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CHAPTERTWO

❝YEAR2862SE❞

Books shimmied off the shelves. Chairs fell onto their backs. Papers glided to the floor. Writing utensils rolled off the desk. Knick knacks fell on their sides.

The young man furrowed his eyebrows as he felt the ground shake around him. He couldn’t recall the last time he felt an earthquake of this magnitude.

He frowned, trying to decide if he should find a safe spot to hide at. He was actually very comfortable in his seat behind his huge desk in his nice, little office.

He was in the middle of going over very important documents. If he left now, none of the work would get done. He was already way behind schedule. His boss would literally kill him if he didn’t turn in his report of the latest failed experiments and the updated list of dead test subjects.

“Stupid earthquake,” the man whispered. He ran a trembling hand through his short, dark brown hair. “I wonder how Kris is handling the situation.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose as the tremors grew worse. They were beginning to give him a headache.

“Sir,” a short, young man busted into the room. He looked disheveled as he tried to keep himself upright.  He was out of breath. His skin was perspiring. His hair was matted to his face. It was obvious he ran all the way from the labs in the underground sections of the building.

“What’s going on?”

“You might want to take a look outside,” he attempted to smooth the crinkles out of his lab coat, making himself look presentable in front of his boss. The quake grew worse.

“Is it important? I’m trying to finish this report.”

“It is. Something is going on outside. I think it has something to do with this earthquake.” He frowned as his boss regarded him with a skeptical expression. “Please, Suho…”

“Fine, but this better be good, Kyungsoo.” The other man nodded with enthusiasm in reply. He used the wall and various other objects in the room as support as he walked past his boss.

He led Suho to the balcony outside. They both held onto the railing as the quake continued.

The two scientists could hear people screaming down below. Car alarms ranged off. Small buildings and houses gradually collapsed one by one.

This was one bad earthquake. It would take forever to recover from it. Suho doubted that the government would do a single thing to help their people, though.

They never did in the past.

Why start now?

They only looked out for themselves.

No one else.

This was one of the few times Suho was glad he worked in the government as one of the two head scientists. The constructional facility he occupied was sturdy enough to withstand an earthquake or any other natural disaster. Several other government funded buildings were still standing as well.

“Sir, look up there,” Kyungsoo was pointing to something up above.

Suho gaped at the happenings in the sky that he was witnessing.

The clouds were gone. The sun had disappeared. The sky, which was always the color of sunset no matter what time of day it was unless it was the evening, turned to a dark shade of gray. A beam of light cut through the middle, splitting the heavens in half. Lightning emitted from black hole now present in the sky.

The tremors grew worse. The wind started picking up. Suho and Kyungsoo tightened their grips on the railing as they felt the gravity shift around, tugging them towards the back hole.

“What’s going on? What is happening?!” Kyungsoo yelled over the screaming coming from the people below. It seemed that they weren’t the only ones being pulled. The scientists watched as the people who lost their battle with gravity got into the black vortex in the sky. Some buildings were destroyed from the haul of gravity. Others were ripped out of the cement of the ground, rushing to the hole.

“I don’t know! It looks like a black hole!”

“But I thought they only existed in space,” Kyungsoo claimed.

“No, you idiot. A black hole can form anywhere where gravity has gotten so strong–”

“How am I supposed to know that? You’re the head scientist here!”

“You’re a scientist too, Kyungsoo! My assistant no less,” Suho rolled his eyes.

“Well, I’ll go and get Kris or Lu Han. They may know what’s–”

“If you let go of that railing, you’re going to get pulled in–”

Suddenly, everything stopped. The wind died down. The earthquake ceased. The gravity stopped tugging them towards the sky. Instead of pulling them, the gravitational force was now pushing.

The sudden force pushed both scientists to their knees. The buildings that were into the hole were pushed back out, falling back to the earth, to their deaths. The black hole began to morph, forming some sort of tunnel in the sky.

Everything grew quiet suddenly.

“What’s that?” Kyungsoo whispered. He pointed to a small object that emerged from the tunnel. Suho pushed against the gravity and stood up. He squinted, trying to make out what Kyungsoo had pointed out. His eyes widen when he realized what it was.

It was a body enclosed in a beam of light. It slowly descended into the city. Suho leaned over the railing, trying to get a better look of it. He lost sight of the body as it disappeared behind one of the various buildings that weren’t destroyed by the earthquake or black hole.

“Suho…” the man turned to his assistant. The brunet was staring at the sky again. When Suho directed his attention back to the sky, the tunnel gradually faded away. Another of beam of light shot through the sky again, merging the heavens together. The sky faded to sunset, and the sun emerged.

Kyungsoo stood up, feeling the gravitational force lift off of him. He frowned, thinking about all the events that just took place. He really had no clue about what he had just experienced. “What just happened?” He asked aloud.

“I’m not really sure,” Suho shook his head, crossing his arms. “Black holes don’t spit things out. They them up.”

“Then what was it, Sir? I’ve never seen anything like that happen before. And you know as well as I do that we’ve seen a lot of… interesting ‘things’ in our field.” Suho and Kyungsoo glanced at each other in confusion.

Woohyun rolled over in his bed. Something told him to get up, but he didn’t want to. Even though his bed was quite uncomfortable, he snuggled deeper into it. The brunet reached for his pillow to keep his head comfy. Instead, he grabbed a handful of something papery. It felt almost synthetic. The young man opened his eyes. He found himself in a bed of flowers. He sat up, looking around.

He noticed he was in a small abandoned house. Dust was everywhere. The windows and doors were boarded up. The only light that shined into the room came from above. There was a gigantic hole in the roof. Presumably from where he had crashed through. The floorboards were gone and flowers and weeds took its place.

Woohyun pulled a few flowers out of the ground. It felt weird in his hands. He smelled it. There was no smell. He attempted to pull a couple of petals off. That didn’t really work out too well. They wouldn’t come off. Woohyun found himself wrestling with the flower, attempting to tug the petals off.

This continued for well over a minute till Woohyun realized that the flower wasn’t real. None of them were real. They were all synthetic and artificial. That explained why they felt papery and fake. Weird... Who would plant a bunch of fake flowers?

The brunet suddenly remembered what happened to him not too long ago. He quickly stood up. He was confused. He wasn't sure where he was. Didn't he die?

The earthquake.

The falling.

The water.

Woohyun looked at the bed of flowers. Fake and artificial but flowers none the less. He then looked up at the stream of sunlight beaming at him.

“Am I in heaven?”

“No, you idiot!” Someone yelled. Woohyun looked to his left and saw an old man sitting in a rocking chair. He was evidently filty. He had very, very dirty blond hair and a very long and unslightly beard. He was not attractive whatsoever.

“Oh,” Woohyun was even more confused now. Where did he come from? Has he been there the entire time? “Am I in hell then?”

“Neither! You’re in my house! Who do you think you are, you damn whippersnapper?” He stood up. “Let me tell ya! Kids these days… They think they own the world…”

“What are you talking about–”

“You’re just like the rest of them, crashing into my house like this!”

“Why do you live in such a shabby looking house like this anyway?” Woohyun gestured to his surroundings. “Are you a hobo or something?” The old man looked really squalid. And Woohyun could smell him from where he was standing.

“Why you little–”

“Where am I?” Woohyun ignored the old, smelly, dirty hobo and examined his surroundings again. “If this isn’t heaven or hell, then where in the world am I? How did I not die in that earthquake?”

“Are you on drugs, boy? You’re in South Hallow. Where else would you be?”

“Well, I don’t know, maybe my hometown?” The old man glared at Woohyun.

“Are you some sort of soldier, part of that new group of super soldiers the government is making?” The old hobo walked up to Woohyun, scrutinizing the brunet. “Your clothes are weird.”

Woohyun covered his nose as the stench of the old hobo intensified. “Well, I could say the same to you, Mr. Old Hobo.”

The brunet inspected the old man’s attire. They were weird in Woohyun’s opinion. But then again that might just be due to the fact that he was just extremely dirty. He needed a shower ASAP.

The old man frowned at the name Woohyun gave him, “I am not old! I’m twenty nine for your information. My name is Park Jeongsu, but you can just call me Leeteuk. That’s what all the other kids call me these days.”

Twenty nine was old in Woohyun’s books. It didn’t really help that Leeteuk had a beard, and he kept talking to Woohyun like he was seventy or something.

“Anyway, Leeteuk, I have no clue what you’re talking about. I’m neither a super soldier nor a part of the military. I don’t even know where I am. I’ve never heard of this South Hallow. All I know is that I was taking a walk this morning, looking for this kid who ‘attacked’ me yesterday, got caught up in this freaky earthquake, fell off of a bridge, and woke up here.”

Leeteuk stared at Woohyun. He stared. And he stared.

“Why do I always attract the junkies,” Leeteuk mumbled, shaking his head. Woohyun heard and scoffed. He was no drug addict! It was not his fault his story sounded very unbelievable. “Alright, let’s start this over. Who are you, and why did you crash into my house?”

“Fine. My name is Woohyun, and I honestly have no clue why or how I crashed into your house. I already told you what happened to me before that.”

“You said you got caught up in an earthquake. The same earthquake that happened not too long ago?” Leeteuk inquired. Woohyun nodded, backing away from him a bit. The smell was getting to him.

“I guess; I was standing on a bridge in my town, an earthquake started out of nowhere, and… Oh yeah, this necklace started glowing, which was really freaky.” He forgot about the Infinity necklace. He touched his neck, seeing if the necklace was still attached to him. But then he remembered that he stuffed it into his pants pocket after it unhooked itself from around his neck. He dug in his pockets, but there was nothing there. Woohyun frowned. He didn’t feel anything.

It was gone.

“Oh no, it’s gone