Nothing Left But Altitude (3/4)
When Kyungsoo comes to, his head is pounding and his ears are ringing. But the first thought that swims out of the darkness of his mind is-Jongin.
Blearily, he sits up and fights the urge to throw up as the room spins. Stupid, stupid, stupid, they’ve been stupid, they should have realized, they should have checked, they should have known-
“Mmmf,” a dark shape lying next to him mumbles, and when Kyungsoo leans over, his grimy fingers brush back blood-matted hair to reveal Jongin’s distinctive nose, his mouth, his eyes blinking slowly.
“Jongin,” Kyungsoo whispers harshly, throat full of gravel and dust. “Jongin, are you all right, can you walk, can you-”
But suddenly the floor beneath them swerves sharply to the right and Kyungsoo falls forward, landing hard on Jongin’s stomach and wincing at the pained moan that leaks from between Jongin’s lips.
“Sorry, sorry,” Kyungsoo gasps, heaving himself upright and rubbing angrily at his temples. So they’re in some sort of vehicle-but with who? And where are they going? And why does his head hurt so damn much?
Unfortunately, someone chooses exactly this moment to jerk the car to a stop, sending Kyungsoo toppling over again as both he and Jongin slam into the back wall of the van they’ve apparently been trapped in. Kyungsoo gasps in pain as his hip connects with the hard metal, but within seconds he’s gasping for a completely different reason. The back doors of the van have been thrown open, sending blinding light into the small, dank space. Jongin merely groans but Kyungsoo hisses, throwing up his arms to ward off the light.
“Damn, you’re awake,” a deep voice says from somewhere in front of him. Kyungsoo finally manages to battle his eyelids open and takes in the face of his kidnapper. The guy looks young-younger than Kyungsoo had expected-and surprisingly handsome. He’s wearing a crisp white button-down with the top two buttons undone, and Kyungsoo can see a small phoenix tattooed on his left clavicle. On the other is the same set of three intertwined rings they’d seen in Baekhyun’s office. The paperweight. Oh, no.
“Need any help, Park?” a lighter voice says from behind the man as a slim, pretty, dark-haired man slides into view, eyeing Kyungsoo critically. “I thought we were supposed to be capturing them, not blowing them up.”
“Same difference,” the man with the tattoos laughs, drawing backwards as his eyes flicker towards Jongin still crumpled up against the back of the van. “If it makes you feel better, Yixing, I didn’t mean for them to get quite so beat up. Yet.”
Kyungsoo growls deep in his throat as the dark-haired man-Yixing?-reaches towards Jongin, and both men suddenly turn to look at him.
“Do you think he bites?” the taller man smirks, and when Yixing rolls his eyes Kyungsoo launches himself forward, managing to surprise the two of them enough to make it past the barricade of their bodies and out onto the hard pavement. But before he can get up and run for it, or fight back, or even get a good look at where he is, the pain in his temples flares dangerously and he screams, falling to the ground with his head cradled in his hands.
“We really need to make sure we get higher-quality shit next time,” the deeper voice says, as Kyungsoo feels large hands grabbing his arms and hauling him roughly back into the van. “He was doing so well during the flight, but it’s worn off too soon.”
“He seems to still be under,” Yixing observes, and when Kyungsoo finally fights off a wave of nausea and cracks his eyes open, he sees him carefully poking at Jongin’s foot.
“That’s my point,” the other man sighs, eyeing Jongin’s still form. “It’s worked exactly the opposite way we wanted it to.”
“Well, you deal with that,” Yixing says, clapping his hands together with an air of finality. “And I’ll deal with him.”
“Would you like to do the honors?” the other man laughs, handing Yixing something Kyungsoo can’t quite make out through the dark spots clouding his vision.
“Ah, nothing like good old tried-and-true methods,” Yixing sighs happily, and before Kyungsoo can struggle he feels a damp cloth being pressed firmly against his nose and mouth. As he fights the chemicals being unwillingly inhaled into his lungs, his mind spins round and round trying to make sense of where they are, of what’s happening. The man had mentioned a flight, which means they could be anywhere. They were drugged, Jongin should be awake but isn’t, Jongin-and then everything is darkness again.
This time when Kyungsoo wakes, he feels more alert-almost human. The first thing he notices is that he’s in what looks like a conference room on the top floor of a huge office building. The wall in front of him is made entirely of glass, and through it he can see a dark river running lazily past grey towers and grimy streets.
The second thing he notices is that he’s in Korea-Seoul, to be exact-as he stares out at the signs and advertisements he can see sprinkled across the city, all printed in a familiar language.
The third thing he notices is that he’s tied to a chair.
The door behind him opens, and Kyungsoo stays perfectly still. He’s never been one to panic in situations like these, and he’s not about to start now.
“So you’re awake,” a quiet voice says, and Kyungsoo mind whirls, tracing its familiar tones, its soft accent, back to the man he’d seen just before he’d been drugged the second time.
Yixing.
“What am I doing here?” Kyungsoo asks bluntly, watching Yixing carefully as the man slides past Kyungsoo’s bound form to stand at the window. Yixing ignores the question, instead turning to shoot him a blinding smile. He smells like expensive cologne and expensive drugs and Kyungsoo struggles not to sneeze.
“You know, if I were you I’d be writing an angry letter to the editor right now, telling those people back at your little headquarters that they’ve made a terrible mistake,” Yixing says slowly, still staring out at the city. “Although I suppose that’d be difficult, tied up like you are. Oops.”
“What do you want?” Kyungsoo tries again, desperate for some sort of answer-he’ll take anything at this point. Who Yixing is, why he’s kidnapped them, what’s happened to Jongin, anything.
“Well, this really isn’t about me, now, is it?” Yixing laughs delicately, finally turning around to stare at Kyungsoo. “This is about The Ring. And our current employers, of course.”
“Employers? I didn’t know The Ring was partial to being owned,” Kyungsoo says casually, though he suddenly has the strange feeling that all of his internal organs have frozen solid.
He’s heard about The Ring-everyone in the business has-your typical gang of smugglers, drug runners, blackmailers. Everything you’d expect from one of the most feared mafia gangs in all of Asia. But Kyungsoo has never heard of The Ring partnering up, and especially not allowing themselves to be used by some other agency. They must have been offered an incredible amount of money, or protection, or-
“Well, isn’t it nice that we aren’t all owned by our employers,” Yixing replies with a sly glance in Kyungsoo’s direction. “I know you can only imagine what that would feel like but I can tell you from experience that having free will cannot be recommended enough.”
Kyungsoo would really like to punch him. Right in his smug, stupid face.
“Now, now, don’t let’s get angry,” Yixing smiles, walking past Kyungsoo nearly close enough to touch. The strange mixture of smells coming off of him is making Kyungsoo feel a little lightheaded, but not so much so that he wouldn’t be able to put Yixing through one of those windows if given the opportunity. “That’s not really what I’m here for, after all. I just want some information.”
“I don’t know anything,” Kyungsoo immediately spits, anger flaring even hotter when Yixing just gives him a pitying look.
“Oh, I really think you do,” he says. “But you might not know that you know. Isn’t it funny how life works like that sometimes?”
“I’ve never much liked philosophy,” Kyungsoo growls, trying to think of what he could possibly know that Yixing wants. He’s always just been told what he needs to know, he’s never questioned, even though he’s wondered-who wouldn’t?-he’s never asked...
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Yixing sighs, abruptly walking back over to the windows and trailing a hand down the cool glass. “I’ve always liked cities built on rivers. They just have so much character.”
“If by character you mean polluted water than sure,” Kyungsoo replies evenly from his chair, staring straight ahead even when Yixing turns to give him a disappointed frown. His mind is racing as he tries frantically to think of a way he and Jongin can both survive this. Their odds are dropping by the second.
“Ah, but it’s always been pretty to look at, hasn’t it?” Yixing asks, smiling just widely enough for Kyungsoo to see that he has dimples. “Even when they used to call it the Muddy River! Do you know who called it that?”
“One of the Three Kingdoms of Korea,” Kyungsoo replies out of force of habit before he can stop himself, but suddenly the words catch in his throat. Muddy.
“Good for you,” Yixing says in surprise, giving Kyungsoo an indulgent smile before turning back to the window. As he does so, Kyungsoo can just make out that same dark tattoo showing through his crisp white shirt. Phoenix.
“Well, you’ve certainly gone to a lot of trouble and waited a long time to get me here only to make me sit in a room dying of boredom,” Kyungsoo says dryly, though his heart is pumping so hard he can feel the beat in his fingertips. And when Yixing turns around with a broad grin stretching across his face he knows he’s figured it out. Fox. They’ve been so stupid.
“Ah, so you do know!” Yixing says happily, clapping his hands like Kyungsoo is a difficult student who’s finally answered a question right. “After New York we weren’t sure, but we figured you must either not suspect a thing or have some huge, complicated master plan you were trying to put into action.”
Apple, Kyungsoo thinks desperately. Dragon. What he says is, “And what would you do if I told you that we did have some large, complex master plan?”
“Oh, please,” Yixing snorts, giving Kyungsoo a sympathetic look. “Our sources tell us that you two have been left here completely alone and defenseless. Well, at least you have.”
“What does that mean?” Kyungsoo demands, thoughts flashing again to Jongin. Jongin’s hair, his hands, his smile, his voice-“What have you done with Kai?”
“Now don’t you worry about…what was that you called him? Kai?” Yixing simpers, shrugging as he steps delicately around Kyungsoo and moves towards the door. “If I were you, I’d be more worried about myself. Bye now! Don’t go away.”
With a last giggle, Yixing slides out the door, leaving Kyungsoo sitting in stunned silence. It takes several moments before he remembers that he’s tied up and should be trying to get free. As he wiggles back and forth in his chair, trying to loosen the knots, Kyungsoo feels a chilly wave of desperation wash over him. They knew he and Jongin were coming. They practically planned them coming, ever since Kyungsoo had taken that leotard from Zitao.
Where is Jongin?
It’s hours before someone comes to get him. Long enough for Kyungsoo to work his wrists out of their bonds-quickly slipping the loosened rope back over his hands to keep up the appearance of being tied. Long enough for Kyungsoo to have imagined a thousand different tortures they could be subjecting Jongin to. Long enough for Kyungsoo to have fallen into a dazed sort of sleep, head lolling uncomfortably against the hard chair back.
“You’re not much of a spy, are you?” a sarcastic voice drawls from much too close to his right ear, and Kyungsoo jerks away so hard he almost topples over in his chair. The man standing next to him snickers, moving backwards and planting his hands on his hips.
“Obviously not, or else I wouldn’t be sitting in this room, tied to a chair,” Kyungsoo bites back, noticing that his words make the man’s mouth twist slightly upwards in amusement.
“Very true,” the man says, moving forward again and flicking open a thin-bladed knife. Kyungsoo tenses, braced for some sort of pain, but all the man does is slice through the ropes binding his ankles to the chair and grab the back of Kyungsoo’s shirt, dragging him to his feet.
“Ouch,” Kyungsoo protests, once he sees that the man hasn’t been sent to hurt him, but the man just grunts in annoyance and shoves him forward.
“Come on, we’ve got places to be,” the man says, running a hand through his shock of bleached hair. Kyungsoo lets himself be led out of the room, but as they’re walking down a dark, dusty hallway he gets curious.
“So, you are?” he asks, eyes flicking downwards to make sure his questions don’t annoy the man enough for him to draw that knife again. Kyungsoo’s hands may be tied, but if he has enough advance warning he’s fairly sure he’d be able to take this tall, skinny stranger.
“What, like to know the names of the people who kidnap you?” the man taunts, shoving Kyungsoo into an elevator and pressing the button for the basement floor. The elevator lurches into motion, and as they both stumble Kyungsoo takes the opportunity to loosen the rope binding his hands even further.
“I’ve found it never hurts,” Kyungsoo sniffs, and suddenly he wonders if this is how Jongin feels all the time when he talks to people. Like he’s in his element, like he knows what he’s doing, like he knows exactly what game they’re playing and what all the rules are.
“Oh Sehun,” the man says shortly, and this time when he reaches up to scratch his head Kyungsoo sees an expensive watch strapped to his wrist. He also has a small phoenix tattooed on the pale underside of his forearm. “Resident art and artifact smuggler, in case you were wondering. The best.”
“Smuggler for The Ring,” Kyungsoo says cautiously. Sehun seems to be the lenient type-willing to excuse questions from people who amuse him-but Kyungsoo has been wrong before, and paid for it. He fights the urge to press a hand to his aching hip.
“So that’s what you’re after,” Sehun laughs darkly, giving Kyungsoo a knowing look. “Yes, for The Ring. I don’t think I’ll be shot for telling you that. You never know, though. I didn’t want to join up with these K.E.X.O. people, let alone let them turn our hideout into their goddamn headquarters. But Park is the one in charge, and he decided we should do it. If you ask me, he just did it because he knew that if we let in those creeps your precious E.X.O. would-ah. Never mind.”
“Would what?” Kyungsoo asks quickly, silently cursing Sehun for picking exactly the wrong moment to start being discreet. But of course. He should have known that the only people capable of bullying The Ring into working for them would be...them.
“Now that I could be shot for telling you,” Sehun chuckles, just as the elevator dings and the doors creak open. “Besides, I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough anyway. I would say I feel bad for you, but really, I don’t. Don’t take it personally or anything.”
“I’ll try,” Kyungsoo snorts, realizing that it’s useless to ask Sehun anything more. Instead, he starts glancing around, searching for any means of escape. They seem to be wandering through some kind of underground complex-tunnels lead off every which way from the main corridor that Sehun is taking him down. Promising.
“In case you’re thinking of running,” Sehun says conversationally, carefully tightening his grip on Kyungsoo’s arm, “know that this place is crawling with guards and littered with cameras. You’d be lucky to make it ten feet without being killed.”
“Aren’t you not supposed to tell your prisoners all about your defenses?” Kyungsoo replies sweetly, though he can’t stop a frown from marring his features as he realizes that Sehun isn’t going to be as easily fooled as he’d thought.
Sehun doesn’t dignify that with a response beyond a sideways glare, but Kyungsoo decides to press his luck with one more question.
“So, what’s with the all the phoenixes?” he asks nonchalantly, carefully noting each turn they make in his head. It might come in useful to know how to get back to the room they’d left him in. “Yixing has one too.”
“Yeah,” Sehun snorts, but Kyungsoo can tell that he’s more amused than annoyed. “Figures, doesn’t it? As soon as I get the traditional triple ring, Chanyeol up and decides that all his favorites should get the phoenix as well. His own personal symbol, if you want to call it that.”
“Favorites?” Kyungsoo asks slyly, not bothering to duck when Sehun hauls back and slaps him hard across the face. If it’ll make Sehun feel better, feel more in-control, Kyungsoo will take anything. Sehun’s finally given the deep-voiced a name. Chanyeol. Kyungsoo wonders why it sounds so vaguely familiar.
“Favorites as in most trusted operatives,” Sehun clarifies, smirking as he watches redness blossom across Kyungsoo’s cheek. “Gang leaders. Whatever. I don’t really care what he calls me as long as it means I get to keep my 15% commission on everything my fence can sell.”
“That’s generous,” Kyungsoo observes, and he almost thinks Sehun is going to slap him again, but instead he seems to think better of it and just yanks at Kyungsoo’s arm a bit so he stumbles.
“Isn’t it, though?” Sehun sniffs, stopping in front of a set of tall, dark doors. There’s no discernable lock or keypad but Kyungsoo knows that there are other ways to open them.
Please state your name.
A mechanical voice fills the hallway as Sehun calmly says, “Oh Sehun,” and a red light by the wall flickers to green. Case in point, Kyungsoo thinks. This is it.
Just as Sehun steps forward, jerking Kyungsoo along beside him, Kyungsoo pretends to stumble. When Sehun pauses just inside the door to drag him forward, Kyungsoo slips his hands quickly out of their bindings and ducks underneath Sehun’s arm, letting his fist swing wildly until it connects with the side of Sehun’s head and Sehun goes down. Kyungsoo jumps back just as the doors slide shut with a pneumatic hiss, and then he’s running, tearing down the corridor and back towards the main hallway they’d just left. An alarm starts blaring behind him and, as adrenaline floods his veins, Kyungsoo finally feels like he’s come home, like he’s somewhere familiar. This is what he knows.
Wishing desperately that he had a gun, Kyungsoo ducks into a dark tunnel to avoid several pairs of tramping feet, sliding the grate that had been covering its entrance smoothly back into place. Even after the feet have moved past, Kyungsoo stays still, listening hard for any other disturbances. He doesn’t hear anything. What he does hear, over the continuous whine of the siren, is a soft voice speaking in what Kyungsoo is sure is Chinese. Strange.
Turning curiously around, Kyungsoo begins to crawl down the tunnel, fingers brushing the rough walls as his knees scrape across the floor. As he travels the noise doesn’t get louder, the way he’d expected. Instead, it remains barely-there, hardly heard, a thin whisper lodged in his ear. But he knows he’s going in the right direction, can somehow feel it, and when the tunnel ends in another grate Kyungsoo suddenly decides he’s going to open it. As he creeps out into the dimly lit hallway-there are no sirens here, everything is oddly silent-he finally sees where the voice is coming from.
It’s a boy.
He’s pale, golden hair falling gently against porcelain skin. But that’s not the strange part. The strange part is that there are some blocks floating in front of him, not held up by any wires or supports that Kyungsoo can see. The boy looks up and appears to notice him, since he gives Kyungsoo a blinding smile. As he does, all the small wooden blocks clatter harshly to the floor.
“Hello,” the boy says in perfect Korean. Kyungsoo’s more than a little rusty but he remembers enough to understand this. “Are you going to play with me?”
“Sorry,” Kyungsoo breathes, stepping forward towards the boy, and that’s when he realizes that there’s a pane of glass separating them. The boy is trapped in a glass box-clear on three sides, a solid, clinical white wall making up the fourth. He’s sitting on a pale blue carpet, a mint green chair and table rest on the floor behind him. But what Kyungsoo notices first, notices most, is that there is no door. There are no windows. It’s just the boy, in his cage, looking out into the deserted hallway.
“Nobody ever comes to play with me anymore,” the boy sniffs, wiping his small nose with a small fist. This time when he looks up at Kyungsoo, Kyungsoo notices that his eyes are a strange violet color. He could have sworn they were black before.
“How long have you been here?” Kyungsoo asks, pressing a hand experimentally to the glass in front of him. It feels smooth and slippery under his touch, but terribly sturdy. So most likely not glass-some kind of tough plastic? But why would anyone need to keep a little boy locked up like this? “What’s your name?”
The boy doesn’t answer, instead pointing at the wall somewhere behind Kyungsoo’s head. Kyungsoo turns, confused, and sees a small plastic shelf set into the smooth plaster. Lying on the shelf is a thick folder with some words printed across the top. Subject 011.
“Subject 011?” Kyungsoo asks, picking up the folder and carefully opening it to expose its contents. The boy in front of him giggles, though Kyungsoo can’t see anything funny about this. He can’t see anything funny about this at all.
“They call me that,” the boy says matter-of-factly. “But my name is Luhan.”
“Luhan,” Kyungsoo says weakly, as the boy in front of him nods vigorously. “Why are you here, Luhan?”
“I don’t know,” Luhan sighs, flopping back down on the floor and hugging his knees to his chest. “But I want to go home. Will you take me home, Kyungsoo?”
“I-” Kyungsoo starts to say before he stops short. “How-how did you know my name?”
“What?” Luhan frowns, dropping his eyes from Kyungsoo and picking up a block from the ground. He holds it up in front of his face and, when he lets go, it doesn’t fall. Instead it just hangs in the air, suspended, and Kyungsoo feels the blood draining from his face. No.
He glances back at the folder in his hands, words starting to swim before his eyes. Collaboration and superior mental capacity and electroshock and top secret. And then when he flips a page, the logo printed across the top of the paper suddenly sends a sickening heat swooping through his stomach. No. No no no.
“Luhan,” he whispers urgently, pressing his palm flat against the glass of the boy’s enclosure. “Who is keeping you here? Do you know who they are? Do you know who they’re working for?”
“Why are you asking me things you already know?” Luhan whines, not looking away from where he’s building a floating staircase spiraling upwards. Kyungsoo wants to scream.
“Because I can’t, this won’t, I-” Kyungsoo stutters before he suddenly feels a wave of rage wash over him. Because there, staring up at him with faces he can barely remember, eyes he never got the chance to memorize, are his parents. Printed beside their photos are the words: Possible Security Threat. Association with project terminated. And underneath that, scrawled in red in messy handwriting-unfortunately, son proved unviable for project. annoying loss but not insurmountable, check lead in China.
This is when Luhan begins to scream.
Kyungsoo doesn’t remember the alarms starting. They’re just suddenly there, blaring in his ears as his heart threatens to rip its way out of his chest, trail blood and heartbreak down the corridor.
“Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” Luhan screams, throwing himself against the glass, pounding it with tiny fists, but it’s not until Kyungsoo looks up and sees the pale green table and chair hurtling towards him that he unfreezes, just as a crew of lab-coated people pound into view.
“Hey! Stop!” One of them yells at Kyungsoo’s retreating figure, but then there’s a tremendous shattering and Kyungsoo hears nothing more. He doesn’t realize that he’s crying until he’s halfway down a side corridor, ducking around carts filled with medical supplies and cardboard boxes that try to trip him up at every turn. The world starts running together into a messy blur of white and grey and red and this is probably why Kyungsoo does what he does when he turns a corner and suddenly sees someone standing there, someone who shouldn’t be there, who could never be there. So Kyungsoo falls to the ground, angry tears leaking out onto the cold floor, and listens to the sound of his heart breaking in the quiet room.
“Jongin,” he whispers, and it’s not until he feels those warm hands on his arm, those thin fingers lifting his head, worriedly brushing his hair out of his eyes, that he knows he’s not dreaming.
“Kyungsoo,” Jongin whispers back, suddenly dropping Kyungsoo’s head like he’s been burned and taking a few steps backwards. “Are you all right?”
“It was them, Jongin,” Kyungsoo says slowly, and as he looks up and takes in Jongin’s unmarked face, his unfamiliar clothes, he feels the tears starting to dry, pure leaden anger settling in his stomach. “It was always them, I should have known, I’m going to kill them, I’m going to kill every last one of them, I-”
“Kyungsoo, what are you saying?” Jongin asks, face crumpling as he appears to fight an inner battle with himself between jumping forward or hanging back. The latter side seems to win since he remains standing in place, merely watching Kyungsoo with worried eyes.
“My parents,” Kyungsoo gasps, voice thick with moisture and rage. “They killed my parents, Jongin, they killed them to get to me, it’s all my fault, it’s all my fault they killed them.”
“Why are you suddenly so upset?” Jongin asks, finally sinking to his knees so he can look straight into Kyungsoo’s eyes. “You knew that someone killed them, why does it matter who did it? Was it K.E.X.O.? Is that it?”
“No,” Kyungsoo gulps, struggling to draw a breath when it feels like there’s a boulder sitting in the hollow of his chest. “It was them.”
“Them?” Jongin asks desperately, balancing on the balls of his feet with his right hand pressing his left firmly against his thigh, as if preventing him from reaching out, from touching. Kyungsoo wishes Jongin would touch him, just to reassure him that this is real, that he’s alive, even if Kyungsoo’s parents-even if Kyungsoo himself-are not.
“E.X.O.,” Kyungsoo spits, and he sees Jongin fall back in shock, tailbone colliding hard with the cold floor as he stares at Kyungsoo in disbelief.
“But how-why?” he asks, wincing as he pulls himself back up, rubbing his spine ruefully.
“They were working with K.E.X.O. They are working with K.E.X.O.,” Kyungsoo says dully, staring hard at his hands. They’re so clean, so perfectly clean, when really they should be stained red with blood. He’s killed and he’s watched his partners be killed. He’s lied, he’s stolen, he’s blackmailed. He’s given up himself to be the person they wanted him to be.
“What are you talking about, they wouldn’t do that-” Jongin starts to say, but Kyungsoo speaks over him, speaks louder.
“They’re trying to make science fiction a reality, Jongin,” he says, voice growing stronger with every trembling word. “They’re trying to build a new army. Telepathy, telekinesis, everything that can be unlocked from the minds of people with ‘superior intelligence.’ Kids with superior intelligence. They’ve been working together on this project for years and nobody knew, nobody thought-”
“I’m sorry,” Jongin gasps, and when Kyungsoo glances up at him he sees that Jongin is shivering, mouth opening and closing wordlessly. “I’m so sorry, Kyungsoo.”
“I was stupid,” Kyungsoo hisses, feeling the flames licking at his toes, his stomach, his throat. “I deserve this, I deserve everything for believing them, for thinking I could trust anyone, I do. I deserve worse than this. I deserve to be dead, Jongin, Jongin kill me, please, I don’t deserve to be alive any more after everything I’ve done, everything I’ve let people do.”
“Kyungsoo-” Jongin says, and now Kyungsoo can hear the tears soaking his words, and he has just enough time to wonder why Jongin is crying before he hears the door behind him slam open.
Kyungsoo doesn’t wait to see who comes through it, instead darting out the other door into the hallway, hoping Jongin is smart enough to follow him. When he looks around, ducking wildly as a hail of bullets go whizzing past his ears, he’s pleased to see that Jongin’s keeping pace with him, staying just behind as they zigzag their way through piles of junk lining the hallways.
“This place...hasn’t been cleaned in a while...huh?” Kyungsoo gasps as they duck into a narrow corridor and crouch behind a towering stack of cardboard boxes.
“I guess since K.E.X.O. turned this place into their own personal lab they needed a lot of equipment moved down,” Jongin laughs darkly, as Kyungsoo peers around the corner of the stack to look for their assailants. There’s nobody in sight, so Kyungsoo creeps forward again, trying desperately to remember which direction he’d come from with Sehun. If only he could find the way out…
“This way,” Jongin whispers, interrupting Kyungsoo’s thoughts, and Kyungsoo barely has time to wonder how Jongin knows before he hears shouts and the pounding of feet behind him. “Go!”
Jongin leads them down a wide, brightly lit corridor that makes Kyungsoo extremely nervous, but luckily by the time the people chasing them round the corner they’re already turning off and stumbling up a dusty staircase.
“Here, help-” Jongin huffs as he throws his weight against a heavy wooden door blocking the top of the stairs. Kyungsoo shoves him out of the way, wincing as he hears Jongin’s yelp of pain, and kicks hard at the door handle. Nothing happens.
“Shit,” Jongin swears, throwing himself against the door again as the sound of voices starts to filter up the stairwell. “Shit, shit, shit, why is this locked, why, why, why-”
“Together,” Kyungsoo grunts, positioning himself on the other side of Jongin and facing his shoulder towards the door. “Ready? One...two...three…”
Kyungsoo only realizes that the tears haven’t dried on his cheeks when they burst out into hot sunshine and he can feel the wet tracks streaking down his face. Angrily, he rubs them away, but he can’t rub away the strange hollowness that’s settled in his stomach, bumping roughly against his lungs, his heart.
“Come on, we’re close to the main road,” Jongin breathes, already running towards the streak of asphalt blurring into the horizon.
Kyungsoo follows quickly after him, but not quite fast enough to escape the question of how Jongin knows where they are, where Jongin has been all this time. Kyungsoo knows better than to ask questions, but sometimes he just can’t help himself.
“So, K.E.X.O.’s new stronghold is right underneath one of The Ring’s safe houses?” Junmyeon asks for the third time as they’re sitting in a grimy hotel room-one of the cheapest and least conspicuous they could find-talking to him on the phone. Kyungsoo can barely hear him over the background drone of the television playing some drama Kyungsoo couldn’t care less about. Jongin says the noise is comforting.
“I don’t know the exact address,” Kyungsoo huffs, flicking a stray thread off the bedcover and clutching the phone tighter to his ear. “Since I was kind of drugged when they were taking us there. But I know it was a tall building, and near the center of the city.”
“Just give us as much information as you can,” Junmyeon says, a sigh crackling through the phone. “And we’ll find it. Out of curiosity, did they take any of your things when they kidnapped you?”
“My weapons,” Kyungsoo answers mournfully, running a hand along the smooth underside of his forearm where his favorite knife would normally be strapped. Junmyeon had directed them to a weapons drop on the way to the hotel, but they’d only had pistols stashed there-nothing as pretty and comforting as Kyungsoo’s knives. “And my phone.”
“Which cell did you have on you?” Junmyeon asks, excitement suddenly coloring his voice. “Personal or standard-issue?”
“Standard-issue, I think,” Kyungsoo murmurs, trying to remember. Rarely does he bring a personal on a mission with him, but what with worrying about Jongin and knowing what they might encounter, he may have chosen differently than usual.
“Then we’ve got them,” Junmyeon crows happily. Kyungsoo can already hear the click of keyboard keys in the background.
“How does that help?” he asks, though he’s fairly certain he already knows the answer.
“Oh, all the standard-issue phones are equipped with a GPS locating device,” Junmyeon mumbles, distractedly enough that Kyungsoo knows it’s time to end the call.
“Of course,” Kyungsoo says dully before hanging up the phone.
“Good news?” Jongin asks, looking up from the television when he sees Kyungsoo placing the phone back in its cradle.
“What? Oh. Sure. Yeah.” Kyungsoo sighs, flopping down onto the bed and burying his face in the pillows. He’s not sure it’s completely sanitary, given the pitiful condition of the rest of the room, but it makes him feel just a little better.
Jongin looks like he’s about to protest, or maybe ask Kyungsoo to be more specific, when suddenly Jongin’s phone starts to ring. His cell phone.
“I-I have to take this,” Jongin mumbles, face paling visibly as he steps out onto the room’s small balcony, slamming the door hard behind him.
Kyungsoo tries not to listen. He really does. He covers his head with the pillow until he starts wondering if he might get lice that way and then can’t keep doing that. He wanders over to the corner of the room farthest away from the balcony and sits down, curling his knees up to his chest and trying to pay attention to the TV, trying to block out the sound of Jongin’s voice. Kyungsoo doesn’t want to know what he knows that call is going to tell him. He doesn’t want to know.
But it’s too much. A lifetime of listening at keyholes and over microphones, a lifetime of testing to make sure his senses are impeccably sharp, his abilities finely honed, means he can hear every word Jongin says through the flimsy glass door. Every word.
“Look, I know what I’m doing,” Jongin whispers, as his shadow shifts restlessly against the curtains. “No, of course he doesn’t know!”
Kyungsoo’s heart drops into his stomach.
“Yes, I do know what I promised,” Jongin mutters coldly, and Kyungsoo can see him starting to pace up and down the narrow strip of concrete. “Nothing has to change. I understand that.”
Kyungsoo suddenly feels too tired even to sit and he lets himself slide down the wall until he’s lying curled up on the floor, head aching almost as terribly as his heart.
“Just leave me alone, okay?” Jongin hisses, as Kyungsoo watches his silhouette pull the phone away from his ear so he can talk angrily into it. “Unlike some people, I don’t turn on my friends whenever it’s convenient. Fuck you too, Sehun.”
Kyungsoo slips a hand between his ribs, grasps his heart, and crushes it into the carpet. To think that he had been so pathetic, had actually started to care, to think Jongin cared, he should have known, he should have remembered what happens whenever he starts to trust someone. He should have remembered. He’d promised himself he’d never be caught unawares like this again but obviously he hadn’t watched carefully enough, prepared himself well enough. In a way, it’s mostly his fault, Kyungsoo thinks dully. His fault.
“Are you all right?” Jongin asks worriedly as he re-enters the room and sees Kyungsoo curled on his side on the dirty carpet.
“Just fine,” Kyungsoo spits, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to erase what he’s just heard from his memory. It doesn’t work. Each word still rings clearly in his ear. I know what I’m doing, Sehun. I know what I promised. He doesn’t know.
“Hey,” Jongin says quietly, and his tone is so serious that Kyungsoo decides to expend the energy to sit up and look at him. “We’ll destroy them. The people who killed your parents. I don’t care who they are, or what organization they’re working for.”
And Kyungsoo would normally be annoyed by such a blatant show of sympathy, or upset by the revelation that his entire life has been built around a lie, but instead he feels a sudden rush of nausea as memories start to flood his unwilling mind. He tries to push them away, fold them up small, shelve them in easily explainable categories. But he can’t, and when he does finally meet Jongin’s eyes he knows that his gaze is desperate and pleading, that Jongin can tell right away that something is wrong. Kyungsoo has never before wished so hard to be wrong about something.
“Jongin,” he says, and he has to stop himself from wincing when Jongin smiles brightly back at him. “How did you know?”
“How did I know what?” Jongin asks, but even though his tone is nonchalant Kyungsoo sees his eyes darken as he starts to realize the meaning behind Kyungsoo’s questions.
“How did you know how to get out of that building?” Kyungsoo asks, and he knows he’s finally asking the right questions when Jongin looks away, lips trembling slightly. “How did you know how close we were to the main road? How did you know that K.E.X.O. had made The Ring’s basement into their own little secret lab? Where were you when I was tied to a chair thinking that you were being tortured or worse?”
“Kyungsoo, I-” Jongin starts to say, but Kyungsoo cuts him off, anger rising in his throat and threatening to choke him.
“Why do you still have your cell phone when they took mine from me? Why were you just talking to Oh Sehun, the man who tried to kill me, and why did you call him your friend?” Kyungsoo spits, wishing for an instant that he was a snake so he could spit poison at Jongin instead of just poisonous words, burn him the way Kyungsoo burns.
“I can explain, Kyungsoo, this isn’t-” Jongin starts to say, but Kyungsoo cuts him off again. He’s tired of never getting to ask questions. He’s so tired.
“Isn’t what, Jongin?” he hisses, finally rising to his feet and smirking when he sees Jongin take a step backwards, hands raised protectively. “Isn’t what it looks like? Isn’t like you’ve been planning to betray me this whole time? Isn’t like you played me for the pathetic fool that I am?”
“I wasn’t lying,” Jongin says firmly, but Kyungsoo doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter what Jongin says anymore, it doesn’t matter what he’s said before. Everything has been a lie. Everything.
“Get out,” Kyungsoo says quietly, and it’s not until he sees the shock flickering across Jongin’s face that he realizes he’s pulled out his gun.
“Kyungsoo,” Jongin breathes slowly, putting both his hands in the air in a gesture Kyungsoo’s seen so many times it only serves to make him angrier. “Kyungsoo, what are you doing? Think about what you’re doing. Yes, I originally joined E.X.O. because Chanyeol wanted me to, because he wanted inside information about what their plans were and where they’d be sending us…you. But when I started to fall-when I realized-I stopped, okay? That’s why Sehun was so angry with me, when you were captured they were so angry because I hadn’t sent a report in two weeks, they’d had to depend on outside sources to know which plane we were getting on and they almost didn’t get us in time-”
“Well, knowing you were able to inconvenience your mafia buddies definitely makes me want to trust you,” Kyungsoo drawls, flames flashing behind as his eyes as he tries desperately to remember what his parents’ faces looked like. He can’t remember.
“Just, look, just put down the gun,” Jongin gulps, even as he takes a step closer to the door. Kyungsoo can see the fear starting to gather in his eyes like storm clouds on the horizon and Kyungsoo is careful to keep his own face blank. His hands are steady, gun leveled directly at Jongin. From this distance, with all the training Kyungsoo’s had, it’s a sure kill.
“Get out,” Kyungsoo repeats, standing his ground even as Jongin continues to move slowly backwards. He almost laughs when he suddenly remembers the last time he told Jongin to get out of a room. “Get out before I do something I’ll regret.”
“You always make fun of me for thinking I live in a spy movie,” Jongin says harshly, hand on the door handle. “But sometimes I think you’re the one who likes being the hero in their own personal tragedy.”
He slams the door behind him, and for a terrible second Kyungsoo confuses the sharp sound with a gunshot and thinks that he’s fired on Jongin by force of habit. But when his mind clears he sees that there’s no puddle of blood soaking steadily into the filthy carpet, no dark eyes staring endlessly up at the ceiling. There’s just the flimsy door hanging tenuously on its hinges. Just the empty room, TV still playing quietly in the background. Just Kyungsoo, broken into a thousand tiny pieces, all of them jagged enough to draw blood. The fire’s gone now, and Kyungsoo is cold. The cold is almost worse than the burning. Almost.
Part 4