Doomsday for thief_nim
For: thief_nim
Title: Doomsday
Pairing(s): Chanyeol-centric, Implied Chanyeol/Kris
Rating: R
Warning(s): multiple character deaths
Length: 3.1k
Summary: It’s a last chance of sorts. Save a planet, re-colonize there. Bring their species back from the brink of extinction. (sort of a pathcode/mama!au)
Author's note: This is unbetad and hastily written! I apologize.
It's a last chance of sorts.
Save a planet, re-colonize there, eventually to bring back their species from the brink of extinction, at the sacrifice of using their powers publicly.
The same race -- the same monsters -- that had destroyed their own planet, attacking another. A chance for justice, for revenge. A chance to get back the dignity that is theirs.
A chance to do some good while still working for themselves, a stranded race of some twelve people, locked away on a forever orbiting ship.
The planet is called Earth. A slower moving society from the looks of it, intelligent but more primitive than some. It will be easy to assimilate their simplified body structures, to live amongst them as one of their own.
Kyungsoo has coined them 'Skorski" after a kind of creature from their home planet, two-footed and large-eyed. It works, though Skorski's cannot talk, and these creatures can. A complicated hub of languages at that, but one that only takes Kyungsoo three days to program into their brains.
It had probably taken less for them, but they're on track, moving quickly and ready to hide themselves where they've tracked the sentinels. They're scattered throughout the world in colonies, hubs of industrialization and of residence, a curious thing to the Exorlites that are used to things being sanctioned, separated, work one place, living the other.
It's not going to be easy, fighting the Irfings, but they can certainly try, can infiltrate and kill the ones on the surface, and in turn cut off communication, stopping any more from coming down from space.
It seems like a set plan, ten of them going to the different colonies, with the other two moving between, completely hidden and waiting to intercept. Lu Han is to be stationed in China, switching between places and in between Exorlites. It had been a tough decision for him, vehemently arguing that he be placed with someone and not by himself, but losing in the end to the common sense provided by descriptions of the colonies.
It's Yifan who travels to the surface first, clocked and untraceable by Irfing vessels. It's a learning mission, to understand the climate, the population, the slang of different languages not understood by their computers.
He explains to them what each of the colonies they'll be visiting is like, ordering Yixing to place memory chips inside them, ones that allow them to act as if they've lived on Earth their entire lives. It's a strange thing to get used to, juggling one's own memories with the memories of another person, an invented human that likes human things, and loves like a human.
Chanyeol can't quite get the hang of it, forgetting which memories are his own and which memories aren't, repeatedly relaying the wrong story back to a frustrated yet patient Yixing, who reminds him over and over that humans cannot use magic, and that he's a wanderer.
Chanyeol is also the only one without a city to travel to, instead stationed in a hot and airy climate, a forest surrounded by desert. It's a dangerous place for someone with fire capabilities, but that's the point.
"If anything happens, sit the entire place on fire. Kill all life signatures near you, every single one." Yifan had told him, before turning to the rest of the group. "Kill anything that could be a sentinel. If human lives are lost during this, it is but a sacrifice for the sake of their entire world. If it's alive, it dies."
And that's the difficult part. The sentinels are going to be disguised as humans also, under a cloak of glamour, stolen magic from an elven race the Irfings had once conquered. Stolen bits of each race they encounter and destroy, grim reminders to those everywhere of species once existing, of things that are no longer.
☆
The first few days on Earth go by easily. Their mental bond is intact, and everyone is settling in nicely, fake lives in place and trackers set, looking for the sentinels. They have exactly one month to find and kill the Irfings on Earth before the entire fleet reaches the edge of the atmosphere.
It's taking Chanyeol a little longer to adjust, not quiet used to the solitude of the forest, sitting outside the small house Yifan had directed him to and staring out into the open. He still has the mind link, still hears the others chattering around but it's not the same without physical bodies with him. They've been with each other so long, cramped into their ship that he's going through a strange sense of withdrawal having no one else around.
It's kind of depressing, but also kind of relaxing, and Chanyeol leans back, cigarette in hand as part of his human mask, taking puffs and ignoring the way his now human lungs scream. As an Exorlite it probably wouldn't bother him, the chemicals and flame of the cigarette, but with his body mostly human it ignites a pain every time he breathes in. Chanyeol can't understand why humans routinely use these things, but he supposes every species has its weird addictions.
Yifan checks on him from time to time, to replenish his energy and to check the trackers, muttering about Jongin's complicated handiwork. It's nice while he's there, and Chanyeol wishes he could stay, but there are others to watch out for, other trackers that need to checked, and Lu Han can't cover them all.
The others, they have company. Humans that can talk to them or hug them, but here's Chanyeol stuck in the middle of nowhere with only the company of a possible sentinel. It's depressing, but he can't complain, not when they're situated on a planet that may fall to the same disastrous end as Exo.
And yet he's waiting for it to happen. Has it in his head that maybe this won't work. The plan is smart, their methods are practiced, and yet how will the shattered remnants of a race stop another from doing what it's been doing for lightyears?
He's not the only one unsure, curling up in bed to sleep on the fourth night of finding nothing and listening to Minseok and Baekhyun bicker back and forth about a possible sighting. He can hear the bitterness in Minseok's voice and the desperation in Baekhyun's as he tries to convince Minseok that they have a chance.
What was it that they called this in their slang debriefing? Oh yes, a suicide mission.
☆
They find a sentinel the next day, or rather a sentinel finds them. Two of them activate at once, one in Berlin and one in Lyon, crawling from a television, flying invisible through the streets. It's not climactic at all, just a scream, a crackle and the mind bond goes dead on two lines.
It's Jongin who reaches both of them first to relay the news, to confirm that the two sentinels have won. Lu Han is screaming, hysterical, somewhere in Yunnan with Yixing, but Yifan keeps himself together, says that he'll take over in Lyon, that Lu Han can re station himself in Berlin.
It'll wear them thin, but Jongin can leap between them easily to replenish them and keep their human disguises functioning. He can't tell if the trackers are malfunctioning or if the Irfing are getting smarter, but they don't have time to find out.
The reality sets in to the rest of them now, and not just Chanyeol, and he's forced to shut down his mind bond and lay in silence, their words too much for him.
Before he falls asleep, he glances at the grid beside him, the tracking map beeping red. A sentinel is nearby. It's close, some twenty feet away from the little house, but unmoving.
Chanyeol ignores it and goes to sleep, not even bothering to report it.
☆
Chanyeol wakes up to another dead line, a part of his brain silent when he turns on the mind bond. He's groggy, mind a mess of broken memories, like an android with scrambled circuits. It takes him a full minute to figure out who's missing, and when he does a part of him crumbles slightly, breaths coming out shaky as he crawls out of the bed and to the tracker.
Their healer is gone -- taken away by the sentinel -- and now they're extra fucked, extra hopeless, left to rely on conventional methods of healing, human methods that do nothing in the long run.
Lu Han is missing. Yifan says to Chanyeol, a private message sent over a private line. He's missing but he's still in the bond, he's still alive.
But if he's unresponsive, how do we know he's not on the brink of being gone. Is all Chanyeol sends back, eyes heavy and lungs shallow as he watches the red dot on his tracker move slightly, closer to him. The sentinel knows I'm here. It's near where I'm stationed.
Fuck. Yifan responds, and Chanyeol almost smiles, image in his mind of Yifan stumbling over something in his haste to reach his own tracker, the one that controls the others. I'll send Jongin over to give you a wrist brace, make it easier to channel your flames in human form.
And Jongin does come, materializing in the middle of Chanyeol's cabin, hair ruffled and falling over his face, eyes dark and serious. Seriousness never did suit Jongin, in Chanyeol's opinion, but seriousness never suits anyone who's normally a bundle of joy. He's holding something in his hands, a wrist brace of sorts, but one that looks like a claw.
Chanyeol remembers it well despite only having worn it once, back in the days when he was still being trained, when they were all being trained to use their individual powers. They're good memories; Minseok accidentally turning one of Lu Han's legs into an icicle, Jongin teleporting half of his body, Chanyeol burning down an entire building. They're funny, good for nostalgia.
Jongin doesn't speak much, attaching the device to Chanyeol's arm and closing each claw-like finger over his own. His hand lingers though, around Chanyeol's own, and he looks up at him with bright, hopeful eyes.
"Don't go in for the kill quickly. That's what they're expecting." He says, glancing at the grid on the bedside table. "That's what failed the others. They saw the red dot and they went for it. You have to wait it out. Let it come to you."
"How will I know when it's close enough?" Chanyeol mutters, staring at the unmoving red dot, glowing like a beacon of his impending death.
"When you see it outside your door." Jongin says simply, smiling sadly. "The second you see the sentinel, set the place on fire. Just like Yifan said, leave nothing behind."
Chanyeol nods, knowing that the conversation is over, and that Jongin is turning on the spot, ready to be on the other side of the planet, to give similar instructions to those left, to those who lie in wait of their future.
Nothing happens, at least not for Chanyeol. He waits, and the dot stays in one place, as if they're playing a game of sorts. Two life forms dancing around each other, waiting for the chance to kill. His brace makes it uncomfortable to sleep, and he never knows where to put his arm. It's heavy, imposing, limiting.
The next sentinel strikes Almaty, throws Jongdae from a building, rules him out to the humans as an accidental death during a thunderstorm, a tourist struck from high up. His death is quick, quiet, no noise on the line, before it goes dead.
It's followed by good news though, Yifan crackling over the bond, speaking directly to all of them that a sentinel is dead, struck by his own hands.
There's hope, a slight hope that some of them might make it, but they're outnumbered now, more sentinels than Exorlites to fight them. The words "suicide mission" flit across Chanyeols
confused brain once more, images deployed from the briefing of airborn ships careening into the ground.
Chanyeol just sits and waits, ignores Yifan speaking to him on the private line. He goes for a walk, takes the tracker with him despite it being heavy, watches his dot and the red dot, not wanting to be caught in an ambush.
It doesn't move, staying a good distance from him. He can breathes easier outdoors, free hand trailing over tree bark and eyes taking in the nature of this planet.
It's a gorgeous planet, all valleys and trees and wildlife, different the harsher climate of Exo, and yet he finds himself selfishly despising it. He misses even the coldest winds of Exo, misses even the worst days huddled for warmth with Yifan and Jongin in their shared capsule.
The red dot moves in the corner of his eye, slightly closer to him. Chanyeol panics, backtracking to the cabin and slamming the door, human infused part of his brain convincing him that it's safer with the door closed.
He doesn't sleep that night, too afraid to look away from the device, mind bond strangely silent in his ears. He wonders if everyone else is doing the same.
☆
Yifan visits him the next day, holds him when they recover from the shock of Lu Han's line going dead. It should be comforting but Chanyeol is scared, shakes out of his arms and fixes him with a glare, uncharacteristic and desperate.
"We should give up." He says, "We should leave now while most of us are still alive and just live on the ship."
"We can't give up now." Yifan snaps, eyebrows furrowing and lips pursed. "Sacrifice is necessary in cases like these. We've killed one, we can kill more."
"They're picking us off." Chanyeol says, voice lower than usual, tired but restrained. "One by one. Until there's none left. This isn't sacrifice when they're winning. And how many more sentinels will they send if we kill them all? How do we know they'll give up and leave?"
"They might not, but we'll be in control. We can breed, repopulate ourselves within the human race." Yifan insists, giving Chanyeol a look, one that makes him feel small, childlike. "You're scared and upset. You're not thinking properly."
Yifan stands up, glancing at Chanyeol's tracker, leaning forward to run his fingers over the rubber lining of his brace.
"I need to fly to London, switch places with Jongin." He announces, drawing a cloak over his shoulders and stopping near the door. "He'll check up on you. Don't do anything stupid."
And when he leaves, Chanyeol feels more alone than ever.
☆
Everything happens fast after that. Four sentinels strike at once, unannounced. In succession, four lines go dead at once also. Kyungsoo, Zitao, Sehun, Joonmyun.
Chanyeol doesn't ask for what happened, just collapses onto the bed in the cabin and lets his tears fall. It's a strange thing, tears. Exorlites don't cry, but humans do, and Chanyeol panics at first, before remembering that this is how they show emotion.
It's a horrible feeling, heaving sobs and knees brought up to his chest, not even bothering to look at the tracker. It's hopeless. Everything has gone wrong and now there's only three of them left.
Jongin, Yifan, and him.
Chanyeol turns off the mind bond, ignoring them and his duties, wandering out into the trees. He doesn't bring the tracker with him, ready to torch the entire country if he sees anyone, ready to torch himself with it.
Because really, even if they kill the rest at this point, even if they recolonize an entire race, and save another, just the three of them,they've lost those closest to them. Chanyeol is strong, but not this strong.
And it happens, a body steps out from the trees, human and yet not, eyes flashing a metallic kind of silver, unnatural to humans. Chanyeol doesn't wait, just lifts his wrist and activates his power, watching the sentinel go up in flames, reverting to it's original skeletal body in the process, primitive and shrieking.
He sinks to the grass and watches around him as the flames touch everything. The grass, the trees, the very sky above him.
I've killed one. He says over the mind bond. Arizona is on fire.
The response he gets is a scream. A shriek over the line, crackling and distorted but somehow clear, as if it's right next to him.
Jongin's line goes dead right when Chanyeol sees him fall to the ground, in front of him and so near.
Yifan is on the line, swearing loudly, and Chanyeol gets to his feet, eyes wide and hands shaking as he tears the brace off and throws it to the ground, unable to speak into the mind bond, no longer private because it's just them now.
It's not your fault. Yifan says over the line, barely decipherable over the roaring of blood in Chanyeol's ears. You did what I told you to do. You had no way of knowing Jongin was on his way to see you.
And yet it is Chanyeol's fault. He hadn't brought the tracking device with him. He'd been selfish, caught up. He'd killed a sentinel, but he'd killed his best friend in the process.
The forest is still burning when Yifan lands softly beside him, touching the ground for only a moment before lifting Chanyeol into the air with him. Into the air and away from the planet, back towards the ship.
"We're going back." Yifan says, slowly, tentatively, unlike himself. "The planet is in their hands now."
Chanyeol wants to say a lot of things, wants to scream, curse, to yell that he was right, but he just goes limp instead, let's himself be carried.
He wakes up as himself again, human body gone, human memories gone, ears once again pointed and limbs once again at their normal number. He feels more comfortable this way, waving his legs around, but the memory of his friends is fresh.
"It's just us now." He says, to no one in particular but also to Yifan, who sits a distance away from him, eyes on him but far away, looking into the grey walls of the ship as if looking through them.
"It is."
"What will we do?" Chanyeol asks, again to no one in particular, but again Yifan answers, voice breaking only slightly.
"We'll stop trying to be heroes." Is what he says, releasing air through his neck slits heavily, something Chanyeol's briefing tells him is called a sigh. At least in human terminology. "We'll find a planet and assimilate. We'll live."
"Just us two."
"Do you forgive me?" Yifan asks, and his voice is wheezing, a sign of stress, a sign that he's as devastated as Chanyeol is.
"Of course I do." Chanyeol answers, lying back down on the jelly bed and also sighing. "I always will."
And he does, in time.
Final author's note: An explanation: The sentinels are a primitive kind of Irfing - A highly intelligent alien race - that acts as a decoy and weapon for them. Exorlites have 4 legs and 4 arms, with elegant facial features.
Title: Doomsday
Pairing(s): Chanyeol-centric, Implied Chanyeol/Kris
Rating: R
Warning(s): multiple character deaths
Length: 3.1k
Summary: It’s a last chance of sorts. Save a planet, re-colonize there. Bring their species back from the brink of extinction. (sort of a pathcode/mama!au)
Author's note: This is unbetad and hastily written! I apologize.
It's a last chance of sorts.
Save a planet, re-colonize there, eventually to bring back their species from the brink of extinction, at the sacrifice of using their powers publicly.
The same race -- the same monsters -- that had destroyed their own planet, attacking another. A chance for justice, for revenge. A chance to get back the dignity that is theirs.
A chance to do some good while still working for themselves, a stranded race of some twelve people, locked away on a forever orbiting ship.
The planet is called Earth. A slower moving society from the looks of it, intelligent but more primitive than some. It will be easy to assimilate their simplified body structures, to live amongst them as one of their own.
Kyungsoo has coined them 'Skorski" after a kind of creature from their home planet, two-footed and large-eyed. It works, though Skorski's cannot talk, and these creatures can. A complicated hub of languages at that, but one that only takes Kyungsoo three days to program into their brains.
It had probably taken less for them, but they're on track, moving quickly and ready to hide themselves where they've tracked the sentinels. They're scattered throughout the world in colonies, hubs of industrialization and of residence, a curious thing to the Exorlites that are used to things being sanctioned, separated, work one place, living the other.
It's not going to be easy, fighting the Irfings, but they can certainly try, can infiltrate and kill the ones on the surface, and in turn cut off communication, stopping any more from coming down from space.
It seems like a set plan, ten of them going to the different colonies, with the other two moving between, completely hidden and waiting to intercept. Lu Han is to be stationed in China, switching between places and in between Exorlites. It had been a tough decision for him, vehemently arguing that he be placed with someone and not by himself, but losing in the end to the common sense provided by descriptions of the colonies.
It's Yifan who travels to the surface first, clocked and untraceable by Irfing vessels. It's a learning mission, to understand the climate, the population, the slang of different languages not understood by their computers.
He explains to them what each of the colonies they'll be visiting is like, ordering Yixing to place memory chips inside them, ones that allow them to act as if they've lived on Earth their entire lives. It's a strange thing to get used to, juggling one's own memories with the memories of another person, an invented human that likes human things, and loves like a human.
Chanyeol can't quite get the hang of it, forgetting which memories are his own and which memories aren't, repeatedly relaying the wrong story back to a frustrated yet patient Yixing, who reminds him over and over that humans cannot use magic, and that he's a wanderer.
Chanyeol is also the only one without a city to travel to, instead stationed in a hot and airy climate, a forest surrounded by desert. It's a dangerous place for someone with fire capabilities, but that's the point.
"If anything happens, sit the entire place on fire. Kill all life signatures near you, every single one." Yifan had told him, before turning to the rest of the group. "Kill anything that could be a sentinel. If human lives are lost during this, it is but a sacrifice for the sake of their entire world. If it's alive, it dies."
And that's the difficult part. The sentinels are going to be disguised as humans also, under a cloak of glamour, stolen magic from an elven race the Irfings had once conquered. Stolen bits of each race they encounter and destroy, grim reminders to those everywhere of species once existing, of things that are no longer.
☆
The first few days on Earth go by easily. Their mental bond is intact, and everyone is settling in nicely, fake lives in place and trackers set, looking for the sentinels. They have exactly one month to find and kill the Irfings on Earth before the entire fleet reaches the edge of the atmosphere.
It's taking Chanyeol a little longer to adjust, not quiet used to the solitude of the forest, sitting outside the small house Yifan had directed him to and staring out into the open. He still has the mind link, still hears the others chattering around but it's not the same without physical bodies with him. They've been with each other so long, cramped into their ship that he's going through a strange sense of withdrawal having no one else around.
It's kind of depressing, but also kind of relaxing, and Chanyeol leans back, cigarette in hand as part of his human mask, taking puffs and ignoring the way his now human lungs scream. As an Exorlite it probably wouldn't bother him, the chemicals and flame of the cigarette, but with his body mostly human it ignites a pain every time he breathes in. Chanyeol can't understand why humans routinely use these things, but he supposes every species has its weird addictions.
Yifan checks on him from time to time, to replenish his energy and to check the trackers, muttering about Jongin's complicated handiwork. It's nice while he's there, and Chanyeol wishes he could stay, but there are others to watch out for, other trackers that need to checked, and Lu Han can't cover them all.
The others, they have company. Humans that can talk to them or hug them, but here's Chanyeol stuck in the middle of nowhere with only the company of a possible sentinel. It's depressing, but he can't complain, not when they're situated on a planet that may fall to the same disastrous end as Exo.
And yet he's waiting for it to happen. Has it in his head that maybe this won't work. The plan is smart, their methods are practiced, and yet how will the shattered remnants of a race stop another from doing what it's been doing for lightyears?
He's not the only one unsure, curling up in bed to sleep on the fourth night of finding nothing and listening to Minseok and Baekhyun bicker back and forth about a possible sighting. He can hear the bitterness in Minseok's voice and the desperation in Baekhyun's as he tries to convince Minseok that they have a chance.
What was it that they called this in their slang debriefing? Oh yes, a suicide mission.
☆
They find a sentinel the next day, or rather a sentinel finds them. Two of them activate at once, one in Berlin and one in Lyon, crawling from a television, flying invisible through the streets. It's not climactic at all, just a scream, a crackle and the mind bond goes dead on two lines.
It's Jongin who reaches both of them first to relay the news, to confirm that the two sentinels have won. Lu Han is screaming, hysterical, somewhere in Yunnan with Yixing, but Yifan keeps himself together, says that he'll take over in Lyon, that Lu Han can re station himself in Berlin.
It'll wear them thin, but Jongin can leap between them easily to replenish them and keep their human disguises functioning. He can't tell if the trackers are malfunctioning or if the Irfing are getting smarter, but they don't have time to find out.
The reality sets in to the rest of them now, and not just Chanyeol, and he's forced to shut down his mind bond and lay in silence, their words too much for him.
Before he falls asleep, he glances at the grid beside him, the tracking map beeping red. A sentinel is nearby. It's close, some twenty feet away from the little house, but unmoving.
Chanyeol ignores it and goes to sleep, not even bothering to report it.
☆
Chanyeol wakes up to another dead line, a part of his brain silent when he turns on the mind bond. He's groggy, mind a mess of broken memories, like an android with scrambled circuits. It takes him a full minute to figure out who's missing, and when he does a part of him crumbles slightly, breaths coming out shaky as he crawls out of the bed and to the tracker.
Their healer is gone -- taken away by the sentinel -- and now they're extra fucked, extra hopeless, left to rely on conventional methods of healing, human methods that do nothing in the long run.
Lu Han is missing. Yifan says to Chanyeol, a private message sent over a private line. He's missing but he's still in the bond, he's still alive.
But if he's unresponsive, how do we know he's not on the brink of being gone. Is all Chanyeol sends back, eyes heavy and lungs shallow as he watches the red dot on his tracker move slightly, closer to him. The sentinel knows I'm here. It's near where I'm stationed.
Fuck. Yifan responds, and Chanyeol almost smiles, image in his mind of Yifan stumbling over something in his haste to reach his own tracker, the one that controls the others. I'll send Jongin over to give you a wrist brace, make it easier to channel your flames in human form.
And Jongin does come, materializing in the middle of Chanyeol's cabin, hair ruffled and falling over his face, eyes dark and serious. Seriousness never did suit Jongin, in Chanyeol's opinion, but seriousness never suits anyone who's normally a bundle of joy. He's holding something in his hands, a wrist brace of sorts, but one that looks like a claw.
Chanyeol remembers it well despite only having worn it once, back in the days when he was still being trained, when they were all being trained to use their individual powers. They're good memories; Minseok accidentally turning one of Lu Han's legs into an icicle, Jongin teleporting half of his body, Chanyeol burning down an entire building. They're funny, good for nostalgia.
Jongin doesn't speak much, attaching the device to Chanyeol's arm and closing each claw-like finger over his own. His hand lingers though, around Chanyeol's own, and he looks up at him with bright, hopeful eyes.
"Don't go in for the kill quickly. That's what they're expecting." He says, glancing at the grid on the bedside table. "That's what failed the others. They saw the red dot and they went for it. You have to wait it out. Let it come to you."
"How will I know when it's close enough?" Chanyeol mutters, staring at the unmoving red dot, glowing like a beacon of his impending death.
"When you see it outside your door." Jongin says simply, smiling sadly. "The second you see the sentinel, set the place on fire. Just like Yifan said, leave nothing behind."
Chanyeol nods, knowing that the conversation is over, and that Jongin is turning on the spot, ready to be on the other side of the planet, to give similar instructions to those left, to those who lie in wait of their future.
Nothing happens, at least not for Chanyeol. He waits, and the dot stays in one place, as if they're playing a game of sorts. Two life forms dancing around each other, waiting for the chance to kill. His brace makes it uncomfortable to sleep, and he never knows where to put his arm. It's heavy, imposing, limiting.
The next sentinel strikes Almaty, throws Jongdae from a building, rules him out to the humans as an accidental death during a thunderstorm, a tourist struck from high up. His death is quick, quiet, no noise on the line, before it goes dead.
It's followed by good news though, Yifan crackling over the bond, speaking directly to all of them that a sentinel is dead, struck by his own hands.
There's hope, a slight hope that some of them might make it, but they're outnumbered now, more sentinels than Exorlites to fight them. The words "suicide mission" flit across Chanyeols
confused brain once more, images deployed from the briefing of airborn ships careening into the ground.
Chanyeol just sits and waits, ignores Yifan speaking to him on the private line. He goes for a walk, takes the tracker with him despite it being heavy, watches his dot and the red dot, not wanting to be caught in an ambush.
It doesn't move, staying a good distance from him. He can breathes easier outdoors, free hand trailing over tree bark and eyes taking in the nature of this planet.
It's a gorgeous planet, all valleys and trees and wildlife, different the harsher climate of Exo, and yet he finds himself selfishly despising it. He misses even the coldest winds of Exo, misses even the worst days huddled for warmth with Yifan and Jongin in their shared capsule.
The red dot moves in the corner of his eye, slightly closer to him. Chanyeol panics, backtracking to the cabin and slamming the door, human infused part of his brain convincing him that it's safer with the door closed.
He doesn't sleep that night, too afraid to look away from the device, mind bond strangely silent in his ears. He wonders if everyone else is doing the same.
☆
Yifan visits him the next day, holds him when they recover from the shock of Lu Han's line going dead. It should be comforting but Chanyeol is scared, shakes out of his arms and fixes him with a glare, uncharacteristic and desperate.
"We should give up." He says, "We should leave now while most of us are still alive and just live on the ship."
"We can't give up now." Yifan snaps, eyebrows furrowing and lips pursed. "Sacrifice is necessary in cases like these. We've killed one, we can kill more."
"They're picking us off." Chanyeol says, voice lower than usual, tired but restrained. "One by one. Until there's none left. This isn't sacrifice when they're winning. And how many more sentinels will they send if we kill them all? How do we know they'll give up and leave?"
"They might not, but we'll be in control. We can breed, repopulate ourselves within the human race." Yifan insists, giving Chanyeol a look, one that makes him feel small, childlike. "You're scared and upset. You're not thinking properly."
Yifan stands up, glancing at Chanyeol's tracker, leaning forward to run his fingers over the rubber lining of his brace.
"I need to fly to London, switch places with Jongin." He announces, drawing a cloak over his shoulders and stopping near the door. "He'll check up on you. Don't do anything stupid."
And when he leaves, Chanyeol feels more alone than ever.
☆
Everything happens fast after that. Four sentinels strike at once, unannounced. In succession, four lines go dead at once also. Kyungsoo, Zitao, Sehun, Joonmyun.
Chanyeol doesn't ask for what happened, just collapses onto the bed in the cabin and lets his tears fall. It's a strange thing, tears. Exorlites don't cry, but humans do, and Chanyeol panics at first, before remembering that this is how they show emotion.
It's a horrible feeling, heaving sobs and knees brought up to his chest, not even bothering to look at the tracker. It's hopeless. Everything has gone wrong and now there's only three of them left.
Jongin, Yifan, and him.
Chanyeol turns off the mind bond, ignoring them and his duties, wandering out into the trees. He doesn't bring the tracker with him, ready to torch the entire country if he sees anyone, ready to torch himself with it.
Because really, even if they kill the rest at this point, even if they recolonize an entire race, and save another, just the three of them,they've lost those closest to them. Chanyeol is strong, but not this strong.
And it happens, a body steps out from the trees, human and yet not, eyes flashing a metallic kind of silver, unnatural to humans. Chanyeol doesn't wait, just lifts his wrist and activates his power, watching the sentinel go up in flames, reverting to it's original skeletal body in the process, primitive and shrieking.
He sinks to the grass and watches around him as the flames touch everything. The grass, the trees, the very sky above him.
I've killed one. He says over the mind bond. Arizona is on fire.
The response he gets is a scream. A shriek over the line, crackling and distorted but somehow clear, as if it's right next to him.
Jongin's line goes dead right when Chanyeol sees him fall to the ground, in front of him and so near.
Yifan is on the line, swearing loudly, and Chanyeol gets to his feet, eyes wide and hands shaking as he tears the brace off and throws it to the ground, unable to speak into the mind bond, no longer private because it's just them now.
It's not your fault. Yifan says over the line, barely decipherable over the roaring of blood in Chanyeol's ears. You did what I told you to do. You had no way of knowing Jongin was on his way to see you.
And yet it is Chanyeol's fault. He hadn't brought the tracking device with him. He'd been selfish, caught up. He'd killed a sentinel, but he'd killed his best friend in the process.
The forest is still burning when Yifan lands softly beside him, touching the ground for only a moment before lifting Chanyeol into the air with him. Into the air and away from the planet, back towards the ship.
"We're going back." Yifan says, slowly, tentatively, unlike himself. "The planet is in their hands now."
Chanyeol wants to say a lot of things, wants to scream, curse, to yell that he was right, but he just goes limp instead, let's himself be carried.
He wakes up as himself again, human body gone, human memories gone, ears once again pointed and limbs once again at their normal number. He feels more comfortable this way, waving his legs around, but the memory of his friends is fresh.
"It's just us now." He says, to no one in particular but also to Yifan, who sits a distance away from him, eyes on him but far away, looking into the grey walls of the ship as if looking through them.
"It is."
"What will we do?" Chanyeol asks, again to no one in particular, but again Yifan answers, voice breaking only slightly.
"We'll stop trying to be heroes." Is what he says, releasing air through his neck slits heavily, something Chanyeol's briefing tells him is called a sigh. At least in human terminology. "We'll find a planet and assimilate. We'll live."
"Just us two."
"Do you forgive me?" Yifan asks, and his voice is wheezing, a sign of stress, a sign that he's as devastated as Chanyeol is.
"Of course I do." Chanyeol answers, lying back down on the jelly bed and also sighing. "I always will."
And he does, in time.
Final author's note: An explanation: The sentinels are a primitive kind of Irfing - A highly intelligent alien race - that acts as a decoy and weapon for them. Exorlites have 4 legs and 4 arms, with elegant facial features.