"Faster!"
Mingi staggers forward as the soldier pushes him towards the gate of Astral Ruins. Through the huge gates between the steel barricades, there are countless sensors that detect any unwarranted entries from the outside. The gate is open wide, with soldiers guarding on each of the corners, their faces covered with black masks. The rest of their attire is a testament to their tactical prowess, adorned in military grade gears with a rigid and stoic demeanour.
His eyes wander around, intervals between taking a glance of his sister being held by another soldier right on his side. Without slight warning, the soldier forces him down on his knees and keeps his face facing forward towards the entrance. Mingi curses under his breath, feeling his knee already scraped against the rough asphalt. He steals another glance towards Elenna, making sure she is alright despite there's nothing he can do to help her.
Just as he's about to turn, the soldier who is holding him down forces his face forward, yelling at him for disobeying.
"Turn your head again, you fool, and I'll snap your head back into two."
Mingi feels the urge to let out a cackle, "Try me, Bravado."
The soldier is about to have a go at Mingi when the speaker in Astral Ruins starts to let out a slight noise. He quickly retreats back to his position and stands up straight, facing forward before raising his hand to his forehead in about 45 degrees, saluting. Mingi turns his head forward.
"Good morning, lucky citizens of Zuhal District!"
A man dressed in a dashing looking suit appears from on the stage built off a complex structure. Mingi's heart thump in an uncomfortable manner as he keeps on glancing towards Elenna's direction. All of them are lined up facing the stage and with them is one soldier that holds them down. Elenna is a few people away from his side and all he can do now is just to pray they won't harm her. Wooyoung is no longer at sight, as he was captured by a different group of force from the siblings.
Mingi's attention shifts back onto the person on the stage as he hums a little bit of song in the microphone, out of nowhere.
"Welcome to the Astral Ruins! You are all so lucky to be chosen as our latest group of newbies. Don't worry, we won't force you to work for us. We just have to take extra precautions on all of you youngsters because your lives are way too precious to be given off to the virus. We have better survival plans for you, so I need your support and cooperation towards VESTRA."
The man speaks, and Mingi can feel himself fuming from the inside. He knows it's not just him who feels that way when a scream echoes through the sacred place, coming from a young boy who has two soldiers straining him down to the ground.
"You're just ruining us, you liars! Give our district back! You don't have any rights to—"
His speech stops abruptly as a bullet pierce through his throat, taking his voice and life off him in a split second. The people gasps in utter shock as his body crashes to meet the ground, with blood gushing out from his throat seeming to drown him down. The air seems to catch their throats, punctuating the palpable sense of horror in the room.
"Such a poor boy. Wasted potential. Now, any of you would like to receive the same fate as him please do raise your hands. I want to make this quick," the man's voice echoes through the place again, as he taps on the microphone hurriedly. He waits for a few seconds, before continuing his speech.
"VESTRA is trying to help young generations. If only you cooperate, we wouldn't have to go as far as killing any of you," he says, clasping his hands in a manner that makes Mingi's blood boil even more. "Your life is very precious to us. We need you, for the sake of the future."
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."