The Ascension by Max GriffinMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
CAUTION: Spoilers
If you're looking for a mm-romance, this story isn't it. It may have a gay couple shagging each other, but it could as well have been a het-couple. No, this story is like one of those scary stories told around the campfire or a Halloween fright-party. Fans of the TV show "The Twilight Zone" or "Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction" or possibly even "The X-Files" may find The Ascension to be right up their alley.
Gabe and Luke are not likeable characters. I didn't like Luke because he was such a douchebag, always insulting people, especially Gabe when Gabe make mistakes or does something clumsy. Already from the start of the story, I'm questioning why Gabe is with Luke...hot sex seem to be the only reason. I didn't like Gabe for drug use, unbeknownst to Luke, because I just generally dislike people with drug addiction whether it's in fantasy or reality.
The story is simple: two couple plans to vacation in the mountain until shit happens and out of nowhere a stranger helps them. The stranger—Aristotle Mann provides them shelter that ever so conveniently contain medical facilities. Already it's suspicious that such a place exist on the mountain that no one knows about, it's even more suspicious for the place to have a "robust medical facilities". Already ideas like a secret military base or terrorist camp or a mad-scientist hideout run through my mind. Whatever is going on, it can't be good.
Weird things happen as Gabe attempts to uncover Aristotle's real purpose. The Ascension mirrors a similar suspense from The Island of Dr. Moreau. Despite the drug addiction, Gabe grew on me as he show enough smart to GTFO—Get The Fuck Out.
Near the end, we find out aliens are capturing humans to make drugs. Think Colombian cartels but from outer space. The captured humans serve a more nefarious purpose than just slave labor, they use humans as a container to mix the chemicals to make the crank. Thus the modified human blood becomes the drug that they sell to alien junkies. I felt a sense of irony that it was junkie Gabe who insisted to GFTO. I guess even the sixth sense of a junkie was good enough to alert Gabe the presence of drug-runners however alien.
With some help from a "sympathetic" human psychopath employed by the bad aliens, Gabe and Luke successfully made their dangerous escape. They ended up in a real hospital where it was discovered that Gabe was junkie...except Luke is denying that the alien drug-running ever happened and that it was just Gabe hallucinating. Was it all just a crank-fueled dream?
No...too bad Gabe failed to realizes that the aliens have turned Luke into one of their human psychopaths. They were doomed from the moment they came upon Aristotle...*cue evil theme music*
Memo to self: when your relative/lover/friend is forcibly isolated off in a mysterious medical facility on some hidden military-looking place, accept them as dead and GFTO quickly. I rate The Ascension 3 for I-like-it.
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