10 Minutes

How long can 10 minutes be?

03/27/2432

00:00

SLAM!

00:01
So quite. Silence should be a welcome sound after all the noise outside. But it was scary, scarier than anything else he had seen in the war. Scarier than anything he could've imagined. But why?

It was just a room. A room in a house. A room in a house in the middle of a battle field. A house that he should be leaving by now.

But the door wouldn't open.

00:02

He was stuck. The door wasn't locked, but it wouldn't open. Maybe it was a trap. A door that only opened in one side. It was an old-school trick, but it worked.

He tried to break it. But the wood was too strong. He was a trained soldier; why was a wood door beating him?

He pulled his gun. Somehow, the door remained intact. Weird. Wood doors were rare and expensive. Steel was the most popular these days. But even steel wouldn't resist the laser.

00:03

Nobody was coming after him. Three minutes already, the standart procedure was to stay 1 minute in a room, if that much. No time to spare; that war was going on for too long already. The bloodiest they had record of. Anyone that wasted time on missions was sent home. And what a mission that one was! It could end everything. He was proud that he was chosen to be in it. But apparently, he wasn't too important. Nobody missed him.

00:04

No sound. He realized why it freaked him out. There should be sounds. A lot of noise from guns, explosives, soldiers screaming, ships flying around the sky... but nothing. It was like somebody literally unplugged the speakers of the world.

Or maybe he was deaf. Yes, it could be it. He tried his voice. He heard it clearly. So it wasn't that. But what was going on? The moment the door shut behind him (blame it on the wind), it was like he wasn't in the same place. A room with no windows, nothing to connect him with the outside but the door. That wouldn't open.

00:05

No windows. Now that was something else to be noticed. What was so important in this room that it had no windows? Nobody builds a room without windows if there wasn't a secret inside it. A thing? Or something that would happen in there?

But what? And where would that thing be hidden? There wasn't a single piece of furniture inside it. The walls were white. Neat. The floor was as white as the walls, except for the muddy footprints he left. He could see the blood of his mates on them.

00:06

Once more he tried to open the door. Nothing. Then he turned to the walls. Seconds before pulling the trigger, he thought better. He could ruin thw whole mission.

They were very carefull, and yet they were spotted. In seconds, they were dead. For luck, he escaped; he was standing right beside the four that went down. How he did it, he would never know. But he returned to the lieutenant, and recieved the same orders he had before: go inside that house.

00:07

It all happened just a few minutes ago? Really? He felt like he was in there for so long! The war was like another lifetime. But he still remembered everything; how he looked for the enemies and didn't see anything. How he jumped his friend's bodies, right beside the fence. How he entered the place without raising any alarms. How he looked room after room, until he found this one. The only one with a closed door. He entered. And then the wind came.

But now he was thinking about it, he didn't feel any wind.

00:08

It was insane. What closed the door then? It wasn't him. It wasn't the wind. But who? If it was an enemy, why not just kill him, why keep him inside there? And if it was a friend, again, why was he there yet?

Pointless. He was in there now. Using his gun was too great of a risk, he should've thought of that when he did it first. Now he didn't dare. Or did he?

00:09

I need to do that.

But they'll find me!

If they're close enough to hear, they already did.

If I had one of those new weapons... they don't make a sound! But this is too loud. They'll find me, they'll find us. I can't!

Just do it already!

It didn't work agains wood, why it work with brick?

Just go!

00:10

He made his decision. He couldn't just wait there, doing nothing. He had to get out.

He pointed the gun at the wall, full potency. It was enough to cut dimmond. But somehow it wasn't enough to cut through wood.

He fired. The wall came down. So did the roof. He was buried under the wreckage, but he managed to get out. He found himself in the middle of a circle of people staring at him.

03/27/2442

"We found another one, Doc."

He was in shock. It wasn't possible. 10 years. 10 whole years passed for the rest of the world. For him, just 10 minutes. A minute there, a year outside.

"I know how hard it must be for you. You're not the only one, you know? There were several of these rooms around the world. Our team was looking for them. Yours was about to be opened."

He stopped listening. 10 years was a long time. He kept hearing how lucky he was: nobody that fought in the war survived, except for those that got trapped in the rooms. But how lucky was he?

He died alone, hallucinating in a bed. He developed a claustrophbia that made him jump whenever he went through a door. The outside wasn't much better. Everytime he went out, he was terrified of the thought that it was happening again. 3 years after he got out, 5 after the war ended, another one died, victim of the war.

Author's Note

Any grammar mistakes, please let me know what is and how to fix it. Thanks.