The massive wheels of the Jetbus 3+ Voyager began to roll slowly, crushing the sun-scorched asphalt of the Sukabumi streets. The roar of the 400-horsepower diesel engine sounded like the low, rhythmic snoring of a giant, lulling its passengers into a forced slumber. From behind the dark, 80% tinted glass windows, Rajawali High School slowly shrunk, receding into the distance until it finally vanished behind a sharp curve, leaving only the fading memories of morning ceremonies and the school bell—a sound they wouldn't hear again for a long, long time.
Inside Bus 3, the atmosphere was bizarre.
Normally, a bus filled with forty high school seniors heading for a private island vacation would be a cacophony of pop songs, out-of-tune acoustic guitars, and the loud rustle of shared snacks. Instead, Bus 3 was silent. The silence was heavy, viscous, and profoundly unnatural. Nearly ninety percent of the passengers were slumped in their seats, heads lolling lifelessly against the headrests, mouths slightly agape, or foreheads pressed against the subtly vibrating glass.
The "Adaptation Vaccine" was working faster and more aggressively than anyone had anticipated.
Salim sat in seat 9A, clutching his backpack to his chest as if it were a life jacket in the middle of a vast, dark ocean. His eyes felt as if lead weights had been hooked to his lids. He blinked slowly, fighting a losing battle against gravity. Every time he tried to focus on the scenery outside, the world appeared in a disorienting motion blur, as if his brain's internal frame rate had plummeted to single digits.
"So cold..." Salim whispered, pulling his denim jacket tighter around his frame.
The bus's air conditioning had been set to an extreme 16 degrees Celsius. It wasn't for the passengers' comfort. As Alya had grimly suspected, the freezing temperature was a calculated move to lower the students' metabolic rates, allowing the sedatives to take a firmer, more lasting hold on their central nervous systems.
"Hey... Lim..."
A raspy, strained voice drifted from seat 8B, directly in front of him. A trembling hand reached back over the seat, clutching an open bag of potato chips.
It was Dani. Of course, it was Dani.
Even with his consciousness likely hovering at a mere thirty percent, Dani Hermawan refused to be silenced. He was a statistical anomaly—a bug in the system that resisted suppression through sheer, ridiculous persistence.
"Want... some chips? Seaweed flavor..." Dani offered, his head bobbing up from behind the seat. His face was ghostly pale, his eyes bloodshot like a drunkard's, but his signature, mischievous grin remained plastered on his face. "Man... this drug hits hard, Lim. I feel like I'm floating... and I've never even tried glue."
Salim shook his head weakly. "Keep it, Dani. My stomach is in knots."
"Lame," Dani chuckled, shoving a handful of chips into his mouth and chewing with agonizing slowness. "Hey... Ki... Rizki... you still alive over there?"
Dani turned to his side. Rizki sat in seat 8A, eyes closed, arms folded across his chest. He looked calm, almost as if he were meditating, but a sheen of cold sweat coated his forehead.
"Shut up, Dani," Rizki muttered without opening his eyes. "My head is spinning. Every time you chew, it sounds like thunder in my ears."
"Sensitive, aren't we, Young Master?" Dani mocked.
In the seats across the aisle (8C and 8D) sat Toto and Abdul from Group 17. Toto, the school's resident bully, wasn't sleeping either. He sat with his feet propped up on the back of the seat in front of him, staring intensely at Dani. The sedative effect had stripped away his self-control, making his already volatile temperament even more unstable.
"Can you shut your trap, Fridge?" Toto growled, his voice deep and menacing. "Your voice makes me want to puke. One more word about chips and I'll stuff the whole bag down your throat."
Dani swallowed hard, his bravado wavering for a second, but the drug-induced lack of inhibition pushed him to answer back. "Relax, Boss Toto. We're team building here. Gotta be friendly. Want a massage?"
"Son of a..." Toto snarled, attempting to stand up to strike Dani, but his body betrayed him. His balance evaporated instantly. He crashed back into his seat with a heavy thud. "Damn it... why is my body so weak..."
Salim watched the scene unfold through the gap in the seats. Even Toto, with a physique built like a bull, was being brought low by that clear liquid. This wasn't a vaccine. It was a chemical restraint.
In the back row, the rest of Group 27 were fighting their own internal wars.
Salma sat upright, clutching her private tablet, attempting to read the PDF of the safety guidelines. But her finger had been swiping through the same page repeatedly for the last ten minutes. Her concentration was shattered.
Udin, sitting next to Salma—since Alya had moved next to Rehan to monitor his vitals—was constantly slapping his own thighs.
Slap. Slap. Slap.
"Don't sleep... don't sleep..." Udin chanted like a mantra. He knew that as the group's primary physical defender, he couldn't afford to lose consciousness. But his eyes were already reduced to mere slits.
Rehan? He was already offline. His head was slumped on Alya's shoulder, snoring softly. Alya allowed it, her left hand constantly gripping Rehan's wrist, monitoring his pulse at regular intervals.
"Pulse at 60. Stable but slow," Alya whispered to herself, her own eyelids fluttering.
The bus pressed on.
An hour passed. They entered the Jagorawi highway. The distant skyline of Jakarta's skyscrapers began to materialize, but the convoy didn't take the exit toward Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.
Instead, they took the outer ring road, heading toward the industrial ports at the northern tip of the city.
Salim forced his eyes open. He looked forward, peering through the wide front windshield of the bus. Ahead of Bus 3 were Bus 2 and Bus 1.
Bus 1 was the designated coach for teachers and staff. Even from the outside, it looked different. The windows were darker, and it seemed to glide over the road with significantly less vibration.
"The teachers..." Salim thought. "They definitely weren't injected with the same stuff."
Suddenly, the convoy slowed. They turned into a rest area at KM 97.
However, this wasn't a typical rest area teeming with famous coffee chains and 24-hour minimarkets. This was a Type B rest area that appeared to be under renovation—or intentionally cleared. A massive "CLOSED" sign blocked the entrance for public vehicles, but the Rajawali convoy glided in as the barricades were moved aside by men in black suits.
The bus came to a halt. The screech of the air brakes sounded deafening in the desolate space.
"Twenty-minute break! Lunch and toilets! No one is permitted to leave the parking area!" commanded the bus coordinator, a stiff-faced man standing near the driver.
The bus doors hissed open.
The students descended with staggering steps, looking like a procession of zombies from a horror flick. Their feet dragged across the pavement, their eyes squinting against the harsh midday sun.
Salim climbed down with Udin's help. His legs felt like jelly.
"Crazy... I can't feel my big toes," Dani complained as he walked beside them, nearly walking into a lamp post.
They were ushered into a large tent in the middle of the barren parking lot. Inside, stacks of styrofoam lunch boxes had been prepared. There was no luxury buffet. No menu choices.
"Eat. It is mandatory to finish your portion," a guard ordered.
Salim opened his box. It contained plain white rice, a piece of boiled chicken breast that looked pale and unseasoned, some boiled vegetables, and a bottle of unlabelled mineral water.
"This is prison food," Toto commented from the next table, slamming his plastic spoon down. "Where's the rendang? Where's the curry? They promised five-star facilities!"
"Just eat, Toto. You need the protein," Rizki said quietly, beginning to shove the tasteless rice into his mouth. Rizki knew that protesting was futile when their bodies were this compromised.
Salim tried to eat. It was bland. Utterly tasteless. His tongue felt numb.
"My tongue is dead," Salim told Alya, who sat across from him. "I can't taste salt or sugar."
Alya nodded, her expression grim. "A mild neurotoxin effect. The drug is temporarily blocking your taste receptors. The goal is likely to ensure we don't pick at the food and simply focus on refueling."
"Or to make sure we don't realize this food is laced with additional sedatives," Rehan interjected suddenly. He was awake now, his eyes red and swollen. He pulled his Portable Jammer from his pocket, concealing it beneath the table.
"What's the word, Han?" Salim whispered.
Rehan shook his head slowly. "Nothing. GSM signals are totally dead within a one-kilometer radius. This rest area is either in a natural blind spot or they've installed a massive jammer on that tower." Rehan glanced at a telecommunications tower at the edge of the area that appeared inactive.
"We are isolated," Salma concluded. "From now on, we only have each other."
While they struggled to eat, Salim looked toward Bus 1—the teachers' bus. The door was open, but not a single teacher stepped down to eat with the students. Instead, several neatly dressed servers were seen boarding the bus carrying trays of gourmet restaurant food—steaks, fresh juices, sliced fruit.
The contrast was agonizing.
"They're having a feast in there," Dani hissed, watching a tray of ice cream being carried into Bus 1. "While we're eating rubber-flavored boiled chicken."
"It's a hierarchy, Dani," Salim said coldly. "We aren't guests. We are commodities."
Suddenly, a long whistle blew.
"Time is up! Back to the coaches! Now!"
The students, most of whom hadn't even finished half their portions due to the overwhelming nausea, were forced to stand and were ushered back into the buses.
As Salim climbed the bus stairs, he stole a glance backward. He saw the highway stretching out. Toward Jakarta in the south, toward the port in the north.
They were moving further and further from home.
Inside the bus, the effects of the lunch began to take hold. A drowsiness far heavier than before attacked them. This time, no one could fight it.
Dani, who had still been trying to make a joke moments ago, had now collapsed. His head rested against the window, his mouth open, snoring loudly. Rizki fell asleep sitting perfectly upright—an incredibly uncomfortable position. Toto slept while clutching his bag, his fierce face gone, replaced by the innocent expression of a large infant.
Salim tried to hold on. He pinched his own arm until it turned blue.
Don't sleep. Don't sleep. Must track the route.
But his eyelids were as heavy as concrete.
"Lim..." Maya's voice seemed to drift from the front (or perhaps Salim was hallucinating, thinking Maya was nearby due to the rotating seats).
No. It wasn't Maya. It was Alya sitting in front of him.
"Just sleep, Salim," Alya whispered, her voice sounding distant, as if coming from inside a long tunnel. "Fighting a sedative of this dosage will only cause neurological damage. Let your body rest."
Salim looked at Alya. She too was half-conscious, her eyes glazed.
"Maya's promise..." Salim murmured incoherently. "I have to... calculate..."
Salim's vision went dark.
The last thing he saw before his consciousness was completely extinguished was the scenery outside the window. They were no longer on the highway. The bus was moving along a dusty dirt road, passing through a massive iron gate guarded by men with long-barreled rifles.
In the distance, the gray open sea was visible, and an old, rusted cargo ship was waiting at a desolate pier. The ship had no name. There was only a hull number: P-27.
"P-27..." Salim thought. "Group 27..."
And then, everything went black.
There were no dreams. There was no sound. Only an absolute darkness that wrapped around those two hundred young souls, carrying them across the sea toward a destiny written in blood-red ink.