Super Junior {various pairings ; High Technology (10/?)}
Title: High Technology (10/?)
Fandom: Super Junior (AU, !cyberpunk)
Pairing: Siwon/Sungmin, Hankyung/Heechul, Kyuhyun/Zhou Mi, Kangin/Eeteuk, Kibum/Donghae, Yehsung/Ryeowook, other pairings implied.
Word count: 3,902
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The micro-chips let the government keep tabs on your every move; the video cameras let the government know when they need to start paying attention. Get rid of the chip in the back of your brain and you can slip under the radar, and do whatever the hell you like. It's not like they're the bad guys, but it's not like they're the good guys, either.
Warning: this chapter contains scenes which imply rape, which some readers may wish to skip and/or avoid. These occur in the flashback.
A/N: I AM IN EDINBURGH. impromptu trip, so I wasn't expecting to be able to post but yay internet access. Have this chapter. Shit some bricks. idk. R.E. the warning: I have quoted it at two friends who both were like "BRB THROWING UP" so just be careful okay guys :( <3
High Technology (10/?)
"It was one of our informants," Shindong explained, voice flat. "I went to see if he'd seen Heechul, but he was dead when I got there. He'd been shot, twice, blood on the floor where he'd obviously tried to crawl away when the first one didn't kill him." He dug in his pocket, and brought something out, enclosed in his fist. "I found this beside him."
He flung it on the table; a small button, last seen on -- "Hankyung," Eeteuk said, turning towards him. "This is from one of your shirts, isn't it?"
Hankyung picked it up, a metal button covered in a gold shine. "Yes," he murmured, and he didn't seem to notice the way that everyone was staring at him, or taking a nervous step away from him, as if he was the one responsible for the death of their informant. Henry, who had previously been sitting beside Hankyung, shifted so far away that he almost fell off the table and onto Eunhyuk's lap. "It's from my shirt. It was the one that Heechul stole, yesterday."
"Heechul stole your shirt?"
"He was wearing it when I left yesterday. He said that he couldn't find his own, so he'd raided my wardrobe." He put the button back on the table, and collapsed into a chair, head in his hands once more. "What has he done?" he whispered.
"It looked like there'd been a struggle," Shindong said. "Maybe it got pulled off?"
"He killed him," Ryeowook said shakily. "It's like I dreamed. He's coming for us, Yehsung." Yehsung wrapped an arm around Ryeowook's shoulders but didn't say anything; he was staring at the floor thoughtfully.
"I've got a bad feeling about this," Kyuhyun said. "Donghae, Kangin, go check on our other informants." With tense nods, they left the room. Sungmin got to his feet and began pacing up and down, drawing an irritated look from Kibum. Eventually Siwon reached out and grabbed his hand and pulled him back over to the table; it had begun to irritate him too.
"Kui Xian," Zhou Mi said, quietly and in Mandarin. "Now will you try?"
"No," Kyuhyun said, a little harshly. "Don't you see, Zhou Mi? There's nothing to look for. He's just gone crazy or something. What could there be to look for?"
"Weird behaviour," Zhou Mi said, clearly grasping at straws. "Just anything that seems a little bit off."
"Weird behaviour and Heechul go hand in hand, Zhou Mi," Kyuhyun said flatly. "I wouldn't know what to look for."
"You wouldn't know," Zhou Mi said, very, very quietly, "or you don't want to?"
Even those who couldn't understand realised that something was suddenly very tense between Kyuhyun and Zhou Mi. Ryeowook curled a little into Yehsung, and Sungmin took a step closer to Siwon. Siwon caught Henry looking at him, confused and curious, as if Siwon could know what the strange conversation had meant. Siwon didn't have a clue, but he knew that it had something to do with Heechul.
"What do you want, Zhou Mi?" he asked. Zhou Mi tried to say something, but it was Kyuhyun who got in first.
"Nothing," he said. "Nothing at all. It's not happening, okay? So everyone just fucking forget about it before I fucking do something about it."
Once more, Zhou Mi slammed out of the room. Yehsung untangled himself from Ryeowook and stood up. He looked tired and twice as stressed as the rest of them. "I have to go see to Eunhyuk," he said. "If Donghae and Kangin bring in anyone injured, then you know where I am."
"You think someone else will be brought in?" Shindong asked, like he was commenting on the weather or something.
"I have no idea," Yehsung shrugged. "I don't know what to think anymore."
No one was brought to Yehsung over the next few hours because there was no one that they could save. The tramp who lived by the river; shot in the head. The two guys who lived in an apartment three streets away; stabbed ten times in total. The whore who dealt with important clients; hung from her ceiling fan. As the day passed and the death tally totted up, the atmosphere in the operations room became more and more black, more anticipatory, until Donghae came in just after five, looking like he was going to cry.
"I found this," he said, and he dropped something on the table. They were all expecting another button, something insignificant, but no -- it was a necklace, a thin silver chain with the Chinese symbol for "hee" hanging as a pendant. Heechul had paid good money (in the form of digital radio parts) at the market to get it made six years earlier and he was fiercely proud of it. There was no way he'd just leave it lying around anywhere.
"Where did you find it?" Kyuhyun asked sharply. Hankyung picked it over with a blank look on his face, turning it over with his hands. It was splashed with blood.
"Chan-ang, you know, the guy who owns that drug house, he's been killed. Stabbed, like a gazillion times. There was blood on the fucking ceiling, Kyuhyun. He had that in his hand."
"Wait," Kangin said, jumping to his feet. "Wait, that's impossible. I just saw Chan-ang half an hour ago, I swear. He said that he hadn't seen Heechul but he'd keep an eye out. There's only one way into the street that his place is on, and it's a long fucking road. I'd have seen Heechul come in -- or Donghae would have seen him come out. It's just not physically possible."
"You think someone is framing him?" Donghae asked eagerly.
"There's a back entrance," Kibum said reluctantly. He clearly didn't want to believe it either, but felt the need to tell the truth. "I know because of, well."
"Heechul wouldn't leave this behind," Hankyung said firmly, holding up the necklace by the chain. "There's no way, it was his most prized possession."
"He probably didn't even realise it was gone," Kyuhyun said. "There must have been a struggle, Chan-ang goes down, grabs the necklace from Heechul's neck, Heechul legs it -- maybe he hears Donghae coming, or maybe someone else interrupts, or maybe he just wants to be away, and leaves the vital clue behind."
"You're wrong," Hankyung said furiously. "He wouldn't have left it behind."
"No one else has a necklace like it," Kyuhyun said. "It's a one of a kind."
"Then someone has taken it from him and is framing him," Hankyung said. "Heechul couldn't have killed all these people, not without being seen by someone, and no one has seen him."
"He could have a hood on," said Kyuhyun, and his voice was so blank. "He could be avoiding people. He could be--"
"He could be a lot of things," Eeteuk said, interrupting what he could see was going to end up a fierce, potentially dangerous, argument. "We won't know until we find him, so that needs to be the priority right now."
"If he's going after our people, then they'll be good places to start," Shindong said. "We simply keep guard outside and wait for him to come to us."
Kyuhyun sent them all off to do whatever they thought was necessary, and climbed the stairs to his room, finding Zhou Mi slumped outside the door asleep. "Couldn't even manage to get in the room, huh?" Kyuhyun asked, more to himself than anything, the flare of guilt rising up once more. Grunting, he heaved Zhou Mi into the room and then collapsed on the bed, Zhou Mi's back against the frame. Kyuhyun stroked through his hair.
"You've always got to try and make a good guy out of me," he said, as Zhou Mi turned to the touch in his sleep.
FIVE YEARS EARLIER
It was the gunshots which woke Ryeowook up. For a second, he thought they were outside, which was terrifying enough. He might not have lived in a particularly nice area, but indiscriminate gunshots weren't something Ryeowook experienced on a regular basis. Then he heard shouting, his mother screaming, and he realised that no; it was coming from inside the house. His father's yell for someone to run was cut off by another bang.
The door flew open and Ryeowook almost screamed himself, but it was just his older sister, hair loose around her face and nightdress bloody. She slammed the bedroom door shut behind her and sobbed out, "Ryeowook, get under the bed."
"What's going on?" Ryeowook asked, already with his feet on the floor. "What's happening?"
"The Institution is here," she said, and jerked forward as someone on the other side tried to force the door open. She just managed to hold it. "Get under the bed and don't move until it's safe."
He'd just rolled under when whoever was outside forced their way into the room. His sister began screaming, screaming screaming screaming, but the man just laughed at her. Ryeowook, hidden under the bed with no way of seeing, could only hear noises; his sister's screams fading into hysterical sobs, a man grunting, the bed springs above him squeaking. Then he heard something being dragged from the room, the bare feet of his sister, blood trickling down her legs, scraping along the floor before his eyes. He clamped his hands over his mouth to stop any noise from escaping; it was something he became good at over the years.
Then, there was silence.
He thought it was safe. Carefully, he rolled out from under the bed and climbed to his feet. Slow tip-toe steps to his bedroom door; his mother's body lying in a pool of blood in the hallway made him scream in horror and a mad in one of the other rooms suddenly appeared, gun held up to his chest. Ryeowook didn't wait for anything to happen, he simply ran. The gunshot rang out, but the bullet ended up in the wall to his left as he took the stairs down to the front door three at a time.
The shouts of his assailants touched only upon the very edge of his consciousness; he was aware of shouting but not of words. To listen would only have slowed him down, and he knew that he couldn't afford to be slowed down. He wasn't fast, he wasn't good at sports, and he'd suffered from a mild form of asthma as a child. To think about what was behind him was to slow his legs, and so he ran for his life, terrified that there'd be someone in front of him. No one was. He burst out of his house onto a deserted street, the street he had lived on for most of his life, the lone street light flickering pathetically.
As he turned to flee, the man who had first shot at him came out of the house too, reaching out to grab his arm, or perhaps the collar of his pyjama top; Ryeowook felt the faint brush of his fingertips as his hand closed around thin air, and then Ryeowook was off.
The man chased him for a white, he knew that much, but when the man stopped, Ryeowook didn't realise. He just kept running until he was totally and helplessly lost. His legs ached, his chest and throat burned and in his mind all he could see was his mother's body, his sister's legs being dragged past. They were dead, he knew. They were all dead, and he didn't know why they were dead, or who had killed them. He didn't know where he was, or why he was still alive. When he ran into someone and his fleeing was cut short, he grew so hysterical that he no longer knew who he was.
"Hey," said the man he'd run into, a large man with a shaved head and a black t-shirt. "Watch where you're going." He cracked his knuckles threateningly, which finally shot Ryeowook's nerves to hell. He collapsed to the floor, practically screaming, and the antagonistic look in the man's eyes faded into a wary sort of fear. "Hey," he said, voice softer. "Hey, I was only -- stop screaming, I'm not going to hurt you, don't worry. Has something happened? Are you hurt? Do you need my help?"
"They've killed everyone," Ryeowook sobbed. "They're all dead, all of them."
"All of who?" asked the man, but Ryeowook was crying too hard to answer. After a brief pause, the man tried to pick him up, and Ryeowook was screaming them, absolutely terrified, struggling this way and that. "Hey, hey, hey!" the man said, letting go of him. "I said I wasn't going to hurt you. Just quiet down a bit, okay? You're going to bring the Gees." Ryeowook's voice grew louder. "Jeez," the man said and, with the back of his hand, knocked Ryeowook out.
Ryeowook woke up on a hard bed in a strange room that smelled like a mix of burning metal, spilled blood and disinfectant. There was a pain on the side of his head, and when he opened his eyes there was a dull light above him, a strip of fluorescent lighting that didn't seem to be working all that well. A couple of men stood by his side; one of them was the man that Ryeowook had run into, the other he didn't recognise. He was the one talking when Ryeowook woke up.
"I'm just saying, you didn't have to use so much force."
The man with the shaved head rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "I don't know my own strength, you know that. Plus, look at him. He's a skinny twerp. He just wouldn't stop screaming."
Another voice, whose owner Ryeowook couldn't see spoke up. "First port of call would have been to find out what he was screaming about, not knock him out."
"I tried to find out. He wouldn't stop screaming long enough to tell me."
That was when Ryeowook remembered just what he'd been screaming about, and he resurfaced completely with a gasp, jumping upright so fast that his head jerked forward and for a second it felt like his head had been detached from his spine. The man that he hadn't recognised was suddenly by his side, gripping his arm. "My family--" was all Ryeowook managed to get out before a syringe was injected into his arm, needle sliding in without any hindrance. When he pulled away, the man was smiling reassuringly at him, and a strange calm descended on him, washing over him like a wave on the beach. He breathed in deeply.
He was pushed back down on the bed, and he lay there as the man lay a hand against his forehead, and then inspected something on the side of his head. "You took a nasty bump," he said. "No thanks to this guy over here." He thumbed over his shoulder at the man with the shaved head, who smiled nervously.
"Hey kid," he said.
"Can you tell me your name?"
"Ryeowook." Ryeowook could feel him doing something to the side of his head, something that was hard to place, but eventually he thought there might be a bandage there or something.
"Do you have a second name?"
"Kim."
"Oh, me too." The man's smile was genuine. "And Kangin, too, though he doesn't like to talk about his real name. Not Kyuhyun, though."
Ryeowook's gaze was limited to the ceiling, so quite who Kangin and Kyuhyun were supposed to be, he didn't know, but he figured they must be the names of the two other people in the room, the one who had knocked him out and the one whose voice he'd only heard. He didn't say anything, anyway, and eventually the man stepped back. "I'm Yehsung. Do you want to tell me what happened to you?"
CURRENT DAY
Waking up was like forcing his way to the surface of a pit of quagmire, but eventually Eunhyuk fought his way out and opened his eyes. The ache in his bones permeated all the way down to the marrow and he tried to groan but found his throat too dry. He must have made some noise because Yehsung appeared in the edge of his vision, holding a glass of water. "Here," he said, voice serious, holding the edge of the glass to Eunhyuk's mouth. He sipped it gratefully, Yehsung pulling it away before Eunhyuk really felt like he'd had enough. "You don't want to make yourself sick," he said.
"Where," Eunhyuk started, before falling back down onto the bed. He knew where he was, there was no point in asking that question. "How long was I out?"
"A couple of days," Yehsung said. "I thought it was best, to give your body a chance of recovery. I wasn't sure if there'd been any internal damage."
"Did you get him?"
The question was quiet, but hopeful. Yehsung was glad that he'd turned away so that his back was to Eunhyuk when he said, "Heechul hasn't been found."
"What do you mean?"
Yehsung turned back around, hearing the panic in Eunhyuk's voice. "Careful," he warned. "Calm down, you'll hurt yourself some more. There have been...developments. Heechul is missing."
After Yehsung had give a brief explanation of what had occurred since Eunhyuk had been unconscious, he rang up on the intercom to the operations room to see if Kyuhyun was around. He wasn't there, but Siwon said he'd go get him, and in the short wait, Sungmin brought some coffee down for Yehsung. He hugged Eunhyuk gently, not commenting on the black eyes, swollen face or stitches. Yehsung had done his best, but Eunhyuk was going to look rough for at least a month. "Glad you're okay," Sungmin murmured.
"I don't feel okay," Eunhyuk said, somewhat sullenly. "Yehsung-hyung says that you haven't found Heechul yet."
"No, we haven't," Kyuhyun said from the doorway. His hair was messed up, jeans obviously pulled on in haste; he'd been asleep when Siwon had come to him, but now he looked awake and aware. "It's been complicated. I need you to tell us what happened, Eunhyuk."
Eunhyuk gave his side of the story of what had happened the day Heechul had attacked him with a baseball bat. "He was just so blank," he said, voice growing hoarser; it wasn't good to use it so much after just waking up. "There was no emotion in his face, he didn't make a sound, he was just hitting me over and over."
"He didn't say anything? No reason for why he did it?"
"Nothing." The part of Eunhyuk's face that they could see under the bandages turned red. "I mean, I was teasing him a little, I'd found his shirt in Hankyung-hyung's room when I'd gone in there, but I didn't think he'd react like that."
"I don't think any of us would," Kyuhyun said with a sigh. "We were entertaining a notion that he'd just flipped out but the spate of killings, all of our informants being hunted down like that, it's making me wonder."
"Wonder what?" Sungmin was biting the skin around his thumb. Siwon reached out and took it away from his mouth.
"Wonder if maybe, he's working for the Institution."
There was a long silence, everyone stunned, before Sungmin said, "That's crazy, Kyuhyun. Completely crazy."
"Is it?" Kyuhyun shrugged. "I don't know what's crazy and what's not anymore. It's one of us picking off those people, though, there's no doubt about it. Either one of us is killing them, or one of us has told the Institution all the names. Either way, it's one of us, and Heechul is the only one who isn't accounted for."
"Heechul hates the Institution," Sungmin protested. "He's spent ten years killing--"
"People who work at the detention center," Kyuhyun interrupted wearily. "Not people involved in the Institution."
"It's the same thing, Kyuhyun," Sungmin said, ready to spit nails. "Don't try to damn him on technicalities. He's been here ten years, you know what that place did to him. He would never--"
"He beat me up!" Eunhyuk's voice broke as he shouted, and it was enough to cut through the tension. "Or don't you believe that either?"
"No," Sungmin said quietly, looking pleadingly at Eunhyuk. "I believe you, Eunhyuk, but I just...don't see how Heechul-hyung is capable of this."
"Okay, you know what?" Yehsung grabbed Sungmin by the shoulders and began pushing him gently from the room. "Eunhyuk needs rest, and I mean to see that he gets some before Donghae hears that he's awake. All of you go do something else. Kyuhyun, go to bed. You're coming up with theories on a lack of sleep and that will never end well."
In the kitchen, Siwon made them some lunch, which Sungmin picked ineffectively at. By the time Siwon had finished, Sungmin was still stirring his ramen with his chopsticks, noodles going cold. Siwon watched him for a minute or so, watching the line of his wrist, before he said, "Hyung." The use of the honorific made Sungmin look up, a guilty look in his face. "Did you eat anything yesterday?"
There was a long, long pause before Sungmin lowered his eyes and murmured, "No."
"And you didn't eat anything most of the day beforehand, did you?" Sungmin didn't answer. "You have to eat something, Sungmin. Starving yourself is not going to make this all go away."
"I know."
"Please eat." Siwon was willing to feed Sungmin by hand if it meant that the ramen was actually eaten, and Sungmin knew that Siwon was willing to do whatever it took. It took him a while, but eventually he ate half of the ramen before he said that it was too cold. Siwon nodded and took it away, using the excuse of washing the dishes to bring a mask over the worry on his face. Sungmin slipped his hands into the back pockets of Siwon's pants and lay his head against his back.
"You--" he began to say, but was interrupted by a loud bang out in the hallway, coming from the front door. Before Siwon could even pull his hands from the sink, Sungmin was pulling open the kitchen door, his gun in his hand. Siwon grabbed a towel and hurriedly washed off the very excess of water, just enough so that he wouldn't drop his own gun, but as he was drawing it, he heard Sungmin call his name, voice almost panic-stricken. Siwon ran into the door frame in his haste getting out of the room.
Jonghyun was there. He, like Sungmin, was leaning over something on the floor -- someone, Siwon corrected himself, seeing a pair of legs clad in leather. Jonghyun was crying. That was Siwon's first clue. He was shirtless, and that was Siwon's second. Sungmin looked around at him, and in a brief flash Siwon saw Key's face, pale and sweaty, and Sungmin's hands holding a balled up piece of material to Key's side. There was blood on it. There was blood on the floor.
"Oh god," he murmured.
"Go get Yehsung," Sungmin said, and yes, his voice was definitely panic-stricken, and Jonghyun was crying, and there was blood on Sungmin's hands and -- Siwon swallowed back his nausea, and got Yehsung.
Fandom: Super Junior (AU, !cyberpunk)
Pairing: Siwon/Sungmin, Hankyung/Heechul, Kyuhyun/Zhou Mi, Kangin/Eeteuk, Kibum/Donghae, Yehsung/Ryeowook, other pairings implied.
Word count: 3,902
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The micro-chips let the government keep tabs on your every move; the video cameras let the government know when they need to start paying attention. Get rid of the chip in the back of your brain and you can slip under the radar, and do whatever the hell you like. It's not like they're the bad guys, but it's not like they're the good guys, either.
Warning: this chapter contains scenes which imply rape, which some readers may wish to skip and/or avoid. These occur in the flashback.
A/N: I AM IN EDINBURGH. impromptu trip, so I wasn't expecting to be able to post but yay internet access. Have this chapter. Shit some bricks. idk. R.E. the warning: I have quoted it at two friends who both were like "BRB THROWING UP" so just be careful okay guys :( <3
High Technology (10/?)
"It was one of our informants," Shindong explained, voice flat. "I went to see if he'd seen Heechul, but he was dead when I got there. He'd been shot, twice, blood on the floor where he'd obviously tried to crawl away when the first one didn't kill him." He dug in his pocket, and brought something out, enclosed in his fist. "I found this beside him."
He flung it on the table; a small button, last seen on -- "Hankyung," Eeteuk said, turning towards him. "This is from one of your shirts, isn't it?"
Hankyung picked it up, a metal button covered in a gold shine. "Yes," he murmured, and he didn't seem to notice the way that everyone was staring at him, or taking a nervous step away from him, as if he was the one responsible for the death of their informant. Henry, who had previously been sitting beside Hankyung, shifted so far away that he almost fell off the table and onto Eunhyuk's lap. "It's from my shirt. It was the one that Heechul stole, yesterday."
"Heechul stole your shirt?"
"He was wearing it when I left yesterday. He said that he couldn't find his own, so he'd raided my wardrobe." He put the button back on the table, and collapsed into a chair, head in his hands once more. "What has he done?" he whispered.
"It looked like there'd been a struggle," Shindong said. "Maybe it got pulled off?"
"He killed him," Ryeowook said shakily. "It's like I dreamed. He's coming for us, Yehsung." Yehsung wrapped an arm around Ryeowook's shoulders but didn't say anything; he was staring at the floor thoughtfully.
"I've got a bad feeling about this," Kyuhyun said. "Donghae, Kangin, go check on our other informants." With tense nods, they left the room. Sungmin got to his feet and began pacing up and down, drawing an irritated look from Kibum. Eventually Siwon reached out and grabbed his hand and pulled him back over to the table; it had begun to irritate him too.
"Kui Xian," Zhou Mi said, quietly and in Mandarin. "Now will you try?"
"No," Kyuhyun said, a little harshly. "Don't you see, Zhou Mi? There's nothing to look for. He's just gone crazy or something. What could there be to look for?"
"Weird behaviour," Zhou Mi said, clearly grasping at straws. "Just anything that seems a little bit off."
"Weird behaviour and Heechul go hand in hand, Zhou Mi," Kyuhyun said flatly. "I wouldn't know what to look for."
"You wouldn't know," Zhou Mi said, very, very quietly, "or you don't want to?"
Even those who couldn't understand realised that something was suddenly very tense between Kyuhyun and Zhou Mi. Ryeowook curled a little into Yehsung, and Sungmin took a step closer to Siwon. Siwon caught Henry looking at him, confused and curious, as if Siwon could know what the strange conversation had meant. Siwon didn't have a clue, but he knew that it had something to do with Heechul.
"What do you want, Zhou Mi?" he asked. Zhou Mi tried to say something, but it was Kyuhyun who got in first.
"Nothing," he said. "Nothing at all. It's not happening, okay? So everyone just fucking forget about it before I fucking do something about it."
Once more, Zhou Mi slammed out of the room. Yehsung untangled himself from Ryeowook and stood up. He looked tired and twice as stressed as the rest of them. "I have to go see to Eunhyuk," he said. "If Donghae and Kangin bring in anyone injured, then you know where I am."
"You think someone else will be brought in?" Shindong asked, like he was commenting on the weather or something.
"I have no idea," Yehsung shrugged. "I don't know what to think anymore."
No one was brought to Yehsung over the next few hours because there was no one that they could save. The tramp who lived by the river; shot in the head. The two guys who lived in an apartment three streets away; stabbed ten times in total. The whore who dealt with important clients; hung from her ceiling fan. As the day passed and the death tally totted up, the atmosphere in the operations room became more and more black, more anticipatory, until Donghae came in just after five, looking like he was going to cry.
"I found this," he said, and he dropped something on the table. They were all expecting another button, something insignificant, but no -- it was a necklace, a thin silver chain with the Chinese symbol for "hee" hanging as a pendant. Heechul had paid good money (in the form of digital radio parts) at the market to get it made six years earlier and he was fiercely proud of it. There was no way he'd just leave it lying around anywhere.
"Where did you find it?" Kyuhyun asked sharply. Hankyung picked it over with a blank look on his face, turning it over with his hands. It was splashed with blood.
"Chan-ang, you know, the guy who owns that drug house, he's been killed. Stabbed, like a gazillion times. There was blood on the fucking ceiling, Kyuhyun. He had that in his hand."
"Wait," Kangin said, jumping to his feet. "Wait, that's impossible. I just saw Chan-ang half an hour ago, I swear. He said that he hadn't seen Heechul but he'd keep an eye out. There's only one way into the street that his place is on, and it's a long fucking road. I'd have seen Heechul come in -- or Donghae would have seen him come out. It's just not physically possible."
"You think someone is framing him?" Donghae asked eagerly.
"There's a back entrance," Kibum said reluctantly. He clearly didn't want to believe it either, but felt the need to tell the truth. "I know because of, well."
"Heechul wouldn't leave this behind," Hankyung said firmly, holding up the necklace by the chain. "There's no way, it was his most prized possession."
"He probably didn't even realise it was gone," Kyuhyun said. "There must have been a struggle, Chan-ang goes down, grabs the necklace from Heechul's neck, Heechul legs it -- maybe he hears Donghae coming, or maybe someone else interrupts, or maybe he just wants to be away, and leaves the vital clue behind."
"You're wrong," Hankyung said furiously. "He wouldn't have left it behind."
"No one else has a necklace like it," Kyuhyun said. "It's a one of a kind."
"Then someone has taken it from him and is framing him," Hankyung said. "Heechul couldn't have killed all these people, not without being seen by someone, and no one has seen him."
"He could have a hood on," said Kyuhyun, and his voice was so blank. "He could be avoiding people. He could be--"
"He could be a lot of things," Eeteuk said, interrupting what he could see was going to end up a fierce, potentially dangerous, argument. "We won't know until we find him, so that needs to be the priority right now."
"If he's going after our people, then they'll be good places to start," Shindong said. "We simply keep guard outside and wait for him to come to us."
Kyuhyun sent them all off to do whatever they thought was necessary, and climbed the stairs to his room, finding Zhou Mi slumped outside the door asleep. "Couldn't even manage to get in the room, huh?" Kyuhyun asked, more to himself than anything, the flare of guilt rising up once more. Grunting, he heaved Zhou Mi into the room and then collapsed on the bed, Zhou Mi's back against the frame. Kyuhyun stroked through his hair.
"You've always got to try and make a good guy out of me," he said, as Zhou Mi turned to the touch in his sleep.
FIVE YEARS EARLIER
It was the gunshots which woke Ryeowook up. For a second, he thought they were outside, which was terrifying enough. He might not have lived in a particularly nice area, but indiscriminate gunshots weren't something Ryeowook experienced on a regular basis. Then he heard shouting, his mother screaming, and he realised that no; it was coming from inside the house. His father's yell for someone to run was cut off by another bang.
The door flew open and Ryeowook almost screamed himself, but it was just his older sister, hair loose around her face and nightdress bloody. She slammed the bedroom door shut behind her and sobbed out, "Ryeowook, get under the bed."
"What's going on?" Ryeowook asked, already with his feet on the floor. "What's happening?"
"The Institution is here," she said, and jerked forward as someone on the other side tried to force the door open. She just managed to hold it. "Get under the bed and don't move until it's safe."
He'd just rolled under when whoever was outside forced their way into the room. His sister began screaming, screaming screaming screaming, but the man just laughed at her. Ryeowook, hidden under the bed with no way of seeing, could only hear noises; his sister's screams fading into hysterical sobs, a man grunting, the bed springs above him squeaking. Then he heard something being dragged from the room, the bare feet of his sister, blood trickling down her legs, scraping along the floor before his eyes. He clamped his hands over his mouth to stop any noise from escaping; it was something he became good at over the years.
Then, there was silence.
He thought it was safe. Carefully, he rolled out from under the bed and climbed to his feet. Slow tip-toe steps to his bedroom door; his mother's body lying in a pool of blood in the hallway made him scream in horror and a mad in one of the other rooms suddenly appeared, gun held up to his chest. Ryeowook didn't wait for anything to happen, he simply ran. The gunshot rang out, but the bullet ended up in the wall to his left as he took the stairs down to the front door three at a time.
The shouts of his assailants touched only upon the very edge of his consciousness; he was aware of shouting but not of words. To listen would only have slowed him down, and he knew that he couldn't afford to be slowed down. He wasn't fast, he wasn't good at sports, and he'd suffered from a mild form of asthma as a child. To think about what was behind him was to slow his legs, and so he ran for his life, terrified that there'd be someone in front of him. No one was. He burst out of his house onto a deserted street, the street he had lived on for most of his life, the lone street light flickering pathetically.
As he turned to flee, the man who had first shot at him came out of the house too, reaching out to grab his arm, or perhaps the collar of his pyjama top; Ryeowook felt the faint brush of his fingertips as his hand closed around thin air, and then Ryeowook was off.
The man chased him for a white, he knew that much, but when the man stopped, Ryeowook didn't realise. He just kept running until he was totally and helplessly lost. His legs ached, his chest and throat burned and in his mind all he could see was his mother's body, his sister's legs being dragged past. They were dead, he knew. They were all dead, and he didn't know why they were dead, or who had killed them. He didn't know where he was, or why he was still alive. When he ran into someone and his fleeing was cut short, he grew so hysterical that he no longer knew who he was.
"Hey," said the man he'd run into, a large man with a shaved head and a black t-shirt. "Watch where you're going." He cracked his knuckles threateningly, which finally shot Ryeowook's nerves to hell. He collapsed to the floor, practically screaming, and the antagonistic look in the man's eyes faded into a wary sort of fear. "Hey," he said, voice softer. "Hey, I was only -- stop screaming, I'm not going to hurt you, don't worry. Has something happened? Are you hurt? Do you need my help?"
"They've killed everyone," Ryeowook sobbed. "They're all dead, all of them."
"All of who?" asked the man, but Ryeowook was crying too hard to answer. After a brief pause, the man tried to pick him up, and Ryeowook was screaming them, absolutely terrified, struggling this way and that. "Hey, hey, hey!" the man said, letting go of him. "I said I wasn't going to hurt you. Just quiet down a bit, okay? You're going to bring the Gees." Ryeowook's voice grew louder. "Jeez," the man said and, with the back of his hand, knocked Ryeowook out.
Ryeowook woke up on a hard bed in a strange room that smelled like a mix of burning metal, spilled blood and disinfectant. There was a pain on the side of his head, and when he opened his eyes there was a dull light above him, a strip of fluorescent lighting that didn't seem to be working all that well. A couple of men stood by his side; one of them was the man that Ryeowook had run into, the other he didn't recognise. He was the one talking when Ryeowook woke up.
"I'm just saying, you didn't have to use so much force."
The man with the shaved head rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "I don't know my own strength, you know that. Plus, look at him. He's a skinny twerp. He just wouldn't stop screaming."
Another voice, whose owner Ryeowook couldn't see spoke up. "First port of call would have been to find out what he was screaming about, not knock him out."
"I tried to find out. He wouldn't stop screaming long enough to tell me."
That was when Ryeowook remembered just what he'd been screaming about, and he resurfaced completely with a gasp, jumping upright so fast that his head jerked forward and for a second it felt like his head had been detached from his spine. The man that he hadn't recognised was suddenly by his side, gripping his arm. "My family--" was all Ryeowook managed to get out before a syringe was injected into his arm, needle sliding in without any hindrance. When he pulled away, the man was smiling reassuringly at him, and a strange calm descended on him, washing over him like a wave on the beach. He breathed in deeply.
He was pushed back down on the bed, and he lay there as the man lay a hand against his forehead, and then inspected something on the side of his head. "You took a nasty bump," he said. "No thanks to this guy over here." He thumbed over his shoulder at the man with the shaved head, who smiled nervously.
"Hey kid," he said.
"Can you tell me your name?"
"Ryeowook." Ryeowook could feel him doing something to the side of his head, something that was hard to place, but eventually he thought there might be a bandage there or something.
"Do you have a second name?"
"Kim."
"Oh, me too." The man's smile was genuine. "And Kangin, too, though he doesn't like to talk about his real name. Not Kyuhyun, though."
Ryeowook's gaze was limited to the ceiling, so quite who Kangin and Kyuhyun were supposed to be, he didn't know, but he figured they must be the names of the two other people in the room, the one who had knocked him out and the one whose voice he'd only heard. He didn't say anything, anyway, and eventually the man stepped back. "I'm Yehsung. Do you want to tell me what happened to you?"
CURRENT DAY
Waking up was like forcing his way to the surface of a pit of quagmire, but eventually Eunhyuk fought his way out and opened his eyes. The ache in his bones permeated all the way down to the marrow and he tried to groan but found his throat too dry. He must have made some noise because Yehsung appeared in the edge of his vision, holding a glass of water. "Here," he said, voice serious, holding the edge of the glass to Eunhyuk's mouth. He sipped it gratefully, Yehsung pulling it away before Eunhyuk really felt like he'd had enough. "You don't want to make yourself sick," he said.
"Where," Eunhyuk started, before falling back down onto the bed. He knew where he was, there was no point in asking that question. "How long was I out?"
"A couple of days," Yehsung said. "I thought it was best, to give your body a chance of recovery. I wasn't sure if there'd been any internal damage."
"Did you get him?"
The question was quiet, but hopeful. Yehsung was glad that he'd turned away so that his back was to Eunhyuk when he said, "Heechul hasn't been found."
"What do you mean?"
Yehsung turned back around, hearing the panic in Eunhyuk's voice. "Careful," he warned. "Calm down, you'll hurt yourself some more. There have been...developments. Heechul is missing."
After Yehsung had give a brief explanation of what had occurred since Eunhyuk had been unconscious, he rang up on the intercom to the operations room to see if Kyuhyun was around. He wasn't there, but Siwon said he'd go get him, and in the short wait, Sungmin brought some coffee down for Yehsung. He hugged Eunhyuk gently, not commenting on the black eyes, swollen face or stitches. Yehsung had done his best, but Eunhyuk was going to look rough for at least a month. "Glad you're okay," Sungmin murmured.
"I don't feel okay," Eunhyuk said, somewhat sullenly. "Yehsung-hyung says that you haven't found Heechul yet."
"No, we haven't," Kyuhyun said from the doorway. His hair was messed up, jeans obviously pulled on in haste; he'd been asleep when Siwon had come to him, but now he looked awake and aware. "It's been complicated. I need you to tell us what happened, Eunhyuk."
Eunhyuk gave his side of the story of what had happened the day Heechul had attacked him with a baseball bat. "He was just so blank," he said, voice growing hoarser; it wasn't good to use it so much after just waking up. "There was no emotion in his face, he didn't make a sound, he was just hitting me over and over."
"He didn't say anything? No reason for why he did it?"
"Nothing." The part of Eunhyuk's face that they could see under the bandages turned red. "I mean, I was teasing him a little, I'd found his shirt in Hankyung-hyung's room when I'd gone in there, but I didn't think he'd react like that."
"I don't think any of us would," Kyuhyun said with a sigh. "We were entertaining a notion that he'd just flipped out but the spate of killings, all of our informants being hunted down like that, it's making me wonder."
"Wonder what?" Sungmin was biting the skin around his thumb. Siwon reached out and took it away from his mouth.
"Wonder if maybe, he's working for the Institution."
There was a long silence, everyone stunned, before Sungmin said, "That's crazy, Kyuhyun. Completely crazy."
"Is it?" Kyuhyun shrugged. "I don't know what's crazy and what's not anymore. It's one of us picking off those people, though, there's no doubt about it. Either one of us is killing them, or one of us has told the Institution all the names. Either way, it's one of us, and Heechul is the only one who isn't accounted for."
"Heechul hates the Institution," Sungmin protested. "He's spent ten years killing--"
"People who work at the detention center," Kyuhyun interrupted wearily. "Not people involved in the Institution."
"It's the same thing, Kyuhyun," Sungmin said, ready to spit nails. "Don't try to damn him on technicalities. He's been here ten years, you know what that place did to him. He would never--"
"He beat me up!" Eunhyuk's voice broke as he shouted, and it was enough to cut through the tension. "Or don't you believe that either?"
"No," Sungmin said quietly, looking pleadingly at Eunhyuk. "I believe you, Eunhyuk, but I just...don't see how Heechul-hyung is capable of this."
"Okay, you know what?" Yehsung grabbed Sungmin by the shoulders and began pushing him gently from the room. "Eunhyuk needs rest, and I mean to see that he gets some before Donghae hears that he's awake. All of you go do something else. Kyuhyun, go to bed. You're coming up with theories on a lack of sleep and that will never end well."
In the kitchen, Siwon made them some lunch, which Sungmin picked ineffectively at. By the time Siwon had finished, Sungmin was still stirring his ramen with his chopsticks, noodles going cold. Siwon watched him for a minute or so, watching the line of his wrist, before he said, "Hyung." The use of the honorific made Sungmin look up, a guilty look in his face. "Did you eat anything yesterday?"
There was a long, long pause before Sungmin lowered his eyes and murmured, "No."
"And you didn't eat anything most of the day beforehand, did you?" Sungmin didn't answer. "You have to eat something, Sungmin. Starving yourself is not going to make this all go away."
"I know."
"Please eat." Siwon was willing to feed Sungmin by hand if it meant that the ramen was actually eaten, and Sungmin knew that Siwon was willing to do whatever it took. It took him a while, but eventually he ate half of the ramen before he said that it was too cold. Siwon nodded and took it away, using the excuse of washing the dishes to bring a mask over the worry on his face. Sungmin slipped his hands into the back pockets of Siwon's pants and lay his head against his back.
"You--" he began to say, but was interrupted by a loud bang out in the hallway, coming from the front door. Before Siwon could even pull his hands from the sink, Sungmin was pulling open the kitchen door, his gun in his hand. Siwon grabbed a towel and hurriedly washed off the very excess of water, just enough so that he wouldn't drop his own gun, but as he was drawing it, he heard Sungmin call his name, voice almost panic-stricken. Siwon ran into the door frame in his haste getting out of the room.
Jonghyun was there. He, like Sungmin, was leaning over something on the floor -- someone, Siwon corrected himself, seeing a pair of legs clad in leather. Jonghyun was crying. That was Siwon's first clue. He was shirtless, and that was Siwon's second. Sungmin looked around at him, and in a brief flash Siwon saw Key's face, pale and sweaty, and Sungmin's hands holding a balled up piece of material to Key's side. There was blood on it. There was blood on the floor.
"Oh god," he murmured.
"Go get Yehsung," Sungmin said, and yes, his voice was definitely panic-stricken, and Jonghyun was crying, and there was blood on Sungmin's hands and -- Siwon swallowed back his nausea, and got Yehsung.