The lady sitting next to the man almost jumped as she went back far from the others before asking, “What is the meaning of this?”

  Grandpa looked the most curious and came close to the others to peek at what was going on.

  “This is all bullshit.” The big guy said with fury. He looked around in his thirties, with clearly defined muscles. Although Syf could say it certainly looked like the work of steroids, not that Syf had any problem with that. However, the side effects were clearly doing a number on the man’s psyche with how impulsively he behaved.

  “They are trying to terrify us. That is why we need to take command over it.” The big guy said.

  “And how do we do that?” The grandpa asked. By this point, it was clear he was being entertained by the man.

  “If they are so capable, let’s just see what they can do to us.” The big guy said. As the others watched him with uncertain eyes, he took his phone and clicked on something. Almost all looked at him like he was out of his mind.

  But Syf felt like he found conviction in the man, just like him. Syf was impressed by the man’s courage and nodded back to himself.

  “What did you do?” The man asked. Another lady sitting near him was trying to inch away from them.

  “What needed to be done?” The big guy said with a smirk. He then turned to the others and showed them the screen. “See that?”

  The others looked at the screen, almost forgetting their fear. They maintained a very safe distance from the phone. Syf left his seat to take a look at the screen. He wanted to see what happened when one clicked on the ‘yes’ button. Although he was looking at the big guy’s device, all his enthusiasm vanished, and he returned to his seat, feeling emotionally drained.

  The others started laughing along with the lady who had crept back the farthest.

  “You really played us. We were thinking that you were going to sacrifice yourself.”

  “Sacrifice? My life is very dear to me.” The big guy’s eyebrows knitted together as he said that.

  The others, too, enjoyed a chuckle while Syf just sighed.

  “Really, I thought I saw a kindred spirit. Turned out to be a wandering specter."

  Syf was very disappointed with the man. With all his talks, the least he could have done was press the ‘yes’ button. But no, he just ruined the moment. He was the perfect guinea pig to test what happened when the first choice was pressed. But he had chosen the ‘no’ button.

  Syf turned around, no longer bothering with them.

  “The application to join the expedition,” Syf said to himself as he watched the water droplets slamming against the windowpanes. The chill was pronounced, and so he tightened the blanket around him a little bit more.

  He also thought of the day he had wanted to commit suicide. He wouldn’t say it was a wrong choice, because he clearly felt like it was a perfect ending for him. However, it didn’t mean that it would be the same for his family.

  His mind relayed what would have happened if he had done the same. His parents, working in the small restaurant and supporting each other, would have been devastated, but even more than that, he felt his heart quiver as he thought about his sister. Her mind would have shattered.

  Honestly, his reasoning told him it was better than having a useless brother.

  Syf opened his phone and went through everything to satisfy his procrastination before ultimately looking at the app.

  [Flickering Horizons.]

  He hesitated for a bit before opening the application.

  The same title window appeared in sci-fi fonts, and after loading for a bit, the familiar screen opened to him.

  [Remaining Time: 3: 8: 45: 21]

  Almost four more days to go.

  The [Join The Expedition] button seemed too alluring to resist before Syf decided to turn his mind toward something else. He had seen other options before, but he hadn’t tried to check them.

  He opened the menu, and a list popped up. It had three listings.

  [Home.]

  [Report.]

  [FAQ.]

  The third button intrigued him because it felt like he could glean more information about the game itself.

  “I just thought of it as a game, didn’t I?” He smiled bitterly. There was a reason he might have called that. And so, anything would be better than reality.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  With that mindset, he clicked on the FAQ button. However, what opened was not the regular FAQ section, where questions were listed with appropriate answers given below. Rather, it felt like an extension of the advertisement.

  [You think you are special and want to prove it. Click on it.]

  [Supernatural powers seem alluring enough to you. Click on it.]

  [Want a longer lifespan? Click on it.]

  There were many similar lines addressing basic human desires. These lines were designed to entice the brain into selecting the [Yes] button.

  [You think you know everything there is to know. You are MISTAKEN.]

  Suddenly, he found that it felt odd among the others. This was no advertisement or marketing tactic to make you click on the button. It was contempt, a sense of superiority toward the one using the app. It carried a slightly threatening tone along with the warning.

  “I am mistaking things? Bold of you to assume I know everything or, in fact, anything at all.” He chuckled with his silly little joke.

  After scrolling through the cartoon animation that popped up with each statement, he finally found one that felt like true information regarding the trial.

  [Only 0.001% people will qualify the Trials.]

  Syf blinked his eyes again and again. He couldn’t believe his eyes.

  But it was all true, and immediately Syf inhaled a mouthful of air. That was a crazy deception. What was this number when calculated on the world scale? Syf was proficient with numbers, and it didn’t take him long to accept the reality of it.

  Almost eight billion people live on this planet, and just a fraction of them. It didn’t take him long to reach the numbers.

  “A mere 80000 people or so. This!” Syf hissed as he thought of the possibility that came along with this. And that was when the whole planet decided to take part in it, which was pretty absurd.

  If people came to realize this, chaos would spread worldwide. And suddenly, he realized he shouldn’t have been the only one to have found it. A chill started to pervade his body, the kind that penetrated his bones. He immediately closed the app and searched for the same on the internet.

  Syf went through several websites and forums in just a few minutes, and he saw no signs of the same. There were no articles talking about this information. It was as if someone had censored it.

  “The government must have realized it sooner and taken the necessary measures to avoid any complications.” However, Syf knew this wouldn’t last for long. They just had to make sure to suppress the message regarding the success rate for the last four days.

  “What happens after that?” Syf asked himself. Chaos, violence, and doubts would spread among anyone still living on the planet.

  Syf closed his eyes and started to concentrate on his breath. He wanted to forget everything he had just seen. Similarly, he now knew his chances of succeeding were much lower than what would have been possible.

  “I might even fail," Syf stopped. He was thinking of failure even before the thing, the expedition, began. It was the same tendencies that had led him toward the end.

  “No, I must succeed. If not for myself, I need to do it for my parents, my sister and…” He stopped again. He didn’t care for anyone else; he had no friends. And suddenly, one face popped into his mind. His ex-girlfriend Sophie. But Syf wasn’t even sure if he loved her anymore after ghosting her for almost a month or so.

  And so Syf went to the internet forums to seek ideas; maybe it would give him a chance at survival.

  The journey proceeded smoothly as even more people came to board the train. Most of them were on the way to the capital, while Syf’s stop came much earlier than any of theirs, and it didn’t take long before he reached his destination.

  The train stopped near a barren station. The station looked devoid of people, but it wasn’t entirely true. As Syf deboarded the train with all his luggage, he looked at the station name with nostalgia.

  ‘Backwaters Town.’

  This was home. Finally, after so long, he had returned. Syf stood on the station, basking in nostalgia, before he heard a voice calling him.

  “Oye, kid. Don’t just stand there, wetting yourself. You will catch a cold.” It was the station police waving at him.

  “Oh no.” Syf came to his senses after almost all his clothes and luggage were drenched in rainwater. He quickly made his way to where the station police stood. The rain fell short of where the shed was made. Without raindroplets falling on his body, he began to feel cold. His teeth started chattering a minute later.

  The station police had left for his workstation. Syf stood there for a bit before he decided to go and look for transport. It was getting darker here.

  It was a struggle finding a taxi in the rain. However, when he finally found one after almost an hour of waiting, he decided not to haggle with the man and, with the help of the driver, put his luggage inside.

  “Where do you want to go, sir?” The driver asked him as he sat inside.

  He almost felt like saying that he wanted to go home. Like some cliché movie dialogue. It would have been too embarrassing, so Syf avoided saying that.

  “Rock Square. Take me there.”

  “Alright.” The engine started with a hum.

  Syf watched the city with wonder. Almost a year and a half. But it looked the same, with the same small shops littering the city and the greenery. If Syf loved something about the town, it was the town’s greenery. The trees stood tall and proud against even the harshest weather.

  The pavements were clean, unlike where he stayed in the city. The locality Syf lived in was like a dumpster of all sorts. With smells coming from the trash and the sewers, the people there lived doing all sorts of odd jobs.

  The taxi driver took out his luggage as Syf stared at the restaurant in front of him. It was an odd little thing in his town. A gathering place of sorts, like a bar, maybe.

  After paying the driver, Syf made his way to the restaurant's front door, with his luggage in tow.

  ***

  Inside the restaurant, Ellen was attending to her customers. It was an odd thing to say, but business was thriving in the rain. The neighbors gathered inside her little eatery for games and to have some meals. And maybe you should forget a little bit.

  They called it a much-needed break from the usual hectic life. Not that life was hectic in Backwaters Town. Still, the old regular folks liked to show off how hard they worked.

  The group of people sitting inside was among the regular ones. They were playing a small game of poker and concurrently watching the news on television.

  One of them called out to her, “Hey, Ellen, would you mind giving me some more beer?”

  That was Mike. Her childhood friend, however, had become somewhat unruly over time.

  “Yeah, getting it for you. Anything more for the royalty?” She threw it sarcastically back at him.

  "No," he said back.

  “Alright.” She smiled accordingly. However, she didn’t notice that while she was busy getting beer for Mike, the door had been left ajar, and a stranger walked right through it.

  She noticed it a bit later and called out to her husband accordingly.

  “Hey, David, would you attend to our customer?”

  “Coming right up.” David, working with something in the back, replied.

  However, Ellen didn’t listen to what her husband said to her, for her entire body stood frozen watching the stranger who had come right inside her restaurant.

  As Ellen disbelievingly saw the man, he too seemed awkward.

  “Um, hi, Mom." Syf waved a hand back at her.

  Ellen responded by dropping the plate on the floor; her jaw slackened.

  “Oops.”