Zero to Peak: Ascension Online

Yongjin and Hyeonu travelled a total of fourteen kilometres before arriving at their destination, where they would drop off the cylinders. They had travelled from the eastern to the western region of Section 1.

The destination was a massive, imposing warehouse. The warehouse looked abandoned, with no signboard to identify its purpose. The building was set behind a concrete fence with a rusty black slide gate. The van stopped before the gate. Hyeonu alighted from the vehicle and approached the gate, sliding it open for the van to enter the warehouse premises.

Yongjin pressed his foot on the accelerator pedal, rolling the black van inside. Hyeonu then slid the gate back into place. The street where this 'abandoned' warehouse was located seemed entirely uninhabited. There were homes lining the street, but not a soul could be seen along its perimeter.

Yongjin manoeuvred the black van to approach the warehouse's massive roll-up door with its rear. The van stopped a few metres away. Hyeonu walked to the roll-up door and rolled them up, exposing the dark, spacious chamber hidden behind it.

Yongjin had descended from the driver's seat and positioned himself in the van's cargo space. Through the open doors, Yongjin tossed the cylinders to his colleague, who caught each one mid-air and placed them down in the warehouse's dark chamber. Their movements were fluid, like those of seasoned professionals.

A crucial slip-up from Yongjin: he mistakenly pulled on a cylinder's valve. The valve's connection to the cylinder was tough enough not to be disconnected, but it was not tough enough to prevent the psychedelic gas from leaking. The cylinder fell from Yongjin's hand because he had gripped the wrong part.

He cursed as the cylinder rolled about the floor of the van. He cursed again as the cylinder rolled away, threatening to fall off the van entirely. Hyeonu was quick to react, catching the cylinder just before it could reach the edge. He scowled at Yongjin.

Yongjin just stared at his colleague, his gaze blank as if his consciousness had departed his body. Hyeonu furrowed his brows, sensing that something was wrong, but before he could act, he too had a blank, glassy gaze.

The gas had taken effect. The duo's luck suddenly took a turn for the worse: the pressure of the leaking gas blew the valve right off the cylinder, and the entire contents of the gas leaked away. There was nowhere to run for the imposters; they were at the epicentre of the leak, and their minds were entranced by the gaseous drug.

Yongjin's thoughts eventually gathered, but they were not grounded in reality. His eyes were open, but when his consciousness returned, it felt as if he had woken from a deep slumber. What the imposter saw terrified him: the corpses of his comrades littered across an apocalyptic battlefield. He had awoken in a war.

Yongjin couldn't help but ask himself where he had been when this war broke out. He couldn't remember that the last place he was was at the abandoned warehouse. He decided to take a closer inspection of the corpses. In reality, he had just taken an unsteady step forward inside the van, his gaze fixed forward, devoid of awareness. But in his head, he was treading across the battleground as he inspected the corpses with his gaze. The corpses were all Unds; there was not a single human corpse.

His emotions flared up in despair, and he yelled, "The humans have killed us all. We were too late to act!"

In reality, Yongjin screamed, but his vocalisations were slow, like a patient suffering from a stroke. Hyeonu was still in a blank, unresponsive state, but Yongjin's slow, guttural scream forced his thoughts to a new reality—one that was still not grounded in the actual world.

Hyeonu saw himself being chased by a squad of human soldiers. He was standing in place as the soldiers, their faces twisted in anger, charged towards him with their guns raised. He heard them scream at him, and in a panic, he drew out his gun and fired wildly. In reality, Hyeonu pulled out his plasma handgun from a hidden pocket on his overall and fired erratically.

Yongjin was lucky not to be hit as his colleague fired in random directions. The gun eventually overheated and blew up in Hyeonu's hands. The searing pain of the blast brought back some senses, but he was still high.

Now, he could see the van. He entered the van through the back, wanting to reach the dashboard and make a distress call to the Unds' base using a secret communicator hidden there. He brushed past Yongjin and stumbled upon the few cylinders still left in the van.

Hyeonu couldn't see his colleague nor the cylinders. His senses told him he was simply tripping due to his own unsteadiness. He arrived at the dashboard and made a pattern of swiping gestures, triggering a pulsating, fluid yet solid platform to emerge.

"JTT to central command. The humans have discovered our plan and are actively moving to intercept the operation. I need help now. I'm stranded and being hunted down by the humans. I seek extraction. I will take refuge at the coordinate position the communicator is transmitting from. JTT halting transmission."

At the Unds central base, in Chairperson Beam's office, Beam was busy going through proposed weapons designs, scrutinising the pros and cons of every weapon. A sudden, constant beeping sound disturbed his quiet activity.

"Assistant, what's the news?" Beam asked, exasperated.

"Chairperson, a distress message has been sent to the base. It seems our plan to attack Section 1 has been compromised."

Beam stood up, agitated. "What?! How?! Who betrayed us?! How is this even possible?"

"A distress signal was received from one of our spies named JTT. Their cover was blown, and their colleague was killed in the purge. JTT has managed to send an extraction call while relaying the message of the compromise."

Beam smashed the heavy wooden table in the office, his frustration boiling over at the turn of events. It felt as though life had conspired against them, setting them up for failure.