On This Planet Spinning (20/23)
On This Planet Spinning
aka post-apocalypse au, aka painfic
Pairings:[Spoiler (click to open)]Baekxing, Xiuhan, Chansoo (+Chanyeol/Plant)
Genre: post-apocalypse, fantasy, drama, romance
Rating: R
Length: 137K total
Warnings: mature themes, violence/injury, some possibly disturbing imagery, threat of death, poor mental health, very brief mentions of suicidal ideation(?), sad times
Summary: Over a century after meteors destroyed Earth, making the surface uninhabitable, communities are returning from their bunkers and attempting to recolonize the planet. But resources are scarce, tensions are high, and neighbouring communities X-22 and Q-16 are fighting tooth and nail over the Valley, a rare patch of fertile land. Add to that a controversial group of humans with special abilities, and people will start to realize it's not the coming winter that's humanity's biggest obstacle-it's humanity itself. But that doesn't mean hope doesn't exist.
Chapter links: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
*****
The day is just warming up when Yifan hears a familiar rumble on the wind. It’s quiet, a hum, and if he hadn’t spent hours in the company of that sound, he might not notice it at all. He looks up from where he’s making preparations with Luhan to sneak into X-22, turns his gaze eastward. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Luhan asks, rubbing his arms as the chilly breeze sneaks under their clothes. It’d been a cold, miserable night outside Zitao’s tent, and they’re both sore and tired.
Yifan listens again, but the sound is gone. He sighs. “Nothing. Must have imagined it.”
“Can you pay attention, then? We’re floundering enough as it is.” Luhan picks up a dirty rock from the ground and uses it as a weight to hold down the corner of the sketchy map he’s made of X-22. “Minseok said Chanyeol’s in a storehouse. There’s several around the community, as far as I know. One near the community center, one attached to the armoury, one nearish the south-”
Yifan frowns. “How do you know he wasn’t lying about that, too?”
Luhan pauses, chews on his lip. “He wouldn’t do that, would he?”
“He lied to you that whole time,” Yifan points out.
Luhan looks pained. “But why would he change his tune just to lie some more?”
Yifan shrugs. “To confuse you?”
“No. No. I really think that was the truth, Yifan.” Luhan swallows visibly. “And if it wasn’t...what would we do? What other options do we have?”
He’s right. If Minseok was telling the truth, Chanyeol doesn’t have long. This is the only chance they have.
“The community’s on lockdown, for whatever reason. Guards are minimal, everyone’s staying inside-this is the perfect time to stage a rescue,” Luhan says, back down to business. “We might have to just go to every-”
“There it is again!” Yifan says, holding out a hand to stop him. A low rumble, getting louder. “Can you hear it?”
Luhan looks dazed. “Yeah. What is that?”
“You’ll call me crazy, but I swear to god it’s the Defense truck,” Yifan says, scanning their surroundings desperately. The wind is too strong, and too erratic, for him to be sure where it’s coming from.
“Q-16?” Luhan asks, eyes wide. “Do you think so?”
“I don’t know...why would they be this far west? We only ever used the truck to get to the Dead Zone.” Yifan shakes his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”
The sound fades, builds up, fades again. It’s coming from the south-east, he’s pretty sure. From the hills. That would explain why the volume keeps changing. Yifan tries to focus on planning Chanyeol’s rescue, but he can’t help but be distracted. What if it is Q-16? What would they want? What would they be doing here?
And then, suddenly, the sound cuts out completely, and Yifan can’t resist his curiosity. “I’m just gonna go check it out,” he says, standing up.
“But what about Chanyeol?” Luhan asks.
“I’ll be right back. I’m just gonna go see what’s going on,” Yifan says, stalking in the direction of the hills. “If it’s nothing, I’ll come right back and we’ll head in. I promise.”
He only makes it fifty meters before a face crests one of the hills. It’s small, distant, but it sparks recognition. “I- Jongdae?”
“Guys!” the face yells. “Over here!”
“What the hell?” Yifan stares, appalled, as more faces appear. Two he doesn’t recognize. But one is- “Liyin?”
“Yifan!”
Yifan gapes. Leaning heavily on Jongdae’s side, feet dragging, is Baekhyun. “Baek!” he yells, running towards them on instinct. “Baek, what are you doing here?”
“Yifan, oh my god! You’re alive!”
It feels like he’s in a dream. Jongdae hoists Baekhyun onto his back, and the lot of them-five people in total, why is Q-16’s healer there?-head down the hill towards them, as fast as they dare. Luhan is coming up behind Yifan, sprinting, but Yifan got a head start. It takes him thirty seconds to all but crash into them.
“Jongdae!” Luhan yells as Baekhyun scrambles down from Jongdae’s back and envelopes Yifan in a hug. “What the hell are you doing here? Liyin?”
“Baek. God. Long time no see,” Yifan says against the side of his friend’s head, squeezing him tightly.
“Oh, fuck. Yifan, I’m ecstatic to see you, really, but that hurts a lot.”
“What?” Yifan lets go, holds him at arm’s length. “Sorry. Are you okay?”
Baekhyun wobbles, clings to Yifan’s arms to steady himself. His grin is broad. “Just recovering from a near-death experience a few months back. No biggie.”
“What? Oh my god. What happened?”
“I got blown up. Lost my memory and all that shit. But look, I’m kind of walking now!” Baekhyun laughs. “Forget about it. We’ll discuss it later. I’m here for a reason.”
“Yeah, what the hell is going on? Who are all these people?” Yifan asks, looking around. Luhan is hugging Jongdae hard to his right, the two strangers are approaching more slowly and watching with small smiles, and Liyin-Liyin looks like she’s seen a ghost.
“They’re my...entourage,” Baekhyun says, pausing noticeably before the word comes out. “We came to-”
“Tao?” Liyin says suddenly, eyes wide. “Zitao?”
Yifan blinks at her, then looks over his shoulder to where Tao is approaching, slowly, from his camp. He looks just as shocked as Liyin does. What?
“Who’s that?” Baekhyun asks, frowning. “Liyin?”
“Tao!” Hand over her mouth, Liyin starts running at the same time as Zitao does, and Yifan watches in utter confusion as they meet and embrace, crying. What the hell?
“How do you know each other?” he asks dumbly. Q-16’s healer and the rogue conjurer he’s been living with for the past three months?
“I thought you were dead,” Zitao says, haltingly, and things start falling into place.
Conjurer. Sister. Dead.
“You’re paranormal?” he asks incredulously.
“What are you doing here?” Zitao asks, sobbing. “What are you-how are you alive?”
“Zitao?” says one of the other strangers, stunned.
Baekhyun turns to him, brows furrowed. “Xing? You know him?”
The stranger gapes. “He was in Gamma with me. He was the other conjurer that came with to find a match in Delta, and then moved on to Beta afterwards.”
Yifan is just so, so lost. “Who the hell is everyone? What’s going on?”
No one seems to know.
“Uh…” Baekhyun says. “Well. This is Yixing, and this is Joonmyun, for starters. They’re...from here. X-22.”
“Hi,” says the taller stranger as he steps forwards, to Baekhyun’s side, smiling softly. He’s holding...Chanyeol’s plant? What? “Nice to meet you.”
“Why are they with you?”
“They were, um, kidnapped. A couple months ago. When I got blown up. They’ve been my personal healers since then. They’re paranormal.” Baekhyun laughs a little hysterically. “Turns out they’re not so bad. Paranormals, I mean.”
Yifan shakes his head in disbelief. “I know. Zitao’s one.”
“Yeah, who the hell is he?”
“A rogue kid. He...he said his partner, his sister-not his real sister-he said she was dead. But I think we just found her.” They glance back at him and Liyin still clinging to each other, trying to speak through their tears.
“I thought she was from Q-17,” Baekhyun says dumbly.
“What? No,” Jongdae says. “I thought she was one of yours.”
“No, she joined at the same time as you. Signed on as a healer.” Baekhyun frowns. “You don’t know her, Xing?”
“No, she must be from Beta, or one of the other groups,” Yixing says. “Wherever Zitao was matched with her. Joon, you didn’t know she’s a sorcerer?”
“We can only sense conjurers,” Joonmyun says, lingering slightly behind Yixing, looking overwhelmed by this all. “Sorcerers just feel like...different people.”
“What the hell was she doing in Q-16, then?” Baekhyun asks.
“And why is Jongdae here, anyway?” Luhan asks, leaning on his old Builder friend.
“Oh, he’s my recovery buddy. We’ve become very close recently.” Baekhyun laughs. “I brought him along as my personal transport, because I walk like a fucking toddler.”
“But why are you here?” Yifan asks at last, resisting the urge to turn to stare at Zitao and Liyin again. “What are all of you doing here?”
“Oh! Right. Yifan. Do you have Chanyeol’s old puzzle box?”
“His-what?”
“Chanyeol had a puzzle box I gave him. He was trying to fix it and solve it.”
“No, I know. I remember. But why are you looking for it?” Yifan asks. It must be pretty important for him to have come all the way here to find it.
“Oh, well, see. We discovered it might be holding the fucking plague inside.” Baekhyun smiles with a hint of a wince.
“What?”
“And,” Joonmyun adds, taking a step closer, “going by the enormity of the terrible feelings coming from this community, it got out.”
Yifan gapes. “I don’t have it. Chanyeol- He had it with him when he was taken. He was messing around with it in the trenches back then.”
“Oh.” Baekhyun stares at him. “Where is it now, then?”
“I don’t know,” Yifan says. “Maybe he still has it.”
Baekhyun’s eyes widen. “You mean he’s-he’s alive?”
Yifan opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Baekhyun doesn’t know. He doesn’t even know Chanyeol’s still alive. He’s spent the last three months assuming his best friend was dead. “Yeah,” he breathes.
“He is,” Luhan confirms. “I’ve been doing recon in there for months. Minseok told me he’s still alive.”
Baekhyun just gapes, eyes visibly filling with overwhelmed tears, and both Jongdae and Yixing reach out to hold onto him as he draws a shuddering breath.
“Minseok?” Yixing says, surprised, even as he clutches Baekhyun’s hand. “Jongin’s conjurer partner?”
“Wait, what?” Luhan blinks at him in shock. “He’s a Builder.”
“No, I know. But he was Jongin’s conjurer partner. Did he quit?”
“What are you talking about?” Luhan looks increasingly panicked. “He spent time with Jongin, but-”
“Oh, then he didn’t quit. That’s good.” Yixing smiles, relieved.
“That asshole, he better have been taking care of Jongin for us,” Joonmyun mutters darkly.
“I am really confused,” Jongdae pipes up as Baekhyun turns into him to muffle a sob against his shoulder. Yifan feels weird; he was Baekhyun’s best friend, next to Chanyeol, last time he saw him. A lot has happened since then, he figures.
“Minseok was my roommate for three months,” Luhan says, and his voice is shaky. “I think I’d know if he was a conjurer.”
“Why, was he a full-time Builder?” Yixing asks with a frown.
Luhan swallows hard. “No. He took afternoons off. He- I don’t know what he did. I knew he was doing other work but…conjuring?”
Yixing nods. “Yeah. He was the only match Jongin found in X-22.”
“How many paranormals does this community have?” Jongdae asks, shaking his head.
“Just the four, as far as I know,” Yixing supplies. “I don’t know where they came from.” He gestures towards Zitao and Liyin in the background.
“The box!” Baekhyun says suddenly, still red-faced and breathless, but now urgent. “We’re getting off-track. We need the box, Yifan. Apparently some...super-powerful paranormals saved all of humanity by locking up the goddamn plague in the puzzle box, and now, maybe, it’s been re-opened. You said Chanyeol’s alive. Where is he? We need to find it.”
“Apparently he’s in a storehouse,” Luhan says, looking shaken. “At least, that’s what Minseok told me. After...lying about everything.” He laughs slightly, bitterly. “It’s all we have to go on.”
“Where is he?” Baekhyun prompts. “Minseok. We need to talk to him.”
Luhan gapes at him. “He- I don’t know. In the community? He told me to leave, last night. He knows who I am.”
“If he told you to leave instead of killing you, he’s practically on our side,” Baekhyun says, incredibly over-confident. Yifan admires that. But maybe right now, after finding out his best friend is alive after presumably accepting he’s been dead for three months, Baekhyun thinks anything is possible. “Plus, we’ve got some Exes on our side.” He gestures to Yixing and Joonmyun behind him.
“We’d give him a heart attack,” Yixing says, chuckling humorlessly.
“All the better. He sounds like a dick,” Baekhyun says.
“He was just trying to protect his community,” Luhan says snippily, and then promptly looks shocked at himself. “Did I just stand up for him?”
“Minseok kissed him,” Yifan puts in, just to catch everyone up.
Joonmyun grins a little. “Did he really? Nice.”
Luhan scowls. “Can we not talk about this?”
“So many inter-community romances,” Jongdae sighs dramatically.
“Are there more?” Yifan asks, looking at Baekhyun, whose cheeks pink tellingly.
Jongdae is a better friend than expected, though. “Joonmyun and me,” he says, grinning. “I’m wooing him.”
“Oh my god,” Joonmyun says flatly. “Never.”
“Shut up! Okay. Here’s what’s going to happen,” Baekhyun says, reminding them all that serious shit is happening. “Some of us are going to go into X-22. Definitely me-if Chanyeol is there, I’m there.”
“You can barely walk,” Jongdae argues.
“Then you’ll just have to carry me, Jongdae dearest,” Baekhyun coos. “Yifan, you’re coming. You’re the only soldier among us, and I don’t want to be in there without any cover.”
“I was planning on going anyway,” Yifan confirms.
“Yixing, Joonmyun, you’re both coming. Our only Exes. Luhan, you too. Our other connection.” Baekhyun looks around. “That just leaves Liyin and the conjurer kid.”
“I could carry you, if Jongdae wants to stay,” Yixing suggests.
“Nah, I’m coming in. I didn’t come all the way out here to sit around and wait for you to get yourselves killed,” Jongdae says.
“It’s settled, then. A whole flock of us are going in.” Baekhyun nods definitively.
“You’re in luck,” Luhan says. “The community’s on lockdown. Everyone’s being told to stay inside.”
“Perfect.” Baekhyun grins, but Yifan can see the glint of fear in his eyes. “Let’s do it, men.”
They turn to head back to Zitao’s camp to make a game plan, but Yifan can’t help but stop next to Liyin and Zitao where they stand, still holding onto each other, tearful but talking in low tones. He swallows hard, rubs the back of his neck. “Uh...Tao?”
Zitao blinks up at him, surprised. “Yifan.”
Yifan doesn’t know what to say. ‘I didn’t kill your sister’? ‘Please don’t still hate me’? He settles on, “Is everything okay?”
Liyin laughs softly. “You must be confused.”
“Extremely,” Yifan admits.
Liyin takes a deep breath, calming herself. “I was part of Beta group. They were...are...not kind to non-paranormals. When we resurfaced and some of the paranormal groups wanted to help others, you know, as Yixing and Joonmyun do, there was a lot of fighting between our groups. Beta was sometimes violent. Hateful. Zitao and I left to get away from it.”
“Right. Zitao told me,” Yifan says softly.
Liyin nods. “But Beta wasn’t pleased. I’m a...strong sorcerer. Comparatively. I was an asset to the group. When I left, they assumed it was because Zitao was rubbing off on me. In a bad way, in their view. One day, in the middle of the night, they attacked our camp, took me away. They...they told me Tao was dead. I believed them.” Her eyes glimmer, but she blinks hard. “I don’t know if they expected me to find a new conjurer and rejoin Beta, or what, but I didn’t. They had me on watch for a while, but I got away eventually. I joined Q-16. As a healer, without telling them I’m paranormal.” She smiles vaguely. “I didn’t want to go back to X-22. Bad memories. And Q-16 was the last place they’d look for me. An anti-paranormal group, known raiders. And I’ve always been a natural healer. It comes with the sorcerer abilities. Even if we can’t heal without a conjurer, we’re very intuitive when it comes to the natural way in which bodies heal themselves, and we know how to encourage it. It’s all about energies.” She shrugs.
“There were so many raids against paranormals back then,” Zitao says, breath hitching. “I just assumed-”
“Hey,” Liyin soothes. “We’re together now.”
Together. Zitao said he would die without his sorcerer. But they’re together now.
“I’m really happy for you,” Yifan says, and he means it. “Tao, I’m so happy you got her back.”
Zitao rubs his eyes, looks at him. “I’m sorry I said you killed her.”
Yifan smiles ruefully. “I’m sorry I couldn’t deny it with any certainty.”
“We’ve all done things we regret. We have to put them behind us,” Liyin says, smiling bravely. “Especially now.”
Yifan nods. “We’re heading into X-22. All of us. We’re going after Chanyeol.”
Liyin nods as well. “The puzzle box?”
“Yeah. Will you guys stay here? If something happens...we’ll need a Plan B.”
“Of course.” Liyin rolls her shoulders, tips up her chin. She’s always struck Yifan as a remarkably strong person. “We’re here if you need us.”
“Thank you.” Yifan smiles. “Stay safe. Both of you.”
Zitao reaches out, takes his hand. “You stay safe, too.”
“I’ll do my best.”
He heads over to where the rest of their group is gathering, poring over Luhan’s rough maps, preparing for a rescue. Everyone is grim, determined. Yifan takes a deep breath.
Finally, after months of waiting, Yifan is throwing himself into the action.
***
Jongin is exhausted.
He’s beyond exhausted. He’s barely existing. He woke up still drained from the previous day’s gruelling work, and then he got right back to it, finding Minseok, finding more people who contracted the sickness during the night. There are so many of them. The community thrums with building black energy. Some of them are already so sick that they’re showing symptoms-coughing, sore, stiff. Jongin can’t waste his energy, and X-22’s energy reserves, on healing them. The best he can do is heal those in which the disease is spreading but not yet festering. It’s so hard to leave the suffering, though. It’s so hard to feel like he’s doing the right thing.
And he’s so tired.
He’s so tired, in fact, and so overwhelmed, that he senses no difference in X-22, no change in the community or its inhabitants, until a somewhat familiar voice stage-whispers, “Minseok,” and an even more familiar voice whispers, “Jongin!”
He turns and sees two very unexpected faces staring back from around the corner of an old building. The breath catches in Jongin’s chest. “Yixing?”
Minseok stands beside him. “Luhan?”
Jongin gapes, and all Yixing does is hold a finger to his mouth, signalling silence. “We need your help,” he whispers, and Jongin thinks he might be dreaming. He thinks he might be so tired that he’s hallucinating.
But then, a minute later, Yixing is hugging him, and so is Joonmyun, and Jongin is crying because they’re alive, they’re here, they came back. A piece of Jongin’s fragile heart slots back into place.
When he finally looks away from them-just for a second, he doesn’t want to blink in case they disappear-he sees Minseok and Luhan staring at each other, stiff, uncertain. But Jongin doesn’t have time to think about them.
“Jongin, listen, we’re so, so happy to see you. Trust me,” Joonmyun says, voice low, eyes shining. “But we have a lot of stuff to tell you, and we need your help.”
Jongin breathes hard, rubs his wet eyes. “What’s going on?”
“I’m guessing you know more than we do,” Yixing says.
Right. The sickness.
Joonmyun and Yixing tell him everything, or at least everything they can fit into a hushed, one-minute explanation, both talking at full speed. Then they take him, overwhelmed, to meet Baekhyun and Jongdae and Yifan, all hunkered down in a mostly-unstable, crumbling building that hasn’t yet been torn down by Builders. There, they talk more, explain more. Jongin feels lost and dazed, but he’s felt like that a lot recently. It’s a lot to take in, but everything kind of falls into place at the same time. Omega, the box, their sacrifice. He can even confirm some things the rest of them had just been guessing at.
“I saw it,” he says, voice shaking slightly with emotion. It’s all been so much recently. “The box, and the plague coming out of it. I didn’t see the Omega symbols-I never saw it whole-but when the plague was first released, I felt it, I went to see. I saw it coming out of the box.”
Yixing and Joonmyun stare at him. “You…saw it?” Joonmyun asks.
Jongin frowns. “Well, I mean, not see. But I sensed it. Which is practically like seeing it.”
Yixing looks at Joonmyun. Joonmyun looks baffled. “No...it’s not.”
“What? Yes it is.” Jongin gestures around them. “It’s, you know, it’s like a mist. Don’t you feel it? It’s like, all around us. It’s coming in through the windows.”
“Jongin, I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about,” Joonmyun tells him. “Are you okay?”
“He always explains it like this,” Minseok puts in. “Like a mist, or a fog, or whatever. Pools of energy, puddles, smoke.” He shrugs. “It feels like that when he siphons it into me. Tangible.”
Yixing frowns. “It becomes tangible when I make it tangible.”
“No, Joon, listen!” Jongin says, insistent. “You know how you can feel sickness in a person? It’s like, it’s a black energy. It’s different from other kinds of good energy. And you can feel it, you can feel where it is and stuff.”
Slowly, Joonmyun shakes his head. “That’s not what it’s like at all, Jongin. I’ve never heard any sorcerer describe it like that before. We can tell when people are sick because their energy is different. Disrupted, or sending out pain signals, or whatever.”
“No, no,” Jongin says, flapping his hand. “That’s just if they’re mad or upset or whatever. I mean if they’re sick. Like the people here.”
“Jongin, I don’t know what you mean. That’s not what it’s like for me.”
Jongin stares at him, eyes wide. “It isn’t?”
“Not at all,” Joonmyun confirms.
“You don’t feel the sickness?” Jongin asks, gesturing around them again.
Joonmyun frowns. “I feel a lot of bad stuff. It’s like, you know, that feeling of dread you get when you know something terrible’s about the happen. Except a little more tangible than that, and I can tell it’s coming from outside myself. When we were in Q-16, I could feel it coming from this direction. Now that I’m here, it’s just kind of everywhere.”
“Oh, god,” Jongin groans. “I didn’t know I was different. I thought I was just sensitive. Why can I feel it?”
Minseok reaches out, squeezes his shoulder. “For the same reason you feel everything so intensely. You’re a special kid.”
“Can you not feel it in Baekhyun, then?” Jongin asks. “Where he’s hurting and needs healing?”
Joonmyun shrugs. “I ask him to tell me.”
“Ribs,” Jongin says immediately. It’s harder to feel when all the energy around him is so bad, it mutes everything, but he can still tell. “Still healing. Legs, aching. Lungs, recovering. Head, wrong.”
“Shit,” Baekhyun says, awed.
“Why am I the only one who can feel it?” Jongin asks, almost a whimper. “Why do I have to feel it alone?”
“Only one who can wield it, too,” Minseok says, and it sounds like he’s trying to be encouraging, but it’s really not. “Only one who can take it and do something with it. Something good.”
For a second, Jongin blanks out. Everything sort of just hits him at once, washes over him, blots out everything else. “Oh my god,” he breathes. “You’re right. I’m the only one.”
“What?” says Joonmyun. “Are you okay, Jongin?”
“I’m going to...I’m going to have to be the new Omega.”
Seven faces stare back at him, concerned and uncomprehending.
Jongin’s throat starts closing up, but he keeps his voice steady, refuses to let this be the thing that breaks him. Not now. Not when he’s needed. “Omega forced the plague into the box. Which they would only have been able to do if they could sense it, feel it, in the way that I can feel it. I’m the only one that can do it. I have to do it.”
“Jongin, that’s-that’s insane,” Joonmyun says. “You can’t handle the whole fucking plague by yourself.”
Jongin shakes his head. “I have to,” he says. “And it’s not the whole plague. Just whatever’s leaked out so far. And it’s still contained. It doesn’t have its hold on the, the world yet. You know? I think it’s still possible. For me.”
“Jongin, that’s crazy,” Minseok tells him. “You’d die.”
Jongin’s heart stutters in his chest. “I know,” he says. “And you might have to die with me.”
Minseok stares back at him, silent, jaw set. Jongin can feel his sudden panic, his uncertainty, his fear. He can feel it all, just like he feels it in himself. But Minseok says, “Okay.”
“What?” squawks Luhan. “You can’t actually be agreeing to this, Minseok!”
“Jongin’s right,” Minseok says, without looking away from him. His gaze is steady, eyes hard. “As far as we know, we’re the only pair capable of this kind of thing. Joonmyun said he’d never even heard of this kind of stuff before. Jongin never has either. But we’re well aware of our own ability to manipulate black energy.”
“You’re not going to sacrifice yourself for this,” Joonmyun says, voice rising. He’s going to give them away. Not that it matters that much, at this point.
“Omega had to,” Jongin says. “I have to, too.”
Minseok stares him straight in the eye and nods, just once.
Jongin had so many doubts about him, back when they first paired up. But he should have known he’d pull through in the end, no questions asked.
Jongin sighs, runs a hand through his hair, closes his eyes. “It’s like a...like a larger, more extreme version of Sehun’s brain sickness. Way more extreme. But maybe I could do it. I just. I would need so much good energy to counteract it. We’ve gotten better since then, more efficient, but this is enormous. We’d need such a big pocket of energy to do this in one go.”
There’s a heavy pause. No one says anything-no one wants to encourage Jongin to go through with this. But Jongin knows he’ll have to. He’s already accepted it.
“The Valley,” Minseok says suddenly.
Jongin’s eyes snap open. “Oh my god.”
“What?”
“The Valley. That was...that was Omega’s Reward. For their sacrifice. You said they mentioned it, right? Hoped it would bless people in the future, or whatever? That’s why it’s so strong. Their Reward turned into the fucking Valley, with the fucking tree,” Jongin says. He shakes his head. “And now we’re going to have to use it to do the same thing they sacrificed their lives for in the first place.”
Joonmyun and Yixing look dazed as understanding dawns over them. None of them have ever actually been to the Valley, but they’ve heard about it. Huge, rich patch of fertile land. An enormous, but as of yet unrecognizable tree bearing fruit at its center. A post-apocalyptic oasis. Mysterious, unexplainable, in the middle of Earth’s wreckage.
A huge Reward, for a huge sacrifice.
“How is this supposed to even work?” asks Baekhyun, looking more baffled than anything. All of the non-paranormals have mostly been watching everything unfold in confused silence.
Jongin takes a deep breath. “Essentially, I’d have to get close enough to the Valley to tap into its energy reserves. Maybe even be in it. And then I’d have to pull all the black energy from here-tear it right out of the people, suck it out the the community-and funnel it into Minseok, and he’d convert it and control it, and then we’d...lock it back up, I guess. It’s like they said. Evil this big can’t be destroyed, only contained. That seems to be our only option.”
“Okay, but…” Baekhyun says slowly. “Isn’t our old...container busted? Like, isn’t that why this is happening? Do you just so happen to have another sickness-proof container lying around?”
Jongin blinks at him, caught off guard. “Oh… No, we don’t have anything like that.”
“So what are we gonna do?” says Jongdae.
For a second, Jongin’s mind spins. A container. They need a container. Something no one will ever open again. Something that not even a dedicated, self-taught Fixer would think to pry apart.
Oh.
“I don’t have anything like that,” Jongin admits. “But I know someone who could make one.”
“Who?” Joonmyun asks, perplexed.
Jongin smiles a little. “Some of you might know him. He’s a prisoner here.” Something clicks in his head. “And my best friend’s brother was his guard.”
Baekhyun and Yifan light up simultaneously. “Chanyeol.”
***
Kyungsoo hasn’t been on active soldier duty since the sickness was released. The rest of the military has been busy under Victoria’s lead, getting away from X-22 and simultaneously fighting relentlessly for rights to the Valley, but Kyungsoo has been left behind, forgotten. He wonders, sitting at home with Sehun, if it’s because they suspect he was involved in orchestrating the plague’s release somehow, if they no longer trust him in such a central role. On the one hand, that enrages his-he can’t believe anyone would think he would willingly inflict that much damage on his own community, his own family. But at the same time, he sees the same pattern his superiors likely do-bad things have been happening in X-22, and Kyungsoo has been suspiciously present in all of them.
Since then, he’s spent all his time at home, like everyone else, keeping Sehun company and waiting around for meals. Jongin visits them a couple times a day, with Minseok in tow, making sure neither of them have caught sick. He always looks so worn out, so frail and unsteady on his feet. Kyungsoo is worried about him, and he knows Sehun is even more so.
He’s not all that surprised when Jongin shows up, again, knocking on his door, letting himself in, followed by Minseok.
He is very surprised, however, when the paranormal pair is followed by Yixing and Joonmyun, back from the dead, and then Luhan, a face Kyungsoo only vaguely recognizes, and then three strangers, one clinging to another’s back. They all squeeze into Kyungsoo’s house as he gapes, and then Jongin turns to him and says, “Kyungsoo, we need your help.”
“Uh...what? What’s going on?”
“I’ll explain in a second,” Jongin says. “But we need to know if you know where Chanyeol is, and how to break him out.”
Kyungsoo stares in slack-jawed bewilderment for another moment, then says, “He...I mean, I could probably figure something out if pressed.”
“You’re being pressed,” Jongin informs him-calm, straightforward, nothing like the shy, uncertain boy Kyungsoo introduced Sehun to less than three months ago.
Kyungsoo shakes his head, laughing slightly. He knows something bad is coming, but at the moment, all he can feel is relief. “Fill me in.”
The plan is insane. The backstory even more so. Sehun cries out in objection and pain when Jongin admits that he’s going to fight the plague with his own life, and that’s the first time Kyungsoo sees the young sorcerer falter, face crumpling briefly. Kyungsoo holds onto his brother’s arm, pulls him close. This is Jongin’s decision, and it looks like he’s already made up his mind.
In the space of a few minutes, Kyungsoo is introduced to Yifan and Baekhyun-two people Chanyeol has mentioned, if only briefly. He’s also introduced to Chanyeol’s plant, the one grown from the seed Kyungsoo gave him when they were kids. He has to laugh at that. He’s heard more about this damn plant than he heard about both of Chanyeol’s best friends combined.
“Okay,” Kyungsoo says at last, still trying to absorb everything he was just told but also realizing that time is short. “Chanyeol isn’t in the storehouse anymore, but the puzzle box is, and so are all of his tools and things. Which means we’re going to have to break him out of jail and into his workshop so that he can get the materials he needs to do whatever it is he has to do.”
“Oh, god,” groans Yifan from the corner.
Kyungsoo smiles a little. “Don’t worry about it. All of our soldiers are at the Dead Zone right now, which means it’s only amateurs doing the guarding, and very few people know what the hell is going on. So convincing them of anything won’t be incredibly hard.”
“You have a plan?” Jongin asks, eyes wide.
Kyungsoo smiles ruefully. “To be entirely honest, I’ve had several plans for the past month and a half.”
Chanyeol’s friends light up, and Minseok gives an approving nod. As it turns out, more people are in support of betraying his community than he expected.
Kyungsoo designs his double-jailbreak in fifteen high-pressure minutes. “What we have to work with are four members of X-22-one soldier that’s not considered very trustworthy, one former-soldier-now-Grower, one paranormal-plus-Builder, one just-paranormal-and one person that is accepted as X-22-occupation Builder. And then two more members of X-22, paranormals, who are presumed dead and would scare the shit out of everyone. And on top of that, three members of Q-16-one Builder, one soldier, one mostly-useless invalid with a faulty photographic memory.”
Everyone stares back at him, uneasy. Kyungsoo isn’t exactly selling their case. “Right,” confirms Jongin uncertainly.
“That’s good,” Kyungsoo says. “We can use that.”
“We can?” says Jongdae, eyebrows raised.
“The Sixers will be staying here, out of sight. They’re pretty useless. If you hear yelling, come save our asses,” Kyungsoo says.
“Sounds exciting,” is Baekhyun’s dry response.
“I’m not dragging a group of ten all over the community. Stay out of trouble until I need you,” Kyungsoo tells him, stern.
“What about me?” Luhan asks, raising his hand.
“You’re coming. I need your Builder persona to get into places.”
“That was my job earlier,” Jongdae says smugly.
“Sehun, you’ll be getting Chanyeol out of jail,” Kyungsoo says briskly.
“What?” Sehun yelps.
“All of his guards right now are amateurs. You were trained, originally, as a soldier. You fit the bill perfectly. You’ll go up to the guards on shift, tell them Boa assigned you to take over, say Chanyeol hasn’t tried anything yet so we’re cutting it down to one guard at a time. I doubt they’ll argue. They don’t know what’s going on any more than we do, and guard duty is shit.”
Sehun is wide-eyed and visibly nervous, but he nods bravely. Kyungsoo hates putting him in danger, but today, it’s necessary.
“The main problem there is that his new prison is near Boa’s office, and it’s in the center of the community. People might be watching, or listening in. So don’t give yourself away, even after the old guards are gone. Stand guard and wait for me. Ignore Chanyeol if you have to. While you’re taking over their shift, I’ll be dropping by the armoury to get helmets and things. Armoured soldiers leaving Chanyeol’s prison is a lot less suspicious than, well, Chanyeol, me, and my brother. Plus, I can get us some emergency weapons.”
“Can you get into the armoury okay?” Minseok asks, one eyebrow quirked.
“I’m still a soldier, even if they don’t let me do anything anymore. People recognize me as a soldier. And besides, no one’s going to be there, they’re all at the Dead Zone.” Kyungsoo takes a deep breath. “While we’re getting Chanyeol out, Jongin and Minseok will be luring the guards away from the storehouse. I don’t care what you guys tell them, I don’t care if you lie out your asses, but convince them that they’re about to die if they don’t leave. The box is in there. Use that knowledge to your advantage. Luhan, once the guards are gone, you’ll be heading over there to break us in.”
“Why me?” Luhan asks, voice breaking slightly.
“Because people know who you are, and you have the excuse of Builder to use if anyone asks you what you’re doing,” Kyungsoo tells him. “Pay attention. The front door of the storehouse will be locked, and the guards may not even have the key. No one’s supposed to be going in there. But there’s a full-wall overhead door on the western side that they might have left unlocked-it’s how they got the Machine out. If it’s not unlocked, force your way in. Yifan has a blaster; blow the lock off if you have to. It’s far enough away that no one will pay too much attention to the sound. If they do, tell them you’re doing extra Builder work to make sure the box is locked tight inside, whatever. Once it’s open, come get us, we’ll be hiding out here. We’ll all head to the storehouse together and stay in there. It’s out of the way, no one bothers looking out there, and it’s spacious.” He swallows hard. “And that’s how we’re gonna do this.”
Everyone stares at him, and silence reigns for a few tense seconds. Then, hesitantly, Jongin asks, “What if something goes wrong?”
“Improvise,” Kyungsoo says. “Lie. Make shit up. We have no backup plan, apart from our Sixers and our presumed-dead paranormals running intervention. So do your best to get your job done.”
It’s a messy plan. There’s a lot of room for error. But they don’t have time to come up with anything more sophisticated. They don’t have the resources to think up anything more reliable. This is all they have.
“Just make sure Chanyeol is safe,” Baekhyun tells him, chewing on his lip.
Kyungsoo cracks a slight smile. “I want him to get out of this alive as much as you do, Baekhyun.”
Baekhyun’s eyebrows twitch up. “Yeah?”
Kyungsoo takes a deep, steadying breath. “Yeah.”
There’s a long, heavy pause, and then Baekhyun says, “Well, what are you waiting for? Go get him.”
*****
NEXT>>
A/N: Posting early and not answering any comments because I have no laptop atm and computer access is depressingly limited. SORRY. I am reading and appreciating your comments and theories uwu <333
aka post-apocalypse au, aka painfic
Pairings:[Spoiler (click to open)]Baekxing, Xiuhan, Chansoo (+Chanyeol/Plant)
Genre: post-apocalypse, fantasy, drama, romance
Rating: R
Length: 137K total
Warnings: mature themes, violence/injury, some possibly disturbing imagery, threat of death, poor mental health, very brief mentions of suicidal ideation(?), sad times
Summary: Over a century after meteors destroyed Earth, making the surface uninhabitable, communities are returning from their bunkers and attempting to recolonize the planet. But resources are scarce, tensions are high, and neighbouring communities X-22 and Q-16 are fighting tooth and nail over the Valley, a rare patch of fertile land. Add to that a controversial group of humans with special abilities, and people will start to realize it's not the coming winter that's humanity's biggest obstacle-it's humanity itself. But that doesn't mean hope doesn't exist.
Chapter links: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
*****
The day is just warming up when Yifan hears a familiar rumble on the wind. It’s quiet, a hum, and if he hadn’t spent hours in the company of that sound, he might not notice it at all. He looks up from where he’s making preparations with Luhan to sneak into X-22, turns his gaze eastward. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Luhan asks, rubbing his arms as the chilly breeze sneaks under their clothes. It’d been a cold, miserable night outside Zitao’s tent, and they’re both sore and tired.
Yifan listens again, but the sound is gone. He sighs. “Nothing. Must have imagined it.”
“Can you pay attention, then? We’re floundering enough as it is.” Luhan picks up a dirty rock from the ground and uses it as a weight to hold down the corner of the sketchy map he’s made of X-22. “Minseok said Chanyeol’s in a storehouse. There’s several around the community, as far as I know. One near the community center, one attached to the armoury, one nearish the south-”
Yifan frowns. “How do you know he wasn’t lying about that, too?”
Luhan pauses, chews on his lip. “He wouldn’t do that, would he?”
“He lied to you that whole time,” Yifan points out.
Luhan looks pained. “But why would he change his tune just to lie some more?”
Yifan shrugs. “To confuse you?”
“No. No. I really think that was the truth, Yifan.” Luhan swallows visibly. “And if it wasn’t...what would we do? What other options do we have?”
He’s right. If Minseok was telling the truth, Chanyeol doesn’t have long. This is the only chance they have.
“The community’s on lockdown, for whatever reason. Guards are minimal, everyone’s staying inside-this is the perfect time to stage a rescue,” Luhan says, back down to business. “We might have to just go to every-”
“There it is again!” Yifan says, holding out a hand to stop him. A low rumble, getting louder. “Can you hear it?”
Luhan looks dazed. “Yeah. What is that?”
“You’ll call me crazy, but I swear to god it’s the Defense truck,” Yifan says, scanning their surroundings desperately. The wind is too strong, and too erratic, for him to be sure where it’s coming from.
“Q-16?” Luhan asks, eyes wide. “Do you think so?”
“I don’t know...why would they be this far west? We only ever used the truck to get to the Dead Zone.” Yifan shakes his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”
The sound fades, builds up, fades again. It’s coming from the south-east, he’s pretty sure. From the hills. That would explain why the volume keeps changing. Yifan tries to focus on planning Chanyeol’s rescue, but he can’t help but be distracted. What if it is Q-16? What would they want? What would they be doing here?
And then, suddenly, the sound cuts out completely, and Yifan can’t resist his curiosity. “I’m just gonna go check it out,” he says, standing up.
“But what about Chanyeol?” Luhan asks.
“I’ll be right back. I’m just gonna go see what’s going on,” Yifan says, stalking in the direction of the hills. “If it’s nothing, I’ll come right back and we’ll head in. I promise.”
He only makes it fifty meters before a face crests one of the hills. It’s small, distant, but it sparks recognition. “I- Jongdae?”
“Guys!” the face yells. “Over here!”
“What the hell?” Yifan stares, appalled, as more faces appear. Two he doesn’t recognize. But one is- “Liyin?”
“Yifan!”
Yifan gapes. Leaning heavily on Jongdae’s side, feet dragging, is Baekhyun. “Baek!” he yells, running towards them on instinct. “Baek, what are you doing here?”
“Yifan, oh my god! You’re alive!”
It feels like he’s in a dream. Jongdae hoists Baekhyun onto his back, and the lot of them-five people in total, why is Q-16’s healer there?-head down the hill towards them, as fast as they dare. Luhan is coming up behind Yifan, sprinting, but Yifan got a head start. It takes him thirty seconds to all but crash into them.
“Jongdae!” Luhan yells as Baekhyun scrambles down from Jongdae’s back and envelopes Yifan in a hug. “What the hell are you doing here? Liyin?”
“Baek. God. Long time no see,” Yifan says against the side of his friend’s head, squeezing him tightly.
“Oh, fuck. Yifan, I’m ecstatic to see you, really, but that hurts a lot.”
“What?” Yifan lets go, holds him at arm’s length. “Sorry. Are you okay?”
Baekhyun wobbles, clings to Yifan’s arms to steady himself. His grin is broad. “Just recovering from a near-death experience a few months back. No biggie.”
“What? Oh my god. What happened?”
“I got blown up. Lost my memory and all that shit. But look, I’m kind of walking now!” Baekhyun laughs. “Forget about it. We’ll discuss it later. I’m here for a reason.”
“Yeah, what the hell is going on? Who are all these people?” Yifan asks, looking around. Luhan is hugging Jongdae hard to his right, the two strangers are approaching more slowly and watching with small smiles, and Liyin-Liyin looks like she’s seen a ghost.
“They’re my...entourage,” Baekhyun says, pausing noticeably before the word comes out. “We came to-”
“Tao?” Liyin says suddenly, eyes wide. “Zitao?”
Yifan blinks at her, then looks over his shoulder to where Tao is approaching, slowly, from his camp. He looks just as shocked as Liyin does. What?
“Who’s that?” Baekhyun asks, frowning. “Liyin?”
“Tao!” Hand over her mouth, Liyin starts running at the same time as Zitao does, and Yifan watches in utter confusion as they meet and embrace, crying. What the hell?
“How do you know each other?” he asks dumbly. Q-16’s healer and the rogue conjurer he’s been living with for the past three months?
“I thought you were dead,” Zitao says, haltingly, and things start falling into place.
Conjurer. Sister. Dead.
“You’re paranormal?” he asks incredulously.
“What are you doing here?” Zitao asks, sobbing. “What are you-how are you alive?”
“Zitao?” says one of the other strangers, stunned.
Baekhyun turns to him, brows furrowed. “Xing? You know him?”
The stranger gapes. “He was in Gamma with me. He was the other conjurer that came with to find a match in Delta, and then moved on to Beta afterwards.”
Yifan is just so, so lost. “Who the hell is everyone? What’s going on?”
No one seems to know.
“Uh…” Baekhyun says. “Well. This is Yixing, and this is Joonmyun, for starters. They’re...from here. X-22.”
“Hi,” says the taller stranger as he steps forwards, to Baekhyun’s side, smiling softly. He’s holding...Chanyeol’s plant? What? “Nice to meet you.”
“Why are they with you?”
“They were, um, kidnapped. A couple months ago. When I got blown up. They’ve been my personal healers since then. They’re paranormal.” Baekhyun laughs a little hysterically. “Turns out they’re not so bad. Paranormals, I mean.”
Yifan shakes his head in disbelief. “I know. Zitao’s one.”
“Yeah, who the hell is he?”
“A rogue kid. He...he said his partner, his sister-not his real sister-he said she was dead. But I think we just found her.” They glance back at him and Liyin still clinging to each other, trying to speak through their tears.
“I thought she was from Q-17,” Baekhyun says dumbly.
“What? No,” Jongdae says. “I thought she was one of yours.”
“No, she joined at the same time as you. Signed on as a healer.” Baekhyun frowns. “You don’t know her, Xing?”
“No, she must be from Beta, or one of the other groups,” Yixing says. “Wherever Zitao was matched with her. Joon, you didn’t know she’s a sorcerer?”
“We can only sense conjurers,” Joonmyun says, lingering slightly behind Yixing, looking overwhelmed by this all. “Sorcerers just feel like...different people.”
“What the hell was she doing in Q-16, then?” Baekhyun asks.
“And why is Jongdae here, anyway?” Luhan asks, leaning on his old Builder friend.
“Oh, he’s my recovery buddy. We’ve become very close recently.” Baekhyun laughs. “I brought him along as my personal transport, because I walk like a fucking toddler.”
“But why are you here?” Yifan asks at last, resisting the urge to turn to stare at Zitao and Liyin again. “What are all of you doing here?”
“Oh! Right. Yifan. Do you have Chanyeol’s old puzzle box?”
“His-what?”
“Chanyeol had a puzzle box I gave him. He was trying to fix it and solve it.”
“No, I know. I remember. But why are you looking for it?” Yifan asks. It must be pretty important for him to have come all the way here to find it.
“Oh, well, see. We discovered it might be holding the fucking plague inside.” Baekhyun smiles with a hint of a wince.
“What?”
“And,” Joonmyun adds, taking a step closer, “going by the enormity of the terrible feelings coming from this community, it got out.”
Yifan gapes. “I don’t have it. Chanyeol- He had it with him when he was taken. He was messing around with it in the trenches back then.”
“Oh.” Baekhyun stares at him. “Where is it now, then?”
“I don’t know,” Yifan says. “Maybe he still has it.”
Baekhyun’s eyes widen. “You mean he’s-he’s alive?”
Yifan opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Baekhyun doesn’t know. He doesn’t even know Chanyeol’s still alive. He’s spent the last three months assuming his best friend was dead. “Yeah,” he breathes.
“He is,” Luhan confirms. “I’ve been doing recon in there for months. Minseok told me he’s still alive.”
Baekhyun just gapes, eyes visibly filling with overwhelmed tears, and both Jongdae and Yixing reach out to hold onto him as he draws a shuddering breath.
“Minseok?” Yixing says, surprised, even as he clutches Baekhyun’s hand. “Jongin’s conjurer partner?”
“Wait, what?” Luhan blinks at him in shock. “He’s a Builder.”
“No, I know. But he was Jongin’s conjurer partner. Did he quit?”
“What are you talking about?” Luhan looks increasingly panicked. “He spent time with Jongin, but-”
“Oh, then he didn’t quit. That’s good.” Yixing smiles, relieved.
“That asshole, he better have been taking care of Jongin for us,” Joonmyun mutters darkly.
“I am really confused,” Jongdae pipes up as Baekhyun turns into him to muffle a sob against his shoulder. Yifan feels weird; he was Baekhyun’s best friend, next to Chanyeol, last time he saw him. A lot has happened since then, he figures.
“Minseok was my roommate for three months,” Luhan says, and his voice is shaky. “I think I’d know if he was a conjurer.”
“Why, was he a full-time Builder?” Yixing asks with a frown.
Luhan swallows hard. “No. He took afternoons off. He- I don’t know what he did. I knew he was doing other work but…conjuring?”
Yixing nods. “Yeah. He was the only match Jongin found in X-22.”
“How many paranormals does this community have?” Jongdae asks, shaking his head.
“Just the four, as far as I know,” Yixing supplies. “I don’t know where they came from.” He gestures towards Zitao and Liyin in the background.
“The box!” Baekhyun says suddenly, still red-faced and breathless, but now urgent. “We’re getting off-track. We need the box, Yifan. Apparently some...super-powerful paranormals saved all of humanity by locking up the goddamn plague in the puzzle box, and now, maybe, it’s been re-opened. You said Chanyeol’s alive. Where is he? We need to find it.”
“Apparently he’s in a storehouse,” Luhan says, looking shaken. “At least, that’s what Minseok told me. After...lying about everything.” He laughs slightly, bitterly. “It’s all we have to go on.”
“Where is he?” Baekhyun prompts. “Minseok. We need to talk to him.”
Luhan gapes at him. “He- I don’t know. In the community? He told me to leave, last night. He knows who I am.”
“If he told you to leave instead of killing you, he’s practically on our side,” Baekhyun says, incredibly over-confident. Yifan admires that. But maybe right now, after finding out his best friend is alive after presumably accepting he’s been dead for three months, Baekhyun thinks anything is possible. “Plus, we’ve got some Exes on our side.” He gestures to Yixing and Joonmyun behind him.
“We’d give him a heart attack,” Yixing says, chuckling humorlessly.
“All the better. He sounds like a dick,” Baekhyun says.
“He was just trying to protect his community,” Luhan says snippily, and then promptly looks shocked at himself. “Did I just stand up for him?”
“Minseok kissed him,” Yifan puts in, just to catch everyone up.
Joonmyun grins a little. “Did he really? Nice.”
Luhan scowls. “Can we not talk about this?”
“So many inter-community romances,” Jongdae sighs dramatically.
“Are there more?” Yifan asks, looking at Baekhyun, whose cheeks pink tellingly.
Jongdae is a better friend than expected, though. “Joonmyun and me,” he says, grinning. “I’m wooing him.”
“Oh my god,” Joonmyun says flatly. “Never.”
“Shut up! Okay. Here’s what’s going to happen,” Baekhyun says, reminding them all that serious shit is happening. “Some of us are going to go into X-22. Definitely me-if Chanyeol is there, I’m there.”
“You can barely walk,” Jongdae argues.
“Then you’ll just have to carry me, Jongdae dearest,” Baekhyun coos. “Yifan, you’re coming. You’re the only soldier among us, and I don’t want to be in there without any cover.”
“I was planning on going anyway,” Yifan confirms.
“Yixing, Joonmyun, you’re both coming. Our only Exes. Luhan, you too. Our other connection.” Baekhyun looks around. “That just leaves Liyin and the conjurer kid.”
“I could carry you, if Jongdae wants to stay,” Yixing suggests.
“Nah, I’m coming in. I didn’t come all the way out here to sit around and wait for you to get yourselves killed,” Jongdae says.
“It’s settled, then. A whole flock of us are going in.” Baekhyun nods definitively.
“You’re in luck,” Luhan says. “The community’s on lockdown. Everyone’s being told to stay inside.”
“Perfect.” Baekhyun grins, but Yifan can see the glint of fear in his eyes. “Let’s do it, men.”
They turn to head back to Zitao’s camp to make a game plan, but Yifan can’t help but stop next to Liyin and Zitao where they stand, still holding onto each other, tearful but talking in low tones. He swallows hard, rubs the back of his neck. “Uh...Tao?”
Zitao blinks up at him, surprised. “Yifan.”
Yifan doesn’t know what to say. ‘I didn’t kill your sister’? ‘Please don’t still hate me’? He settles on, “Is everything okay?”
Liyin laughs softly. “You must be confused.”
“Extremely,” Yifan admits.
Liyin takes a deep breath, calming herself. “I was part of Beta group. They were...are...not kind to non-paranormals. When we resurfaced and some of the paranormal groups wanted to help others, you know, as Yixing and Joonmyun do, there was a lot of fighting between our groups. Beta was sometimes violent. Hateful. Zitao and I left to get away from it.”
“Right. Zitao told me,” Yifan says softly.
Liyin nods. “But Beta wasn’t pleased. I’m a...strong sorcerer. Comparatively. I was an asset to the group. When I left, they assumed it was because Zitao was rubbing off on me. In a bad way, in their view. One day, in the middle of the night, they attacked our camp, took me away. They...they told me Tao was dead. I believed them.” Her eyes glimmer, but she blinks hard. “I don’t know if they expected me to find a new conjurer and rejoin Beta, or what, but I didn’t. They had me on watch for a while, but I got away eventually. I joined Q-16. As a healer, without telling them I’m paranormal.” She smiles vaguely. “I didn’t want to go back to X-22. Bad memories. And Q-16 was the last place they’d look for me. An anti-paranormal group, known raiders. And I’ve always been a natural healer. It comes with the sorcerer abilities. Even if we can’t heal without a conjurer, we’re very intuitive when it comes to the natural way in which bodies heal themselves, and we know how to encourage it. It’s all about energies.” She shrugs.
“There were so many raids against paranormals back then,” Zitao says, breath hitching. “I just assumed-”
“Hey,” Liyin soothes. “We’re together now.”
Together. Zitao said he would die without his sorcerer. But they’re together now.
“I’m really happy for you,” Yifan says, and he means it. “Tao, I’m so happy you got her back.”
Zitao rubs his eyes, looks at him. “I’m sorry I said you killed her.”
Yifan smiles ruefully. “I’m sorry I couldn’t deny it with any certainty.”
“We’ve all done things we regret. We have to put them behind us,” Liyin says, smiling bravely. “Especially now.”
Yifan nods. “We’re heading into X-22. All of us. We’re going after Chanyeol.”
Liyin nods as well. “The puzzle box?”
“Yeah. Will you guys stay here? If something happens...we’ll need a Plan B.”
“Of course.” Liyin rolls her shoulders, tips up her chin. She’s always struck Yifan as a remarkably strong person. “We’re here if you need us.”
“Thank you.” Yifan smiles. “Stay safe. Both of you.”
Zitao reaches out, takes his hand. “You stay safe, too.”
“I’ll do my best.”
He heads over to where the rest of their group is gathering, poring over Luhan’s rough maps, preparing for a rescue. Everyone is grim, determined. Yifan takes a deep breath.
Finally, after months of waiting, Yifan is throwing himself into the action.
***
Jongin is exhausted.
He’s beyond exhausted. He’s barely existing. He woke up still drained from the previous day’s gruelling work, and then he got right back to it, finding Minseok, finding more people who contracted the sickness during the night. There are so many of them. The community thrums with building black energy. Some of them are already so sick that they’re showing symptoms-coughing, sore, stiff. Jongin can’t waste his energy, and X-22’s energy reserves, on healing them. The best he can do is heal those in which the disease is spreading but not yet festering. It’s so hard to leave the suffering, though. It’s so hard to feel like he’s doing the right thing.
And he’s so tired.
He’s so tired, in fact, and so overwhelmed, that he senses no difference in X-22, no change in the community or its inhabitants, until a somewhat familiar voice stage-whispers, “Minseok,” and an even more familiar voice whispers, “Jongin!”
He turns and sees two very unexpected faces staring back from around the corner of an old building. The breath catches in Jongin’s chest. “Yixing?”
Minseok stands beside him. “Luhan?”
Jongin gapes, and all Yixing does is hold a finger to his mouth, signalling silence. “We need your help,” he whispers, and Jongin thinks he might be dreaming. He thinks he might be so tired that he’s hallucinating.
But then, a minute later, Yixing is hugging him, and so is Joonmyun, and Jongin is crying because they’re alive, they’re here, they came back. A piece of Jongin’s fragile heart slots back into place.
When he finally looks away from them-just for a second, he doesn’t want to blink in case they disappear-he sees Minseok and Luhan staring at each other, stiff, uncertain. But Jongin doesn’t have time to think about them.
“Jongin, listen, we’re so, so happy to see you. Trust me,” Joonmyun says, voice low, eyes shining. “But we have a lot of stuff to tell you, and we need your help.”
Jongin breathes hard, rubs his wet eyes. “What’s going on?”
“I’m guessing you know more than we do,” Yixing says.
Right. The sickness.
Joonmyun and Yixing tell him everything, or at least everything they can fit into a hushed, one-minute explanation, both talking at full speed. Then they take him, overwhelmed, to meet Baekhyun and Jongdae and Yifan, all hunkered down in a mostly-unstable, crumbling building that hasn’t yet been torn down by Builders. There, they talk more, explain more. Jongin feels lost and dazed, but he’s felt like that a lot recently. It’s a lot to take in, but everything kind of falls into place at the same time. Omega, the box, their sacrifice. He can even confirm some things the rest of them had just been guessing at.
“I saw it,” he says, voice shaking slightly with emotion. It’s all been so much recently. “The box, and the plague coming out of it. I didn’t see the Omega symbols-I never saw it whole-but when the plague was first released, I felt it, I went to see. I saw it coming out of the box.”
Yixing and Joonmyun stare at him. “You…saw it?” Joonmyun asks.
Jongin frowns. “Well, I mean, not see. But I sensed it. Which is practically like seeing it.”
Yixing looks at Joonmyun. Joonmyun looks baffled. “No...it’s not.”
“What? Yes it is.” Jongin gestures around them. “It’s, you know, it’s like a mist. Don’t you feel it? It’s like, all around us. It’s coming in through the windows.”
“Jongin, I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about,” Joonmyun tells him. “Are you okay?”
“He always explains it like this,” Minseok puts in. “Like a mist, or a fog, or whatever. Pools of energy, puddles, smoke.” He shrugs. “It feels like that when he siphons it into me. Tangible.”
Yixing frowns. “It becomes tangible when I make it tangible.”
“No, Joon, listen!” Jongin says, insistent. “You know how you can feel sickness in a person? It’s like, it’s a black energy. It’s different from other kinds of good energy. And you can feel it, you can feel where it is and stuff.”
Slowly, Joonmyun shakes his head. “That’s not what it’s like at all, Jongin. I’ve never heard any sorcerer describe it like that before. We can tell when people are sick because their energy is different. Disrupted, or sending out pain signals, or whatever.”
“No, no,” Jongin says, flapping his hand. “That’s just if they’re mad or upset or whatever. I mean if they’re sick. Like the people here.”
“Jongin, I don’t know what you mean. That’s not what it’s like for me.”
Jongin stares at him, eyes wide. “It isn’t?”
“Not at all,” Joonmyun confirms.
“You don’t feel the sickness?” Jongin asks, gesturing around them again.
Joonmyun frowns. “I feel a lot of bad stuff. It’s like, you know, that feeling of dread you get when you know something terrible’s about the happen. Except a little more tangible than that, and I can tell it’s coming from outside myself. When we were in Q-16, I could feel it coming from this direction. Now that I’m here, it’s just kind of everywhere.”
“Oh, god,” Jongin groans. “I didn’t know I was different. I thought I was just sensitive. Why can I feel it?”
Minseok reaches out, squeezes his shoulder. “For the same reason you feel everything so intensely. You’re a special kid.”
“Can you not feel it in Baekhyun, then?” Jongin asks. “Where he’s hurting and needs healing?”
Joonmyun shrugs. “I ask him to tell me.”
“Ribs,” Jongin says immediately. It’s harder to feel when all the energy around him is so bad, it mutes everything, but he can still tell. “Still healing. Legs, aching. Lungs, recovering. Head, wrong.”
“Shit,” Baekhyun says, awed.
“Why am I the only one who can feel it?” Jongin asks, almost a whimper. “Why do I have to feel it alone?”
“Only one who can wield it, too,” Minseok says, and it sounds like he’s trying to be encouraging, but it’s really not. “Only one who can take it and do something with it. Something good.”
For a second, Jongin blanks out. Everything sort of just hits him at once, washes over him, blots out everything else. “Oh my god,” he breathes. “You’re right. I’m the only one.”
“What?” says Joonmyun. “Are you okay, Jongin?”
“I’m going to...I’m going to have to be the new Omega.”
Seven faces stare back at him, concerned and uncomprehending.
Jongin’s throat starts closing up, but he keeps his voice steady, refuses to let this be the thing that breaks him. Not now. Not when he’s needed. “Omega forced the plague into the box. Which they would only have been able to do if they could sense it, feel it, in the way that I can feel it. I’m the only one that can do it. I have to do it.”
“Jongin, that’s-that’s insane,” Joonmyun says. “You can’t handle the whole fucking plague by yourself.”
Jongin shakes his head. “I have to,” he says. “And it’s not the whole plague. Just whatever’s leaked out so far. And it’s still contained. It doesn’t have its hold on the, the world yet. You know? I think it’s still possible. For me.”
“Jongin, that’s crazy,” Minseok tells him. “You’d die.”
Jongin’s heart stutters in his chest. “I know,” he says. “And you might have to die with me.”
Minseok stares back at him, silent, jaw set. Jongin can feel his sudden panic, his uncertainty, his fear. He can feel it all, just like he feels it in himself. But Minseok says, “Okay.”
“What?” squawks Luhan. “You can’t actually be agreeing to this, Minseok!”
“Jongin’s right,” Minseok says, without looking away from him. His gaze is steady, eyes hard. “As far as we know, we’re the only pair capable of this kind of thing. Joonmyun said he’d never even heard of this kind of stuff before. Jongin never has either. But we’re well aware of our own ability to manipulate black energy.”
“You’re not going to sacrifice yourself for this,” Joonmyun says, voice rising. He’s going to give them away. Not that it matters that much, at this point.
“Omega had to,” Jongin says. “I have to, too.”
Minseok stares him straight in the eye and nods, just once.
Jongin had so many doubts about him, back when they first paired up. But he should have known he’d pull through in the end, no questions asked.
Jongin sighs, runs a hand through his hair, closes his eyes. “It’s like a...like a larger, more extreme version of Sehun’s brain sickness. Way more extreme. But maybe I could do it. I just. I would need so much good energy to counteract it. We’ve gotten better since then, more efficient, but this is enormous. We’d need such a big pocket of energy to do this in one go.”
There’s a heavy pause. No one says anything-no one wants to encourage Jongin to go through with this. But Jongin knows he’ll have to. He’s already accepted it.
“The Valley,” Minseok says suddenly.
Jongin’s eyes snap open. “Oh my god.”
“What?”
“The Valley. That was...that was Omega’s Reward. For their sacrifice. You said they mentioned it, right? Hoped it would bless people in the future, or whatever? That’s why it’s so strong. Their Reward turned into the fucking Valley, with the fucking tree,” Jongin says. He shakes his head. “And now we’re going to have to use it to do the same thing they sacrificed their lives for in the first place.”
Joonmyun and Yixing look dazed as understanding dawns over them. None of them have ever actually been to the Valley, but they’ve heard about it. Huge, rich patch of fertile land. An enormous, but as of yet unrecognizable tree bearing fruit at its center. A post-apocalyptic oasis. Mysterious, unexplainable, in the middle of Earth’s wreckage.
A huge Reward, for a huge sacrifice.
“How is this supposed to even work?” asks Baekhyun, looking more baffled than anything. All of the non-paranormals have mostly been watching everything unfold in confused silence.
Jongin takes a deep breath. “Essentially, I’d have to get close enough to the Valley to tap into its energy reserves. Maybe even be in it. And then I’d have to pull all the black energy from here-tear it right out of the people, suck it out the the community-and funnel it into Minseok, and he’d convert it and control it, and then we’d...lock it back up, I guess. It’s like they said. Evil this big can’t be destroyed, only contained. That seems to be our only option.”
“Okay, but…” Baekhyun says slowly. “Isn’t our old...container busted? Like, isn’t that why this is happening? Do you just so happen to have another sickness-proof container lying around?”
Jongin blinks at him, caught off guard. “Oh… No, we don’t have anything like that.”
“So what are we gonna do?” says Jongdae.
For a second, Jongin’s mind spins. A container. They need a container. Something no one will ever open again. Something that not even a dedicated, self-taught Fixer would think to pry apart.
Oh.
“I don’t have anything like that,” Jongin admits. “But I know someone who could make one.”
“Who?” Joonmyun asks, perplexed.
Jongin smiles a little. “Some of you might know him. He’s a prisoner here.” Something clicks in his head. “And my best friend’s brother was his guard.”
Baekhyun and Yifan light up simultaneously. “Chanyeol.”
***
Kyungsoo hasn’t been on active soldier duty since the sickness was released. The rest of the military has been busy under Victoria’s lead, getting away from X-22 and simultaneously fighting relentlessly for rights to the Valley, but Kyungsoo has been left behind, forgotten. He wonders, sitting at home with Sehun, if it’s because they suspect he was involved in orchestrating the plague’s release somehow, if they no longer trust him in such a central role. On the one hand, that enrages his-he can’t believe anyone would think he would willingly inflict that much damage on his own community, his own family. But at the same time, he sees the same pattern his superiors likely do-bad things have been happening in X-22, and Kyungsoo has been suspiciously present in all of them.
Since then, he’s spent all his time at home, like everyone else, keeping Sehun company and waiting around for meals. Jongin visits them a couple times a day, with Minseok in tow, making sure neither of them have caught sick. He always looks so worn out, so frail and unsteady on his feet. Kyungsoo is worried about him, and he knows Sehun is even more so.
He’s not all that surprised when Jongin shows up, again, knocking on his door, letting himself in, followed by Minseok.
He is very surprised, however, when the paranormal pair is followed by Yixing and Joonmyun, back from the dead, and then Luhan, a face Kyungsoo only vaguely recognizes, and then three strangers, one clinging to another’s back. They all squeeze into Kyungsoo’s house as he gapes, and then Jongin turns to him and says, “Kyungsoo, we need your help.”
“Uh...what? What’s going on?”
“I’ll explain in a second,” Jongin says. “But we need to know if you know where Chanyeol is, and how to break him out.”
Kyungsoo stares in slack-jawed bewilderment for another moment, then says, “He...I mean, I could probably figure something out if pressed.”
“You’re being pressed,” Jongin informs him-calm, straightforward, nothing like the shy, uncertain boy Kyungsoo introduced Sehun to less than three months ago.
Kyungsoo shakes his head, laughing slightly. He knows something bad is coming, but at the moment, all he can feel is relief. “Fill me in.”
The plan is insane. The backstory even more so. Sehun cries out in objection and pain when Jongin admits that he’s going to fight the plague with his own life, and that’s the first time Kyungsoo sees the young sorcerer falter, face crumpling briefly. Kyungsoo holds onto his brother’s arm, pulls him close. This is Jongin’s decision, and it looks like he’s already made up his mind.
In the space of a few minutes, Kyungsoo is introduced to Yifan and Baekhyun-two people Chanyeol has mentioned, if only briefly. He’s also introduced to Chanyeol’s plant, the one grown from the seed Kyungsoo gave him when they were kids. He has to laugh at that. He’s heard more about this damn plant than he heard about both of Chanyeol’s best friends combined.
“Okay,” Kyungsoo says at last, still trying to absorb everything he was just told but also realizing that time is short. “Chanyeol isn’t in the storehouse anymore, but the puzzle box is, and so are all of his tools and things. Which means we’re going to have to break him out of jail and into his workshop so that he can get the materials he needs to do whatever it is he has to do.”
“Oh, god,” groans Yifan from the corner.
Kyungsoo smiles a little. “Don’t worry about it. All of our soldiers are at the Dead Zone right now, which means it’s only amateurs doing the guarding, and very few people know what the hell is going on. So convincing them of anything won’t be incredibly hard.”
“You have a plan?” Jongin asks, eyes wide.
Kyungsoo smiles ruefully. “To be entirely honest, I’ve had several plans for the past month and a half.”
Chanyeol’s friends light up, and Minseok gives an approving nod. As it turns out, more people are in support of betraying his community than he expected.
Kyungsoo designs his double-jailbreak in fifteen high-pressure minutes. “What we have to work with are four members of X-22-one soldier that’s not considered very trustworthy, one former-soldier-now-Grower, one paranormal-plus-Builder, one just-paranormal-and one person that is accepted as X-22-occupation Builder. And then two more members of X-22, paranormals, who are presumed dead and would scare the shit out of everyone. And on top of that, three members of Q-16-one Builder, one soldier, one mostly-useless invalid with a faulty photographic memory.”
Everyone stares back at him, uneasy. Kyungsoo isn’t exactly selling their case. “Right,” confirms Jongin uncertainly.
“That’s good,” Kyungsoo says. “We can use that.”
“We can?” says Jongdae, eyebrows raised.
“The Sixers will be staying here, out of sight. They’re pretty useless. If you hear yelling, come save our asses,” Kyungsoo says.
“Sounds exciting,” is Baekhyun’s dry response.
“I’m not dragging a group of ten all over the community. Stay out of trouble until I need you,” Kyungsoo tells him, stern.
“What about me?” Luhan asks, raising his hand.
“You’re coming. I need your Builder persona to get into places.”
“That was my job earlier,” Jongdae says smugly.
“Sehun, you’ll be getting Chanyeol out of jail,” Kyungsoo says briskly.
“What?” Sehun yelps.
“All of his guards right now are amateurs. You were trained, originally, as a soldier. You fit the bill perfectly. You’ll go up to the guards on shift, tell them Boa assigned you to take over, say Chanyeol hasn’t tried anything yet so we’re cutting it down to one guard at a time. I doubt they’ll argue. They don’t know what’s going on any more than we do, and guard duty is shit.”
Sehun is wide-eyed and visibly nervous, but he nods bravely. Kyungsoo hates putting him in danger, but today, it’s necessary.
“The main problem there is that his new prison is near Boa’s office, and it’s in the center of the community. People might be watching, or listening in. So don’t give yourself away, even after the old guards are gone. Stand guard and wait for me. Ignore Chanyeol if you have to. While you’re taking over their shift, I’ll be dropping by the armoury to get helmets and things. Armoured soldiers leaving Chanyeol’s prison is a lot less suspicious than, well, Chanyeol, me, and my brother. Plus, I can get us some emergency weapons.”
“Can you get into the armoury okay?” Minseok asks, one eyebrow quirked.
“I’m still a soldier, even if they don’t let me do anything anymore. People recognize me as a soldier. And besides, no one’s going to be there, they’re all at the Dead Zone.” Kyungsoo takes a deep breath. “While we’re getting Chanyeol out, Jongin and Minseok will be luring the guards away from the storehouse. I don’t care what you guys tell them, I don’t care if you lie out your asses, but convince them that they’re about to die if they don’t leave. The box is in there. Use that knowledge to your advantage. Luhan, once the guards are gone, you’ll be heading over there to break us in.”
“Why me?” Luhan asks, voice breaking slightly.
“Because people know who you are, and you have the excuse of Builder to use if anyone asks you what you’re doing,” Kyungsoo tells him. “Pay attention. The front door of the storehouse will be locked, and the guards may not even have the key. No one’s supposed to be going in there. But there’s a full-wall overhead door on the western side that they might have left unlocked-it’s how they got the Machine out. If it’s not unlocked, force your way in. Yifan has a blaster; blow the lock off if you have to. It’s far enough away that no one will pay too much attention to the sound. If they do, tell them you’re doing extra Builder work to make sure the box is locked tight inside, whatever. Once it’s open, come get us, we’ll be hiding out here. We’ll all head to the storehouse together and stay in there. It’s out of the way, no one bothers looking out there, and it’s spacious.” He swallows hard. “And that’s how we’re gonna do this.”
Everyone stares at him, and silence reigns for a few tense seconds. Then, hesitantly, Jongin asks, “What if something goes wrong?”
“Improvise,” Kyungsoo says. “Lie. Make shit up. We have no backup plan, apart from our Sixers and our presumed-dead paranormals running intervention. So do your best to get your job done.”
It’s a messy plan. There’s a lot of room for error. But they don’t have time to come up with anything more sophisticated. They don’t have the resources to think up anything more reliable. This is all they have.
“Just make sure Chanyeol is safe,” Baekhyun tells him, chewing on his lip.
Kyungsoo cracks a slight smile. “I want him to get out of this alive as much as you do, Baekhyun.”
Baekhyun’s eyebrows twitch up. “Yeah?”
Kyungsoo takes a deep, steadying breath. “Yeah.”
There’s a long, heavy pause, and then Baekhyun says, “Well, what are you waiting for? Go get him.”
*****
NEXT>>
A/N: Posting early and not answering any comments because I have no laptop atm and computer access is depressingly limited. SORRY. I am reading and appreciating your comments and theories uwu <333