A Race to New World // ATEEZ Dystopia AU

21 | San

Seoul, South Korea

It was already dark when I first went down the trapdoor. Now, with the hatch closed shut by the collapsed roof,  I couldn't even see my fingers when I put them in front of my face.

I wasn't thinking quickly enough. There wasn't time to find the phone that had slipped out of my hands when the ground first started shaking - first, I had to find Wooyoung. Before the ceiling could cave in on us. We had to get out of here somehow.

I dropped to my knees and reached out to the ground in front of me, like a myopic looking for their glasses. My hands grazed something silky, and I knew that had to be Wooyoung's head. I found his shoulders and began shaking him, although I doubted that he could feel a thing over the earthquake.

"Wooyoung, can you hear me? Wake up, please wake up--" I choked, surprised at my trembling voice. Even if it was futile, I shut my eyes and tried not to imagine being crushed under the weight of a crumbling building. "Wooyoung, wake up."

I felt him shift so I retracted my hand, sensing his movements as he tried to stand up. The shaking ground brought him back down again and I steadied him with an arm around his back.

There was panic in his voice as he reached out and whacked me in the face accidentally. "Why can't I see anything?"

I grabbed his wrists to stop him from rubbing all over my face. "You blacked out for a minute when you fell down and hit your head. There's an earthquake and we're separated from the rest of the group." I looked up, waiting for something to fall on us. "Quick, use your phone. I lost mine."

A few seconds later, a beam of light cut through the darkness ahead of us, illuminating the path of a narrow hallway.

I had thought this was some sort of secret vault for more valuables, but it didn't look like one anymore. Perhaps it was a maintenance shaft? I lifted Wooyoung's arm so the light could reach further, and there was a doorway at the end.

"There's no way we can go back up," I said my thoughts out loud. "This is the only way and I'm not about to stand here and wait for death."

Wooyoung still seemed a bit dazed, so I dragged him along as I started running. In the past, I had failed to save him or help him in any other way. It was my chance to make a difference - I was going to get us out here alive.

Once we got close enough, I realized the doorway led to more stairs that went down. A basement... in a basement? I hesitated for a moment before continuing, praying that it would bring us to a safe underground shelter.

The staircase spiralled downwards, making me dizzy. I was starting to think that we were digging our own grave, or that I was already dead and this was all an illusion, when I started to notice the changes.

The concrete walls that zoomed past my peripheral vision gave way to some sort of metal, and the stairs under my feet were no longer rough and uneven. The shaking was more intense down here, but it seemed like we were going into some sort of underground structure, and it didn't look like it was going to collapse any time soon. Even the cracks disappeared.

Not long afterward, we finally reached the last landing, where I leaned against the wall to keep my balance. There was a screen hung on the wall opposite of me, but it was switched off.

Wooyoung directed his phone's torch ahead, revealing a door. I sidled to the keypad and punched in random buttons, but that was dead, too.

I slid down to sit on the floor, helpless. "D- do you think... we'll make it through if we waited here?"

I stared ahead blankly, expecting Wooyoung to sit next to me. But instead, his legs walked past in front of my eyes. I heard a small creak and snapped up. Wooyoung was pushing the door open.