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What? My "Information Club" is Actually an All-Knowing Secret Society?
Genre : Apocalypse, Fantasy, Superpower, Action
Tag : Misunderstanding, Secret Organization, World-Freezing, Super power
Chapter 34 : Plan B
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[Time remaining until the Great Freeze: 4 Days]
[Location: Arlen's Apartment, Floor 4]
[Time: 06:00 AM]
The heavy silence of the early morning felt completely suffocating inside the cramped apartment. Arlen sat on the edge of his thin mattress, pulling his heavy winter coat tighter around his shoulders. The structural modifications they had made over the past few days worked perfectly. The thick plastic sheets and the aluminum foil successfully trapped their body heat inside the living room, raising the internal temperature to a manageable, stable chill. Outside the taped windows, the endless barrage of black snow continued to bury the ruined city. The muffled sound of the dark ice scraping against the exterior concrete provided a constant, grim reminder of the lethal environment waiting just beyond the walls.
Arlen rubbed his tired eyes, exhaling a thin cloud of white breath. He stood up and walked slowly toward his small wooden desk in the corner of the room. His battered laptop sat exactly where he had left it weeks ago, a thin layer of fine dust gathering on its closed lid.
He stared at the device for a long moment. He had ignored the Information Club for a long time. Around the time his apartment first started losing power, he had posted a final, vague announcement to his fanatical followers.
He had written a highly dramatic message stating that he would step back into the shadows to simply 'watch and observe' their progress. He told them to walk the path he had laid out for them.
His intention back then was entirely simple. He wanted to wash his hands of the crazy problem he could got. He wanted them to quiet down, stop asking him for impossible predictions, and let him focus entirely on real-world survival.
Since that day, he had dedicated one hundred percent of his mental energy to preserve food, insulating his walls, dealing with the freezing temperatures, and managing his unexpected new roommate, Maya. He unintentionally ignored the digital world, fully believing his followers were just sitting quietly in their respective shelters, waiting for the storm to pass.
He reached out and opened the laptop lid. The battery icon in the corner flashed a dark red warning, indicating only a fraction of power remaining. He plugged the device into his portable power bank and launched his encrypted server client. He just wanted a quick glance at the global situation. He needed to see if the world outside his taped windows was still functioning.
The screen flared to life, casting a pale, sickly blue glow across his pale face.
The main communication channel of the Information Club was completely flooded with high-priority system alerts.
Arlen leaned closer to the monitor, his eyes scanning the rapid succession of text. His heart instantly dropped into his stomach.
His followers had not been sitting quietly. They had interpreted his 'observation phase' as a holy trial. The text on the screen detailed a massive, highly coordinated military mobilization taking place right at this exact moment. FrostBite had logged an update claiming complete digital encryption dominance over the entire Java island. Viper had confirmed the violent redirection of a heavily armored vanguard unit. Apothecary had submitted an inventory list consisting of highly concentrated biological SW pills. And Seraph had issued a terrifyingly elegant, absolute command for every single Pillar to converge immediately on Tank's logistics warehouse.
They were all heading to Cikarang.
Arlen stared at the glowing pixels, completely paralyzed. A cold sweat broke out across his forehead, chilling his skin far more effectively than the winter air.
"Why Cikarang? Why were the most dangerous people he has know suddenly rushing toward an abandoned industrial estate? He desperately scrolled back up through the chat logs, searching for the exact catalyst that triggered this mass migration.
He found Tank's final entry. The massive logistic worker had simply written: 'The sky above the warehouse is tearing open. The white light is here.'
Arlen stopped breathing. He gripped the edges of his desk until his knuckles turned completely white. His mind raced frantically, trying to process the information.
"A torn sky? A white light? He immediately remembered the exact fantasy ARG draft he had posted months ago on a forgotten internet forum. He had written a highly dramatic, overly poetic scene about a magical Iron Gate opening in the north to reveal a light. "
He closed his eyes and pressed his palms against his face. He wanted to scream. He wanted to throw the laptop straight through the sealed window.
The sheer absurdity of the situation physically hurt his brain. He was just a broke, desperate writer hiding in a taped-up apartment, and his random internet lore was somehow manifesting itself.
He needed to gather real intelligence about the outside world immediately.
Arlen closed the laptop lid with a soft click and turned around. Maya was sitting on the floor near the portable stove, carefully organizing their remaining canned food into two separate piles. She wore her oversized, triple-layered jacket, her dark hair tucked neatly behind her ears. She looked up when she heard his footsteps, offering a small, hesitant smile.
"Maya," Arlen said, keeping his voice entirely flat and devoid of his internal panic. "Tell me everything you know about the rumors surrounding Cikarang."
Maya paused. Her hands stopped moving over the tin cans. She looked up at him with deep confusion written across her face.
"Ren?" Maya asked, She tilted her head slightly, her dark eyes studying his stoic expression. "You want to know about the network rumors? I thought you hated dealing with unverified information. You always focus on the barricades, the structural safety. You never cared about the something like this before."
"Something has change," Arlen replied smoothly. He pulled out a wooden chair and sat down across from her, maintaining intense eye contact. "You mentioned previously that the Recollection network treats the Cikarang sector like a black zone area. You said they instantly ban anyone who streams from that area. I need to know the exact details. What did the civilian streamers actually see before Recollection cut their feeds?"
Maya swallowed hard, sensing the heavy, serious tone in his voice. She abandoned the cans and pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs. Whenever Ren asked a direct question, she felt a strong, compelling need to provide the most accurate answer possible. Being useful to his pragmatic survival plans was the only thing keeping her grounded in this nightmare.
"Something happened late last night," Maya began, her voice dropping to a quiet whisper. "I was monitoring the public stream hubs on the tablet before I went to sleep. A few rogue Zone Runners managed to bypass the blockades and set up long-distance cameras pointing toward the northern industrial estate. The chat rooms were going crazy. Everyone thought they were going to capture footage of that ruthless cult taking over the factories."
Arlen kept his face completely blank. The 'ruthless cult' was his own Information Club. He nodded slowly, silently urging her to continue.
"But they did not see any army," Maya continued, her eyes widening slightly as she recalled the terrifying digital footage. "Instead, what they found was the sky breaking. One of the streamers focused his lens upward. The black clouds and the falling snow literally split apart. A massive, jagged crack appeared in the absolute darkness. Pure, blinding white light poured out of it. It looked incredibly heavy. The streamer started panicking on the microphone, screaming that the gravity around his hiding spot felt entirely wrong, like something invisible was pressing down heavily on his chest."
Arlen felt a cold shiver run down his spine. Gravity anomalies. This was a real, terrifying cosmic event.
"The chat completely exploded," Maya said, her breath hitching slightly. "People thought it was a nuclear strike from a surviving government. Others thought it was a divine miracle. The white light was so intense it started vaporizing the black snow before it even hit the ground. And then ... less than two minutes after the tear appeared, the entire Recollection network made a move. They did not just ban the streamer. They even initiated a total blackout of the entire northern sector. They shut down every single relay node within twenty kilometers of Cikarang to stop the footage from spreading."
Arlen leaned back in his chair, processing the massive scale of the chaos.
Recollection, a highly advanced shadow organization expanding across multiple countries, was absolutely terrified of that white light. They had shut down their own valuable infrastructure just to prevent the public from seeing it. And meanwhile, the most important individual he know were aggressively marching straight toward the epicenter of that cosmic anomaly, fully believing that Arlen had orchestrated the entire event for their salvation.
Arlen stood up abruptly. The chair scraped loudly against the floorboards.
"We are finalizing the emergency exit right now," Arlen declared. He walked straight past the kitchen area and headed toward the back bedroom.
He was not acting purely out of panic. His decision was rooted in his deeply ingrained, pessimistic survival philosophy. Plan A was locking the doors, sealing the vents, and hiding inside this insulated living room until the world stopped breaking. It was a good, solid plan. However, Arlen never trusted a single plan. His highly analytical, writer's mind always demanded a backup.
A protagonist who relies entirely on a static defense without preparing a secondary escape route dies in chapter two. He needed a Plan B. If Recollection sent heavily armed patrols sweeping through these outer city blocks, or if the mutant hordes fled from the gravity anomaly and swarmed around residential streets, that would make a really great change in this landscape. He refused to be trapped inside a concrete box.
Maya quickly scrambled to her feet, abandoning the food piles entirely. She followed him into the freezing back bedroom. This room had been completely sealed off since she arrived. The air inside felt noticeably colder, lacking the aluminum foil insulation they had installed in the living room.
Arlen walked directly toward the large, cracked glass window at the far end of the room. He grabbed the edges of the heavy plastic sheeting he had taped over the frame and ripped it down with a single, forceful pull. The freezing wind immediately whistled through the jagged cracks in the glass, biting at their exposed skin.
Maya gasped, wrapping her arms around herself. She stepped forward and looked out through the dirty, cracked glass.
The view outside was deeply unsettling, yet perfectly suited for an escape. Their apartment building had originally stood ten stories tall. However, during the initial catastrophic earthquakes that accompanied the falling black snow weeks ago, the upper six floors of the building had suffered a massive structural failure. The concrete slabs, the steel support beams, and the masonry from floors six through ten had collapsed outward in a catastrophic cascade.
The resulting debris had formed a massive, steep slope of rubble directly outside their fourth-floor window. The heavy black snow had fallen continuously over the past week, completely burying the jagged concrete and exposed rebar. The toxic precipitation had frozen solid, transforming the chaotic mountain of building debris into a smooth, incredibly steep, charcoal-colored ice ramp leading directly from their window ledge down to the dark, abandoned street level below.
"This is our Plan B," Arlen stated, pointing at the frozen slope. "If the lower floors or this building get breached. We will use this rubble pile to slide directly down to the street and disappear into the alleyways."
Maya stared at the massive ice ramp. Her professional architectural background immediately took over her terrified mind. She analyzed the severe angle of the descent and the structural integrity of the collapsed debris beneath the snow.
"The angle of repose is surprisingly stable," Maya observed, her voice turning highly analytical. She traced the slope with her finger against the cold glass. "The heavy black ice acted like a binding cement, locking the loose concrete slabs and the steel rebar firmly in place. The entire structure will easily hold our combined weight without triggering a secondary avalanche."
She turned her head and looked at Arlen, her dark eyes completely serious.
"But the surface is completely frictionless," Maya warned him. "The black snow froze into smooth ice. If we simply jump out of this window and try to slide down, we will accelerate too fast. We will hit the asphalt at the bottom with enough kinetic force to shatter our legs instantly. We need a controlled descent system. A friction anchor."
Arlen nodded in silent agreement. He respected her intelligence. He reached under the dusty bed frame and pulled out a heavy, dark green military duffel bag. He unzipped the canvas material and extracted a massive spool of heavy-duty nylon climbing rope.
"We build the anchor right now," Arlen commanded. He tossed the heavy spool of rope onto the floor. "Find the strongest structural point in this room."
Maya immediately dropped to her knees. She crawled toward the corner of the bedroom where the drywall had cracked open during the earthquake. She carefully pulled away chunks of the broken plaster, exposing the thick, vertical steel rebar of the main load-bearing column hidden inside the wall.
"Here," Maya said, pointing at the exposed steel. "This column connects directly to the foundation of the building. It will hold against extreme tensile stress."
Arlen walked over, unspooling a long section of the thick nylon rope. The rough texture of the synthetic fibers scraped against his calloused palms. He knelt beside Maya, the cold air from the window washing over their bodies.
They worked together in intense, focused silence. Arlen wrapped the thick rope around the exposed steel rebar multiple times, creating a dense, unbreakable coil. He pulled the slack tight, his shoulder muscles straining against the heavy friction. Maya leaned in close, guiding the end of the rope through the loops to assist him with the complex securing knots.
Her bare hands brushed casually against his cold knuckles. Maya flinched slightly at the sudden physical contact, but she did not pull away. She stayed close to him, watching his focused, determined expression. His jaw was set tight, entirely dedicated to ensuring the knot would hold their weight. The freezing air rushing into the room made her shiver violently, but sitting right next to him provided a strange, overwhelming sense of psychological warmth.
In a world that has been broken, this quiet, pragmatic man was the only real thing left for her. He simply handed her a rope and planned their survival with cold, calculating logic.
Her profound sense of trust deepened into an intense, unbreakable dependence. She realized quietly that she would follow him down this frozen slope into the absolute darkness without a single moment of hesitation.
"Pull the slack," Arlen instructed, snapping her out of her thoughts.
Maya immediately grabbed the rope with both hands and pulled with all her strength. Arlen secured the final knot, locking the heavy nylon firmly against the steel column. He stood up, wrapped the remaining rope around his waist, and leaned his entire body weight backward. The thick nylon pulled tight, vibrating slightly under the heavy tension. The steel column did not move a single millimeter. The anchor was absolutely flawless.
Arlen unspooled the rest of the rope, extending it straight across the floor to the edge of the window. He left the remaining coil resting on the dusty sill, ready to be thrown out into the freezing night at a moment's notice.
"Plan B is done now," Arlen said, his breathing slightly elevated from the physical exertion. He looked at Maya, his expression softening just a fraction. "Good work. Your structural assessment was perfect."
Maya felt a sudden rush of heat spread across her cold cheeks. The simple, direct validation hit her chest harder than the freezing wind. She looked down at the floor quickly, hiding her genuine smile. "I am glad I could be useful, Ren."
Arlen turned his attention away from her and focused entirely on the heavy emergency bags resting near the bedroom door. They had packed the bags earlier with highly condensed calorie bars, thermal blankets, heavy flashlights, and their remaining medical supplies. He dragged the heavy canvas bags across the floor and placed them directly beneath the window sill, positioning them for immediate extraction.
The escape route was completely finalized. If the apartment door broke, they grabbed the bags, threw the rope out the window, and rappelled down the frozen rubble slope to the street.
Arlen stood by the cracked glass, looking out over the dark, ruined city. The black snow continued to fall, completely ignorant of the chaos happening in the north. Far away in Cikarang, a cosmic anomaly was tearing the sky apart.
Arlen rested his hand against the cold, taped glass. He was just a single, ordinary man standing in a freezing room. He let out a long, quiet sigh, mentally preparing himself for the terrifying moment when the whole world break even more.
›› To Be Continue ‹‹
—KS