Of all the things they could have ended up arguing about, it was the water distribution.  Jinsu tried to be practical and Baekhyun insisted on being noble.

“You’re the girl here,” he said.  “You should have it.  And beside, you still have a head injury.”

“And you don’t?”

He stubbornly shoved the thermos back over to her.

She pushed it back.  “Baekhyun, you’re being an idiot.  Drink.”

“I’ve had a sip.  It’s your turn.”

“You’ve had a sip, and before that you hadn’t had water for a day.  Stop being such a tool.”

“There’s not enough water in there to rehydrate me anyway, Jinsu, but it might help you stay hydrated rather than ending up in the same condition.  Just have it.”

Jinsu wanted to club him over the head with the thermos flask.  If there hadn’t been the potential for making his injuries worse, she probably would have done.  Impatiently, she grabbed the thermos flask and stomped the two steps over to him, pinching his nose so that he would be forced to open his mouth.  She didn’t want to go through the argument a seventh time.

Baekhyun flailed.  “Not fair!  Okay, I’ll drink, you heathen!”

A little mistrustful, Jinsu let go of his nose, but her fingers hovered by his face just in case.  Baekhyun took the thermos off her and took a couple of gulps.  She narrowed her eyes at him, but he’d found the cap and started screwing it on.

“We ought at least to conserve it.  We don’t know when somebody’ll next come with more,” he reasoned.

It was better than nothing, so Jinsu backed down.

“We’ve only got bargaining power until the 1950s,” she said.  “That’s twenty hours away, absolute tops, probably a little less.  If we can get Minseok and Yixing back on board, I think a lot of problems will sort themselves out.  Particularly with Minhwan and Youngdo.  Actually, if we had Yixing, I think we’d be in with a fair chance of getting back to Jongdae and Sehun.  He’s a brilliant engineer and Minseok would probably support us.”

Baekhyun set the thermos flask aside.  “He knows your dad, so he probably would.”

“But we might not get anybody coming back for us until after the twenty-hour mark,” Jinsu went on.  “According to Kyungsoo’s calculations, home time is two hours on from the 1950s.  We’re most likely to see somebody turn up within that last couple of hours.”

“Then we need to break out of here.”

“. . . Yeah,” Jinsu agreed.  It was a fair point.

“And how are we going to do that?”

She shrugged.  “You’re brainy.  I was hoping you’d have a plan.”

He laughed softly.  “I wasn’t brainy enough to get myself out.”

“But you’re tied up and there’s two of us.  You were never going to do it on your own.”

Baekhyun’s stomach growled.  “We have time,” he said.  “We’ll think of something.”

They didn’t.  For another couple of hours, or maybe it was longer, they attempted to discuss it, but they kept running into the stumbling block of Baekhyun not being able to move without somebody cutting the rope, and then they got bored of it and gave up, Jinsu silently cursing Baekhyun’s yawns for being so contagious.  He nodded off long before she did, his sweat-covered hair plastered to his forehead.

Jinsu sat there for a bit, wondering what to do.  She was tired as well, having not slept since she was put in the storeroom, and now that she didn’t have Baekhyun to talk to, she was starting to feel uncomfortable and dirty in her clothes.  She was no way near as sweaty as Baekhyun was (it was sort of gross, but she didn’t think any of his were actually dry anymore), but her t-shirt was sticking to her in places, her jeans uncomfortably hot, and she was becoming more and more aware of the fact that she hadn’t had a shower since before Youngdo had nearly killed her in the snow.  The worst thing about broken fingers, though, was that she hadn’t been able to tie her hair back, and it was like she could feel every molecule of grease in it against her scalp and the back of her neck.  She was restive enough if she got caught out in the rain without a hood or hat (though hat hair looked awful) or umbrella because of the way her waterlogged hair would get knotted with city-polluted water and hang in rats’ tails that dripped down her back, but she was hot and clammy and her hair was clinging to her in much the same fashion now, and rather than the not-quite-refreshing-feel of dirty water and the knowledge that she could wash it all out when she got home, she had the icky sticky feeling of sweat in it and she had no idea when she’d get out of the storeroom, let alone have an opportunity to clean herself up.

It made her uncomfortable and fidgety, and the more uncomfortable and fidgety she was, the harder it was to copy Baekhyun and fall asleep.  She tried twiddling her thumbs.  That worked until she caught sight of the dirt under her fingernails.  They needed cutting.  She could get rid of the dirt quickly by biting them, but that was unhealthy and disgusting and a bad habit and her fingernails wouldn’t be neat, so she didn’t.  Instead, she ended up playing with one of the pieces of metal that was on the floor between her and Baekhyun.

Not long after, Baekhyun’s head drifted down to the side and his body slumped towards her.  She braced her shoulder, ready to take the brunt of it, but it never quite came: he jerked to a halt and then sort of hung there, his bound arm holding him up in a manner that actually looked a little painful.

She really needed to do something about that, she thought, picking at the piece of metal.

A tiny bit of it came off and stuck under her fingernail.  Irritated, she dug the fleck out with her thumbnail and flicked it away, looking at the lump of metal with some confusion.  It wasn’t supposed to flake off like that.  It was metal.  Or was it rock, or covered in dirt or something?

Fresh, shiny silver metal gleamed at her.  Definitely metal.  She tapped on another part of the lump with her index finger.  Nope, not dirt.  But then—

And then she remembered Minseok taking her around the machine, and she scrambled to her feet.  Lithium.  It was lithium.  It must either have been rescued after the explosions in the engine rooms, or there’d just been extras kept in this little storeroom, which was more likely since lithium was so reactive.

She looked