A Perfect Secret [2/?]
Title: A Perfect Secret [2/?]
Author: LovelessEnding
Rating: PG-13 (overall)
Chapter Pairing: HanChul, friendship!sungwook (sungmin x ryeowook)
Story Pairing: JaeMin, YooSu, HanChul, and others
Genre: AU, Sci-Fi
Summary: Three levels of humans exist in the world: the Untouched, those that know nothing of their government’s experimentations; Perfects, experiments that have been sworn to secrecy; and Imperfects, who don’t exist. To create what was thought to be the perfect human, a mix of DNA material was entered into the bloodstream. The outcome could be a gift… or a curse.
Prologue || Chapter 1 || Chapter Two || Chapter Three
Heechul plays with his nails idly, watching as Zhoumi goes into the examination room with Kyuhyun. Hankyung keeps a close eye on Heechul, knowing that at any moment, Heechul might clench his hand and end up skewering it right through. For a brief second, Hankyung’s heart is in his throat as he sees Heechul’s hand close suddenly into a fist (and he’ll see nails sticking like needles in the back of his hand) but Heechul has already sheathed them and is watching Hankyung with a bemused expression. “You know I do that just to watch your reaction?”
“You shouldn’t, you know.” Heechul’s eyebrows waggle, and Hankyung sighs, “You might make a mistake someday.”
The phrase irritates Heechul, and he spits out a taunt, “Like going to the model search? Like when you went to your dance competition?”
Hankyung’s tongue flicks out, tasting the tension in the air. The involuntary action doesn’t surprise either of them. Gene splicing caused several new habits to incorporate into their behaviours, this was just one of the many.
However, it did make Heechul soften around the edges. Reaching out slowly, he strokes Hankyung’s cheek, his hand running over the harsh ridges. “They did this to us, Hankyung, and we need to make them pay.”
Hankyung laughs loudly, drawing more attention than it should have, “And what could we possibly do that could make them suffer like we have? What would we ever be able to do?”
“Well, I don’t know, Hankyung, but maybe we should think about it! Maybe sometime we can think about something ‘after,’ instead of always: ‘here,’ and ‘right now,’ and ‘we’ll never get out of here again.’” Heechul throws his hands up in desperation, “Maybe I want to be in a world where we can go out and about as we please, let our tails out, be who we are.”
“You know that’ll never happen!” Hankyung looks away, withdrawing from the conversation, crushing any hopes that could possibly come up with Heechul’s words.
“But it can! We can make it happen!”
“We can’t. Stop it, stop right now. You’re making a fool of yourself.”
“If that’s what you think I’m doing, then fine. I’ll leave, let you alone to your little emo thoughts, and your little dragon tongue.”
“Heechul…” Hankyung’s exasperated, grabbing Heechul’s wrist lightly.
Heechul wrenches his hand out of Hankyung’s grip, “Don’t you ‘Heechul’ me. Let me go, Hankyung.”
---
Sungmin wakes up first. His eyes don’t want to open, and his skin is itchy. He feels like he can’t move, and his body jerks, once, twice, pushing itself out of the molding it seemed to have fit into. Memories flicker like a bad reel, ‘You didn’t… he didn’t, oh my god, what happened?’; heart beats, beats, beats, pulses, races, stops- he breathes, a horrid sound, shuddering in and out like an asthmatic, ‘another Imperfect, here, look at the markings,’ and his fingers curl: in, out.
He rubs his eyes carefully, movements still jilted, awkward, and it feels like he’s shedding his old skin. He blinks carefully, looks around himself, and sees beds upon beds, obviously in a hospital. Automatically, he begins searching for Ryeowook, sees him not two beds down, but something’s wrong. Ryeowook’s hands are clenched in fists around the sheets, and his chest is pulled up like someone has put a hook through and pulled. His eyes are wide open, and they’re shaped all strange. Ryeowook opens his mouth in a silent scream - it can’t be anything other than that - and his body arches horribly backwards. He scrabbles at the sheets, and his mouth gapes like a fish.
Sungmin lurches forward, pulls IVs out from under his skin, and rushes towards Ryeowook’s side instantly. The boy is gurgling, choking, gasping out laboured breaths, and his stomach seems to be bulging. It’s doing all sorts of weird patterns in his skin, and to be honest, it’s making Sungmin sick. Quite sick, in fact; and he runs towards the nearest trash can to throw up.
His throat sears and it’s almost as if he’s chucked up a kidney in the mass of gunk. His eyes burn and Sungmin fights to blink back tears. Ryeowook is moaning under his breath, and Sungmin wipes his mouth carefully, slowly walking back to the bed.
Ryeowook has somewhat settled down, his fists loosening on the sheet’s material, and his entire back half touching the bed. Sungmin fights off the urge to entwine their hands together, fights off the panic that’s coming now that his attention is divided.
Where are they?
---
The room is completely dark but for a syringe that seems to be glowing with an effervescent gleam that’s both frightening and calming. It’s orange in colour, and as the doctor holds it up against the experiment’s pale arm, the colour casts onto his skin. The doctor is sweating lightly, past failures resurfacing in his memory, but his hands remain steady, and the needle finds its way into the veins of the young boy on the table.
The boy stirs, struggling against the anesthesia that put him to sleep, and against the catalyst and DNA material that is entering into his blood. The doctor stands and watches, imagining each DNA strand splitting and copying into the nucleic acid of the RNA. And then, almost like a cancerous cell, the chromosomes duplicate, overtaking the human genetic material, infesting it like a disease, and eating it away.
It was a rare specimen, this DNA split, and to be completely honest, if this didn’t work, then the doctor would have caused the extinction of a complete species. And yet, if it did work, he would have altered the species so much so that it might never go back to its original state. He didn’t much mind. What was one species compared to a whole new human race?
---
The beds are still. The heart monitors quiet. The experiments unresponsive.
Their bodies are twisted, the genes not having mixed correctly, generating an entirely different sequence. It screwed up their immune system, and a few of them grew cancerous tumours through their body, effectively stopping their existence.
On one boy, it was a particularly bloody case. Having been mixed with a beaver, his teeth had begun to grow at an extremely fast rate, and as beaver’s teeth never stop growing, they had curved inwards, eventually piercing through his throat. He died from suffocation, not able to breathe around his teeth.
The doctor makes a few notes on a small notepad, and then turns to his assistant, “Bag ‘em.”
---
The Park household has been quiet for much too long.
Yoochun trudges through the door and toes off his shoes. A few letters are lying next to their slot, so he picks them up and carries them towards the kitchen. He puts his jacket on the coat-hanger, keys in the jar, and the letters on the counter. Turning towards the sink, he washes his hands idly, and runs his damp fingers through his hair.
It’s been a long day, and even though he’s tired, Yoochun would give anything to be able to roughhouse around with Ricky, while hearing his parents shout in the background. He misses their exuberance, their loud natures. He just misses them.
He picks up the letters and heads off to his bed. The blankets are warm around him, and he can feel sleep already coming. With more thought than needed, he slowly opens the first letter, skims the contents, and drops it to the floor. A bill. The two letters afterwards were similar but the fourth was oddly light. He slips his finger through the fold, and tears it upwards.
Mr. Park,
We regret to inform you…
He reads each word once. Then he reads them again, his breath oddly hitched, an almost disbelieving (yet horrified) smile on his face. The third time he reads it, his fist crumples it slowly.
His mind is blank, except for the words in the letter, set on repeat. We regret to inform you- they can’t be.
In an unfortunate scientific accident - he laughs hysterically, twisting the bed sheets in his hands. Mr. Park, Ms. Park, and young Ricky Park have been pronounced as dead.
He sobs now, loud in the silence - because their laughter won’t ring in the air, their voices will never sound again. His breath hitches again, causing him to choke, and then he cries even harder.
The sheets pull at him now, urging him to forget, to stifle his sobs and fall asleep. Yoochun tears the letter in rough, angry snatches, tears it to a million little pieces. “Mom,” he whimpers.
PREVIOUS || NEXT
A/N: And here we are introducing more characters!! Sorry for the late update, guys, but I'm on winter break now, so I'm hoping to get a few chapters churned out before the end \o/
Author: LovelessEnding
Rating: PG-13 (overall)
Chapter Pairing: HanChul, friendship!sungwook (sungmin x ryeowook)
Story Pairing: JaeMin, YooSu, HanChul, and others
Genre: AU, Sci-Fi
Summary: Three levels of humans exist in the world: the Untouched, those that know nothing of their government’s experimentations; Perfects, experiments that have been sworn to secrecy; and Imperfects, who don’t exist. To create what was thought to be the perfect human, a mix of DNA material was entered into the bloodstream. The outcome could be a gift… or a curse.
Prologue || Chapter 1 || Chapter Two || Chapter Three
Heechul plays with his nails idly, watching as Zhoumi goes into the examination room with Kyuhyun. Hankyung keeps a close eye on Heechul, knowing that at any moment, Heechul might clench his hand and end up skewering it right through. For a brief second, Hankyung’s heart is in his throat as he sees Heechul’s hand close suddenly into a fist (and he’ll see nails sticking like needles in the back of his hand) but Heechul has already sheathed them and is watching Hankyung with a bemused expression. “You know I do that just to watch your reaction?”
“You shouldn’t, you know.” Heechul’s eyebrows waggle, and Hankyung sighs, “You might make a mistake someday.”
The phrase irritates Heechul, and he spits out a taunt, “Like going to the model search? Like when you went to your dance competition?”
Hankyung’s tongue flicks out, tasting the tension in the air. The involuntary action doesn’t surprise either of them. Gene splicing caused several new habits to incorporate into their behaviours, this was just one of the many.
However, it did make Heechul soften around the edges. Reaching out slowly, he strokes Hankyung’s cheek, his hand running over the harsh ridges. “They did this to us, Hankyung, and we need to make them pay.”
Hankyung laughs loudly, drawing more attention than it should have, “And what could we possibly do that could make them suffer like we have? What would we ever be able to do?”
“Well, I don’t know, Hankyung, but maybe we should think about it! Maybe sometime we can think about something ‘after,’ instead of always: ‘here,’ and ‘right now,’ and ‘we’ll never get out of here again.’” Heechul throws his hands up in desperation, “Maybe I want to be in a world where we can go out and about as we please, let our tails out, be who we are.”
“You know that’ll never happen!” Hankyung looks away, withdrawing from the conversation, crushing any hopes that could possibly come up with Heechul’s words.
“But it can! We can make it happen!”
“We can’t. Stop it, stop right now. You’re making a fool of yourself.”
“If that’s what you think I’m doing, then fine. I’ll leave, let you alone to your little emo thoughts, and your little dragon tongue.”
“Heechul…” Hankyung’s exasperated, grabbing Heechul’s wrist lightly.
Heechul wrenches his hand out of Hankyung’s grip, “Don’t you ‘Heechul’ me. Let me go, Hankyung.”
---
Sungmin wakes up first. His eyes don’t want to open, and his skin is itchy. He feels like he can’t move, and his body jerks, once, twice, pushing itself out of the molding it seemed to have fit into. Memories flicker like a bad reel, ‘You didn’t… he didn’t, oh my god, what happened?’; heart beats, beats, beats, pulses, races, stops- he breathes, a horrid sound, shuddering in and out like an asthmatic, ‘another Imperfect, here, look at the markings,’ and his fingers curl: in, out.
He rubs his eyes carefully, movements still jilted, awkward, and it feels like he’s shedding his old skin. He blinks carefully, looks around himself, and sees beds upon beds, obviously in a hospital. Automatically, he begins searching for Ryeowook, sees him not two beds down, but something’s wrong. Ryeowook’s hands are clenched in fists around the sheets, and his chest is pulled up like someone has put a hook through and pulled. His eyes are wide open, and they’re shaped all strange. Ryeowook opens his mouth in a silent scream - it can’t be anything other than that - and his body arches horribly backwards. He scrabbles at the sheets, and his mouth gapes like a fish.
Sungmin lurches forward, pulls IVs out from under his skin, and rushes towards Ryeowook’s side instantly. The boy is gurgling, choking, gasping out laboured breaths, and his stomach seems to be bulging. It’s doing all sorts of weird patterns in his skin, and to be honest, it’s making Sungmin sick. Quite sick, in fact; and he runs towards the nearest trash can to throw up.
His throat sears and it’s almost as if he’s chucked up a kidney in the mass of gunk. His eyes burn and Sungmin fights to blink back tears. Ryeowook is moaning under his breath, and Sungmin wipes his mouth carefully, slowly walking back to the bed.
Ryeowook has somewhat settled down, his fists loosening on the sheet’s material, and his entire back half touching the bed. Sungmin fights off the urge to entwine their hands together, fights off the panic that’s coming now that his attention is divided.
Where are they?
---
The room is completely dark but for a syringe that seems to be glowing with an effervescent gleam that’s both frightening and calming. It’s orange in colour, and as the doctor holds it up against the experiment’s pale arm, the colour casts onto his skin. The doctor is sweating lightly, past failures resurfacing in his memory, but his hands remain steady, and the needle finds its way into the veins of the young boy on the table.
The boy stirs, struggling against the anesthesia that put him to sleep, and against the catalyst and DNA material that is entering into his blood. The doctor stands and watches, imagining each DNA strand splitting and copying into the nucleic acid of the RNA. And then, almost like a cancerous cell, the chromosomes duplicate, overtaking the human genetic material, infesting it like a disease, and eating it away.
It was a rare specimen, this DNA split, and to be completely honest, if this didn’t work, then the doctor would have caused the extinction of a complete species. And yet, if it did work, he would have altered the species so much so that it might never go back to its original state. He didn’t much mind. What was one species compared to a whole new human race?
---
The beds are still. The heart monitors quiet. The experiments unresponsive.
Their bodies are twisted, the genes not having mixed correctly, generating an entirely different sequence. It screwed up their immune system, and a few of them grew cancerous tumours through their body, effectively stopping their existence.
On one boy, it was a particularly bloody case. Having been mixed with a beaver, his teeth had begun to grow at an extremely fast rate, and as beaver’s teeth never stop growing, they had curved inwards, eventually piercing through his throat. He died from suffocation, not able to breathe around his teeth.
The doctor makes a few notes on a small notepad, and then turns to his assistant, “Bag ‘em.”
---
The Park household has been quiet for much too long.
Yoochun trudges through the door and toes off his shoes. A few letters are lying next to their slot, so he picks them up and carries them towards the kitchen. He puts his jacket on the coat-hanger, keys in the jar, and the letters on the counter. Turning towards the sink, he washes his hands idly, and runs his damp fingers through his hair.
It’s been a long day, and even though he’s tired, Yoochun would give anything to be able to roughhouse around with Ricky, while hearing his parents shout in the background. He misses their exuberance, their loud natures. He just misses them.
He picks up the letters and heads off to his bed. The blankets are warm around him, and he can feel sleep already coming. With more thought than needed, he slowly opens the first letter, skims the contents, and drops it to the floor. A bill. The two letters afterwards were similar but the fourth was oddly light. He slips his finger through the fold, and tears it upwards.
Mr. Park,
We regret to inform you…
He reads each word once. Then he reads them again, his breath oddly hitched, an almost disbelieving (yet horrified) smile on his face. The third time he reads it, his fist crumples it slowly.
His mind is blank, except for the words in the letter, set on repeat. We regret to inform you- they can’t be.
In an unfortunate scientific accident - he laughs hysterically, twisting the bed sheets in his hands. Mr. Park, Ms. Park, and young Ricky Park have been pronounced as dead.
He sobs now, loud in the silence - because their laughter won’t ring in the air, their voices will never sound again. His breath hitches again, causing him to choke, and then he cries even harder.
The sheets pull at him now, urging him to forget, to stifle his sobs and fall asleep. Yoochun tears the letter in rough, angry snatches, tears it to a million little pieces. “Mom,” he whimpers.
PREVIOUS || NEXT
A/N: And here we are introducing more characters!! Sorry for the late update, guys, but I'm on winter break now, so I'm hoping to get a few chapters churned out before the end \o/