A Race to New World // ATEEZ Dystopia AU

23 | Seonghwa

WARNING    WARNING    WARNING

Slight mention of gore in this chapter; read at your own discretion.

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GHSA, South Korean Headquarters

Bolded English words flashed in the monitor above the elevator doors. Lab 2.

From our earlier experience in Lab 1, we knew what to expect when the doors opened. I craned my neck at Hongjoong, who stood in the back corner behind everybody else. He was the last to exit, and I saw him hesitating at the threshold.

"You okay?"

It occurred to me that just a few days ago, I would've never uttered a question like that to anyone, maybe not even my family. But after what we've seen on the floor above us, I couldn't help but get worried for the soldier.

He gave me a weak smile and placed a hand on my back, pushing me forwards to join the group. "I'm fine."

I knew he wasn't, but I didn't force him to talk.

We stopped in front of a pair of glass double doors that looked exactly the same as the ones in Lab 1. Yeosang discovered that the grey clearance tag we had was like a master key of some sort, and that was what we used to get into the otherwise locked labs.

Hongjoong flinched next to me when the lights switched on automatically, and it was like rewinding a movie to watch a scene the second time.

The first thing that struck us was the smell. The place reeked of rotting flesh and dried blood, mixed among the stench of urine, vomit, and countless types of chemicals.

Then came the sight. What used to be a white and immaculate lab was now painted over with the rusty-red of dried blood and the occasional pink of viscera. Shattered glassware, toppled shelves, crushed benches.

On top of everything, around a dozen scientists - some with disembodied limbs - were strewn across the lab to complete the picture of a massacre by Invincs.

Although I had developed a sort of numbness for it after visiting the first lab, it was clear that the others were still... adjusting.

Yunho started coughing into his face mask, and Jongho turned to the wall, covering his nose and mouth. Mingi and Wooyoung were retching in the corner with their backs turned to San, who had his eyes shut and was breathing through his mouth. Yeosang remained somewhat calm, but I could tell he was trying to avoid looking directly at a corpse while he busied himself with a bottle of water.

Hongjoong was the only one who stood still and stared, unblinking, like me. Yet I knew what he was looking at was different from the others - he was reliving the memories of his previous missions to evacuate the civilians, the moments when he arrived the scenes a minute too late and had to deal with dead bodies instead of living people.

I approached him carefully and touched him on the shoulder to bring him back to reality. It was then did I see how pale his face was, and how his knuckles were blanched white from gripping his weapon too tightly.

"Hongjoong." I continued patting his shoulder gently, not wanting to spook him. "Come, there's no need to stay here. We'll be on our way to New World soon - we'll all start afresh on the planet."

To be frank, I was also trying to convince myself. We found no sign of the spaceship in Lab 1, which left most of us in a dejected state.

Hongjoong had shut his eyes and was now shaking his head. Still not responding to me. I was starting to think that maybe we saw wrong in the footage, and the spaceship didn't even exist. Or maybe someone had already found it and left with it.