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What? My "Information Club" is Actually an All-Knowing Secret Society?
Genre : Apocalypse, Fantasy, Superpower, Action
Tag : Misunderstanding, Secret Organization, Wolrd-Freezing, Super power
Chapter 12 : Defense
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[Time remaining until the Great Freeze: 15 Days]
[Location: The Lab, Apothecary's Bunker]
[Time: 08:00 PM]
Apothecary stood frozen before her monitors, the Architect's cryptic warning pulsing on the screen.
> "Prepare not for the Final Day, but for the Next Breath." <
Her mind raced, dissecting the syntax. The Architect had deliberately separated the timeline. He spoke of a "Final Day" (The End) and a "Next Breath" (The Immediate).
"Why distinct terms?" she whispered, her hands hovering over the keyboard. "Unless the Calamity is not singular."
She turned to her main console, her fingers trembling as she accessed the raw orbital data of the anomaly.
For days, she had treated the incoming celestial object (the meteor) and the dropping temperatures as a single, simultaneous event. The "Great Freeze" was the meteor, and the meteor was the Freeze.
"Separate the variables," she whispered, typing furiously.
She ran the simulation again, this time decoupling the impact event from the climate shift.
The screens flashed red. The data rearranged itself into two distinct, terrifying timelines.
Her breath caught in her throat. The models aligned perfectly with the Architect's riddle.
There were two Apocalypses.
Event A: The Falling Star. (The Impact).
Event B: The Great Freeze. (The Great Apocalypse).
She had know that 15-day countdown based on the Freezing world, the moment when the real Apocalypse begin.
But the Falling Star... the Star will hit the earth before even the countdown goes down. They're both two different variable.
"The Impact... What about the impact?" Apothecary gasped, her eyes widening behind her thick lenses.
She pulled up the trajectory tracking for the object. She stripped away the atmospheric drag coefficients and focused solely on velocity and distance. The numbers tumbled down, counting backwards at a sickening rate.
The object wasn't slowing down. It was accelerating, she don't knowz how or why it happened. In the vacuum of space, objects maintain a constant velocity unless acted upon by a force. But the data showed the opposite. Thare is no such a thing to make the meteor goes faster then before. What's the cause?
She grabbed the desk for support. The room seemed to spin.
The Architect warned them to prepare for the Next Breath because the first calamity wasn't weeks away.
She slammed her hand onto the comms button, opening the emergency channel to the Council.
[USER: APOTHECARY]: ALL STATIONS. IMMEDIATE ATTENTION.
[USER: VIPER]: Go.
[USER: APOTHECARY]: We made a fatal error in the timeline. The Architect corrected us.
[USER: APOTHECARY]: The Great Freeze and The Falling Star are separate events. They do not happen at the same time.
[USER: FROSTBITE]: English, doc. What are you saying?
Apothecary watched the simulation reach its conclusion. The predicted impact time flashed in bold crimson digits, mocking her previous calculation.
[USER: APOTHECARY]: The meteor impact is imminent.
[USER: APOTHECARY]: Brace for collision.
***
[Location: Viper's Bunker - "The Silo"]
[Time: 06:01 PM]
The moment Apothecary's message hit the screen, Viper smashed the red button on his command console.
A deafening Klaxon alarm screamed through the underground facility. The rotating amber lights turned off, replaced by a strobing, blood-red emergency lighting.
"CONDITION BLACK!" Viper roared into the PA system. "THIS IS NOT A DRILL. IMPACT IMMINENT. SECURE THE PERIMETER!"
Down in the hangar bay, the thirty "Fangs" didn't ask questions. They moved with the terrifying synchronization of a hive mind.
Ten men sprinted to the weapon racks, grabbing heavy ballistic shields.
Ten men ran to the hydraulic controls of the elevators.
The last ten moved to the structural support pillars, engaging the manual locking mechanisms to reinforce the ceiling.
Viper typed a command code: Protocol: Iron Turtle.
THOOM.
Above them, 100 meters up in the backyard of the suburban house, the hidden launch bay doors slammed shut.
Hiss.
Hydraulic seals engaged, locking the blast doors with twelve inches of titanium steel. The air pressure in the bunker shifted instantly as the ventilation system sealed itself off from the surface world to prevent dust intake.
"Seals holding at 100%," the Captain shouted over the alarm. "Oxygen scrubbers set to internal cycle!"
Viper grabbed the railing of the catwalk, his knuckles white. He looked at his soldiers. They were strapping themselves into jump seats inside the APCs to avoid concussion injuries from the coming earthquake.
Viper didn't sit. He stood rigid, his hand resting on the hilt of his combat knife.
Viper growled at the ceiling. "We serve as the bedrock. We do not break."
***
[Location: FrostBite's Bunker - "The Nexus"]
[Time: 06:02 PM]
FrostBite didn't scream. He didn't even stand up. He just focused typed in his supercomputer.
His fingers moved so fast they were a blur. He was securing the most valuable resource on earth: Information.
"Auto-save! Auto-save everything!" he yelled at his monitors.
He executed Script: Hard_Shell.exe.
Around the room, the bunker transformed.
Thick steel shutters descended over the glass display cases, sealing his precious anime figurines in darkness to protect them from falling debris.
Magnetic locks engaged on the server racks, bolting them to the floor with a metallic CLANG.
"Rerouting power to the stabilizing gyros," FrostBite muttered, sweat beading on his forehead.
The floor beneath the server racks began to float slightly. The suspension system activated, detaching the delicate hardware from the building's foundation. If the earth shook, the servers would glide, protected from the vibrations.
He grabbed his headset.
"Warning to all nodes!" FrostBite broadcasted. "I'm cutting the external satellite uplink to prevent EMP backlash. Going to hardline-only mode!"
He slammed a large lever on his desk.
The lights in the room died, instantly replaced by the low, blue hum of the backup batteries. The cooling fans roared to maximum speed.
FrostBite spun his chair around, grabbed a helmet from his desk, and strapped it on. He grabbed a pillow and hugged it against his chest.
"Server status: Locked," he whispered, looking at the blinking green lights in the dark. "Don't you dare crash on me now."
***
[Location: The Penthouse, 80th Floor of The Celestial Spire]
[Time: 06:05 PM]
The world below was screaming.
From the height of the 80th floor, the chaos of Jakarta looked like a colony of ants under a magnifying. glass. Fires bloomed in the streets.
Tiny specks light of ths police sirens flashed uselessly against the encroaching dark.
Seraph stood against the floor-to-ceiling glass window, her palm pressed against the cold surface.
She feels euphoric.
The red emergency lights of the room bathed her in a bloody crimson glow. She tilted her head slightly, her fingers tracing the reflection of the burning city in the glass.
Her lips curled into a smile that was too wide, too intense to be sane. It was the smile of watching a baptism.
"Beautiful," she whispered. Her voice trembled, not with fear, but with an overwhelming, shivering delight.
The old world with its corrupt politicians, its false idols, its rotting systems, was finally being flushed away. The Architect finally cleaning the world.
"Burn," she cooed, her eyes glowing with a fanaticism that mirrored the fires below. "Burn away the filth. Make room for the Garden."
Beep.
He look at the tablet again, especially at The Crimson Alert from Apothecary about Impact Imminent before.
Seraph turned away from the window. The smile remained fixed on her face, sharp and dangerous. She walked to the central console in the middle of the room. A single, system with bio-recognition protected by a glass case waited for her.
She smashed the glass with her bare hand. She didn't care about the small cut on her knuckle. She put her hand on the system
"Protocol: Heavensfall. Activate"
KRA-KOOM.
The sound of a fortress waking up could be hear hundreds meter from the building.
Deep within the walls of the skyscraper, hydraulic clamps disengaged.
To the outside world, the Celestial Spire began to change.
Massive plates of tungsten-carbide armor, hidden behind the decorative facade, slid out.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
The sound rippled down the 80 stories like a cascading waterfall of steel. The luxury windows were covered. The view of the city was erased. The building sealed itself into a monolithic needle of grey metal, impervious to the heat and shockwave of the coming star.
Seraph walked to the back of the penthouse.
There stood a solitary elevator door. It had no call button. It had no digital panel.
It had only a biometric scanner and a physical keyhole.
This was the Golden Thread. The private link that connect the Sky (The Spire) and the Deep (The Sanctuary).
She placed her hand on the scanner.
[ACCESS GRANTED: LADY SERAPH]
She inserted a heavy, ornate key into the lock and turned it.
[SYSTEM LOCKED. MANUAL OVERRIDE ONLY.]
Now, the 80 floors above were isolated. The soldiers and lookouts stationed in the sniper nests were cut off from the underground. No one could come down or goes up unless she Allow them.
She held the lives of her "Angels" in her pocket.
The doors slid open. She stepped inside the velvet-lined cabin.
As the doors began to close, narrowing the slice of the red-lit penthouse, Seraph looked at the empty room one last time.
She brought her hand to her cheek, her eyes narrowing into crescents of pure obsession.
"Goodnight, Jakarta," she whispered, her voice dripping with venomous love. "Embrace the Fate The Architect Brought to us."
The doors shut with a final thud.
The elevator began its long, smooth descent into the earth, carrying the Queen down to her waiting Kingdom.
***
*Ding.*
The private elevator slowed to a smooth halt. The heavy blast doors slid open with a pressurized hiss, revealing the heart of Seraph's domain.
Seraph stepped out onto the "Oculus"—a circular observation deck suspended at the very top of the underground complex, overlooking the abyss.
Before her lay The Sanctuary.
It was a marvel of engineering, an inverted skyscraper carved fifty stories deep into the earth's crust, designed to sustain life for decades.
Seraph walked to the reinforced glass railing. The facility hummed with the vibration of life.
* Levels B-1 to B-10 (The Shield): The militarized zone. Here, the armories, drone repair bays, and decontamination airlocks stood ready. The elevator shaft from the surface ran directly through this spine, heavily guarded but intact, waiting for the day the gates would open again.
* Levels B-11 to B-20 (The Garden): The agricultural belt. Thousands of vertical hydroponic racks glowed with violet light, growing genetically modified rice, soy, and vegetables in a sterile, pest-free environment.
* Levels B-21 to B-40 (The Hive): The residential blocks. Modular, compact apartments stacked in neat rows, housing the families of the chosen.
* Levels B-41 to B-50 (The Engine): The industrial heart. Geothermal generators tapped into the earth's heat, and massive filtration plants recycled every drop of water in a closed loop.
Two thousand, four hundred and twenty (2,420) souls lived in this steel silo.
They were the "Echoes". An engineers, doctors, soldiers, and their families handpicked by Seraph herself.
Seraph looked down at the Central Plaza located on Level B-25. It was packed. Every resident who wasn't manning a critical station had gathered there. They looked up towards her balcony like worshippers gazing at the moon.
Silence reigned. It was a disciplined, reverent silence.
Seraph raised her hand. Her image was projected onto massive screens mounted on the walls of every floor, ensuring every single citizen could see her face.
"The Door is shut," Seraph announced. Her voice was calm, carried by the internal speakers to every corner of the facility.
"The world above is a funeral pyre. It belongs to the dead and the damned."
She lowered the key, tucking it safely into the bodice of her dress, close to her heart. She did not destroy the path; she simply claimed guardianship over it.
"But here... here lies the Cradle. You are the 2,000 seeds I have chosen. You are the blood that will civilize the Earth when the winter comes."
Below her, on the residential levels, mothers hugged their children. On the engineering levels, technicians bowed their heads. They felt safe. They felt chosen.
"Rest now," Seraph commanded, her eyes glowing with that same dangerous, reddish hue on the giant screens.
"The Architect shakes the foundation of the world. Let us sleep while the wicked burn."
The lights dimmed to "Night Mode."
The Ark was locked, waiting for the command to rise again.
›› To Be Continue ‹‹
—KS