Commander by Mistake

-- 1 --

The world crashed down on his head like a sledgehammer.

Sandro Hoppe lay facedown, buried in the remains of something that had once resembled a pillow and now stank of stale beer and bitter regrets. His head pounded like a drumhead stretched to bursting, with an invisible musician beating it furiously with whatever was at hand. Every heartbeat echoed in his skull like a merciless explosion.

He tried to open his eyes. Big mistake. Light filtering through the dusty curtains drove straight into his brain. A thousand needles. A million. Sandro groaned and squeezed his eyelids shut, begging any god still listening to let him die here, on this bed, buried under clothes, books, and something sticky whose origin he did not want to know.

What the hell happened last night?

Memories rushed in on murky waves, chopped up like film with missing frames. Music. Too much music. Laughter. Dimitris’s flushed, gleaming face raising a toast with “something special”—a liquid of unnaturally bright color. Sandro remembered refusing. Twice. Then his memory betrayed him.

A girl. Or two? No, just one. Dark-haired. Or blonde?

He opened his eyes to slits and stared at the ceiling. The white paint was peeling, forming a map of an unknown continent. Australia? Or just a damp stain that his brain, in its desperate need to order chaos, was trying to recognize.

His body felt like lead. His arms refused to obey. He lifted his right arm with an effort that demanded immense will. He gave up and let it flop back onto the mattress.

Around him was devastation. Books scattered across the floor like fallen soldiers. A poster of some band hung crooked, its torn corner flapping pitifully. Cups. Many cups. Empty, half-empty, with questionable contents. Clothes in piles. Chip wrappers. A single lonely sock draped over the lamp. How had it gotten there?

Sandro closed his eyes and gathered his strength. With the last remnants of energy, he pushed himself up on his elbows. The world spun. His stomach clenched into a knot, and he froze, waiting—a sprint to the toilet or mercy from fate.

Mercy won. At least for the moment.

He sat on the edge of the bed and buried his face in his hands. His hair was sticky. He smelled entirely of a club—that clinging mixture of sweat, alcohol, and cheap perfume that sinks into your pores like a ghost.

Water. I need water.

His thoughts narrowed to that single mantra. He stood—slowly and painfully—and the world tilted sharply to the left. Sandro grabbed the desk to keep from collapsing.

First step—victory.

Second—miracle.

The third took him into the middle of the room, where his feet tangled in a T-shirt. He swayed and flailed desperately before finding support against the wall. He was breathing hard, as if he had run a marathon instead of barely four steps.

The bathroom door stood ajar. The tiles inside gleamed in the dim light. The sink was there. Salvation.

Sandro peeled himself off the wall. Every step required more concentration than a college final. He stepped inside, his fingers found the switch, and the light exploded—aggressive and merciless.

He cursed through his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut, but it was too late. The light had already pierced him. He stumbled blindly until his hands found the metal of the faucet. He turned the handle.

Water gurgled in the sink. He shoved his head directly under the stream and began greedily gulping down the icy salvation. The liquid put out the fire in his throat and soaked his parched flesh.

He drank for a long time, until his stomach rebelled against the cold.

He stopped, panting, his hand on the faucet while the water kept running. He raised his head.

And then something hit him harder than the hangover.

In the mirror, under the lamp’s harsh rays, his skin was glowing. Not an illusion. It was giving off light.

Sandro froze.

He stared at his reflection while his mind—that clumsy engine wrung dry by the hangover—barely shifted into gear.

Lines. Dozens. Maybe hundreds.

They covered his arms—creeping up from his wrists, winding like a river delta along his forearms, conquering his elbows. He raised a palm before his eyes. The patterns—fine, exquisite, impossibly complex—wove themselves into spirals and unfamiliar geometric signs. They did not resemble tribal tattoos. Nor henna designs. There was no earthly explanation for them.

And they phosphoresced.

They emitted a soft, greenish-blue light, like bioluminescence from the ocean floor. The glow did not blind, but it remained distinct even in daylight.

Sandro looked down at his chest.

And there too.

A web of threads wrapped around his ribs and descended toward his stomach. He pulled up his T-shirt—the same one he had fallen asleep in last night. Light was streaming from underneath as well.

Everywhere.

He pulled the shirt over his head and threw it on the floor. His skin had become a map—an atlas of something alien, inhuman. The lines encircled his waist, branched down his thighs. Gripped by terror, he took off his pants too. The patterns reached his ankles.

Not a single inch of unmarked flesh.

Sandro froze before the mirror. Naked, glowing, unrecognizable.

What the hell is this?

His fingers twitched and touched one of the bands on his chest. The sensation was strange—not pain, but presence. The pattern did not look drawn on; it looked grown from within. It had fused with his tissue, had become part of him.

The skin beneath his fingertips radiated warmth. And the thread itself... vibrated. Barely perceptibly. A strange rhythm that did not follow his own.

Panic crashed over him.

Get it off me. Now!

He lunged for the sink. On the porcelain lay a bar of soap—dried out and cracked. He grabbed it, wet it until it foamed, and began scrubbing his arm. Furiously. Mercilessly. White foam covered his skin, but beneath it the lines kept glowing, untouched.

He pressed harder. He scrubbed until his flesh burned from the friction. He rinsed it.

The lines had not moved. They had grown brighter.

No, no!

He grabbed the sponge—synthetic, worn from use—and scraped at his skin again. Soap, water, scraping.

On his arms, his chest, his stomach. He scrubbed with such ferocity that the abrasive surface scraped him raw. Every cell rebelled; a searing pain flared beneath his fingers, but the lines remained. Unchanged. Indifferent. Eternal.

Get the hell off me!

He scrubbed to exhaustion, gasping, his eyes welling with panic. The water in the sink mixed with foam and ran down his forearms, but the symbols kept glowing—indifferent to his fury.

Sandro stopped. His hands fell limply, and the sponge dropped with a dull thud into the ceramic basin. In the mirror, a reflection met him with sharpened features and a face crossed by a network of alien glyphs that refused to disappear.

This can’t be real.

But it was.

He looked down. The lines vibrated faintly in their own alien rhythm. He touched them. The skin beneath them—warm. Organic. Alive.

What did I do?

Memories from last night flooded his head—the music, the laughter, the alcohol. Dimitris gesturing animatedly, explaining something Sandro was too drunk to care about. The girl... the dark-haired one who had sat next to him and talked to him. About what? Art? History? Time?

Not a clue.

And then—nothing.

Emptiness. Darkness.

And now—this.

Sandro braced himself on the sink, fingers gripping the edge. His breathing turned shallow and ragged. The hangover paled before this nightmare.

This is a disgrace. I can’t live like this.

How would he go outside? How would he show up to class? How could he even look people in the eye when his whole body was covered with this... phenomenon? He imagined the stares, the whispers, the mockery. His parents. His mother. God, his mother.

He raised his head and again met the gaze of his reflection. The glowing lines answered him. Alien. Inexplicable. Indelible.

Despair settled heavy in his chest, cold and crushing. Helpless. Marked by something he did not understand, had not asked for, and could not remove.

The truth broke him. He remained in the bathroom—naked and glowing, frozen before the mirror—while the water kept running in the sink, and the daylight outside grew more merciless by the minute.

Cold water poured from the faucet, its murmur echoing indifferently against the ceramic basin. Every drop layered emptiness upon thickening despair.

Sandro stood motionless, naked, staring at his reflection. Alien lines glowed on his skin—pale bioluminescence cutting through the gloom seeping in from the window.

Outside, the city was waking up. Traffic noise and distant voices pierced the glass, but here, only the silence of his own nightmare reigned. The smell of stale alcohol and cigarettes—his usual company after yet another college party—gave way to a suffocating surge of panic. His body wasn’t trembling from the cold, but shuddering with tremors that wracked every muscle.

This isn't me.

The words echoed in his mind, but his eyes could not deny what they saw. Every curve, every symbol on his skin felt tangible. His fingers dug into the edge of the sink so hard his knuckles turned white. The cold ceramic remained his only anchor in a collapsing world.

A metallic creak tore through the silence. A deafening crash followed—someone had kicked open the apartment door.

Sandro flinched, his heart contracting into an icy knot. There was no time to react; familiar voices were already spilling in from the living room, soaked in hungover cheerfulness.

"Hey, Sandro. Where are you, man?"

John's raspy voice sounded like grinding gravel.

"I thought you'd be the first on your feet to get us coffee."

Their laughter scraped against Sandro's ears like broken glass. Footsteps were approaching. He reached for the towel on the floor, but his arm moved with agonizing slowness, as if pushing through deep water. He couldn't hide. He couldn't stop them. Their shadows were already stretching across the hallway.

"Maybe he vanished!" Maya called out with dry sarcasm. "From too much dancing. Or too much Dimitris."

Fresh, louder laughter followed. The bathroom door swung open with a light push. Sandro didn't even look up, merely cursing under his breath.

His fingers still clutched the towel, but it hung uselessly at his side.

"There he is!" Dimitris's voice boomed, cheerful despite the hangover. "The hero of the night!"

The light from the hallway flooded the bathroom, yet it failed to drown out the ghostly bioluminescent glow streaming from Sandro's skin.

Dimitris froze in the doorway.

John, with tousled chestnut hair and puffy eyes, peered over his shoulder. Behind them, leaning against the doorframe, Maya appeared, her golden locks falling across her face.

Silence fell. Not oppressive, but taut—heavy with bated breath. Their gazes fixed not on him, but on the markings: phosphorescent lines wrapping his chest, arms, and abs. The patterns cast an aquamarine glow in the dim room, turning Sandro into an exhibit from another galaxy.

"Oh my God!"

Dimitris finally broke the silence. His voice didn't waver with horror; it brimmed with genuine amusement. A quiet chuckle escaped his throat, quickly swelling into a booming laugh.

"Look at him! The guy's a work of art!"

John leaned in for a closer look, his face stretching into a wide grin that pulled at his puffy cheeks.

"Unbelievable! Dimitris, this is your greatest masterpiece!"

Their laughter was infectious; Maya caught it too. She shook her head, her golden hair swaying.

"Well, Sandro, looks like you were pretty... accommodating last night."

Sandro gritted his teeth. His throat went dry, and an icy knot tightened in his chest.

I want to scream. To throw something at them. To end this insane farce.

Yet he couldn't move. Hot fury erupted in the pit of his stomach—a wave eating through his insides like acid.

"We couldn't just leave him like that, could we?" Dimitris patted his own chest, smugness oozing from every gesture. "I can't take all the credit, though. Forgive me, but I left him with three street artists—hardcore fantasy nerds. They turned him into a legend! True masters. I told them, 'Guys, total creative freedom. Make him unforgettable!' And they did!"

"Just look at the detail!" Dimitris reached out to touch the glowing lines, but Sandro recoiled instinctively, his back striking the cold wall tiles.

A joke? Is this all some sick joke?

The thought echoed in his mind—hollow and mocking. He studied their faces. The laughter and amusement in their eyes cut straight through him. To them, this was harmless fun. A memory from another wild night, a story to brag about at the next one.

"Relax, man," John said, noticing how rigid Sandro stood. His tone softened, turning reassuring. "It'll wash off in a couple of days. The artists said the ink is temporary. Biological pigments, you know? Something bioluminescent."

Maya nodded, her sarcasm giving way to mild condescension. "Yeah, don't sweat it. You can just wear long sleeves to class if you're that embarrassed. Or own it. Pretend you're some kind of space warrior or an ancient elf!"

Space warrior?

A fracture split Sandro's mind, letting the ice rush in. Shame. Crushing, humiliating shame. Their words struck him like stones. They talked about job interviews as if they were trivial, and exams as if a long-sleeved shirt could fix everything.

They don't get it. They don't understand anything.

"It's not funny."

Sandro finally spoke. His voice, though low, cut with such venom that it instantly killed the laughter. The smiles vanished.

"This is... an indelible humiliation."

John's eyes widened. Dimitris's grin dropped, his mouth slightly agape. Maya took half a step back.

"What? Why?" Dimitris asked, thrown off by the sudden shift in tone.

"What do you mean, 'why'?" Sandro's voice erupted, the words lashing out like blows. "Do you even hear yourselves? How am I supposed to walk into a job interview like this? An internship at the State Department? An interview for the space law program? Covered in glowing markings? What about finals? What about just walking down the street to buy groceries?"

He spread his arms, displaying the full reality of his condition. The greenish-blue glow along his skin pulsed like a living organism. Lines snaked along his forearms, tapering toward his wrists. Intricate symbols spread across his chest, radiating with an intensity that seemed to shine through his very flesh.

"This isn't a joke! This ruins everything! My plans, years of studying, discipline... all down the drain!"

Sandro's voice degraded into a harsh growl. His hands trembled—not from fear, but from raw, suffocating rage.

"Do you have any idea how hard I worked to get here? How many nights out I skipped just to study? How many weekends I spent buried in textbooks while you were out partying? And now... because of you... everything—"

He broke off, choked by words inadequate to convey the searing fury in his chest.

Maya stepped forward. The sarcasm had completely vanished, replaced by genuine concern. She reached out toward him, but immediately pulled her hand back.

"Wait, calm down. They really will fade. They told us it's just... like temporary tattoos, only with a high-tech pigment base. A few days, Sandro. A week at most."

"And what am I supposed to do during those days? Or that week?" A dry, bitter laugh tore from Sandro's throat. "Crawl into a hole? Show up to an exam in long sleeves and pray nobody notices I'm glowing?"

His friends looked down, guilt finally burning through the haze of their hangovers. John ran a hand through his messy hair. Dimitris bit his lip. Maya averted her eyes toward the window.

That's what I thought.

The rage inside Sandro mutated. Panic and despair receded, yielding to something colder, sharper, and far more dangerous. His intellect, which had always kept his emotions in check, began slicing through the chaos. His mind kicked into gear, analyzing the facts.

He was already strategizing.

They don't understand. But they will.

He studied them one by one. John, still dazed, with puffy eyes and slumped shoulders. Maya, her remorse tinged with cluelessness. And Dimitris—pride shattered, looking like a chastised kid who had made a mess he couldn't comprehend.

In Sandro's mind, amidst the wreckage, a plan crystallized. Not a fleeting impulse. Not a drunken whim. Something far more calculated.

A trap was taking shape—designed to strike each of them where it would hurt the most.

I'll pay them back.

The vow resonated within him, cold and absolute.

And then some.

As his friends stood before him, paralyzed by guilt, Sandro no longer saw them as companions. Now, they were pieces on a chessboard, positioned for a game only he could see. Their vulnerabilities lay exposed, waiting to be exploited. Retribution would not come in screams or brute force; it would be far more insidious.

Sandro drew a ragged breath. The fury still burned, but he had harnessed and aimed it. He lifted his palms from the sink. Beneath his skin, the intricate network of lines still pulsed with that faint, alien luminescence.

His gaze pierced John, swept over Maya, and finally locked onto Dimitris. Words were unnecessary. His face had hardened into an impenetrable mask.

Dimitris cleared his throat uneasily.

"Look, Sandro... I'm sorry if—"

"Get out."

Sandro's voice was barely above a whisper, but it carried an icy authority that froze all three in place.

"Please. Get out."

They exchanged uneasy glances. Then, one by one, they backed out of the doorway.

John began to say something, but swallowed his words and turned away. Maya cast one last glance at the eerily glowing patterns along Sandro's arms before following him.

Dimitris was the last to leave. He lingered in the frame for a heartbeat, head lowered, before slipping away. The bathroom door clicked shut. Footsteps drifted down the hall, then faded into the living room. Muffled murmurs followed, punctuated by a terse reply. A moment later, the front door clicked and slammed shut.

Silence.

Sandro turned back to the mirror. His reflection stared back with hollow eyes. The glowing lines flickered—a pale, bluish-green bioluminescence that held his gaze captive. He lifted a hand and traced one of the markings on his chest. His skin tingled with heat. These were no surface drawings. They were woven into him. Part of him.

I'll pay them back.

The thought repeated, louder and clearer than before.

I'll pay them back. And they'll never forget it.

He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. His temples still throbbed from the hangover, but his mind had cleared completely. He was planning. He could see the path forward.

And this time, it was all deadly real.

-- 2 --

Five hours past midnight. The bluish glow of the laptop washed over Sandro’s face and deepened the stubborn shadows under his eyes. His fingers raced across the keys—search after search, forum after forum, article after article.

“Bioluminescent tattoos,” “removing organic designs from skin,” “unwanted tattoos,” “living tattoos.”

Nothing.

Or rather—everything turned out to be either meaningless or too ordinary. Artists bragging about UV inks. Users complaining about allergies. Discussions about laser dermabrasion that cost a kidney. No one had written: “Hi, my tattoos also move like living organisms and glow green in the dark. Please help.”

Sandro closed his eyes and pressed his palms to his eyelids. He pressed until red spots floated up.

A reasonable explanation. There has to be a reasonable explanation.

But there was none.

The silence felt unnatural. Not an absence of noise—a total deadness. Usually, the city’s chorus drifted in from outside: distant traffic, barking dogs, some drunk student yelling in the hallway. Noise and life—unchanging constants.

And now? Nothing.

As if someone had pressed a master shutdown button. As if he were under a glass dome, cut off from every sound, every presence, every shred of proof of anyone else’s existence.

He opened his eyes and looked at the window. The curtain hung motionless, though a draft usually seeped through the gap. Not a breath of air. The air in the room had gone still, as if it had acquired an unnatural density.

I’m exhausted. That’s all. I haven’t slept properly since... since when? Since that night.

It had all started with waking up to those marks on his skin.

Sandro pulled himself away from the desk. His joints cracked; his spine protested against the hours spent in a forced hunch. He needed to move. To do something, instead of staring at the screen that offered him neither answers nor peace.

A step. Another. The floor creaked under his feet—the only sound in the apartment. Even the air conditioner had gone silent. The refrigerator wasn’t humming either.

And then it hit him.

Cold.

It wasn’t coming from the window. Or the air conditioner. The cold poured in from nothingness itself, from all directions at once, and wrapped around his flesh. His breath materialized in a pale cloud.

This isn’t normal.

He turned sharply, his heart slamming painfully in his chest. His gaze swept the room—the door, the window, the shadows in the corners. Nothing. Emptiness.

But the feeling didn’t fade. It intensified.

I’m exhausted... my imagination is playing tricks on me... or someone is watching me. Again?

The tattoos on his arms remained dark. They didn’t light up or flicker. But Sandro felt something else—a faint vibration in his bones, a frequency below the threshold of hearing that made him clench his teeth.

I’m going crazy!

The air trembled, and it wasn’t a draft. Something passed through the room—a wave, a distortion in the very fabric of space.

Sandro froze.

They appeared without a sound.

Two of them. So tall the crowns of their heads touched the ceiling. Humanoid, but with an unnatural stance. Limbs too long. Smooth movements devoid of inertia. Their joints bent in ways impossible for human anatomy, as if each limb had an extra joint.

Their skin.

Dear God, their skin!

It was entirely covered with tattoos.

They were different from his—denser, more complex, having conquered every millimeter of visible flesh. Organic lines branched and intertwined into geometric patterns the eye couldn’t take in. They emitted a blue-green bioluminescence.

They hadn’t come in. They hadn’t opened the door. They were simply there.

They moved smoothly, effortlessly. Their steps made no sound on the floor. They turned their heads toward him in perfect sync.

Their eyes darkened. They weren’t black—they were missing. Where sight should have been, a void gaped.

Sandro couldn’t move.

Fear nailed him to the floor—not the rational terror of an exam or a dark alley. Primal. Animal. The feeling of prey facing a predator when it realizes escape is impossible.

One of them stepped forward.

Run. You have to run. Move. MOVE!

His body refused to obey. His muscles remained locked, nerve impulses cut off. He breathed in ragged, shallow gasps. Every breath carried pain; every exhale tore through the silence.

The humanoid extended a hand. The long fingers spread—six instead of five. The tattoos on its palm shifted, the geometric patterns rearranged themselves, and light swam across its skin.

Sandro threw himself sideways. Instinct overcame paralysis. He lunged toward the desk and his hand grabbed the first thing it found—a lightweight plastic chair with a metal frame.

“Get away!”

His voice came out shrill, like a child’s, not a man’s. He raised the chair over his head and hurled it with all his strength.

The chair flew. And froze in midair.

No impact. No rebound. It stopped abruptly, as if it had struck an invisible barrier. It hung three feet from the humanoid before sliding down to the floor with a muffled thud.

The second humanoid took a step left, then right—a flanking maneuver that cut off the path to the door. Their movements held no haste, but they radiated inevitability and coordination.

Sandro retreated, his thigh slamming into the edge of the desk. Pain shot through his body, but he ignored it. His hand groped frantically for something—anything.

The first humanoid extended its palm again, this time more sharply.

The air grew heavy. The pressure wasn’t physical; it sank directly into his chest. Sandro took a step back, then another, until his back met the wall beside the window.

There was no way out. The humanoid drew closer. The long fingers stretched to within inches of his face.

“No!”

He tried to slip sideways, to get past the creature, but his legs refused to move. His muscles wouldn’t yield. It was as if his neural signals had been cut, rerouted, jammed by some external interference.

The tattoos on the humanoid’s skin shone more intensely, the greenish-blue hue deepening. And in that instant, the designs on Sandro’s arms reacted.

They glowed. Not brightly, but enough to reveal the same colors, the same structures and patterns breaking out across his own skin in response to the alien presence.

They’re like me. No. I’m like them.

The humanoid touched his shoulder, and cold filled him. A deep, all-pervading ice spread through his muscles and bones, toward the very center of his heart. His body went limp, his knees buckled, and his peripheral vision sank into darkness.

Even so, the marks on the humanoid’s skin were clearly visible—flickering in sync with his own, reflecting the light and revealing a reality he refused to accept.

Then everything froze.

The cold was still pressing down on him. It wouldn’t let up even when the darkness thinned and revealed the familiar outlines of his apartment. Sandro tried to draw a deep breath, but his lungs refused to expand. An emptiness gaped in his chest—as if someone had sucked out his very essence.

His vision slowly cleared. The ceiling—that same ceiling he had stared at for countless nights while searching for meaning in the numbers and charts that ruled his life. The yellowish paint looked wan in the half-light.

Then the two figures rose above him.

The humanoids.

Their faces—blank canvases reflecting only his panic. Sandro tried to move. Fingers. Legs. Head.

Nothing.

His body had become a cage, and he remained its prisoner, stripped of all control. Even his eyelids refused to obey. He struggled to blink, to clear his vision, but his nerve impulses lagged, as if forcing their way through thick liquid.

I can’t move!

The thought echoed in his skull—screamed, but soundless.

What’s happening? This is a nightmare!

His eyes darted desperately, searching for a gap in the invisible grip. One of the humanoids—the same one that had touched his shoulder earlier—extended its long arm. Gently. Effortlessly. The movement had a smoothness bordering on the unnatural—the joint bent at an angle impossible for human anatomy.

The second surveyed the room with a gaze that registered details without betraying intent. Its head rotated slowly, scanning the space like a camera lens, pausing for a moment on each object before moving on.

Worse than a nightmare. Completely helpless.

His senses sharpened to the point of pain. Every thread of his consciousness screamed. He was not inanimate cargo, not a suitcase someone carried indifferently. He perceived everything. He thought. He felt. The fear did not weaken for a moment—on the contrary, it grew more tangible, thicker. The threat was not abstract, nor the product of an overloaded mind. It was happening right now. In his own apartment.

The humanoid’s hand touched his thigh. Instead of cold—a sensation of vacuum, of matter entirely absent at the point of contact. His muscles tensed instinctively—or at least tried to, because nothing followed. And then, without effort, without strain or sound, Sandro floated upward.

He felt no pressure. The support beneath him vanished. Gravity seemed to cease. He hung in the air—motionless and horizontal, though his body trembled uncontrollably. His stomach clenched: not from nausea, but from the terror of a vestibular system refusing to accept what was happening.

The humanoids moved around him. One at his side, the other ahead. Their movements were smooth, with unnatural ease, each step precisely measured, never breaking the silence. Even their breathing was absent. If they needed air at all.

Will they kill me? Or worse—torture me?

A wave of pure terror washed over him. Images rose in his mind: laboratories, cold metal tables, needles, and blades. Why? What did they want from him? He was an ordinary statistician. A tiny cog in a mechanism that barely functioned. A man whose value amounted to converting data into presentations no one opened.

But the tattoos… They were the reason. He knew it, and they glowed in response.

His own code—written on the skin of these creatures. And not duplicated, but as if made by the same hand.

That thought inspired the greatest horror.

The aroma of home—coffee, dirty socks, and the remnants of an unfinished dinner—mixed with something he couldn’t name, something alien. Ionized air, metal. Sandro had caught it before he even turned and saw them. Now the smell was everywhere, seeping into the familiar and turning comfort into a threat.

They crossed the hallway in complete silence. The humanoids’ footsteps made no sound, and their hands did not hold him roughly. Even so, he remained a helpless witness to his own abduction.

His peripheral vision caught the bookshelves. The photograph of his mother in its glass frame. The old television he rarely turned on. Everything froze in the moment before his disappearance.

They approached the kitchen nook. The counters were thick with crumbs from the morning toast, cluttered with an old, rusted coffee maker and a pile of unwashed dishes.

One of the humanoids stopped. A long, thin finger extended and drew from an invisible pocket a metal cylinder the size of a thumb. Its surface gleamed smooth, without markings or seams.

The creature placed it carefully beside one of the burners on the gas stove, just behind the front grate. Immediately afterward came a barely perceptible hiss, like a soft whisper of decompression.

Gradually, a sharp odor reached Sandro’s nostrils.

Gas.

The smell of propane promised explosion and ruin.

Ingenious. Terrifying. Efficient. Goddamn it!

They were staging his disappearance. An accidental gas leak. No one would find the device, if anyone even looked. When the fire crews arrived, they would find a scorched, empty apartment. No trace of him. No signs of violence. Just a minor technical fault, entirely natural for a lonely man consumed by work and worry.

No!

He wanted to scream, to warn someone, to tear through this murderous silence. But the stupor pinned his voice just as it did his body. Only thought remained.

No one will know. No one will seek the truth.

And it was hiding right here: in the small hissing device and in the icy, expressionless faces above him.

The tattoos revealed the truth, flickering beneath his skin in response to an invisible kindred force.

The humanoids moved again and guided him toward the exit. Effortlessly, without undue haste.

The massive wooden door that separated him from the world now opened outward treacherously, without a creak or resistance.

The mechanism obeyed from outside.

The handle turned smoothly, as if the hinges had been greased minutes earlier. As soon as they crossed the threshold, the door swung shut just as silently.

The lock engaged at the edge of hearing. But Sandro felt it—a fine vibration crawling along the floor. A path of no return.

They were already outside the apartment.

The stairwell stood empty.

Ghostly silence.

Usually at this hour, he could hear distant barking, children’s voices from the street, or the dull noise of the elevator moving. Sandro always complained about the upstairs neighbors dragging furniture at the worst possible hours, and about the young family on the second floor whose baby cried all night.

Now, nothing. Only the silent echo of his own terror.

The humanoids descended the stairs. Their legs moved like creeping shadows.

Sandro lay on his back as the steps vanished beneath him. The familiar yellow walls, scratched by local teenagers, the light that forever flickered—everything remained there, but distorted through the prism of helplessness.

The stain on the ceiling above the third floor from the old leaking pipe. The graffiti by the elevator—stupid initials enclosed in a heart. The stairs climbed thousands of times when the elevator refused to work.

Everything was familiar. Everything was alien.

Then came the ground floor. The large windows facing the street offered a fleeting glimpse of the world he was leaving.

The street. The asphalt gleamed from the morning rain. A few parked cars—Mrs. Petrova’s blue Fiat, holding the best spot; the red Audi of the first-floor neighbor, that programmer who came home late. The trees were just budding with spring green.

On the sidewalk, only a few meters from the entrance—emptiness.

No police sirens, no curious neighbors, no shouts. Only absolute normality. A terrifying normality concealing his disappearance.

A woman passed along the sidewalk, head down, gaze fixed on her phone. She didn’t look up. A car crossed the street, its tires hissing over the wet pavement. No one noticed.

The humanoids carried him through the entrance door. Fresh air—damp and cool—slapped him in the face. His skin felt it, but his chest refused to draw a deep breath. The familiar smell of the city, of wet pavement and exhaust, pressed against him like a last goodbye kiss.

The last touch of the reality he had known. Spring. April.

The day should have passed ordinarily. Right now, Sandro should have been at the office, battling spreadsheets and listening to his boss complain about clients.

Instead, he had ended up here.

Then the vehicle appeared. Neither car nor truck. A whirlwind of radiance and darkness hung motionless before the entrance. It made no sound. Its surface reflected no light—it absorbed it like a black hole while emitting a pale bluish halo that danced along its contours. The shape remained elusive; Sandro’s gaze couldn’t focus, as if sliding away with every attempt to decipher the object.

There were no doors. No windows. No wheels.

They stepped forward. Without abrupt movement, the whirlwind opened like an incorporeal maw. The interior darkened without reaching total blackness—deep blue, reminiscent of an ocean abyss never touched by sunlight.

The humanoids carried him across the threshold.

The cold wrapped around him again—sharper and more all-encompassing than before. His body sank into it. The chill felt unnatural: not an absence of heat, but an active force sucking life away. And then beneath his skin, exactly where the tattoos had glowed moments before, light appeared.

Blue light.

It spread through his veins and bathed his bones—as if living circuits were infiltrating his being. The same organic forms that adorned the limbs of his abductors. The glow carried no pain, but it felt all-consuming, promising transformation. Or doom. The boundary between them proved frighteningly thin.

His breathing slowed. Not from lack of air, but because something else flooded his lungs. Something that should not exist in a human body.

Everything blurred. Blue bled into darkness. Darkness—into the void.

To the world, the statistician Sandro Hoppe disappeared without a trace, erased by a staged gas leak. No one would ever know that a whirlwind of light and shadow had swallowed him while blue radiance danced beneath his own skin.