“Ha… ha…”

  His ragged breathing echoed through the damp, icy air—quickly swallowed by the steady drip of rain falling from the mouth of the pit.

  When he lifted his head, he saw only a slate-gray sky above. A black-haired little boy stared upward, panic filling his eyes.

  Mud and grime smeared his face and the thick ski jacket clinging to his small frame. The hunting rifle lying beside him was just as filthy.

  In many parts of the country, the law clearly stated that minors were not allowed to possess firearms. But in remote regions, that rule lived mostly on paper. Nearly every household kept one or two hunting guns for the season. Hunting was a pastime—and a livelihood—so children raised there inevitably learned to handle a rifle and followed adults into the woods.

  It was obvious the boy had been hunting with someone.

  And now, through sheer bad luck, he’d fallen into a sinkhole.

  The opening had been hidden under vegetation and leaf litter. While chasing a rabbit, he’d stepped forward without seeing it—and the ground had vanished under his foot.

  “Grandpa!!”

  Fear cracked through his voice as he shouted toward the opening, hoping his grandfather was nearby.

  He called again and again.

  No answer.

  Exhausted and hungry, the boy finally broke down.

  “W-w… Grandpa…” Tears soaked his long lashes and slid down his dirty cheeks. Clutching the rifle like it could keep him safe, he turned helplessly, scanning the slick, wet stone around him.

  Then he noticed something.

  To his left, another tunnel led away into darkness—stretching toward an unknown depth.

  He blinked hard, forcing the tears away until his vision cleared.

  From deep within that tunnel came a faint blue glow.

  He hesitated for a long time.

  Then curiosity—stronger than fear—won.

  He started toward the light.

  The tunnel was about as tall as a grown man, but only half a person wide. For a child his size, slipping through was easy.

  At the far end, the space opened suddenly, widening into a chamber about the size of a hunter’s cabin.

  The boy crept forward on silent feet—then stopped.

  His black eyes fixed on a corner of the cavern.

  He swallowed.

  And finally, in a small, trembling voice, he asked:

  “Um… who are you?”

  2031: Humanity creates a microscopic black hole for the first time using an atomic collider.

  2045: Experiments confirm the validity of M-theory, establishing the existence of eleven dimensions.

  2047: The world’s leading scientists collaborate to build the “Window of Space,” hoping to observe a world on another plane.

  That December, the experiment explodes. The space within several kilometers twists violently.

  The area—tens of kilometers across—is designated one of the most dangerous zones on Earth.

  2049 — Washington, D.C., Fifth Science Division

  “Sir, Professor Yan Qing has arrived.”

  “Let him in.”

  The moment he stepped through the door, the young scientist demanded, anger blazing on his face.

  “Inspector Hollins—give me an explanation. Why is an expedition team being sent to the Genesis test site?”

  The elderly man behind the workbench rose slowly from his comfortable chair and strolled closer.

  “Professor Yan Qing… as a researcher, surely you can understand humanity’s curiosity toward the unknown,” he said, then paused, his dark eyes sliding over the younger man’s face. “Can you not?”

  “Only under the condition that we stay rational, sir!” Yan Qing clenched his fists so hard his knuckles whitened. “Genesis has already exceeded what our current technology can control. Any manned investigation is madness. Why send people in? We have robots—we—”

  “We tried,” the old man cut in, his voice suddenly rough, stubbornness bordering on frenzy. “And the previous attempts failed. Robots have limits. We cannot rely on them alone to resolve Genesis. Only humans can uncover the truth!”

  Yan Qing drew a sharp breath, as if trying to force his anger back down. Then, as though some conclusion had snapped into place, he turned to leave.

  Behind him, the old man lit the cigar that had somehow already been in his hand. He smiled—cold, mocking.

  “Giving up so quickly, Professor?”

  “Yes,” Yan Qing said without turning back. “You win. If someone must enter Genesis, then unless I’m on that team too, no one is coming out alive.”

  Bang.

  The door slammed.

  Left alone in the office, the old man chuckled—a sound laced with satisfaction and derision.

  “In the end,” he murmured, “you still can’t escape a scientist’s madness, William.”

  February 11, 9:00 a.m. — Florenza, Town B, Military Equipment Division

  “Listen up! We’re moving out tonight at ten, heading to the Genesis test site. Make sure you’re ready!”

  The officer barked orders. His lieutenant’s insignia was clear on his shoulder.

  “Yes, sir!” the team answered quickly—but most of it sounded perfunctory.

  The newly appointed lieutenant, Lanice, hadn’t built authority. Not even close.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Anyone watching him drill the unit would wonder how he’d ever made lieutenant. No one listened to him.

  Behind his back, his team called him the unit mascot.

  “Ah, shit! Sam! Your damn compressed biscuits nearly snapped my tooth!” a young soldier shouted, crumbs still stuck at the corner of his mouth.

  From the other end of the room, a head popped up from beneath a military jeep—face full of sarcasm.

  “Who told you to steal food? That’s emergency rations. If we go into Genesis and run out, I’ll eat you instead, Aiden.”

  “Hell no—try it if you can take me down first!” The young soldier flipped him off.

  “Oh? Babe. You want to test it?”

  The other soldiers were used to this routine.

  But the scientists, watching the exchange, wore a whole range of expressions—amused, uneasy, baffled.

  Lieutenant Lanice gave an awkward little laugh. “All right, everyone. Keep moving.”

  During Genesis surveillance, NASA had detected signs consistent with unknown life activity near the center. That was why command refused to abandon the area. Given the unknown risks, a small military team had been assigned to escort the investigation group. Lanice and his squad—stationed nearby—had been tasked with the mission.

  “Fifteen people,” Yan Qing murmured to himself.

  He stood not far from the lieutenant.

  “Professor,” Lanice said, “we’re leaving tonight. You’re not going to rest?”

  “No.” Yan Qing shook his head. “I still have materials to prepare.”

  Lanice studied the physicist he’d met only today, recalling the file he’d read earlier.

  Dr. William Yan Qing—Harvard graduate, top of his field in space physics. After graduation, he joined NASA’s Fifth Division as lead researcher. He modified a turbine particle collider and became the first human to capture evidence of gravitons—solid experimental proof supporting M-theory. At only twenty-five, William Yan Qing had stood under the world’s spotlight.

  But Lanice couldn’t help thinking: compared to most physicists, the professor could have been a model. That refined, distinctly East Asian face paired with a tall, straight frame made him a media favorite and a frequently invited guest on science channels.

  And Yan Qing’s signature waist-length black hair gave him an almost classical allure.

  “Lieutenant?” Yan Qing noticed the stare and frowned faintly. “Is something wrong?”

  “Huh? Oh—!” Lanice coughed, embarrassed at himself. “Do we need to add any additional equipment, Professor?”

  “…No.” Yan Qing lowered his gaze, as if hiding whatever passed through his eyes. “We leave on schedule tonight.”

  “Yes, Professor!”

  Lanice turned to finish final checks.

  “Lieutenant Lanice.”

  “Yes?”

  “Have you said goodbye to your family?”

  Lanice blinked. “Not really. It’s just a mission. Nothing special.”

  “Go,” Yan Qing said, voice weighted with meaning. He gave Lanice a tired, almost helpless smile. “Say goodbye. At least they’ll know where you went.”

  Florenza — 500 km south of Town B, 9:00 p.m.

  “Thirteen kilometers until we enter the influence zone.”

  “Copy. All communications will be disrupted by particle streams and fail. After that, you’re on your own. Good luck.”

  “Understood.”

  The call ended. Lanice cut the radio and turned to the others.

  “All right, brothers—starting now, it’s just us. Let’s show our guests what soldiers can do!”

  “Oh!” The seven soldiers replied with sudden enthusiasm.

  Ah… finally, they listened.

  Lanice felt absurdly happy—it might have been the best day since he became lieutenant.

  “Ha, looks like our mascot is having a great time,” Aiden said, wiping down his weapon. He elbowed Sam.

  Sam didn’t answer—he just snorted with laughter.

  Worse than he’d expected.

  Yan Qing stared at the calculation results on the monitor, frowning hard.

  The ratio of dark matter in this region exceeded the upper limit. Lateral gravitational values were rising. Light was visibly distorted by the dense mass distribution.

  He checked the digital clock in the corner.

  Local time differed from satellite time by 0.7%.

  This was a disaster.

  Why insist on sending humans into a zone this dangerous?

  He raked a hand through his hair, irritation spiking into something close to dread.

  He wasn’t confident he could keep the team alive. What he knew couldn’t compete with the yawning unknown of spacetime.

  Even with him on the expedition, the Genesis team still had a 99% chance of never returning.

  So why had he joined?

  Guilt—because Genesis had been launched from the foundations of his work?

  Or the same madness that drove all scientists forward: the hunger to see the truth for himself?

  Yan Qing didn’t know.

  BEEEEEP—

  The monitor shrieked. Every system froze.

  “What happened?” a scientist beside him asked, voice trembling.

  “Particle interference—electronic signal pulse disruption,” Yan Qing said evenly. He’d expected this. “Gentlemen… we’ve entered the influence zone.”

  “That’s impossible!” the man snapped. “The data says the radius is fifty kilometers!”

  “Did you not read the latest Genesis report before coming?” Yan Qing pressed his fingers to his forehead, a headache blooming. “The influence radius is expanding at an exponential acceleration.”

  “What?” another scientist cut in. “That can’t be right—this morning’s data didn’t show anything that fast!”

  Yan Qing’s eyes narrowed. “That’s what I calculated before the system crashed.”

  His voice slowed.

  “It can only mean Genesis is expanding beyond our control.”

  If that continued, Genesis would reach Town B within a week. If nothing stopped the expansion, then theoretically… Earth’s entire spatial structure would collapse into distortion.

  Worse still, their calculations suggested the center of the Genesis facility might be a black hole.

  “Hey—why are we speeding up?” a soldier shouted from the cab.

  “That’s the weird part—I’m not pressing the gas,” the driver answered, baffled.

  Yan Qing’s blood went cold.

  “Turn around!” he yelled toward the cab. “Turn around now!”

  “What?!”

  If his hypothesis was correct, continuing meant being trapped inside Genesis’s gravitational well—unable to escape.

  Forever.

  And that wasn’t even the worst outcome.

  Yan Qing had proposed the original Genesis initiative two years ago—but his work had been stolen by another physicist. He hadn’t been present when the experiment ran. He didn’t know how far it had gotten.

  Theoretically, Genesis would create a micro black hole to open a wormhole—then send in a tiny probe with a camera, tethered by a cable, hoping to transmit images of the other side.

  Then the explosion happened. The energy discharge twisted the surrounding space into instability.

  All Yan Qing could do was pray the experiment hadn’t opened the entrance fully—

  That it hadn’t finished forming the “door.”

  That their calculations were wrong.

  But heaven, apparently, had no interest in sparing them from Yan Qing’s accuracy.

  When the expedition suddenly found that they could no longer see anything around them, his last thread of hope snapped.

  Even light could not escape the strongest gravity in the universe.

  A human-made, out-of-control black hole—born from the Genesis experiment two years ago.

  And the expedition had just crossed the line between life and death:

  the event horizon.

  Anything that crosses it can never escape the black hole’s pull again—until it is swallowed into the core, compressed by its own gravity into a point smaller than a grain of dust, denser than the sun by hundreds of times.

  Time felt as if it stopped.

  Space, however, continued to move—relentlessly.

  Within the gravitational well, Yan Qing could see nothing and hear nothing. Energy particles, waves—nothing reached human senses.

  He soon felt the pull begin to tear at his body. At first it was faint, then escalating into pain that felt like being ripped apart.

  If he could still hear sound, he would have heard himself screaming first.

  Because he understood exactly how he would die.

  Different parts of his body would be pulled by different magnitudes of gravity. He would stretch. Split. Two pieces, four, eight, sixteen—

  Until he became fragments at the quantum scale, devoured into the core.

  To an outside observer it might look like seconds.

  To the people falling in, it felt like centuries.

  Every second was agony.

  Hell would have been kinder.

  “—!”

  Then—suddenly—the crushing pull vanished.

  Yan Qing’s eyes flew open.

  What he saw was even more impossible.

  Everything inside the armored vehicle was floating, as if gravity had been shut off. Equipment drifted in slow chaos.

  “What… happened?”

  “I’m flying!”

  “Oh my God!”

  The team’s panicked shouts yanked Yan Qing back from shock.

  Weightlessness was impossible on Earth unless—

  His eyes flicked to the small window—

  and he froze.

  Outside was not a sky any human could see from Earth.

  Within purple-red clouds, countless stars glowed dimly in the distance.

  “How—are we in space?!” Sam shouted, voice full of disbelief.

  Space.

  “Shut all ventilation—!”

  Yan Qing’s voice cut off abruptly, as if someone had pressed a mute button.

  Because there was no air.

  And the last thin remnants were already leaking out through the vehicle’s ventilation into the void.

  In space, sound could not travel.

  Worse—humans could not breathe.

  Blood began to boil inside veins.

  Suffocating, helpless, Yan Qing’s eyes widened as he saw the others’ faces twisting in pain.

  Even if they sealed the vents, it was only delay. Under cosmic radiation, if they didn’t die from asphyxiation, they’d die from mutations.

  But living people cling to life, even if it’s only one extra second.

  Xiaowen…

  His awareness peeled away in layers, slipping out of his mind.

  Before unconsciousness took him, the young scientist silently called his fiancée’s name.

  In the blur, he thought he saw a figure—

  golden…

  An angel?

  But I don’t believe in God.