sin city (2/2)
sin city
minseok/everyone, pg-13, general, warning: battle scenes, violence
when his city falls under siege, minseok learns to fight the enemy.
back
Dawn brings siege on the cards.
This time it's Minseok's turn to slam the emergency button. The text he'd received from the brigadier-general brands itself into Minseok's mind.
"They're planning something," Minseok says when everyone hurries into the huddle room. "Tomorrow. A coordinated attack here, they're bringing out the big stuff. Tanks and jets and heavy duty artillery. Codenamed Operation Phoenix." He holds out the military tablet so everyone can read.
Baekhyun snorts, his fist braced tight next to Minseok. "Speak of the devil."
"We can take them on," Chanyeol says loudly. "All eleven. Good chance to take out the machinery they have, then we can coordinate a big attack."
Junmyeon's eyes are foamy blue, like water when it's churning angrily. "Save from Zitao and Yixing, we're still good to go. We've taken them on with less of us."
"I can fight," Zitao protests, straightening, but he cuts himself off when the pain knits his brows.
"You can stop time so we'll have a better time fighting," Jongdae says, patting Zitao's waist gently. Zitao doesn't say anything, but Minseok can see him lean into Jongdae's touch.
Kyungsoo looks at Minseok. "Do you know the strength they're bringing?"
Operation Phoenix is a trap for death. The military frontline with its tanks and cannon is a ruse, to occupy the attackers at the mouth of EXO's base, then the best jets the military has will take the back and go in for the kill. Minseok's role is to lure the defenders to the jets.
”Jesus,” Baekhyun says, staring at the tablet, the strategy laid over a map of EXO’s base red as blood. “Imagine if we hadn’t known - jesus.”
"At least we'll be prepared," Yixing says. "Home ground, too."
"We’ve taken down the sort of stuff they have anyway," Sehun agrees. "Jets, tanks, cannons."
"The only thing we should be careful of is the bombs." Junmyeon's eyes are cool as steel. "We're not immune. Lu Han and Jongin should standby? Zitao too, you can always buy us some time."
Zitao nods, a small smile on his lips. Chanyeol grins wide, almost feral. "We'll destroy them. I’ll take the foot soldiers with Kyungsoo, Baekhyun and Jongdae the tanks?”
Minseok points out the formation of the jets on the tablet. “They’re polycarbonate aluminium. Not exactly heat-resistant, I think it’ll be better if you take the ones at the tip of the V. I can disable the flying and missile systems for the ones behind, that’s probably where they’ll have the bombs. "
Jongdae nods. “Junmyeon-hyung can do the foot soldiers then, and Sehun can help with the jets. I think it’d be better if Minseok-hyung does the disabling out of plain sight - give them a surprise of element?”
"Yeah." It's a promise.
Junmyeon puts his hand in the middle. Minseok watches as the rest pile their hands on his - and wait for Minseok to join in. It's the first time he's doing this with EXO, but it's not difficult to hear why: a reminder that they're all in this together. Minseok's part of it too, whether by association or inclusion.
When the cheer rings out, it feels like a burst of energy and confidence. Strength in numbers is the best thing EXO has. “We can do it,” Zitao yells, just because, and in the room watching Chanyeol hurl a fireball at the painted training dummies Minseok can only focus on the ways they will succeed.
They break up into the pairs they’ll be working in the next day, and Minseok’s wondering if he should grab a couple just to test out combat strategies when Lu Han taps him on the shoulder.
“Hey,” Lu Han’s smile is amiable. Minseok’s smile in return is hesitant.
“I just wanted to say… I’m sorry you had to find out that way.” Minseok’s surprised at the offer of empathy, the idea that this might be just more than an alliance, that at least some of this team is still fighting with him - Minseok doesn’t know what to say.
“Thank you.”
“Jongdae made a point yesterday, I can’t imagine finding out that everything you know is a lie,” comes Yixing’s voice, and Minseok jumps a little to find Yixing next to him. His eyes are soft.
“So cut yourself a little slack,” Lu Han continues, “I think I’m more than inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt. I don’t know how to believe you as a military spy trying to double-cross us.”
Faith is what Minseok hadn’t realised he’d needed. His fingers are tingling with emotion he can’t parse.
Yixing smiles, squeezing Minseok’s elbow. “Time to prepare to kill it.”
Minseok returns their smiles gratefully, and when he intercepts a fireball Chanyeol tosses his way during training, freezing a solid shell of ice around it so it fizzles and collapses upon itself in midair, Minseok's filled with the familiar sense of purpose for this team.
---
When the sun bleeds orange over the horizon, EXO are ready. None of them had slept a wink the last night; how could they have? They’d had to drag each other away from the training dummies so their body and powers would be re-energized by daybreak. All eleven are wide-eyed, braced and ready. Jongin had flashed to the Square to warn them of military deployment. The frontline - Junmyeon, Kyungsoo, Baekhyun and Jongdae - wait in front of base, a fortress wall melded from light and water. There’s a storm brewing in the skies overhead. The rumble of thunder is electrifying.
Jongin’s smoke when he arrives is a whirlwind of relief and anticipation. “They’re on their way. Two minutes half.”
That’s all the frontline needs to fire up. Jongdae crackles into blue next to Baekhyun, who’s got a supernova in his clenched fist. Junmyeon’s cool as a cucumber, test-lashing out a rope of water. Kyungsoo cricks his neck.
The first of the gunfire just misses the frontline, but Kyungsoo’s ready for it. He sends a force field rippling outwards, the bullets blown backwards to embed themselves in enemy flesh and metal. Jongdae doesn’t give them much time to retaliate after the first loud cries of anguish - pulling lightning straight from the eye of the storm in the skies to hit a tank, military vehicles, throwing the soldiers in a mile radius around each vehicle backwards so they’re scattered, formation broken. Junmyeon sends columns of water rushing down on the rest of the foot soldiers, and Baekhyun slices the launcher right off a cannon.
It’s not going to be an easy fight. The shell around the lethal core, the enemy frontline the military had rounded up was meant to be staggering enough to occupy most of EXO, and the military has fought EXO enough to know their strengths. The bullets seem never ending, ammunition raining down on EXO’s frontline so fast and furious that it leaves the four no time to attack. Minseok doesn’t think when he darts out to halt a cannonball heading straight for Kyungsoo, driving it backwards with the expansion of water molecules in the air around the cannonball when he freezes it. The ball lands with considerable explosion in the enemy camp, but next to him Chanyeol still has to send a lash of fire into a tank before they can aim a missile drone at Jongdae. It’s chaos - the urgency of the crossfire is so arresting that Minseok trembles to a stop when the explosion sounds near the back of base, so loud that Minseok feels the ground underneath him tremble. His veins are liquid panic.
“Fuck,” Chanyeol swears as Minseok turns to see Jongin - they’re behind base in a flash, just in time to see the first of the jets careening straight for them and Chanyeol holds his hand out, just as Lu Han and Zitao yell and the jets freeze to a stop as if slamming into pause, a shimmering wave of air rippling out. Chanyeol looks over and gives both of them a thumbs-up. Jongin returns it with a grin, his eyes dark with steel.
Sehun’s storm is already swirling within the pod of paused time that Zitao, Jongin and Lu Han had thought quickly enough to build - Jongin to flash space around the planes, Lu Han to hold it in, and Zitao to stop time within it. Chanyeol’s fireball is hovering right before the first jet.
“Ready?” Zitao yells over the howling wind, and Minseok bellows a “yes!” as the sound carries over the rumble of thunder and realises they’d yelled unanimously.
“You guys head back after in front to check on them?” Chanyeol adds, revving up the fire licking his arms so every inch of his skin is flame. Zitao nods and holds his fingers up to countdown.
Three, two - the pod releases, the fireball Chanyeol sent crashes into the first jet, taking it down with the screech of burning, lacerating metal, and Sehun knocks the second and third in the V-formation off course, crashing into the mountains next to base. Minseok locks in on his target. The four at the back are spaced far enough apart that he’ll have to take them down individually. At least the impending storm is helpful - the air is charged with static, heavy with water. He’s got an atmosphere full of ammunition.
Minseok makes sure the blast of ice that he sends roaring towards the last jet is forceful enough to prevent defensive piloting, though this strategy saps his power quick so Minseok has to let go when his target plunges into the valley below base. In the second he takes to recharge, drag the frost back from every artery, Chanyeol’s taken two more and - Minseok’s lost his heart when he sees the missile coming for them - throws himself bodily against Sehun so they narrowly avoid the missile slamming into the back of base.
“Okay?” Minseok hollers, directing his freezing energy to focus on the second last jet, which stalls, crackling and wailing, to plummet. Chanyeol and Sehun are on their feet back again.
“Fuckers,” Chanyeol yells and sends a strong blast of fire that takes two jets at once. They’re down to six, two each.
He does the same trick with the second last jet on the left, feeling a brutal sense of victory when it crashes into the one right before it that Sehun’s whoop voices. “Suck my dick,” Sehun yells as he sends the one closest to them crashing straight into the mountain on the left of the fleet. This is it, two more and they’ll - Minseok’s eyes dart to the huge missile, suddenly much too big in his field of vision, big enough that Minseok’s positive it will decimate the whole of base. There’s no fucking time -
The blast he’d used on the first jet is instinctive, breaking upon impact with the missile to send tiny ice chips flying - but the missile’s too heavy, too much inertia and holding too much kinetic energy from the burst it’d gotten from launch that Minseok only manages to slow it, and there’s no way he can stop it in time before it’ll make impact. The rain hammers down - is it rain? - Minseok can't take his eyes off the missile, but it's only till the bullet rips its way through Minseok's muscle to land just before his collarbone that he realises it's a shower of bullets. His shoulder is a supernova of pain, but he can't stop. Minseok drives everything into keeping the blast up, dragging up every inch of frost he has within his body that regulates his body temperature so he feels on fire - he’s never used this before; never had to fight this intense before, but the missile is all he can see, all the boom of thunder all he can hear. The blast strengthens to harden, unbreakable as the ice that compacts beneath pressure, and Minseok drives it downwards, using all he has left, till he’s trembling with the weight of a thousand tons, until the missile hits the foot of the mountain base is on and Minseok blacks out.
----
Minseok jerks awake with panic numbing his limbs.
"Base -" He blurts, before registering the faces, the wan light in the room. Yixing's hands just leaving the side of his head. Minseok can only see the missile, so huge it jolts him into the memory -
"The last two jets? The missile?"
Yixing's smile is gentle, ironing Minseok's knot in his chest out. "It exploded at the foot of the mountain just as you blacked out, Chanyeol hit one jet right after and a smaller grenade hit the back of base just before Sehun took it out, but Kyungsoo patched us back just fine. Don't move too much, your wound needs some time to heal on its own. At least the bullet didn't hit your collarbone."
As if his pain nerves have only just buzzed to life, Minseok feels the deep ache from the bone wreck his shoulder, so strongly it feels numbing. "So - we took them out?"
Chanyeol grins from the foot of his bed. "You bet. We went back to the frontline, by then they'd gotten most of the tanks down. They were all pretty rough when we crushed the last cannon together, but Yixing got them back soon enough. Reckon we destroyed a good part of the military's strength."
His smile is so infectious Minseok finds himself cracking a smile, even if his shoulder hurts like a motherfucker despite looking none worse for the wear. It's mirrored on all sides around Minseok's bed. "About twenty tanks, maybe five cannons? At least twenty jets." Jongin adds. "That's about forty percent of what they have from what I've seen in the military hangar."
It's not a huge percentage, but they'll will the small victory. It's a good dent in the military's confidence, and the rest of the military's artillery sounds much more manageable, especially when they've just walked out of a battle with the military proud and strong.
"No time to be complacent, though," Kyungsoo says. "They probably have more prepared, and we're all still weak from that battle." Minseok gets it. Desperation forces the ugly out of power, and there's nothing the military isn't capable of doing.
"So we'll attack first," Baekhyun replies sharply. "Hit them while they're down, this is our best opportunity."
Jongdae nods in agreement. "Attack is the best defence we have right now. Give it a couple more days and they'll be back with more."
"We'll work something out to attack in five days, max," Junmyeon says, "but for now we let Minseok sleep the wound off."
Zitao smiles, patting Minseok's arm. "Guess what, we get the room all to ourselves because Baekhyun and Chanyeol's snores are very detrimental to proper sleep. Doctor's orders." A laugh bursts out of Minseok's throat and he immediately regrets it when the pain tears through his flesh, scorching as raw electricity. Kyungsoo and Yixing raise their eyes in concern at Minseok's wince, as an incredulous Baekhyun reaches over to mock-punch Zitao in the arm to loud hoots from Sehun and Lu Han.
"Have you ever heard yourself snore, Zitao," Chanyeol says. "That's the only detrimental thing here."
"Weakass comeback." Jongdae is the very picture of unimpressed and gets a pinch in the side for his effort.
"I'm fine," Minseok manages a weak smile at Yixing and Kyungsoo. "I have to agree with Zitao, though..." The smile melts into a grin when Baekhyun and Chanyeol send him twin faces of mock hurt. His shoulder wound seems to hurt less this time. Chanyeol clutches his heart dramatically.
"You should go on the couch for that kind of acting alone," Jongin says. Junmyeon turns to Minseok. "I wanted to say - I hope you understand why we reacted how we did when you told us about the military. I think you've more than shown us where your loyalties lie," Junmyeon says quietly, and put it like that Minseok remembers he has. Perhaps he'd put everything he couldn't say - even if it's a mix of comradeship and remorse - into that blast.
"I should have told you guys earlier -" Minseok says, but Baekhyun puts his hand on Minseok's fist and squeezes.
"You'd only just found out," Baekhyun says, smiling, "so how can we fault you for that?"
It's the same faith, now multiplied ten times. Minseok's almost embarrassed. "I still betrayed your trust."
"Because someone else was betraying yours," Kyungsoo points out. "You've saved us twice now, we should be saying thanks instead of anything else."
“That’s not what a team says to each other," Minseok says, keeping his smile and breath held, till EXO burst into grins around Minseok.
“Fair point,” Chanyeol says, rounding the bed so he can wedge himself between Baekhyun and Jongdae to sit by Minseok’s bed. “Guess some hugs are in order, then?” Minseok’s shoulder erupts in electric pain when Chanyeol throws himself at Minseok, then Jongdae and Baekhyun and Sehun and Zitao cheering and suddenly Minseok’s at the bottom of a group pile disguised as a huge hug.
“Hey, hey,” Yixing says late, extracting himself and Minseok from the tangle of limbs and grins. “He took a bullet, be gentle.”
Minseok even lets Lu Han ruffle his hair when the rest apologise and pile out of the room with Junmyeon’s herding. “Sleep well,” come the goodbye yells from outside the room, and Minseok’s shoulder hurts so much that the pain drags tears into his eyes, but his grin is still wide enough to neutralise it.
---
The text comes after the two days it takes for the pain to completely go away.
You have been disavowed.
No other explanation or mention of consequences - the sentence sends a chill down Minseok’s spine. The unknown is much, much more unnerving than a direct threat, but it’s not like Minseok doesn’t know what the military can do. His fate if he falls captive to the military is plain.
“You okay?” Lu Han nudges Minseok in the side and Minseok wonders how bad his expression shows, if that means he’s more shaken than he’d like to admit.
Minseok shows Lu Han the text. He’d read the fine print he’d signed off on. In case of disavowal, the officer is no longer under the protection of the Military Act and the establishment will no longer provide security nor identification. He’s free territory now. It’s not like the military’s protection had meant anything before disavowal, but laid in black and white Minseok hears it loud and clear. This is a warning that he’s being hunted.
Lu Han looks at him, the concern pooling in his eyes. Minseok shakes his head. “It was due any time now.”
“They’ll terminate - you?”
Minseok nods, but surprisingly, watching his teammates zap dummies in the training hall, hearing the laughter that’s come to sound like liquid recharge, he finds less resignation and more resolve, more purpose in himself. “I’m not going to let them, though.”
Lu Han grins wide and bumps his fist with Minseok. “That’s the spirit.”
Junmyeon calls for a huddle in the training hall. “Our attack - we’ve got to act fast. Jongin made a recon trip today, they’re pretty badly hit and this is a good window of opportunity.”
“I think we should take the rest of their stuff out and force a coup,” Chanyeol says, singeing a hole in the side of a dummy.
“They still have a good half left,” Jongin reminds them, “and who’s to say they won’t retreat to the space habitat and leave the city in ruin?”
Yixing’s lips are tight. “We need to act fast, the city’s getting sicker. The radiation the military upped in the plants so they can work faster, more efficiently is getting to the workers, and the medical facilities here in the hospitals only buy them time, not save it. You’d be surprised how many of the city are ready to fight back against the establishment, too. Every patient I’ve healed is on our side, and word spreads like fire.”
Baekhyun shakes his head. “They’ll probably cut off the little money they’re using to run the plant and pay wages. Paint it as the establishment being compromised by mutant forces.”
“They still need the city to continue operations to serve the space habitat,” Lu Han points out.
“It’s not getting to the root of the matter,” Kyungsoo’s sombre. “They won’t necessarily surrender, and wrestling control of the Square doesn’t change shit. I doubt they’ll surrender the space habitat.”
Wrestling control. It drags out a hazy memory Minseok has from his cursory tour of the Square on the day he’d signed on to receive his directive. He'd learnt that each door and computer is encrypted with the fingerprints of a military or government officer, and Minseok had had an account set up for him.
“Every computer is connected to the central server,” the IT technician had told him. “And this account will gain you access into the server. That doesn’t mean you can see everything in the server, of course. Administrator rights are dependent on your rank. Your account can be overridden by the brigadier-general, the major-general, and of course, the President who has highest level rights of the entire government server.”
It didn’t take much to put two and two together. “It’s a wired establishment?” Minseok asked out of curiosity.
The IT technician had nodded as he swiped Minseok’s fingerprints into the server. “Everything is electronically controlled. You could wrestle power of the entire establishment - as long as you get into the President’s laptop that’s remote from the server. It’s not that easy, a ton of people have tried. Each of them were terminated within 24 hours, so I advise you not to try.”
“We could force abdication,” Minseok says, looking around at his teammates. “as long as we can get to the President’s laptop and rewire it. The entire government structure - including ranks and directives - are programmed and stored on a central server. The President’s laptop is remote from the server, but probably behind incredible security. If we gain access to it we’ll be able to hijack the system and change commanding rights for the city.”
Jongin’s quiet for a second. “I’ve heard something when I was in the government building in the space habitat. The President’s office is many, many floors underground, but I have no idea where.”
“Then that’s what we’ll need,” Minseok says. “To get in the office. Jongdae can short-circuit the drive and force a reboot, then that should be sufficient to recode the identity of the President.”
“It seems a little too easy.” Yixing’s concerns are valid, but perhaps the human ego defense mechanism works in their favour this time. Pride spawns denial, which spawns weakness.
“It’s not going to be a walk in the park,” Jongin has his lip in his teeth. “The government building isn’t too great to navigate, and security gates are every five metres. The military will be swarming the second you blast any one down.”
“How many floors will we have to fight through?”
“Ten, if the lift is anything to go by,” Jongin’s snort is dry. “I assume his office is on the lowest floor.”
“Better than fighting missiles and jets,” Jongdae says, “at least our targets will be stationary.”
“Our first targets,” Junmyeon frowns. “The military probably have thousands of guards on standby in the building, but I suppose our advantage is that we’ll only have to deal with foot soldiers.”
“It’s our best bet,” ZItao says. “A real chance to change the system once and for all - we’ll just have to give our all.”
Chanyeol nods. “I’m in, this is precisely what we’ve been trying to work towards, except we didn’t know how to do it.”
Sehun nods next to Chanyeol, Baekhyun next to him, and Minseok ends the circle of agreement. Conviction eleven times over feels bolder on Minseok’s skin, much bolder than the threat of his identity as a military target looming over his head. The same sense of purpose that had filled Minseok that afternoon he watched death sweep over the hospital ruin is throughout Minseok’s veins.
“Our ultimatum, then,” Junmyeon says, putting his hand in the middle, and the pile that follows his is instantaneous. When the cheer rings out in the small training room, Minseok feels something like invincible.
---
Ultimatum sets the world on fire.
Jongin takes five, Minseok, Chanyeol, Jongdae, Sehun and Lu Han, to the space habitat first. The way Jongin explains it - that his teleportation works when he has a clear view of where he wants to go - Minseok sees why Jongin can’t take them straight into the President’s office. This fight will need to happen against stone and metal, against riches and fear.
The smoke clears to artificial heaven. Up close before Minseok’s eyes the scene gleams brighter than he’d expected, too bright so it sears his eyes. Jongin had put them in an alley near the government building just round the corner. Minseok can see it in all its grandeur. The tinted glass panels form a bulletproof cover around the heart of the establishment, managing to make the building look imposing and luxurious at the same time. It’s early, barely four in the morning, and there is not a person in sight. Minseok assumes the establishment thinks the space habitat sentinels - the fighter jets defending the space habitat from any foreign craft - are more than sufficient.
“They probably have most of the guards in the building,” Jongdae mutters, keeping his eyes peeled. Minseok nods. He wouldn’t put it past the establishment to focus the defensive resources they have where it matters - the rich citizens on the space habitat are just that, after all.
The rest come in another cloud of smoke and Minseok already feels fuller, more assured in the air of the space habitat. Body warmth must help, but the confidence comes deep from the bone. They’re ready.
“Stick close to your teams,” Junmyeon says. “We don’t know what we’ll be dealing with. And don’t push yourself, Zitao.” Zitao’s back’s healed that he no longer needs a brace, but bone’s brittle when it’s new. He nods and braces his fists.
“Yixing, stick with Jongin so you guys can patch anyone up if necessary?” Yixing smiles, the dimple denting the corner his cheek steely. Minseok has one second to swallow his heartbeat at the back of his throat, then they’re out.
Jongdae makes the first cut. Minseok freezes the guard next to the side entrance just as Jongdae short-circuits the magnetic strip that holds the entrance closed, and the glass doors fall open to a screeching alarm that chills Minseok’s blood to the last artery.
“Shit,” Baekhyun swears as EXO activates. They’d planned for this, contingency plans hashed and rehashed based on what Jongin remembers of the government buildings in the recon trips he’s made. Upon alarm activation, split up into threes to avoid easy capture in one fell swoop. Minseok’s with Jongdae and Lu Han.
Baekhyun, Zitao and Junmyeon are sprinting to a door under an exit sign in the building, Baekhyun slicing the door open so it reveals what seems to be an emergency exit stairwell. The other attacking team - Kyungsoo, Sehun and Chanyeol - have already disappeared into the other emergency stairwell, what remains of the door crumbling at the doorframe, and when they reach the first landing of the last stairwell, Minseok looks back to see a swarm of drones descending at them.
Jongdae’s blue before Minseok can react. Half of them fizzle and crash into the polished floor right before Minseok, like a carpet of giant black wasps with lethal-looking darts at their ends. Minseok freezes the next wave and Lu Han moves the crowd heading towards the first emergency stairwell, but they keep coming, so numerous that the cloud of drones seems dense enough to choke. Even between the three of them maintaining their powers the cloud is unstoppable, and Minseok ducks to just miss a drone planting its stinger in Minseok’s neck and recovers to a shower of bullets. The foot soldiers have activated, pouring out from every nook and cranny of the sprawling hall. Dark is everywhere Minseok sees, and the realization that this dark they're fighting matches you every step of the way in their fight, enough to crush you, Minseok’s suddenly aware what he needs to do.
It’s like Jongdae can read his heart. “They need a distraction.” Jongdae’s voice reverberates in the stairwell. Minseok sees the guards following the drones at the mouths of the other stairwells and catches Lu Han’s eye, Jongdae’s.
Minseok freezes the air molecules before the drones and the soldiers can make it downstairs - a thick wall of ice crystallizes in the path of the establishment and by the time the enemy turns around, Minseok, Jongdae and Lu Han are at the top of the stairwell, Minseok’s feet crunching the fallen drones Jongdae buzzed. Three is a good enough distraction - the drones and guards winding towards the stairwell turn immediately, and Minseok takes the one second reprieve that Lu Han gives them by sweeping the second shower of bullets away to ready himself. The drones keep raining down, as Jongdae creates a network of electricity right before them so dense that the drones and bullets fizzle into thousands of sparks that fall backwards onto the enemy, driving them back. Lu Han tears the guards bodily away from the scene, out of the building as quickly as he can.
When Jongdae’s current runs out, Minseok’s ready. The lattice of ice crystals in the air comes locking around the drone cloud and guards stretching all the way to the other end of the hall. "Can you keep it around them for me?" Minseok yells, glancing at Lu Han, but he's just finished his sentence when the lattice starts rounding around the mass of black, closing in on then like a massive glittering shell catching the light, and Minseok keeps it up, pouring every inch of frost he has within himself to strengthen the lattice, as dense as solid uniform ice by now. Lu Han shapes it for Minseok, pushing the lattice so it plugs every exit from the inside, and when the lattice reaches the sides of the hall flanking, enclosing the enemy in a reinforced, bulletproof cage of ice, Minseok releases the breath he hadn't realised he'd held and looks up in the direction of flames crackling to see the world exploding in fire.
The slam of Jongdae's shoulder in his ribcage, his own shoulder against stone and Lu Han's knee winding him is palpable - painful, even, and Minseok wrenches his eyes open to find fire everywhere he sees, a huge cannonball crushing the marble floor of the building like it's paper. Jongdae's leg feeding a flame. Jongdae's out cold.
"Fuck," Minseok looks up at Lu Han's exclamation to see another flaming cannonball that Lu Han moves to make the trajectory directly into the plane craft that had launched it, then at his fallen teammate. There must be something that he can do to stop - water! Minseok generates a ball of ice that melts into water upon contact with the fire, fizzling out the flames on Jongdae's leg and Minseok cringes when the expanse of the flesh left looks raw and gruesome. "Jongdae?"
Yixing's by their side in a flash. "Prop him up for me."
Minseok bodily drags Jongdae up so Jongdae's leaning against his back - the immediacy erases all thought in his head, and his fingers are tingling with liquid panic. Yixing smooths his palm over the burnt flesh when there's a sound - Minseok jerks his head up, but Lu Han's got it, crashing the plane into the ground outside the building, and when he looks back Jongdae's awake.
"Okay?" The colour in Jongdae's cheek is jolting relief - it's like Jongdae hadn't thrown himself in front of his teammates to save them from a cannonball of fire, hadn't been clawed back from the brink of death. Jongdae nods, his lips tight. "Let's join the rest."
Jongin wastes no time. Minseok feels the familiar squeeze before they materialise in a subterranean level, then into the gaping hole in the floor to land next to Baekhyun, Zitao and Junmyeon.
"Okay?" Lu Han hollers over the rubble, pieces of stone and plaster still raining.
Baekhyun nods. “We’ve been cutting our way through, but they have defences on every floor -“ As if on cue, the first of the gunfire erupts in Junmyeon’s arm. Minseok whips around with the rest of his team, acting on instinct, and the combined sheer force of light, frost, lightning, kinetic energy and raw anger decimates the corridor holding the group of guards and their guns, and when Minseok turns back to Junmyeon, Yixing’s got the bullet out of Junmyeon’s arm and his wound sealed.
“Hyung -“ Zitao says, but Junmyeon shakes his head. “I’m fine. How many floors to go?”
“Two,” Lu Han says, pointing at the sign near the stairwell.
“We’ve gotta make it fast then,” Minseok says, “can you get Kyungsoo’s team here with us? Might as well fight the last two together, since we’re close. Meet you guys at level nine?”
Jongin nods, grabbing Yixing and they’re gone. Baekhyun traces a square with the light from his palm in the floor, and they jump into the hole that falls open when an entire slab of stone and cement slams smoking onto level nine. Junmyeon winces and has to hold on to Lu Han for support when he lands, but his teeth are gritted.
This time they’re ready when the handful of grenades comes. Minseok takes out the first one, Lu Han the second and the last crashes straight into the few guards rounding the corner, charred and flaming, and Minseok turns to see Chanyeol, Kyungsoo and Sehun with deep cuts marking their faces and limbs, but otherwise fine. Minseok keeps waiting for more, greater defence now that they’re at the penultimate floor away from the most important office in the establishment, but he realises the very structure of the building works in their favour, too - the President’s office has itself backed into a corner, and Minseok will bet that the establishment isn’t willing to take the chance to drop bigger ammunition, bombs and cannonballs, when they’re so close to the heart of the building, to what will affect the establishment most. Checkmate.
The last floor falls with a combination of force and light so quickly they’re looking at what must be the front of the President’s office in seconds. It’s impressive, the heavy duty solid doors that feels impossibly thick. It takes the joint effort of both Lu Han and Kyungsoo to force the huge doors open, and Minseok keeps looking out for enemy forces, but nothing comes. They reach the ultimatum, the smaller door at the end of the tunnel after the metal gates in quiet, eerie silence. Minseok’s nerves are on fire, eyes darting to every tiny hint of movement, every shadow. Each second that passes with nothing is another second to held breath. Jongdae exchanges a look with him - but still nothing comes.
“Ready?” Kyungsoo’s voice is quiet but calm. All of the team are panting, bleeding and bruised, but at the finish line before what they’ve all been fighting for, the finality still rushes a warrior cry in Minseok.
The door opens to crumbling plaster and Minseok freezes the first person he sees before he can register who it is. When the man falls Minseok realises he’s made an attack on the President, but this means nothing at all. A sweep of the room affirms that it’s empty, and it’s then that Minseok realises why the ultimatum had come with silence. The establishment abandons even their leader when all hope is lost. He should’ve expected it. The last ugly side of the cancer in the city that they’re fighting tooth and nail to excise. A laptop gleams on the shiny hardwood table, and EXO step aside to let Jongdae do the favours.
The laptop’s on, blinking fire-engine red. Jongdae places his hand over the keyboard so the screen goes black, then, as Jongdae gingerly charges the drive so it turns on, a message blinks on the screen.
System restart._
City command server restart?_
Jongdae’s tap of the keyboard is quick.
Define President._
Jongdae looks over at the rest of them crowded around the laptop, small smile brightening the cut lashed angrily down the side of his cheek. “Junmyeon-hyung?”
“It’s a big city,” Junmyeon says. His murky eyes are stark against the white of his cheeks.
“It is,” Chanyeol says, smiling and wiping the blood off the side of his mouth. “But we have eleven of us.”
“The establishment -“ Kyungsoo mutters. “It’s disgusting.”
Junmyeon nods. “We’ll have to disable the entire server when we patch the city up again. I don’t think any of us want to lead an army of murderers.”
“No,” Minseok agrees, “but in the meantime, taking charge is what we need to rebuild the ruins.”
“So interim president it is,” Baekhyun says, and when Jongdae types Junmyeon’s identification number and name slowly but surely into the server, the green light signalling server restart is the precise colour of a bud emerging from barren soil. Junmyeon swipes his fingerprint that the laptop detects to open the commanding panel, then orders the stand down of all troops and military equipment and the dispatch of medical emergency aircraft back to the city. The alarm that had gone on for so long Minseok’s ears had gotten used to it stops abruptly, leaving ringing silence in Minseok’s ears - it’s what peace sounds like.
Junmyeon looks up at Jongin. “I think we should speak to the city.”
Jongin nods. They owe an explanation to their city, their home. Junmyeon pulls the laptop from the table, and Minseok finds himself in the Square, where the national broadcast control station is. The Square is deserted besides the main plaza that’s full of city residents, the sick and the healthy alike, clambering to understand the mass exodus from the Square they’d witnessed. Minseok can see the hangar for crafts and jets from here empty - no doubt taking the part of the establishment housed in the Square to the space habitat. Junmyeon taps the microphone.
“My name is Kim Junmyeon, you might have seen me and my team in the news.” Junmyeon introduces each one of them, his voice loud and clear. “We are the team of mutants against the establishment, but not in the way you might have been convinced. The establishment has forsaken the city to save a space habitat, where the robots this city builds, the profits from the incineration plants and the medicine that could be used to save our sick and dying go.”
The eruption of exclamations of rage and disbelief are ripple throughout the plaza. “Why should we believe you?” One man shouts at the control station, echoed by the people around him.
Junmyeon’s smile is a little sad. “You don’t have to,” Junmyeon says into the mic. “That’s not what we fought the military for.”
The plaza is immediately quiet. “We took control of the city to stop the establishment from siphoning money from the city and turning our homeland into ruin. You saw the aircrafts taking off - the military landed in the space habitat I mentioned, either to fight us or to escape. Either way, they’ve abandoned this city we all call home after thoroughly wrecking it. We forced a coup.”
Right on cue, two of the medical aircraft that Junmyeon had sent lands just outside the Square, medics and medical robots responding to Junmyeon’s directive. The clambering that follows immediately, before Junmyeon can say anything, for medical attention is staggering; Minseok sees what Yixing had meant about the city getting sicker.
“We’ll send more medical facilities,” Junmyeon says into the mic, “terminate the space habitat and put the money where it should, and find more sustainable ways to make robots.” The plaza is quiet in reaction, but the air feels like change. Trust.
“In the meantime, welcome home.”
---
“Hey.” Minseok looks up from his report to see Kyungsoo, grinning. Minseok reaches over to bump his fist.
“See you later?”
“Of course, have I ever missed any Friday night?” Minseok makes sure to look mock-offended.
“Fair point,” Kyungsoo laughs, and they step into the meeting room for the discussion on the Dragon X case - time to figure out a strategy now that they’ve gotten a lead on the villian’s whereabouts. Five years since the battle at the space habitat and a lot has changed; the city slowly building up its self-sustaining capabilities - taking up agriculture as well as water generation for export and domestic consumption, laying down trees and grass and flowers as part of the city’s landscape, the lone hospital that’s all the city needs next to the new government building. Now the city no longer needs to take shit from anyone to grow something out of their own efforts.
Things that haven’t changed: Junmyeon leading the city, who was voted as President even after terminating the entire command server system, EXO - the rest of them in charge of law enforcement, which means Minseok goes back to doing what he’d been doing, full time, and the Friday night sessions at the bar round the corner from the government building. Sometimes Minseok joins Chanyeol, Baekhyun, Sehun and Jongdae at half-sloshed pool, or sometimes he just nurses a beer with Kyungsoo and discuss the roasting techniques to make the best Americano, then drag the lightweights back to the base they’ve called home for six years and counting. Chanyeol still snores in his sleep, Baekhyun still yells fit to burst so Minseok has to get up and wrestle his ass into bed, and Junmyeon still leaves his clothes all over the living room floor, but this is the family he’s found, the family he comes back to every night.
minseok/everyone, pg-13, general, warning: battle scenes, violence
when his city falls under siege, minseok learns to fight the enemy.
back
Dawn brings siege on the cards.
This time it's Minseok's turn to slam the emergency button. The text he'd received from the brigadier-general brands itself into Minseok's mind.
"They're planning something," Minseok says when everyone hurries into the huddle room. "Tomorrow. A coordinated attack here, they're bringing out the big stuff. Tanks and jets and heavy duty artillery. Codenamed Operation Phoenix." He holds out the military tablet so everyone can read.
Baekhyun snorts, his fist braced tight next to Minseok. "Speak of the devil."
"We can take them on," Chanyeol says loudly. "All eleven. Good chance to take out the machinery they have, then we can coordinate a big attack."
Junmyeon's eyes are foamy blue, like water when it's churning angrily. "Save from Zitao and Yixing, we're still good to go. We've taken them on with less of us."
"I can fight," Zitao protests, straightening, but he cuts himself off when the pain knits his brows.
"You can stop time so we'll have a better time fighting," Jongdae says, patting Zitao's waist gently. Zitao doesn't say anything, but Minseok can see him lean into Jongdae's touch.
Kyungsoo looks at Minseok. "Do you know the strength they're bringing?"
Operation Phoenix is a trap for death. The military frontline with its tanks and cannon is a ruse, to occupy the attackers at the mouth of EXO's base, then the best jets the military has will take the back and go in for the kill. Minseok's role is to lure the defenders to the jets.
”Jesus,” Baekhyun says, staring at the tablet, the strategy laid over a map of EXO’s base red as blood. “Imagine if we hadn’t known - jesus.”
"At least we'll be prepared," Yixing says. "Home ground, too."
"We’ve taken down the sort of stuff they have anyway," Sehun agrees. "Jets, tanks, cannons."
"The only thing we should be careful of is the bombs." Junmyeon's eyes are cool as steel. "We're not immune. Lu Han and Jongin should standby? Zitao too, you can always buy us some time."
Zitao nods, a small smile on his lips. Chanyeol grins wide, almost feral. "We'll destroy them. I’ll take the foot soldiers with Kyungsoo, Baekhyun and Jongdae the tanks?”
Minseok points out the formation of the jets on the tablet. “They’re polycarbonate aluminium. Not exactly heat-resistant, I think it’ll be better if you take the ones at the tip of the V. I can disable the flying and missile systems for the ones behind, that’s probably where they’ll have the bombs. "
Jongdae nods. “Junmyeon-hyung can do the foot soldiers then, and Sehun can help with the jets. I think it’d be better if Minseok-hyung does the disabling out of plain sight - give them a surprise of element?”
"Yeah." It's a promise.
Junmyeon puts his hand in the middle. Minseok watches as the rest pile their hands on his - and wait for Minseok to join in. It's the first time he's doing this with EXO, but it's not difficult to hear why: a reminder that they're all in this together. Minseok's part of it too, whether by association or inclusion.
When the cheer rings out, it feels like a burst of energy and confidence. Strength in numbers is the best thing EXO has. “We can do it,” Zitao yells, just because, and in the room watching Chanyeol hurl a fireball at the painted training dummies Minseok can only focus on the ways they will succeed.
They break up into the pairs they’ll be working in the next day, and Minseok’s wondering if he should grab a couple just to test out combat strategies when Lu Han taps him on the shoulder.
“Hey,” Lu Han’s smile is amiable. Minseok’s smile in return is hesitant.
“I just wanted to say… I’m sorry you had to find out that way.” Minseok’s surprised at the offer of empathy, the idea that this might be just more than an alliance, that at least some of this team is still fighting with him - Minseok doesn’t know what to say.
“Thank you.”
“Jongdae made a point yesterday, I can’t imagine finding out that everything you know is a lie,” comes Yixing’s voice, and Minseok jumps a little to find Yixing next to him. His eyes are soft.
“So cut yourself a little slack,” Lu Han continues, “I think I’m more than inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt. I don’t know how to believe you as a military spy trying to double-cross us.”
Faith is what Minseok hadn’t realised he’d needed. His fingers are tingling with emotion he can’t parse.
Yixing smiles, squeezing Minseok’s elbow. “Time to prepare to kill it.”
Minseok returns their smiles gratefully, and when he intercepts a fireball Chanyeol tosses his way during training, freezing a solid shell of ice around it so it fizzles and collapses upon itself in midair, Minseok's filled with the familiar sense of purpose for this team.
---
When the sun bleeds orange over the horizon, EXO are ready. None of them had slept a wink the last night; how could they have? They’d had to drag each other away from the training dummies so their body and powers would be re-energized by daybreak. All eleven are wide-eyed, braced and ready. Jongin had flashed to the Square to warn them of military deployment. The frontline - Junmyeon, Kyungsoo, Baekhyun and Jongdae - wait in front of base, a fortress wall melded from light and water. There’s a storm brewing in the skies overhead. The rumble of thunder is electrifying.
Jongin’s smoke when he arrives is a whirlwind of relief and anticipation. “They’re on their way. Two minutes half.”
That’s all the frontline needs to fire up. Jongdae crackles into blue next to Baekhyun, who’s got a supernova in his clenched fist. Junmyeon’s cool as a cucumber, test-lashing out a rope of water. Kyungsoo cricks his neck.
The first of the gunfire just misses the frontline, but Kyungsoo’s ready for it. He sends a force field rippling outwards, the bullets blown backwards to embed themselves in enemy flesh and metal. Jongdae doesn’t give them much time to retaliate after the first loud cries of anguish - pulling lightning straight from the eye of the storm in the skies to hit a tank, military vehicles, throwing the soldiers in a mile radius around each vehicle backwards so they’re scattered, formation broken. Junmyeon sends columns of water rushing down on the rest of the foot soldiers, and Baekhyun slices the launcher right off a cannon.
It’s not going to be an easy fight. The shell around the lethal core, the enemy frontline the military had rounded up was meant to be staggering enough to occupy most of EXO, and the military has fought EXO enough to know their strengths. The bullets seem never ending, ammunition raining down on EXO’s frontline so fast and furious that it leaves the four no time to attack. Minseok doesn’t think when he darts out to halt a cannonball heading straight for Kyungsoo, driving it backwards with the expansion of water molecules in the air around the cannonball when he freezes it. The ball lands with considerable explosion in the enemy camp, but next to him Chanyeol still has to send a lash of fire into a tank before they can aim a missile drone at Jongdae. It’s chaos - the urgency of the crossfire is so arresting that Minseok trembles to a stop when the explosion sounds near the back of base, so loud that Minseok feels the ground underneath him tremble. His veins are liquid panic.
“Fuck,” Chanyeol swears as Minseok turns to see Jongin - they’re behind base in a flash, just in time to see the first of the jets careening straight for them and Chanyeol holds his hand out, just as Lu Han and Zitao yell and the jets freeze to a stop as if slamming into pause, a shimmering wave of air rippling out. Chanyeol looks over and gives both of them a thumbs-up. Jongin returns it with a grin, his eyes dark with steel.
Sehun’s storm is already swirling within the pod of paused time that Zitao, Jongin and Lu Han had thought quickly enough to build - Jongin to flash space around the planes, Lu Han to hold it in, and Zitao to stop time within it. Chanyeol’s fireball is hovering right before the first jet.
“Ready?” Zitao yells over the howling wind, and Minseok bellows a “yes!” as the sound carries over the rumble of thunder and realises they’d yelled unanimously.
“You guys head back after in front to check on them?” Chanyeol adds, revving up the fire licking his arms so every inch of his skin is flame. Zitao nods and holds his fingers up to countdown.
Three, two - the pod releases, the fireball Chanyeol sent crashes into the first jet, taking it down with the screech of burning, lacerating metal, and Sehun knocks the second and third in the V-formation off course, crashing into the mountains next to base. Minseok locks in on his target. The four at the back are spaced far enough apart that he’ll have to take them down individually. At least the impending storm is helpful - the air is charged with static, heavy with water. He’s got an atmosphere full of ammunition.
Minseok makes sure the blast of ice that he sends roaring towards the last jet is forceful enough to prevent defensive piloting, though this strategy saps his power quick so Minseok has to let go when his target plunges into the valley below base. In the second he takes to recharge, drag the frost back from every artery, Chanyeol’s taken two more and - Minseok’s lost his heart when he sees the missile coming for them - throws himself bodily against Sehun so they narrowly avoid the missile slamming into the back of base.
“Okay?” Minseok hollers, directing his freezing energy to focus on the second last jet, which stalls, crackling and wailing, to plummet. Chanyeol and Sehun are on their feet back again.
“Fuckers,” Chanyeol yells and sends a strong blast of fire that takes two jets at once. They’re down to six, two each.
He does the same trick with the second last jet on the left, feeling a brutal sense of victory when it crashes into the one right before it that Sehun’s whoop voices. “Suck my dick,” Sehun yells as he sends the one closest to them crashing straight into the mountain on the left of the fleet. This is it, two more and they’ll - Minseok’s eyes dart to the huge missile, suddenly much too big in his field of vision, big enough that Minseok’s positive it will decimate the whole of base. There’s no fucking time -
The blast he’d used on the first jet is instinctive, breaking upon impact with the missile to send tiny ice chips flying - but the missile’s too heavy, too much inertia and holding too much kinetic energy from the burst it’d gotten from launch that Minseok only manages to slow it, and there’s no way he can stop it in time before it’ll make impact. The rain hammers down - is it rain? - Minseok can't take his eyes off the missile, but it's only till the bullet rips its way through Minseok's muscle to land just before his collarbone that he realises it's a shower of bullets. His shoulder is a supernova of pain, but he can't stop. Minseok drives everything into keeping the blast up, dragging up every inch of frost he has within his body that regulates his body temperature so he feels on fire - he’s never used this before; never had to fight this intense before, but the missile is all he can see, all the boom of thunder all he can hear. The blast strengthens to harden, unbreakable as the ice that compacts beneath pressure, and Minseok drives it downwards, using all he has left, till he’s trembling with the weight of a thousand tons, until the missile hits the foot of the mountain base is on and Minseok blacks out.
----
Minseok jerks awake with panic numbing his limbs.
"Base -" He blurts, before registering the faces, the wan light in the room. Yixing's hands just leaving the side of his head. Minseok can only see the missile, so huge it jolts him into the memory -
"The last two jets? The missile?"
Yixing's smile is gentle, ironing Minseok's knot in his chest out. "It exploded at the foot of the mountain just as you blacked out, Chanyeol hit one jet right after and a smaller grenade hit the back of base just before Sehun took it out, but Kyungsoo patched us back just fine. Don't move too much, your wound needs some time to heal on its own. At least the bullet didn't hit your collarbone."
As if his pain nerves have only just buzzed to life, Minseok feels the deep ache from the bone wreck his shoulder, so strongly it feels numbing. "So - we took them out?"
Chanyeol grins from the foot of his bed. "You bet. We went back to the frontline, by then they'd gotten most of the tanks down. They were all pretty rough when we crushed the last cannon together, but Yixing got them back soon enough. Reckon we destroyed a good part of the military's strength."
His smile is so infectious Minseok finds himself cracking a smile, even if his shoulder hurts like a motherfucker despite looking none worse for the wear. It's mirrored on all sides around Minseok's bed. "About twenty tanks, maybe five cannons? At least twenty jets." Jongin adds. "That's about forty percent of what they have from what I've seen in the military hangar."
It's not a huge percentage, but they'll will the small victory. It's a good dent in the military's confidence, and the rest of the military's artillery sounds much more manageable, especially when they've just walked out of a battle with the military proud and strong.
"No time to be complacent, though," Kyungsoo says. "They probably have more prepared, and we're all still weak from that battle." Minseok gets it. Desperation forces the ugly out of power, and there's nothing the military isn't capable of doing.
"So we'll attack first," Baekhyun replies sharply. "Hit them while they're down, this is our best opportunity."
Jongdae nods in agreement. "Attack is the best defence we have right now. Give it a couple more days and they'll be back with more."
"We'll work something out to attack in five days, max," Junmyeon says, "but for now we let Minseok sleep the wound off."
Zitao smiles, patting Minseok's arm. "Guess what, we get the room all to ourselves because Baekhyun and Chanyeol's snores are very detrimental to proper sleep. Doctor's orders." A laugh bursts out of Minseok's throat and he immediately regrets it when the pain tears through his flesh, scorching as raw electricity. Kyungsoo and Yixing raise their eyes in concern at Minseok's wince, as an incredulous Baekhyun reaches over to mock-punch Zitao in the arm to loud hoots from Sehun and Lu Han.
"Have you ever heard yourself snore, Zitao," Chanyeol says. "That's the only detrimental thing here."
"Weakass comeback." Jongdae is the very picture of unimpressed and gets a pinch in the side for his effort.
"I'm fine," Minseok manages a weak smile at Yixing and Kyungsoo. "I have to agree with Zitao, though..." The smile melts into a grin when Baekhyun and Chanyeol send him twin faces of mock hurt. His shoulder wound seems to hurt less this time. Chanyeol clutches his heart dramatically.
"You should go on the couch for that kind of acting alone," Jongin says. Junmyeon turns to Minseok. "I wanted to say - I hope you understand why we reacted how we did when you told us about the military. I think you've more than shown us where your loyalties lie," Junmyeon says quietly, and put it like that Minseok remembers he has. Perhaps he'd put everything he couldn't say - even if it's a mix of comradeship and remorse - into that blast.
"I should have told you guys earlier -" Minseok says, but Baekhyun puts his hand on Minseok's fist and squeezes.
"You'd only just found out," Baekhyun says, smiling, "so how can we fault you for that?"
It's the same faith, now multiplied ten times. Minseok's almost embarrassed. "I still betrayed your trust."
"Because someone else was betraying yours," Kyungsoo points out. "You've saved us twice now, we should be saying thanks instead of anything else."
“That’s not what a team says to each other," Minseok says, keeping his smile and breath held, till EXO burst into grins around Minseok.
“Fair point,” Chanyeol says, rounding the bed so he can wedge himself between Baekhyun and Jongdae to sit by Minseok’s bed. “Guess some hugs are in order, then?” Minseok’s shoulder erupts in electric pain when Chanyeol throws himself at Minseok, then Jongdae and Baekhyun and Sehun and Zitao cheering and suddenly Minseok’s at the bottom of a group pile disguised as a huge hug.
“Hey, hey,” Yixing says late, extracting himself and Minseok from the tangle of limbs and grins. “He took a bullet, be gentle.”
Minseok even lets Lu Han ruffle his hair when the rest apologise and pile out of the room with Junmyeon’s herding. “Sleep well,” come the goodbye yells from outside the room, and Minseok’s shoulder hurts so much that the pain drags tears into his eyes, but his grin is still wide enough to neutralise it.
---
The text comes after the two days it takes for the pain to completely go away.
You have been disavowed.
No other explanation or mention of consequences - the sentence sends a chill down Minseok’s spine. The unknown is much, much more unnerving than a direct threat, but it’s not like Minseok doesn’t know what the military can do. His fate if he falls captive to the military is plain.
“You okay?” Lu Han nudges Minseok in the side and Minseok wonders how bad his expression shows, if that means he’s more shaken than he’d like to admit.
Minseok shows Lu Han the text. He’d read the fine print he’d signed off on. In case of disavowal, the officer is no longer under the protection of the Military Act and the establishment will no longer provide security nor identification. He’s free territory now. It’s not like the military’s protection had meant anything before disavowal, but laid in black and white Minseok hears it loud and clear. This is a warning that he’s being hunted.
Lu Han looks at him, the concern pooling in his eyes. Minseok shakes his head. “It was due any time now.”
“They’ll terminate - you?”
Minseok nods, but surprisingly, watching his teammates zap dummies in the training hall, hearing the laughter that’s come to sound like liquid recharge, he finds less resignation and more resolve, more purpose in himself. “I’m not going to let them, though.”
Lu Han grins wide and bumps his fist with Minseok. “That’s the spirit.”
Junmyeon calls for a huddle in the training hall. “Our attack - we’ve got to act fast. Jongin made a recon trip today, they’re pretty badly hit and this is a good window of opportunity.”
“I think we should take the rest of their stuff out and force a coup,” Chanyeol says, singeing a hole in the side of a dummy.
“They still have a good half left,” Jongin reminds them, “and who’s to say they won’t retreat to the space habitat and leave the city in ruin?”
Yixing’s lips are tight. “We need to act fast, the city’s getting sicker. The radiation the military upped in the plants so they can work faster, more efficiently is getting to the workers, and the medical facilities here in the hospitals only buy them time, not save it. You’d be surprised how many of the city are ready to fight back against the establishment, too. Every patient I’ve healed is on our side, and word spreads like fire.”
Baekhyun shakes his head. “They’ll probably cut off the little money they’re using to run the plant and pay wages. Paint it as the establishment being compromised by mutant forces.”
“They still need the city to continue operations to serve the space habitat,” Lu Han points out.
“It’s not getting to the root of the matter,” Kyungsoo’s sombre. “They won’t necessarily surrender, and wrestling control of the Square doesn’t change shit. I doubt they’ll surrender the space habitat.”
Wrestling control. It drags out a hazy memory Minseok has from his cursory tour of the Square on the day he’d signed on to receive his directive. He'd learnt that each door and computer is encrypted with the fingerprints of a military or government officer, and Minseok had had an account set up for him.
“Every computer is connected to the central server,” the IT technician had told him. “And this account will gain you access into the server. That doesn’t mean you can see everything in the server, of course. Administrator rights are dependent on your rank. Your account can be overridden by the brigadier-general, the major-general, and of course, the President who has highest level rights of the entire government server.”
It didn’t take much to put two and two together. “It’s a wired establishment?” Minseok asked out of curiosity.
The IT technician had nodded as he swiped Minseok’s fingerprints into the server. “Everything is electronically controlled. You could wrestle power of the entire establishment - as long as you get into the President’s laptop that’s remote from the server. It’s not that easy, a ton of people have tried. Each of them were terminated within 24 hours, so I advise you not to try.”
“We could force abdication,” Minseok says, looking around at his teammates. “as long as we can get to the President’s laptop and rewire it. The entire government structure - including ranks and directives - are programmed and stored on a central server. The President’s laptop is remote from the server, but probably behind incredible security. If we gain access to it we’ll be able to hijack the system and change commanding rights for the city.”
Jongin’s quiet for a second. “I’ve heard something when I was in the government building in the space habitat. The President’s office is many, many floors underground, but I have no idea where.”
“Then that’s what we’ll need,” Minseok says. “To get in the office. Jongdae can short-circuit the drive and force a reboot, then that should be sufficient to recode the identity of the President.”
“It seems a little too easy.” Yixing’s concerns are valid, but perhaps the human ego defense mechanism works in their favour this time. Pride spawns denial, which spawns weakness.
“It’s not going to be a walk in the park,” Jongin has his lip in his teeth. “The government building isn’t too great to navigate, and security gates are every five metres. The military will be swarming the second you blast any one down.”
“How many floors will we have to fight through?”
“Ten, if the lift is anything to go by,” Jongin’s snort is dry. “I assume his office is on the lowest floor.”
“Better than fighting missiles and jets,” Jongdae says, “at least our targets will be stationary.”
“Our first targets,” Junmyeon frowns. “The military probably have thousands of guards on standby in the building, but I suppose our advantage is that we’ll only have to deal with foot soldiers.”
“It’s our best bet,” ZItao says. “A real chance to change the system once and for all - we’ll just have to give our all.”
Chanyeol nods. “I’m in, this is precisely what we’ve been trying to work towards, except we didn’t know how to do it.”
Sehun nods next to Chanyeol, Baekhyun next to him, and Minseok ends the circle of agreement. Conviction eleven times over feels bolder on Minseok’s skin, much bolder than the threat of his identity as a military target looming over his head. The same sense of purpose that had filled Minseok that afternoon he watched death sweep over the hospital ruin is throughout Minseok’s veins.
“Our ultimatum, then,” Junmyeon says, putting his hand in the middle, and the pile that follows his is instantaneous. When the cheer rings out in the small training room, Minseok feels something like invincible.
---
Ultimatum sets the world on fire.
Jongin takes five, Minseok, Chanyeol, Jongdae, Sehun and Lu Han, to the space habitat first. The way Jongin explains it - that his teleportation works when he has a clear view of where he wants to go - Minseok sees why Jongin can’t take them straight into the President’s office. This fight will need to happen against stone and metal, against riches and fear.
The smoke clears to artificial heaven. Up close before Minseok’s eyes the scene gleams brighter than he’d expected, too bright so it sears his eyes. Jongin had put them in an alley near the government building just round the corner. Minseok can see it in all its grandeur. The tinted glass panels form a bulletproof cover around the heart of the establishment, managing to make the building look imposing and luxurious at the same time. It’s early, barely four in the morning, and there is not a person in sight. Minseok assumes the establishment thinks the space habitat sentinels - the fighter jets defending the space habitat from any foreign craft - are more than sufficient.
“They probably have most of the guards in the building,” Jongdae mutters, keeping his eyes peeled. Minseok nods. He wouldn’t put it past the establishment to focus the defensive resources they have where it matters - the rich citizens on the space habitat are just that, after all.
The rest come in another cloud of smoke and Minseok already feels fuller, more assured in the air of the space habitat. Body warmth must help, but the confidence comes deep from the bone. They’re ready.
“Stick close to your teams,” Junmyeon says. “We don’t know what we’ll be dealing with. And don’t push yourself, Zitao.” Zitao’s back’s healed that he no longer needs a brace, but bone’s brittle when it’s new. He nods and braces his fists.
“Yixing, stick with Jongin so you guys can patch anyone up if necessary?” Yixing smiles, the dimple denting the corner his cheek steely. Minseok has one second to swallow his heartbeat at the back of his throat, then they’re out.
Jongdae makes the first cut. Minseok freezes the guard next to the side entrance just as Jongdae short-circuits the magnetic strip that holds the entrance closed, and the glass doors fall open to a screeching alarm that chills Minseok’s blood to the last artery.
“Shit,” Baekhyun swears as EXO activates. They’d planned for this, contingency plans hashed and rehashed based on what Jongin remembers of the government buildings in the recon trips he’s made. Upon alarm activation, split up into threes to avoid easy capture in one fell swoop. Minseok’s with Jongdae and Lu Han.
Baekhyun, Zitao and Junmyeon are sprinting to a door under an exit sign in the building, Baekhyun slicing the door open so it reveals what seems to be an emergency exit stairwell. The other attacking team - Kyungsoo, Sehun and Chanyeol - have already disappeared into the other emergency stairwell, what remains of the door crumbling at the doorframe, and when they reach the first landing of the last stairwell, Minseok looks back to see a swarm of drones descending at them.
Jongdae’s blue before Minseok can react. Half of them fizzle and crash into the polished floor right before Minseok, like a carpet of giant black wasps with lethal-looking darts at their ends. Minseok freezes the next wave and Lu Han moves the crowd heading towards the first emergency stairwell, but they keep coming, so numerous that the cloud of drones seems dense enough to choke. Even between the three of them maintaining their powers the cloud is unstoppable, and Minseok ducks to just miss a drone planting its stinger in Minseok’s neck and recovers to a shower of bullets. The foot soldiers have activated, pouring out from every nook and cranny of the sprawling hall. Dark is everywhere Minseok sees, and the realization that this dark they're fighting matches you every step of the way in their fight, enough to crush you, Minseok’s suddenly aware what he needs to do.
It’s like Jongdae can read his heart. “They need a distraction.” Jongdae’s voice reverberates in the stairwell. Minseok sees the guards following the drones at the mouths of the other stairwells and catches Lu Han’s eye, Jongdae’s.
Minseok freezes the air molecules before the drones and the soldiers can make it downstairs - a thick wall of ice crystallizes in the path of the establishment and by the time the enemy turns around, Minseok, Jongdae and Lu Han are at the top of the stairwell, Minseok’s feet crunching the fallen drones Jongdae buzzed. Three is a good enough distraction - the drones and guards winding towards the stairwell turn immediately, and Minseok takes the one second reprieve that Lu Han gives them by sweeping the second shower of bullets away to ready himself. The drones keep raining down, as Jongdae creates a network of electricity right before them so dense that the drones and bullets fizzle into thousands of sparks that fall backwards onto the enemy, driving them back. Lu Han tears the guards bodily away from the scene, out of the building as quickly as he can.
When Jongdae’s current runs out, Minseok’s ready. The lattice of ice crystals in the air comes locking around the drone cloud and guards stretching all the way to the other end of the hall. "Can you keep it around them for me?" Minseok yells, glancing at Lu Han, but he's just finished his sentence when the lattice starts rounding around the mass of black, closing in on then like a massive glittering shell catching the light, and Minseok keeps it up, pouring every inch of frost he has within himself to strengthen the lattice, as dense as solid uniform ice by now. Lu Han shapes it for Minseok, pushing the lattice so it plugs every exit from the inside, and when the lattice reaches the sides of the hall flanking, enclosing the enemy in a reinforced, bulletproof cage of ice, Minseok releases the breath he hadn't realised he'd held and looks up in the direction of flames crackling to see the world exploding in fire.
The slam of Jongdae's shoulder in his ribcage, his own shoulder against stone and Lu Han's knee winding him is palpable - painful, even, and Minseok wrenches his eyes open to find fire everywhere he sees, a huge cannonball crushing the marble floor of the building like it's paper. Jongdae's leg feeding a flame. Jongdae's out cold.
"Fuck," Minseok looks up at Lu Han's exclamation to see another flaming cannonball that Lu Han moves to make the trajectory directly into the plane craft that had launched it, then at his fallen teammate. There must be something that he can do to stop - water! Minseok generates a ball of ice that melts into water upon contact with the fire, fizzling out the flames on Jongdae's leg and Minseok cringes when the expanse of the flesh left looks raw and gruesome. "Jongdae?"
Yixing's by their side in a flash. "Prop him up for me."
Minseok bodily drags Jongdae up so Jongdae's leaning against his back - the immediacy erases all thought in his head, and his fingers are tingling with liquid panic. Yixing smooths his palm over the burnt flesh when there's a sound - Minseok jerks his head up, but Lu Han's got it, crashing the plane into the ground outside the building, and when he looks back Jongdae's awake.
"Okay?" The colour in Jongdae's cheek is jolting relief - it's like Jongdae hadn't thrown himself in front of his teammates to save them from a cannonball of fire, hadn't been clawed back from the brink of death. Jongdae nods, his lips tight. "Let's join the rest."
Jongin wastes no time. Minseok feels the familiar squeeze before they materialise in a subterranean level, then into the gaping hole in the floor to land next to Baekhyun, Zitao and Junmyeon.
"Okay?" Lu Han hollers over the rubble, pieces of stone and plaster still raining.
Baekhyun nods. “We’ve been cutting our way through, but they have defences on every floor -“ As if on cue, the first of the gunfire erupts in Junmyeon’s arm. Minseok whips around with the rest of his team, acting on instinct, and the combined sheer force of light, frost, lightning, kinetic energy and raw anger decimates the corridor holding the group of guards and their guns, and when Minseok turns back to Junmyeon, Yixing’s got the bullet out of Junmyeon’s arm and his wound sealed.
“Hyung -“ Zitao says, but Junmyeon shakes his head. “I’m fine. How many floors to go?”
“Two,” Lu Han says, pointing at the sign near the stairwell.
“We’ve gotta make it fast then,” Minseok says, “can you get Kyungsoo’s team here with us? Might as well fight the last two together, since we’re close. Meet you guys at level nine?”
Jongin nods, grabbing Yixing and they’re gone. Baekhyun traces a square with the light from his palm in the floor, and they jump into the hole that falls open when an entire slab of stone and cement slams smoking onto level nine. Junmyeon winces and has to hold on to Lu Han for support when he lands, but his teeth are gritted.
This time they’re ready when the handful of grenades comes. Minseok takes out the first one, Lu Han the second and the last crashes straight into the few guards rounding the corner, charred and flaming, and Minseok turns to see Chanyeol, Kyungsoo and Sehun with deep cuts marking their faces and limbs, but otherwise fine. Minseok keeps waiting for more, greater defence now that they’re at the penultimate floor away from the most important office in the establishment, but he realises the very structure of the building works in their favour, too - the President’s office has itself backed into a corner, and Minseok will bet that the establishment isn’t willing to take the chance to drop bigger ammunition, bombs and cannonballs, when they’re so close to the heart of the building, to what will affect the establishment most. Checkmate.
The last floor falls with a combination of force and light so quickly they’re looking at what must be the front of the President’s office in seconds. It’s impressive, the heavy duty solid doors that feels impossibly thick. It takes the joint effort of both Lu Han and Kyungsoo to force the huge doors open, and Minseok keeps looking out for enemy forces, but nothing comes. They reach the ultimatum, the smaller door at the end of the tunnel after the metal gates in quiet, eerie silence. Minseok’s nerves are on fire, eyes darting to every tiny hint of movement, every shadow. Each second that passes with nothing is another second to held breath. Jongdae exchanges a look with him - but still nothing comes.
“Ready?” Kyungsoo’s voice is quiet but calm. All of the team are panting, bleeding and bruised, but at the finish line before what they’ve all been fighting for, the finality still rushes a warrior cry in Minseok.
The door opens to crumbling plaster and Minseok freezes the first person he sees before he can register who it is. When the man falls Minseok realises he’s made an attack on the President, but this means nothing at all. A sweep of the room affirms that it’s empty, and it’s then that Minseok realises why the ultimatum had come with silence. The establishment abandons even their leader when all hope is lost. He should’ve expected it. The last ugly side of the cancer in the city that they’re fighting tooth and nail to excise. A laptop gleams on the shiny hardwood table, and EXO step aside to let Jongdae do the favours.
The laptop’s on, blinking fire-engine red. Jongdae places his hand over the keyboard so the screen goes black, then, as Jongdae gingerly charges the drive so it turns on, a message blinks on the screen.
System restart._
City command server restart?_
Jongdae’s tap of the keyboard is quick.
Define President._
Jongdae looks over at the rest of them crowded around the laptop, small smile brightening the cut lashed angrily down the side of his cheek. “Junmyeon-hyung?”
“It’s a big city,” Junmyeon says. His murky eyes are stark against the white of his cheeks.
“It is,” Chanyeol says, smiling and wiping the blood off the side of his mouth. “But we have eleven of us.”
“The establishment -“ Kyungsoo mutters. “It’s disgusting.”
Junmyeon nods. “We’ll have to disable the entire server when we patch the city up again. I don’t think any of us want to lead an army of murderers.”
“No,” Minseok agrees, “but in the meantime, taking charge is what we need to rebuild the ruins.”
“So interim president it is,” Baekhyun says, and when Jongdae types Junmyeon’s identification number and name slowly but surely into the server, the green light signalling server restart is the precise colour of a bud emerging from barren soil. Junmyeon swipes his fingerprint that the laptop detects to open the commanding panel, then orders the stand down of all troops and military equipment and the dispatch of medical emergency aircraft back to the city. The alarm that had gone on for so long Minseok’s ears had gotten used to it stops abruptly, leaving ringing silence in Minseok’s ears - it’s what peace sounds like.
Junmyeon looks up at Jongin. “I think we should speak to the city.”
Jongin nods. They owe an explanation to their city, their home. Junmyeon pulls the laptop from the table, and Minseok finds himself in the Square, where the national broadcast control station is. The Square is deserted besides the main plaza that’s full of city residents, the sick and the healthy alike, clambering to understand the mass exodus from the Square they’d witnessed. Minseok can see the hangar for crafts and jets from here empty - no doubt taking the part of the establishment housed in the Square to the space habitat. Junmyeon taps the microphone.
“My name is Kim Junmyeon, you might have seen me and my team in the news.” Junmyeon introduces each one of them, his voice loud and clear. “We are the team of mutants against the establishment, but not in the way you might have been convinced. The establishment has forsaken the city to save a space habitat, where the robots this city builds, the profits from the incineration plants and the medicine that could be used to save our sick and dying go.”
The eruption of exclamations of rage and disbelief are ripple throughout the plaza. “Why should we believe you?” One man shouts at the control station, echoed by the people around him.
Junmyeon’s smile is a little sad. “You don’t have to,” Junmyeon says into the mic. “That’s not what we fought the military for.”
The plaza is immediately quiet. “We took control of the city to stop the establishment from siphoning money from the city and turning our homeland into ruin. You saw the aircrafts taking off - the military landed in the space habitat I mentioned, either to fight us or to escape. Either way, they’ve abandoned this city we all call home after thoroughly wrecking it. We forced a coup.”
Right on cue, two of the medical aircraft that Junmyeon had sent lands just outside the Square, medics and medical robots responding to Junmyeon’s directive. The clambering that follows immediately, before Junmyeon can say anything, for medical attention is staggering; Minseok sees what Yixing had meant about the city getting sicker.
“We’ll send more medical facilities,” Junmyeon says into the mic, “terminate the space habitat and put the money where it should, and find more sustainable ways to make robots.” The plaza is quiet in reaction, but the air feels like change. Trust.
“In the meantime, welcome home.”
---
“Hey.” Minseok looks up from his report to see Kyungsoo, grinning. Minseok reaches over to bump his fist.
“See you later?”
“Of course, have I ever missed any Friday night?” Minseok makes sure to look mock-offended.
“Fair point,” Kyungsoo laughs, and they step into the meeting room for the discussion on the Dragon X case - time to figure out a strategy now that they’ve gotten a lead on the villian’s whereabouts. Five years since the battle at the space habitat and a lot has changed; the city slowly building up its self-sustaining capabilities - taking up agriculture as well as water generation for export and domestic consumption, laying down trees and grass and flowers as part of the city’s landscape, the lone hospital that’s all the city needs next to the new government building. Now the city no longer needs to take shit from anyone to grow something out of their own efforts.
Things that haven’t changed: Junmyeon leading the city, who was voted as President even after terminating the entire command server system, EXO - the rest of them in charge of law enforcement, which means Minseok goes back to doing what he’d been doing, full time, and the Friday night sessions at the bar round the corner from the government building. Sometimes Minseok joins Chanyeol, Baekhyun, Sehun and Jongdae at half-sloshed pool, or sometimes he just nurses a beer with Kyungsoo and discuss the roasting techniques to make the best Americano, then drag the lightweights back to the base they’ve called home for six years and counting. Chanyeol still snores in his sleep, Baekhyun still yells fit to burst so Minseok has to get up and wrestle his ass into bed, and Junmyeon still leaves his clothes all over the living room floor, but this is the family he’s found, the family he comes back to every night.