tell me, would you kill to save a life ; 11/14
“The sewers,” Sehun mumbles. “The fucking sewers.”
Jongdae looks over his shoulder only to see Sehun glaring back at him. He can’t deny that it does look like the definition of worse right now, but the more he thinks about his plan, the more it makes sense. It seemed silly to consider slipping into Thorne’s headquarters through the roof access, and even more to even think about using the front door. Thankfully, the building Thorne chose for his troops is none other than the Bottoms’ abandoned police station, which involves a lot of different accesses, including a direct connection between the morgue and the sewers. That’s their way in. Jongdae’s plan might not be the most comfortable, it seemed to be the smartest one.
Sehun meets his eyes, his face scrunched in a scornful expression.
“I hate this city.”
“Sewers are everywhere, not just here you know?” Jongdae snorts.
He takes a certain pleasure in the way Sehun glowers at him, but he mentally agrees with the latter. The pungent smell stagnating around him has knotted his stomach and definitely killed his chances to use his nose to detect anything, and the confined space of the arched tunnel has turned him slightly claustrophobic. He knows this is nothing specific to Port Ville, but it looks even more gloomy to him because of the city spreading above their heads. He wouldn’t be surprised to find a few rotten corpses here and there, or even discover that the old urban legend about eight-feet long crocodiles living down here are true.
Sehun doesn’t add anything, so they walk deeper into the tunnel in silence. Luckily for them, the Bottoms police station isn’t a big building - just like every building on the island since the first colonists tried to squeeze all their installations there before realising there was a piece of land literally just across the bay that was still unclaimed. It also means that the station’s installations are outdated, and that there is no high-tech security system as the place was shut down more than sixty years ago. Jongdae supposes it was getting too dangerous to keep the city’s police force that close to its biggest criminals. Not that it changed much.
“That way,” Sehun whispers when they reach a crossroad.
Jongdae glances at the tunnel stretching at his feet, then at its right and left arms. Sehun is pointing at the right portion, and Jongdae nods shortly before following it. He listens to their feet on the wet floor as he deems the police station close. The silence is quite resting, if he had to be honest, so he happily feeds on it instead of spreading his senses around him. He’s been running on only a few hours of sleep since a couple of days already. He knows his limits, and they are currently very close. It feels like an odd moment, an odd place, to take a break, but it’s the quieter Jongdae’s gotten in what feels like ages. So he takes it all in, the silence and Sehun’s heartbeat.
“I’m sorry for bailing out earlier,” Sehun says. “I’m glad you managed to get the boy out of there.”
Jongdae looks over his shoulder again, taken aback, but Sehun avoids his gaze.
“It’s okay,” Jongdae finally says. “I’m getting used to it.”
He meant the last words to come out like a joke, but when they clash on the silt-covered walls, they sound bitter, almost toxic. He also means to apologize but the words never actually reach his mouth. Instead, he listens closely to Sehun’s heart, his curiosity peeking out. Sehun’s heart beat doesn’t break its regularity.
“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Sehun mumbles.
Jongdae stops dead in his tracks. He whirls around, and Sehun almost knocks into him. He stops just in time though, and takes a step back for good measure.
“You know what, maybe I would if you’d explain me,” Jongdae snaps. “And for fuck’s sake, stop stepping away like that. Do you really think I’d use my powers against you?”
“Of course not. I just don’t want you to look for an answer in my head.”
Jongdae blinks. Sehun’s eyes harden.
“In fact, I don’t want you to see what’s inside my head at all.”
Sehun makes to walk around Jongdae and set on again, but Jongdae plants himself firmly and blocks the way. Sehun looks down and they exchange a look.
“Tell me what happened,” Jongdae says.
Once again, his voice comes our harsher than what he meant to, but he doesn’t step back or regret it. Sehun looks into his face, his own features still partially hidden by his mask, and his heart gives a start which they both hear loud and clear.
“Tell me,” Jongdae repeats.
“I died,” Sehun says. His heart speeds up, slightly but noticeably. “And I came back.”
“How?”
“Now’s not really the time, Jongdae. We need to stop Thorne.”
He walks around Jongdae and shoves him away with a bump of his shoulder to clear the way. He sets off with long strides without even a glance above his shoulder, and Jongdae immediately trails after him.
“What on Earth makes you think I don’t need to know?” he hisses.
He reaches out to grab Sehun by the shoulder and stop him, but the latter probably sensed him, because he whirls around and snatches his hand away.
“Don’t,” Sehun thunders.
“Just fucking tell me! I spent five years thinking you were dead, thinking I was too late!” Jongdae’s sight flashes red, and he clenches his fist as a flaring shot of anger takes over his body. “God, Sehun! I thought I let you die!”
“Didn’t make the guilt too hard though, uh? Or you would have gone and actually avenged me!”
This comes out like a blow, and Jongdae feels every second of it. He half expects his skin to bloom with bruises after how loudly and sharply Sehun’s voice hit him. The slight discomfort left in his back by all the digging Dahye’s done with her knife to take out the bullet suddenly comes back in full power, and Jongdae feels like he’s been shot again. This time it’s his own heart that takes over the gloomy silence of the sewers.
“Do you really think I didn’t consider it?” he snaps. “You say I don’t understand, but neither do you!” His voice feels like sandpaper in his throat. “I’ve dreamed about it. For days - for months all I could think about was breaking into the asylum and cut his throat open. I’d lost you because he took you away from me and I wanted to kill him for that so bad.”
Sehun remains silent, still. His eyes, though, don’t leave Jongdae’s as they take him in, scrutinizing, and almost hungry. Jongdae wants to punch him so bad for not understanding. Or maybe he wants to punch himself for the poisonous words he thought he had buried long ago now flooding his mouth.
“It scared me so much,” he continues. “That’s why I quit being Alpha. I was afraid that I would end up killing, and I knew that if I crossed that line, I’d never stop crossing it.”
The costume, the cape, they were weapons, and he fully realized it one second too late. Maybe his mourning would have been easier if Jongdae had been just a plain human, maybe he would have cried and been depressed, and nurtured a blazing need for revenge, but that would have been it. He wouldn’t have been able to take it farther. But Jongdae’s not human, he can mess up with brains, he can tweak waves, and he can kill a man with the smallest push. And god knows he would have done it. He wishes it was a matter of morals, or what is right and what is not, he wishes he could have been this good, but it’s not the case. Jongdae is obviously not above the many criminals he put in jail.
“Do you remember the case we were working on five years ago?” Sehun asks, thus breaking the silence. “About the deaths with that mysterious poison in their veins?”
Jongdae looks up, surprised. He nods. Of course he does. A few criminals from the lowest rank in the food chain went crazy, and they were literally unstoppable - as in bulletproof and incredibly strong. That only lasted for a couple of hours though, because it always ended with their brains liquefying and dripping from their eyes, noses and ears. Each autopsy revealed traces of an unknown mix of chemicals that the doctors never managed to link to anything, or anyone.
“We didn’t solve it,” Jongdae says. “It stopped after a while.”
Sehun snorts, but he doesn’t react to Jongdae’s questioning eyes.
“No, it didn’t. It was just more discreet. Well, we were right to think Thorne had something to do with it though. The serum was stocked in the warehouse. It was dying from the blast or surviving and having my brain turn to jelly a few hours later, so I took it. Spoiler alert, it saved me and my brain never turned to jelly.”
Jongdae freezes.
“What?”
Sehun shrugs.
“That’s how I survived.” His voice is so blank, so detached, that his words struggle to make sense in Jongdae’s mind. “We should hurry now,” Sehun adds.
He turns around, ever so silent, and walks deeper into the tunnel, Jongdae’s eyes following him with disbelief. He takes him a couple of seconds to break free from his confusion, and he immediately dashes off to join Sehun.
“Thorne was behind those deaths?” he asks, his mind working so hard on putting back together the pieces.
“Are you really surprised? It was chaotic and messy. Of course he was behind that.”
“And?” Jongdae questions. “Do you know why? What happened next? I mean - Sehun!” he hisses, angry.
Sehun looks at him over his shoulder, his eyes cold and provocative.
“Don’t make me bail out on you again,” he says.
Jongdae’s heart misses a bit and the blood in his veins turns to ice. He should be used to it by now. It’s always the same pattern. He watches Sehun, so different, and he thinks he catches pieces of the man he was before, so Jongdae starts hoping. He starts digging, spotting old habits coming back to life, and he thinks he can feel it, that old bound coming back between him and Sehun. But it always - always - crumbles to pieces, because Sehun isn’t… There’s no connection between them anymore.
“Like I said,” Jongdae snaps back. “I’m getting used to it.”
He looks away, not wanting to see Sehun’s reactions and sets off again. He bypasses Sehun, keeping an obvious safe distance between them. If Sehun doesn’t even want to trust him, then Jongdae will stop trying. He has enough pressing matters at hand, and not adding Sehun to the list would actually be a good thing. Then so be it.
His anger doesn’t diminish, even with Sehun’s footsteps following him, so he keeps walking deeper into the tunnel in silence. It’s only when he spots another smaller tunnel connecting with the one they currently are that he forces his raging temper, still beating against his temples, to lower to regain his focus. He stops and scans the thick darkness patching the end of the tunnel. If his calculations are correct, this should be the connection with the morgue, and he hopes it is, because he can’t pick up anything that would confirm his belief. Sehun stop next to him and puts a glove hand on the edge of the tunnel as he scrunches up his nose.
“It smells disgusting,” he says, stating the obvious.
“It smells like sewers,” Jongdae mumbles.
He hauls himself on the tunnel, whose smaller circumference forces him to slightly bend. He doesn’t spare a look at Sehun before moving deeper into the tunnel. Sehun’s clothes ruffle behind him, soon followed by a splashing sound and a groan. Jongdae snorts as he pictures Sehun stepping into one of those muddy silt puddles that Jongdae managed to avoid up to this point.
“Fuck you, Jongdae,” he hears Sehun say in a low voice.
Jongdae allows himself a tiny smile, but he doesn’t answer to Sehun’s provocation. Keeping his focus on their advance is a better idea, especially now that the tunnel is curving up, taking them closer to the surface. The ground is slippery and mushy under his soles, which, despite being risky, is good news, because it looks more and more like a discharge tunnel.
“It’s huge,” Sehun says behind him. “Man, I wonder what they used to throw in there.”
“Organs, bodies, whatever.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not true,” Sehun answers, but there’s a certain tension in his voice.
Jongdae glances over his shoulder just in time to see Sehun cautiously step away from the wall with a wary look at the sludge tainting it. Jongdae sneers which draws Sehun’s attention on him. He earns himself a glare from the latter, before Sehun’s eyes open wide and he reaches out.
“Hey, careful!”
Sehun’s fingers graze Jongdae’s sleeves without actually closing around his wrist, but his cry is enough in itself to make Jongdae stop in his tracks. His heart speeding up in his chest, he turns around and finds himself staring at a solid piece of wall closing the tunnel and bringing it to its end. Jongdae makes a face at the filamentous slit just a few inches from him. Sehun joins him.
“Close call,” he snickers.
Jongdae looks at him, meaning to throw him a nicely thought-out comeback, but the realization that Sehun is standing straight stops him. Glancing at the ceiling above Sehun, he notices a gap and a grating just within arm reach. The sickly white ceiling stained by moist above the grating looks terribly welcoming.
“The morgue,” Jongdae says as he too straightens up.
They both stand under the grating in silence. Jongdae deploys his senses above his head, and his mind slowly draws a mental image of the room they’re about to slip in. There’s no one guarding it, which is a miracle considering the huge activity he picks up in the rest of the building. Between radio frequencies buzzing around, voices mingling and old, thin walls catching the slightest vibrations, it’s almost painful to search through the place. He glances at Sehun who also has his head thrown back, his eyes narrowed at the grating, determined.
He’s the one reaching out to close his fingers around the bars, Jongdae being too small, and Sehun barely has to push to pull out the grating. He makes it slide on the tiled floor to clear the way into the morgue. The metal grates in a sinister, awfully loud way, and both Sehun and Jongdae stop breathing. They exchange a glance, Sehun’s fingers still secured around the grating, and wait for a few minutes in perfect stillness. Then Jongdae slightly nods, and Sehun lets go of the grating. He grabs the edge of the gap and hauls himself into the morgue. Jongdae scans the tunnel on his left one last time, then jumps up and grabs the edge of the gap.
When he gets back on his feet, Sehun is already searching through the old morgue, a distant interest in his dark eyes. The place looks like it has been the stage of a huge fight: surgeon trolleys are lying on their sides, rusty surgical instruments all over the dirty floor, and there are a few dark stains on the large metallic table occupying the centre of the room that look awfully similar to dried blood. Sehun stops in front of the wall of mortuary drawers, most of them opened on darkness, and grabs the handle of a closed one. He pulls on it. The hinges give way, snap with a sharp sound, and the door ends up in Sehun’s hand. Far from being impressed, Sehun puts it on a table next to him and pulls out the sliding table. It comes out with a low grating sound and stops abruptly. The sheet that was still on the table opens silently, curls in thin air and slowly falls down towards the floor.
Sehun glances at Jongdae.
“The place was shut down after the Bloody Uprisings,” he says, unfazed. “My dad died during them.”
The sheet crumples at his feet, and Sehun looks away to scan the rest of the room. Jongdae desperately tries to keep at bay the memory of a sobbing Sehun sharing stories from his fucked up childhood, and it has him walking to the door. He breathes in and listens closely, but just like the morgue, the whole floor seems to be empty. They’re still underground after all, so Jongdae reckons Thorne kept his men on the higher floors. He glances at the ceiling, at the noises and vibrations he’s getting and turns back to Sehun. The latter is standing in the middle of the room, his attention already on Jongdae.
“And now?” he asks.
Jongdae peeks in the hallway again and at the broken pieces of furniture blocking some of the doors, and decides against it. He raises his eyes and flashes a smile when they land on a large air vent. Sehun follows his gaze and sighs.
“Still better than the sewers, I guess,” he grumbles.
Jongdae doesn’t raise Sehun’s remark, already calculating. He eyes the vent, then the table in the centre of the room. This should be enough.
He walks to it and grabs it, intending to carry it under the air vent, but the table barely moves and creaks indignantly. Sehun turns to Jongdae with a raised eyebrow, and Jongdae internally swears when he looks down only to see the table’s feet screwed to the tiled floor.
“What were they afraid of,” he grumbles as he pulls a bit harder on the table. The four screws pop in unison. “Dead bodies stealing their freaking table?”
Sehun snorts. He joins Jongdae and grabs the opposite side of the table so that it wouldn’t grate against the floor. Together, they move it to the wall. Jongdae hops on it, carefully avoids the dark stains and grabs the air vent. The screws don’t resist much either, and they fall on the tiled floor beneath Jongdae with almost musical clinking sounds. He takes out the vent and holds it out for Sehun, who silently puts it away.
Jongdae breathes in dust and musty smells as he checks the inside of the air duct, palming the surface to make sure it won’t collapse under them. It seems as safe as it could be, and it’s not like they have any other choice anyway. So Jongdae stretches his arms inside the duct and transfers his weight on his elbows to haul himself inside the pipe. Sehun signs loudly behind him, but he climbs the table just the same. Jongdae crawls over a few feet then stop to look over his shoulder.
Sehun wriggles his legs in the duct then looks up at Jongdae.
“Let’s get going,” he says. His voice bumps on the conduit and all around them, and they both wince.
“Wait,” Jongdae whispers. He lowers his head and presses a finger against his earpiece. “Jongin, everything okay?”
It takes two scary seconds for Jongin’s voice to sizzle in his ear.
“Yeah, we’re good.”
Jongdae allows himself a short smile before he opens another communication.
“Heize?” he asks.
She answers right away. “Everything’s great here. I’m leaving the school. I didn’t find Chanyeol’s body, so I think he’s okay. He probably went back to the basement.”
“Oh, not so stupid Park,” Sehun marvels behind Jongdae.
“I’m shutting our com here, Heize. We’re inside the station. Check on Jongin and Kyungsoo regularly please.”
“Of course. Be careful.”
Jongdae nods as though she could hear him. He looks up at the duct spreading in front of him and breathes in - which turns out to be a bad idea as he inhales too much dust for his own good - and starts crawling, Sehun on his tail.
It’s even worse than the sewers. Despite being large enough to allow them to handle the turns quite easily, the conduit is still pretty confined. They reach the end of their tunnel with the only way possible being up to another branch of the tunnel. Jongdae almost freaks out when he realizes that the conduit is too small to allow him to switch to a standing position, but after an intense wriggling session, he manages to get on his knees and haul himself into the next duct. He patiently waits there while Sehun goes through the same struggle, his heart still distraught in his chest.
“This is not for tall people,” Sehun groans once he finally joins Jongdae.
Sweat is glistening, sweat on his forehead gluing his long dark locks together, and there’s dust all over him. Jongdae probably doesn’t look any better, but the air duct at least offers them a relative safety while they go deeper into the station. It’s not long before they stumble upon the first guards, and suddenly hyper aware of the slightest ruffling of their clothes, Jongdae freezes in the conduit. He can hear the men - two judging by the voices - walking down the hallway beneath the air duct, and shuffling their feet. They’re both wearing talkie-walkies because Jongdae can hear them buzz with the constant flow of waves. Guns are clicking, bulletproof jackets are scratching against clothes and lips open on long sentences. They’re talking about food. Jongdae can’t believe his ears.
He looks up to the conduit before him and bites his lips. They’re moving towards the largest source of noise in the building, and if he stops every time someone walks under the air duct, it’ll take them two days to reach Thorne, wherever he is. He glances at Sehun, who’s frowning at him, and internally sighs. He holds his breath and starts crawling again, slowly and silently.
He loses track of time as they keep crawling, checking through every air vent they stumble upon for a safe room, or a trace of Thorne. Jongdae knows Sehun is probably listening as hard as him, but with all those mercenaries, all that constant background noise, this turns out harder than what it should be.
They’ve just reached the umpteenth crossroad, which comes with another air vent, when Thorne’s name reaches their ears.
“I heard he’s gonna get his ass kicked,” a male voice says.
Someone snickers.
“Thorne? His ass kicked by some politician? Come on, Yang thinks he can handle him like one of his opponents, but the Bomber is a crazy motherfucker. He’ll blow our dear Mayor up, you’ll see.”
Jongdae looks over his shoulder. It’s pretty obvious from the icy anger spreading over Sehun’s face that the latter also hears the conversation.
“I don’t know about that, man…”
“Yeah? Well, why don’t we go see that meeting, uh? Fifty bucks Thorne shuts the politico’s trap.”
“We’re not supposed to go there, we’re on watch duty…”
“Ha! Afraid to lose?”
“You know what, fuck you. Let’s go. I hope you have those fifty bucks on you, pal.”
Said pal chuckles and answers with a teasing voice as he and his friend set off in a slow pace. Jongdae looks over his shoulder, and Sehun meets his eyes with a pressing and wordless order to start crawling again. Jongdae glares at him, hoping it will be enough to calm him down and remind him to keep quiet. He doesn’t fancy the idea of Sehun losing it again and jumping into a crowd of heavily armed mercenaries. He does heal from pretty much any injury, but that doesn’t cancel the pain. Sehun aggressively gestures at the conduit as the two men walk away. Their footsteps suddenly get oddly rhythmic. They’re going down some stairs.
Jongdae closes his eyes, focusing on the hallway under him. It seems to be leading in a much larger room slightly further down, and from what he’s getting, that room is packed. The hallway seems empty now that the two men have deserted it. It might not be the case for long though, so Jongdae jumps on the occasion. He blatantly ignores Sehun, who has started wriggling behind him to try and slip before him, and presses a hand against the air vent. He gives one sharp push, and the piece of metal immediately gives way with a low squeaking sound. Wincing, Jongdae slips it back inside the duct before turning back to the opening. Holding his breath, he takes a peek at the hallway. Empty.
Behind him, Sehun has stopped wriggling to watch, intrigued. When Jongdae slips his head back into the duct, he glances at Sehun and presses a finger against his lips to gesture him to keep quiet - to which Sehun gives him an obvious eye roll. Internally groaning, Jongdae squirms in the conduit until he manages to slide his legs out of it. He lets gravity do its work and falls quietly on the warped wooden floor. His cape, which was half stuck in the conduit while he was wriggling his lower body out of it flits around him before closing on his body. His heart beating loudly in his chest, Jongdae slowly stands up, his eyes glued to the end of the hallway.
The Bottoms’ old police station was built from an abandoned train station. The main hall, which had the policemen’s desks organized in an open-plan space was the centre of the action, and from the look of it, it is now the beating heart of Thorne’s headquarters. Jongdae stands on tiptoe to try and peek into the circular room spreading at the foot of the large stairs the two mercenaries took while Sehun gracefully lands behind him. Thorne is down there, he’s sure of it. They just need a better look at the room and the number of men he currently has with him. And Jongdae still hopes to get some explanations about Yang Hyunsuk’s - Mayor of Port Ville - implications with Thorne.
“And now?” Sehun asks in a whisper-like voice.
Jongdae points at the glazed door on the left of the wall. Realization flashes through Sehun’s eyes and he nods erratically before bending down and rushing to the room. Jongdae follows him there. He quietly closes the door behind him then turns to the rest of the room.
It probably used to look like a small office back then, with the wooden desk facing the door and several racks lined up behind him. Now it looks like a rubbish tip. The paint on the walls is cracked, dirty, and a fair amount of beer bottles lie on the floor. Jongdae spots a used condom in what looks like a nest of smelly blankets in a corner, and he makes a face. There’s also a large hole in the wall across from him that Sehun is currently checking. He scrunches up his nose at the rusty pipes on the other side and looks down the hole.
“I’m pretty sure this leads to the basement,” he hums, thinking.
When Sehun pulls out, tiny chunks of the wall crumble down the hole, and Jongdae is suddenly struck with the image of the whole place collapsing on them. He has to refrain himself from grabbing Sehun and pulling him away from that hole. At least, the office was meant to look out onto the main room, which means that there are three windows - which have long lost their panes - taking most of the front wall. And it is definitely a nice spot to spy on the main room.
After pressing himself in the corner of the office, Jongdae scans the room below a first time. His blood turns to ice when his eyes land on a very peculiar silhouette. He would recognize it in a blink of an eye. It’s only one body in the middle of two dozens of others, but it’s so easy to overlook the mercenaries when you have Thorne sitting on a desk and dangling his legs, obviously enjoying himself.
Jongdae glances at Sehun, who is huddled in the other corner, his eyes glimmering with rage.
Down below, Thorne is whistling a melody which sounds really close to the Beauty and the Beast Belle song while two of his men set up a large laptop on the desk before him. He doesn’t move, except from the regular dangling of his legs, like a ticking clock, as one of the two men leans over the laptop. There are a few clicking sound, a short typing involved, and the bright screen suddenly turns dark, its glow even more gloomy and almost morbid in the abandoned police station. Thorne’s legs stop dangling.
“Finally answering my calls, I see,” a low voice says, its intonations deformed by the low quality conference call. “What, do you need some help now?” it says sarcastically.
Thorne chuckles.
“Oh I just can’t wait to be king,” he singsongs, bobbing his head right and left.
“Will you stop with the Disney songs?” the voice hisses.
Thorne doesn’t say anything, but the tension in the room tightens. He’s facing the laptop, but turning his back to Sehun and Jongdae’s vantage point. They do have, though, quite the view over the laptop’s screen, and Jongdae must admit that it’s one thing to hear that the mayor of the city you live in is actually a sell-out, it’s definitely another one to witness it. Yang Hyunsuk doesn’t have that friendly smile he always sports for political events, or those warm comprehensive eyes he always makes sure to flash to the cameras while he pays tribute to some random people who died in the streets - instead he’s wearing a patronizing snarl like a weapon and his eyes are so cold that the pixels can’t even soften them.
“I bet you’re having the time of your life, Thorne” the mayor says. “Pulling a stunt like that… I should just kill you.”
Thorne gives another chuckle and starts dangling his legs again.
“I am quite enjoying myself indeed.” He pauses and adds in a mumble. “Everybody wants to be a cat…”
“For fuck’s sake,” the mayor groans. “This was never part of the plan. You’re lucky I own half of the police force of that city and that we have enough men for your shitty plan. It would have just fallen through without me.”
Thorne stops dangling his legs once again. He straightens up slightly on the desk, and the closest mercenaries take a cautious step back.
“You know what? I am tired of playing with you,” Thorne sighs. “You’re not funny anymore. You keep giving me orders and expecting me to follow them.”
“Oh we’re not playing Thorne. I am the King of this city, you hear me? I was nice enough to let you have your fun, now you cut the shit. We have more important things to do.”
“He killed my daughter,” Thorne says. His voice has lost its usual singing intonations or drawling accents. It is now icy and scary. Some mercenaries exchange a few uneasy looks. “He killed my daughter and I want him to pay. I want him to watch while I spread chaos and make people crazy.”
Jongdae looks at Sehun, but the latter doesn’t look back. His eyes harden more and more with every second passing by, and his face is now frozen in grimace of anger that honestly looks scary. Jongdae would want to say something, but he can’t think of anything, and he’s pretty sure that no words could be brought to life in the dryness of his mouth. Even breathing feels like swallowing blades.
“I don’t give a fuck, you hear me? Your daughter was a whore.”
Thorne slowly crosses his arms on his chest. He shakes his head.
“Oh, I’m so going to destroy you,” he muses. “It’s going to be unprecedented. Disney will write songs about it. I will blow up every effort you’ve ever made to control this city.”
“Yeah yeah,” Yang mocks him. “Now you’re going to send me back my men - because they’re mine remember? - and I’ll let you have your fun with the super hero kids if we catch them. But I want you off the radar again, do you hear me? You should have stayed in the asylum. You’re going to fuck up everything.”
Thorne hums.
“Ah, yes. Your men, right? And your resources. Everything that you need to spread your little drug. You’re trusting them so much!” Thorne chuckle. “You’re making it so easy for me…”
He jumps off the desk, and the sudden gesture has everyone taking another step back. They’re not trying to be discreet about it anymore, and just like them, Jongdae can’t shake the feeling that something bad is about to happen. Thorne’s voice has an excited quality to it that sounds terribly wrong, especially after the coldness he was displaying a few moments earlier.
“You see,” Thorne begins as he starts pacing in front of the laptop. “People tend to forget that my full name is actually Mad Bomber so it always comes out as a surprise when I do something crazy and explosive.”
He stops and turns towards the screen. Jongdae tenses. He glances at Sehun, whose eyes have lost a bit of their bloodlust flare for a confused bordering-on-anxious look.
“Thorne,” Yang thunders, but even from the office, Jongdae can spot the nervousness spreading on his face.
“We’re all crazy anyway,” Thorne says, his smile heavy in his voice. “There’s this one line that says it oh so well! And it’s not even a song! It’s from a book!” he laughs as he starts fumbling through the inside pocket of his jacket.
“Thorne, what the fuck are you doing?”
Jongdae and Sehun’s eyes meet. They both step away from the windows, their heartbeats speeding up almost in unison.
“Jongdae,” Sehun whispers.
“Do you want to hear it?” Thorne singsongs below. He stops searching through his pocket as his hand suddenly stops. “It says - It says… We all float down here, Georgie.”
He roars with laughter as he pulls out a small remote from his jacket which has only one button. Jongdae’s heart explodes in his chest as one of the mercenaries protest loudly and makes to walk to Thorne. The latter draws a gun from his belt and shoots him in the face. The mercenary’s cheek turns to bloody pulp and Thorne laughs louder.
“That guy’s gonna know before us if it’s true!” he giggles.
Sehun starts kicking the wall under the hole on Jongdae’s left. Jongdae rushes to him and hastily helps him widening the hole. Thorne’s laugh still rings through the room.
“Now let’s see what you’ll do without your men and your resources,” he chuckles.
It all happens in a flash. Sehun curses, throws himself against the wall and almost falls over as it crumbles away. He barely glances down before calling Jongdae’s name. Meanwhile, Thorne keeps laughing as he raises his arm. Someone fires and shoots him in the chest. Thorne still laughs. He presses the button, laughing. And everything blows up.
Jongdae is falling in the hole. Pipe taps tear his costume and his flesh, irregularities stab him, and chunks of walls follow him in his fall. His hand hits something, and he hears his wrist joint dislocate. He lets out a groan, but before he can squeeze his arms against his torso, he lands harshly on a hard surface, Sehun sprawled on the floor just before him, bits and pieces of walls all around him as though he had flown through concrete and bricks - which is probably the case. The whole building shakes above their heads, it grumbles and roars and slowly crumble away. Jongdae hastily gets back on his feet, his eyes quickly taking in where they landed, and his heart almost explodes with relief when he spots the morgue’s door a few feet away. He grabs Sehun’s arm and pulls him up, wincing when he feels the latter’s shoulder much more flexible than it should be. The end of the hallway behind them collapse, and that seems to bring back Sehun to his senses.
They dash off in one same movement towards the morgue. Jongdae reaches the door a fraction of second before Sehun, and he knocks it down with a push of his shoulder. There’s a cloud of white dust trailing after them as the building collapses all around them, shaken by several smaller explosions here and there. The morgue falls to pieces too as a wall starts crumbling down, taking the ceiling with it. Jongdae hurls himself forward. He hits the edge of the opening in the floor and moans as two of his ribs snap. The landing in the sewers a few feet under isn’t very soft either, but he quickly rolls away to avoid Sehun. The latter lands on his knees with a groan.
They look up at each other, panting and both heavily bruised. Sehun raises a shaky hand to slowly slide the mask off his face. He lets it dangle from one of his ears and breathes in deeply. Jongdae watches, noticing the unusual bump on his nose, the blood trickling from it and following the soft curves of his lips. Above their heads, the police station is still collapsing.
“He’s dead,” Jongdae finally says. Thorne’s laugh keeps replaying in his head. “He’s dead…”
We all float down here. Jongdae throws an uneasy look at the tunnel on his left.
Sehun wipes his chin and frowns at the blood on his sleeve. He palms his nose with a hand and snaps it back into place.
“He was working for the mayor,” he says. He looks up, and upon seeing the lack of reaction from Jongdae, his eyes harden. “I thought Thorne was the one behind that new drug taking over the Bottoms. I investigated, I had proofs… But he was just a guaranty for the mayor” he trails off and his lips twitch before he looks away, a blank look in his eyes. “I know, I know. He might have been behind that too,” he whispers in a breathy voice.
Jongdae, for once, is too busy replaying the video conference in his mind to worry about Sehun’s nonsense whispering. Feeling like he’s been dumped into icy water, he looks up at Sehun, mouth agape.
“Sehun,” he says, but Sehun doesn’t react. “Sehun!”
Sehun’s head snap up towards him.
“What?” he hisses.
“Do you remember what he said? About owning the police?”
Sehun frowns. Jongdae remembers though.
You’re lucky I own half of the police force of that city.
The police force. Half of it. Policemen that are currently about to enter the Bottom because Jongdae asked Heize to call Insung. Flashes of Dahye’s colleagues’s faces flash through his mind, from Jihoon and Seulgi to Frank and Insung, and he wonders with bitterness who’s been making dirty money all this time.
“Come on, don’t be naïve,” Sehun says, unfazed. “Of course there are dirty cops. Maybe more than what we thought, but who cares.”
He gets back on his feet and fixes his shoulder.
“Where are you going? We have to warn them!”
Jongdae hastily jumps back on his feet too, and mindlessly snaps his wrist back into his joint. Sehun throws him a look that says it all, and Jongdae feels his panic swell even more in his chest.
“No,” he stutters. “I need your help. You - You have to help me with that, and then I’ll help you take care of the mayor.”
Sehun freezes, his hand inches away from his facial mask. He looks into Jongdae’s face, and Jongdae steps closer.
“I need you,” he begs. “Please.”
Sehun keeps staring without even blinking. There are no explosions, no collapsing above their heads anymore, but there’s probably a fire or two heating up the night. The last fire Jongdae saw was the one that engulfed the warehouse five years ago. There’s a little voice in his head that immediately refutes with the memory of Sehun blowing up a truck with a bazooka a few days ago. It feels like ages. It feels like two different Sehun and Jongdae.
Sehun’s eyes lower to Jongdae’s lips, but it’s so fleeting that Jongdae takes it for another unwanted burst of his memory due to his confused, probably concussion-induced, thinking.
“Okay,” Sehun finally gives in. He blinks away and puts the mask back on his face before adjusting his hood. His eyes fall back on Jongdae. “I think you should update the troops.”
Jongdae nods, his heart beating wildly in his chest. He raises a shaking hand while still making sure to keep the eye contact with Sehun, who is now wiping the dust from his clothes, and presses his finger against his earpiece.
“Thorne is dead,” Jongin repeats, dumbfounded.
Kyungsoo looks away from the latter to glance at Lexie, who is still sitting on a stool just next to him. The friendly smile she had a couple of seconds earlier while she was chatting with him is long gone, now replaced by a pleased smirk. She stops drumming her fingers on the cracked surface of the bar and looks over Kyungsoo’s shoulder. The latter turns around on his stool and meets Jongin’s eyes, who looks as anxious as Kyungsoo himself is starting to feel.
“Is he now?” Pavoni says, delighted. “Excellent. He should have known better. No one kills one of us and survives.”
“This would make a beautiful eulogy,” Lexie says in her honey voice.
Kyungsoo and Jongin keep looking at each other. Jongin is sitting on another stool, his hoodie and shirt rolled up around his neck so his wounded arm would be free. Baekhyun has been working on it since Alpha, Heize and that hooded guy left, long fingers cleaning the blood and bandaging Jongin’s biceps. Now he’s stopped moving, those very same fingers frozen in mid-air as his dark, unreadable eyes stay on Lexie. Kyungsoo is suddenly struck by the images of those hands, which he found quite beautiful a couple of minutes ago, wrapped around a neck.
“He blew himself up,” Jongin says, slightly frowning. He’s obviously still listening to whatever is being said in his earpiece.
Pavoni smiles, grabs his hat - that he had put on the bar - and puts it back on his head.
“I guess that concludes the day,” he says, in a cheer, delighted voice. “I’ll be sleeping like a kitten tonight.” He glances at Lexie. “Pull out our men and let’s go home. The mayor can do whatever the fuck he wants, I don’t care. I am actually pleased to have a new enemy. Beaulieu was getting old anyway.”
Lexie slips down from her stool with grace. She smiles, icy blue eyes sparkling.
“Yes sir,” she simpers.
Kyungsoo was born and raised in Port Ville. His parents grew up here too. His family’s been stuck in this rat hole for generations, and there’s only one rule that makes it through the mess of this city. His father’s always told him, with a shadow in his eyes and a slight shake of his head, to always expect the worst, because chances are, it will happen. Maybe Kyungsoo’s spent too much time in college and he let himself get fooled. He forgot the rule for a second and now it’s coming back to bite him in the -
“Now, now,” Lexie tells Baekhyun. “Don’t forget our promise.”
Kyungsoo throws himself towards one of the many shards of glass left on the bar just as Baekhyun wraps an arm around Jongin’s shoulders to push him aside. He stretches out his other arm quickly and the gesture draws out a small gun that was concealed under his sleeve. His fingers close on it and he pulls the trigger before Kyungsoo even grabs his makeshift weapon. Jongin gasps loudly, his back hitting the bar, as Pavoni’s body falls to the floor.
Kyungsoo almost falls from his stool, but he manages to keep his balance with his twisted ankle on the floor. Slightly swaying, he still raises the shard of glass above his head and aims at Lexie’s back. Always expect the worst, his father’s voice says in his head again, and to Kyungsoo’s great displeasure, his father is right - again.
Lexie grabs his wrist then pins it violently to the bar. Kyungsoo gasps in pain and lets go of the shard. Not even a second later, Lexie is driving a knife through his sleeve thus successfully nailing his arm to the wood. Kyungsoo glares at her.
“You have guts,” she tells him with a big friendly smile. “I like you.”
She makes to ruffle his hair, but Kyungsoo pulls away.
“Fuck you,” he hisses.
She smiles, and shrugs before turning to Baekhyun, whose gun has long disappeared under his sleeve again. Kyungsoo closes his free hand around the handle of the knife - golden-coloured, of course - and tries to pulls it out, groaning. D
“What the fuck?” Jongin blurts as he eyes Pavoni’s body.
Baekhyun offers his hand to Lexie, who grabs it with a smile before stepping over her ex-boss’s body, unfazed. She gestures towards the door and Baekhyun nods before turning on his heels and stepping out of the pub. Putting her hands on her hips, Lexie draws back her attention on Jongin and Kyungsoo.
“This is where we part ways,” she says with a blinding smile. “Please, make sure to tell our common friend that I kept my words and did not injure you.” Her eyes fall on Jongin’s bandaged arm. “I would write him a thank you note for taking care of my dirty work, but I’m afraid I’ll be too busy leading my men, so make sure you tell him how grateful I am.”
“He’ll catch you,” Kyungsoo tells her. “And he’ll stop you.”
“Oh, honey,” she says. “You’re so sweet.”
She blows him a kiss, waves at Jongin and walks out of the room without a single glance over her shoulder. They both distinctively hear the door of the pub open, and some voices erupt on the outside, but as much as Kyungsoo would like to believe Pavoni’s men wouldn’t accept this coup, he doesn’t have much hope. She probably had them on her side all along.
His eyes unintentionally fall on the Italian mob leader’s body, and his stomach tenses when he spots the bloody hole between his two eyes, and the frozen pleased smile on his lips. Looking away, he tries to pull out the knife again, his whole skin felling itchy and uncomfortable.
“Wait, I - I’m gonna help you…”
Kyungsoo looks at Jongin, who looks just as cautiously at Pavoni’s body as he gets down from his stool. He rolls down his shirt, slips his arm back into the sleeve and adjusts his hoodie as he bypasses the body. Kyungsoo can’t help but think that he looks like a kid trying to look like an adult. Kyungsoo’s not the only one completely overrun at least.
“Did they tell you something else? Does Alpha know Heize found your friend?” he asks.
Jongin nods as he closes his hands around the knife.
“Yes, she told him.” He scrunches up his nose with a slight wince as he tugs on the knife. “Apparently the PVPD is even dirtier than we all thought and those scumbags work for the mayor.” He grits his teeth and pulls hard. The knife comes out with a splinter of wood. “Heize told Alpha that the Commissioner planned to divide his forces to enter in the Bottoms through the three bridges and Alpha kind of freaked out. He asked her to call someone she really trusted in the PVPD and tell them.”
Kyungsoo watches Jongin, frozen. Realization finally floods Jongin’s face and he parts his lips in a silent gasp.
“You’re Insung’s son,” he states.
“My dad’s gonna be there,” Kyungsoo nods, his voice slightly shaking. “He’s probably going to enter through Main Bridge…”
“He’ll be warned,” Jongin tries to reassure him. The lack of colours on his face doesn’t help though. “Heize will have told him. She’s amazing and -”
“How is he supposed to know who’s dirty though? What if they just receive the order to shoot at will? If they’re so many of them, how being warned will help him stay safe?” Kyungsoo freaks out.
His breathing gets erratic and not as efficient as it should be. He winces and presses a hand against his chest, cold sweat trickling down his forehead. Jongin puts a hand on his shoulder, but he startles before he can speak. Kyungsoo catches the worried look he throws him before he puts a finger in his ear.
“We’re here, we’re here,” he says hastily. “We … well, we couldn’t really speak? Lexie had Pavoni killed.” Jongin pauses and exchanges another look with Kyungsoo. His hand presses hard on Kyungsoo’s shoulder when he has to breath out, and goes back to being light when he inhales. “No, no, we’re okay she - yes she left us in the pub. Uh. You sure?”
Jongin nods, and Kyungsoo thinks it’s stupid. Is Alpha supposed to know Jongin just approved whatever he just said? He takes another deep breath. Somehow Jongin’s hand turns to be helpful as Kyungsoo follows the changes of pressure to settle down his breathing.
“Okay,” Jongin adds. “Copy that.”
He hasn’t even pulled out his finger that Kyungsoo scoots closer on stool, pressing.
“So? What did he say?”
“He wants us to lock ourselves in the pub and wait until it’s over. He’s going to Misaine Bridge with the Hood to make sure nothing bad happens. Heize and Chanyeol are going to Northill Bridge.”
Kyungsoo nods. It makes sense. Well, he guesses it does. He doesn’t seem to be able to think right now.
“Who’s going to Main Bridge?” he asks.
Jongin hesitates, which doesn’t seem to be a good sign at all.
“Jongin,” Kyungsoo thunders.
Jongin immediately gives in.
“No one. You’re right, your father’s going in through that bridge, and they trust him so…”
Kyungsoo blinks. Growing up in Port Ville can be a good thing, because it makes you aware and it teaches you how to fight back. There are some lessons that Kyungsoo wishes he didn’t learn though, and at the top of the list is probably his father’s lesson. Always expects the worst.
“We’re not staying here,” Kyungsoo says.
Jongin shakes his head. “Nope.”
They stare at each other for a few seconds. Jongin lets out a little sigh.
“I think I might have an idea.”
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