I was genuinely paralysed by the nature of this quest. It was an established historical fact in my time that the System began with a trial, but I had never seen a record stating it was broken into specific, high-stakes "parts."
In the official history of the Three Kingdoms, the quest was supposed to begin with a formal appearance—a grand, ethereal manifestation of the Guides—followed by a long, instructional lecture designed to explain the new mechanics of the world.
However, this reality was far more jagged and cruel. The people surrounding me didn't have a single shred of information regarding the cosmic horror unfolding above them.
They were being fed a "Survive" command without being told what they were surviving against. In a crisis, confusion is a more efficient killer than any blade, and right now, the silence of the System was deafening.
If this is how it starts... then the old man's warnings were right all along, I admitted to myself, a cold pit forming in my stomach. And if his description of the 'Tutorial' was accurate, then the danger isn't coming from the sky yet. It's already standing right next to us.
I turned my gaze around with predatory vigilance, scanning the faces of the nearby New Yorkers. They were all paralysed by the flickering golden text of their own screens. Isabella, sensing my sudden shift in intensity, moved closer to me, her shoulder brushing mine for a sense of grounding. I realised then that I was acting far too composed—my lack of panic was making me stand out like a beacon in a sea of hysteria.
Thankfully, my earlier outburst and curse had provided a momentary mask for my suspicion.
"What do you think is actually happening, Hye?" Isabella whispered. Her voice was thin, but her eyes were still sharp, searching mine for an answer she wasn't finding on the internet.
"I believe we are about to be tested," I said, keeping my tone as neutral as possible. "The message said 'Survive.' That means something is coming within the hour."
"Survive what, exactly?" she pressed. She was smart—too smart for her own good. She had sensed that I wasn't just guessing; she suspected I had a level of clarity that no one else in the park possessed.
"I don't know," I lied, shrugging with forced nonchalance. "But let's hope it's not a nuclear exchange."
I knew for a fact that nuclear weapons were a non-issue. The moment the apocalypse was triggered, every silo and submarine on the planet had been "neutralised" by the System—decommissioned with such surgical precision that not a single warhead could even spark. But to the people of 2030, the "Cold War" fears were still the ultimate nightmare.
"Don't tell me..." Isabella's face drained of colour, her hand flying to her mouth. "You think it's World War III?"
I didn't bother to answer. My attention was diverted by a growing ruckus toward the centre of the Great Lawn. The thousands of scattered individuals were instinctively gravitating toward one another, drawn by the ancient human urge to find safety in numbers.
"Listen up, everyone! Eyes on me!" A man with a powerful, athletic build stepped onto a stone bench, his voice booming with a practised authority. He looked like he had military or law enforcement experience—the kind of man people naturally look to when the world stops making sense. I watched him, but I didn't feel any comfort. Instead, my skin crawled.
"Look, we're all confused," the man shouted, raising his hands to quiet the murmurs. "But panicking will only get us killed. I'm sure the National Guard and the federal government are already mobilising. We just need to stay organised until the authorities arrive."
"What are we supposed to do?" a woman cried out. "Does anyone have a signal? My phone is a brick!" "What about the sun? Where did the sun go?!"
The questions were frantic and logical, but the man on the bench remained unnervingly calm. I scanned the perimeter of the group and noticed something that made my blood run cold.
There were other men—similarly built, standing with a specific, rigid posture—stationed at regular intervals around the crowd. They looked less like terrified civilians and more like prison guards patrolling a yard.
"I don't have all the answers," the "leader" admitted, "but I do know that standing out in the open like this is a mistake. If this is a biological or nuclear event, we need cover. We need to move, now."
Bingo, I thought, a strange, grim excitement flickering in my chest. One of 'them' is here. The old man had spoken of "Infiltrators"—beings or thralls meant to shepherd the human "livestock" into kill zones during the first hour.
"Where are we supposed to go?" someone shouted. "Should we try to get home?"
"It's too dangerous to head into the streets," the leader countered, his voice dripping with false concern. "We don't know if there are chemical agents in the air or if the city is under bombardment. We need to go somewhere deep, somewhere shielded."
A voice from within the crowd—one I was certain belonged to one of the suspicious "guards"—shouted out: "What about the subways? The tunnels are reinforced! They're the safest place in the city!"
"That's a good point!" the man on the bench shouted, pointing toward the nearest entrance. "The subway tunnels. They're deep, they're cool, and they'll protect us from the fallout. Everyone, move in an orderly fashion toward the 81st Street station! Let's go!"
I watched as the mass of humanity—families clutching their children, students holding their backpacks, elderly couples leaning on each other—began to shuffle toward the maw of the underground. It was a procession of the condemned. I had no intention of interfering.
In my time, I had learned that you cannot save people who are determined to follow a silver tongue into a slaughterhouse. Besides, I had to ensure that Isabella and I were nowhere near that tunnel when the "Part 1" timer hit zero.
"I say we go with you," a woman in the centre of the crowd called out, her voice acting as the catalyst for the rest.
"I agree! What he says makes sense," a man nearby added, nodding vigorously.
It was like watching a row of dominoes fall. Once the first few people expressed their agreement out loud, the initial wall of stunned silence collapsed. The collective fear and confusion of the group were channelled into a single, unified direction.
"Then let's move," the man who had assumed the role of the leader commanded. He stepped down from the bench with a practised, military grace. "We'll hit the first subway entrance we find and move deep into the tunnels. It's our best shot."
"Yeah, he's right. That's a solid point." "Even if a nuclear missile strikes the city, we'll have a fighting chance if we're deep enough underground."
More and more voices joined the chorus, expressing their support with a strange, rehearsed rhythm. I watched them go, but I didn't move an inch. I stood like a stone in a rushing river as the mass of humanity began to flow toward the 81st Street station. I knew better. This wasn't a tactical retreat or a flight toward safety; it was a death march into a cage.
According to the old man—and I finally, irrevocably believed every word he had ever told me—certain individuals had been contacted by "them" prior to the start of the apocalypse. These selected few were offered a dark bargain: survival and power in exchange for betrayal.
They looked like normal humans, spoke like fellow citizens, and wore the same clothes, but they were already operating under a different set of rules. Their Systems were already active, their souls already sold to the predatory species waiting on the other side of the rift.
In my time, the official records attributed the catastrophic death toll of the early days to "unavoidable panic and confusion." But the old man had whispered a far grimmer truth: the majority of those early massacres were orchestrated by these filthy traitors. They were shepherds, and they were leading the sheep directly to the slaughterhouse.
"Aren't we going after them?" Isabella asked, her voice snapping me out of my dark reflections. I felt her hand tighten on my arm. She looked genuinely surprised to see me standing motionless, making no move to follow the departing crowd.
"Don't you find this a little too convenient?" I asked, turning to face her. I needed to be careful. I couldn't lose her, not after the sheer luck of finding her here.
According to the records of the future, her name didn't exist, which likely meant she died in this very city during the first hour. I refused to let that happen. "We have impossible things happening in the sky, and suddenly this 'reliable' guy pops up with a perfect plan to shove everyone into a dark hole?"
"What do you mean?" Her gaze sharpened, her analytical mind starting to grind.
"I don't know," I said, shrugging to maintain my cover as a sceptical student rather than a time-travelling survivor. "But that man doesn't sit right with me. Something feels... fishy. It's as if he already knew exactly what he was going to say before the sun even finished dimming. He has a plan, and I don't think it's a plan that includes our well-being."
"No way," she whispered, looking back at the large, retreating group. "But he seems so reliable, like an ex-soldier or a government agent. Why would he lie?"
"I know he looks the part," I acknowledged, "but notice how he didn't actually take a vote or ask for other ideas. He manipulated the crowd's fear. He used a few vocal supporters to drown out the doubt and then started marching. That's not a leader helping people; that's a man corralling them."
Her eyes widened, and I knew I had finally reached her. I wasn't bluffing. These traitors used a simple psychological trick: project authority, establish a clear goal, and use "plants" in the crowd to create an illusion of consensus. If not for the old man's warnings, I might have fallen for the trap myself.
"Now that you mention it... I find it weird too," she admitted, her "future president" instincts taking over. "That's not how decisions should be made in a crisis. We should be looking for real information, using democracy and collective logic, not just blindly following the loudest voice in the park."
While she spoke, I scanned our surroundings. We weren't the only ones who had stayed behind. Scattered groups—perhaps a few dozen people in total—remained on the Great Lawn. Most were students or academics, people with a natural, ingrained instinct to question authority. They were the outliers, the ones the traitors hadn't been able to sweep up in the first pass.
"Excuse me," a voice called out, dripping with a false, oily warmth.
As I had expected, the "Leader" had returned. He hadn't even been gone for five minutes before he doubled back to collect the stragglers. He targeted the two of us first, likely assuming a pair of young students would be the easiest targets for his "strength in numbers" rhetoric.
"Aren't you two coming with us?" he asked, his eyes crinkling in a way that didn't reach his cold, calculating pupils. "It's getting dark fast, and staying out here alone is a death sentence. Staying with the group is much better for everyone involved. We need to stick together if we're going to survive this."
I felt Isabella tense beside me. The trap was being laid again, and this time, the predator was looking us directly in the eye.