Super Junior {various pairings ; High Technology (12/?)}
Title: High Technology (12/?)
Fandom: Super Junior (AU, !cyberpunk)
Pairing: Siwon/Sungmin, Hankyung/Heechul, Kyuhyun/Zhou Mi, Kangin/Eeteuk, Kibum/Donghae, Yehsung/Ryeowook, other pairings implied.
Word count: 4,200
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.
A/N: LOVERHOLIC ROBOTRONIC LOVERHOLIC ROBOTRONIC this is all.
High Technology (12/?)
It was late at night before the fire in the market had died down enough for them to actually enter. No fire engines came to help; it was down to the people who had once lived there, with their help, to put the blaze out. The air was still murky with smoke, and on Yehsung's orders they kept low to the floor with damp towels over their faces. Everyone had returned to the house but Hankyung, and obviously Heechul. Most of those who had managed to escape the fire were scattered around the city, tending to the wounded or mourning the dead, of which there were many. With so many wooden tables packed close together, it was no surprise that the fire had spread so quickly, but once you added in the stalls selling alcohol or fuel, it was no surprise that, as they worked their way through, there were so many dead bodies.
Once out in the fresh air again, Shindong said, "If Hankyung-hyung was down there, we'd have no way of knowing. All of the bodies are too badly burnt to even make out any features."
Donghae was dragging someone out by their feet, towel wrapped around his face and tied at the back so that his hands were free. He caught Kangin gagging at the smell and said, pulling the towel down so that he could speak, "We can't leave them all down there, it wouldn't be right."
"If you want to touch dead bodies, that's your call," Kangin said, looking green.
"You touch dead bodies all the time," Eeteuk said disapprovingly, though he didn't look overly impressed at the idea either.
"Yeah, but they aren't usually black," Kangin said. The body, apparently that of a woman, lay on the ground between them, like train wreck that no one could look away from, before Siwon sighed and joined Donghae in trying to get as many of the bodies out of market place.
Eventually, when they had about twenty lying on the ground, Eeteuk said weakly, "We can't get them all out, there are far, far too many."
"But these were our friends," Donghae protested. "We can't leave them to just rot."
"It's not like we can walk around with hundreds of dead bodies," Shindong said. "We're better off leaving them to the people who lived in the market in the first place."
"But what if one of these was Hankyung-hyung," Siwon said, so quietly he was almost whispering. Sungmin, who had been silent throughout it all, turned to him and cupped his face with his hands, but couldn't find the words to say what he wanted to say. In the end he just put his arms around his sides and hugged him. The silence amongst them all seemed to stretch into eternity, before a phone rang.
Scrambling in his pocket, Donghae almost dropped it when he managed to find it. "Yeah?" He mouthed Kyuhyun at them, then said out loud, "What? Oh, okay. Uh, yeah. Lots. Lots and lots, we got about twenty -- hmm? Yes, yes, fine." Hanging up, he winced. "He's not happy about us getting the bodies out. Said it was unnecessary."
"Unnecessary for him, maybe," Sungmin said darkly. "He's different, somehow. This thing with Heechul has made him so cold."
"He's always been cold," Eeteuk said sadly. "It's what happens when you're revered as a genius. It makes people hard to know."
Kyuhyun's mood had been getting worse and worse throughout the day. He was running on a severe lack of sleep, and too many things seemed to be happening at once. First Heechul going crazy, then Jonghyun and Key managing to find the house, then the market being set on fire; he hadn't calculated for any of those things. He hadn't needed to, since his plans were always foolproof, his situation always secure, his men always loyal. That was all he asked for when agreeing to take out the chip that kept you fettered to the Institution: loyalty. You could choose to do what you wanted in your own time, but if Kyuhyun needed you, then all else was dropped. His word had been law.
He was therefore, to put it mildly, irritable when he sat in the kitchen and asked Jonghyun, "How the hell do you know where our headquarters is?"
Jonghyun's smile was tense in his white face. In addition to worrying about Key, he now wasn't sure how many of his friends had been killed in a fire. "You come to me because you want building plans," he said. "I'm the best in the business, able to get in any building without anyone even realising that someone was there. I'm one of your most trusted agents. You're asking me how I know where you live?"
Kyuhyun felt like shaking him. "That information has been held in your head this entire time," he said through gritted teeth. "What if you made a mistake and came to their attention?"
"I wouldn't have come here unless it was an emergency, hyung." Jonghyun's expression was earnest. "I just -- Key was dying, and I didn't know where else to go."
Kyuhyun yelled in frustration and banged his fist off the kitchen table. Zhou Mi, who had been asleep with his head buried in his arms, jumped and startled awake. "Kui Xian?" he mumbled, reaching out and snagging his sleeve. "There's smoke on the horizon."
"I know," Kyuhyun said, not really paying that much attention. His brain was racing, trying to work out just how they were supposed to fix this. The chain of events led to only one place, and that was back to the building that they were in right then. Heechul was slowly picking off all their sources of information. If he was finished with the market, what else remained for him to go against? He had no proof that it was Heechul who had started the fire in the market; it could easily have been an accident, and he had no eye-witnesses as of yet who could tell him what had happened, but his gut instinct told him. Heechul had done it.
The problem, therefore, lay in when they would be attacked. He had no doubt left in his mind that they would be. Maybe Heechul would attack on his own, or maybe he would have help, but an attack would come. He could no longer bend his brain over when or why Heechul had betrayed them, it was simply that he had, and Kyuhyun hated simply reacting to events.
There was too much equipment for them to ever be able to evacuate. Eunhyuk could possibly be moved, but it was unlikely that Key would be stable enough for it any time soon. All the computers, the chair for taking out the chips, the one that he had spent so many years perfecting; they would have to leave them behind if they tried to vacate the building. He was at a loss: if they stayed where they were, it was a waiting game until someone, an unknown force, descended on them, but if they left, they would be left as blind as babies, cut off from their only remaining sources of intelligence.
Leaving Jonghyun and the once more sleeping Zhou Mi with Ryeowook, who had come down to start making some food for those who felt up to eating it, Kyuhyun left the kitchen and headed for the operations room. The headache just starting across his forehead and along his temples threatened to become painful if he did not sleep soon, but time, he knew, was beginning to run out. He needed to get a hold of what was happening before his sanity snapped like a rubber band stretched too tightly.
Still, he lost track of what he was doing once he'd sat down in the operations room, and the next thing he knew Kyuhyun was shaking him, so he had probably fallen asleep. Donghae's face was drawn, though there was something burning in his eyes, something a little like excitement. "Kyuhyun," he hissed. "Kyuhyun, wake up."
"I'm awake," Kyuhyun said, slurring pushing Donghae away. He wondered how long he had been out, and why no one had woken him before then. "What time is it?"
"I don't know, sometime after five," Donghae said. "That's not important. Listen, Kyuhyun -- I saw Heechul."
That made Kyuhyun sit up straighter, forcing his brain into being awake. "Really?" He was half lifting out of his seat at the same time that Donghae was sinking into his. "Where?"
"Outside of the..." Donghae looked like he didn't want to say where, and when he added, "Market," Kyuhyun realised why. It wasn't proof by any stretch of the imagination, but after all the things that they knew Heechul had done, even just being near the market after it had gone up in flames was enough to plant the seeds of doubt. "He was standing a couple of streets away. He looked lost, like he didn't know where he was. I called his name, and he looked at me, right at me. It was him, Kyuhyun."
"What happened then?" Kyuhyun half-expected to be told that Heechul had shot at Donghae, which was so strange that it was almost comical.
"There were men, everywhere. They pulled him into a van, black, tinted windows, it just suddenly appeared."
"Did you follow it?"
"I tried," Donghae said with a sigh. "It was going too fast. But the thing is, Kyuhyun, I didn't need to follow it. I know where it was going."
"Where?" asked a voice from the doorway. "Looking over, they saw Hankyung standing there, looking a little worse for wear, eyes tired and the start of stubble around his chin. "Where did they take him, Donghae?"
The happy expression on Donghae's face at seeing that in the end, Hankyung hadn't been killed in the fire in the market, faded into apprehension. "Uh," he said, avoiding Hankyung's eyes, "that is, I mean, I could be mistaken--"
"Where?" Hankyung and Kyuhyun both asked at the same time. Donghae winced.
"It was one of the vans that they use at the detention center," he said with another sigh. "I think they were taking him to the detention center."
There was a minute where they processed this information, before Hankyung turned abruptly on his heel and looked like he was about to run out on them. "Hyung!" Kyuhyun snapped. Hankyung stopped. "Where are you going?"
"I'm going to get him back," Hankyung said, his back to them.
"How? You're going to break into the detention center all by yourself?"
"I did it once before."
"Luck was on your side back then. There was already a break out going on. There's no way of getting in there, especially not when you look like you're about to collapse any minute now."
Hankyung turned around again, eyes blazing. "Well, what do you want me to do, Kyuhyun? Leave him there? I can't do that, you know it's like his own personal hell, and now they've got him back there again--"
"Haven't you thought," Kyuhyun interrupted quietly, "that maybe Heechul is there because he willingly agreed to work for them?"
"Kyuhyun--" Donghae cried out disapprovingly, but Hankyung beat him to the punch, literally. Kyuhyun whipped his head around from the side, blood from where he had bit his lip filling his mouth, only to be jerked forward as Hankyung grabbed his collar and pulled him bodily out of his chair. This was Hankyung when he lost his temper, Hankyung at his most dangerous. It wasn't a sight that people usually saw, and it wasn't a sight that many on the receiving end lived to tell about.
"You god damned son of a bitch," Hankyung spat. "You know, almost as much as I do, what the people in that place did to him. You don't even know how many scars it's left, but I do. I've fucking seen them. They aren't just on his body, either, they run far deeper than that. And you're trying to tell me that's he working for the place that almost destroyed him? I thought you were supposed to be a fucking genius!"
Kyuhyun wasn't answering, eyes full of defiant bravado, but in reality he was just terrified. In the back of his mind, a little voice pointed out that he’d been pushing for this. Donghae was trying to pull Hankyung away but it was almost impossible to move him when he was like this; Donghae wouldn't be able to manage it through his strength alone.
"Don't you have any compassion?" Hankyung yelled; he was practically strangling Kyuhyun now. "Any soul in that body of yours? Nothing that makes you able to see beyond the fucking computer screen at the people that you deal with? Just jumping to a conclusion without even thinking about who you're talking about, what kind of a machine are you? Do you even feel? Is there even any guilt, do you even feel any guilt over what you did to Zhou Mi?"
It was the taboo subject, the lid blown off the thing that no one ever spoke about, and Kyuhyun found just enough breath to choke out, "Every fucking day."
Hankyung's hands uncurled and Kyuhyun fell back on his chair, gasping for air. Hankyung flung Donghae away and kicked a chair so hard that one of the legs snapped clean off as it skidded across the room. The quiet that was filled only with heavy breathing on all their parts was broken when Hankyung said, his back to them once more, "I'm going to go find him. Don't try to stop me."
Donghae was avoiding his eyes as he tried to make sure that Kyuhyun was alright. Kyuhyun pushed his hands away, and held his head in his own, bent over the table. "I want to be left alone," he muttered, feeling Donghae shift beside him. "Just, go away hyung."
He half-expected Donghae to protest or take offence at his tone, but he didn't and Kyuhyun heard the door shut quietly as he left the room. He didn't think that he'd fall asleep again. His throat was too sore for that, and his mind full of thoughts that he couldn't ignore. No one spoke about what he had done to Zhou Mi. No one, least of all Zhou Mi, had ever blamed him for what went wrong in those early stages. Sometimes, it just seemed like that was what Zhou Mi was., that he had always been like that. Zhou Mi, who couldn't be awake for more than ten hours before the hallucinations started. Zhou Mi who could fall asleep in any position, who had almost fallen out of the window once when he snapped into sleep. Zhou Mi whose problems had all been caused by Kyuhyun.
Was it love that had stopped Zhou Mi for blaming Kyuhyun for how he had damaged part of him? Sometimes Kyuhyun got the feeling that Zhou Mi would have forgiven anyone for it, no matter their place in his heart. It felt like love that stopped Kyuhyun from ever forgiving himself, for being a stupid kid masquerading as a genius, but it was certainly fear that stopped him from ever talking about it. He felt like if he spoke about it out loud, something would change. Zhou Mi would realise how little Kyuhyun was worth. Zhou Mi wouldn't be so forgiving.
"Kui Xian?"
The sound of the door opening, and Zhou Mi's tentative voice, had Kyuhyun wiping furiously at his eyes, a futile attempt at hiding his tears. "Oh Kui Xian," Zhou Mi said, and then he tried to wrap his arms around Kyuhyun's shoulders. Kyuhyun pushed him off desperately; he couldn't handle that, right then. Zhou Mi just stared at him solemnly. "Donghae told me about the fight," he said. "He said that Hankyung had asked--"
"Don't," said Kyuhyun, grabbing Zhou Mi's arms. "Don't say anything about it. It's all my fault, and you're not allowed to talk about it."
"Kui Xian, it wasn't your fault. I don't blame you."
"That thing that you asked me to do," he said, pulling Zhou Mi to him. "I'll do it." It was the only thing that he could think of that would make the guilt go away right now. Zhou Mi smiled, and sometimes it felt like the only thing that got Kyuhyun up in the morning was that smile.
"Thank you," Zhou Mi said.
"Hankyung-hyung is back."
Siwon was sitting on the bed, applying some sort of cream to the burns on his arms. He glanced up at Sungmin standing in the doorway, still and solemn. "Thank God," Siwon murmured, and that was all it took, two words. Sungmin, Siwon realised, was angry. He hadn't been angry before Siwon had said that. He'd been worried, and scared, and tired, but now he was angry.
"Why do you keep saying things like that?" Sungmin said. Siwon forced himself to keep rubbing the cream on his arm, then wrapping a bandage around it. "Ever since hyung went, you've been -- saying things like that."
"I don't mean anything by it," Siwon said, standing up to grab his shirt from the dresser. "Just a habit."
"A habit that you broke out of. I don't like it, Siwon."
"Well, I don't mean to do it." Siwon smiled at him, reassuring. "Where's Hankyung-hyung?"
"In his room, he doesn't want to be disturbed." Sungmin was standing fully in the doorway now, filling it so that there was no way Siwon could get out without physically moving him. "He had a fight with Kyuhyun. Siwon, don't--"
When he didn't continue, Siwon said, "Really, I don't mean anything by it. They're just figures of speech, Sungmin."
"Every time you say them, I feel you get further from me, and I can't -- not now, Siwon. Not after everything."
"You're overreacting," Siwon told him, looking down at him but avoiding his eyes.
"Am I?" Sungmin reached up and made him look at him. "Because I remember what you were like back then, Siwon, even if you don't. So angry, so frustrated, and you avoided looking at me then too."
Siwon sighed and closed his eyes, and when he opened them he smiled at Sungmin, looking him directly in the eyes. "I'd been taught that desiring another man went against scripture," he said, teasing just a little. "No wonder I couldn't look at you." Sungmin just stayed quiet; he didn't even like Siwon teasing about it. "Fine, fine, I get it. I'll watch what I say."
Now Sungmin was the one avoiding his eyes. "Watch what you think," he muttered, trying to push past into the bedroom. Quick as a flash, Siwon trapped him between the door frame and his body, pressing him so hard that he knew it must have been painful. "Ow, Siwon," Sungmin whined, struggling, but even with Sungmin's superior skill, he was pretty much cornered. "It's right in my back."
"You think I would ever go back to how I was then?" Siwon asked, voice incredulous. "That way of thinking, that way of living, you think I'd go back to that?"
"I don't know what to think anymore," Sungmin cried, still trying to push Siwon away. "Heechul-hyung is running around killing people, Hankyung-hyung is lashing out at Kyuhyun, and you're -- you're talking about God again!"
"I'm not talking about it," Siwon insisted. "I don't -- they're just phrases, Sungmin. They slipped out. I'm not going to be like I was back then, Sungmin. I would never, ever--"
"Okay," said Sungmin, the fight going out of him. "Okay, I know, I didn't mean to get so angry about it. I just worried about it."
"Well, we've all got things to be worried about." Siwon cupped the back of Sungmin's head and kissed him, softly at first, but then Sungmin grabbed his collar and wrenched him forward. When Siwon eventually managed to pull back, Sungmin had his eyes closed.
"You're being smug, aren't you," he said. "Wipe that smug smile off your face." Siwon tried to do so, but didn't try that hard. Instead, he focused his attention on unbuttoning Sungmin's shirt while touching as much skin as he possibly could.
The tiny cameras that Kyuhyun had set up all over the house were only known to him and Zhou Mi. He'd done it when they'd first moved into the place, just before anyone else turned up wanting their chips removed. Back then, it had just been because Kyuhyun was still very paranoid and he disliked the idea of the huge house being unknown to him. Then it became a way of keeping an eye on new recruits, just in case they weren't who they said they were. Now, however, it was proving useful in it's own way.
Trawling through hours and hours of footage was one of the most boring tasks he'd ever set his mind to, and he yearned to be allowed to work on his new device before everything that he'd known for eleven years somehow came crashing down around him. The only thing that stopped him from simply giving up was because Zhou Mi was asleep on the floor by his feet, like some sort of cat, his fingers curled around Kyuhyun's ankle.
So far, Kyuhyun hadn't been able to see anything strange on any of the tapes. He skipped past anything that might cause his brain to shut down -- he'd looked down when Zhou Mi made a noise, and then looked up to find Yehsung and Ryeowook kissing in the kitchen -- and anything that he didn't already know, like Siwon and Sungmin's fledging plans to run away. He'd been too caught up in his work, and then what had happened with Heechul, to do anything about it, and now he felt almost as though it was the only option left open to any of them: run away before the Institution could catch up to them.
It frustrated him, knowing that he'd managed eleven years on the run without even coming close to being found out, and now the broken teen who had looked even younger than Kyuhyun when they'd first met could be the one who destroyed all he'd built up. He wouldn't have thought it would be Heechul who did it. All the evidence was against it: Heechul's sense of loyalty, his love for the people that he'd met there, his respect for Kyuhyun, but most of all, it was like Hankyung had said -- Heechul hated the Institution. That place had spent three years breaking almost every single part of him. Why would he go back to it?
He groaned his frustration, pushing his hair back from his eyes. The tape he was watching was from a couple of weeks back, two days after Heechul and Hankyung had had their argument. He was eating breakfast in the kitchen. Heechul's hair, the faded blonde that had given Sungmin, resident stylist, some trouble to perfect, was falling forward over his face; he always did wear it too long. Kyuhyun gave himself a mental shake. He was thinking like Heechul had died or something. Heechul glanced up, then leaned back in his chair, apparently looking at someone in the hallway. He shouted something, smirked, then sat normally again.
Then his hand reached up, and scratched at the back of his neck. Kyuhyun frowned, rewound the tape, and watched again. "Wait a minute," he breathed, and sped the tape on, until another moment that he could remember, just a few hours later, where Heechul was talking to Ryeowook, maybe bugging him for food, and he was --
"Hey," Kyuhyun hissed, shaking his foot. Zhou Mi woke up, blinking up at him. "Look at this." He pointed at the screen. Zhou Mi sat up, looking like he was about to fall asleep again, and dutifully looked at the screen. Kyuhyun pressed play. "Look at what he's doing."
"He's scratching his neck," Zhou Mi said in a slur, and slumped to the side and fell asleep again, head against Kyuhyun's thigh.
"Yeah," Kyuhyun said, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips. "Exactly."
Fandom: Super Junior (AU, !cyberpunk)
Pairing: Siwon/Sungmin, Hankyung/Heechul, Kyuhyun/Zhou Mi, Kangin/Eeteuk, Kibum/Donghae, Yehsung/Ryeowook, other pairings implied.
Word count: 4,200
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.
A/N: LOVERHOLIC ROBOTRONIC LOVERHOLIC ROBOTRONIC this is all.
High Technology (12/?)
It was late at night before the fire in the market had died down enough for them to actually enter. No fire engines came to help; it was down to the people who had once lived there, with their help, to put the blaze out. The air was still murky with smoke, and on Yehsung's orders they kept low to the floor with damp towels over their faces. Everyone had returned to the house but Hankyung, and obviously Heechul. Most of those who had managed to escape the fire were scattered around the city, tending to the wounded or mourning the dead, of which there were many. With so many wooden tables packed close together, it was no surprise that the fire had spread so quickly, but once you added in the stalls selling alcohol or fuel, it was no surprise that, as they worked their way through, there were so many dead bodies.
Once out in the fresh air again, Shindong said, "If Hankyung-hyung was down there, we'd have no way of knowing. All of the bodies are too badly burnt to even make out any features."
Donghae was dragging someone out by their feet, towel wrapped around his face and tied at the back so that his hands were free. He caught Kangin gagging at the smell and said, pulling the towel down so that he could speak, "We can't leave them all down there, it wouldn't be right."
"If you want to touch dead bodies, that's your call," Kangin said, looking green.
"You touch dead bodies all the time," Eeteuk said disapprovingly, though he didn't look overly impressed at the idea either.
"Yeah, but they aren't usually black," Kangin said. The body, apparently that of a woman, lay on the ground between them, like train wreck that no one could look away from, before Siwon sighed and joined Donghae in trying to get as many of the bodies out of market place.
Eventually, when they had about twenty lying on the ground, Eeteuk said weakly, "We can't get them all out, there are far, far too many."
"But these were our friends," Donghae protested. "We can't leave them to just rot."
"It's not like we can walk around with hundreds of dead bodies," Shindong said. "We're better off leaving them to the people who lived in the market in the first place."
"But what if one of these was Hankyung-hyung," Siwon said, so quietly he was almost whispering. Sungmin, who had been silent throughout it all, turned to him and cupped his face with his hands, but couldn't find the words to say what he wanted to say. In the end he just put his arms around his sides and hugged him. The silence amongst them all seemed to stretch into eternity, before a phone rang.
Scrambling in his pocket, Donghae almost dropped it when he managed to find it. "Yeah?" He mouthed Kyuhyun at them, then said out loud, "What? Oh, okay. Uh, yeah. Lots. Lots and lots, we got about twenty -- hmm? Yes, yes, fine." Hanging up, he winced. "He's not happy about us getting the bodies out. Said it was unnecessary."
"Unnecessary for him, maybe," Sungmin said darkly. "He's different, somehow. This thing with Heechul has made him so cold."
"He's always been cold," Eeteuk said sadly. "It's what happens when you're revered as a genius. It makes people hard to know."
Kyuhyun's mood had been getting worse and worse throughout the day. He was running on a severe lack of sleep, and too many things seemed to be happening at once. First Heechul going crazy, then Jonghyun and Key managing to find the house, then the market being set on fire; he hadn't calculated for any of those things. He hadn't needed to, since his plans were always foolproof, his situation always secure, his men always loyal. That was all he asked for when agreeing to take out the chip that kept you fettered to the Institution: loyalty. You could choose to do what you wanted in your own time, but if Kyuhyun needed you, then all else was dropped. His word had been law.
He was therefore, to put it mildly, irritable when he sat in the kitchen and asked Jonghyun, "How the hell do you know where our headquarters is?"
Jonghyun's smile was tense in his white face. In addition to worrying about Key, he now wasn't sure how many of his friends had been killed in a fire. "You come to me because you want building plans," he said. "I'm the best in the business, able to get in any building without anyone even realising that someone was there. I'm one of your most trusted agents. You're asking me how I know where you live?"
Kyuhyun felt like shaking him. "That information has been held in your head this entire time," he said through gritted teeth. "What if you made a mistake and came to their attention?"
"I wouldn't have come here unless it was an emergency, hyung." Jonghyun's expression was earnest. "I just -- Key was dying, and I didn't know where else to go."
Kyuhyun yelled in frustration and banged his fist off the kitchen table. Zhou Mi, who had been asleep with his head buried in his arms, jumped and startled awake. "Kui Xian?" he mumbled, reaching out and snagging his sleeve. "There's smoke on the horizon."
"I know," Kyuhyun said, not really paying that much attention. His brain was racing, trying to work out just how they were supposed to fix this. The chain of events led to only one place, and that was back to the building that they were in right then. Heechul was slowly picking off all their sources of information. If he was finished with the market, what else remained for him to go against? He had no proof that it was Heechul who had started the fire in the market; it could easily have been an accident, and he had no eye-witnesses as of yet who could tell him what had happened, but his gut instinct told him. Heechul had done it.
The problem, therefore, lay in when they would be attacked. He had no doubt left in his mind that they would be. Maybe Heechul would attack on his own, or maybe he would have help, but an attack would come. He could no longer bend his brain over when or why Heechul had betrayed them, it was simply that he had, and Kyuhyun hated simply reacting to events.
There was too much equipment for them to ever be able to evacuate. Eunhyuk could possibly be moved, but it was unlikely that Key would be stable enough for it any time soon. All the computers, the chair for taking out the chips, the one that he had spent so many years perfecting; they would have to leave them behind if they tried to vacate the building. He was at a loss: if they stayed where they were, it was a waiting game until someone, an unknown force, descended on them, but if they left, they would be left as blind as babies, cut off from their only remaining sources of intelligence.
Leaving Jonghyun and the once more sleeping Zhou Mi with Ryeowook, who had come down to start making some food for those who felt up to eating it, Kyuhyun left the kitchen and headed for the operations room. The headache just starting across his forehead and along his temples threatened to become painful if he did not sleep soon, but time, he knew, was beginning to run out. He needed to get a hold of what was happening before his sanity snapped like a rubber band stretched too tightly.
Still, he lost track of what he was doing once he'd sat down in the operations room, and the next thing he knew Kyuhyun was shaking him, so he had probably fallen asleep. Donghae's face was drawn, though there was something burning in his eyes, something a little like excitement. "Kyuhyun," he hissed. "Kyuhyun, wake up."
"I'm awake," Kyuhyun said, slurring pushing Donghae away. He wondered how long he had been out, and why no one had woken him before then. "What time is it?"
"I don't know, sometime after five," Donghae said. "That's not important. Listen, Kyuhyun -- I saw Heechul."
That made Kyuhyun sit up straighter, forcing his brain into being awake. "Really?" He was half lifting out of his seat at the same time that Donghae was sinking into his. "Where?"
"Outside of the..." Donghae looked like he didn't want to say where, and when he added, "Market," Kyuhyun realised why. It wasn't proof by any stretch of the imagination, but after all the things that they knew Heechul had done, even just being near the market after it had gone up in flames was enough to plant the seeds of doubt. "He was standing a couple of streets away. He looked lost, like he didn't know where he was. I called his name, and he looked at me, right at me. It was him, Kyuhyun."
"What happened then?" Kyuhyun half-expected to be told that Heechul had shot at Donghae, which was so strange that it was almost comical.
"There were men, everywhere. They pulled him into a van, black, tinted windows, it just suddenly appeared."
"Did you follow it?"
"I tried," Donghae said with a sigh. "It was going too fast. But the thing is, Kyuhyun, I didn't need to follow it. I know where it was going."
"Where?" asked a voice from the doorway. "Looking over, they saw Hankyung standing there, looking a little worse for wear, eyes tired and the start of stubble around his chin. "Where did they take him, Donghae?"
The happy expression on Donghae's face at seeing that in the end, Hankyung hadn't been killed in the fire in the market, faded into apprehension. "Uh," he said, avoiding Hankyung's eyes, "that is, I mean, I could be mistaken--"
"Where?" Hankyung and Kyuhyun both asked at the same time. Donghae winced.
"It was one of the vans that they use at the detention center," he said with another sigh. "I think they were taking him to the detention center."
There was a minute where they processed this information, before Hankyung turned abruptly on his heel and looked like he was about to run out on them. "Hyung!" Kyuhyun snapped. Hankyung stopped. "Where are you going?"
"I'm going to get him back," Hankyung said, his back to them.
"How? You're going to break into the detention center all by yourself?"
"I did it once before."
"Luck was on your side back then. There was already a break out going on. There's no way of getting in there, especially not when you look like you're about to collapse any minute now."
Hankyung turned around again, eyes blazing. "Well, what do you want me to do, Kyuhyun? Leave him there? I can't do that, you know it's like his own personal hell, and now they've got him back there again--"
"Haven't you thought," Kyuhyun interrupted quietly, "that maybe Heechul is there because he willingly agreed to work for them?"
"Kyuhyun--" Donghae cried out disapprovingly, but Hankyung beat him to the punch, literally. Kyuhyun whipped his head around from the side, blood from where he had bit his lip filling his mouth, only to be jerked forward as Hankyung grabbed his collar and pulled him bodily out of his chair. This was Hankyung when he lost his temper, Hankyung at his most dangerous. It wasn't a sight that people usually saw, and it wasn't a sight that many on the receiving end lived to tell about.
"You god damned son of a bitch," Hankyung spat. "You know, almost as much as I do, what the people in that place did to him. You don't even know how many scars it's left, but I do. I've fucking seen them. They aren't just on his body, either, they run far deeper than that. And you're trying to tell me that's he working for the place that almost destroyed him? I thought you were supposed to be a fucking genius!"
Kyuhyun wasn't answering, eyes full of defiant bravado, but in reality he was just terrified. In the back of his mind, a little voice pointed out that he’d been pushing for this. Donghae was trying to pull Hankyung away but it was almost impossible to move him when he was like this; Donghae wouldn't be able to manage it through his strength alone.
"Don't you have any compassion?" Hankyung yelled; he was practically strangling Kyuhyun now. "Any soul in that body of yours? Nothing that makes you able to see beyond the fucking computer screen at the people that you deal with? Just jumping to a conclusion without even thinking about who you're talking about, what kind of a machine are you? Do you even feel? Is there even any guilt, do you even feel any guilt over what you did to Zhou Mi?"
It was the taboo subject, the lid blown off the thing that no one ever spoke about, and Kyuhyun found just enough breath to choke out, "Every fucking day."
Hankyung's hands uncurled and Kyuhyun fell back on his chair, gasping for air. Hankyung flung Donghae away and kicked a chair so hard that one of the legs snapped clean off as it skidded across the room. The quiet that was filled only with heavy breathing on all their parts was broken when Hankyung said, his back to them once more, "I'm going to go find him. Don't try to stop me."
Donghae was avoiding his eyes as he tried to make sure that Kyuhyun was alright. Kyuhyun pushed his hands away, and held his head in his own, bent over the table. "I want to be left alone," he muttered, feeling Donghae shift beside him. "Just, go away hyung."
He half-expected Donghae to protest or take offence at his tone, but he didn't and Kyuhyun heard the door shut quietly as he left the room. He didn't think that he'd fall asleep again. His throat was too sore for that, and his mind full of thoughts that he couldn't ignore. No one spoke about what he had done to Zhou Mi. No one, least of all Zhou Mi, had ever blamed him for what went wrong in those early stages. Sometimes, it just seemed like that was what Zhou Mi was., that he had always been like that. Zhou Mi, who couldn't be awake for more than ten hours before the hallucinations started. Zhou Mi who could fall asleep in any position, who had almost fallen out of the window once when he snapped into sleep. Zhou Mi whose problems had all been caused by Kyuhyun.
Was it love that had stopped Zhou Mi for blaming Kyuhyun for how he had damaged part of him? Sometimes Kyuhyun got the feeling that Zhou Mi would have forgiven anyone for it, no matter their place in his heart. It felt like love that stopped Kyuhyun from ever forgiving himself, for being a stupid kid masquerading as a genius, but it was certainly fear that stopped him from ever talking about it. He felt like if he spoke about it out loud, something would change. Zhou Mi would realise how little Kyuhyun was worth. Zhou Mi wouldn't be so forgiving.
"Kui Xian?"
The sound of the door opening, and Zhou Mi's tentative voice, had Kyuhyun wiping furiously at his eyes, a futile attempt at hiding his tears. "Oh Kui Xian," Zhou Mi said, and then he tried to wrap his arms around Kyuhyun's shoulders. Kyuhyun pushed him off desperately; he couldn't handle that, right then. Zhou Mi just stared at him solemnly. "Donghae told me about the fight," he said. "He said that Hankyung had asked--"
"Don't," said Kyuhyun, grabbing Zhou Mi's arms. "Don't say anything about it. It's all my fault, and you're not allowed to talk about it."
"Kui Xian, it wasn't your fault. I don't blame you."
"That thing that you asked me to do," he said, pulling Zhou Mi to him. "I'll do it." It was the only thing that he could think of that would make the guilt go away right now. Zhou Mi smiled, and sometimes it felt like the only thing that got Kyuhyun up in the morning was that smile.
"Thank you," Zhou Mi said.
"Hankyung-hyung is back."
Siwon was sitting on the bed, applying some sort of cream to the burns on his arms. He glanced up at Sungmin standing in the doorway, still and solemn. "Thank God," Siwon murmured, and that was all it took, two words. Sungmin, Siwon realised, was angry. He hadn't been angry before Siwon had said that. He'd been worried, and scared, and tired, but now he was angry.
"Why do you keep saying things like that?" Sungmin said. Siwon forced himself to keep rubbing the cream on his arm, then wrapping a bandage around it. "Ever since hyung went, you've been -- saying things like that."
"I don't mean anything by it," Siwon said, standing up to grab his shirt from the dresser. "Just a habit."
"A habit that you broke out of. I don't like it, Siwon."
"Well, I don't mean to do it." Siwon smiled at him, reassuring. "Where's Hankyung-hyung?"
"In his room, he doesn't want to be disturbed." Sungmin was standing fully in the doorway now, filling it so that there was no way Siwon could get out without physically moving him. "He had a fight with Kyuhyun. Siwon, don't--"
When he didn't continue, Siwon said, "Really, I don't mean anything by it. They're just figures of speech, Sungmin."
"Every time you say them, I feel you get further from me, and I can't -- not now, Siwon. Not after everything."
"You're overreacting," Siwon told him, looking down at him but avoiding his eyes.
"Am I?" Sungmin reached up and made him look at him. "Because I remember what you were like back then, Siwon, even if you don't. So angry, so frustrated, and you avoided looking at me then too."
Siwon sighed and closed his eyes, and when he opened them he smiled at Sungmin, looking him directly in the eyes. "I'd been taught that desiring another man went against scripture," he said, teasing just a little. "No wonder I couldn't look at you." Sungmin just stayed quiet; he didn't even like Siwon teasing about it. "Fine, fine, I get it. I'll watch what I say."
Now Sungmin was the one avoiding his eyes. "Watch what you think," he muttered, trying to push past into the bedroom. Quick as a flash, Siwon trapped him between the door frame and his body, pressing him so hard that he knew it must have been painful. "Ow, Siwon," Sungmin whined, struggling, but even with Sungmin's superior skill, he was pretty much cornered. "It's right in my back."
"You think I would ever go back to how I was then?" Siwon asked, voice incredulous. "That way of thinking, that way of living, you think I'd go back to that?"
"I don't know what to think anymore," Sungmin cried, still trying to push Siwon away. "Heechul-hyung is running around killing people, Hankyung-hyung is lashing out at Kyuhyun, and you're -- you're talking about God again!"
"I'm not talking about it," Siwon insisted. "I don't -- they're just phrases, Sungmin. They slipped out. I'm not going to be like I was back then, Sungmin. I would never, ever--"
"Okay," said Sungmin, the fight going out of him. "Okay, I know, I didn't mean to get so angry about it. I just worried about it."
"Well, we've all got things to be worried about." Siwon cupped the back of Sungmin's head and kissed him, softly at first, but then Sungmin grabbed his collar and wrenched him forward. When Siwon eventually managed to pull back, Sungmin had his eyes closed.
"You're being smug, aren't you," he said. "Wipe that smug smile off your face." Siwon tried to do so, but didn't try that hard. Instead, he focused his attention on unbuttoning Sungmin's shirt while touching as much skin as he possibly could.
The tiny cameras that Kyuhyun had set up all over the house were only known to him and Zhou Mi. He'd done it when they'd first moved into the place, just before anyone else turned up wanting their chips removed. Back then, it had just been because Kyuhyun was still very paranoid and he disliked the idea of the huge house being unknown to him. Then it became a way of keeping an eye on new recruits, just in case they weren't who they said they were. Now, however, it was proving useful in it's own way.
Trawling through hours and hours of footage was one of the most boring tasks he'd ever set his mind to, and he yearned to be allowed to work on his new device before everything that he'd known for eleven years somehow came crashing down around him. The only thing that stopped him from simply giving up was because Zhou Mi was asleep on the floor by his feet, like some sort of cat, his fingers curled around Kyuhyun's ankle.
So far, Kyuhyun hadn't been able to see anything strange on any of the tapes. He skipped past anything that might cause his brain to shut down -- he'd looked down when Zhou Mi made a noise, and then looked up to find Yehsung and Ryeowook kissing in the kitchen -- and anything that he didn't already know, like Siwon and Sungmin's fledging plans to run away. He'd been too caught up in his work, and then what had happened with Heechul, to do anything about it, and now he felt almost as though it was the only option left open to any of them: run away before the Institution could catch up to them.
It frustrated him, knowing that he'd managed eleven years on the run without even coming close to being found out, and now the broken teen who had looked even younger than Kyuhyun when they'd first met could be the one who destroyed all he'd built up. He wouldn't have thought it would be Heechul who did it. All the evidence was against it: Heechul's sense of loyalty, his love for the people that he'd met there, his respect for Kyuhyun, but most of all, it was like Hankyung had said -- Heechul hated the Institution. That place had spent three years breaking almost every single part of him. Why would he go back to it?
He groaned his frustration, pushing his hair back from his eyes. The tape he was watching was from a couple of weeks back, two days after Heechul and Hankyung had had their argument. He was eating breakfast in the kitchen. Heechul's hair, the faded blonde that had given Sungmin, resident stylist, some trouble to perfect, was falling forward over his face; he always did wear it too long. Kyuhyun gave himself a mental shake. He was thinking like Heechul had died or something. Heechul glanced up, then leaned back in his chair, apparently looking at someone in the hallway. He shouted something, smirked, then sat normally again.
Then his hand reached up, and scratched at the back of his neck. Kyuhyun frowned, rewound the tape, and watched again. "Wait a minute," he breathed, and sped the tape on, until another moment that he could remember, just a few hours later, where Heechul was talking to Ryeowook, maybe bugging him for food, and he was --
"Hey," Kyuhyun hissed, shaking his foot. Zhou Mi woke up, blinking up at him. "Look at this." He pointed at the screen. Zhou Mi sat up, looking like he was about to fall asleep again, and dutifully looked at the screen. Kyuhyun pressed play. "Look at what he's doing."
"He's scratching his neck," Zhou Mi said in a slur, and slumped to the side and fell asleep again, head against Kyuhyun's thigh.
"Yeah," Kyuhyun said, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips. "Exactly."