I ran down the hallway from the research center and through the dorms with the girls running behind me. I ran as fast as I could and almost ran straight into Harold, who was stumbling out of his room.
“What is going on?!” Harold asked as he pulled on his dress pants.
“I don’t know, but I don’t think the flashing red lights are a good sign! What do you think would cause this, dumbass?! Come on!” I yelled and kept running to the main elevator.
I was trying to run every situation I could think of through my head, but I wasn’t coming up with any solutions. I really had no idea how I was supposed to stop this from happening.
“Do you think that we can even get down there?” Jilly asked, and I nodded, pulling out my lanyard with the black card hanging from it.
“This is the same one that Helsin uses. I got it from him last month, so I could study how the Megatron Pulse activation would work. That was the final piece of the puzzle we needed, so I hope it still works. We literally just completed the God Frequency, so I doubt he has had them changed yet,” I said as we reached the elevator.
I put my black card up to the door, and the elevator opened, and we all got in. The door closed as the lights continued to flash, and I pressed the button for the bottom floor.
“Do you have any kind of plan?” Jilly asked, and I shook my head.
“I have no idea what I will do to stop him. This is all happening too fast, and the Megatron Pulse has been a ticking time bomb that has been waiting to go off. If we are wrong, and this doesn't work, everyone dies,” I said, and the elevator went quiet except for the hum of our descent.
“If this does go off, what then? We have never looked at what we could do yet, and I am worried about the other two-thirds of the population that aren't included. There has to be something that we can do, right?” Harold asked, but I didn’t get why he was looking to me for the answer to that question.
“You are the brains! I need you to come up with some, and fast! We have about thirty seconds until that door opens, and I run to open the blast doors. You need to have a plan by then!” I yelled at Harold.
“Zack, give him a break. We are all under stress here,” Lizy said, but Harold put a hand up.
“No, he is right. I am a thinker, and I need to come up with an idea. From what I understand about the game, it will be linked to Helsin’s frequency, so he will have full control over everything inside the reality he creates. You need to disrupt that reality somehow before it can form! If you can do that, you will gain partial control of the game or whatever is left of it,” Harold explained after shaking his head.
“Disrupt him? Do you mean like I do to you when you piss me off? And I need to do that right after the wave is activated?” I asked, and Harold got an unsure look on his face.
“Not really sure about that part. I know it will be a bad idea to do it after, or it could be like stars colliding. That is a very low estimate of what it would probably be like. We have no idea what the outcome of such a thing would be because we have no reference points,” Harold explained, and the elevator dinged.
“That is better than nothing. I suggest that you all go back up top, but it’s not like there is anywhere that will be safe,” I said and then turned and ran to the blast doors as the elevator door opened.
It was a short jog, and I had my keychain ready when I reached the massive doors. I pressed my card into it, and the system confirmed as the doors started to open painfully slowly.
I could hear the others coming up behind me, but I dropped when the door was over a foot off the ground. I pushed myself under the door and then back up to my feet, starting to run to the center.
The colossal batteries had sparks bouncing off them, which wasn’t a good sign. The Megatron Pulse was gathering up energy to activate the God Frequency.
I ran as hard as possible and could see Helsin inside, pointing and shouting. The door I was running to was starting to close, but I wasn’t going to let that happen.
I threw myself at the gap, just barely able to catch the door, pushing myself inside. The door slid closed behind me, and I looked up at a smiling Helsin.
“You might have made it this far, but even you must know that we are far past the point of no return!” Helsin laughed.
“Zack, we are going to have the perfect world! We will be able to do anything we want! Helsin is going to make us gods!” Mark exclaimed with a big smile from beside him, and I blinked at Mark.
“You know that over six billion people are about to die when he presses that button, right?” I asked, expecting to see shock on Mark’s face, but all I saw was shame as he looked away.
“That is just something that had to happen. We were running out of money, and the government would shut the whole project down. When they found out that not everyone would make it, they would try to stop the pulse! Everyone would have died then!” Mark explained, but I could finally see what Harold had always said.
“You don’t get it. We could have tried to fix things long ago, but this was always Zero’s plan! This bastard has always wanted to have control of everything, and you gave it to him by lying to me!” I shouted and advanced on Helsin.
This chapt𝓮r is updat𝒆d by (f)reew𝒆b(n)ovel.com