A/N: AU set in a distant future. At the beginning, this was inspired by the Reset Theory. But then in its planning, it became a story of its own. And well, it's still a first draft so it may have changes in the future. And the title is also still a temporary title.

Feedback/Reviews are much appreciated. Thanks for reading^^

He had been watching them for years—his friends, his family. Living a life in another world, a dream world, free from war and famine and disasters. And he was there with them, among them, with another name, another life. And no one knew. No one remembered. But him.

~ O ~

Chapter 1

el…

Luciel…

Wake up…

Wake up, Luciel…

Wake u—

~ O ~

"Yo! Are you not going to listen to me? I told you to wake up!"

A pair of hands pulled the blanket off him and a sudden gush of cool air hit his bare arms.

Luciel jerked awake.

"Wha—?"

"It's six and you need to go to your shift." Luciel, still bleary-eyed, could only make out the figure of a man standing before his bunk. Shoulder-length brown hair. A scowl on his face. Vanderwood.

Ah! Shut up! He fell back on his back and covered his face with his pillow. "Just give me five more minutes."

"Your five minutes can turn into two hours," Vanderwood countered. "Get up! You have work to do." But Luciel didn't get up. Vanderwood was quiet for a while that Luciel thought his partner might have left. But there was no sound of the sliding door and a moment later, he heard Vanderwood sigh. "Did you get inside again?"

Inside. A star-strewn sky. The scent of fresh grass. And a soft voice in his ear.

Wake up, Luciel…

His bunk shook and he jerked up violently, hit his head on the bunk above, and swore viciously, but Vanderwood didn't flinch.

"Don't make me wake you up a second time!" Vanderwood said loud and clear.

Luciel was still half-awake as he watched Vanderwood turn and leave and the automatic steel door closed behind him. His receding footsteps were the only thing Luciel heard before his partner turned around a corner and disappeared.

The room was instantly quiet. No hum of a machine. No beeping computer sounds. No sign of a girl with large brown eyes and long brown hair.

He was back in his room; he needed to remind himself that.

But the memory of a dream still clung tightly to his mind and Luciel forced the smile on her face and the sound of her laughter far away to the deepest part of his mind.

Luciel pushed himself off his bed. His room was empty, save for himself. His brother was nowhere to be found. He had probably gone to his shift before him.

So Luciel decided to go to the common bathroom to wash himself.

~ O ~

The research facility had several levels. The lowest level was the station maintenance level. Above it were storages and laundries. Their sleeping quarters, cafeteria, all sorts of recreational spaces, and a medical bay were divided into two levels. The second to highest level consisted of computer rooms, programming rooms, meeting rooms, and all sorts of labs. The highest level was where they housed their hibernating test subjects—a vast level divided by hallways.

The cafeteria was a spacious hall filled with rows and rows of long tables. Neither Vanderwood nor his brother were there so Luciel went to the cafeteria lady by himself and got himself a portion of today's dinner: another mesh of gooey paste that had the distinct flavor of roasted chicken.

He took a seat near a TV showing news of the state of the Earth: another earthquake had just struck the East. The casualty counted to hundreds and the government was still trying to organize refugee camps and search for missing people. And then footages of the affected areas; interviews with the government, the Red Cross, and a couple of the victims.

Luciel glanced at the TV screen and tried not to let the image of the wrecked city hurt him. They needed to hurry, he thought, if they wanted to save those people before Earth swallowed them whole.

He finished his gooey dinner, handed his tray to another cafeteria lady to wash, and headed upstairs.

He took the side lift as it was closer to his office in one of the programming rooms. The door slid open; people got out; some people were still inside; and Luciel casually made his way to the ceiling-to-floor curving window and watched the endless black space speckled with silver and gold dots before the lift stopped on his floor and he and several other people got out.

~ O ~

"You're late," was the first thing Vanderwood said when Luciel entered the programming room.

"Can't work with an empty stomach now, can I?" Luciel said with a grin. "Or do you want to see my desk being covered by Honey Buddha Chips and Dr. Pepper cans again?"

Vanderwood scowled. He had always hated seeing their work spaces in a mess. Back when they were still working on Earth, Luciel had experience countless times Vanderwood's nagging at him to clean up his desk. Though in the end, Vanderwood had always been the one to clean it. And Luciel never stopped him.

"Just get to work," Vanderwood muttered.

Luciel laughed.

Actually, Honey Buddha Chips and Dr. Pepper cans shouldn't be able to cover his desk since they shouldn't even be available inside the facility—food regulation and all that. But Luciel knew that Vanderwood knew he had managed to smuggle boxes of them into his room. And Luciel also knew Vanderwood never reported him.

Their programming room only consisted of three people—himself, Vanderwood, and his brother. Luciel could feel Vanderwood's eyes follow him all the way to his desk and they only left him after he took his seat, beheld all the post-its and notes stuck to his desk and computer, and opened up the program. His brother, Saeran, or Unknown as he'd given them his name, sat on the other side of the room, already busy.

"Why didn't you wake me?" Luciel asked his brother as a way of greeting.

"I did," his younger twin replied, eyes still glued to his monitor. "You didn't wake up."

"Then you should have tried harder."

"Why should I when I knew Vanderwood could wake you up easily?"

"Hey! It wasn't easy," Vanderwood exclaimed from his seat.

"He woke up, didn't he?"

"Yeah well after I got a concussion from bumping my head on your bunk," Luciel said.

"You could use a concussion once in a while, though."

"Then you'll have to answer to V if he asks why the program isn't finished," he teased.

"If," Saeran repeated. "You admit I have as much skill as you and have a chance to finish the program without you."

Luciel couldn't help but chuckle at that.

"Well—"

"Brothers!" Vanderwood yelled. "Please shut up and get to work."

~ O ~

Luciel was one of the main programmers of a virtual world program. It had been in the making for years, long before Luciel joined the scientists' rank over seven years ago when he was only 15. It started after the first several natural disasters occurred. Back then, a natural disaster would occur every few years—earthquakes, tsunamis, volcano eruptions. There were heat waves and cold waves and more and more ice in the north and south pole melt and the sea level rose and then the soil began to fail and animals were found dead. A lot of people died. Resources were quickly spent and then famine spread everywhere. Nations went to war in order to save their people. Everything was chaos.

Then hope appeared in the form of astronauts being sent to space to find a new habitable planet. Rumor had it that the secret mission had been going on for years, even before the disasters occurred. The news of the mission was finally disclosed when war had escalated at the other side of the Earth, to give people hope that they were working on something, that hope was not all lost. Along with it was the news that they would be making a space station large enough to house at least half of the Earth's then-population.

But no news came from the astronauts that were sent to space. And after long last, the team that were tasked to build the space station formed another team led by a man called V to create something that would be their last salvation.

A virtual world. A place with no war, no conflict, no disasters, forever plentiful resource. They would be hibernated. And they would live for countless years. And they would not know.

A man in the scientists' white uniform entered the room. The grey strap around his left arm indicated that he was among those who monitored their fellow scientists who live inside the virtual world to oversee the program. They called them the Overseers.

With him were several bundles of probably more notes—the Overseers were tasked to note everything that went on inside the virtual world. Notes of improvement, notes that needed improving, notes that had too many improvements. Their goal was to create the perfect world that people who would one day live in them would want for nothing.

Luciel sighed as he beheld the size of those bundles. The man distributed the bundles to Luciel, his brother, and Vanderwood.

Luciel frowned at the bundles before him.

"Do these never stop?" he asked, flipping over the pages of the bundles.

"They won't until we complete it," Vanderwood said.

Luciel sighed dramatically and pushed the bundle away from his desk. "I'm tired!" he complained.

"It's only been three hours," Vanderwood said again.

"It has been three hours."

He glanced at his brother. "Here," he said, pushing his bundle over to Saeran's desk.

"Move that one more inch and I'm going to kill you," Saeran said, taking his eyes off his own bundle to glare at him.

"Oh, come on! Help your brother for once!"

"I have my own work to finish, thank you very much."

Luciel sighed and lay his head on his desk. He could still work. His mind still had lots of power to keep him up for another twelve hours. He just didn't feel like working right now.

"Did you hear about the earthquake?" Vanderwood asked suddenly.

"Yeah," Luciel replied. "I saw the news."

"It's bad, isn't it?" Vanderwood said. "I didn't see the whole news but think about it. How long has it been since the last disaster occurred?"

"Less than a month," Saeran said.

"Yes, and I think it will only keep getting worse." Vanderwood paused. "Remember how we only had disasters every couple of years? Now disasters are occurring every other month." He shook his head. "The plants are dying. Animals are going extinct. It will be our turn next. They planet is finished."

"And that's why we're building this goddamn program, isn't it?" Luciel said. "To save everyone? So they won't forget Earth even when the planet is dead."

"Right," Vanderwood said. "So get to work!"

~ O ~

It was hours later, and according to the clock, it was already past midnight. Not that midnight had any significance when you were on space. Vanderwood was sleeping on his chair and Saeran had gone to grab a midnight snack. Luciel had finished more than half of what he needed to do that day and his mind had stopped working again. He knew why. His mind kept wandering to that place. So before anyone saw him, he snuck away.

There was a deserted lab he often frequented. Among the labs the Overseers used to go inside the virtual world was one they rarely used—for some reason Luciel never knew. A perfect copy of any other lab in that facility; only, the door didn't have any sign. It consisted of two rooms: one was the monitoring room, with the computers and screens to monitor an Overseer's health and take a look inside the virtual world surrounding the Overseer; the other was the hibernating room, with a chair connected to a machine.

But it was a different kind of hibernation from what the test subjects underwent—this was a temporary hibernation that only lasted for a week, and Luciel only needed to go for a few hours at most.

He was one of the head programmers. He knew what he had to do. He had done this before, countless times.

He locked the door, though he doubted anyone would enter the room. He turned on the monitor and checked that it was still working. He set the timer for a couple of hours on the screen. He wouldn't need the hibernation shot. He would only be gone for just an hour and he'd be back.

He switched on the lamp; the second chamber shone bright white. He turned on the machine and there was that familiar hum filling his ears. Then he sat on the chair and he took the time to attach all sorts of cables on his body and his head—to monitor his heart rate, his respiratory rate, his blood pressure, his heart and brain activities, and all sorts of other medical necessities. He attached more cables that would let him enter the virtual world.

As he put the black helmet on his head, Luciel remembered why scientists had no longer used that lab anymore—it was one of the earliest ways to enter the virtual world, and it was quite painful. He had hacked into that computer's system to let him control the virtual world from inside the chamber by adding a plug and a switch. And he lay his head back and tried to relax.

Luciel clutched the switch on his hand and pressed the red button.

His body jolted as electricity from the machine flowed into his body and he gritted his teeth and shut his eyes. And then darkness fell.

~ O ~

Rrriiiinngg!

Luciel jerked awake.

He didn't know where he was at first. A huge room, with multiple doors. On one side was a desk and computer with additional screens attached to it. Clothes and chips and cans strewn everywhere. He was on a black sofa, wearing a black jacket with gold stripes and a red shirt.

Rrriiiiinngg!

A phone kept ringing.

Beside the sofa was a low-lying table; various magazines were scattered over it. A red cell phone was vibrating and ringing.

Feeling very tired, Luciel reached out to his phone and looked at who was calling.

'Hyunsoo' appeared on the screen with a picture of a girl with long hair and brown eyes and a lovely smile that made his heart skip a beat.

A smile crept onto Luciel—no, Seven's face.

He was back.

~ To be Continued ~