Military Complex

Samantha stepped out of her assigned room in Conrad Hotel, rubbing her eyes as the early morning sun streamed through the wide glass windows. It had been a week since she was rescued—dragged out of her hellish confinement at the university where she thought she would die.

But even now, walking through the halls of this supposed "safe zone," she couldn't shake the eerie feeling that something was off.

She wasn't ungrateful—far from it. She owed her life to Thomas Estaris, her former classmate, who had somehow risen to a level of authority that no one seemed to question. But there were things that didn't make sense, things she had been too exhausted to process before.

Today, as she finally stepped out of the Conrad and into the streets of what used to be the SM Mall of Asia, she finally saw it—the impossible transformation.