SBB 2011 Entry #07: Replay (1/2)
Title: Replay
Pairing/Focus: Onew-centric, Onew/Minho
Rating: PG-13
Final word count: 14,700
Summary: Where Jinki finds himself with a man he doesn't know, a cup of coffee (he hates coffee), and eight minutes to save the world. Sort of. Source Code!AU.
June 13, 20xx, 14:07
"No seriously, hyung. You can't keep running away from this."
Jinki blinked. "I can't?"
He was sitting across from a young man who looked like he'd just gotten out of college, all fresh face and wide eyed with an earnest expression marred by a touch of concern. A table was between them, two identical cups of coffee in front of them both. This baffled Jinki. He'd never liked coffee.
"Hyung." The young man sounded exasperated. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, picking up the cup and tipping it to his lips.
There was another problem that baffled Jinki. "Running away from what?"
The man rolled his eyes, replacing his coffee on the table. His mouth was already open to speak when a generic ring tone sounded loudly. He frowned, giving Jinki a look. A very clearly 'we're not done talking about this' sort of look. Jinki shrugged.
"Choi Minho speaking." That must have been his name. His tone was brisk, officious. A number he didn't know, Jinki surmised.
Jinki leaned back in his seat, tuning out the other's phone call to observe his surroundings. They were sitting on the patio of a small coffee shop. It was the middle of the day-no, wait, that couldn't be right. He distinctively remembered it being night. It had to have been night. He'd fallen asleep, then. This was a dream. He could live with that. So it was the middle of the day, and it was a nice day at that, just enough clouds so the sky didn't look plain but not so many as to be overcast. And he was having coffee with a man who he didn't know, who had just stood up with an extremely serious expression on his face and was walking away with brisk steps.
Jinki stood up and followed him. In terms of dream logic, it made perfect sense.
"No, it's-I'm sorry hyung, I have to go." The man paused just long enough to turn to Jinki with an apologetic expression, hand over the mouthpiece. "It's work."
"I'll come with you," Jinki said. He didn't know why, it just felt like the right thing to say.
The man frowned. "No, you can't. It's dangerous. You know that, hyung."
Jinki smiled, a light touch on his arm. "All the more reason to, right, Minho?" The name rolled off his tongue, and Jinki felt a little bad about the deception. Dream deception, but still. It was the thought that counted.
"Look hyung, you'd just get in the way. I'll call you when I'm free, okay?" Jinki was a little disappointed when the man turned his attention back to the other end of the line. He sighed, watching him disappear down the street. Well that was anti-climatic. So much for a dream. Jinki frowned, fairly sure that that was not how dreams worked. He shrugged, and chased after him.
"Hey, uh, wait! Minho?" He was rewarded when the man stopped and looked at him, giving Jinki enough time to catch up. "Let me come with you. I, uh, just have a feeling about this. And the feeling says that I should come with you."
"Sometimes, you're really weird hyung," Minho said, but didn't protest when Jinki followed with determined steps. "We have a possible situation on 3rd. They want an eye on it even if nothing happens. Standard procedure, nothing we haven't seen before."
Jinki nodded, as they rounded the corner of the street. He hadn't been here before; he didn't recognise any of the stores. Well, that was the power of a dream, right? To come up with things he'd never seen before. This seemed awfully realistic for a dream, though. "So, um, what's the possible situation?"
Minho shrugged. "Don't know yet. Green shirt, black jacket, jeans, baseball cap, around five seven."
"Green shirt," Jinki muttered to himself, scanning the crowd. A man leaning against a car caught his attention. "Black jacket, jeans, baseball cap?" he confirmed.
"Yeah, you found him?"
Jinki nodded, doing his best to point at the man as subtly as he could. "By the car. Oh, no wait, not anymore, he's walking towards a store, talking to someone? He's kind of short, blond hair-oh. Um, I think that's a gun?"
Jinki didn't think he'd ever seen anyone spin around as fast as Minho had at that moment, eyes hardening. "Stay here," he said to Jinki, pulling out his cell phone. Jinki nodded, frozen to the spot as Minho walked away slowly, so as to not draw attention.
This, Jinki decided, wasn't a particularly good dream.
He tried to make himself as inconspicuous as he could, and settled for taking a few steps to the side to stare at a window display. He looked casually to the side. Minho had disappeared out of his field of vision, but he had a perfect view of the man in the green shirt. The other man was frowning, his shoulders tense. The man in the green shirt said something that made the blond man frown even harder, shake his head and pull away. Jinki saw the man in the green shirt step forward, and the blond man recoil before nodding, taking a step towards the car reluctantly.
Jinki had given up all pretence of window shopping to stare. He saw Minho at maybe the same time he saw the gun, maybe a little after, because if he'd seen him before maybe he wouldn't have started running towards the two men. "Leave him alone!" he yelled.
The man in the green shirt stared at him. Pulled out the gun.
Dying, Jinki found, really hurt. Even in a dream.
-
Blurring at the sides.
His vision, that is. Face staring at you, familiar. Sad. It shouldn't have been sad.
He coughed-thought he coughed. It didn't even hurt anymore. Wait, what? Hurt? What hurt?
His mouth is moving, saying something. He can't quite make it out, he's not sure. He's oddly coherent, he thinks, as he brings a hand up, but not far enough, fingers barely brushing against solidity before falling through the air.
They don't quite-
-
He sit's up gasping, fingers splayed cautiously against his chest. The skin was strangely intact. He presses down; a stab of pain elicits another badly smothered gasp.
He wasn't dead-! No, but-
"Where?"
Jinki stands, glancing slowly around the small room. White walls. A small window set high in one corner. No door. A bed, a small screen. Speakers. He moves towards them, the same moment the screen flickers to life. He stops.
"Where am I?" His voice is surprisingly steady. It's steady, and this is surprising to him.
A young man stares back at him, leaning towards the camera. Jinki takes in the softness of his cheeks, his youth. This isn't a dream. That much Jinki knows. He presses his lips together, moistening them with his tongue as silence crackles loudly around them. When he gets no answer, Jinki takes another step forward. "Who are you?" and then "Where are they?"
The other man frowns. "You know who I am," he says flatly. Tiredly.
"That wasn't a dream," Jinki says.
"No, it wasn't," the other agrees. "Did you find him?"
It's Jinki's turn to frown. He walks the remaining distance to the screen, glancing around the room for a camera to direct his attention towards. He finds none. "Find who?" he asks, even as a memory slips into his consciousness. Darkness, night, the sound of rushing water.
Jinki stares. The other man stares back, unperturbed. A thought flits across his mind. "I know him," he says suddenly, urgently. "The other guy! The blond one. He's..."
"Find him," the other man says. No, boy, Jinki revises. He's more of a boy than anything, the sudden desperation hinged with panic unmasking his age.
Who? Jinki begins to ask. He doesn't get to finish.
-
June 13, 20xx, 14:07
"No seriously, hyung. You can't keep running away from this."
Jinki blinked. "I can't?"
Minho sat across from him, a cup of coffee in front of them both. Find him, echoed in his thoughts, as Jinki shook away the dÈj‡ vu. He picked up the cup and brought it contemplatively to his lips, brushing the bitter taste against his tongue before replacing it on the table, the same moment Minho leaned back, exasperated. "Hyung."
So this wasn't a dream. But then, Jinki had no idea what it was. "I'm supposed to find someone," he said. Minho stared at him.
"Are you-" he began to say, when his phone rang. He frowned, giving Jinki a look. A 'we're not done talking about this' sort of look. Jinki shrugged.
There would be a man in a green shirt. Jinki watched Minho talk on the phone, the way his brows drew together as the conversation drew on. Maybe. There had been last time. It was hard to say.
"Find him," Jinki mouthed quietly to himself.
Minho stood, hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. "It's-I'm sorry, hyung, I have to go. It's work," he said apologetically.
"Oh, okay." Jinki stood awkwardly, unsure of whether to follow him or not this time. Find him, echoed in his mind, even if he had no idea who he was supposed to be finding. "Yeah, um. Be careful!" he said, when he realised Minho was still looking at him.
"Thanks hyung. I'll call you when I'm free
," Minho said before dashing off, leaving Jinki with two half-full cups of coffee on the patio of a cafe. He stared at the cups for a brief moment, before leaving the cafe as well hoping that it would be okay if he left them there. He frowned, pacing the length of the sidewalk in the other direction Minho had gone.
The thing was, none of this made sense. The last thing he remembered-it was night. And then there'd been Minho. And then there'd been a man in a green shirt, and a blond man who Jinki was sure he knew, and a gun. Jinki frowned again, jamming his hands into his pockets. And then the other boy. And the room. The room was important-was it?
With a sense of disquiet, Jinki realised that he'd begun to retrace his steps. Another frown. Maybe he should've followed Minho after all; it didn't feel right. A sharp crack rang through the air.
Jinki swore, breaking into a sprint. He could hear yelling as he approached 3rd. A lot of yelling. The screech of tires as a car barrelled around the corner. Jinki backpedalled hastily, away from the edge of the sidewalk, narrowly avoiding being clipped by the sideview mirror. He stumbled and fell, palms scraping painfully against the ground, landing with a quiet 'oomf'. From the corner of his eye, he saw Minho stop breathlessly a few meters away, talking urgently into his phone.
"Are you hurt?" Minho asked, flipping his phone shut as he jogged the distance to Jinki's side.
Jinki shook his head. "The car-"
"They're dispatching officers to stop it." Minho frowned. "I don't like it."
"You don't like what?" Jinki asked.
"The situation," Minho said shortly. "You should probably go home."
Minho began to walk off with determined steps; Jinki had to run to catch up to him. "You're going to do something dangerous, aren't you?" he asked, grabbing at Minho's wrist.
Minho turned, startled. "No," he said.
"Take me with you," Jinki demanded.
"No."
"I'm coming with you."
Minho shook off Jinki's grip. "No," he said again, walking away.
Jinki followed doggedly, even when Minho lengthened his stride. It felt right. He should've followed Minho in the first place. Minho was important, probably. "A man in a green shirt, right?" he asked.
Minho gave him a scrutinizing look, but didn't stop walking, grunting what Jinki took as an assent. He didn't elaborate further. They turned down a side street, and then again, a narrow alley between storefronts. Jinki glanced behind him nervously, Minho pushing open a door Jinki hadn't noticed, plastered behind old posters and grafiti as it was.
"It's not locked," Minho murmured, stopping so suddenly that Jinki suddenly found himself pressed against the other man's back.
"Sorry," Jinki said, taking a step back. "Is that... a bad thing?"
Minho shook his head, pushing the door open wider, stepping inside cautiously. "It's strange," he said quietly under his breath. "If I tell you to stay here, you'd still follow me, right?" He turned back to Jinki with a slightly amused expression.
"Pretty much," Jinki agreed, following Minho closely.
Their footsteps sounded loud, loud until there was a whimpered cry, and Jinki bit back a gasp at the sound. A light flickered on suddenly, and Jinki blinked to clear the spots away from his eyes. Minho moved in front of him quickly.
"You're cops." A woman was speaking.
"That doesn't matter," Minho said.
Jinki could hear his heart beating in his ears, pulsing at the back of his throat. He moved until Minho was no longer obstructing his vision-and gasped again. It was the blond man from before, Jinki was sure of it, only he was crumpled in a heap on the floor, his wrists and ankles bound by heavy duct tape. His eyes were drawn to the streak of red running across his face, and Jinki gulped.
"Minho," he said quietly, urgently.
"I know," Minho replied in the same tone. "You won't gain anything from this," he said, louder.
The woman chuckled. Jinki had to tear his eyes away from the other man to look at her. She didn't look very old, or very young. Glasses, Jinki noticed. Grey jacket, jeans. "On the contrary," she said, and pulled out a gun.
Jinki decided that he'd had enough of guns for a life time.
A gunshot cracked sharply, loud in Jinki's ears. When he opened his eyes, he was greeted with smoke. "Move," Minho was saying in his ear, a guiding hand on his back. Jinki coughed, stumbling along blindly.
"What about him?" he asked, stopping suddenly to twist to look behind him.
"They won't kill him," Minho said. He gave Jinki a little shove, and Jinki found himself in the street, Minho close behind. "Just go, hyung. Seriously."
Jinki stared at him, and then back at the smoke filled room they'd just come out of. "Where are you going?" he asked.
Minho stared back, and shook his head. "Just go, hyung. Please." There was a look in Minho's eyes that Jinki couldn't quite place-desperate, was the closest he could come up with. Worried, maybe.
"Alright," Jinki agreed. He waited for Minho to disappear down the alley before pulling his shirt collar up to cover his mouth and turning back towards the building. He hadn't managed to set foot inside before there was a loud explosion, and Jinki lost himself in the engulfing heat.
-
The heat was pleasant, the way it seemed to stream off his back-or maybe it was just because his back was the only part of him facing the sun, everything else tucked under the shade of a tree. He grinned, leaning back until the sunlight was pouring against his face, his weight resting on the heels of his palms. "This is nice," he murmured. "See, better than being a workaholic, right?"
"Look who's talking."
"Mm," he hummed. A hand briefly overlapped his, and he grinned at the touch. The world looked red like this, eyes closed and overlaid with a fine web of lace. "It can't be helped."
He gasped suddenly, the wind knocked out of him when his back met the albeit grassy but still hard ground. "Hey!" he yelped, to the sound of quickly smothered giggling. Nonetheless, he grabbed the hand when it was extended to him, disgruntled.
"Let's go-"
-
June 13, 20xx, 19:23
He frantically taps in a few more cues, worrying at his lower lip. Nothing changes, and he frowns. "Hyung," he calls over his shoulder.
"What?" It's snapped, frayed nerves clearly visible at more than just the edges.
"Just come." He massages his temples, sliding his chair to the side to vacate the keyboard. "Please?" he adds as an afterthought, too addled by the situation and the numbers streaming across the screen to fall back on carefully drilled manners.
He feels a little better when he hears quiet footsteps approaching, twisting his upper body to send the other a grateful smile. "Sorry, I know you're busy, but... I can't fix this." He sounds helpless, and he hates himself a little for it. Hates himself a lot. But there's more on the line than just him, and bashing away at a tiny locked box with a club isn't going to get him anywhere.
"Memory," is the simple answer, with one frown at the codes. "I told him this was going to be the problem."
"If there'd been time-"
"There was never time. There isn't time."
Silently, he agrees. He wishes he didn't have to.
-
-Darkness.
It was night.
He paced restlessly.
His phone vibrated in his hand. He frowned-the caller was a private number.
The sound of the river nearby-
-
June 13, 20xx, 19:27
He sits up gasping, eyes still open wide in shock.
"Did you find him?" is the first thing to greet him, before he's even managed to get his bearings.
"Find who?" he asks. He rubs a hand tiredly against his face, slumping back against the wall. In the back of his mind, he sees Minho's face faintly, a blur in the distance when he turned back. "That wasn't a dream."
"No, it's not, I thought we already established that." Jinki sits up again, staring at the screen across the room. It's someone different. He has an intense gaze, Jinki notices. A sharp gaze, and sharp cheekbones.
"Where's Taemin?" Jinki asks, at the same time his mind realises oh, his name is Taemin.
The boy slides back into view, a serious expression on his face. "I'm here. But hyung-did you find him?"
"No, yes-a street off 3rd." Jinki stops suddenly, shakes his head. Frowns. "An explosion. There was an explosion."
The other man makes a frustrated expression, disappearing from view. "We knew that," Jinki hears faintly.
"We're running out of time," Taemin says. "They took him somewhere after the explosion, we need to find him."
"I know," Jinki says. His voice is exasperated, worn thin. He squeezes his eyes shut, massages his temples. Dying hurts. Really hurts. "I can't remember," he says, looking up.
Taemin bites at his lower lip, shaking his head. "That's not important," he says quietly.
"It is to me," Jinki says. "If this isn't a dream, what is it?"
Taemin shrugs, fingers tapping out of view at keys. "You know that too," he says. "Source code, remember?"
No, Jinki is about to say, when it all distorts again.
-
June 13, 20xx, 14:07
For a split moment, Jinki felt lost. Lost in familiarity. As if time had frozen in one familiar moment, too familiar to escape from, not familiar enough to understand. Or maybe too familiar to understand. Jinki didn't think he'd figured it out well enough to tell the difference. And then the man across from him spoke, and the split moment fell apart into pieces.
"No seriously, hyung. You can't keep running away from this."
The words washed over Jinki; he didn't pay them as much mind as he should've. They were familiar. Familiarity bred contempt, or something like that. Familiarity.
Jinki jumped up suddenly, a stray arm knocking over the cup of coffee. "Jonghyun!", he yelled in realisation. From across the table, Minho stared even as he uprighted the cup and tossed napkins onto the spreading mess. "It's Jonghyun," Jinki said earnestly. "He's-"
He's-, Jinki thought, and didn't get any further, sinking back into his seat with a frown. "Sorry," he mumbled, reaching forward to help mop up the spill. "You were saying?"
"Who's Jonghyun?" Minho asked, just as his phone rang. "Sorry," he said, turning away from the table.
"It's fine," Jinki said, throwing more napkins onto the table. Jonghyun. It was Jonghyun. There was this horrible blankness beyond that, but Jinki was sure that the blond man was Jonghyun. And he had to find him. Source code, he thought. That was important. It was definitely important. Minho would be getting off the phone soon, saying he had to go. Quick, Jinki, decisions-follow him, or not to follow him? Like a choose-your-own-adventure story book, he thought distractedly. No, focus-
The sound of a chair scraping back as Minho stood. "I'm sorry hyung, I have to go. It's work."
"Yeah, uh, call me when you're free?" Jinki resisted the urge to squeeze his eyes shut, offering Minho a nervous smile instead.
"We'll talk about this later," Minho said. He reached out, a hand placed momentarily on Jinki's shoulder, before he walked off briskly. He watched Minho walk away, reaching unconsciously to the sudden gain and lack of warmth, before squaring his jaw and walking in the opposite direction. He didn't have much time. His eyes roamed across the store fronts, until he found what he thought was the right alley, wedged between a bakery and a boutique. He glanced over his shoulder-no screech of tires, no gunshots. Yet.
Jinki took a sharp breath, crossing the street. It had been behind the bakery. He ventured carefully to the bakery's other side, ducking surreptitiously along the wall. Someone was there-he dropped into a crouch, hiding himself behind a pile of crates. 'DECORATIONS', the label read.
"...soon...new place...ready or..."
"...don't know...risky thing to do..."
He strained forward, trying to catch pieces of the conversation. Two men, middle aged. Probably. He'd never been the greatest detective, even when they'd played at it when they were little, the three of them. The sound of a gunshot cracking through the air had Jinki stiffening every muscle in his body to avoid jumping in surprise-the screech of tires wailed by him. A flurry of movement, muffled voices. The sound of a motor backing up slowly.
Jinki inched forward, peering around the crates to see. A motorcycle, a cargo container tagged on behind it. He could just make out the license plate-a figure's shadow had him darting back behind the crates. He heard a yell and a struggle, and then the thump of something being struck. Jonghyun, Jinki thought idly. His heart clenched at the thought, an uncomfortable tightness just behind his gut, and it took all his self restraint to remain where he was. The sound of footsteps pounding against sidewalk, slowing. Jinki bit at his lip-Minho, probably. Find him, Taemin had said. Source code, remember?.
No, he didn't remember. And this was important.
Minho was talking-he couldn't make out the words. He wished he could. A long conversation, muted voices. And then a gunshot. Another. He didn't run forward-he was getting the hang of this, he decided. Minho would've made it out, he'd be fine. Definitely. Minho was capable, that much was clear. Jinki leaned forward as the sound of an engine starting up rumbled quietly, in time to see the lid of the cargo container being buckled down. Jonghyun, he thought emptily. The alley was empty. He stood, chased after where the motorcycle had been.
It was cruising down the street, an unnoticeable pace. A muffled yell came from behind him-Minho stood there, clinging to a wall, gesturing furiously at Jinki. With a slow dawning of apprehension, Jinki turned, only to see someone jump down in front of him. He felt the explosion from behind, and a sharp pain from in front. A brief glimpse of Minho as he turned-
-
June 13, 20xx, 19:37
"9312," Jinki gasps breathlessly. The room, he's in the room again. "Motorcycle. Jonghyun's probably in the cargo container." His eyes are squeezed shut-he opens them slowly as he catches his breath, the movement still painful. The room is dark. Night. The screen flickers to life, a guiding light in a cage of black.
"Trace it," he hears in the background, low and urgent.
"Tell me," Jinki says, voice steadying. Taemin stares at him, lips caught between his teeth. "Tell me everything. Source code. Jonghyun. I know it, but I don't remember."
Taemin glances at a point behind him, waving someone over. Kibum, Jinki realises. The other man. Known as Key in most circles. More things he knew. But couldn't remember. If Jinki had been the sort to grind his teeth in frustration, he would have been doing that without a second thought.
"What do you remember?" This was Kibum. He's tilted the camera up towards him, Taemin effectively disappearing from view.
Jinki shakes his head. "Not much. You're Kibum. We need to find Jonghyun. Um, something about source code, but Taemin didn't say anything else."
Kibum nods briskly, Jinki's answer neither a surprise nor a relevation. "This is source code. You're in the source code," he explains matter-of-factly.
"What is source code?"
Kibum stares at him, and Jinki squirms under the gaze. "You don't know," he says blankly.
Jinki shrugs. "Maybe I've forgotten."
Kibum shakes his head, purses his lips. "Source code. When it comes down to it, memories are data. And data is code. Can be coded. Algorithm trees. You're in the source code right now, because it's the closest lead we have before we lost track of where-where Jonghyun is."
"I don't get it," Jinki says softly.
Kibum growls in frustration, and suddenly the camera is pulled down again, back to Taemin. "It's okay hyung, you don't have to. You have eight minutes though, that's all. You've probably noticed-nature draws to a lowest energy state, and within the confines of the source code, that's to return to, uh, the original ending."
"Original ending," Jinki echoes softly. "Death."
Taemin nods. "Second law of thermodynamics. Entropy. The measure of chaos, an increase in disorder, decrease in energy. Life is highly ordered, you know. But conversely, there are any number of paths a system can have travelled to reach the final state of least energy, highest entropy. Basic science." A pained look crossed across Taemin's face. Jinki frowned, confused, but waited for him to continue.
"When someone dies, there's an afterimage left behind in the short term memory circuits, because of the neurochemical responses that get altered-hyung-" this is to Kibum, who had taken to pacing back and forth like a caged animal. At Taemin's admonishment, he turns sharply on his heel and disappears, Taemin turning back to the camera "-An imprint. Like when you close your eyes and can still see whatever you were looking at before-sight works the same way, which makes sense since it's all part of the same physiological human system. We can use that imprint and write you into the source code, effectively exploring the eight minutes which were left behind. There's an infinite number of possibilities, as long as it starts and ends at the same point."
"But I can't change the outcome."
"Right. It's like an alternate reality, but the past can't be changed when it's already happened. Anything between is fair game though. I'm not sure about the details, those were - uh - anyway, something about quantum states and how it's all about probability anyway? So the individual paths matter less than the outcome."
Jinki drops his head into his hands, processing the information. "And Jonghyun?"
"'Kim Jonghyun, age 23. Was taken hostage at approximately 2:10 this afternoon. No demands have been made. The son of a cabinet minister, political reasons are presumed.' is what we have, officially," Taemin reads off a sheet of paper. "We don't know that much more, truthfully. We have suspicions of who's responsible, but that doesn't help if we can't find them." He clenches his fist, the paper crumpling under the touch.
"And Minho? What about Minho?" Jinki asks urgently. He swallows back a burst of nausea, willing himself to forget the image still burned faintly into the back of his retinas.
"Who?"
Jinki frowns, although he doubts Taemin can see it, dark as the room was. "Um, Choi Minho. I think he's a cop. He gets-got called to the location, looking for the man in a green shirt who's the one who kidnaps Jonghyun. He..."
"We'll look him up," Taemin promises. "Can we send you back in now?"
Jinki shakes his head, pacing to the screen. "Why did they take him?"
Taemin shrugs, shakes his head as well. "I don't know," he says, although his face, Jinki's sure, is saying something altogether different, if the way he's worrying at his lip, eyes downcast beneath a frown is any indication.
"Taemin."
"You have to find him, hyung. We don't have much time left. An hour, two hours at most. You're our only lead. I don't think Kibum hyung would be like this if we had any other way."
"I'll try my best," Jinki promises. "Oh, and one more thing?"
"Yes?" Taemin asks, tapping furiously at a keyboard.
"Who..." 's dead body am I occupying "am I?" he settles for instead.
"Not important," Taemin dismisses, and the floor falls out from under Jinki's feet again.
-
"I traced it," Kibum says, dropping into a seat next to Taemin. From the look on the older man's face, Taemin doesn't bother to ask if it had turned up any leads yet. "You didn't have to tell him all that," he adds next. "It's not like he needs to know."
"But he does," Taemin insists. His voice drags haggard and unconvincing in his own ears. "He does, hyung. I... I would want someone to tell me, if I were him."
"It won't help," Kibum snaps. "Every moment we waste is a moment that Jonghyun could be..."
He trails off, and Taemin cringes, willing himself not to finish the sentence. "I think you need a break," he says firmly. "You've been working for the past eight hours-"
"This isn't working. This is-"
"A break, hyung." If he were honest with himself, this isn't just for Kibum's good, it's for his too-Kibum's been getting on his nerves, and it's been eight straight hours of Taemin slowly feeling his own nerves thin. "Jinki hyung's still in there for another five minutes at least, unless something goes wrong. Again."
Kibum presses his lips together, pushing the seat back from the table. "He's good at that," he says, laughing. If it sounds forced, Taemin doesn't say anything.
Instead, he pulls Kibum out of the chair and gives him a shove towards the door. "I'll look for the motorcycle," he says. "I'm sure we'll find him."
"We have to," Kibum says.
"We will," he reassures. He just wishes he was more convinced himself.
-
Jinki gasped for breath, water blinding his eyes-
"Have you arrived?" The voice was robotic, masked. It did nothing to put him at ease.
"What did you want to discuss?" His own voice was clipped and more high-strung than he would've liked.
Ten minutes past the appointed time. He was the only one here.
-a strong grip around his wrist, his eyes fluttering briefly open to see a(n un)familiar face-
"You know what we want. And you know what we'll do if we don't get what we want."
"What do you want?"
"Oh, that's simple. You're supposed to be smart. Not as smart as we thought it seems. We want-"
-
June 13, 20xx, 14:07
"No seriously, hyung. You can't keep running away from this."
Minho stared at him, a reproachful look in his eyes. Jinki flinched away, remembering the last time he'd seen the other man's face. "Yeah, um, I know," he said shakily, lying through his teeth.
Something seemed to click in Minho's eyes, as he leaned forward. Expectantly, Jinki realised. "I..." he began slowly. Mostly because he still didn't know what he was running away from. But maybe because he wasn't used to being looked like that. That being. Well. Jinki leaned back in his chair, tongue flicking out to moisten his lips, gone suddenly dry. That being-he was endlessly glad when Minho's phone rang, and Minho turned away with what seemed to Jinki like a flicker of disappointment.
"Sorry," he mouthed, fishing out his phone.
Jinki nodded, not feeling like Minho needed to apologise in the slightest. He reached into his pocket, pulling out a phone that wasn't his-but he didn't expect it to be his. For a moment, the weight in his hand felt familiar, and an unfamiliar number flashed ghostly on the screen across time, before Jinki blinked it out of insistence, reading the time instead. Eight minutes, Taemin had said. 2:07, said the phone, before the seven slipped into an eight.
He was pretty calm. Was it okay to be this calm? It probably didn't hurt.
As if on clockwork, Minho stood, covering the mouthpiece of the phone with one hand. "Sorry hyung, I have to go. It's work."
"I'll come with you," Jinki said.
"No, you can't," Minho said, his expression suddenly closing. "It's dangerous hyung, you know that."
Jinki smiled, shaking away the sense of dÈj‡ vu that was probably actual dÈj‡ vu. "I know. That's all the more reason, right, Minho?"
"No, it's not. You'd... You'd just get in the way. Look, I'll call you when I'm free, okay?"
"I'm coming with you," Jinki said firmly with a smile. Very firmly. "Just let me. As, um, a hyung."
Minho turned away, lips pressed into a thin line. He said nothing, and Jinki wondered if he'd made a mistake. Not that, he realised, he knew what sort of mistake he could've made. When Minho suddenly started walking, Jinki had to jog slightly to catch up on the first few steps.
"Hey, uh, Minho," Jinki ventured. Minho turned to look at him, although he didn't slow. "I know work is urgent, but I just, uh, have a gut feeling about this."
"About what?" Minho asked.
Jinki swallowed. "Could we stay here for a moment?" He had an idea. "I have an idea."
"About what?" He was getting impatient. Work, Jinki knew. Minho seemed like the type who cared deeply about work.
"About work. Um, your work. Or-" This could either work, or horribly backfire, Jinki thought, coming to a standstill. "If I told you I know what's going to happen, would you believe me?"
Minho stared at him flatly-no, not flatly. A myriad of expressions before he seemed to settle on staring at Jinki flatly. "No," he said. "Probably not."
"Wait!" Jinki reached out and caught at Minho's wrist-the other man jerked his arm away as burned, whirling around so fast that Jinki didn't have time to process he was looking at Minho's face again, and not the back of his head. "This is going to sound really weird, but you're going to look for a man in a green shirt, right?"
This caught Minho's attention. "How did you know?"
Jinki shook his head. "It's, um, not important. So will you believe me a little?"
"That depends."
"On?" Jinki prompted.
"On how you know. Hyung, you're not supposed to-"
"That part isn't important!" Now he sounded hysterical. That wouldn't work. "There's going to be a car. It's this blue-black colour. And it's going to have the person you're looking for in it, I think, or maybe it won't, but either way it's related to it all."
Minho looked like he was torn between believing him and calling him out on his bullshit (maybe). Jinki didn't really know him enough to be sure.
"Jonghyun. They're going to kidnap a man called Jonghyun. Do you know anything about him?" Now he did sound hysterical.
Minho looked at him strangely, a frown tucked onto his face where it didn't belong, corners of his lips drawn back severely. "Why do you know all this?" he asked-at the same moment they saw the car round the corner. Jinki pointed with a quiet yell, drawing Minho's attention to the vehicle which swerved, and suddenly there were two. Or, that was what it looked like, before one of them pulled away. The one they wanted, Jinki was sure.
"This way," Jinki said, grabbing one of the younger man's wrists without a second thought, pulling him down the street to where the bakery was. He hesitated at the alley, remembering what had happened last time, and the time before that too. But-that was the past. That didn't mean it had to happen again. Definitely. He chanced a glance backwards at Minho, and saw his expression change.
"You know this place," he said.
"Sort of," Jinki answered, dodging the question. Minho was walking beside him now, and Jinki released his grip.
"If I tell you to stay here, would you?" Minho asked.
"Not really," Jinki acquiesced with a chuckle that seemed strangely out of place, bubbling up from somewhere he couldn't quite identify. Probably somewhere like 'oh god please let this go well this time,' but Jinki wasn't exactly being discerning at the moment.
Minho shrugged. "Fair enough," he said. He walked to the door that Jinki had missed the first time, his hand on the doorknob.
"Maybe-" Jinki began, pausing when Minho turned to look at him, all questions. "Maybe you shouldn't," he said.
"Why not?"
"It's dangerous. Just. Trust me on this one."
"My job is dangerous, hyung," Minho pointed out, and pushed open the door. He frowned. "That's strange."
"The door should be locked?" Jinki ventured.
Minho didn't say anything, just glanced at him over his shoulder, before he walked in. Jinki peeked at his phone-or rather, the phone in his pocket that belonged to someone he didn't know. 2:11, it read. Jinki gulped. He didn't really want to die again. Even if it couldn't be helped. More than that, he didn't want to see Minho die again. He followed Minho in, cautiously. Their footsteps sounded loud in the empty room. He didn't know what they were going to accomplish like this.
So, when the lights flickered on and Jinki did his best to not look at the crumpled sort-of-human shape on the floor, he spoke up. "What are you going to do with him?" he asked.
The woman (same woman, Jinki noticed) looked at him in surprise. Minho's eyes opened wider than they already were. "Hyung," he said, voice low and urgent.
"Him," Jinki repeated. His voice wavered a little. He had to fix that. "Where are you going to take him?"
The woman laughed this time. "You don't need to know," she said. "Cops?"
"No," Jinki answered quickly, before Minho could get a word in.
Minho got a word in anyway, smoothly following up against Jinki's words. "What you're doing," he said calmly to the woman. "It won't work."
Jinki gaped at him. "What are they doing?"
"What do you know," the woman scoffed. Her hand reached under her jacket, and Jinki blanched.
"Um-!" he tried to interrupt.
"More than you think," Minho interrupted. A smirk was settled onto his face, although his eyes were hard. "And I wouldn't do that if I were you."
"Oh really?" the woman asked, and in the next moment, there was a sound Jinki had gotten to know far too well, as Minho shoved him to the ground.
"No," Minho grunted, and Jinki caught sight of him pulling out his own gun-had he always had that?-and taking careful aim. There was a muffled yelp, and the woman dropped to one knee, hands pressed against her thigh. Suddenly, there were more people than there had been a moment ago. There was the man in the green shirt, Jinki recognised him. But that was around it.
On the floor, Jonghyun groaned, stirring. His eyes blinked open briefly, and Jinki could see the panic in them. Not good, he thought. Find him, and Jinki had him, right here. But that wasn't how source code worked, was it? No, he was sure it wasn't. "Hi," he said nervously, as he got to his feet again. "Maybe one of you could tell me what you're doing with him?"
"Hyung, shut up," Minho hissed, pushing Jinki back down.
The man in the green shirt laughed. "That's none of your business. Particularly if you're both dead."
"No, wait." One of the other men placed a restraining hand on his arm. "The tall one. Recognise him?"
Beside him, he felt Minho stiffen, the grip on his own gun tightening. "Wouldn't be surprised if you did," he said. There was an edge to his voice now, tingeing the underlying calmness with swirling colour.
Jinki gaped at him. Wait what, he wanted to say.
"You're that brat," green-shirt said suddenly. A smile broke out across his face, and it wasn't pleasant. "Having second thoughts leaving us?"
"Nope." Minho's tone was almost breezy, strange and out of place for the few minutes Jinki had known the other man. He grinned, too obviously forced. The hand that was still on Jinki's shoulder tightened. "I'd never regret it."
The man smirked, eyes leering at Jinki, a chill running inexplicably down his spine. He shuddered. "I see," he said slowly, and brought up his gun. "You were good as far as brats went, too bad you got, ah, distracted. And now it looks like you're getting in the way, hm."
Jinki watched eyes wide as grips shifted around guns-he'd never seen a gun before in his life, and now he'd seen too many, not that he'd ever wanted to see one in the first place-and realised with a sinking stomach that he was a liability here. It was with a sinking stomach when he realised that the gun wasn't pointed at the younger man, but at him.
A flash, a sound he was getting to know all too well, a sudden force to his side, and then Minho staggered, his weight collapsing against Jinki even as he struggled to stay upright. "Minho," Jinki breathed. 2:14, he saw off Minho's watch. A muted horror stemmed from the growing warmth damp against his own chest, his eyes cringing shut. Can't be helped, he reminded himself. Second law of thermodynamics, he thought.
"Hyung I-I," Minho's breaths were laboured, interspersed with breathless coughs. Jinki forced his eyes open to observe, his gaze meeting Jonghyun's for a brief second, before the other looked away.
"I know," he said. Minho's lips twitched into a smile, and then Jinki supposed that the eight minutes were up.
-
like pricks of flame were stabbing at his lungs.
His eyes were squeezed shut - that much he was aware of - as he couldn't hold back the coughs, only jarring the pain worse. Hang in there he thought he heard
a hand on his wrist, a face blurring in and out of view, the taste of water on his lips
"Water doesn't have a taste." He didn't sound particularly impressed by his protests.
"This water does," he whined. "I don't like it." Or, that's what he tried to say, before a solid push sent him tumbling back into the lake, dry change of clothes and all. He came up spluttering, blinking droplets out of his eyes
"Ten. They want to meet at ten."
"You're going?" It's resigned by now. He tries to smile - it comes out as a grimace instead. "Let me come with you."
"No offence Taemin, but I don't think you'd be much help. With luck, they just want to discuss it reasonably."
"That's unlikely, and you know it, hyung. Just... call us if something happens, okay?"
He laughs, bites back the thought that if something happened he'd never get the chance to call. "Tell Kibum I'll see him tomorrow morning, since it seems like he's sulking. There's still a lot of work-"
"It can wait."
-
June 13, 20xx, 19:54
The room is still dark.
"Did you find him?" Taemin asks eagerly. "Do you know where he is?"
Jinki groans, sitting up. "No," he says, slowly getting his bearings. "But he was right there."
"Focus, hyung. We don't have much time left if we..."
"I know. But this isn't working, Taemin-ah." He runs a hand through his hair tiredly, glancing up at the screen. Or where the screen should've been. It's blank, missing, as if it had never been there in the first place. "Taemin-ah?" he asks to the emptiness.
"I'm here." The sound of Taemin's voice is just as strong as it was before.
"Did someone move things around while I was in the source code?" Jinki asks. "In the room, I mean."
"The room?" Taemin's voice sounds too puzzled to make sense. About the room? "No, I mean-no, I don't think so. Why?"
Jinki shakes his head. "No, never mind. It's... It's nothing. Did you find the motorcycle?"
A brief silence where Jinki guesses that Taemin must have shaken his head or something. "Sort of. We traced the serial number, and it turns out it was stolen three weeks ago, but we haven't found it yet. Hyung's...working on it. Do you have any idea where they were going?"
Jinki shakes his head again, and wonders if Taemin could see. "There's four of them. A woman, the man in the green shirt, and then two others. Um, I think the police know who the man in the green shirt is because he's the one who Minho was looking for." And Minho seemed to know them. He's not sure why, but he feels safer leaving that part out.
"Right. I've also dug up some information on Choi Minho. He's 21, graduated top of the class, and is apparently with the NPA, but there's no further information there. Which is strange." Taemin sounds like he's frowning. "Anyway, the police wouldn't tell us when we asked, which is kind of suspicious, but maybe they just don't know. Which is even more suspicious. Do you think he knows anything?"
"I-I don't know," Jinki says. Except he probably does. It seems like he does. Jinki groans, head dropping into his hands. All of this, everything, it was too confusing. None of it makes sense. Nothing did. The more he pieced it together, the more it fell apart. Too many questions. Not enough ways to get answers. "Minho," he says suddenly. "What happened to him? After, or um, now, I guess."
"No idea," Taemin says softly. "They think he might've, uh, been caught up in the explosion at the bakery, but they haven't found any bodies that would match his profile, so he could just be missing in action."
"I see." Jinki leanes back, his head hitting the wall with a quiet thunk. "Bodies-the bakery?"
"Yeah." Taemin's voice is hushed. There's a pause, a moment of mutual hesitation where Jinki wonders if he can ask another question and get any answers, where Taemin wonders if this was going to succeed. "Find him, hyung. Please."
"I want to save him too," Jinki says quietly. "I don't know why, but I do."
"It's this Jonghyun we have to find," Taemin reminds him, before plunging him back into the source code without another word.
Jinki doesn't quite get the chance to say 'I know', but he says it anyway.
-
"What the fuck, are you serious?"
"Why wouldn't I be? We can't just give up here, can we?"
"No one said anything about giving up-"
-a strong grip curled around his wrist, pulling him upwards, downwards? he couldn't tell-
"-can't ignore it either."
"I can't fucking believe this. This is the stupidest thing you've ever done, and possibly ever will do, and that's saying a lot because you're like the epitome of doing stupid things."
He sighed. "Kibum, we don't have a choice. I can't just let it fall apart after everything."
"But there's always a choice, hyung, and um, I agree with Kibum hyung this time."
"I'm going, and that's final."
-
June 13, 20xx, 14:07
"No, wait," Jinki said, holding up a hand to stop Minho from speaking.
Minho stopped mid-sentence in surprise.
"I... I'm not trying to run away from anything," he said. Minho shut his mouth. Jinki swallowed. Continued. "But before we talk about it -" whatever it was "- could I ask you something?"
"Ask me what?"
Jinki worried at his lips between his teeth, eyes meeting Minho's full on. "I want to ask you about your past."
If he hadn't been watching for it, he wouldn't have caught the momentary double-take in Minho's eyes. Bingo, he thought.
"Why are you asking this suddenly?" Minho asked slowly.
"It's important," Jinki said. "Someone's going to get kidnapped-and um it's probably better not to ask how I know because I don't really have an answer for you-and I think it has to do with people in your past."
"That's..." Minho frowned, considering this as he straightened, having gradually been leaning towards Jinki. His phone rang. He reached for it, shooting Jinki an apologetic look.
"It's from work, right? What happens if you don't answer it?"
"Why wouldn't I?" Minho asked, and answered the phone. "Choi Minho speaking."
He leaned forward, straining to catch the conversation. Minho's expression was solemn. "That's..." If possible, his frown got deeper. "No, yes, I understand."
He stood, pushing back his chair, shooting Jinki an apologetic look. "Sorry, it's-"
"Work," Jinki finished. "I-"
"We'll talk about this later," Minho said abruptly. By the time Jinki managed to form a vaguely coherent sentence, Minho had already jogged halfway down the street.
"Fuck," Jinki breathed quietly to himself. He felt like he had a little license to swear, right now. He slipped his hand into his pocket, pulling out the phone again. He scrolled through the contacts, pausing first at the one labelled "Home ♥", and again "Minho ♥". Eight past two, the time read. He could call him. Call him and ask him, because Minho definitely knew something. Maybe. At least who, or why, Jinki decided.
The phone dialled once, twice, and then again, before it disconnected, leaving Jinki with a 'call ended' flashing across the screen as he held it away from his ear. "Caller ID," he murmured to himself. Well so much for that, he thought, sliding the phone back into his pocket. His fingers brushed against paper, and he instinctively tugged out a folded note. He hesitated, feeling like he was in grade school peeking into a classmate's desk looking for his missing pencil case again, unfolding the sheet slowly. Any little bit of information helped, he told himself firmly.
His eyes scanned the words quickly, catching on the "I'm sorry"s and "maybe"s crossed out and rewritten and crossed out and rewritten again. His mouth formed a quiet "oh", as things fell in place. Sort of. The wrong things.
His eyes skipped to the end of the note, quietly trying the name penned there on his tongue, revelling in the way it felt just wrong enough to feel right. If he even knew what that meant.
The sound of a car cruising past snapped Jinki out of his musings, and he knocked the chair back as he stood. Find him, he reminded himself. "But how?"
But how.
He found himself pacing to the bakery again, hesitating as he approached. He strolled by the second laneway as nonchalantly as he could, peering down the space to see two men deep in conversation. He stopped abruptly, a slight frown on his face as he replayed what he'd seen in his mind. Well, someone else's mind, but his consciousness? That-that wasn't important, focus, he reminded himself. A flash of white though, a sheet of paper changing hands. A note. It was important, he had a hunch.
A note. His mind flashed to a different note altogether as his fingers brushed against a slip of paper. Jinki swallowed apprehensively-Minho knew something for sure. He could... he could use that, maybe, ask the younger man.
He made his way determinately down the laneway instead. A short cut. That was all he was doing. "Hello," he greeted, forcing the nervousness out of his voice. The two men barely spared him a glance, moving aside to let him pass instead. The one on the left, he remembered, glancing at their faces. "It's a nice day, isn't it?"
"Yes...?" The other answered hesitantly.
Jinki blanked, trying to draw for words. It turned out he didn't need to, his empty train of thought derailed quickly enough. "If you don't mind, we're busy people," the taller one said, clearly dismissing Jinki as he turned on his heel. The other shrugged and offered Jinki a smile, before following.
"W-wait!" someone yelled. The someone being him, he realised a beat later, when there were two pairs of eyes trained on him. "Um, I was looking for someone," he said, without really thinking. "Minho. Choi Minho. Around this tall-do you know him?" Which wasn't what one would ask when looking for someone, he also realised another beat later, but it was too late to take it back.
The taller one just looked at him blankly, but there was a definite flicker of recognition in the others' eyes. "No, we don't," the first said, only to be countered by a "no he's-" by the latter before he was cut off by a glare. "No we don't," he said more firmly, and Jinki nodded automatically.
On the other hand, that did tell him there was maybe more to Minho than it seemed.
If there was more to that thought, he didn't quite remember, because there was a sharp pain at the back of his head, and then nothing.
-
That was the funny thing about memory. It was hard to tell if it was memory, or if it wasn't. Or something like that.
"I..." he heard himself stammer. "I don't know."
"Why not?" Frustration. A lot of frustration. He realised this as if it were something new, like the little details you picked up only the fifth time you'd watched a movie.
"It's not-"
And then he was kissing someone. A memory, he decided. Wrong enough to feel right.
Right enough to feel wrong.
No, not a memory. Too wrong for a memory.
"You're running away." Anger, this time. This wasn't new. But it wasn't real anger. This was new.
"No."
"Yes."
"We... we shouldn't." Shouldn't, because there were too many things that could go wrong, ways people could find out, reasons that would hurt him, would hurt Minho.
Minho.
Oh.
So that was what it was about.
Then it was a memory.
Or wasn't. It was getting hard to tell.
-
June 13, 20xx, 20:03
The room is still dark.
He stares up at the ceiling, the silence of his breathing loud in his ears. He drops a hand on his chest, just to reassure himself of the rise and fall, the warmth sliding through to his fingers.
"Hey," he calls quietly. They would hear, he's sure. "Did you guys ever fix the problem with the memory?"
There's a sharp gasp, a rapid intake of air. "You remembered!"
"Not really," he says quietly. "Just that there was a problem with the memory. Wasn't there?"
"There was." Resigned. "Is."
"It never got fixed. Didn't know how, right?"
"We... No, never mind. About Jonghyun, did you-"
"Maybe. I think I have an idea."
Jinki falls silent, listening to his own breathing. If he strains his ears, he can just hear Taemin's breaths as well, quiet in anticipation. Has several ideas, really, some better than others. In another time, another place, maybe he would've explained them all, gone through them, debated the pros and cons. But this is neither another time nor another place, and Jinki doesn't elaborate.
"Hyung. I-"
"It's okay," he says automatically, cutting Taemin off. Even if his gut feeling is that it's the furthest thing possible from 'okay'-but Jinki doesn't think he wants to hear it either. "How much time do we have left?"
"Fourty five minutes, give or take," Taemin answers after a moment of hesitation. "Hyung-"
Jinki doesn't let him finish. "Onew. His name is Onew. Tell me about him."
He can hear Taemin hold his breath, hesitate. "Wrong place, wrong time, died from gunshot wounds. He was an up and coming singer, before the incident. He was twenty three. Same... Same as you."
"Have you found the motorcycle yet?" Jinki asks, changing the topic abruptly.
"Kibum hyung's still working on it."
Jinki nods. "Send me back in," he says, and hears the shuffle as Taemin pulls a keyboard towards himself. He braces himself for the disorientation, almost but not quite used to the feeling.
"Hyung, I'm... I'm sorry," he thinks he hears Taemin say, before the world drops out from around him again.
Next
Pairing/Focus: Onew-centric, Onew/Minho
Rating: PG-13
Final word count: 14,700
Summary: Where Jinki finds himself with a man he doesn't know, a cup of coffee (he hates coffee), and eight minutes to save the world. Sort of. Source Code!AU.
June 13, 20xx, 14:07
"No seriously, hyung. You can't keep running away from this."
Jinki blinked. "I can't?"
He was sitting across from a young man who looked like he'd just gotten out of college, all fresh face and wide eyed with an earnest expression marred by a touch of concern. A table was between them, two identical cups of coffee in front of them both. This baffled Jinki. He'd never liked coffee.
"Hyung." The young man sounded exasperated. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, picking up the cup and tipping it to his lips.
There was another problem that baffled Jinki. "Running away from what?"
The man rolled his eyes, replacing his coffee on the table. His mouth was already open to speak when a generic ring tone sounded loudly. He frowned, giving Jinki a look. A very clearly 'we're not done talking about this' sort of look. Jinki shrugged.
"Choi Minho speaking." That must have been his name. His tone was brisk, officious. A number he didn't know, Jinki surmised.
Jinki leaned back in his seat, tuning out the other's phone call to observe his surroundings. They were sitting on the patio of a small coffee shop. It was the middle of the day-no, wait, that couldn't be right. He distinctively remembered it being night. It had to have been night. He'd fallen asleep, then. This was a dream. He could live with that. So it was the middle of the day, and it was a nice day at that, just enough clouds so the sky didn't look plain but not so many as to be overcast. And he was having coffee with a man who he didn't know, who had just stood up with an extremely serious expression on his face and was walking away with brisk steps.
Jinki stood up and followed him. In terms of dream logic, it made perfect sense.
"No, it's-I'm sorry hyung, I have to go." The man paused just long enough to turn to Jinki with an apologetic expression, hand over the mouthpiece. "It's work."
"I'll come with you," Jinki said. He didn't know why, it just felt like the right thing to say.
The man frowned. "No, you can't. It's dangerous. You know that, hyung."
Jinki smiled, a light touch on his arm. "All the more reason to, right, Minho?" The name rolled off his tongue, and Jinki felt a little bad about the deception. Dream deception, but still. It was the thought that counted.
"Look hyung, you'd just get in the way. I'll call you when I'm free, okay?" Jinki was a little disappointed when the man turned his attention back to the other end of the line. He sighed, watching him disappear down the street. Well that was anti-climatic. So much for a dream. Jinki frowned, fairly sure that that was not how dreams worked. He shrugged, and chased after him.
"Hey, uh, wait! Minho?" He was rewarded when the man stopped and looked at him, giving Jinki enough time to catch up. "Let me come with you. I, uh, just have a feeling about this. And the feeling says that I should come with you."
"Sometimes, you're really weird hyung," Minho said, but didn't protest when Jinki followed with determined steps. "We have a possible situation on 3rd. They want an eye on it even if nothing happens. Standard procedure, nothing we haven't seen before."
Jinki nodded, as they rounded the corner of the street. He hadn't been here before; he didn't recognise any of the stores. Well, that was the power of a dream, right? To come up with things he'd never seen before. This seemed awfully realistic for a dream, though. "So, um, what's the possible situation?"
Minho shrugged. "Don't know yet. Green shirt, black jacket, jeans, baseball cap, around five seven."
"Green shirt," Jinki muttered to himself, scanning the crowd. A man leaning against a car caught his attention. "Black jacket, jeans, baseball cap?" he confirmed.
"Yeah, you found him?"
Jinki nodded, doing his best to point at the man as subtly as he could. "By the car. Oh, no wait, not anymore, he's walking towards a store, talking to someone? He's kind of short, blond hair-oh. Um, I think that's a gun?"
Jinki didn't think he'd ever seen anyone spin around as fast as Minho had at that moment, eyes hardening. "Stay here," he said to Jinki, pulling out his cell phone. Jinki nodded, frozen to the spot as Minho walked away slowly, so as to not draw attention.
This, Jinki decided, wasn't a particularly good dream.
He tried to make himself as inconspicuous as he could, and settled for taking a few steps to the side to stare at a window display. He looked casually to the side. Minho had disappeared out of his field of vision, but he had a perfect view of the man in the green shirt. The other man was frowning, his shoulders tense. The man in the green shirt said something that made the blond man frown even harder, shake his head and pull away. Jinki saw the man in the green shirt step forward, and the blond man recoil before nodding, taking a step towards the car reluctantly.
Jinki had given up all pretence of window shopping to stare. He saw Minho at maybe the same time he saw the gun, maybe a little after, because if he'd seen him before maybe he wouldn't have started running towards the two men. "Leave him alone!" he yelled.
The man in the green shirt stared at him. Pulled out the gun.
Dying, Jinki found, really hurt. Even in a dream.
-
Blurring at the sides.
His vision, that is. Face staring at you, familiar. Sad. It shouldn't have been sad.
He coughed-thought he coughed. It didn't even hurt anymore. Wait, what? Hurt? What hurt?
His mouth is moving, saying something. He can't quite make it out, he's not sure. He's oddly coherent, he thinks, as he brings a hand up, but not far enough, fingers barely brushing against solidity before falling through the air.
They don't quite-
-
He sit's up gasping, fingers splayed cautiously against his chest. The skin was strangely intact. He presses down; a stab of pain elicits another badly smothered gasp.
He wasn't dead-! No, but-
"Where?"
Jinki stands, glancing slowly around the small room. White walls. A small window set high in one corner. No door. A bed, a small screen. Speakers. He moves towards them, the same moment the screen flickers to life. He stops.
"Where am I?" His voice is surprisingly steady. It's steady, and this is surprising to him.
A young man stares back at him, leaning towards the camera. Jinki takes in the softness of his cheeks, his youth. This isn't a dream. That much Jinki knows. He presses his lips together, moistening them with his tongue as silence crackles loudly around them. When he gets no answer, Jinki takes another step forward. "Who are you?" and then "Where are they?"
The other man frowns. "You know who I am," he says flatly. Tiredly.
"That wasn't a dream," Jinki says.
"No, it wasn't," the other agrees. "Did you find him?"
It's Jinki's turn to frown. He walks the remaining distance to the screen, glancing around the room for a camera to direct his attention towards. He finds none. "Find who?" he asks, even as a memory slips into his consciousness. Darkness, night, the sound of rushing water.
Jinki stares. The other man stares back, unperturbed. A thought flits across his mind. "I know him," he says suddenly, urgently. "The other guy! The blond one. He's..."
"Find him," the other man says. No, boy, Jinki revises. He's more of a boy than anything, the sudden desperation hinged with panic unmasking his age.
Who? Jinki begins to ask. He doesn't get to finish.
-
June 13, 20xx, 14:07
"No seriously, hyung. You can't keep running away from this."
Jinki blinked. "I can't?"
Minho sat across from him, a cup of coffee in front of them both. Find him, echoed in his thoughts, as Jinki shook away the dÈj‡ vu. He picked up the cup and brought it contemplatively to his lips, brushing the bitter taste against his tongue before replacing it on the table, the same moment Minho leaned back, exasperated. "Hyung."
So this wasn't a dream. But then, Jinki had no idea what it was. "I'm supposed to find someone," he said. Minho stared at him.
"Are you-" he began to say, when his phone rang. He frowned, giving Jinki a look. A 'we're not done talking about this' sort of look. Jinki shrugged.
There would be a man in a green shirt. Jinki watched Minho talk on the phone, the way his brows drew together as the conversation drew on. Maybe. There had been last time. It was hard to say.
"Find him," Jinki mouthed quietly to himself.
Minho stood, hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. "It's-I'm sorry, hyung, I have to go. It's work," he said apologetically.
"Oh, okay." Jinki stood awkwardly, unsure of whether to follow him or not this time. Find him, echoed in his mind, even if he had no idea who he was supposed to be finding. "Yeah, um. Be careful!" he said, when he realised Minho was still looking at him.
"Thanks hyung. I'll call you when I'm free
," Minho said before dashing off, leaving Jinki with two half-full cups of coffee on the patio of a cafe. He stared at the cups for a brief moment, before leaving the cafe as well hoping that it would be okay if he left them there. He frowned, pacing the length of the sidewalk in the other direction Minho had gone.
The thing was, none of this made sense. The last thing he remembered-it was night. And then there'd been Minho. And then there'd been a man in a green shirt, and a blond man who Jinki was sure he knew, and a gun. Jinki frowned again, jamming his hands into his pockets. And then the other boy. And the room. The room was important-was it?
With a sense of disquiet, Jinki realised that he'd begun to retrace his steps. Another frown. Maybe he should've followed Minho after all; it didn't feel right. A sharp crack rang through the air.
Jinki swore, breaking into a sprint. He could hear yelling as he approached 3rd. A lot of yelling. The screech of tires as a car barrelled around the corner. Jinki backpedalled hastily, away from the edge of the sidewalk, narrowly avoiding being clipped by the sideview mirror. He stumbled and fell, palms scraping painfully against the ground, landing with a quiet 'oomf'. From the corner of his eye, he saw Minho stop breathlessly a few meters away, talking urgently into his phone.
"Are you hurt?" Minho asked, flipping his phone shut as he jogged the distance to Jinki's side.
Jinki shook his head. "The car-"
"They're dispatching officers to stop it." Minho frowned. "I don't like it."
"You don't like what?" Jinki asked.
"The situation," Minho said shortly. "You should probably go home."
Minho began to walk off with determined steps; Jinki had to run to catch up to him. "You're going to do something dangerous, aren't you?" he asked, grabbing at Minho's wrist.
Minho turned, startled. "No," he said.
"Take me with you," Jinki demanded.
"No."
"I'm coming with you."
Minho shook off Jinki's grip. "No," he said again, walking away.
Jinki followed doggedly, even when Minho lengthened his stride. It felt right. He should've followed Minho in the first place. Minho was important, probably. "A man in a green shirt, right?" he asked.
Minho gave him a scrutinizing look, but didn't stop walking, grunting what Jinki took as an assent. He didn't elaborate further. They turned down a side street, and then again, a narrow alley between storefronts. Jinki glanced behind him nervously, Minho pushing open a door Jinki hadn't noticed, plastered behind old posters and grafiti as it was.
"It's not locked," Minho murmured, stopping so suddenly that Jinki suddenly found himself pressed against the other man's back.
"Sorry," Jinki said, taking a step back. "Is that... a bad thing?"
Minho shook his head, pushing the door open wider, stepping inside cautiously. "It's strange," he said quietly under his breath. "If I tell you to stay here, you'd still follow me, right?" He turned back to Jinki with a slightly amused expression.
"Pretty much," Jinki agreed, following Minho closely.
Their footsteps sounded loud, loud until there was a whimpered cry, and Jinki bit back a gasp at the sound. A light flickered on suddenly, and Jinki blinked to clear the spots away from his eyes. Minho moved in front of him quickly.
"You're cops." A woman was speaking.
"That doesn't matter," Minho said.
Jinki could hear his heart beating in his ears, pulsing at the back of his throat. He moved until Minho was no longer obstructing his vision-and gasped again. It was the blond man from before, Jinki was sure of it, only he was crumpled in a heap on the floor, his wrists and ankles bound by heavy duct tape. His eyes were drawn to the streak of red running across his face, and Jinki gulped.
"Minho," he said quietly, urgently.
"I know," Minho replied in the same tone. "You won't gain anything from this," he said, louder.
The woman chuckled. Jinki had to tear his eyes away from the other man to look at her. She didn't look very old, or very young. Glasses, Jinki noticed. Grey jacket, jeans. "On the contrary," she said, and pulled out a gun.
Jinki decided that he'd had enough of guns for a life time.
A gunshot cracked sharply, loud in Jinki's ears. When he opened his eyes, he was greeted with smoke. "Move," Minho was saying in his ear, a guiding hand on his back. Jinki coughed, stumbling along blindly.
"What about him?" he asked, stopping suddenly to twist to look behind him.
"They won't kill him," Minho said. He gave Jinki a little shove, and Jinki found himself in the street, Minho close behind. "Just go, hyung. Seriously."
Jinki stared at him, and then back at the smoke filled room they'd just come out of. "Where are you going?" he asked.
Minho stared back, and shook his head. "Just go, hyung. Please." There was a look in Minho's eyes that Jinki couldn't quite place-desperate, was the closest he could come up with. Worried, maybe.
"Alright," Jinki agreed. He waited for Minho to disappear down the alley before pulling his shirt collar up to cover his mouth and turning back towards the building. He hadn't managed to set foot inside before there was a loud explosion, and Jinki lost himself in the engulfing heat.
-
The heat was pleasant, the way it seemed to stream off his back-or maybe it was just because his back was the only part of him facing the sun, everything else tucked under the shade of a tree. He grinned, leaning back until the sunlight was pouring against his face, his weight resting on the heels of his palms. "This is nice," he murmured. "See, better than being a workaholic, right?"
"Look who's talking."
"Mm," he hummed. A hand briefly overlapped his, and he grinned at the touch. The world looked red like this, eyes closed and overlaid with a fine web of lace. "It can't be helped."
He gasped suddenly, the wind knocked out of him when his back met the albeit grassy but still hard ground. "Hey!" he yelped, to the sound of quickly smothered giggling. Nonetheless, he grabbed the hand when it was extended to him, disgruntled.
"Let's go-"
-
June 13, 20xx, 19:23
He frantically taps in a few more cues, worrying at his lower lip. Nothing changes, and he frowns. "Hyung," he calls over his shoulder.
"What?" It's snapped, frayed nerves clearly visible at more than just the edges.
"Just come." He massages his temples, sliding his chair to the side to vacate the keyboard. "Please?" he adds as an afterthought, too addled by the situation and the numbers streaming across the screen to fall back on carefully drilled manners.
He feels a little better when he hears quiet footsteps approaching, twisting his upper body to send the other a grateful smile. "Sorry, I know you're busy, but... I can't fix this." He sounds helpless, and he hates himself a little for it. Hates himself a lot. But there's more on the line than just him, and bashing away at a tiny locked box with a club isn't going to get him anywhere.
"Memory," is the simple answer, with one frown at the codes. "I told him this was going to be the problem."
"If there'd been time-"
"There was never time. There isn't time."
Silently, he agrees. He wishes he didn't have to.
-
-Darkness.
It was night.
He paced restlessly.
His phone vibrated in his hand. He frowned-the caller was a private number.
The sound of the river nearby-
-
June 13, 20xx, 19:27
He sits up gasping, eyes still open wide in shock.
"Did you find him?" is the first thing to greet him, before he's even managed to get his bearings.
"Find who?" he asks. He rubs a hand tiredly against his face, slumping back against the wall. In the back of his mind, he sees Minho's face faintly, a blur in the distance when he turned back. "That wasn't a dream."
"No, it's not, I thought we already established that." Jinki sits up again, staring at the screen across the room. It's someone different. He has an intense gaze, Jinki notices. A sharp gaze, and sharp cheekbones.
"Where's Taemin?" Jinki asks, at the same time his mind realises oh, his name is Taemin.
The boy slides back into view, a serious expression on his face. "I'm here. But hyung-did you find him?"
"No, yes-a street off 3rd." Jinki stops suddenly, shakes his head. Frowns. "An explosion. There was an explosion."
The other man makes a frustrated expression, disappearing from view. "We knew that," Jinki hears faintly.
"We're running out of time," Taemin says. "They took him somewhere after the explosion, we need to find him."
"I know," Jinki says. His voice is exasperated, worn thin. He squeezes his eyes shut, massages his temples. Dying hurts. Really hurts. "I can't remember," he says, looking up.
Taemin bites at his lower lip, shaking his head. "That's not important," he says quietly.
"It is to me," Jinki says. "If this isn't a dream, what is it?"
Taemin shrugs, fingers tapping out of view at keys. "You know that too," he says. "Source code, remember?"
No, Jinki is about to say, when it all distorts again.
-
June 13, 20xx, 14:07
For a split moment, Jinki felt lost. Lost in familiarity. As if time had frozen in one familiar moment, too familiar to escape from, not familiar enough to understand. Or maybe too familiar to understand. Jinki didn't think he'd figured it out well enough to tell the difference. And then the man across from him spoke, and the split moment fell apart into pieces.
"No seriously, hyung. You can't keep running away from this."
The words washed over Jinki; he didn't pay them as much mind as he should've. They were familiar. Familiarity bred contempt, or something like that. Familiarity.
Jinki jumped up suddenly, a stray arm knocking over the cup of coffee. "Jonghyun!", he yelled in realisation. From across the table, Minho stared even as he uprighted the cup and tossed napkins onto the spreading mess. "It's Jonghyun," Jinki said earnestly. "He's-"
He's-, Jinki thought, and didn't get any further, sinking back into his seat with a frown. "Sorry," he mumbled, reaching forward to help mop up the spill. "You were saying?"
"Who's Jonghyun?" Minho asked, just as his phone rang. "Sorry," he said, turning away from the table.
"It's fine," Jinki said, throwing more napkins onto the table. Jonghyun. It was Jonghyun. There was this horrible blankness beyond that, but Jinki was sure that the blond man was Jonghyun. And he had to find him. Source code, he thought. That was important. It was definitely important. Minho would be getting off the phone soon, saying he had to go. Quick, Jinki, decisions-follow him, or not to follow him? Like a choose-your-own-adventure story book, he thought distractedly. No, focus-
The sound of a chair scraping back as Minho stood. "I'm sorry hyung, I have to go. It's work."
"Yeah, uh, call me when you're free?" Jinki resisted the urge to squeeze his eyes shut, offering Minho a nervous smile instead.
"We'll talk about this later," Minho said. He reached out, a hand placed momentarily on Jinki's shoulder, before he walked off briskly. He watched Minho walk away, reaching unconsciously to the sudden gain and lack of warmth, before squaring his jaw and walking in the opposite direction. He didn't have much time. His eyes roamed across the store fronts, until he found what he thought was the right alley, wedged between a bakery and a boutique. He glanced over his shoulder-no screech of tires, no gunshots. Yet.
Jinki took a sharp breath, crossing the street. It had been behind the bakery. He ventured carefully to the bakery's other side, ducking surreptitiously along the wall. Someone was there-he dropped into a crouch, hiding himself behind a pile of crates. 'DECORATIONS', the label read.
"...soon...new place...ready or..."
"...don't know...risky thing to do..."
He strained forward, trying to catch pieces of the conversation. Two men, middle aged. Probably. He'd never been the greatest detective, even when they'd played at it when they were little, the three of them. The sound of a gunshot cracking through the air had Jinki stiffening every muscle in his body to avoid jumping in surprise-the screech of tires wailed by him. A flurry of movement, muffled voices. The sound of a motor backing up slowly.
Jinki inched forward, peering around the crates to see. A motorcycle, a cargo container tagged on behind it. He could just make out the license plate-a figure's shadow had him darting back behind the crates. He heard a yell and a struggle, and then the thump of something being struck. Jonghyun, Jinki thought idly. His heart clenched at the thought, an uncomfortable tightness just behind his gut, and it took all his self restraint to remain where he was. The sound of footsteps pounding against sidewalk, slowing. Jinki bit at his lip-Minho, probably. Find him, Taemin had said. Source code, remember?.
No, he didn't remember. And this was important.
Minho was talking-he couldn't make out the words. He wished he could. A long conversation, muted voices. And then a gunshot. Another. He didn't run forward-he was getting the hang of this, he decided. Minho would've made it out, he'd be fine. Definitely. Minho was capable, that much was clear. Jinki leaned forward as the sound of an engine starting up rumbled quietly, in time to see the lid of the cargo container being buckled down. Jonghyun, he thought emptily. The alley was empty. He stood, chased after where the motorcycle had been.
It was cruising down the street, an unnoticeable pace. A muffled yell came from behind him-Minho stood there, clinging to a wall, gesturing furiously at Jinki. With a slow dawning of apprehension, Jinki turned, only to see someone jump down in front of him. He felt the explosion from behind, and a sharp pain from in front. A brief glimpse of Minho as he turned-
-
June 13, 20xx, 19:37
"9312," Jinki gasps breathlessly. The room, he's in the room again. "Motorcycle. Jonghyun's probably in the cargo container." His eyes are squeezed shut-he opens them slowly as he catches his breath, the movement still painful. The room is dark. Night. The screen flickers to life, a guiding light in a cage of black.
"Trace it," he hears in the background, low and urgent.
"Tell me," Jinki says, voice steadying. Taemin stares at him, lips caught between his teeth. "Tell me everything. Source code. Jonghyun. I know it, but I don't remember."
Taemin glances at a point behind him, waving someone over. Kibum, Jinki realises. The other man. Known as Key in most circles. More things he knew. But couldn't remember. If Jinki had been the sort to grind his teeth in frustration, he would have been doing that without a second thought.
"What do you remember?" This was Kibum. He's tilted the camera up towards him, Taemin effectively disappearing from view.
Jinki shakes his head. "Not much. You're Kibum. We need to find Jonghyun. Um, something about source code, but Taemin didn't say anything else."
Kibum nods briskly, Jinki's answer neither a surprise nor a relevation. "This is source code. You're in the source code," he explains matter-of-factly.
"What is source code?"
Kibum stares at him, and Jinki squirms under the gaze. "You don't know," he says blankly.
Jinki shrugs. "Maybe I've forgotten."
Kibum shakes his head, purses his lips. "Source code. When it comes down to it, memories are data. And data is code. Can be coded. Algorithm trees. You're in the source code right now, because it's the closest lead we have before we lost track of where-where Jonghyun is."
"I don't get it," Jinki says softly.
Kibum growls in frustration, and suddenly the camera is pulled down again, back to Taemin. "It's okay hyung, you don't have to. You have eight minutes though, that's all. You've probably noticed-nature draws to a lowest energy state, and within the confines of the source code, that's to return to, uh, the original ending."
"Original ending," Jinki echoes softly. "Death."
Taemin nods. "Second law of thermodynamics. Entropy. The measure of chaos, an increase in disorder, decrease in energy. Life is highly ordered, you know. But conversely, there are any number of paths a system can have travelled to reach the final state of least energy, highest entropy. Basic science." A pained look crossed across Taemin's face. Jinki frowned, confused, but waited for him to continue.
"When someone dies, there's an afterimage left behind in the short term memory circuits, because of the neurochemical responses that get altered-hyung-" this is to Kibum, who had taken to pacing back and forth like a caged animal. At Taemin's admonishment, he turns sharply on his heel and disappears, Taemin turning back to the camera "-An imprint. Like when you close your eyes and can still see whatever you were looking at before-sight works the same way, which makes sense since it's all part of the same physiological human system. We can use that imprint and write you into the source code, effectively exploring the eight minutes which were left behind. There's an infinite number of possibilities, as long as it starts and ends at the same point."
"But I can't change the outcome."
"Right. It's like an alternate reality, but the past can't be changed when it's already happened. Anything between is fair game though. I'm not sure about the details, those were - uh - anyway, something about quantum states and how it's all about probability anyway? So the individual paths matter less than the outcome."
Jinki drops his head into his hands, processing the information. "And Jonghyun?"
"'Kim Jonghyun, age 23. Was taken hostage at approximately 2:10 this afternoon. No demands have been made. The son of a cabinet minister, political reasons are presumed.' is what we have, officially," Taemin reads off a sheet of paper. "We don't know that much more, truthfully. We have suspicions of who's responsible, but that doesn't help if we can't find them." He clenches his fist, the paper crumpling under the touch.
"And Minho? What about Minho?" Jinki asks urgently. He swallows back a burst of nausea, willing himself to forget the image still burned faintly into the back of his retinas.
"Who?"
Jinki frowns, although he doubts Taemin can see it, dark as the room was. "Um, Choi Minho. I think he's a cop. He gets-got called to the location, looking for the man in a green shirt who's the one who kidnaps Jonghyun. He..."
"We'll look him up," Taemin promises. "Can we send you back in now?"
Jinki shakes his head, pacing to the screen. "Why did they take him?"
Taemin shrugs, shakes his head as well. "I don't know," he says, although his face, Jinki's sure, is saying something altogether different, if the way he's worrying at his lip, eyes downcast beneath a frown is any indication.
"Taemin."
"You have to find him, hyung. We don't have much time left. An hour, two hours at most. You're our only lead. I don't think Kibum hyung would be like this if we had any other way."
"I'll try my best," Jinki promises. "Oh, and one more thing?"
"Yes?" Taemin asks, tapping furiously at a keyboard.
"Who..." 's dead body am I occupying "am I?" he settles for instead.
"Not important," Taemin dismisses, and the floor falls out from under Jinki's feet again.
-
"I traced it," Kibum says, dropping into a seat next to Taemin. From the look on the older man's face, Taemin doesn't bother to ask if it had turned up any leads yet. "You didn't have to tell him all that," he adds next. "It's not like he needs to know."
"But he does," Taemin insists. His voice drags haggard and unconvincing in his own ears. "He does, hyung. I... I would want someone to tell me, if I were him."
"It won't help," Kibum snaps. "Every moment we waste is a moment that Jonghyun could be..."
He trails off, and Taemin cringes, willing himself not to finish the sentence. "I think you need a break," he says firmly. "You've been working for the past eight hours-"
"This isn't working. This is-"
"A break, hyung." If he were honest with himself, this isn't just for Kibum's good, it's for his too-Kibum's been getting on his nerves, and it's been eight straight hours of Taemin slowly feeling his own nerves thin. "Jinki hyung's still in there for another five minutes at least, unless something goes wrong. Again."
Kibum presses his lips together, pushing the seat back from the table. "He's good at that," he says, laughing. If it sounds forced, Taemin doesn't say anything.
Instead, he pulls Kibum out of the chair and gives him a shove towards the door. "I'll look for the motorcycle," he says. "I'm sure we'll find him."
"We have to," Kibum says.
"We will," he reassures. He just wishes he was more convinced himself.
-
Jinki gasped for breath, water blinding his eyes-
"Have you arrived?" The voice was robotic, masked. It did nothing to put him at ease.
"What did you want to discuss?" His own voice was clipped and more high-strung than he would've liked.
Ten minutes past the appointed time. He was the only one here.
-a strong grip around his wrist, his eyes fluttering briefly open to see a(n un)familiar face-
"You know what we want. And you know what we'll do if we don't get what we want."
"What do you want?"
"Oh, that's simple. You're supposed to be smart. Not as smart as we thought it seems. We want-"
-
June 13, 20xx, 14:07
"No seriously, hyung. You can't keep running away from this."
Minho stared at him, a reproachful look in his eyes. Jinki flinched away, remembering the last time he'd seen the other man's face. "Yeah, um, I know," he said shakily, lying through his teeth.
Something seemed to click in Minho's eyes, as he leaned forward. Expectantly, Jinki realised. "I..." he began slowly. Mostly because he still didn't know what he was running away from. But maybe because he wasn't used to being looked like that. That being. Well. Jinki leaned back in his chair, tongue flicking out to moisten his lips, gone suddenly dry. That being-he was endlessly glad when Minho's phone rang, and Minho turned away with what seemed to Jinki like a flicker of disappointment.
"Sorry," he mouthed, fishing out his phone.
Jinki nodded, not feeling like Minho needed to apologise in the slightest. He reached into his pocket, pulling out a phone that wasn't his-but he didn't expect it to be his. For a moment, the weight in his hand felt familiar, and an unfamiliar number flashed ghostly on the screen across time, before Jinki blinked it out of insistence, reading the time instead. Eight minutes, Taemin had said. 2:07, said the phone, before the seven slipped into an eight.
He was pretty calm. Was it okay to be this calm? It probably didn't hurt.
As if on clockwork, Minho stood, covering the mouthpiece of the phone with one hand. "Sorry hyung, I have to go. It's work."
"I'll come with you," Jinki said.
"No, you can't," Minho said, his expression suddenly closing. "It's dangerous hyung, you know that."
Jinki smiled, shaking away the sense of dÈj‡ vu that was probably actual dÈj‡ vu. "I know. That's all the more reason, right, Minho?"
"No, it's not. You'd... You'd just get in the way. Look, I'll call you when I'm free, okay?"
"I'm coming with you," Jinki said firmly with a smile. Very firmly. "Just let me. As, um, a hyung."
Minho turned away, lips pressed into a thin line. He said nothing, and Jinki wondered if he'd made a mistake. Not that, he realised, he knew what sort of mistake he could've made. When Minho suddenly started walking, Jinki had to jog slightly to catch up on the first few steps.
"Hey, uh, Minho," Jinki ventured. Minho turned to look at him, although he didn't slow. "I know work is urgent, but I just, uh, have a gut feeling about this."
"About what?" Minho asked.
Jinki swallowed. "Could we stay here for a moment?" He had an idea. "I have an idea."
"About what?" He was getting impatient. Work, Jinki knew. Minho seemed like the type who cared deeply about work.
"About work. Um, your work. Or-" This could either work, or horribly backfire, Jinki thought, coming to a standstill. "If I told you I know what's going to happen, would you believe me?"
Minho stared at him flatly-no, not flatly. A myriad of expressions before he seemed to settle on staring at Jinki flatly. "No," he said. "Probably not."
"Wait!" Jinki reached out and caught at Minho's wrist-the other man jerked his arm away as burned, whirling around so fast that Jinki didn't have time to process he was looking at Minho's face again, and not the back of his head. "This is going to sound really weird, but you're going to look for a man in a green shirt, right?"
This caught Minho's attention. "How did you know?"
Jinki shook his head. "It's, um, not important. So will you believe me a little?"
"That depends."
"On?" Jinki prompted.
"On how you know. Hyung, you're not supposed to-"
"That part isn't important!" Now he sounded hysterical. That wouldn't work. "There's going to be a car. It's this blue-black colour. And it's going to have the person you're looking for in it, I think, or maybe it won't, but either way it's related to it all."
Minho looked like he was torn between believing him and calling him out on his bullshit (maybe). Jinki didn't really know him enough to be sure.
"Jonghyun. They're going to kidnap a man called Jonghyun. Do you know anything about him?" Now he did sound hysterical.
Minho looked at him strangely, a frown tucked onto his face where it didn't belong, corners of his lips drawn back severely. "Why do you know all this?" he asked-at the same moment they saw the car round the corner. Jinki pointed with a quiet yell, drawing Minho's attention to the vehicle which swerved, and suddenly there were two. Or, that was what it looked like, before one of them pulled away. The one they wanted, Jinki was sure.
"This way," Jinki said, grabbing one of the younger man's wrists without a second thought, pulling him down the street to where the bakery was. He hesitated at the alley, remembering what had happened last time, and the time before that too. But-that was the past. That didn't mean it had to happen again. Definitely. He chanced a glance backwards at Minho, and saw his expression change.
"You know this place," he said.
"Sort of," Jinki answered, dodging the question. Minho was walking beside him now, and Jinki released his grip.
"If I tell you to stay here, would you?" Minho asked.
"Not really," Jinki acquiesced with a chuckle that seemed strangely out of place, bubbling up from somewhere he couldn't quite identify. Probably somewhere like 'oh god please let this go well this time,' but Jinki wasn't exactly being discerning at the moment.
Minho shrugged. "Fair enough," he said. He walked to the door that Jinki had missed the first time, his hand on the doorknob.
"Maybe-" Jinki began, pausing when Minho turned to look at him, all questions. "Maybe you shouldn't," he said.
"Why not?"
"It's dangerous. Just. Trust me on this one."
"My job is dangerous, hyung," Minho pointed out, and pushed open the door. He frowned. "That's strange."
"The door should be locked?" Jinki ventured.
Minho didn't say anything, just glanced at him over his shoulder, before he walked in. Jinki peeked at his phone-or rather, the phone in his pocket that belonged to someone he didn't know. 2:11, it read. Jinki gulped. He didn't really want to die again. Even if it couldn't be helped. More than that, he didn't want to see Minho die again. He followed Minho in, cautiously. Their footsteps sounded loud in the empty room. He didn't know what they were going to accomplish like this.
So, when the lights flickered on and Jinki did his best to not look at the crumpled sort-of-human shape on the floor, he spoke up. "What are you going to do with him?" he asked.
The woman (same woman, Jinki noticed) looked at him in surprise. Minho's eyes opened wider than they already were. "Hyung," he said, voice low and urgent.
"Him," Jinki repeated. His voice wavered a little. He had to fix that. "Where are you going to take him?"
The woman laughed this time. "You don't need to know," she said. "Cops?"
"No," Jinki answered quickly, before Minho could get a word in.
Minho got a word in anyway, smoothly following up against Jinki's words. "What you're doing," he said calmly to the woman. "It won't work."
Jinki gaped at him. "What are they doing?"
"What do you know," the woman scoffed. Her hand reached under her jacket, and Jinki blanched.
"Um-!" he tried to interrupt.
"More than you think," Minho interrupted. A smirk was settled onto his face, although his eyes were hard. "And I wouldn't do that if I were you."
"Oh really?" the woman asked, and in the next moment, there was a sound Jinki had gotten to know far too well, as Minho shoved him to the ground.
"No," Minho grunted, and Jinki caught sight of him pulling out his own gun-had he always had that?-and taking careful aim. There was a muffled yelp, and the woman dropped to one knee, hands pressed against her thigh. Suddenly, there were more people than there had been a moment ago. There was the man in the green shirt, Jinki recognised him. But that was around it.
On the floor, Jonghyun groaned, stirring. His eyes blinked open briefly, and Jinki could see the panic in them. Not good, he thought. Find him, and Jinki had him, right here. But that wasn't how source code worked, was it? No, he was sure it wasn't. "Hi," he said nervously, as he got to his feet again. "Maybe one of you could tell me what you're doing with him?"
"Hyung, shut up," Minho hissed, pushing Jinki back down.
The man in the green shirt laughed. "That's none of your business. Particularly if you're both dead."
"No, wait." One of the other men placed a restraining hand on his arm. "The tall one. Recognise him?"
Beside him, he felt Minho stiffen, the grip on his own gun tightening. "Wouldn't be surprised if you did," he said. There was an edge to his voice now, tingeing the underlying calmness with swirling colour.
Jinki gaped at him. Wait what, he wanted to say.
"You're that brat," green-shirt said suddenly. A smile broke out across his face, and it wasn't pleasant. "Having second thoughts leaving us?"
"Nope." Minho's tone was almost breezy, strange and out of place for the few minutes Jinki had known the other man. He grinned, too obviously forced. The hand that was still on Jinki's shoulder tightened. "I'd never regret it."
The man smirked, eyes leering at Jinki, a chill running inexplicably down his spine. He shuddered. "I see," he said slowly, and brought up his gun. "You were good as far as brats went, too bad you got, ah, distracted. And now it looks like you're getting in the way, hm."
Jinki watched eyes wide as grips shifted around guns-he'd never seen a gun before in his life, and now he'd seen too many, not that he'd ever wanted to see one in the first place-and realised with a sinking stomach that he was a liability here. It was with a sinking stomach when he realised that the gun wasn't pointed at the younger man, but at him.
A flash, a sound he was getting to know all too well, a sudden force to his side, and then Minho staggered, his weight collapsing against Jinki even as he struggled to stay upright. "Minho," Jinki breathed. 2:14, he saw off Minho's watch. A muted horror stemmed from the growing warmth damp against his own chest, his eyes cringing shut. Can't be helped, he reminded himself. Second law of thermodynamics, he thought.
"Hyung I-I," Minho's breaths were laboured, interspersed with breathless coughs. Jinki forced his eyes open to observe, his gaze meeting Jonghyun's for a brief second, before the other looked away.
"I know," he said. Minho's lips twitched into a smile, and then Jinki supposed that the eight minutes were up.
-
like pricks of flame were stabbing at his lungs.
His eyes were squeezed shut - that much he was aware of - as he couldn't hold back the coughs, only jarring the pain worse. Hang in there he thought he heard
a hand on his wrist, a face blurring in and out of view, the taste of water on his lips
"Water doesn't have a taste." He didn't sound particularly impressed by his protests.
"This water does," he whined. "I don't like it." Or, that's what he tried to say, before a solid push sent him tumbling back into the lake, dry change of clothes and all. He came up spluttering, blinking droplets out of his eyes
"Ten. They want to meet at ten."
"You're going?" It's resigned by now. He tries to smile - it comes out as a grimace instead. "Let me come with you."
"No offence Taemin, but I don't think you'd be much help. With luck, they just want to discuss it reasonably."
"That's unlikely, and you know it, hyung. Just... call us if something happens, okay?"
He laughs, bites back the thought that if something happened he'd never get the chance to call. "Tell Kibum I'll see him tomorrow morning, since it seems like he's sulking. There's still a lot of work-"
"It can wait."
-
June 13, 20xx, 19:54
The room is still dark.
"Did you find him?" Taemin asks eagerly. "Do you know where he is?"
Jinki groans, sitting up. "No," he says, slowly getting his bearings. "But he was right there."
"Focus, hyung. We don't have much time left if we..."
"I know. But this isn't working, Taemin-ah." He runs a hand through his hair tiredly, glancing up at the screen. Or where the screen should've been. It's blank, missing, as if it had never been there in the first place. "Taemin-ah?" he asks to the emptiness.
"I'm here." The sound of Taemin's voice is just as strong as it was before.
"Did someone move things around while I was in the source code?" Jinki asks. "In the room, I mean."
"The room?" Taemin's voice sounds too puzzled to make sense. About the room? "No, I mean-no, I don't think so. Why?"
Jinki shakes his head. "No, never mind. It's... It's nothing. Did you find the motorcycle?"
A brief silence where Jinki guesses that Taemin must have shaken his head or something. "Sort of. We traced the serial number, and it turns out it was stolen three weeks ago, but we haven't found it yet. Hyung's...working on it. Do you have any idea where they were going?"
Jinki shakes his head again, and wonders if Taemin could see. "There's four of them. A woman, the man in the green shirt, and then two others. Um, I think the police know who the man in the green shirt is because he's the one who Minho was looking for." And Minho seemed to know them. He's not sure why, but he feels safer leaving that part out.
"Right. I've also dug up some information on Choi Minho. He's 21, graduated top of the class, and is apparently with the NPA, but there's no further information there. Which is strange." Taemin sounds like he's frowning. "Anyway, the police wouldn't tell us when we asked, which is kind of suspicious, but maybe they just don't know. Which is even more suspicious. Do you think he knows anything?"
"I-I don't know," Jinki says. Except he probably does. It seems like he does. Jinki groans, head dropping into his hands. All of this, everything, it was too confusing. None of it makes sense. Nothing did. The more he pieced it together, the more it fell apart. Too many questions. Not enough ways to get answers. "Minho," he says suddenly. "What happened to him? After, or um, now, I guess."
"No idea," Taemin says softly. "They think he might've, uh, been caught up in the explosion at the bakery, but they haven't found any bodies that would match his profile, so he could just be missing in action."
"I see." Jinki leanes back, his head hitting the wall with a quiet thunk. "Bodies-the bakery?"
"Yeah." Taemin's voice is hushed. There's a pause, a moment of mutual hesitation where Jinki wonders if he can ask another question and get any answers, where Taemin wonders if this was going to succeed. "Find him, hyung. Please."
"I want to save him too," Jinki says quietly. "I don't know why, but I do."
"It's this Jonghyun we have to find," Taemin reminds him, before plunging him back into the source code without another word.
Jinki doesn't quite get the chance to say 'I know', but he says it anyway.
-
"What the fuck, are you serious?"
"Why wouldn't I be? We can't just give up here, can we?"
"No one said anything about giving up-"
-a strong grip curled around his wrist, pulling him upwards, downwards? he couldn't tell-
"-can't ignore it either."
"I can't fucking believe this. This is the stupidest thing you've ever done, and possibly ever will do, and that's saying a lot because you're like the epitome of doing stupid things."
He sighed. "Kibum, we don't have a choice. I can't just let it fall apart after everything."
"But there's always a choice, hyung, and um, I agree with Kibum hyung this time."
"I'm going, and that's final."
-
June 13, 20xx, 14:07
"No, wait," Jinki said, holding up a hand to stop Minho from speaking.
Minho stopped mid-sentence in surprise.
"I... I'm not trying to run away from anything," he said. Minho shut his mouth. Jinki swallowed. Continued. "But before we talk about it -" whatever it was "- could I ask you something?"
"Ask me what?"
Jinki worried at his lips between his teeth, eyes meeting Minho's full on. "I want to ask you about your past."
If he hadn't been watching for it, he wouldn't have caught the momentary double-take in Minho's eyes. Bingo, he thought.
"Why are you asking this suddenly?" Minho asked slowly.
"It's important," Jinki said. "Someone's going to get kidnapped-and um it's probably better not to ask how I know because I don't really have an answer for you-and I think it has to do with people in your past."
"That's..." Minho frowned, considering this as he straightened, having gradually been leaning towards Jinki. His phone rang. He reached for it, shooting Jinki an apologetic look.
"It's from work, right? What happens if you don't answer it?"
"Why wouldn't I?" Minho asked, and answered the phone. "Choi Minho speaking."
He leaned forward, straining to catch the conversation. Minho's expression was solemn. "That's..." If possible, his frown got deeper. "No, yes, I understand."
He stood, pushing back his chair, shooting Jinki an apologetic look. "Sorry, it's-"
"Work," Jinki finished. "I-"
"We'll talk about this later," Minho said abruptly. By the time Jinki managed to form a vaguely coherent sentence, Minho had already jogged halfway down the street.
"Fuck," Jinki breathed quietly to himself. He felt like he had a little license to swear, right now. He slipped his hand into his pocket, pulling out the phone again. He scrolled through the contacts, pausing first at the one labelled "Home ♥", and again "Minho ♥". Eight past two, the time read. He could call him. Call him and ask him, because Minho definitely knew something. Maybe. At least who, or why, Jinki decided.
The phone dialled once, twice, and then again, before it disconnected, leaving Jinki with a 'call ended' flashing across the screen as he held it away from his ear. "Caller ID," he murmured to himself. Well so much for that, he thought, sliding the phone back into his pocket. His fingers brushed against paper, and he instinctively tugged out a folded note. He hesitated, feeling like he was in grade school peeking into a classmate's desk looking for his missing pencil case again, unfolding the sheet slowly. Any little bit of information helped, he told himself firmly.
His eyes scanned the words quickly, catching on the "I'm sorry"s and "maybe"s crossed out and rewritten and crossed out and rewritten again. His mouth formed a quiet "oh", as things fell in place. Sort of. The wrong things.
His eyes skipped to the end of the note, quietly trying the name penned there on his tongue, revelling in the way it felt just wrong enough to feel right. If he even knew what that meant.
The sound of a car cruising past snapped Jinki out of his musings, and he knocked the chair back as he stood. Find him, he reminded himself. "But how?"
But how.
He found himself pacing to the bakery again, hesitating as he approached. He strolled by the second laneway as nonchalantly as he could, peering down the space to see two men deep in conversation. He stopped abruptly, a slight frown on his face as he replayed what he'd seen in his mind. Well, someone else's mind, but his consciousness? That-that wasn't important, focus, he reminded himself. A flash of white though, a sheet of paper changing hands. A note. It was important, he had a hunch.
A note. His mind flashed to a different note altogether as his fingers brushed against a slip of paper. Jinki swallowed apprehensively-Minho knew something for sure. He could... he could use that, maybe, ask the younger man.
He made his way determinately down the laneway instead. A short cut. That was all he was doing. "Hello," he greeted, forcing the nervousness out of his voice. The two men barely spared him a glance, moving aside to let him pass instead. The one on the left, he remembered, glancing at their faces. "It's a nice day, isn't it?"
"Yes...?" The other answered hesitantly.
Jinki blanked, trying to draw for words. It turned out he didn't need to, his empty train of thought derailed quickly enough. "If you don't mind, we're busy people," the taller one said, clearly dismissing Jinki as he turned on his heel. The other shrugged and offered Jinki a smile, before following.
"W-wait!" someone yelled. The someone being him, he realised a beat later, when there were two pairs of eyes trained on him. "Um, I was looking for someone," he said, without really thinking. "Minho. Choi Minho. Around this tall-do you know him?" Which wasn't what one would ask when looking for someone, he also realised another beat later, but it was too late to take it back.
The taller one just looked at him blankly, but there was a definite flicker of recognition in the others' eyes. "No, we don't," the first said, only to be countered by a "no he's-" by the latter before he was cut off by a glare. "No we don't," he said more firmly, and Jinki nodded automatically.
On the other hand, that did tell him there was maybe more to Minho than it seemed.
If there was more to that thought, he didn't quite remember, because there was a sharp pain at the back of his head, and then nothing.
-
That was the funny thing about memory. It was hard to tell if it was memory, or if it wasn't. Or something like that.
"I..." he heard himself stammer. "I don't know."
"Why not?" Frustration. A lot of frustration. He realised this as if it were something new, like the little details you picked up only the fifth time you'd watched a movie.
"It's not-"
And then he was kissing someone. A memory, he decided. Wrong enough to feel right.
Right enough to feel wrong.
No, not a memory. Too wrong for a memory.
"You're running away." Anger, this time. This wasn't new. But it wasn't real anger. This was new.
"No."
"Yes."
"We... we shouldn't." Shouldn't, because there were too many things that could go wrong, ways people could find out, reasons that would hurt him, would hurt Minho.
Minho.
Oh.
So that was what it was about.
Then it was a memory.
Or wasn't. It was getting hard to tell.
-
June 13, 20xx, 20:03
The room is still dark.
He stares up at the ceiling, the silence of his breathing loud in his ears. He drops a hand on his chest, just to reassure himself of the rise and fall, the warmth sliding through to his fingers.
"Hey," he calls quietly. They would hear, he's sure. "Did you guys ever fix the problem with the memory?"
There's a sharp gasp, a rapid intake of air. "You remembered!"
"Not really," he says quietly. "Just that there was a problem with the memory. Wasn't there?"
"There was." Resigned. "Is."
"It never got fixed. Didn't know how, right?"
"We... No, never mind. About Jonghyun, did you-"
"Maybe. I think I have an idea."
Jinki falls silent, listening to his own breathing. If he strains his ears, he can just hear Taemin's breaths as well, quiet in anticipation. Has several ideas, really, some better than others. In another time, another place, maybe he would've explained them all, gone through them, debated the pros and cons. But this is neither another time nor another place, and Jinki doesn't elaborate.
"Hyung. I-"
"It's okay," he says automatically, cutting Taemin off. Even if his gut feeling is that it's the furthest thing possible from 'okay'-but Jinki doesn't think he wants to hear it either. "How much time do we have left?"
"Fourty five minutes, give or take," Taemin answers after a moment of hesitation. "Hyung-"
Jinki doesn't let him finish. "Onew. His name is Onew. Tell me about him."
He can hear Taemin hold his breath, hesitate. "Wrong place, wrong time, died from gunshot wounds. He was an up and coming singer, before the incident. He was twenty three. Same... Same as you."
"Have you found the motorcycle yet?" Jinki asks, changing the topic abruptly.
"Kibum hyung's still working on it."
Jinki nods. "Send me back in," he says, and hears the shuffle as Taemin pulls a keyboard towards himself. He braces himself for the disorientation, almost but not quite used to the feeling.
"Hyung, I'm... I'm sorry," he thinks he hears Taemin say, before the world drops out from around him again.
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