<span style="font-weight: bold"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0080FF">Jake Patel</span></div></span><br/><br/>“Hello!?”<br/><br/>Jake’s throat was starting to hurt, and his feet were already aching. At this rate, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could go. “Is anyone out there??”<br/><br/>There was no good way to tell the time in this place, as there was no sun in the sky, and his phone battery had unfortunately died about an hour ago. It was dark and damp, and the sand was getting into his shoes and abrading his feet. He’d been walking in straight line, figuring that there must have been an end to the chilly desert, but…<br/><br/>“What the hell kind of place<span style="font-style: italic">is</span>this?” Jake muttered to himself. There was no way his small town was home to a gigantic empty cavern full of sand, at least not without him knowing about it. Was he underground? Did he get kidnapped and shipped out across the country or something? Nothing  seemed to make any sense.<br/><br/>He stopped his forced march and crouched down to give his legs a rest. “Okay, think,” he spoke to himself, rubbing against his temples with his fingers. “How did I get here?” The last thing he remembered was saying goodnight to his worried mother and heading to bed. Yeah, she’d been pretty nervous for the past week or so because he was about to start college. “Damn,” breathed Jake. “Then I ended up here! It makes no freaking sense!” His voice didn’t even echo in a place as large as this one.<br/><br/>He stood up and kicked a small stone in frustration, watching it skip across the sand and disappear into the darkness… or at least he had expected it to be darkness. “What?” Jake squinted at what he thought was a slight twinkling in the distance. “Is that...?” It was. The first source of bright light he’d seen since his phone ran out of battery. That meant he wasn’t alone in this place!<br/><br/>“Hey! Hey, over here!” With renewed vigour, Jake started scrambling towards the distant source of light.