Darkness.

Where am I? I don't know.  I feel dizzy, and can feel nothing but the cool air around me.  My hands are tied behind my back and I can sense a makeshift blindfold of a material I don't recognize tied around my head.  I scream for help, but no words come out.

And then came the light...
and the hallucinations.

I fade in and out of consciousness.  As I drift awake, I hear snippets of official-sounding people speaking.

"He won't be able to handle it."

"We should have brought the girl."

"He won't survive first nightfall."

***** 

When I finally wake for good, the blindfold is gone and my wrists are unbound.  I lie on a bed in an empty room with pristine white walls and no windows or doors.  Then, all of a sudden, I see the outline of a rectangle, about the size of a door, form on one of the walls.  It slides open revealing 

"Steve."

"Who are you?" I ask him. "Where am I?! Where's Al-"

"Patience, boy.  I'll explain things to you in a moment.  But first I have to ask.  What's the last thing you remember?"  I think about the question and delve deep into my brain, but it's like trying to kill a fly in open air.  Nothing comes.  Only the darkness.

"D-darkness," I manage to get out.  "Floating, in a void...or something.  I don't know.  All I remember is-"

"Darkness.  Interesting," the man says.  He nods and exits the room into a hallway that looks identical to the room, except longer.  The sliding door shuts behind him and the outline fades away.  I sit back onto the bed and fall to the ground.  I yelp and look around.  The bed that was there only a moment ago has seemingly vanished into thin air.  Bewildered, I look around the room.  Nothing.  Then, I hear a faint sound.  Yes, the hum of machinery working.  It begins to get louder until it pierces my eardrums.  I coaver my ears with my hands hoping to block out the shrill noise, but to no avail.


And then I fell.

The pristine white floor, identical to the walls of the floor, collapses.  Again I am engulfed by the darkness.  The darkness, which I have already come to despise after knowing it for such a short time.  Or perhaps I have always known it.  I really don't know.

I fall for what seems like five, maybe six hours.  I close my eyes and foolishly attempt sleep.  Such action is impossible when you're falling to uncertain fate.

BAM!

I crash to the floor and a sharp pain immediately pierces my entire body.  It feels like every bone in my body has broken...and then the pain goes away.  Instant relief.  I cannot wrap my head around what is happening to me.  I'm trapped again in another room, identical to the one before.  Above me is the abyss from which I fell.  I stand up and stare into the darkness that has become my sky.  For some reason that I can't understand, I think.  I try as hard as I possibly can to remember - remember something, from my life before this darkness.  There was...a life before this darkness...right?  I feel something...the faintest memory fades into view.  Except now it is all around me.  Rolling hills.  Deep oceans.  Mountains that seem to go past the sky itself.  A lush forest filled with flowers and beautiful trees, howling wolves.  I cover my eyes from the blistering sun and try to gain sense of what in the world is happening to me.

No memory comes except the memory of survival.  It's almost as if an instinct kicks in, where you are on your on and cannot depend on anyone else.  You must survive.

Bits and pieces of my life before this horror come back to me throughout my journey.  As I dig through the plains of grass, I remember the piles of debris surrounding a city.  As I mine into the depths of the earth I remember the eruptions of lava in the street.  As zombies attempt to break down my door, I remember hiding in the corner, with voices yelling "leave us alone!".

As I battle the Dragon, I remember the horror of...everything.  The simple horror of being afraid, that you won't survive to see the next day.  As I stand atop a pillar of obsidian, the Dragon flying straight for me and close my eyes and let the gust of his wings carry me into the abyss once again.

*****

"Steve!" a voice exclaims.  I open my eyes and find myself on a bed in yet another white room.  But this time, the sliding door is open and there are people around me.  Immediately I recognize the girl sitting next to me.

"...Alex...?" I say.

"Ahem," a man says.  It's the man who visited me in the first white room.  "Congratulations, Steve.  You have progressed further than any of our subjects so far."

"What...?"

"You can call me Mr. Mojang.  I am apart of a program called Gamemode Zero.  And you are our prized experiment.  Several weeks ago, our planet was attacked by mysterious invaders.  While our government was able to hold them off for a limited amount of time, our forces could never hold against theirs.  So we, desperate to save our kind, selected you and eleven others to be apart of a special trial to see how well you could survive against nearly any odds.  And you have done the best.  Several others perished in the dungeons, or the Nether dimension.  Each of these obstacles was specifically designed to trigger something in your mind, your deepest fears.  Yours what you called the 'darkness', also known as The Void.  Before you entered the Gamemode Zero project, you were subject to that fear.  And yet you still excelled in the trial."

"So..what...what now?" I ask, still processing the overload of information he has just dropped upon my shoulders.

"In a moment, I will restore your memories...if you wish.  Once I have done so, you, along with your sister," he said, gesturing to Alex, "will travel to the land of these invaders and strike at the heart of these people who have stolen our lives from us."

"I...I want my memories back," I reply.

"Very well, " he says.  "Now then.  Alex, head to your quarters while I restore his memories and prepare for your next task - Gamemode Two."