tell me, would you kill to save a life ; 9/14
Dahye puts three earpieces in Jongdae's palm, and the latter looks up to two faces bright with expectation and excitement. Chanyeol and Jongin have both geared up following Dahye's enthusiast orders, and their pockets are now full of Jongin's gadgets and smoke bombs she gave them. She made Chanyeol wear one of his facial masks (Of course I know you put on a mask when you want to go incognito, I'm a cop Park.) and ended up giving Jongin the Heize mask he created - which made Jongin's eyes shine so bright it was almost blinding. Jongdae watches those two men, more like boys in his eyes, that he didn't know yesterday, and he can't think of one single reason why he shouldn't be worried. Chanyeol keeps fiddling with his hood - which Dahye pulled up to hide the flaming red locks - and Jongdae knows for a fact that it can be quite confusing at first to have something cutting the edges of your vision. Jongin may be a future cop, the Beretta he's kept doesn't mean he's cut out to face a gang war on his own. Jongdae has so many bad feelings about this, obviously unlike Dahye who can’t stop grinning. It's too late to back out now, anyway.
Jongdae lets out a sigh as Chanyeol adjusts his hood for the umpteenth time with a shake of his head. He lowers his eyes at the earpieces as Sehun chuckles on his right.
“The secret is to turn your head completely instead of just, you know, glancing,” Sehun says. Chanyeol looks up at him, his face a mix between gratefulness and wariness. “I like your style,” Sehun adds, his smile hidden beneath his own mask and the rest of his face merging in with the shadow of his hood.
Jongdae tries not to roll his eyes as Chanyeol smiles proudly, his eyes curling up and his chest sticking out. He draws back his focus on the earpieces and lashes out his power against the tiny devices. He knows exactly what waves he needs to reproduce - the ones currently buzzing in his and Dahye's ears - so it takes him only a few seconds to sew them all over the earpieces. He gives them a little push, throws a little jolt of electricity at them, and the waves start undulating in the air as the earpieces turn on in unison.
Jongdae looks up and nods at Dahye, who takes back the devices. She gives one to Chanyeol then one to Jongin. She stops before Sehun who raises an eyebrow at her. He was very quiet while she was taking care of Chanyeol and Jongin, if not for the broken whispers he mumbled in the dark corner of the room he had withdrawn to - mumbles that Jongdae caught, and that he wishes he didn't. (Soon, Sehun had breathed out with a low, low chuckle. I know, I know... I've been waiting for so long...)
“Don't be stupid,” Dahye says, with the exact same voice she’s always thrown at Sehun when she told him off before. “You're taking one too.”
Sehun makes a face, but Dahye's eyes glued to his are enough of a threat for him to take the last earpiece. He reluctantly puts it in his ear, his eyes falling on Jongdae for a short second before he blinks away. Jongdae doesn't. He watches, sucked in, every little details, from the game of shadows sculpting Sehun's face to the way his fingers hover over the blades pressed tight against his thigh thanks to the holster. He doesn't miss it when Sehun grits his teeth after adjusting his hood over his ear, his jaw rolling under the mask. Neither does he miss the low whisper that comes almost right away.
“Stop that,” Sehun says in a breath. “I can feel you all over myself.”
Jongdae gives a start as his conscience immediately rushes back to his mind, tainting his cheeks with a light pink that mortifies him. He glances at Sehun, just in time to catch a faint eye smile before Sehun straightens and his face merges with the darkness of his hood again.
“Okay,” Dahye says. “I guess we should go now.”
Jongdae makes a face as Sehun immediately whirls on his heels and rushes to the door. Dahye gestures at Chanyeol and Jongin to follow him, her eyes reduced to slits with how wide she is grinning. Jongin obeys but Chanyeol pauses after a first step, his lips curling into a thinking pout.
“What is it, gossip girl?” Dahye says in a teasing voice.
Chanyeol glances at her, but it's the soft touch she lays on the small of his back that has him moving forward. Her palm remains in the air for a short second before she draws her attention on Jongdae.
“Are you sure about this?” he asks her while Chanyeol groans about his hood outside, to the sound of Sehun's snorts.
“It's an island, Dae,” she answers seriously, her grin wiped off her face. “And it's a gang war. There's only three of us. We need help.”
Jongdae's heart leaps into his throat at how easily she includes Sehun in her calculation. Probably aware of what he's thinking, she flashes him a light smile and pats him softly on the arm before turning on her heels and stepping out of the basement. Jongdae follows her, forcing himself to focus on their surroundings again. His senses instinctively reach out to the house across the street but the Monopoly game seems to be over. He glances around him, only to have his eyes crash on dirty walls and closed shutters. The air is heavy with tension, something that Sehun, who's now perched up the railing leading to the basement door, doesn't seem concerned about. Instead, he snickers at Chanyeol, who keeps groaning at his too large hood, his body gracefully shifting from one position to the other, his long legs unfolding swiftly.
Dahye looks away from the street to grab Chanyeol's wrist as she clicks her tongue.
“It's your hair, Park,” she groans. “Red isn't really discreet you know so suck it up and stop whining like a big baby.”
Chanyeol throws her a heartbroken glance as he sadly adjusts the hood on his head, his face sinking in the shadow cast on it. Jongin pats him on the arm with a tiny smile. He, at least, has the common sense to look nervous, slightly afraid, as he keeps glancing at the street. It's the determination shinning in his eyes though that scares Jongdae the most, especially when their eyes meet, and Jongin’s harden.
“Listen, if you -”
“We’ll be going that way,” Jongin cuts him. He points at the street on his left, the outline of the Heize mask silver against the streetlights. It makes his nose chiselled, sharper. “You two should go north, it’s the shortest way to Thorne’s HQ.”
“We know exactly where to go, don’t worry,” Sehun says. He jumps of the rail and lands on the concrete silently, his body like water flowing quietly. Jongdae does feel the slight vibrations echoing against his soles though. “I grew up in the Bottoms, with your idol here.”
Both Chanyeol and Jongin turn to Dahye.
“You’re friend with that psycho?” Chanyeol blurts out while Jongin gasps an amazed “You did?!”
Sehun snorts, but the sound grazes Jongdae’s ear with a softness it didn’t have before. He breaks away from Dahye smiling at Jongin to glance at Sehun, whose dark eyes were already on him.
“Let’s go,” he says in a whisper before gesturing with a nod at the houses behind him.
Jongdae just nods, takes a first step before stopping and throwing a heavy be careful at Dahye. She answers with a short nod and very serious eyes, and Jongdae draws back his attention at the street in front of him. He exchanges a glance with Sehun, and they dash off in perfect synchronization, like they used to. Jongdae may not have grown in the Bottoms like Sehun and Dahye did, he still has a fairly good knowledge of the place, due to countless of cases blooming or ending on the island, so he knows exactly the shortest way to the place Jongin gave them the address of. Sehun doesn’t ask either, and they run together to the other side of the street and to the big tree whose foliage is so thick it hides the house behind it. Jongdae jumps up to grab a branch on which he hauls himself almost immediately, while Sehun defies gravity by running up the trunk. When physics do catch up with him, his body bends, slides to a vertical position and his hands close on the closest branch. They both jump from the tree to the house’s roof together, landing with a mix of vibrations that reverberate particularly harshly against Jongdae’s ribcage.
He looks down at Sehun, who landed with a knee on the tiles in a very feline position, while the latter looks up at him.
“Wanna race?” he asks, his eyes curling up.
Jongdae can’t do anything about the chuckle he lets out, just like he can’t stop himself from setting off immediately. The wind swoops down on him, hurls in his ears and bites his face with its still warm teeth as Jongdae runs as fast as he can, just like he used to when Sehun challenged him back then. Then he would slide into a halt, turn around and tease Sehun about how slow he was, how he’d better stop trying to win battles he’s already lost, and he would let go of the wind, the rush of adrenaline, the power and the speed to instead adjust his pace with Sehun’s. The second Jongdae slows down this time though, Sehun runs by him in a whiff. He looks at Jongdae over his shoulder, lets out his usual laugh and speeds up. He jumps off the roof and leaves Jongdae’s sight, and Jongdae never hears him land. He dives off the roof too.
Sehun runs like a cheetah, he jumps like a feline and his body is all reflexes, strength and speed. Jongdae runs next to him like he’s always run, fast and quiet, and they exchange glances, competitive eye smiles like they’ve always done. They’re walking on a thin line, their shoulders merging with the past, with the love struck smiles and the childish challenges, but the rest of their bodies deeply attached to the current times, the present and the fact that Sehun can now keep up with Jongdae. It’s a fragile balance, almost impossible to maintain, but as Jongdae looks over at Sehun while they climb the side of a three-floor building, he realizes how synchronized they are, like shadows of the same object.
Sehun probably feels Jongdae’s eyes on him because he looks at him as they run across the roof, and for a fleeting, very crazy second, Jongdae thinks it would be okay to reach out and take his hand. He thinks that in that special balance, in this tiny piece of the puzzle that is the universe, they’ve found the perfect middle for them. So who cares if Sehun is mostly friendly to Dahye? Who cares if he’s now sharp and lethal? In that tiny comfortable point in the continuum space time, it would be okay. Jongdae’s heart leaps up into his throat as Sehun suddenly forks and comes straight at him. And it crashes back against his ribcage when Sehun violently tackles him. The line is definitely broken as they both lose their balance and topple over. Their speed has them rolling on the roof over several feet until the low wall running along the border stops them. Jongdae moans as his head hits the edge with a shock violent enough for the concrete to crack. Next to him, Sehun groans as he snaps his left wrist back in place.
“Why would you do that,” Jongdae glares at him as the pain in his body slowly fades away.
Sehun opens his mouth, but his eyes land on his own leg thrown over Jongdae’s lap, and he sits up with a jolt, his heart immediately speeding up. He whirls around, literally throws himself on the side and grips the concrete to crawl away from the human knot he and Jongdae had become. There’s no balance anymore, no more unison, and Jongdae is suddenly hyper aware of his body and how it longs for Sehun while the latter kneels down behind the low wall as far as possible from Jongdae.
“Didn’t you hear them?” Sehun tells him as he purposely avoids Jongdae’s eyes.
Jongdae considers screaming at Sehun for a short second, and just grabbing him and maybe hitting him, but the sound of voices, and everything that usually comes with vocal chords vibrating, reaches his ears. He glares at Sehun for good measure, even though the latter is still very intent on keeping his eyes on the dirty concrete, before putting a hand on the low wall and getting back up on his feet. He takes a quick peek at the street beneath them and makes a face. They have indeed reached Jongin’s address, and it’s pretty obvious that the kid was right about the place. The abandoned building, whose structure somehow looks as broken as its windows, is heavily guarded. There’s no light inside, and probably no electricity whatsoever, which reduces Jongdae’s visibility, but he can hear hearts beating and soles hitting the floor. There are sighs, voices mingling in a whispered conversation he can’t understand, and the now too familiar clicking of guns.
Jongdae scrunches up his nose. He glances at Sehun and presses himself tighter against the low wall, careful not to stand out. In the chaos of regular heartbeats, he tries to pick up erratic ones, panicked rhythms that could belong to Thorne’s hostages, but there’s too much noise in the building and around him. He pushes as hard as he can, but all he gets is a scratching sound two blocks north and a burning peak of pain. He lowers behind the wall with a groan.
“They’re inside,” Sehun tells him with a casual voice.
Jongdae looks at him, slightly frowning. There’s an elephant in the room, a very huge and obvious one, and Jongdae is done crashing against its thick grey skin. There’s enough space and distance between him and Sehun as it is.
“Can you hear them?” he asks.
Sehun throws him a surprised look. He watches Jongdae’s face, his irises as dark as the hood he’s wearing, and a plethora of things flashes through his eyes. Jongdae thinks he catches regret, sadness and the usual lurking madness, but also something softer, almost grateful. He expects Sehun to look away, but Sehun doesn’t. Instead, he just shakes his head.
“My… my abilities aren’t as regular as yours. I have no control over them. I just thought - I just thought you heard them but maybe it’s too noisy or - I don’t know, if you’re tired or - ”
Sehun’s voice trails off, dropping with every word he says until Jongdae only catches a faint whisper, and he looks away, drawing back his attention on the abandoned squat, a darker shade spreading over the bits of his cheekbones left uncovered by the mask. Jongdae too looks away, his heart beating faster in his chest, and knowing that Sehun probably can pick it up doesn’t make it slow down at all. He breathes in deeply and clears his throat so that the words stuck in it would dissolve and let more air reach his lungs.
“Heize,” Sehun suddenly says. “We’re there, and the kid was right. We’re going in, so it’ll be radio silence for a few. Is everything okay for you?”
Sehun throws Jongdae a fleeting glance and Jongdae holds it as Jongin snorts in their ears.
“Of course I was right,” he mumbles.
“We’re okay,” Dahye cuts him. Her voice sounds amused on the edges, but the radio frequency mostly carries the seriousness of her intonations. “Apparently there are a few people who took refuge in the school so we’re going there now.” She pauses. “Be careful, okay? Don’t let Thorne know you’re there, or he’ll press the detonator.”
Jongdae and Sehun exchange a glance. At the mention of Thorne’s name, Sehun’s eyes narrowed and his embarrassed, almost shy look disappeared. He’s now challenging and angry, so angry Jongdae can feel the tension radiates from his body.
“We won’t,” he assures Dahye while still holding Sehun’s eyes, and the latter glares at him. “Talk to you soon.”
“Roger that,” she says, and Jongdae feels her get out of the frequency, leaving behind only statics and waves.
“We’ll use the roof access,” he tells Sehun as he tries not to let the latter’s icy eyes throw him off. “No one has to see us, okay? And the hostages are more important than -”
“Me getting my revenge? You’re right, it’s not like he killed me.”
Despite being crouched down, Sehun looms over Jongdae like a monster, a barely living being, and it’s like seeing the warehouse explode all over again. Jongdae has had that nightmare a hundred times over the past five years, and it’s just a revised version of it, of Sehun breaking and cracking open. It used to scare him, it used to hurt so much. Now, it just angers him.
“Listen, you have to explain what the hell happened to you,” he starts, fire rising in his chest.
Sehun snorts, and suddenly leaps up to his feet. He jumps on the low wall before Jongdae can stop him, and tenses his muscles. The concrete cracks under his soles when he jumps above the street like a flying arrow. He lands on the abandoned building’s roof so easily, and immediately swoops down on the first guard. Jongdae curses and jumps on his feet. He takes a few steps back and dashes off towards the low wall, gathering speed. It is so noisy to him, the rush of adrenaline, the sound of his left shoe on the low wall before his leg muscles propel him forward and even his cape immediately opening behind him, swelling with the momentum and flapping in the air, but he knows that he’s just a silent black shadow shooting across the polluted sky of the Bottoms right now. It eases the urgency rushing everywhere in his body and slows down everything just enough for him to take in the roof coming closer. He counts four guard still on their feet, guns aiming at Sehun currently fighting with two other guards.
Power rushes to Jongdae’s fingers, and when he lands on the roof, it’s already buzzing and sizzling under his gloves. He grabs the two closest guards’ necks, and unleashes it. He knows exactly what to aim for, and barely one heartbeat later, the two guards collapse, their brains shutting down and settling down for a good eight-hour long nap. One of the two remaining mercenaries spots Jongdae, and he raises his gun, the barrel staring straight at Jongdae. No matter how quick he was, Jongdae is quicker. He sees the fingertip rushing to the trigger, the surprise flashing though the man’s eyes followed by hatred, just like he sees his own blade fly and hit the mercenary’s median nerve on his wrist. The strap holding the machine gun isn’t even taut that Jongdae is already grabbing the man’s throat. He feels his pulse, his fear, and he can taste the gun powder on the back of his tongue. Above it all, he feels his brain and his whole nervous system. It’s already too late for the mercenary.
Jongdae lets go of his throat and the man’s body goes limp. It bends like a branch in the wind, and gravity finally grabs a hold of it. Jongdae is already whirling around, his hand flying to his belt to catch another blade. His senses are already focused on the last mercenary, and from what he’s feeling, the latter’s too far for Jongdae to just jump on him. He expects a gun, he expects a rictus and an expression of victory way too prompt to come, but he does not expect the mercenary on his knees, Sehun’s hands like claws spreading on each side of his face. Blood lust is staining his eyes, and a sort of macabre pleasure spreads over his face as his wrists click, ready to break the man’s neck.
“SEHUN!”
Jongdae throws his blade in a desperate attempt at stopping the sudden icy adrenaline running through his body from freezing him, and it reaches Sehun in less than a heartbeat. The latter’s head snaps up so sharply that it barely looks human, and he lets go of the mercenary to stop the flying knife. The soft thud it does when it crashes against Sehun’s gloves reaches Jongdae’s ears like an explosion, but he does not catch any fabric ripping or flesh scratching sound. Of course.
“No killing,” Jongdae hisses as he gets back on his feet.
Sehun shoots daggers at him while he has the knife swirling between his fingers. They close on the blade part of it and he violently hits the mercenary on his temple with the handle. The man collapses, one eye still partially open, and blood already trickling down his face. Jongdae holds Sehun’s eyes, suspicious. He scans the rooftop and the bodies lying here and there, ears trailing after each heartbeat.
“No one’s dead,” Sehun says. He tosses the blade back at Jongdae, who catches it mid-air. “Let’s go.”
Jongdae lets out a long sigh as Sehun mindlessly steps over a leg and walks to the roof top access. The screeching noise the door makes when Sehun opens it brings him back to his senses, and he winces as the sound painfully reverberates in his mind. Sehun throws him a look over his shoulder before he shrugs and steps into the building, Jongdae trailing after him. Now that he is closer, it’s definitely easier for him to pick up how many guards are wandering in the hallways, because of their heavy shoes shaking the building to its core.
“Wait,” Jongdae whispers, and Sehun, who was already walking down the stairs, turns back to him.
Jongdae avoids his gaze as he tries to focus as much as possible on the data his body receives. It comes to him in a massive knot of messy feelings and certainties, and it’s hard for him to decipher it, but all he knows is that he and Sehun are largely outnumbered. Dahye would have been so helpful. Jongin and Chanyeol, not so much though.
“What?” Sehun finally asks, his voice bordering on impatient and annoyed.
Jongdae watches him.
“We stay together, okay? We inspect every floor one by one. And we do not get caught.”
Sehun doesn’t even try to hide his eye roll but his body has lost its challenging posture.
“They’re probably on the upper floor anyway. We’ll be okay, we can do this.” He goes down one step and looks up at Jongdae again with a lopsided smile. “I won’t kill anyone, I swear.”
And it’s so genuine, so soft and definitely clashing with the current situation, that Jongdae can’t help a short chuckle. Sehun flashes him a childlike eye smile before walking down the stairs again with catlike stealth. Jongdae puts his hand just above the bannister so he can catch any vibrations coming their way then falls into step behind Sehun.
“I can’t believe you turned killing people into a joke,” Jongdae says in a low whisper.
For a short moment, he thinks Sehun didn’t even hear him, because the latter just crouches down before the door at the foot of the staircase, and doesn’t react. Feeling disappointed for some reason, Jongdae lets go of the trail, and focuses on what is coming from the other side of the door.
“I can’t believe you actually laughed at it,” Sehun finally says.
Jongdae doesn’t laugh this time, but he does smile, and when Sehun glances at him over his shoulder, his smile turns into a wide grin. One that, he likes to think, echoes with the one spreading on Sehun’s lips under his mask.
“Are you getting something?” Jongdae asks, forcing himself back to the more serious matters at hand.
Sehun shakes his head. Jongdae silently gestures at him to step away so he can be the closest to the door. When Sehun throws him a confused look as he moves away, Jongdae answers with a confident glance. He gets something.
He feels Sehun’s eyes on him as he softly puts a hand on the door. The coldness of the metal easily sips through his glove, but Jongdae doesn’t even pay attention to it, too focused on what he’s feeling. He closes his eyes to limit the amount of data his senses are sending to his brain, and gathers his sensitivity on his palm. Sehun’s slow heartbeat feels like a lighthouse in the darkness painted over Jongdae’s eyelids, and he mentally clings to it. It’s his anchor, his guaranty that he won’t lose himself in the details, the scratching, breathing, the voices and the waves, all that mess waiting for him to lower his guard.
The vibrations against the door harden. They emit a low sound as they spread over the metal of the door now, and Jongdae braces himself, adrenaline and tension taking over his whole body. When it becomes more sound than vibrations, Jongdae throws himself against the door, his whole body going rigid and solid right before he crashes against the surface. The violence of the shock has the hinges literally exploding. Without their restraint, the door turns into a huge shield for Jongdae who’s carried away by his momentum. He hits something, someone gasps and Jongdae presses harder against the metallic surface, pushes on his legs and drives his makeshift shield straight into the wall. There’s another gasp and, when Jongdae steps away, the familiar thud of a body collapsing.
Jongdae grabs the door and puts it against the wall as silently as he can, before looking down at the mercenary he knocked out cold lying at his feet. Sehun joins him, one eyebrow raised.
“That’s discreet to you?” he deadpans.
Jongdae shrugs and crouches down, just as a radio frequency buzzes in his ears.
“Hey, Thompson, is everything okay? What was that sound?” a male voice says through the radio on the mercenary’s bulletproof jacket.
Sehun throws a very patronizing and disapproving glance at Jongdae, but Jongdae ignores him. Instead, he presses his fingertips on the man’s temple while grabbing the radio with his other hand. His power lightens the path like tiny bright lanterns, and Jongdae just has to mentally follow it until it takes him right where he wants to go. He plays with synapses, with electricity and connections until the mercenary’s eyes suddenly shoot open, blank but definitely awake.
“Nah, ‘s okay mate, I tripped,” he says with a strong Australian accent in the radio Jongdae’s been holding in front of his face.
He cuts a few connections here and there, undoes what he’s done, and when he withdrawn from the man, the latter is unconscious again. Jongdae looks up at Sehun with a lopsided smile.
“I can’t believe you,” the man’s voice groans, mingling with the statics. “Quit playing around, will you? Go switch with Parker before he shoots the kid’s brains out.”
Jongdae and Sehun stare at each other as a third voice fills the air.
“Yes, please. He won’t shut the fuck up, I’m about to throw myself out of a window. Do people die when they jump from the third floor?”
Sehun rolls his eyes, and Jongdae barely refrains a snort. Third floor, uh? He looks around them, squinting at the darkness flooding the hallways. The building looks even more sinister on the inside. Bared walls and graffitis close down on them, and all sorts of rubbish cover the floor. There’s a ripped mattress lying a few steps ahead, and huge chunks of walls building tiny mountains here and there. Jongdae notices a few syringes catching the faint street light seeping through the holes and broken windows, and some dark thick puddles which he’d rather not get any closer to.
“So?” Sehun whispers. “Right or left?”
Jongdae glances at him before taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. Just like he did a couple of minutes earlier, he tries to focus on his other senses, his conscience running around the whole building to fetch any detail that might be useful. He can feel the structure vibrating and the radio frequency the mercenaries use immediately sticks out, as he just tweaked it. Other than that though, it’s the same bundle of voices, heartbeats and lungs swelling. Frustrated, he opens his eyes and gets back up on his feet.
“Right,” Sehun suddenly whispers.
His eyes are glued to the hallway stretching on their left, and Jongdae easily recognizes the slight twitch in his already furrowed brows. Intrigued, he follows Sehun’s gaze and gathers his senses, ready to lash them out to identify whatever threat Sehun may have felt. Before he does though, he glances back at Sehun only to see that the latter is now watching him. His body is easily blurred by the surrounding darkness, just like his face is almost ghostly in the middle of all that black, but to Jongdae, it’s like going back to your childhood house after years. It’s different, it’s empty and cold, and it may feel a bit smaller than it should have been, but it’s familiar. Sehun’s face moves and twitches like it used to, and this expression is for eagerness, eagerness to be trusted.
“Right,” Jongdae repeats softly. “Lead the way.”
Sehun nods and immediately plasters his face with indifference. Jongdae watches him turn back on his heels. Maybe there’s hope. They are working together after all.
They reach the corner of the hallway, and Sehun gestures at Jongdae to stop. They exchange a glance and Jongdae instinctively reaches out to grab Sehun’s hand and communicate with him in the most silent way since, he muses, Sehun also felt the two guards a few steps ahead. But Sehun jumps away with a start. His heart frantically speeds up and he throws the most helpless look at Jongdae, his wide eyes making him look like a deer caught in the headlights. Jongdae’s own ribcage closes on his heart as he sees Sehun eagerly stepping away in slow motion. He holds out his hand to try and catch Sehun’s wrist in a very desperate and stupid attempt at stopping the catastrophe unfolding before him.
Sehun’s eyes harden, so slowly and so fast at the same time, and a sort of cold determination takes over his face as the right side of his mouth twitches up. Still stepping back, and unfortunately leaving the safety of their hidden spot, he grabs one of his blades. It happens in slow motion, but, mesmerized by the impending doom he knows is coming Jongdae can only watch.
“Hey!” a voice suddenly says as Sehun steps farther away from the corner, and that’s when the world clicks back to its usual speed.
Jongdae gasps and jumps forward, but Sehun has already thrown the blade, and one of the guards has already opened fire. Some of the bullets fly past him. From the corner of his eyes, Jongdae sees the first man falling forward, Sehun’s blade driving through his shoulder, and urgency swoops down on him. He braces himself and tackles Sehun with his shoulder, as violently as he can. Surprised, the latter gasps while the shock has him letting go of the second blade he had just taken.
“Stop that!” Sehun protests as he shoves Jongdae away.
A new burst of bullets hits the wall just next to Sehun’s head. Jongdae grabs him by the collar and pushes him down while he turns around and grabs a blade with his other hand. He tosses it above his head, catches it mid-air by the blade side of it and throws it towards the last mercenary. He doesn’t get to see him collapse after it hits his head, because Sehun is pushing him away with so much strength that he almost loses his balance.
“Don’t do that! Ever again!” Sehun hisses, furious.
He doesn’t seem to notice that his fingers are clenching around the remaining blades on his thigh holster, but Jongdae does, so he hastily raises his hands to ease him.
“I won’t, I won’t! I’m sorry!”
Sehun narrows his eyes at him, the left side of his face slightly twitching. Jongdae waits, his throat too constricted to allow him to fully breathe, and adrenaline raging on in his ears, begging him to move because the whole building has probably heard what just happened. But Jongdae just waits until Sehun is done battling the madness closing in on him. The radio frequency constantly sizzles in the air as the mercenaries call for backup, and in the midst of this chaos, little by little, Sehun’s heartbeat finally slows down until it is back to its usual cold, detached rhythm.
“I didn’t kill him,” Sehun whispers.
Jongdae glances at the two mercenaries lying down a few steps ahead. His instincts are pushing, biting on his muscles and licking fire in his veins to get him to move, but Jongdae keeps his focus on Sehun.
“I know,” he says as the two heartbeats graze his ears. The shoulder wound must have been painful enough for the man to just pass out, which Jongdae can definitely understand. It is painful.
He glances at Sehun, and finally lowers his hands. Sehun still looks a bit confused, as though he had missed the last few moments, but his face goes back to carefully measured indifference with every second passing by.
“Come on,” Jongdae finally says. “We need to get the hostages.”
He turns on his heels and dashes off towards the door that the mercenaries were guarding. More than a door actually, it’s a hole in the wall, but it does lead into another room. The floor under Jongdae’s soles shake as he steps over rocks and ruins, and the urgency gets even stronger. He glances over his shoulder to make sure Sehun is following him, and rushes into the room.
The search doesn’t take long, as the room is pretty small and empty aside from the single chair standing at its centre. Jongdae immediately recognizes the face of the man - boy - sitting on it. Do Kyungsoo looks a lot like his father, although Do Insung doesn’t have Kyungsoo’s roundness. Other than that, he mostly looks afraid, bordering on terrified, and the blood on his face, the bruises and the bumps makes him appear even more vulnerable and much younger than Jongdae knows him to be.
“It’s okay,” he says in a hurry. “We’re gonna get you out of here.”
“The city?” Kyungsoo asks. His voice as a shallow quality in it, as though it broke one too many times before, and Jongdae’s heart clenches in his chest when he notices the very obvious signs of torture on the boy’s arms. “Is the city safe? I’m not - I can’t go home before they find all the bombs.”
Sehun snorts under his mask as he cuts the ropes tying Kyungsoo’s ankles to the chair, and Jongdae knows exactly what he is thinking. Kyungsoo probably shares more with his father than physical likeness, but considering the situation he is currently in, he shouldn’t be so prompt at thinking about others before himself.
“It’s okay,” Jongdae repeats, tearing apart the ropes around Kyungsoo’s wrists. “Don’t worry, we got it all under control. Just tell us where are the other hostages. Can you do that for me?”
Kyungsoo frowns as he accepts Jongdae’s helpful arm. The ferrous smell of blood is stinging, bitter, and Jongdae forces himself to breathe only through his mouth. His senses are on overdrive, all of them frantically following the mercenaries as they get irremediably closer.
“The hostages?” Kyungsoo asks, confused. “Are there more hostages?”
“The mayor’s wife,” Sehun says.
To both his and Jongdae’s surprise, Kyungsoo is the one snorting this time. His face twitches with anger and coldness as his eyes harden - a look that Jongdae’s see a bazillion times on Insung’s face.
“The Mayor?” he repeats. “He’s the one who took me there. He got me out of the house by saying my dad wanted to talk to me. He was here with Thorne.”
Jongdae freezes.
“What?” he says, dumbfounded.
It doesn’t make any sense. Why would have the Mayor kidnapped Kyungsoo? That was Thorne’s doing, that’s what he said during his special flash. The bombs, the Bottoms lockdown, all Thorne. Everything, since the beginning, everything was on Thorne. The jewel thieves. Thorne.
Jongdae looks over at Sehun, confused and lost, but his question dies out on the tip of his tongue when he catches the look on Sehun’s face.
“Thorne’s here?” Sehun asks in a low voice, almost like a groan.
A red alert immediately goes off in Jongdae’s mind.
“Sehun,” Jongdae calls him out.
Sehun’s head snap towards Jongdae, and Jongdae feels it before it happens - the shift and the muscles rolling under Sehun’s skin, the anger and the icy need for revenge taking over his eyes. With the mercenaries now flooding the third floor, Kyungsoo still leaning on his arm, Jongdae starts feels panic mercilessly closing its claws on his heart.
“Sehun,” he starts, but it’s too late. Sehun is already whirling around and pulling out three blades from his holster. They stick out from between his fingers.
“Sehun!”
Sehun doesn’t even bother looking over his shoulder. He steps out of the room, crouches down to grab a gun from one of the mercenaries they’ve knocked out before, and the last thing Jongdae sees of him, is a sharp side view and a macabre contentment as he opens fire on whoever’s coming his way. Jongdae turns back to Kyungsoo, wrapping himself around him to shield him, his heart beating loudly in his chest.
“Shit,” he curses. He looks up at the rest of the room, but there’s nothing there that could help him. He could survive to the fall if he were to jump from the window, but Kyungsoo wouldn’t. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Kyungsoo’s fingers are digging in his flesh and even though he’s obviously trying to keep calm, the fear taking over his face and making his heart hurl against his ribcage tells another story. Jongdae holds him tighter, his eyes going back to the window as gunfire and screams fill the corridor behind him. He could keep Kyungsoo against him and make sure he lands on top of him. Would his own body be enough to protect Kyungsoo from any severe injuries? Considering that he’s already in bad shape…
A bullet whistles past Jongdae’s ear, and he crouches down, still holding Kyungsoo against him. He grabs his cape with an arm and wraps it around Kyungsoo and him so that their bodies will disappear. Hopefully that will distort the mercenaries’ aiming, and he’ll be the only one getting shot. Kyungsoo seems to understand his plan, because he curls up on himself, careful to keep his arms and legs close. He looks up at him, dried blood in one of his eyebrows and bruises darkening the skin around his left eye, and Jongdae holds his gaze.
“It’s okay,” he says. “I’m gonna get you out of here.”
Kyungsoo nods.
Jongdae holds him tighter. He looks up at the window, his decision made. If they stay here, Kyungsoo will die. If Jongdae jumps, he at least has a chance. What about Sehun? his mental voice says, and Jongdae’s heart clenches painfully. He can’t go running after him with Kyungsoo. The latter has to be his priority, no matter what.
“Hold on tight,” he whispers, hoping that Kyungsoo will hear him above the ruckus going on, and, gathering his courage, he straightens up, his eyes glued to the window. He barely has time to take one step that a stinging pain explodes in his back. He winces, holding back a moan, as he feels a foreign body tearing his flesh apart. He starts healing right away, but the bullet is still inside, and with each roll of Jongdae’s muscles, the wound reopens.
Jongdae groans as more bullets fly in the room. He lets go of Kyungsoo and pulls out a blade from his belt. He glances over his shoulder to aim while walking towards the window, hoping to slow down the mercenaries long enough for them to jump but what he sees instead freezes him.
Gasping, he lowers his blade as a very familiar man smiles at him from the entrance of the room.
“Hello,” Byun Baekhyun says, absolutely gorgeous in his three-piece suit. “Need a hand?”
Jongdae realizes that the radio frequency now filling the building is different than the one the mercenaries used. He straightens up, uncovers Kyungsoo, although still keeping him close, and takes in Baekhyun, confused.
Baekhyun blinks at him, full of mischief. He looks flawless, his hair perfectly styled and the red eyeshadow still darkening the outer corners of his eyes. He’s not holding any weapons - more like his weapons aren’t in sight, but Jongdae knows better than to be fooled. Baekhyun is standing on a pile of bodies, like a king of ancient times, feral and deadly, and if the bodies weren’t enough, the blood stain on his cheek, only traces of the fight that just ended, is definitely a more tangible proof.
“Oh come on,” Baekhyun chuckles. “I was expecting a thank you at least.”
“Bring them to me,” Lexie’s voice says in Baekhyun’s ear and in Jongdae’s mind. She sounds just as delighted as her right arm.
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