Our Past World

Past

[FLASHBACK]

I finally got to a city. I had spent days walking through a really rural area. All I know is that I was losing track of time. I was completely alone. My sanity was low. I was exhausted and afraid but I just couldn't stop. I didn't know where I was, obviously. The silence was really unsettling.

[END OF FLASHBACK]

A week had passed since the last wave of drones came in. Surprisingly, the atmosphere of the place was lighter than it had been a month ago. Was it the fact that we knew that we aren't the only survivors anymore? Or was it that Seob figured out how to reverse the code and reprogram the drone Theo had shot down last week? Either way, we knew we were getting somewhere with this chaos of a virus.

I was thinking more about my friends than I realized. I read the note again, flipped to both sides. We don't have any coordinates to get where we need to go. We didn't even know where we had to go. "Hey, you alright? You look like you're thinking too hard." Intak said.

He sat down next to me. "I just realized that we're missing something. How are we going to get to the place where the drones are coming from without any specific coordinates?" I start.

"It's amazing that Seob was able to recode and reprogram the drone and all, but we don't even know where we're going. And sure, the note we got was from my friends. But how do we know if they're lying to us? I haven't seen them since this entire thing started." I admit it. I'm worried that we're going into this blindly.

"You're not wrong. We really don't know anything about the place. We don't know why this entire virus thing started either. I think we should look into it more, after all, we aren't affected by it. The six of us have been hit at least once with the pins, and neither of us reacted the same way the rest of the population did." Intak added onto my thoughts.

I sigh, continuing to fiddle with the note. I notice something on the back side of the note. Something was written in an invisible ink. I just barely saw it. I went inside and went to find Theo. "Theo hyung!"

He came out of wherever he was a while later. "What's up?"

"I need your UV light, I think i found something on the backside of the note from the drone." I tell him. He leads me over to his small office-like area.

I watched him pull out his UV light that Jongseob helped him engineer and put together. This soon got the attention of the others and they gathered around as the UV light was shone onto the note. The coordinates we were missing all along. Theo read out the coordinates as Keeho wrote them down. We now had exactly what we were missing.

A month later, we were on our way. About a week after we left where we were staying, we reached the city where the coordinates originated from. It was weird being here. As we passed what seemed to be the main square, I noticed Intak kept his head down. I figured that he was here when the outbreak started. I saw Keeho rub his back. I knew something must have happened while he was here, something he didn't want to talk about.

We were all really quiet compared to while we were on the way here. Everyone was more talkative. I even noticed it. I pictured how it was back home.

[FLASHBACK]

The festivals back home were always so colorful. Similar to the small shops in the cities surrounding my small hometown. The colors were always vibrant. It was the best. The colors always brought out the best of people. Going out to the beaches, the malls and the plazas were my favorite part.

It always smelt really good downtown. The different outdoor seated restaurants and cafes had some special things about each and every single one of them. The marketplace always smelt good as well. All the familiar scents stuck around for months after the festivals. Maybe it was that part that always stuck with me. It was a comforting smell.

[END OF FLASHBACK]

Jongseob stopped suddenly and pulled out the reprogrammed drone. He turned it on and we followed it to the coordinates that we had. An office building. Specifically, it was a government office building. We heard footsteps from behind us and Theo already had his gun aimed. Another person. We didn't know if she was infected or not.

"Who are you? Were you shot?" He asked.

The girl shook her head. I put my hand on the barrel of Theo's gun and pushed it down gently. "Remember, you don't have a silencer on right now and we're here for one reason. Save your ammo while you can. We don't want unwanted attention."

The girl looked to be no less than Jongseob's age. Possibly a bit older. "My name is Novah, I've been hiding out here since the start. And no, I haven't been shot. If you're going to head in that building be careful, each floor is covered in drones. I went in at one point to find my sister, but I couldn't get far." she advised us.

I nod towards her to thank her. We went inside when we felt that we were ready. We weren't talking so that we wouldn't set off the swarm of drones on each floor we went up. It was really quiet in the building other than the buzzing of the drone propellers. We got to one floor and I felt the need to look around the floor. Something wasn't right.

I was right, something was wrong and I found out very fast what it was.