The first thing you registered was the cold. It seeped into your bones, a damp, metallic chill.

You opened your eyes to find yourself in a room the size of a shipping container. The walls were stainless steel, save for a single, thick, obsidian-black glass window dominating one end. There were no doors.

Then you saw him.

He was sitting opposite you, mirroring your position: strapped into a heavy, bolted-down steel chair, wrists and ankles secured with magnetic cuffs. He was a man you vaguely recognized. A colleague? Perhaps, or someone from a professional network, but his name was a slick, forgotten thing on the edge of your memory.

A voice, synthesized and genderless, boomed from unseen speakers.

“Welcome, participants. You are in the vault.”

A collective, desperate adrenaline surge hit you both. You thrashed against the restraints, the magnetic cuffs humming in response.

“Attempting to escape is… futile,” the voice continued. “I am your Guardian. I have selected you for one purpose: The Selection.”

A panel on the wall opposite the black window glowed, displaying a simple message: ONE LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM REMAINING.

"The system is sustaining this module. The oxygen, the temperature, and the gravity are designed to support one adult human for the next 504 hours (three weeks). When the timer reaches zero, the system will fail. Both of you will die."

Your mind reeled. This wasn't a game; it was a horror show.

"However," the voice said, a cruel inflection entering its timbre, "you have been provided with a solution. Only one of you may leave the vault alive."

Slowly, agonizingly, the magnetic cuffs on your left wrist and his right wrist clicked open. Attached to the released cuff was a tool: a heavy, serrated steel knife.

The voice's final instruction hung in the air like poison gas.

"Kill the other participant. The survivor’s restraints will be released, and the exit sequence will begin. If neither of you acts within the next 504 hours, I promise you, you will both suffocate. The clock is ticking."

A red, digital timer appeared below the message, beginning its slow, relentless countdown: 21 days 23:00:00.

You looked down at the knife in your hand, its cold, weighty reality a sickening contrast to the dizzying impossibility of the situation. Then you looked up.

He was staring at the knife in his hand, then at you. In his eyes, cold, giving nothing.

It is a race against the clock, but more importantly, a race against the soul.

You and he are the only variables, and one of you has to become the solution.

504 hours. Three weeks. 21 days.

You held the knife, the steel a shocking extension of your own shaking hand. The man across from you, his name still just a blank space in your memory, was breathing heavily. His knuckles were white where they gripped his own weapon.

The digital clock ticked down: 504-hour timer, 20 days, 23:59:45.

He looked up, and his gaze was unsettlingly calm. Too calm for a man facing a death sentence.

"Can you kill?"

You didn't answer, but you asked it back.

His violet eyes flickered to the knife in his hand again, then back to your face. The corner of his mouth twitched. Not a smile, but something colder, more calculating. He exhaled through his nose, slow and measured, like a man conserving energy.

"Of course I can," he said. "But more importantly—will I? That's the real question."

He tilted his head slightly, observing you like a pilot scanning instruments before a storm. "Killing isn't the hard part. The hard part is deciding when it's worth it. Right now?" His fingers flexed around the knife’s grip. "The clock’s barely started. We have food. Oxygen. Time."

Just then, a slot in the wall automatically opened, presenting a meal. Two plates and drinks. It was the first of the twenty-one daily rations you're expected to receive.

He didn't look.

"But when those plates stop coming? When breathing gets harder? That’s when people start making… interesting choices." A dry, humorless chuckle. "Tell me, do you want to die slow or fast?"