowned, checked the antenna, popped the battery out, then slid it back in. One last attempt, just to be sure.
"Falcon-4… anyone… please respond."
Again, nothing but the whisper of wind between trees.
Aiden exhaled slowly, rising to his feet. He scanned his surroundings. The forest loomed tall and ancient, the trees standing like silent guardians of another age. Their twisted branches reached like skeletal fingers overhead. A thin mist was beginning to creep along the ground.
No crickets.
No birds.
No signs of wildlife at all.
Only a silence so complete, it pressed against his eardrums like a weight.
This… this isn't just a jungle. This place is wrong.
He began walking slowly, deliberately. His boots made almost no sound as they moved over the forest floor. His eyes caught every detail, the texture of the bark, the way the roots curled across the ground, even the soft glow of moss that didn't look like anything he'd ever seen before.
Above him, stars filled the sky.
But they were all wrong.
No Orion. No North Star. Just strange constellations, foreign and ancient, like the sky belonged to another world entirely.
Is this some kind of experimental weapon? Dimensional tech? Or… did I die?
The thought flashed through his mind before he shook it off.
"No. I'm alive. I have to be."
He paused near a massive tree, something like an oak, but its leaves glowed faintly in the dark. He stared at it in wonder and suspicion.
"Is this a dream?" he whispered to no one.
And then..
A sound.
Not human. Not animal.
Low. Heavy. Like a growl… but impossibly deep and distant, as though it came from something huge.
The ground beneath him trembled ever so slightly. Just enough to make his instincts flare.
Aiden dropped into a crouch, weapon raised, eyes narrowing.
From the shadows between the trees, through the shifting mist…
A pair of eyes appeared.
Large. Glowing with a faint bluish-green light. Far away, dozens of meters at least, but unmistakably staring straight at him.
And then… it moved.
Slowly.
Each step marked by a guttural breath, a growl so low it made his spine stiffen.
"What the hell is that…?"
His hands instinctively tightened around his M4A1 rifle, the cold metal reassuring beneath his gloves. He lowered himself, shifting behind the moss-covered trunk of an ancient tree, listening, trying to count how many legs it had. Heavy steps… but just one set. Whatever it was, it was alone.
He reached for his comms again, pressing the earpiece. Nothing. Just the same static silence. The HUD in his night vision goggles flickered again, before fading out completely.
The forest had gone still.
Too still.
No wind. No insects. No distant hoots or rustling leaves. Just the soft drip of moisture falling from canopy to undergrowth… and that breathing.
He dared a glance around the edge of the trunk.
Two glowing yellow eyes, not thirty feet away, watching him.
Not a bear. Not a big cat. It stood too tall, its outline vaguely humanoid, but wrong. Limbs too long. Head cocked at a disturbing angle. Skin like stretched shadow, rippling faintly in the mist. It looked… curious.
His mouth went dry.
He thought about pulling the trigger.
But didn't.
It hadn't attacked yet.
It's watching. Studying me. Like a predator gauging if the prey is worth the effort.
A branch cracked to his left.
Aiden spun, weapon raised.
Nothing.
He turned back.. the eyes were gone.
Gone.
Aiden's breath caught.
He scanned the dark again, shifting into a crouch, every muscle in his body tight.
Then came a sound he couldn't explain.
A deep, low hum that vibrated in his chest, like the forest itself was breathing.
His heart pounded louder now. He took one cautious step back. Then another.
Every fiber of his being screamed at him to run, but he couldn't, wouldn't, until he knew what this place was.
Until he knew where the hell he was.
He glanced up.
The moon looked closer than it should. Too big. And… there were two of them.
That's when the final certainty hit him like a punch to the gut.
This wasn't Earth.
This wasn't Colombia.
This wasn't any place he knew.
"Where the fuck am I...?"