SILENCE | ATEEZ

2 | Astral Ruins : Roll 182

Mingi suddenly springs up on his feet when he hears a slight scream coming from his right side of ears. He recognises Elenna's voice and the instincts of keeping her under his protection lights up faster than light. The soldier that holds him down hits him down again and tightens the rope around his wrists. At that moment he feels helpless, he wants to scream and ask if Elenna was alright, but his tongue freezes when the sight of someone's shoes appears in front of his eyes.

A woman stands in front of him, looking at him nonchalantly. She is wearing black uniform that he assumes was VESTRA'S, with a white lab coat. He stares at her without moving an inch, as the soldier that's holding him down slap the back of his head.

"I'll untie your hands, but don't ever think of doing something stupid."

A strong urge to roll his eyes appears in him, but he knows it won't change a thing that he's stuck there, with a bunch of foreign people that don't even speak the same dialect as them. The woman in front of him did not say anything as she wait patiently with a syringe in her hands. Something poisonous, he assumes.

"Bring up your wrist, please," she finally says when the soldier is done. Mingi gives her a sceptical look and obeys, not wanting to cause any more trouble to himself. His eyes search for any identification of her, and finds out on the lanyard that hangs around her neck. Ko Saera. A name he will remember, for what good of it, he does not know yet. He tries to keep his memories intact, in case any sort of help miraculously reaches them.

He wants every single person who works for VESTRA to pay the same price as his people did. Especially those who dared to touch both him and Elenna. Mingi winces as the needle of the syringe pierces into his vein. The process takes less than a few seconds and before he even knew it, she's already standing back up on her feet.

"Roll 182, Song Mingi, Zuhal District."

Mingi tries to bring his arm back to him but the soldier rigidly pulls it out back again, suspecting him to do something. He stares at the guy blankly with a slight frown over his face. The mask that is covering the soldier's face suddenly feels insufficient to blacken out his real identity.

Before Mingi gets to say any word out, the woman in front of them blocks the soldier from him. She pushes him away with the tip of her fingers as he sees her rolling her eyes back to her skull, and Mingi can tell that she is annoyed. He can't blame her for feeling the obvious towards this particular soldier.

"Get off him, Yunho. President is not going to like any of the newbies getting hurt because of your stupid anger issues," she utters slowly as she wraps a bandage around Mingi's arm. The woman then turns to him with yet another nonchalant expression, it almost feels like he is seeing a mannequin instead of a human.

Dull, empty.

"Right, I'm done with him. Take him to the base, let all of them rest. Tomorrow, gather them up at the lounge," she faces Mingi for a second, "don't be scared."

The soldiers then start to bring the newbies up to the base in lines. In the base, there are a lot of small cubicles inside a single room. One room is designated for 4 people at the same time. Mingi forces himself to watch his surroundings for Elenna, but there's literally no sign of her as he is only surrounded with boys around his age. There's even those who are younger than him, giving chills running through him.

The soldier then pushes him into a room, before locking it with an access card from the outside, leaving him in the vast darkness. Mingi suddenly finds his body hair standing up straight, goosebumps arise as he struggles to find a switch for the lights. He hates the dark, it makes him feel suffocated. As he struggles, the lights automatically switch on. He sighs out of relief before walking to his cubicle that he assumes is his. Number 182 clearly states on the cubicle's wall. He sits on his bed, wandering in his thoughts.

His bandaged arm suddenly itches so badly. Mingi rips the bandage off, wanting to scratch the wound but what he sees doesn't correlate with what he thought he would. He expects a wound that's somehow similar to what the crawlers had. Mingi is not dumb, he knows VESTRA only takes them in because they want to experiment on them. They're trying to find a way to produce antidotes, that's true, but those are not for the citizens. They are keeping it to themselves.

What he sees makes him doubt himself. He sees a number, blinking on his arm. Mingi rubs his eyes repeatedly, not believing one bit his arm is producing a screen that does not exist physically, displaying a number.

182

"You're not hallucinating. I have it too," a voice greets him from the upper cubicle as an arm appears suddenly in front of him. His body registers it as a threat as it jolts backwards and hits the wall of his small cubicle so hard that it shakes. Mingi gasps as he tries to catch his breath from the shock, his arms and legs are spread open in the small cubicle as self defence.

"The hell did you do?" A face appears from the upper cubicle, a frown out of annoyance. Upon seeing the state of Mingi in, he throws out a laugh, so hard that their whole two cubicles are reverberating. Mingi sighs low, he pulls himself out from the cubicle to face the guy without having their bunks limiting his vision. His glasses are broken anyway, with blurry eyesight in this situation really puts him in a hard situation.

The figure notices him, while he finishes off with his laugh. He gives him a small smile, nodding his head.

"Tough life, isn't it? I'm Yeosang. Guess we will be seeing each other often after this," he says briefly, and contrasting to Wooyoung, this guy doesn't hand out his hand to shake. Mingi nods his head back, sighing.

"Mingi. What are your numbers?"

"It's not just any numbers. It's our identification number. They call it roll number," Yeosang says flatly, as he fixes his position by resting his head back on the cubicle's wall while he hugs a pillow close to his chest. "It's 183. My roll number. You're 184?"

Mingi shakes his head, "182. Do you know where they put the female newbies?" he asks, seeing how much Yeosang knows about this place. Yeosang only returns a frown as a response.

"Really? Do they take your girlfriend too?"

"My sister, to be exact," Mingi's tone hardens, "Now, do you have any idea where they place them?"

Yeosang sits up straight, "I do know lots of things, but I can't help you with that," he replies slowly as he looks at the troubled man in front of him. "But don't worry, they won't harm anyone, at least not now."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Tomorrow, they will gather all of us at the lounge. Newbies will have to go through a specialised training, all at the same time. There will be groups though, you can try to hope they'll place you in the same group with your sister."

Mingi shuts his eyes, "I'm guessing they never put acquaintances or family close to each other in the training."

"You caught on pretty quickly."

"Where do you get these informations anyway? You seem to know whole lots of things for a newbie," Mingi asks as curiosity peaks up in him.

"Cause it's not exactly my first time here, 182. Welcome to Astral Ruins, you should be glad you got me as your mentor."