Chapter 11 : Escalation
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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 11 : Escalation
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[Time remaining until the Great Freeze: 15 Days]
[Location: Viper’s Bunker - "The Silo", 100m Beneath the Suburbs]
[Time: 02:00 PM]
General Viper stood in the center of the reinforced training dojo, stripped to the waist. His body, mapped with scars from a decade of covert warfare, radiated an unnatural heat.
Steam rose from his shoulders and back, evaporating instantly into the cool air of the underground facility. He took a deep, rattling breath, the specific rhythm described in Page 1 of the Architect’s manuscript.
"Again," Viper commanded.
Opposite him stood three of his "Fangs". Elite operators wearing full protective padding. They gripped shock batons and weighted training knives, exchanging nervous glances.
"Attack!" Viper roared.
The three men lunged simultaneously. To a normal observer, they moved with professional spreed. But not in front of viper eyes.
Viper stepped forward. The friction of his movement scorched the rubber mats beneath his bare feet.
Crack.
Viper’s fist connected with the first attacker’s chest protector. The sound resembled a sledgehammer hitting a wall. The man flew backward, lifting five feet into the air before crashing into the steel cage fence at the edge of the ring, bending the metal mesh inward.
The other two attackers swung their batons. Viper caught the wrist of the second man mid-swing. Right now, he's not use leverage or technique. He's only used raw, crushing grip strength.
The soldier scream. Viper spun him around, throwing him into the third attacker with the force of a car crash.
Silence fell over the dojo.
Three elite soldiers lay groaning on the floor. Viper stood in the center, barely winded. His skin flushed a deep, angry red, pulsing with the energy he had absorbed from the atmosphere.
"The Atmosphere is changing," Viper said, looking at his trembling hands. He clenched his fist, feeling the hydraulic pressure in his own veins. "The Architect called it 'Ether'. It is a fuel."
He looked at the thirty other soldiers watching from the sidelines. They stared in terrified awe.
"This is the power of Page 1. The 'Ignition Breath'. Practice it. Master it."
Viper walked closer to the formation, his eyes burning.
"By the time the snow falls, I want every one of you able to dodge a bullet."
Viper grabbed a towel and wiped the sweat—which was abnormally hot—from his face. He walked out of the dojo, his boots clanking heavily on the metal floor.
He emerged into the main hangar bay. This was the true scale of his operation.
The cavernous space stretched for hundreds of meters, carved out of the bedrock. The ceiling was reinforced with two meters of lead-lined concrete to block radiation and thermal scans.
In the center of the bay sat his war machines. Three UH-60 Black Hawk Helicopters gleamed under the floodlights. Mechanics swarmed over them, loading belts of 7.62mm ammunition into the door-mounted miniguns. Beside them, a row of armored APCs sat ready for ground deployment.
Viper walked to the edge of the launch platform. Above him, massive hydraulic pistons waited to push the entire floor upward, opening the hidden hatch in his backyard one hundred meters above.
"The world is breaking," Viper whispered, feeling the supernatural heat coiling in his stomach.
"And we are the only ones evolving fast enough to conquer it."
***
[Location: FrostBite’s Bunker - "The Nexus", Central Jakarta]
[Time: 02:45 PM]
FrostBite spun his chair around, facing the massive central wall of monitors.
The central screen displayed a high-resolution 3D map of the whole Java Island. It was a chaotic web of traffic jams, burning districts, and failing power grids.
But FrostBite wasn't looking at the chaos. He was looking at the Green Dots.
Hundreds of small, pulsing emerald lights peppered the map. They were everywhere. Hidden in abandoned subway tunnels, buried in public parks, locked inside rental storage units in Tangerang, and submerged in waterproof crates along the Ciliwung River.
"Logistics Network: Stable," FrostBite said, taking a bite of a premium chocolate bar.
He tapped a key, zooming in on a cluster of dots near the Industrial District where Tank was stationed.
[CACHE #402: CONFIRMED]
* Contents: 5000 Rounds (5.56mm), 200 Gallons of Fuel, Class-A Medical Kits, 50 Self-Heating Rations.
"Why carry your inventory when you can just have spawn points?" FrostBite grinned.
He had spent the last Four months coordinating this massive distribution. He used shell companies, blind contractors, and automated delivery drones to scatter these supplies across the Java Island.
To the outside world, it looked like random clutter, and a waste of resources. But, frosbite know this is a Genius way to spend his wealth. If any pillars needed to deploy a squad accros Java Island, they didn't need to carry much of heavy supplies. They just had to ping the nearest Green Dot and unlock the "Loot Box."
FrostBite dragged a window across the screen, checking the inventory levels of his own bunker.
[TOTAL RESERVES: 20 YEARS SUSTAINABILITY]
He laughed. A normal prepper hoards beans in their basement. FrostBite had hoarded enough to supply a small army for two decades.
"Some might call it wasteful," he mused, looking at a dot representing a cache buried under a golf course that cost him $50,000 to install.
"But this is a Pay-to-Win game now. And I have the money I need."
He typed a command into the console. The map updated, drawing projected routes between the bunkers.
* Route A (Viper to Seraph): Underground sewer clearance 45%.
* Route B (Tank to FrostBite): Highway blockade imminent. Rerouting via train tracks.
FrostBite leaned into his microphone, broadcasting on the encrypted channel to all Pillars.
"Admin here. I've updated your HUDs," FrostBite announced, his voice casual. "I've marked all the 'Safe Houses' and 'Loot Spawns' on your offline maps. If you get pinned down, just run to the nearest Green Dot. It has everything you need to reset the fight."
He watched the traffic lights on his screen turn red as the city grid finally began to fail.
"The server is crashing, boys," FrostBite whispered, his eyes reflecting the glow of the map. "But don't worry. I bought all the items in the shop before they burn."
***
[Location: Arlen’s Apartment, West Jakarta]
[Time: 05:30 PM]
Arlen dragged his heavy oak desk just a few inches to the right, enough to clear the window he had boarded up. He pressed his face against the small gap between the plywood sheets.
The sun was setting over Jakarta. The sky was a bruised, sickly purple, choked by the smog of a thousand uncontrolled fires.
The street below, usually a gridlock of commuters heading home, was a theater of anarchy. Abandoned cars clogged the main artery like cholesterol. The sidewalks were a blur of motion.
Arlen watched a group of men smash the rolling door of a pharmacy across the street. They used a concrete slab, heaving it repeatedly until the metal buckled.
They swarmed inside, emerging moments later clutching boxes of antibiotics and baby formula.
But the looting was the normal part.
The horror came from the shadows.
From the alleyway next to the pharmacy, a pack of four stray dogs emerged.
They didn't trot or sniff the ground. They sprinted in a tight, coordinated wedge formation. Their fur was matted, their ribs visible, but their muscles twitched with hysterical energy.
One of the looters, a heavy-set man carrying a crate of milk, didn't see them coming.
The lead dog, a mongrel with patches of missing fur. Launched itself at the man’s throat.
There was no bark. No growl. Just the wet thud of impact and the crunch of cartilage.
The man went down screaming. The other three dogs didn't fight over the kill. They immediately fanned out, forming a perimeter to guard the leader while it fed. Their eyes reflected the streetlights with a distinct, luminescent red glow.
Arlen recoiled, his breath fogging up the glass.
"They are organized," he whispered.
He looked further down the street. He saw people running, not from other people, but from everything.
The birds on the power lines ware diving at windshields, shattering glass with suicidal force.
It feels like city was already being eaten alive even before the Real Apocalypse begin
Arlen stumbled back from the window, his heart hammering against his ribs. He felt sick. He looked at his "Fortress of Cans" and his warm blankets. He was safe for now.
But out there, his "followers"—the Echoes—were standing guard in the open, waiting for a Freeze that was still two weeks away.
He sat down in front of his laptop. The screen illuminated his pale, sweaty face.
He opened [THE COUNCIL] encrypted channel.
He expected questions flowing becaus there's no word from him for a few days.
Instead, he found a terrifying, fanatical word that makes them use standing still. They were letting themselves be surrounded by monsters and rioters because they were waiting for him—The Architect—to tell them what to do.
They were waiting for the "Great Freeze" to start fighting, not realizing the war had already begun.
Guilt twisted in Arlen’s stomach like a cold knife.
"They are going to die," Arlen whispered, gripping his hair. "They are going to be slaughtered by those things while checking their watches for the 15-day mark."
He needed to warn them. He needed to scream: Stop looking at the countdown! The danger is here! Fight now!
But he couldn't break character. The Architect couldn't say, "Hey guys, watch out for the dogs." The Architect had to speak in riddles and thunder.
Arlen’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. He needed a phrase that meant "Urgent Vigilance." He needed to tell them that the timeline didn't matter anymore because death was knocking at the door right now.
He typed. Backspaced. Typed again.
He found the words. They sounded poetic. They sounded ominous. To Arlen, they meant, “Stay alert every second.”
[USER: THE_ARCHITECT] has entered the chat.
The stream of "Awaiting Word" statuses stopped instantly. The digital room fell into a hush.
Arlen took a deep breath and hit Enter.
> [THE_ARCHITECT]: "Do not look at the Calendar, for Time is a shackle of the weak. The Abyss does not wait for the hourglass to empty. Prepare not for the Final Day, but for the Next Breath." <
Arlen exhaled, closing the laptop lid slightly.
"Okay," he muttered, rubbing his eyes. "That should scare them enough to keep their guard up tonight."
He leaned back, listening to the screams from the street below, satisfied that he had done his duty as the 'leader'.
›› To Be Continue ‹‹
—KS
