sin city (1/2)
sin city
minseok/everyone, pg-13, general, warning: battle scenes, violence
when his city falls under siege, minseok learns to fight the enemy.
originally written for minseokful. thanks ang for putting up with my shit ;;;;
Minseok opens fire with frost.
It's a gunfight; Minseok had walked straight into it on his way back home from work at the robotics lab. Minseok hadn’t seen the beginnings of the fight, but from what he can see it’s ugly, and the gunfire rings out sharp in the night. He’d better move fast before civilians fall into the crossfire.
There are more than twenty bullets in the air - it takes Minseok a while to sheath them in a shell of ice, stopping their motion mid-air so they fall to the ground. The gangs yell, twisting around in confusion, but Minseok steps back into the shadows in his alley. It’s lucky his power works even at a distance, plus he has the element of surprise on his side. In the five seconds the gang takes to figure out what the fuck happened, Minseok freezes the water vapour molecules around both sides to lock them in a cube of ice each, and dusts his hands free of frost to continue on his way home. They’ll be taken care of by the police when the ice melts - Minseok’s just putting in his hours for good ol’ crimebusting today. He’s somewhat of a moonlighting policeman, or perhaps even just a righteous civilian. The only thing that sets him apart from regular people is the frost over his fingers.
It’d started early. Minseok’d woken up one day in middle school shaking with frost dusting his fingertips, the tips of the tiny icicles hanging off his palm just starting to melt from the summer heat swirling in the room. They were gone by the time he made it down for breakfast, but it came back at lunch, at soccer practice. Minseok channeled his alarm into looking up frost mutants on the internet. Mutants weren’t that uncommon, but most striking was how every article Minseok found was written in a clinical fashion, like they were scientific anomalies to be wary of. The icicles went away soon enough after they they showed up every morning, but his friends turned out to follow suit, too.
Eight years later he’s learnt how to control it. One time he’d patted someone on the shoulder and left a searing icy burn from his hand frozen over. He'd learnt his lesson since. It always starts as a prickly little feeling in the veins in his hand, sometimes so faint he barely registers it, then he has to reroute the freezing energy elsewhere before it fires his whole hand up. Apparently his blood doesn’t take the energy like other people do; his arteries carry it to his feet so it’s grounded, like a lightning bolt that strikes the ground and fizzles out. Other people’s blood freeze over so their vital functions pause.
It’s a powerful weapon. The first time Minseok turned it on without thinking - he’d just wanted to stop a guard from beating up an already unconscious officer at the incineration plant Minseok passes by on the way home from work - the guard had toppled over. Minseok stuck around in shock and later found out on the news that he’d frozen the guy’s blood instantly. It’d thawed just in time for him to wake in prison. Since then Minseok’d used it on the bastards that needed stopping in the city, never sticking around long enough to let someone identify him. He thought he’d be immune from frost, but five years of exclusion when Minseok inevitably lets his power slip is a long time.
---
The smell of smoke, the crackle of flames is a trick of the night, Minseok thinks and ruffles his sister's hair until he looks up to see a fireball heading straight for him.
Minseok doesn't think - he throws himself bodily against his family so they land in a heap on the ground, shaking from pure panic electrifying him, and yells, "run!"
They run. Minseok keeps his eyes to his side - his parents are running, panic written all over his sister's face, and it's pure adrenaline that keeps Minseok's limbs moving, pure biological flight response. His heart is slamming against his ribcage so hard like his pulse resonates in every muscle, every nerve, but still then he keeps running, making sure he can see his parents, his sister. His ears are ringing like he's been sucked into a vacuum, so loudly that the crackling behind him only registers when Minseok can feel the intense heat on his back.
There's no way he could have stopped it. The huge fireball engulfs his parents and his sister, grazing his arm as it does so Minseok's thrown backwards from the heat energy, and -
Minseok jerks upwards in his bed, drenched with sweat. This is how he wakes most days, burning and pulse racing like he'd been reliving the moment all over again. Sometimes it feels like he has - the nightmares never get less vivid, and what's the difference, anyway? Minseok always wakes with the regret that is an arrow to his heart, the intense rage for the supervillain responsible for the fireballs that day, like it'd happened to him yesterday. Minseok scrubs his face and gets out of bed.
The first morning news headline is the same today - has been, for the last couple of weeks. A particular syndicate of mutants calling themselves EXO have been all over the news in recent days, a whirlwind band of villains blazing through the city leaving destruction in their wake. Most of what Minseok’s seen is devastation after they fight hard enough against the military, looking to bring the government down. There’s no question that the city isn’t ideal, teeming with filth and ruin from the centuries of pillaging their predecessors made on Earth. Minseok’s read about the green and blue the Earth had to offer, but sepia and tan is all he’s - everyone’s - known. Most of the city works in recycling-incineration plants that clean up the years of trash laid down by the human race, or robotics plants that builds robots from the raw materials from the recycling-incineration plants for export. The plant guards are strict, even violent with their workers, and there’s no doubt corruption is rife in the city. But turning waste into value is a pretty good system in Minseok’s opinion, and above all the blood spilled, no matter what EXO are fighting for, is most jarring for Minseok. He still sees - how could he ever stop? - his parents’ faces when he’s trying to fall asleep most nights, mouths open in shock, just before they’d been engulfed by the fireball.
Today the camera pans over the gaping crevices in the ground rippling out from one mutant, the force buckling homes and trees in the area. The military’s forces are down, fighter jets knocked clean out of the air to nosedive into the ocean and tanks crumpling like they’re aluminium. It’s staggering. Minseok can’t quite say he resents the stigma that comes with mutants when this is what they can do. Distill fear in raw flesh and you get the best defense mechanism the human psyche has: exclusion, and humans have good reason to be afraid. This city has seen its fair share of creeps and psychopaths drunk on power, but this group has an unprecedented stronghold on the city. Minseok’s seen the footage. Blasts of fire crumbling buildings into mere ash, light so intense it has the cutting power of lasers, floods causing severe damage to civilian homes. Stuff that makes power rear its ugly head, makes people seem like playthings.
Minseok recognizes the middle school he spent a good part of his life in sunken into the ground, and his television suddenly buzzes to black as Minseok realises he’s frozen it, the anger that had charged through his blood melting into sheer energy at his fingertips. So solidly that he has to take an ice pick to it, too. He’s bristling with defensiveness for his city, bold offense that comes hot on its heels. Action begets retaliation, attack.
Minseok puts the anger he has into the ice pick. Maybe he’ll put up a good fight against these bastards, but it’s one against ten, and the truth of the matter is that he has no clue where to start. Taking down what he can is probably the best he has to offer.
Maybe he’ll stick with the casual baddies as anonymously as he can. Fame and mics in his face aren’t what he’s looking for when he stops who he can anyway. It’s the best compromise he can find between doing good and the space that the world parts to leave around anomalies.
---
Except his very combat weapon leaves the most incriminating signature possible - he’d might as well have plastered a signboard over his victims. Friday turns the military up at his door, but they’ve brought a plea with them.
“We need your help,” the army brigadier-general says, sombre on Minseok’s couch. “We’re facing a national emergency. I’m sure you’ve heard of EXO?”
The brigadier-general offers more videos of the destruction EXO can leave, but Minseok’s seen more than enough. Left to their devices, Minseok has no doubt their nation can be decimated in a matter of seconds, especially when the military, with their heavy-duty tanks and cannons, are struggling to take the mutants down.
“Yes.”
“Our strength isn’t enough to overcome them,” the brigadier-general presses his lips together tight, as if admitting a particularly sour fact. “So we’re looking at other ways to bring them down.”
The beat of premonition resonates in Minseok’s chest.
“What we’re proposing is that you enter EXO, as a recruit, then feed us information on their operations and base. For a syndicate that causes damage as far as the eye can see, we don’t know much about them. It’s why we’ve had a lot of difficulties anticipating where they will attack. A spy would give us good information to pre-empt them.”
It’s a thunderbolt, one that throws the world into sharp relief. He’d assumed that he’d be using his powers to fight, but this is something else he hadn’t considered. Another way to contribute while giving himself a fighting chance. The rush of offense is back.
“We’ll assure your safety and comfort after the operation succeeds, of course.” Minseok’s heard the rumours of military-associated wealth. Just imagining it feels like a dream, and he’s got to admit it’s attractive. But perhaps the belief in what Minseok can offer the world is most bolstering of all. EXO’s a formidable team, but if the military’s giving him a government-backed way to do what he’s been doing, he can well dream big. The baddies he’s been dealing with are ants to his sledgehammer.
He accepts his directive in two days. Join EXO as a new recruit, gather intelligence on their operations for the government and eventually assist in military efforts to shut them down. Minseok leaves the icicles at his fingertips and steps out into the fray.
---
Lightning tears a ragged gash in the sky, driving into one mutant’s skull, but Minseok sees him channel it out in short bolts so he takes several police officers down like he’s a conduit for raw electricity. The military had orchestrated this attack on EXO to facilitate Minseok’s recruitment into the syndicate; Minseok's there to lend a hand for EXO when the chance crops up, present himself as an ally. The military had brought a lot; two tanks and a good-sized platoon, but they're turning out to be useless. Minseok keeps the frost within his fingers as lightning guy - Minseok had learnt from the military’s intelligence as Jongdae - fizzles all of the guns into live wires before the military have a chance to fire anything. Gunmetal is a hell of a conductor. It's trying, especially when officers at the end of the wires are barely able to defend themselves from the overwhelming current. The frontline falls to the floor unconscious. Minseok has to clench his fist to prevent himself from stopping the bolts from raining down on his comrades.
Just two are fronting EXO - Jongdae and Sehun, going by the storm that swirls around the military tanks and has several officers choking on sand - but between them they’ve gotten the military well-subdued. Minseok wonders if any point of intervention will open for him to show himself. With the two sides clearly mismatched in power even if the brigadier-general had assured Minseok they'd sent the best, Minseok's more fired up than ever for this mission, more determined to bring these bullies down.
It happens in a flash. Jongdae’s in the middle of short-circuiting the cannon on the tank through maximal current as Sehun keeps the sandstorm up when the fighter jet dives low enough to drop the grenade right above Jongdae. Minseok’s hand moves on its own accord.
The freezing power Minseok sends locks the water vapour molecules in the air in a lattice strong enough to stop the grenade in motion - it explodes mid-air, rippling sheer force through the lattice and it’s too sudden for Minseok to hold up his side of the defense. Ice chips the size of hail pelter down over the scene, drawing blood when they meet flesh. Minseok himself is thrown backwards from the force of the explosion, and when he recovers it’s ruin that meets his eyes.
The tanks are burning, what's left of the platoon shielding themselves from ice chips, Sehun badly cut up and Jongdae unconscious. The ice laid over the carnage - bodies, dead or alive Minseok does not know, guns, blood - is a carpet of crystalline sharps. Sehun's eyes are wide, his line of sight a straight arrow in Minseok's ribs. Minseok's still stricken by the suddenness of it all - and how instinctive his defence had been - when he's engulfed in a flash of deep grey.
"You can't stay here," a voice sounds in the choking smoke, and Minseok feels a hand on his shoulder before he feels himself squeezed through space.
He lands barely holding onto his breath on hard ground, in what looks like a basement. In the few seconds Minseok takes to cough the smoke out of his throat and take in his surroundings, they've gotten Jongdae trembling with some kind of force another mutant is driving into him till his cheeks are flush with colour again, and Sehun's cuts healing without a trace as the same man traces his wounds. Yixing, Minseok guesses from what he'd memorised from the factfiles that the military had obtained about EXO. They'd contained names, powers and little else. That he's one person against these mutant powerhouses he knows nothing about hits his insides like a chilling bolt. Minseok finds himself reinforcing his heart with ice to compensate.
"Alright," Yixing says when Jongdae opens his eyes. "They'll be fine. Going back for cleanup now." Minseok barely has time to catch Jongin's face before they're gone in the same thick black smoke. A man with clear blue irises straightens from whispering to Sehun.
He walks up to Minseok, holds his hand out. Minseok grabs it and pulls himself up. "I’m Junmyeon.”
“Minseok.” Up close the waterbender looks much more genial, much unlike what Minseok had expected, had seen on screen lashing ropes of water to hold cannons and battalions off, but Minseok reminds himself not to jump the gun. Junmyeon introduces the rest of the syndicate in the room - Jongdae and Sehun, weak but grateful, Kyungsoo and Zitao, whose gazes are unnerving, Chanyeol and Baekhyun whose features are carefully ironed straight. The weight of the air in the room is much thicker than Minseok would like to admit.
Junmyeon pauses, then smiles. “Thank you for what you did back there. You didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to,” Minseok says, and it’s then he realises he does, for reasons besides the operation. Maybe it’s the fact that the military hadn’t told him they were sending a fighter jet, nor that they’d sneak an attack on Jongdae that way. The attack was meant to be a mock one, organized solely to allow Minseok to present himself to EXO. Minseok’s afraid to parse what the military had meant with that grenade; what it’d meant to himself. Junmyeon looks at Minseok, quiet.
He jumps headfirst in. “I’d like to join your team.” He figures laying it out straight is his best bet - this way he seems like he has nothing to hide, and he has no idea what alternative motive he’d propose anyway.
In the whispering that follows, Minseok swallows his heartbeat at the back of his throat. He has an explanation ready - that he’s in support of what they do. It’s evident with their modus operandi and time choices for attack that EXO is fighting the establishment. Most of their attacks are coordinated, planned in around the fort circling the Square, the sprawling heart of the city that houses the government and the military. The recent siege they’d carried out had taken out a good number of artillery in the reserve hangar before the military had time to deploy any, though Zitao, who Minseok recognizes immediately as one of the representatives fronting EXO for the siege, has what looks like a brace for his spine. It’d been a small victory framed in the media, that the collision between Kyungsoo’s power and the explosion the military ignited had broken Zitao’s spine in multiple places. Minseok assumes Yixing’s healing power can only do so much.
“We’d be glad to have you,” Junmyeon says with his hands out. Sehun and Jongdae join him, linking their shoulders like a line of solidarity. The others step up next to Minseok too, their smiles subdued but sincere. Minseok surprisingly completes the circle, instead of feeling encircled like prey around bait. If it'd been a little too easy, Minseok doesn't show it. Perhaps the action he'd made in the battle just a while ago speaks the volumes he doesn't have to put in words to convince. They'd probably figured Minseok had everything to lose stepping out in that battle, especially in this city where superpower is synonymous with mutant, not hero. His move hadn't just been one to protect EXO, not in that battle against the military. If Minseok had been a bystander, he'd have heard the statement, too.
"Shall we show you around?" Junmyeon's eyes are the colour ice is when it's most pure as he gestures deeper in the room to lead the way. Minseok wonders if he can trust it to remain so, but he turns to follow.
---
Shoving yourself into a space forces your habituation faster than you’d think. Third day since Minseok’s started coming here from dawn to dusk, getting used to physical training in EXO’s headquarters. Training - their daily work - is drastically different from what Minseok’s used to, in the plant. Everyone here works because they want to; because good fights don’t come without putting in your dues. No one needs an alarm to be at the training hall at nine sharp.
Minseok trains and watches. The room isn’t as lavish as he’d expect for a syndicate, but then again a lot of EXO is turning out to be nothing like what he’d expected. The mutants - his teammates, now - are very much like anyone else. Regular people happening to have superpowers, with fatigue and laughter and drive and sensitivity. Perhaps it’s the proximity: watching them through a screen unleash their terror on the city makes it much easier to fear, to make judgment. Sometimes he has to remind himself these are the same people who’ve broken too much of the city he’s grown up in. It’s somewhat surreal to see the same person slice through fort walls with light so cutting it has the intensity of a laser fall back on a mat after a duel, drenched in sweat but laughing. Minseok accepts a bottle of water gratefully from Lu Han, who pulls a couple straight from the fridge in the kitchen several rooms over when they all decide to give themselves a break.
“Thanks.”
“So,” Baekhyun takes a big swig of water and looks at him. His eyes are bright. “What made you decide to join us?”
Minseok shrugs. He’d prepared for this question, even practised answering it in the mirror, but faced with it in the quiet of the training hall, his heartbeat thudding in his chest at the confrontation, his throat goes dry. “I’ve heard a lot about you guys.”
Kyungsoo’s smile is small, but laced with something else. “I’d imagine most of it is negative.”
There’s no point in lying. “Yes.”
Baekhyun snorts softly. None of them meet Minseok’s eyes, but he hasn’t answered the question.
“When I was ten,” Minseok starts, the words tumbling off his tongue before he can stop them. “My parents were killed in crossfire.” It’s not a lie, but his voice is trembling. Is there a difference between bold lies and hiding the truth, if the intent is the same? He’s gotten what he needed. Minseok’s eyes latch onto the floor - perhaps they’re not ready for four doses of hijacked sympathy either.
“I’m sorry,” Jongin says first, and when Minseok lifts his head to look him in the eye it’s the welcome that’s most striking. Minseok’s lost as to what to say.
The smile he musters eventually is weak next to the rest, but it’s from the deepest rawness inside himself. Ten years since he’d had his power and he’s had to go all the way into the enemy’s camp to feel acceptance.
“What about you guys?” Minseok blurts something, anything to take the focus off himself. He’s not sure if it’s his self-consciousness that comes with the spotlight that’s making him uncomfortable or his conscience.
Lu Han smiles a little, blinks back down at the floor. “Think our stories are pretty similar. Sick of taking shit from the government, sick of watching our friends and family be robbed by the establishment? My dad was beaten to death at the incineration plant when I was twelve because he wouldn’t give them the watch we scrimped to give him for his birthday.” There’s a little gloss in Lu Han’s eyes when he looks back up, but Minseok can see the steel too. “It’s no way to live.”
Jongin nods, his lips pressed tightly together. “I wanted to ignore the shit before, too, focus on what I had and defend myself when I can, but the people of the city - there’s nothing they can do. I figured life didn’t give me the power to teleport for me to get beaten up in a plant.”
Hearing it to his own ears Minseok realises he’d taken the military offer for the exact same reason. It makes him wonder if identification with the enemy is a dangerous thing to feel.
“Our fight hasn’t been easy for sure, and I’m not even talking about the injuries. But it comes with the territory, I guess, and I’d rather put my power to good use than go down without a fight. We’ve got Yixing anyway, can’t die from this even if we wanted to.” Baekhyun’s smile is cheekier, fearless. The sense that power and domination is nowhere near the drive that fuels this rag-tag bunch is palpable, and it throws Minseok. This isn’t what he’d seen on the news, from what the military had told him. This isn’t what he’d come to fight.
“I’m glad you showed up,” Junmyeon walks in just then, his eyes soft. “We’re good at what we do, but ten is a tight number to work with the sheer forces the military are recruiting lately to stop us, and Zitao’s out for the count after the shitstorm at the Square. Guess they figured our bodies are fundamentally human, and Yixing can restart organs and heal wounds, but bone doesn’t re-grow the way Yixing heals.”
Minseok can’t help but note this is much more than the military had let on. If they’re aware of mutant biology - there must be a world of information that the military knows about EXO, but had intentionally kept from Minseok. The feeling that the military isn’t as helpless, as much of a sitting duck as Minseok had thought is unnerving. It’s the first time since he’s joined EXO that he feels threatened by a predatory presence, and it’s from inside his head.
Minseok sends his report to the brigadier-general at home, a short one about the location of EXO’s headquarters and its meagre defence strategies, before he packs his bags to move in with his new team. There's a worming sense of betrayal that he can't shake, even if he reminds himself this is his responsibility to fulfil.
Minseok moves in that night, in a room with Chanyeol, Baekhyun and Zitao. His new roommates are welcoming, but not intrusive. Friendly, even, and the same sense of betrayal weaves a hard cage around his heart to squeeze it tight. Chanyeol snores lightly throughout the night, but Minseok’s kept awake wondering if taking different routes to achieve end points, despite sharing intentions, puts people on opposite sides of the game.
---
Minimizing damage to innocents is the first rule of thumb for battle Minseok learns in EXO. That’s what the training hall is for, besides physical training. Kyungsoo pulls a good number of training dummies in the middle of the hall again, spacing them out, and an army more sloshed with thick red paint in a semicircle around the training dummies in the middle. Chanyeol, Baekhyun and Jongdae join him on to complete the circle.
“This is mostly what we use the hall for,” Jongdae had explained the first time. “The red dummies are the enemy - whoever it turns out to be in a battle. The middle - civilians.”
“It’s fifty pushups per civilian every round,” Zitao reminds the four in the circle, wincing as he adjusts his brace. Minseok reaches over to hold it straight so Junmyeon can help adjust the buckles before he can help himself. Two weeks of living and breathing EXO condenses development so much Minseok feels like he’s known them for at least a couple of months. He’d expected the sting of feeling like a stranger, like a slice wedged into an already round pie, but his teammates had left no room for the self-consciousness to seep in. Ten people stuff your days chock full, especially when solitude is all you’ve known.
Junmyeon sets the timer to twenty. “And… go.”
Light flashes between dummies, so fast that Minseok has barely time to follow anything with his eyes. Kyungsoo’s power is the least discriminatory of all of these attackers, so the strength he has to put in to focus it at a point before releasing burns him out much faster. He’s on the floor in minutes, his hands smoking.
“Okay?” Minseok leans forward, but Kyungsoo nods and grabs Minseok’s hand to pull himself up. “Still working on the endurance.”
Chanyeol and Jongdae’s powers are targeted, but so powerful they graze past the civilian dummies to leave singeing holes, crackling from energy. A couple of them fall and Minseok can see Chanyeol swear under his breath.
“Two each for Jongdae and Kyungsoo,” Junmyeon calls out when the timer dings. “And five for Chanyeol. One for Baekhyun. Next group!”
Minseok knocks down three more, and Sehun takes two. They get to the pushups immediately after practice. It’s not about the punishment, but the reminder that this stuff is important, that there are consequences to bear from not delivering. Minseok’s done it enough times in the two weeks he’s been here that the fatigue in his arms is almost flesh memory when he’s duelling. The rest have been doing it for months.
“God,” Chanyeol groans as he collapses to the floor after his loud yell of two-fifty. “My arms are gonna fall off.”
It rushes a laugh out of Minseok, even if he feels exactly the same. Baekhyun laughs too, reaching over to pinch Chanyeol’s nipple. “Loser.”
Chanyeol yelps, jerking up to glare daggers at Baekhyun. “I’ll burn your hair off later, you just watch.”
“Come at me,” Baekhyun taunts, then jumps to grab Minseok’s body so he’s shielded completely. “Hyung! He’s threatening me!”
Minseok laughs, letting Baekhyun jerk his arms around to ward Chanyeol off.
“Hyung,” Chanyeol whines, “how can you be on Baekhyun’s side? I thought I was your favourite.”
“I’m a neutral party here,” Minseok says grinning, holding his hands up, and Chanyeol charges at Baekhyun so they fall in a heap, laughing and yelling. Minseok hasn’t laughed this freely in a while. It feels energizing, even if he’d just done a hundred and fifty push-ups straight. Jongdae laughs and falls over mock-accidentally on their pile of limbs so Minseok has the breath knocked out of him, but Baekhyun’s yelled loud enough to be heard fifty miles away for him.
Jongin’s flashing into the hall is a surprise that makes them all sit up, and the smoke clears to a scene that jerks Minseok’s heart out of his chest. There’s a bullet embedded in Yixing’s arm. Lu Han’s arm is holding Yixing up, and his lips are pale as death. “Yixing -“
“’m fine,” Yixing manages, his knuckles white as he grasps Jongin’s arm to sit up. “Just give it a while.” Even as he speaks, the bullet forces itself out of Yixing’s arm so there’s just a gaping wound left, bloody and gruesome.
“Did something happen at the hospital?” Junmyeon’s eyes are a darker blue than what Minseok’s used to.
Lu Han nods. “We were doing the usual, Yixing doing his stuff in the hospital. We were heading to the next building when - it was my fault, I should have seen the guard coming. They got one shot in before I could react.”
The defenders - the mutants with more defensive powers - train in the real field, where they can put their powers to good use. It’d been a revelation when Minseok had found out. For cleanup, Lu Han had said. After battle when the people need us to do what we’re good at. Jongin brings Yixing to the patients and Lu Han covers their back in case of ambush. Second thing Minseok had learnt in EXO’s base is the knowledge that someone’ll be there to take care of the things you can’t. Injuries and pain come with the territory, but someone’s there to ease it better.
“It’s not your fault,” Yixing mutters. The wound’s still open, but blood’s no longer trickling out of it.
Junmyeon is grim. “That means they’re upping their game now. If the armed guards know what all of us look like and won’t hesitate to shoot - we can’t afford to have you guys train outside now.”
This should make Minseok feel different, that his side of the game has a better foothold, but how could he? Yixing’s blood is all he can see, the group holding out water, a shoulder to lean on, a clean bandage. Minseok has to force the lump that’s rotten, decayed down his throat and convince himself his loyalties lie with the city.
---
Jongin flashes into the basement panting and frantic, slamming the emergency button. All ten - eleven, Minseok reminds himself, are out in the huddle room in seconds, even Zitao, wincing as he takes a seat. Jongin drops it.
“Hospital A3. There’s a raid, bombs and guns. Military seals on the fighter jets.” Minseok has to take several seconds to run what Jongin’s saying in his head. Junmyeon starts barking instructions.
“I’ll fight the fires, Jongdae can cover the artillery? Sehun and Baekhyun for the jets. Lu Han for control?” The four of them nod, and Minseok’s about to step forward, his mouth open, but he has no idea what he’s about to say. A military-sanctioned attack on a hospital - the implication explodes in Minseok’s face hard enough for him to take a step back. The shock is buzzing, insistent.
The frontline for this battle are gone with Jongin in that familiar flash of black before Minseok has any time to cover, and Yixing pats Minseok on the shoulder.
“You okay?” There’s genuine concern in his voice.
Minseok nods, though his heart feels like it’s been ripped from himself. “On a hospital -“
Zitao nods, his lips in a harsh grimace. “Not the first time, doubt it’ll be the last. The last one was much worse.”
The revelations keep punching Minseok in the gut, but he doesn’t say anything. He’d never seen anything like that in the news, but showing his surprise would probably draw suspicion. Yixing’s fingers are rough at the hem of his shirt. “Couldn’t even do anything - the bomb they dropped was too powerful. Wiped the hospital out before Jongin could even make it there.”
If this is the military’s signature, Minseok’s mind is racing to think of what else they’ve kept under the media’s radar, what else they haven’t bothered to mention to Minseok. Perhaps they aren’t obliged to, but the sting, the heavy sense of danger robs Minseok of his breath. This is not the ally he’d thought he’d be helping.
Jongin materializes in front of them. “I guessed right. The hospital’s too full of dying patients, riddled with radiation from the plants. Too expensive to nurse back to health than what they’ll be worth working.”
It’s plain as day, what Jongin’s saying, but with his mind shredded and his veins turned inside out nothing makes sense to Minseok. Chanyeol’s fists are clenched, but flames are blazing from them anyway. “Bet they’re feeding some shit about us to the media again. I gotta go blow these bastards up.”
Kyungsoo puts his hand on Chanyeol’s arm. ”You’ll just add to the crossfire.” He turns to Jongin. “Heard anything yet?”
“The ruse they’re using is that they suspect the hospital is harbouring mutants - they made up some kind of bullshit mutant signature.”
There’s a hardness in Yixing’s eyes, so strong it seems almost out of place from what Minseok’s seen of Yixing. “Casualties?”
Jongin nods. “Maybe half the hospital. Lu Han’s moving the rest as fast as he can into the nearby bomb shelter, but it’s difficult with the beds and equipment. Baekhyun and Sehun have got most of the planes down.”
“Jongdae and Junmyeon?”
“Working on it. The fires are getting put out, but - the soldiers with the guns are running through the civilians, either for cover or to distract. Lightning doesn’t have that kind of resolution. He’s on the roof now for a better vantage point. Alone. I came to get Kyungsoo to cover his back.”
Even in the shelter of headquarters, away from the action Minseok can imagine how easy it’ll be to take down someone on the roof, a fixed point for target. A sudden silence falls in the basement, and it’s then that Minseok finds it. The understanding that no battle in the world can be won without sacrifice, but minimizing it is the best they can do. On this side of the coin the world turns inside out to slip into place.
Kyungsoo nods, and they’re down to four in the room. Yixing turns to Minseok. “When you freeze someone’s blood - that’s all it does, right?”
“Yes.” Minseok’s hands are tingling with energy. Emotion has always been the best cue for his weapon.
Yixing nods. “Jongin’ll be back after it’s over - he’ll pick us up for cleanup. Freezing’s useful for the victims till I can get to them.”
Minseok gets it immediately, like they’re old partners with honed chemistry. Instant freezing brings the human body down to a pause on the molecular level and stops all sentience, pain and self-decay, but molecules bounce back to how they are when the body thaws. That buys them enough time while Yixing works through what must be hundreds of victims, and Chanyeol’s fire will be enough energy to revive them when Yixing can. He swallows. “Okay.”
Every second of wait is excruciating. Zitao turns on the news to show coverage of the hospital, explosions and blood and ruin. The camera takes the military jets going down, soldiers being hit by Jongdae’s bolts, people getting swept away in the lashes of water Junmyeon sends at the fires. There’s a glaring feeling of déjà vu - he’s seen this all on a television screen, but now that Minseok knows the other side of the story, he sees the things that he would have missed - the soldiers running through what’s left of the beds in the corner of a shot, Lu Han a pinprick in the distance moving patients to safety, the flash of a military seal on a plane wing staining the edge of a camera shot as an explosion ignites. The urgency to help swallows any other confusion Minseok has about his identity as a military spy. Yixing’s hand on his shoulder, Chanyeol’s form next to him is reassuring, anchoring for his racing heart.
When Jongin finally, finally flashes back with the frontline spent but mostly fine, the ground under Minseok’s feet is frozen hard.
“We’re going for cleanup,” Yixing says, grabbing Minseok’s hand. “Lu Han’s still there?”
Junmyeon nods and catches Minseok’s eye, a mix of reassurance and gratefulness that melts Minseok’s pulse at the back of his throat, then Jongin grabs Minseok’s other hand and there’s the familiar squeeze.
But no amount of reassurance, Minseok realises, could have prepared him for the wreckage. The hospital looks like death and ash. Lu Han’s gotten most of the survivors and the wounded in the bomb shelter, but the bodies littering the smoking debris are as far as the eye can see. Yixing clenches his fist and turns away so he can focus on the survivors - healing is futile for the irrevocable.
Minseok sends a wave of frost energy through the bomb shelter so the victims in critical condition have some time. It’s a scary sight, a hundred people with blue lips and dead eyes, but Chanyeol and Yixing work as fast as they can, and Lu Han lifts them back out on the street when he’s done. Minseok watches as they breathe life amidst the rubble that the military’s caused, and he’s limp, all of a sudden, like he’s been stretched to breaking point.
What’s awash in his veins, in the marrow of his bones, Minseok realises, is the desperation that comes with piercing doubt. If this is the other side to what he’s been seeing and believing for years, then Minseok is free to renege on his loyalties. The team that's come to stand by him, the team that he has to sell out is not the enemy he'd meant to fight. The purpose that had made the decision for him before - that what's he's doing is for the good of the city - no longer points at the team he cannot bring himself to fight. The establishment he's been working for, trusting, has robbed it from him. There is no longer a question of morality or abandonment, when he was never meant to be a part of the establishment anyway, merely a pawn in their game.
He's quiet for the rest of the cleanup, the confession on the tip of his tongue. He owes them the truth; it would be impossible to hide this secret and face the ten people that's trusted him wholeheartedly. Minseok doesn't let himself think about the possible outcomes. His mere association with the establishment disgusts himself.
"Minseok?" Lu Han's hand at his elbow is soft, his voice quiet. "Are you okay?"
Minseok looks up to see Yixing and Jongin, ready by Lu Han's side. He nods. "There's something I need to tell you guys."
---
The huddle room is deathly silent when Minseok finishes. It feels like a load off his shoulders, but the guilt, the self-disgust is heaviest of all. Betrayal is the sickest feeling to stomach - it's that afternoon, the rubble all over again, except closer to the bone.
"How dare you." Chanyeol's voice is quiet and it cuts sharper than a blade.
"I'm sorry." It sounds weak even to Minseok's ears, even if it's the best he can give. His mistake had been ignorance, precisely crafted by what the establishment has been doing, but why should they trust him if his entire identity has been a lie?
"You didn't know." The statement comes as a question. Minseok nods and meets Kyungsoo's eyes.
"It's easy to blame the media, the manipulation of the establishment, but I should have found out more about you guys, dug deeper. I thought I knew the kind of people I was working for, that they were trying to defend the city from you guys."
"Even with the space habitat?" Baekhyun sounds incredulous. Minseok freezes with the premonition of realization that more has been hidden from him.
"Space habitat?"
Sehun, Jongdae and Kyungsoo's eyes soften, but the rest remain sharp. It's not going to be easy, but Minseok had expected it. He doesn't even know what he's trying to achieve with his confession - maybe just to fulfil the need to let EXO know.
"Guess the secret's more obscure than we'd thought," Junmyeon mutters, and now holding his eyes isn't as painful as it'd been. He turns the projector in the room on and Minseok watches his beliefs crumble on him for the third time today.
The space habitat is two light years away from Earth, where the rich and the government live. Luxury is an understatement for it - the pictures they've found look like heaven. It's revolting, the diamond rings that glitter off the residents' fingers, the rich food strewn over the luscious grass, the robots - the very robots Minseok builds in his plant - serving the residents food and drinks. Plane crafts that make the distance from one end of a house compound to another.
"This is the space habitat," Junmyeon says, scrolling through a litany of pictures, the very scene of exorbitant. "What the government lives in, where the money from the city's robotics exports and profit from incineration goes to. This is why more than half of the city lives in poverty. The city's barely more than a production plant for their riches. That's why they bombed the hospital - sucking up drugs and medical equipment for a couple workers? Waste of money."
Next to Minseok, Sehun jerks away from his side as though burned, which is only when he realises that his hands are encased in a rock solid layer of ice. It's another explosion in his face, except this time everything makes sense. EXO's drive, the attack on the hospital, what the establishment has been feeding the city all this while. The secret that would decimate loyalty and trust. Start a revolution.
The rage that courses through Minseok's veins and fires him up rushes straight to his hands, and he barely manages to keep it within his skin barrier so it doesn't explode. "Jesus." He remembers when his neighbour had had a high fever and they ran miles to find a hospital that was willing to give out medication to no avail, when he'd watched a plant guard kick aside a beggar. It's funny how the mind rejects the evil you see when you've already imprinted on something else. The hints had been there waiting for Minseok to see them, but how could he, when defender against the enemy is all he's known the establishment to be? There's nothing left in his throat.
"I'm glad you came clean with us, at least," Junmyeon says. Minseok can't read his face. "That says enough to me." Minseok isn't here to convince, but what he's sure of now is that the establishment is what he needs to fight. Maybe it is about taking sides after all.
"I'm going to destroy them," he says. "I can't work for this kind of establishment."
"But you should," Kyungsoo looks Minseok in the eye. "If you want to help us, information on the military's operations is the most valuable thing you can offer."
Minseok's been so horrified, so overwhelmed with the truth that he'd forgotten his identity, what he can offer. So it's a business exchange. An alliance, though it doesn't mean they've accepted Minseok. Trust is a tough thing to repair. But it's a compromise, one that can achieve their common goal.
"But why should we trust you?" Jongin's question hits the heart of the matter.
"I don't have anything," Minseok admits. There's no reason why they should give him the benefit of the doubt. "But I really had no idea."
"You can't know what you don't," Jongdae says. "I don't know how to blame you for that." It's validation, comfort. A small reminder that he's not entirely alone.
"What have you told them?" Baekhyun's arms are still folded, defensive. Minseok can't blame him.
"Where this place is." It feels little for the weeks he's been here, but Minseok realises that EXO has nothing else to hide.
Yixing furrows his brow. "They know about that already. Why would they ask you for that information?"
Minseok's stumped, and perhaps a little relieved. Being on this side of the gun isn't quite the same as shining a light on the target. "They probably didn't plan for me to be just an information source."
"Then they're planning something." Chanyeol says, his eyes darting to Minseok's. Minseok can read the expectation clearly.
"We'll take turns to guard," Junmyeon says, and Minseok wonders what will happen when it's his turn. He's still staring at the ceiling when dawn breaks and his cheeks are dry.
next
minseok/everyone, pg-13, general, warning: battle scenes, violence
when his city falls under siege, minseok learns to fight the enemy.
originally written for minseokful. thanks ang for putting up with my shit ;;;;
Minseok opens fire with frost.
It's a gunfight; Minseok had walked straight into it on his way back home from work at the robotics lab. Minseok hadn’t seen the beginnings of the fight, but from what he can see it’s ugly, and the gunfire rings out sharp in the night. He’d better move fast before civilians fall into the crossfire.
There are more than twenty bullets in the air - it takes Minseok a while to sheath them in a shell of ice, stopping their motion mid-air so they fall to the ground. The gangs yell, twisting around in confusion, but Minseok steps back into the shadows in his alley. It’s lucky his power works even at a distance, plus he has the element of surprise on his side. In the five seconds the gang takes to figure out what the fuck happened, Minseok freezes the water vapour molecules around both sides to lock them in a cube of ice each, and dusts his hands free of frost to continue on his way home. They’ll be taken care of by the police when the ice melts - Minseok’s just putting in his hours for good ol’ crimebusting today. He’s somewhat of a moonlighting policeman, or perhaps even just a righteous civilian. The only thing that sets him apart from regular people is the frost over his fingers.
It’d started early. Minseok’d woken up one day in middle school shaking with frost dusting his fingertips, the tips of the tiny icicles hanging off his palm just starting to melt from the summer heat swirling in the room. They were gone by the time he made it down for breakfast, but it came back at lunch, at soccer practice. Minseok channeled his alarm into looking up frost mutants on the internet. Mutants weren’t that uncommon, but most striking was how every article Minseok found was written in a clinical fashion, like they were scientific anomalies to be wary of. The icicles went away soon enough after they they showed up every morning, but his friends turned out to follow suit, too.
Eight years later he’s learnt how to control it. One time he’d patted someone on the shoulder and left a searing icy burn from his hand frozen over. He'd learnt his lesson since. It always starts as a prickly little feeling in the veins in his hand, sometimes so faint he barely registers it, then he has to reroute the freezing energy elsewhere before it fires his whole hand up. Apparently his blood doesn’t take the energy like other people do; his arteries carry it to his feet so it’s grounded, like a lightning bolt that strikes the ground and fizzles out. Other people’s blood freeze over so their vital functions pause.
It’s a powerful weapon. The first time Minseok turned it on without thinking - he’d just wanted to stop a guard from beating up an already unconscious officer at the incineration plant Minseok passes by on the way home from work - the guard had toppled over. Minseok stuck around in shock and later found out on the news that he’d frozen the guy’s blood instantly. It’d thawed just in time for him to wake in prison. Since then Minseok’d used it on the bastards that needed stopping in the city, never sticking around long enough to let someone identify him. He thought he’d be immune from frost, but five years of exclusion when Minseok inevitably lets his power slip is a long time.
---
The smell of smoke, the crackle of flames is a trick of the night, Minseok thinks and ruffles his sister's hair until he looks up to see a fireball heading straight for him.
Minseok doesn't think - he throws himself bodily against his family so they land in a heap on the ground, shaking from pure panic electrifying him, and yells, "run!"
They run. Minseok keeps his eyes to his side - his parents are running, panic written all over his sister's face, and it's pure adrenaline that keeps Minseok's limbs moving, pure biological flight response. His heart is slamming against his ribcage so hard like his pulse resonates in every muscle, every nerve, but still then he keeps running, making sure he can see his parents, his sister. His ears are ringing like he's been sucked into a vacuum, so loudly that the crackling behind him only registers when Minseok can feel the intense heat on his back.
There's no way he could have stopped it. The huge fireball engulfs his parents and his sister, grazing his arm as it does so Minseok's thrown backwards from the heat energy, and -
Minseok jerks upwards in his bed, drenched with sweat. This is how he wakes most days, burning and pulse racing like he'd been reliving the moment all over again. Sometimes it feels like he has - the nightmares never get less vivid, and what's the difference, anyway? Minseok always wakes with the regret that is an arrow to his heart, the intense rage for the supervillain responsible for the fireballs that day, like it'd happened to him yesterday. Minseok scrubs his face and gets out of bed.
The first morning news headline is the same today - has been, for the last couple of weeks. A particular syndicate of mutants calling themselves EXO have been all over the news in recent days, a whirlwind band of villains blazing through the city leaving destruction in their wake. Most of what Minseok’s seen is devastation after they fight hard enough against the military, looking to bring the government down. There’s no question that the city isn’t ideal, teeming with filth and ruin from the centuries of pillaging their predecessors made on Earth. Minseok’s read about the green and blue the Earth had to offer, but sepia and tan is all he’s - everyone’s - known. Most of the city works in recycling-incineration plants that clean up the years of trash laid down by the human race, or robotics plants that builds robots from the raw materials from the recycling-incineration plants for export. The plant guards are strict, even violent with their workers, and there’s no doubt corruption is rife in the city. But turning waste into value is a pretty good system in Minseok’s opinion, and above all the blood spilled, no matter what EXO are fighting for, is most jarring for Minseok. He still sees - how could he ever stop? - his parents’ faces when he’s trying to fall asleep most nights, mouths open in shock, just before they’d been engulfed by the fireball.
Today the camera pans over the gaping crevices in the ground rippling out from one mutant, the force buckling homes and trees in the area. The military’s forces are down, fighter jets knocked clean out of the air to nosedive into the ocean and tanks crumpling like they’re aluminium. It’s staggering. Minseok can’t quite say he resents the stigma that comes with mutants when this is what they can do. Distill fear in raw flesh and you get the best defense mechanism the human psyche has: exclusion, and humans have good reason to be afraid. This city has seen its fair share of creeps and psychopaths drunk on power, but this group has an unprecedented stronghold on the city. Minseok’s seen the footage. Blasts of fire crumbling buildings into mere ash, light so intense it has the cutting power of lasers, floods causing severe damage to civilian homes. Stuff that makes power rear its ugly head, makes people seem like playthings.
Minseok recognizes the middle school he spent a good part of his life in sunken into the ground, and his television suddenly buzzes to black as Minseok realises he’s frozen it, the anger that had charged through his blood melting into sheer energy at his fingertips. So solidly that he has to take an ice pick to it, too. He’s bristling with defensiveness for his city, bold offense that comes hot on its heels. Action begets retaliation, attack.
Minseok puts the anger he has into the ice pick. Maybe he’ll put up a good fight against these bastards, but it’s one against ten, and the truth of the matter is that he has no clue where to start. Taking down what he can is probably the best he has to offer.
Maybe he’ll stick with the casual baddies as anonymously as he can. Fame and mics in his face aren’t what he’s looking for when he stops who he can anyway. It’s the best compromise he can find between doing good and the space that the world parts to leave around anomalies.
---
Except his very combat weapon leaves the most incriminating signature possible - he’d might as well have plastered a signboard over his victims. Friday turns the military up at his door, but they’ve brought a plea with them.
“We need your help,” the army brigadier-general says, sombre on Minseok’s couch. “We’re facing a national emergency. I’m sure you’ve heard of EXO?”
The brigadier-general offers more videos of the destruction EXO can leave, but Minseok’s seen more than enough. Left to their devices, Minseok has no doubt their nation can be decimated in a matter of seconds, especially when the military, with their heavy-duty tanks and cannons, are struggling to take the mutants down.
“Yes.”
“Our strength isn’t enough to overcome them,” the brigadier-general presses his lips together tight, as if admitting a particularly sour fact. “So we’re looking at other ways to bring them down.”
The beat of premonition resonates in Minseok’s chest.
“What we’re proposing is that you enter EXO, as a recruit, then feed us information on their operations and base. For a syndicate that causes damage as far as the eye can see, we don’t know much about them. It’s why we’ve had a lot of difficulties anticipating where they will attack. A spy would give us good information to pre-empt them.”
It’s a thunderbolt, one that throws the world into sharp relief. He’d assumed that he’d be using his powers to fight, but this is something else he hadn’t considered. Another way to contribute while giving himself a fighting chance. The rush of offense is back.
“We’ll assure your safety and comfort after the operation succeeds, of course.” Minseok’s heard the rumours of military-associated wealth. Just imagining it feels like a dream, and he’s got to admit it’s attractive. But perhaps the belief in what Minseok can offer the world is most bolstering of all. EXO’s a formidable team, but if the military’s giving him a government-backed way to do what he’s been doing, he can well dream big. The baddies he’s been dealing with are ants to his sledgehammer.
He accepts his directive in two days. Join EXO as a new recruit, gather intelligence on their operations for the government and eventually assist in military efforts to shut them down. Minseok leaves the icicles at his fingertips and steps out into the fray.
---
Lightning tears a ragged gash in the sky, driving into one mutant’s skull, but Minseok sees him channel it out in short bolts so he takes several police officers down like he’s a conduit for raw electricity. The military had orchestrated this attack on EXO to facilitate Minseok’s recruitment into the syndicate; Minseok's there to lend a hand for EXO when the chance crops up, present himself as an ally. The military had brought a lot; two tanks and a good-sized platoon, but they're turning out to be useless. Minseok keeps the frost within his fingers as lightning guy - Minseok had learnt from the military’s intelligence as Jongdae - fizzles all of the guns into live wires before the military have a chance to fire anything. Gunmetal is a hell of a conductor. It's trying, especially when officers at the end of the wires are barely able to defend themselves from the overwhelming current. The frontline falls to the floor unconscious. Minseok has to clench his fist to prevent himself from stopping the bolts from raining down on his comrades.
Just two are fronting EXO - Jongdae and Sehun, going by the storm that swirls around the military tanks and has several officers choking on sand - but between them they’ve gotten the military well-subdued. Minseok wonders if any point of intervention will open for him to show himself. With the two sides clearly mismatched in power even if the brigadier-general had assured Minseok they'd sent the best, Minseok's more fired up than ever for this mission, more determined to bring these bullies down.
It happens in a flash. Jongdae’s in the middle of short-circuiting the cannon on the tank through maximal current as Sehun keeps the sandstorm up when the fighter jet dives low enough to drop the grenade right above Jongdae. Minseok’s hand moves on its own accord.
The freezing power Minseok sends locks the water vapour molecules in the air in a lattice strong enough to stop the grenade in motion - it explodes mid-air, rippling sheer force through the lattice and it’s too sudden for Minseok to hold up his side of the defense. Ice chips the size of hail pelter down over the scene, drawing blood when they meet flesh. Minseok himself is thrown backwards from the force of the explosion, and when he recovers it’s ruin that meets his eyes.
The tanks are burning, what's left of the platoon shielding themselves from ice chips, Sehun badly cut up and Jongdae unconscious. The ice laid over the carnage - bodies, dead or alive Minseok does not know, guns, blood - is a carpet of crystalline sharps. Sehun's eyes are wide, his line of sight a straight arrow in Minseok's ribs. Minseok's still stricken by the suddenness of it all - and how instinctive his defence had been - when he's engulfed in a flash of deep grey.
"You can't stay here," a voice sounds in the choking smoke, and Minseok feels a hand on his shoulder before he feels himself squeezed through space.
He lands barely holding onto his breath on hard ground, in what looks like a basement. In the few seconds Minseok takes to cough the smoke out of his throat and take in his surroundings, they've gotten Jongdae trembling with some kind of force another mutant is driving into him till his cheeks are flush with colour again, and Sehun's cuts healing without a trace as the same man traces his wounds. Yixing, Minseok guesses from what he'd memorised from the factfiles that the military had obtained about EXO. They'd contained names, powers and little else. That he's one person against these mutant powerhouses he knows nothing about hits his insides like a chilling bolt. Minseok finds himself reinforcing his heart with ice to compensate.
"Alright," Yixing says when Jongdae opens his eyes. "They'll be fine. Going back for cleanup now." Minseok barely has time to catch Jongin's face before they're gone in the same thick black smoke. A man with clear blue irises straightens from whispering to Sehun.
He walks up to Minseok, holds his hand out. Minseok grabs it and pulls himself up. "I’m Junmyeon.”
“Minseok.” Up close the waterbender looks much more genial, much unlike what Minseok had expected, had seen on screen lashing ropes of water to hold cannons and battalions off, but Minseok reminds himself not to jump the gun. Junmyeon introduces the rest of the syndicate in the room - Jongdae and Sehun, weak but grateful, Kyungsoo and Zitao, whose gazes are unnerving, Chanyeol and Baekhyun whose features are carefully ironed straight. The weight of the air in the room is much thicker than Minseok would like to admit.
Junmyeon pauses, then smiles. “Thank you for what you did back there. You didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to,” Minseok says, and it’s then he realises he does, for reasons besides the operation. Maybe it’s the fact that the military hadn’t told him they were sending a fighter jet, nor that they’d sneak an attack on Jongdae that way. The attack was meant to be a mock one, organized solely to allow Minseok to present himself to EXO. Minseok’s afraid to parse what the military had meant with that grenade; what it’d meant to himself. Junmyeon looks at Minseok, quiet.
He jumps headfirst in. “I’d like to join your team.” He figures laying it out straight is his best bet - this way he seems like he has nothing to hide, and he has no idea what alternative motive he’d propose anyway.
In the whispering that follows, Minseok swallows his heartbeat at the back of his throat. He has an explanation ready - that he’s in support of what they do. It’s evident with their modus operandi and time choices for attack that EXO is fighting the establishment. Most of their attacks are coordinated, planned in around the fort circling the Square, the sprawling heart of the city that houses the government and the military. The recent siege they’d carried out had taken out a good number of artillery in the reserve hangar before the military had time to deploy any, though Zitao, who Minseok recognizes immediately as one of the representatives fronting EXO for the siege, has what looks like a brace for his spine. It’d been a small victory framed in the media, that the collision between Kyungsoo’s power and the explosion the military ignited had broken Zitao’s spine in multiple places. Minseok assumes Yixing’s healing power can only do so much.
“We’d be glad to have you,” Junmyeon says with his hands out. Sehun and Jongdae join him, linking their shoulders like a line of solidarity. The others step up next to Minseok too, their smiles subdued but sincere. Minseok surprisingly completes the circle, instead of feeling encircled like prey around bait. If it'd been a little too easy, Minseok doesn't show it. Perhaps the action he'd made in the battle just a while ago speaks the volumes he doesn't have to put in words to convince. They'd probably figured Minseok had everything to lose stepping out in that battle, especially in this city where superpower is synonymous with mutant, not hero. His move hadn't just been one to protect EXO, not in that battle against the military. If Minseok had been a bystander, he'd have heard the statement, too.
"Shall we show you around?" Junmyeon's eyes are the colour ice is when it's most pure as he gestures deeper in the room to lead the way. Minseok wonders if he can trust it to remain so, but he turns to follow.
---
Shoving yourself into a space forces your habituation faster than you’d think. Third day since Minseok’s started coming here from dawn to dusk, getting used to physical training in EXO’s headquarters. Training - their daily work - is drastically different from what Minseok’s used to, in the plant. Everyone here works because they want to; because good fights don’t come without putting in your dues. No one needs an alarm to be at the training hall at nine sharp.
Minseok trains and watches. The room isn’t as lavish as he’d expect for a syndicate, but then again a lot of EXO is turning out to be nothing like what he’d expected. The mutants - his teammates, now - are very much like anyone else. Regular people happening to have superpowers, with fatigue and laughter and drive and sensitivity. Perhaps it’s the proximity: watching them through a screen unleash their terror on the city makes it much easier to fear, to make judgment. Sometimes he has to remind himself these are the same people who’ve broken too much of the city he’s grown up in. It’s somewhat surreal to see the same person slice through fort walls with light so cutting it has the intensity of a laser fall back on a mat after a duel, drenched in sweat but laughing. Minseok accepts a bottle of water gratefully from Lu Han, who pulls a couple straight from the fridge in the kitchen several rooms over when they all decide to give themselves a break.
“Thanks.”
“So,” Baekhyun takes a big swig of water and looks at him. His eyes are bright. “What made you decide to join us?”
Minseok shrugs. He’d prepared for this question, even practised answering it in the mirror, but faced with it in the quiet of the training hall, his heartbeat thudding in his chest at the confrontation, his throat goes dry. “I’ve heard a lot about you guys.”
Kyungsoo’s smile is small, but laced with something else. “I’d imagine most of it is negative.”
There’s no point in lying. “Yes.”
Baekhyun snorts softly. None of them meet Minseok’s eyes, but he hasn’t answered the question.
“When I was ten,” Minseok starts, the words tumbling off his tongue before he can stop them. “My parents were killed in crossfire.” It’s not a lie, but his voice is trembling. Is there a difference between bold lies and hiding the truth, if the intent is the same? He’s gotten what he needed. Minseok’s eyes latch onto the floor - perhaps they’re not ready for four doses of hijacked sympathy either.
“I’m sorry,” Jongin says first, and when Minseok lifts his head to look him in the eye it’s the welcome that’s most striking. Minseok’s lost as to what to say.
The smile he musters eventually is weak next to the rest, but it’s from the deepest rawness inside himself. Ten years since he’d had his power and he’s had to go all the way into the enemy’s camp to feel acceptance.
“What about you guys?” Minseok blurts something, anything to take the focus off himself. He’s not sure if it’s his self-consciousness that comes with the spotlight that’s making him uncomfortable or his conscience.
Lu Han smiles a little, blinks back down at the floor. “Think our stories are pretty similar. Sick of taking shit from the government, sick of watching our friends and family be robbed by the establishment? My dad was beaten to death at the incineration plant when I was twelve because he wouldn’t give them the watch we scrimped to give him for his birthday.” There’s a little gloss in Lu Han’s eyes when he looks back up, but Minseok can see the steel too. “It’s no way to live.”
Jongin nods, his lips pressed tightly together. “I wanted to ignore the shit before, too, focus on what I had and defend myself when I can, but the people of the city - there’s nothing they can do. I figured life didn’t give me the power to teleport for me to get beaten up in a plant.”
Hearing it to his own ears Minseok realises he’d taken the military offer for the exact same reason. It makes him wonder if identification with the enemy is a dangerous thing to feel.
“Our fight hasn’t been easy for sure, and I’m not even talking about the injuries. But it comes with the territory, I guess, and I’d rather put my power to good use than go down without a fight. We’ve got Yixing anyway, can’t die from this even if we wanted to.” Baekhyun’s smile is cheekier, fearless. The sense that power and domination is nowhere near the drive that fuels this rag-tag bunch is palpable, and it throws Minseok. This isn’t what he’d seen on the news, from what the military had told him. This isn’t what he’d come to fight.
“I’m glad you showed up,” Junmyeon walks in just then, his eyes soft. “We’re good at what we do, but ten is a tight number to work with the sheer forces the military are recruiting lately to stop us, and Zitao’s out for the count after the shitstorm at the Square. Guess they figured our bodies are fundamentally human, and Yixing can restart organs and heal wounds, but bone doesn’t re-grow the way Yixing heals.”
Minseok can’t help but note this is much more than the military had let on. If they’re aware of mutant biology - there must be a world of information that the military knows about EXO, but had intentionally kept from Minseok. The feeling that the military isn’t as helpless, as much of a sitting duck as Minseok had thought is unnerving. It’s the first time since he’s joined EXO that he feels threatened by a predatory presence, and it’s from inside his head.
Minseok sends his report to the brigadier-general at home, a short one about the location of EXO’s headquarters and its meagre defence strategies, before he packs his bags to move in with his new team. There's a worming sense of betrayal that he can't shake, even if he reminds himself this is his responsibility to fulfil.
Minseok moves in that night, in a room with Chanyeol, Baekhyun and Zitao. His new roommates are welcoming, but not intrusive. Friendly, even, and the same sense of betrayal weaves a hard cage around his heart to squeeze it tight. Chanyeol snores lightly throughout the night, but Minseok’s kept awake wondering if taking different routes to achieve end points, despite sharing intentions, puts people on opposite sides of the game.
---
Minimizing damage to innocents is the first rule of thumb for battle Minseok learns in EXO. That’s what the training hall is for, besides physical training. Kyungsoo pulls a good number of training dummies in the middle of the hall again, spacing them out, and an army more sloshed with thick red paint in a semicircle around the training dummies in the middle. Chanyeol, Baekhyun and Jongdae join him on to complete the circle.
“This is mostly what we use the hall for,” Jongdae had explained the first time. “The red dummies are the enemy - whoever it turns out to be in a battle. The middle - civilians.”
“It’s fifty pushups per civilian every round,” Zitao reminds the four in the circle, wincing as he adjusts his brace. Minseok reaches over to hold it straight so Junmyeon can help adjust the buckles before he can help himself. Two weeks of living and breathing EXO condenses development so much Minseok feels like he’s known them for at least a couple of months. He’d expected the sting of feeling like a stranger, like a slice wedged into an already round pie, but his teammates had left no room for the self-consciousness to seep in. Ten people stuff your days chock full, especially when solitude is all you’ve known.
Junmyeon sets the timer to twenty. “And… go.”
Light flashes between dummies, so fast that Minseok has barely time to follow anything with his eyes. Kyungsoo’s power is the least discriminatory of all of these attackers, so the strength he has to put in to focus it at a point before releasing burns him out much faster. He’s on the floor in minutes, his hands smoking.
“Okay?” Minseok leans forward, but Kyungsoo nods and grabs Minseok’s hand to pull himself up. “Still working on the endurance.”
Chanyeol and Jongdae’s powers are targeted, but so powerful they graze past the civilian dummies to leave singeing holes, crackling from energy. A couple of them fall and Minseok can see Chanyeol swear under his breath.
“Two each for Jongdae and Kyungsoo,” Junmyeon calls out when the timer dings. “And five for Chanyeol. One for Baekhyun. Next group!”
Minseok knocks down three more, and Sehun takes two. They get to the pushups immediately after practice. It’s not about the punishment, but the reminder that this stuff is important, that there are consequences to bear from not delivering. Minseok’s done it enough times in the two weeks he’s been here that the fatigue in his arms is almost flesh memory when he’s duelling. The rest have been doing it for months.
“God,” Chanyeol groans as he collapses to the floor after his loud yell of two-fifty. “My arms are gonna fall off.”
It rushes a laugh out of Minseok, even if he feels exactly the same. Baekhyun laughs too, reaching over to pinch Chanyeol’s nipple. “Loser.”
Chanyeol yelps, jerking up to glare daggers at Baekhyun. “I’ll burn your hair off later, you just watch.”
“Come at me,” Baekhyun taunts, then jumps to grab Minseok’s body so he’s shielded completely. “Hyung! He’s threatening me!”
Minseok laughs, letting Baekhyun jerk his arms around to ward Chanyeol off.
“Hyung,” Chanyeol whines, “how can you be on Baekhyun’s side? I thought I was your favourite.”
“I’m a neutral party here,” Minseok says grinning, holding his hands up, and Chanyeol charges at Baekhyun so they fall in a heap, laughing and yelling. Minseok hasn’t laughed this freely in a while. It feels energizing, even if he’d just done a hundred and fifty push-ups straight. Jongdae laughs and falls over mock-accidentally on their pile of limbs so Minseok has the breath knocked out of him, but Baekhyun’s yelled loud enough to be heard fifty miles away for him.
Jongin’s flashing into the hall is a surprise that makes them all sit up, and the smoke clears to a scene that jerks Minseok’s heart out of his chest. There’s a bullet embedded in Yixing’s arm. Lu Han’s arm is holding Yixing up, and his lips are pale as death. “Yixing -“
“’m fine,” Yixing manages, his knuckles white as he grasps Jongin’s arm to sit up. “Just give it a while.” Even as he speaks, the bullet forces itself out of Yixing’s arm so there’s just a gaping wound left, bloody and gruesome.
“Did something happen at the hospital?” Junmyeon’s eyes are a darker blue than what Minseok’s used to.
Lu Han nods. “We were doing the usual, Yixing doing his stuff in the hospital. We were heading to the next building when - it was my fault, I should have seen the guard coming. They got one shot in before I could react.”
The defenders - the mutants with more defensive powers - train in the real field, where they can put their powers to good use. It’d been a revelation when Minseok had found out. For cleanup, Lu Han had said. After battle when the people need us to do what we’re good at. Jongin brings Yixing to the patients and Lu Han covers their back in case of ambush. Second thing Minseok had learnt in EXO’s base is the knowledge that someone’ll be there to take care of the things you can’t. Injuries and pain come with the territory, but someone’s there to ease it better.
“It’s not your fault,” Yixing mutters. The wound’s still open, but blood’s no longer trickling out of it.
Junmyeon is grim. “That means they’re upping their game now. If the armed guards know what all of us look like and won’t hesitate to shoot - we can’t afford to have you guys train outside now.”
This should make Minseok feel different, that his side of the game has a better foothold, but how could he? Yixing’s blood is all he can see, the group holding out water, a shoulder to lean on, a clean bandage. Minseok has to force the lump that’s rotten, decayed down his throat and convince himself his loyalties lie with the city.
---
Jongin flashes into the basement panting and frantic, slamming the emergency button. All ten - eleven, Minseok reminds himself, are out in the huddle room in seconds, even Zitao, wincing as he takes a seat. Jongin drops it.
“Hospital A3. There’s a raid, bombs and guns. Military seals on the fighter jets.” Minseok has to take several seconds to run what Jongin’s saying in his head. Junmyeon starts barking instructions.
“I’ll fight the fires, Jongdae can cover the artillery? Sehun and Baekhyun for the jets. Lu Han for control?” The four of them nod, and Minseok’s about to step forward, his mouth open, but he has no idea what he’s about to say. A military-sanctioned attack on a hospital - the implication explodes in Minseok’s face hard enough for him to take a step back. The shock is buzzing, insistent.
The frontline for this battle are gone with Jongin in that familiar flash of black before Minseok has any time to cover, and Yixing pats Minseok on the shoulder.
“You okay?” There’s genuine concern in his voice.
Minseok nods, though his heart feels like it’s been ripped from himself. “On a hospital -“
Zitao nods, his lips in a harsh grimace. “Not the first time, doubt it’ll be the last. The last one was much worse.”
The revelations keep punching Minseok in the gut, but he doesn’t say anything. He’d never seen anything like that in the news, but showing his surprise would probably draw suspicion. Yixing’s fingers are rough at the hem of his shirt. “Couldn’t even do anything - the bomb they dropped was too powerful. Wiped the hospital out before Jongin could even make it there.”
If this is the military’s signature, Minseok’s mind is racing to think of what else they’ve kept under the media’s radar, what else they haven’t bothered to mention to Minseok. Perhaps they aren’t obliged to, but the sting, the heavy sense of danger robs Minseok of his breath. This is not the ally he’d thought he’d be helping.
Jongin materializes in front of them. “I guessed right. The hospital’s too full of dying patients, riddled with radiation from the plants. Too expensive to nurse back to health than what they’ll be worth working.”
It’s plain as day, what Jongin’s saying, but with his mind shredded and his veins turned inside out nothing makes sense to Minseok. Chanyeol’s fists are clenched, but flames are blazing from them anyway. “Bet they’re feeding some shit about us to the media again. I gotta go blow these bastards up.”
Kyungsoo puts his hand on Chanyeol’s arm. ”You’ll just add to the crossfire.” He turns to Jongin. “Heard anything yet?”
“The ruse they’re using is that they suspect the hospital is harbouring mutants - they made up some kind of bullshit mutant signature.”
There’s a hardness in Yixing’s eyes, so strong it seems almost out of place from what Minseok’s seen of Yixing. “Casualties?”
Jongin nods. “Maybe half the hospital. Lu Han’s moving the rest as fast as he can into the nearby bomb shelter, but it’s difficult with the beds and equipment. Baekhyun and Sehun have got most of the planes down.”
“Jongdae and Junmyeon?”
“Working on it. The fires are getting put out, but - the soldiers with the guns are running through the civilians, either for cover or to distract. Lightning doesn’t have that kind of resolution. He’s on the roof now for a better vantage point. Alone. I came to get Kyungsoo to cover his back.”
Even in the shelter of headquarters, away from the action Minseok can imagine how easy it’ll be to take down someone on the roof, a fixed point for target. A sudden silence falls in the basement, and it’s then that Minseok finds it. The understanding that no battle in the world can be won without sacrifice, but minimizing it is the best they can do. On this side of the coin the world turns inside out to slip into place.
Kyungsoo nods, and they’re down to four in the room. Yixing turns to Minseok. “When you freeze someone’s blood - that’s all it does, right?”
“Yes.” Minseok’s hands are tingling with energy. Emotion has always been the best cue for his weapon.
Yixing nods. “Jongin’ll be back after it’s over - he’ll pick us up for cleanup. Freezing’s useful for the victims till I can get to them.”
Minseok gets it immediately, like they’re old partners with honed chemistry. Instant freezing brings the human body down to a pause on the molecular level and stops all sentience, pain and self-decay, but molecules bounce back to how they are when the body thaws. That buys them enough time while Yixing works through what must be hundreds of victims, and Chanyeol’s fire will be enough energy to revive them when Yixing can. He swallows. “Okay.”
Every second of wait is excruciating. Zitao turns on the news to show coverage of the hospital, explosions and blood and ruin. The camera takes the military jets going down, soldiers being hit by Jongdae’s bolts, people getting swept away in the lashes of water Junmyeon sends at the fires. There’s a glaring feeling of déjà vu - he’s seen this all on a television screen, but now that Minseok knows the other side of the story, he sees the things that he would have missed - the soldiers running through what’s left of the beds in the corner of a shot, Lu Han a pinprick in the distance moving patients to safety, the flash of a military seal on a plane wing staining the edge of a camera shot as an explosion ignites. The urgency to help swallows any other confusion Minseok has about his identity as a military spy. Yixing’s hand on his shoulder, Chanyeol’s form next to him is reassuring, anchoring for his racing heart.
When Jongin finally, finally flashes back with the frontline spent but mostly fine, the ground under Minseok’s feet is frozen hard.
“We’re going for cleanup,” Yixing says, grabbing Minseok’s hand. “Lu Han’s still there?”
Junmyeon nods and catches Minseok’s eye, a mix of reassurance and gratefulness that melts Minseok’s pulse at the back of his throat, then Jongin grabs Minseok’s other hand and there’s the familiar squeeze.
But no amount of reassurance, Minseok realises, could have prepared him for the wreckage. The hospital looks like death and ash. Lu Han’s gotten most of the survivors and the wounded in the bomb shelter, but the bodies littering the smoking debris are as far as the eye can see. Yixing clenches his fist and turns away so he can focus on the survivors - healing is futile for the irrevocable.
Minseok sends a wave of frost energy through the bomb shelter so the victims in critical condition have some time. It’s a scary sight, a hundred people with blue lips and dead eyes, but Chanyeol and Yixing work as fast as they can, and Lu Han lifts them back out on the street when he’s done. Minseok watches as they breathe life amidst the rubble that the military’s caused, and he’s limp, all of a sudden, like he’s been stretched to breaking point.
What’s awash in his veins, in the marrow of his bones, Minseok realises, is the desperation that comes with piercing doubt. If this is the other side to what he’s been seeing and believing for years, then Minseok is free to renege on his loyalties. The team that's come to stand by him, the team that he has to sell out is not the enemy he'd meant to fight. The purpose that had made the decision for him before - that what's he's doing is for the good of the city - no longer points at the team he cannot bring himself to fight. The establishment he's been working for, trusting, has robbed it from him. There is no longer a question of morality or abandonment, when he was never meant to be a part of the establishment anyway, merely a pawn in their game.
He's quiet for the rest of the cleanup, the confession on the tip of his tongue. He owes them the truth; it would be impossible to hide this secret and face the ten people that's trusted him wholeheartedly. Minseok doesn't let himself think about the possible outcomes. His mere association with the establishment disgusts himself.
"Minseok?" Lu Han's hand at his elbow is soft, his voice quiet. "Are you okay?"
Minseok looks up to see Yixing and Jongin, ready by Lu Han's side. He nods. "There's something I need to tell you guys."
---
The huddle room is deathly silent when Minseok finishes. It feels like a load off his shoulders, but the guilt, the self-disgust is heaviest of all. Betrayal is the sickest feeling to stomach - it's that afternoon, the rubble all over again, except closer to the bone.
"How dare you." Chanyeol's voice is quiet and it cuts sharper than a blade.
"I'm sorry." It sounds weak even to Minseok's ears, even if it's the best he can give. His mistake had been ignorance, precisely crafted by what the establishment has been doing, but why should they trust him if his entire identity has been a lie?
"You didn't know." The statement comes as a question. Minseok nods and meets Kyungsoo's eyes.
"It's easy to blame the media, the manipulation of the establishment, but I should have found out more about you guys, dug deeper. I thought I knew the kind of people I was working for, that they were trying to defend the city from you guys."
"Even with the space habitat?" Baekhyun sounds incredulous. Minseok freezes with the premonition of realization that more has been hidden from him.
"Space habitat?"
Sehun, Jongdae and Kyungsoo's eyes soften, but the rest remain sharp. It's not going to be easy, but Minseok had expected it. He doesn't even know what he's trying to achieve with his confession - maybe just to fulfil the need to let EXO know.
"Guess the secret's more obscure than we'd thought," Junmyeon mutters, and now holding his eyes isn't as painful as it'd been. He turns the projector in the room on and Minseok watches his beliefs crumble on him for the third time today.
The space habitat is two light years away from Earth, where the rich and the government live. Luxury is an understatement for it - the pictures they've found look like heaven. It's revolting, the diamond rings that glitter off the residents' fingers, the rich food strewn over the luscious grass, the robots - the very robots Minseok builds in his plant - serving the residents food and drinks. Plane crafts that make the distance from one end of a house compound to another.
"This is the space habitat," Junmyeon says, scrolling through a litany of pictures, the very scene of exorbitant. "What the government lives in, where the money from the city's robotics exports and profit from incineration goes to. This is why more than half of the city lives in poverty. The city's barely more than a production plant for their riches. That's why they bombed the hospital - sucking up drugs and medical equipment for a couple workers? Waste of money."
Next to Minseok, Sehun jerks away from his side as though burned, which is only when he realises that his hands are encased in a rock solid layer of ice. It's another explosion in his face, except this time everything makes sense. EXO's drive, the attack on the hospital, what the establishment has been feeding the city all this while. The secret that would decimate loyalty and trust. Start a revolution.
The rage that courses through Minseok's veins and fires him up rushes straight to his hands, and he barely manages to keep it within his skin barrier so it doesn't explode. "Jesus." He remembers when his neighbour had had a high fever and they ran miles to find a hospital that was willing to give out medication to no avail, when he'd watched a plant guard kick aside a beggar. It's funny how the mind rejects the evil you see when you've already imprinted on something else. The hints had been there waiting for Minseok to see them, but how could he, when defender against the enemy is all he's known the establishment to be? There's nothing left in his throat.
"I'm glad you came clean with us, at least," Junmyeon says. Minseok can't read his face. "That says enough to me." Minseok isn't here to convince, but what he's sure of now is that the establishment is what he needs to fight. Maybe it is about taking sides after all.
"I'm going to destroy them," he says. "I can't work for this kind of establishment."
"But you should," Kyungsoo looks Minseok in the eye. "If you want to help us, information on the military's operations is the most valuable thing you can offer."
Minseok's been so horrified, so overwhelmed with the truth that he'd forgotten his identity, what he can offer. So it's a business exchange. An alliance, though it doesn't mean they've accepted Minseok. Trust is a tough thing to repair. But it's a compromise, one that can achieve their common goal.
"But why should we trust you?" Jongin's question hits the heart of the matter.
"I don't have anything," Minseok admits. There's no reason why they should give him the benefit of the doubt. "But I really had no idea."
"You can't know what you don't," Jongdae says. "I don't know how to blame you for that." It's validation, comfort. A small reminder that he's not entirely alone.
"What have you told them?" Baekhyun's arms are still folded, defensive. Minseok can't blame him.
"Where this place is." It feels little for the weeks he's been here, but Minseok realises that EXO has nothing else to hide.
Yixing furrows his brow. "They know about that already. Why would they ask you for that information?"
Minseok's stumped, and perhaps a little relieved. Being on this side of the gun isn't quite the same as shining a light on the target. "They probably didn't plan for me to be just an information source."
"Then they're planning something." Chanyeol says, his eyes darting to Minseok's. Minseok can read the expectation clearly.
"We'll take turns to guard," Junmyeon says, and Minseok wonders what will happen when it's his turn. He's still staring at the ceiling when dawn breaks and his cheeks are dry.
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