episode three: heart attack
"I had a dream," Jongin says a week later, as they're waiting to start a sync test, "about my mom."
"Oh lord," Baekhyun mutters under his breath.
Kyungsoo swings around in his chair to swat at him with a rolled-up manual, which Baekhyun dodges. But Baekhyun's not hooked up to any of the mics feeding into the EXO intercom, so Jongin continues, oblivious, "Or, I don't know, it might have been Yixing-hyung."
"Yixing looks nothing like your mother," Kyungsoo says, and bites down on his lip, because, actually, Yixing did look a little like the one picture of Commander Wu's wife Kyungsoo's seen. Over his shoulder, Baekhyun raises an eyebrow that asks, want me to pull up a profile?, but Kyungsoo shakes his head. What would be the point?
"I guess you might consider Yixing a mother figure for Jongin," Baekhyun muses.
if you wanted to raise a nintendog, Kyungsoo types into Baekhyun's command line, so the mics won't pick it up, and Baekhyun laughs.
"In my dream," Jongin says, "my mother points at a tree on top of a hill in the distance and tells me to go to it. So I get up and start walking, but my body becomes really heavy, and I look down, and I'm covered in pieces of armor."
"What have I told you about reading fantasy webtoons before going to bed?" Kyungsoo asks idly, examining the biometric stats the S.E.S are spitting out for Jongin and Zitao.
"No, not metal armor, more like-" On the screen monitoring EXO KAI's cockpit, they can see Jongin pause and furrow his eyebrows, his eyes still closed as EXO KAI's internal sensors scan his body. In the split screen, they can also see Zitao stoically pretend to ignore the conversation, though he gives himself away by frowning the way he does only when he's trying to understand Korean. "A mini EXO KAI, small enough to fit on me," Jongin says finally. "But it was growing out of me, you know, coming out of my skin. And every piece I grew, I got heavier, and heavier, until I couldn't walk anymore and started sinking into the ground. It was like I was being buried alive."
Kyungsoo frowns, turning his full attention to Jongin's face on the screen, but Baekhyun pats his hand soothingly, rolling his eyes as he mouths, so Freudian. "Don't worry," Baekhyun chirps into the mic, "that's just stress. Everyone gets that sometimes."
"You're still adjusting to being a pilot, Jongin," Kyungoo adds. "That's all."
Jongin nods. After a while, though, he wrinkles his forehead again. "Kyungsoo-hyung, have you ever been in an EXO?"
"Once," Kyungsoo admits. Only once, on an evening when Baekhyun had needed to run neuro-language feed calibration, and no one was working overtime except for Kyungsoo. Baekhyun had let him get into a test EXO cockpit, KAI's, in fact. It was early on, before Kyungsoo knew you had to breathe in the LCL for oxygen. Instead he'd held his breath the whole time the LCL flooded in. He still remembers the way it felt, pressing in all around him, the hard pressure like being squeezed, in or out, Kyungsoo hadn't been able to tell, at least not before he passed out from air hunger and Baekhyun, shamefacedly, had to call a medical team to make sure he hadn't accidentally killed Kyungsoo.
"Then you know the way LCL smells," Jongin insists. "That's what it smelled like, when I woke up. Like..."
"Hmm?"
Jongin sighs. On the screen, there is a little stream of bubbles that escapes from his mouth, which Kyungsoo can tell disturbs Baekhyun, because that's not how air in the EXO core should work. The bubbles disappear, popping, in a loose halo around Jongin's forehead. "Familiar," Jongin exhales. "Like someone I used to know, or someone wearing my clothes. My own smell."
"Weirdo," Zitao snickers.
"You're one to talk, pinhead," Jongin shoots back, hurt.
"All right, quiet down, you two," Kyungsoo says, clapping to get their attention, "the test is about to start."
For the first time since Zitao's arrival, Jongin beats him in a sync test. Zitao, raised by Chanyeol and with Chanyeol's sense of competition, spends the afternoon sulking, and Chanyeol has to coax him out of the locker room with the promise of a barbecue dinner, much to Kyungsoo's amusement. But the next time Kyungsoo sees the pilots together, they're sharing earbuds in the SME cafeteria, Zitao occasionally prodding Jongin to translate the text of the music magazine they're poring over.
"Don't they remind you of someone?" Chanyeol says, creeping up from behind Kyungsoo, and Kyungsoo grunts, knocking Chanyeol's shoulder a little too hard as he turns to go.
When the fourth Angel attacks, they are ready. Jongin and Zitao are flawless on the offensive, as if the physicality of the fight breaks down all language barriers. The Angel tears off the plating of EXO KAI's back, but KAI shakes it off, its waist more flexible and soft without the armor, and Jongin throws out one of Yixing's pirouetting kicks, sending the Angel straight into Zitao's progressive knife. Afterwards, Baekhyun proudly reports Jongin's sync rate: 98%. "It's like he's really become his EXO," he muses and Kyungsoo pauses, but only for a minute.
-
Because it's been over a month since Chanyeol arrived and he's only made an inappropriate move on Kyungsoo twice (compared to the five times on Baekhyun - four times as a joke and once, Kyungsoo suspects, actually seriously), Kyungsoo feels safe saying yes to dinner after work, which doesn't stop Baekhyun from putting a condom in Kyungsoo's wallet. It dutifully embarrasses Kyungsoo by falling out when he goes to pay for his half of the bill. "Baekhyun's idea of a joke," Kyungsoo explains, red-faced as he throws the condom away.
"Has to be for your other boyfriend on the side," Chanyeol says with a wide grin. "That one was an extra small."
In college Kyungsoo and Chanyeol were horrible at dating and especially at dating each other, but they were, in the end, friends first. With years separating past sex and their current companionship, Kyungsoo can almost look at Chanyeol from a distance and see him objectively: the mellowed pitch of his laugh, the extra wrinkles on his face, the unchanged volume of his voice, which he used both indiscriminately and with surprising deftness, how he would unfurl his body quickly whenever he sprang into action. And, mostly, Kyungsoo can see what drew them together in the first place - the way they moved with and against each other without speaking, instinctively understanding even the most casual of subterfuges. So when Chanyeol only drinks one beer at the restaurant and asks Kyungsoo if he will walk him home, Kyungsoo falls in with the pace, abstains from alcohol, and casually suggests they stop in for odeng at a pojangmacha a few miles outside the radius of the GeoFront, where they're unlikely to encounter any other SME employees.
An hour later, Chanyeol mumbles around a mouthful of mustard and fishcake, "You have questions, but I'm not going to be able to answer any of them."
"So why are we here?" Kyungsoo grumps, pouring them both more soju.
Chanyeol grunts, then squints into his plate of odeng, as if looking for answers. When none swim up from the broth, he swallows thickly and offers Kyungsoo a skewered turnip, eats it slowly when Kyungsoo refuses. "You've been to Terminal Wolf, haven't you?" he says afterwards, with an absent wave of the skewer in the general direction of the GeoFront.
"I'm not authorized," Kyungsoo says. It's an autopilot answer, though, and when he actually processes Chanyeol's tone, Kyungsoo grabs the skewer out of Chanyeol's hand and stabs Chanyeol in the arm, urgent. "Wait, you mean you have? What's down there?"
The din rising up from the rest of the pojangmacha customers, a reassuring cover of laughter and chatter, has gotten steadily louder through their stay. Worried he's missed Chanyeol's answer, Kyungsoo leans in closer, skimming his shoulder against Chanyeol's. But when he does speaks, Chanyeol makes himself impossible to miss. He presses his mouth against Kyungsoo's ear, blocking out everything else. "The secret to the EXO Units," he murmurs. "The Tree of Life."
For just a second, as he filters Chanyeol's words from Chanyeol's breath, boozy and warm against his skin, Kyungsoo is thrown back to a moment long ago, when he and Chanyeol and Baekhyun were in college drinking Friday nights after class, Chanyeol's heavy weight bearing down on both sides of memory. The years are ships scraping against each other, grinding Kyungsoo to a halt. "I don't-" Kyungsoo begins, but before he can finish, Chanyeol leans back. The air between them clears, bringing back the sound of the other customers, the odeng tang bubbling next to them, Chanyeol's older face and insincere grin.
"Or that's what Kr-Commander Wu says," Chanyeol cuts in. "I've never been."
"The Tree of Life?" Kyungsoo pours more soju, forgetting that his cup is still full. While he grabs at some napkins to sop up the mess, he tries to refocus his thoughts and ignore Chanyeol who, despite his feigned drunkenness, is watching him carefully, evaluating. "Is that code for something?"
Chanyeol shrugs. "Search me."
"Does this have something to do with the cores? Or the pilots?"
"Don't you ever wonder about why only two of the EXOs have cores?" Chanyeol pushes Kyungsoo's nearly overflowing cup at him and waits until Kyungsoo has drunk the full shot before continuing. "And how the EXOs choose their pilots?"
"Sure, but that's for-" It's Kyungsoo's turn to gesture towards the GeoFront. "Baekhyun and the Technical Division."
"Just more secrets and bullshit," Chanyeol insists. His face twists, the first truly sincere expression Kyungoo has seen on his face since his arrival in Seoul-3.
Disturbed, Kyungsoo puts a skewer of fishcakes on each of their plates, to distract himself before he says something too searching. "Maybe," he says. "But if it helps us beat the Angels-I mean, does it matter how much I really understand about the EXOs?"
"Or the Angels."
"As long as we're still alive at the end of the day."
"Kyungsoo's in charge, all's right with the world," Chanyeol mocks.
"This isn't a video game, Park Chanyeol," Kyungsoo hisses. He slams his soju cup against the table for emphasis. It's empty, so the only thing that spills over is Kyungsoo's fishcake skewer, which tumbles off his plate onto the floor. "We don't all get grand backstories, we don't have to unlock anything, this is reality."
Kyungsoo has never been a good with alcohol and, on a half-empty stomach and down most of a bottle of soju, intoxication hits him in a sluggish, unrepentant way, like liquid exhaustion making a mold out of his stomach. Chanyeol ebbs away, but their surroundings come into crystal clear focus, made sharper by Kyungsoo's self-conscious hope he isn't coming off as a drunkard. His forehead is too hot, which seems to add five pounds to his entire head. He sinks into his own shoulder only to realize it's actually Chanyeol's.
"Give me some credit," Chanyeol's voice rumbles under him. "I know it's not a videogame, not if we're using children as pieces on the board."
Kyungsoo laughs. "You're mixing your metaphors."
"You're drunk." Chanyeol puts his hand on Kyungsoo's face, like a shield. He might be trying to pet Kyungsoo's head, only the angle or his aim is off. Kyungsoo isn't sure, just settles into the semi-darkness and the salt smell of Chanyeol's fingers. "You know how we call them Comebacks?" Chanyeol muses. "After the First Impact, I mean. I wonder if it's not just an easy shorthand. Like, maybe, they're something out there trying to reach us, and they're going to keep coming back until we listen to them."
"To fight monsters, we make monsters in the shape of ourselves." That's not what Commander Wu had said, but Kyungsoo can't remember the exact wording. His own paraphrase feels true, in his drunken state.
Chanyeol nods, jostling Kyungsoo's head. "Sometimes I look at the EXO units, and it feels like I know them."
"Because you know the pilots."
"That must be it," Chanyeol says, unconvinced. Then, as if he is putting Kyungsoo to sleep, he sweeps his palm over Kyungsoo's eyes, drawing them shut. The pojangmacha lights are orange and neon green behind his eyelids. A leaden emptiness invades him, old and full of the years that connect this moment to him, to Chanyeol, to another night when Chanyeol tucked him into bed. He floats, seasick and calm, in between. Chanyeol's words thread through, saying, "but if we could somehow peel back the layers-"
Layers of flesh and armor, like secrets and bullshit, Kyungsoo muses. He falls into a black, sticky sleep.
-
The next day, KANGIN appears in the sky over Seoul-3. Zitao attacks the core, textbook with a progressive knife and a lithe spin kick, but it turns out that the actual body is in the shadow, and it swallows up Jongin in EXO KAI. Kyungsoo orders all the remaining N2 mines dropped on the shadow, but the shadow eats them up, until the unexploded metal bodies of the mines are like jagged teeth sticking up from the mouth of the street, a hideous smile mocking Kyungsoo and the rest of SME. From the GeoFront, Kyungsoo watches EXO KAI's remaining battery go from minutes, to seconds, to the negatives; then, the life support system slowly go from active, to hibernation, to dead. Zitao refuses to come out of his EXO, and pounds on the pavement surrounding the shadow body until his own battery runs out. Kyungsoo has to forcibly eject him from the cockpit, and the collection crew brings him back to Headquarters in triple cuffs.
While they wait on the bridge for a miracle, Zitao falls asleep, still in his plug suit. This isn't the first time Kyungsoo has waited for Jongin to return. The last time, he'd stayed awake the whole night, and, as if doing penance for an unknown sin, he tries to stay awake now. But eventually he, too, falls asleep. His dreams are hazy, hungover, tumultuous. In the distance, Jongin advances, pieces of KAI growing out of him like cancerous limbs: a crooked foot from one hip, a metal hand reaching out from his shoulder blades, casting a wing-like silhouette. He comes close to Kyungsoo, presses both palms to Kyungsoo's temples. Kyungsoo is lucid in his dream, but his body is mired waist-down in orange mud, and when he reaches out for Jongin, it rises to meet him, and suffocates him.
He wakes up to flesh ripping, wet and methodical, a rumbling in his ears that's a distant cousin to sound. Blinking, he watches on the monitor as a bloody figure squeezes out from the spherical body floating above the ground. The surface of the fake Angel twists, shreds like skin under large mechanical teeth. Blunt, well-articulated fingers tear at the sides. Kyungsoo is about to sound the alarms when he notices the glistening, red bundles that ooze out alongside EXO KAI's torso as it makes its way out of the Angel. "Organs?" Chanyeol whispers next to Kyungsoo, horrified. Kyungsoo shakes his head at first, but then EXO KAI growls, shaking its large head like a wild dog, and spits out towards the camera what is unquestionably an Angel core in the shape of a human heart. With one great leap, EXO KAI springs out of the eviscerated sphere of the Angel, making a beeline for the camera. At the last minute, it turns its head away and down. When it looks back at the camera, it has the Angel's heart in its jaws.
Within seconds, the heart is gone. The armor around EXO KAI's throat bulges. KAI lets out a roar, displaying a scrap of red tissue on one large mechanical incisor. Its teeth are faintly pink. Kyungsoo's heart seems to surge ahead without him. The screen swims out of his focus, and his fuzzy vision makes the patches of drying Angel blood on KAI's face look like a creeping rust.
"Did KAI..." Chanyeol asks, and then stops, twisting his mouth up in disgust and disbelief.
"Yeah," Kyungsoo whispers, mouth dry. "It just ate the Angel's heart."
Which is when Zitao lunges away from the railing of the bridge and begins to vomit. The retching almost drowns out the sound of EXO KAI's screams, but not before Kyungsoo notices that it - he - sounds just like Jongin the seconds before he was swallowed into the Angel. Magnified, distorted by the vocal cords of machinery, and so savage it could never belong to the boy who would wait for Kyungsoo to come home to play video games with him before going to sleep, but all the same, unquestionably Jongin.
-
When the rescue crew forcibly open EXO KAI's core, they find Jongin naked, unconscious, with a faint smile on his face. There's no sign of his plug suit. His hands are caked in blood all the way up to his elbows. They scrub him down, trying to find a wound, but other than a scratch on his forehead - "most likely from hitting the controls by accident," one of the technicians explains - Jongin's body is pristine.
"So whose blood is that?" Kyungsoo demands as he follows Jongin's gurney to the doors of the ICU.
Baekhyun, wordlessly, hands him the supercomputer analysis of the bits dug out from under Jongin's fingernails.
It's Pattern Pearl.
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