Chapter 2

  Mason strapped his helmet on tight and climbed onto the pillion seat of Dante’s bike, while Ronan settled in behind Silas. The heavy, synchronized rumble of the twin engines filled the quiet suburban street.

  "Keep close. Follow my lead," Silas called out over the mechanical roar, adjusting his side mirrors.

  Dante, however, immediately gunned his throttle. His bike surged aggressively forward, cutting Silas off and claiming the lead position on the asphalt. "Don't worry!" Dante yelled back over his shoulder. "I know the way!"

  Sitting securely behind Silas, Ronan scoffed and patted Silas's shoulder. "You really gonna let him outdo you like that?"

  Silas’s eyes narrowed behind his dark visor. "Hold tight."

  With a quick flick of his thumb, Silas switched his bike’s engine mapping from the restricted Rain mode into Sports mode. The machine instantly responded, roaring to life with a deeper, far more aggressive growl. He twisted the throttle. The tires gripped the asphalt fiercely as the bike launched forward like a missile. In mere seconds, he blew past Dante, pulling level just long enough for Ronan to look over and wave.

  "Meet you both at the destination!" Ronan shouted, laughing against the wind.

  Silas cranked the throttle again, leaving Dante and Mason eating their dust.

  Watching Silas rapidly disappear down the long stretch of road, Mason tightened his panicked grip around Dante's waist. "I think we shouldn't have gotten competitive!" he shouted over the rushing wind.

  "Hold tight," Dante muttered, leaning forward over the tank, determined to chase his cousin down.

  "Hey, calm down!" Mason yelled, genuine panic edging into his voice. "I don't want to die today! Silas actually knows how to ride these things on a track. You drive a sedan!"

  Reluctantly recognizing the hard truth in Mason's warning, Dante eased off the throttle, slowing the heavy machine to a safer, more manageable speed.

  But the street race was short-lived anyway. Within a few miles, the open road condensed into a suffocating bottleneck of blaring horns, thick exhaust fumes, and a sea of stationary vehicles. By the time Dante and Mason expertly wove their way through the gridlock, they found Silas and Ronan waiting idly in the middle of the choking traffic jam.

  Dante pulled up beside them, lifting his visor with a smug, triumphant grin. "All that speed just to get stuck in traffic with the rest of us."

  Silas’s jaw tightened, the jab ticking him off far more than he cared to admit.

  Ronan sighed heavily, wiping a bead of sweat from his neck. "Silas, is there another way we can take? We're going to roast out here in these jackets."

  Silas pulled up his visor, his sharp eyes scanning the dense, chaotic urban sprawl. He looked over at Dante. "You alright with cutting through the inner colony roads?"

  "If it gets us out of this mess, it would be great," Mason chimed in eagerly from the back.

  "Follow behind," Silas ordered. He banked his bike sharply, navigating a perilously narrow gap between two idling cars, and plunged down a tight, winding side lane.

  These connecting alleys wove endlessly through the different residential colonies, acting as a labyrinthine bypass away from the city gridlock. The roads were barely three meters wide—just broad enough for a single car to pass. The towering brick compound walls and closely packed houses flanking the street cast the path in a deep, cool shade. Above them, a tangled, chaotic canopy of black electrical wires crisscrossed the sky, completely blocking out the sun. The deafening roar of the city traffic quickly faded into a muffled, distant hum behind them.

  They rode for a while, crossing intersection after intersection, winding deeper into the maze of neighborhood backroads.

  "How much longer?" Dante yelled from behind, his voice echoing hollowly off the concrete walls.

  "Ten minutes!" Silas called back without turning his head. "Then we hit the main road!"

  Mason looked around as they rode. Good thing there aren't any people back here, he thought to himself, watching the blur of identical houses. Makes it a lot easier to drive without dodging pedestrians or parked scooters. But the moment the thought crossed his mind, a creeping, icy sense of wrongness settled deep in his stomach. He craned his neck, peering down the intersecting lanes as they blew past them.

  Wait. There was literally no one. No stray dogs resting by the iron gates. No kids playing cricket in the narrow alleys. Not even the distant hum of an AC unit or water cooler from the nearby windows. It was utterly, profoundly dead silent.

  "Hey!" Mason yelled, leaning out from behind Dante to catch Silas's attention. "Are you sure we're going the right way?!"

  The rushing wind and the heavy engines drowned out his voice. Silas kept driving, oblivious.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  But Ronan had noticed the eerie atmosphere too. The fine hairs on the back of his arms were standing straight up. He leaned close, practically pressing his helmet against Silas’s. "Silas! Are you sure about this route? It’s a little too quiet around here, don't you think?!"

  Silas frowned behind his visor. He finally took his eyes off the road ahead to really process his surroundings. Ronan was right. The residential lane was entirely desolate. But it wasn't just the lack of human life that felt wrong. The overgrown plants spilling aggressively over the brick boundary walls were warped. The broad leaves were an unnatural, sickly shade of violet, and the thick vines creeping up the stonework seemed to pulse with a faint, oily sheen.

  A heavy, suffocating unease washed over Silas as he pushed the bike forward.

  Then, it happened.

  It wasn't a sound, but a physical, bone-rattling sensation—like a wave of static electricity washing over all four of them at the exact same instant. It felt as though they had driven through a freezing, invisible membrane. The air pressure violently shifted, painfully popping their eardrums.

  The scenery around them fractured and warped, altering completely in the blink of an eye.

  Silas slammed hard on his brakes. Dante did the exact same a fraction of a second later. The rubber tires shrieked against the ground, sliding wildly as both heavy bikes skidded to a jarring, violent halt.

  The residential iron gates and the concrete colony roads were gone. In their place, colossal, pulsating vines as thick as ancient tree trunks crept across the path, weaving together into an impenetrable biological wall. The alien vegetation spread rapidly over the pavement, making any further travel forward physically impossible.

  Silas kicked his kickstand down. He slowly pulled his helmet off, his eyes wide.

  The only words that managed to escape his lips were a breathless, "What in the actual godly fuck..."

  How did this entire jungle appear out of nowhere?

  The others were just as speechless, paralyzed beneath their dark visors.

  Ronan swallowed hard, his voice trembling in the sudden quiet. "I think... I think we're in another dimension."

  Silas snapped his head toward him, his analytical mind rejecting the absurdity. "You need to stop watching Stranger Things."

  "Is this..." Mason stammered, pulling his helmet off and pointing a shaking finger at the towering wall of vines. "Is this the place we were supposed to go through?"

  "This is my first time coming here," Silas said quietly, his eyes darting frantically across the bizarre landscape.

  "Guys," Dante called out, his voice cracking. "I think we are fucked."

  They all turned around. Stunned silence fell over the group.

  The way they had just come—the long residential lane they had driven down mere seconds ago—was entirely sealed off. Thick, writhing tree roots had burst aggressively through the asphalt, spreading across the road and forming an inescapable wooden cage right behind them.

  "Okay. Okay, we definitely didn't come from there," Ronan said, full-blown panic setting in. He scrambled off the bike, backing away from the roots. "Something is happening! I'm telling you, we really are in another dimension!"

  Silas ignored the panic. He stripped off his riding gloves, walked purposefully toward the massive blockade, and crouched down in the dirt. He narrowed his eyes, studying the strange biology of the roots.

  "It's not just whatever spatial event is happening," Silas muttered, tracing the bark. Drawing heavily on his rigorous university majors in botany and zoology, he ran a bare finger over the surface. "The vascular structure, the way the epidermis is forming... these don't match any existing plant species. At least, not something you would find anywhere in our country. There isn't even a one-in-a-million chance."

  "This is clearly not the time to be looking at plants right now!" Mason yelled, pacing frantically. "Wear your helmets!"

  Silas looked up. Drifting softly down from the dense canopy of strange vines above them were faintly glowing particles, suspended like dust in the heavy, humid air.

  Dante, Mason, and Ronan had already snapped their visors back down and hastily covered their exposed necks with their thick leather jackets.

  Curious, Silas reached out a bare hand and caught one of the floating spores on his palm.

  "Silas, don't!" Dante yelled, his voice muffled through his helmet. Mason violently shook his head in agreement.

  "This stuff is literally everywhere," Silas pointed out grimly. "If it's an airborne pathogen or toxic, a motorcycle helmet and just covering some parts of our bodies definitely isn't going to save us."

  He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. The glowing particle instantly crumbled, turning to a fine, silvery-grey dust on his skin. Silas wiped it off on his jeans and stood up, his mind made up.

  "Let's go back."

  "How?" Ronan asked, gesturing wildly to the impenetrable wall of roots behind them.

  "On foot," Silas replied calmly.

  "What about the bikes?" Dante asked, staring painfully at the expensive machinery they were about to abandon.

  "I can get them later when I come back," Silas said, already turning toward a small, narrow gap he had spotted in the tangled roots. "Or I'll just buy new ones. Right now, it's better to get out of here first."

  They abandoned the motorcycles and squeezed through the narrow gap in the twisted barricade. But every step they took felt profoundly wrong.

  The familiar, narrow concrete lane was gone, replaced by a claustrophobic, overgrown nightmare. Thick, reddish-brown and violet roots sprawled aggressively across the ground, leaving only small patches of cracked, ruined asphalt visible to step on. The roots crept like serpents up the brick walls of the closely packed houses, sprouting human-sized offshoots that bore sickly, greenish-violet leaves.

  In the far distance, silhouetted against a hazy fog, a colossal tree loomed. It looked like the dark heart of the infestation, though countless other mutated plants seemed to be contributing to the rapid overgrowth.

  Then, the noise started.

  At first, it was just a low, thrumming vibration that resonated deep in their chests. But within seconds, it multiplied, building into a deafening, piercing screech that tore through the mist.

  Silas immediately clamped both bare hands tightly over his ears, squeezing his eyes shut as a sharp, blinding jolt of agony shot straight through his skull.

  Without his helmet, he took the absolute brunt of the sonic wave. For Dante, Mason, and Ronan, the thick, insulated foam padding of their motorcycle helmets dampened the worst of the agonizing frequency. But for Silas, it felt like white-hot needles were being driven directly into his eardrums.

  Through the blinding pain, Silas forced his eyes open. He gritted his teeth and tilted his head back, searching the sky for the source of the noise.

  The sky itself was terrifying—a deep, bruised reddish-orange marred by unnatural streaks of violent violet and blue. A thin mist hung in the air, while the silver-grey spores drifted down around them like falling ash in the aftermath of a forest fire.

  Sensing his movement, Dante, Mason, and Ronan followed his gaze, tilting their heavy, visored heads upward.

  The screech peaked, vibrating the very ground beneath their boots. Silas’s hands slowly dropped from his ears, the intense physical pain momentarily eclipsed by pure, unadulterated dread. Beside him, his friends froze in a cold, suffocating silence.

  Whatever they were looking at in that apocalyptic sky left all four of them utterly paralyzed with horror.