“Have you gotten anything yet?”

Youngjae squeezes his eyes shut and takes a breath- it’s the tenth time someone’s asked him that this morning, and he swears, if another person opens their mouth to ask it again, he’s going to explode.

“No,” he grits out without turning around, and two pairs of feet shuffle awkwardly in the spacious room quietly. “I told Jaebum-hyung this morning that I’d make it a point to inform everyone the moment Jackson contacts us, so if you’d just leave for the time being and let me do my work-…”

“Okay, okay,” Bambam mutters, and Youngjae lets out a breath as he and Yugyeom exit the room. He’s spent the last nine hours scouring the entire of Seoul by satellite (because they’re stuck in the Daegu base and can’t possibly do the stronger localised infrared sweeps, can they), doing everything he possibly can to find Jackson, from facial recognition checks in the area around the complex he’d been assigned to infiltrate, to hacking into CCTVs in the surrounding office buildings to scan for sightings of the older man (hell of a piece of work on a Friday morning), but to no avail. His head is aching with the bright glare of the monitor, and his stomach rumbles from the lack of solid food for the past twelve hours other than the sandwich Jinyoung had dropped by with some time ago, despite the fact that he’s been doing this almost all his life.

The foil and plastic in Youngjae’s hands crinkle invasively as he pops another capsule out and tosses it into his mouth absently, washing it down with cold black oversweet coffee. For a moment again he wishes he’d found a way around removing the signal trace on Jackson’s physical body so he’d be able to track his presence there without a hitch, but the superior technology in the laboratories had raised suspicions that they’d be able to detect the signature just as easily as Youngjae could follow it, so that had to go. While they could be assured about Jackson being untraceable, though, this meant that Youngjae was going in blind, except for the constant feed of noise through his earpiece, that’d very abruptly (and noticeably) stopped about eleven hours ago.

The door opens for the eleventh time in three hours, and Youngjae whips around, eyes narrowed, ready to snarl out an I haven’t heard anything so get lost before I castrate you, before Jaebum steps in, and the tech specialist recedes grumpily into his comfortable swivel chair.

“I assume you haven’t gotten anything from Jackson,” Jaebum observes pensively, wrinkling his nose at the mess of candy bar wrappers, stained coffee mugs and the plate with the crumbs of the sandwich Jinyoung had brought earlier. Predictably, he starts compulsively sweeping the rubbish together with a tissue and tossing it into the bin under the table, despite the situation at hand.

“No,” Youngjae rubs at his eyes tiredly, slumped in his chair. “I’ve tried everything, hyung, facial recognition, surveillance, I even contacted Yerin in the Seoul base to ask if Jackson had tried to make contact- there’s nothing. It’s like he’s trying not to be found.”

“Maybe that’s it,” Jaebum shrugs, resting a hand on Youngjae’s shoulder. “Maybe he thinks they were listening in to your conversation, or that he’d been detected.”

“Well then he should’ve said something, or alerted us, right?” Youngjae snaps, drawing his legs up on the chair, studying the satellite maps moodily.

“You know him, he probably just forgot,” Jaebum doesn’t sound entirely convinced, and that’s the reason Youngjae chooses to shut up for the next few minutes, eyes properly closed for the first time in what feels like days, head buzzing from the caffeine and meds.

"It was just supposed to be a dumb espionage mission," the tech specialist mumbles drowsily. "Get in, set the bugs, give us access to the important files, get out. He's done this loads of times- how could anything have gone wrong?"

"Nothing's ever supposed to go wrong, Jae, but things don't always work out that way," Jaebum reminds him, still squinting at the wide screen, trying to make things out.

Youngjae’s trying to relax by running through the different possibilities in his head, calculating the probabilities of each action and comparing each statistic to come up with the most probable sequence of events, when Jaebum’s voice brings him back down to Earth, hand urgently shaking his shoulder.

“…that red light, over there, what does it mean?”

Youngjae blinks back into focus, suddenly fully alert, scrambling to quickly blow up the tiny blip on the radar and pull up live images, and his eyes widen.

“That’s our proximity tracker- it only works within a ten kilometer radius but it tracks everyone,” he pushes a couple of wrappers aside in his impatience, quickly analysing the data. “Oh -…it’s Jackson, hyung, he’s in Daegu, he’s here-…”

“Lock his location on our trackers, Mark and I are heading out to get him,” Jaebum’s already turning away, firing away commands into their radio, but Youngjae’s eyes are slightly hazed with confusion, making sense of the data he’s been able to detect.

“Hyung, I think you need to get Jinyoung-hyung, and tell him to bring the health kit,” Youngjae trails off a little uncertainly, and Jaebum looks up at the plasma screen, fingers temporarily frozen. Jackson’s physical stats are there, courtesy of the black ion band around his wrist doubling up as a health tracker, all little bars and numbers and conditions Jaebum barely understands.

He’s never been very fond of the figures Youngjae always seems to manipulate so easily, but even he can tell that something’s not very right about how much red is flaring on the horizontal bars that Youngjae’s brought up.

“Mark,” he says tersely into the radio, then, not surprised when the other man responds immediately, as though he’d been waiting for the call.

“Yeah? Did you find him?”

“Mark, get Jinyoung, bring the first-aid equipment, meet me at the unloading zone,” Jaebum says, heading out the door. “I’ll be driving the van.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s on foot, hyung, about eight kilometers out from here. His physical stats don’t look too good,” Youngjae’s tuned in now, narrating the information quickly, and Jaebum hooks the earpiece into his ear as he leaves the room, heading for the carpark. “Should we inform the rest?”

“Quickly,” Jaebum says tensely, taking towards the elevator at a run. “Tell them to stay in contact. We’ll keep you posted.”

*

“Around that corner, then straight. He’s about two streets down,” Jinyoung says, looking anxiously out the windshield, feeling Mark do the same over his shoulder as Jaebum turns the van.

He honestly doesn’t know what to expect- Youngjae hadn’t said much before they left, only that Jackson might be injured and in need of immediate medical assistance. For a moment, he lets his mind wander, trying to make sense of what’s happened the past few days. It didn’t click, why Jackson would deliberately avoid making contact, though Jinyoung understands why he’d tried to avoid detection near the complex- that was in case the company managed to trace the espionage back to JYP.

Fear pools at the pit of his stomach at the thought of what they might find two streets down, the stark contrast of everything that’s gone wrong so far against the disturbing normalcy of seeing Jackson again, on foot, for crying out loud. He hadn’t even managed to hotwire a car? Jackson hated unnecessary exertion, so why would he be walking, in the middle of the day, at that?

“There,” Mark points, voice betraying only the slightest hint of anxiety, and Jinyoung strains to see until he catches sight of the figure trudging along the pavement under the beating sun, eyes on the asphalt.

“Stop the van first,” Jinyoung urges, and Jaebum obliges immediately, but Mark’s already gotten out the back, regaining his balance perfectly when he hits the ground running.

Jinyoung pushes the door open, heart weighed down with anxiety as he runs after Mark. The eldest is already ahead, catching up to Jackson’s meandering figure easily.

He’s expecting a noise of surprise, a laugh, anything, when Mark catches Jackson’s shoulder, going round to his front to cut him off, but Jackson barely seems to move.

“Jackson, where were you? Why didn’t you try to get in contact?” Jinyoung demands, but he catches the frozen look of anxiety and worry on Mark’s face, and right then and there, his stomach sinks.

“Jackson, what’s wrong,” Mark doesn’t phrase it like a question, fingers wound tight into the material of Jackson’s shirt at his shoulders, like he’s the only thing keeping Jackson standing, and when Jinyoung rounds Mark to get a better look at Jackson’s face, he thinks he understands why.

Jackson isn’t even looking at either of them, eyes unfocused and heavily lidded, jaw slack, his face completely blank of emotion. There’s a thin sheen of perspiration on his brow, and despite the fact that they’re in the late afternoon sun, they’ve been trained in harsher weathers than this, and a slight temperature shouldn’t be enough to make Jackson break out in a sweat. He seems intent on continuing his walk down the road, barely aware that Mark’s there holding him in place.

“How’s he?” Jaebum’s gesturing impatiently, eyes sweeping across the perimeter anxiously, always thinking ahead. “Come on, let’s get into the van and we can give him a proper check-up.”

“Hyung,” Jinyoung says uncertainly, waving a hand in front of Jackson’s face, feeling his chest tighten when Jackson barely blinks in response. “Hyung, something’s wrong with Jackson-…we don’t know what’s wrong.”

“Jackson,” Mark shakes the other man once, emotion causing his voice to slip ever so slightly, eyes desperately searching Jackson’s gaze. “Come on, man, snap out of it. Jackson!”

Jackson finally blinks, once, twice, before shifting his gaze with what seems to be like a tremendous amount of effort, brow creasing slightly when his eyes lock onto Mark’s, like he’s just realised something.

“Jackson?” Mark repeats, more uncertainly this time, as Jaebum finally approaches properly, frowning.

“Can we just get into the-…” are all the words Jaebum manages to get out, then, before Jackson’s legs seem to give out under him like all the strength’s left them at once, and Jaebum’s forced to lurch forward and support him from behind.

“What the hell happened?” Jaebum hisses, looking to Mark for explanation, but for once the silence on the eldest member’s part seems to be unintentional, his eyes wide with a certain empty sort of terror, hands trembling even in their grip on Jackson’s shirt.

“We need to get him back,” Jinyoung says, half breathless, breaking into a run towards the van. “I need to get him on a drip and check him properly.”

“Mark, radio back, tell them to meet us at the med bay,” Jaebum orders, starting to half-drag, half-carry Jackson to the back of the van. “Jinyoung, stabilise Jackson when we’re in the van. We’re going to figure out what happened.”

*

Jaebum notes, with some degree of appreciation, that the maknaes have pressed themselves, by sheer force of self-control, against the wall, staying out of the way as Jaebum and Mark carry Jackson in, Jinyoung grabbing a mobile med cart and picking up several bottles from the cabinet in the wall as he walks in, snapping on a pair of sterile gloves as he does so.

They manage to stay there for a grand total of about three seconds, before Bambam darts over, eyes wide and worried, parking himself on Jackson’s other side as Jaebum and Mark lay him down on one of the beds, quickly moving out of the way for Jinyoung to start working.

“I called the medics like you asked, hyung, the specialist will be down soon,” Yugyeom says, watching Jackson nervously over Mark’s shoulder, and Jaebum acknowledges with a tight word of thanks. It’s another downside to not being part of the main base in Seoul- the Daegu base is ridiculously understaffed and years behind the main headquarters (or even the Busan one, for that matter) in terms of technology. “Is Jackson…is he?”

“Move,” Jinyoung says tersely, and Bambam stumbles aside quickly as Jinyoung hooks up the IV bag. “Jackson’s stable for now, I just don’t know how long more. He’s dehydrated, though, and showing signs of exhaustion, but I don’t think that’s the reason why he’s like this.”

“Then what’s wrong?” Youngjae seems uncomfortable, standing at the foot of Jackson’s bed with his iPad, like he’s wondering what he can do to help. They’d all been trained on the basics of healthcare, sure, but Youngjae preferred machines to flesh and blood by a large extent. “How do you know?”

“I gave him a basic check-up when we were in the van,” Jaebum tunes back into what Jinyoung’s saying, the other man looking like he’s barely paying attention to what he’s saying, focused instead on extracting the liquid from a tiny plastic bottle using a syringe. “I wasn’t able to pinpoint exactly what was causing his condition, but I’m pretty sure it has something,” he pauses for a moment to give Jackson the shot, before setting the syringe down on the med cart, grabbing a pair of scissors instead. “To do with this,” and he grabs the edge of Jackson’s shirt, cutting side upwards in a few clean, concise snips, before peeling away the fabric to reveal-…

“He got hurt,” Bambam sounds a little like he’s in disbelief.

There’s a bandage there, done rather messily, probably by Jackson himself, wrapped around his right shoulder tightly, to stop the bleeding.

“I didn’t want to mess with it in case I found something I didn’t have the equipment to deal with in the van,” Jinyoung explains, gently removing the clip securing the bandage in place, Mark quickly helping him lift Jackson’s arm slightly to allow Jinyoung to unwind the bindings neatly. “But now that we’re here…”

There’s a brief moment of silence as Jinyoung fully unwinds the bandage, before there’s another general sound of surprise as Jinyoung finally peels the last bit of it off, and Jaebum blanches slightly in confusion.

This isn’t making any sense.

“Okay,” Jaebum’s trying to maintain a cool façade though he’s pretty much spooked now. “I’ll admit, I was expecting a lot worse.”

It’s a messy gash, for sure, but then again, they know for a fact Jackson’s dealt with worse, much worse, before. In contrast to the various scars littering his back and arms, this one seems tame, almost.

“Looks like a grazing, by a bullet, or something,” Jinyoung frowns, grabbing cotton pads and some antiseptic wash. “Someone was shooting at him.”

“Who? Security?”

“Why would he let himself be shot? Jackson hyung doesn’t just get shot, by the complex’s crummy security, at that.”

“But that doesn’t explain why he’s like this,” Mark interjects, then, the first time he’s spoken up at all throughout this entire episode, Jaebum notices. He’s standing near the head of Jackson’s bed, body wound like he’s dying to move, run, like he needs to do something. “He’s been shot before, he never gets like this.”

Jinyoung straightens, eyes on the gauze, a slight frown on his brow.

“This is just a hunch…” he trails off uncertainly, before reaching back for the med cart and taking out a clean syringe, tearing the wrapper off and taking a tiny vial. “But maybe…maybe the bullet was…poisoned?”

Jaebum’s mouth goes dry- there’s a wired sort of silence after that, because poisons mean antidotes, mean they need to find one before the toxin claims Jackson completely, mean that no amount of bargaining and negotiation can extend his time now.

Predictably, he’s the one to ask the question they’re all dreading. “How long do you think he has?”

Jinyoung chews his lower lip, wiping a spot on Jackson’s shoulder with an alcohol swab. Hesitation on his part in the med bay is never good. “We won’t know as long as we’re not sure which poison it was, but looking at his stats now,” he takes a deep breath. “I’d say two days. Three, if we’re lucky.”

The leader takes a deep breath, eyes sliding shut momentarily. “Okay. Okay, Jinyoung, get the blood samples and send them down for testing. There’s a chance we’ve got the poison in our database, and that’ll get us a lot closer to finding an antidote, at least,” Jinyoung nods, moving in to draw the blood automatically. “The rest of us need to figure out just who it was that managed to shoot Jackson so we can get a headstart on finding the antidote.”

“You mean we need to figure out who it was anyway, so we can go after them,” Mark’s voice is uneven, and Jaebum blinks, looking over at the other man. He notices then that Mark’s hands are curled into fists, so tight it looks like his knuckles are white from the pressure, the muscles in his body looking like they’re springs coiled tight, waiting to explode.

“Well, going after them isn’t that important, what we need to focus on right now is the anti-…”

“They poisoned Jackson,” Mark cuts in, and even Jinyoung looks over at him this time, half in the process of transferring the blood to the vial. “Don’t you mean we have to find out who it is and ing kill them?”

Another stretched silence follows after that.

“Hyung?” Youngjae says in a small voice.

“Mark,” Jaebum says, as calmly as he possibly can, when Mark’s tension is actually taking a toll on his own temperament. “Look, we’re going to find the antidote and get Jackson better first before we think about that, alright? It could’ve just been someone doing their job, this happens all the time-…”

“That’s not the point!” Mark snaps so sharply Bambam flinches, going rigid, as Mark points at Jackson. “The point is that Jackson’s dying, and someone out there was responsible for it!”

“Hyung,” Yugyeom clears his throat.

“Yugyeom, wait- Mark, listen, calm down, Jackson’s going to be fine-…”

“How do you know that? How do you know he’s not going to die because some piece of out there poisoned him?”

“Hyung.”

“What?” Jaebum almost snaps at Yugyeom, who points defensively at the door.

“Someone’s here.”

Jaebum turns towards the door, then, sensing everyone else in the room do the same, catching the girl standing at the doorway with the deer-in-the-headlights look in her eyes off guard.

“Uhm-…” she says in the tiniest voice Jaebum has ever heard a person speak in.

“You’re one of Jihyo’s girls, aren’t you?” Jinyoung says warmly, sends a warning look at first Jaebum, then Mark, a concealed threat for them to at least can it until she isn’t there. “What, uh, what are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at the Gwangju base?”

The Gwangju base is the one Academy base in the entire of South Korea possibly worse off than the Daegu base, and it makes sense that the one group of rookies newer than their unit would get sent there. Lots of gang activity (though not as much as Daegu), petty assignments and espionage equipment from before the era of the first Mission Impossible movie, as Youngjae would complain.

The girl’s bowing furiously, obviously terrified. “The medics- they got called out on emergency, two are with Unit 6 in Osaka and the other’s in Guam. I’m-…” she clears . “I’m supposed to replace them for these few days. I came for a training exchange.”

“You’re still in training,” Jinyoung frowns a little. “They left you here to cover their shift?”

Mark lets out a sharp exhale, arms dropping to his sides, and the girl seems to shrink a little- Jaebum’s grateful to note that Jinyoung sends him a look. Jihyo would not be happy to see him again if she ever found out one of Unit 7 was showing the slightest disrespect to one of her girls.

“So you’re holding the fort?” the leader clears his throat. “Tzuyu, isn’t it?”

“Yes, uhm, sunbaenim, Dahyun and I-…” she stammers, and Jinyoung gestures for them to move away, and for her to come closer.

“Look, it’s fine, we just need someone to help me take care of Jackson while we’re figuring out what happened, right?” he says pointedly, mostly to Mark, before turning to the girl, who acknowledges anxiously. “You’ve been receiving training for the past year or something, right?”

She nods, but eyes dart uncertainly from Jackson to the medical equipment Jinyoung’s hooked him up to, and Jaebum sighs, pressing a finger to his temple.

“Okay,” he exhales, trying not to let the frustration in his voice slip through. “Jinyoung, how about you brief her, just to make sure? Bambam, get the blood sample down to the labs. The rest of us go straight to the usual meeting room- we’ll try to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible.”

Jaebum squares his jaw, then, the usual deterrent to cut off all form of protest or retaliation from the rest of them, before he realises it’s Mark he’s afraid will protest, Mark, their supposed beacon of calm and cooperation and sanity, but the eldest merely turns stiffly, lips pressed together tightly, before leaving the room with Bambam and Yugyeom, and Jaebum hears Jinyoung let out a sigh of relief.

“Youngjae, you too, set up the supercomputer-…”

“I just remembered,” Youngjae says, then, but Jaebum senses that he’d been waiting for a while now to say it, and wonders if he’d been too intimidated by Mark to bring it up earlier. Jinyoung moves aside for the tech specialist to hurry over to Jackson’s side, before picking up the fabric of his ruined shirt and unclipping something from the collar.

“Protocol,” Youngjae mumbles, with none of the usual bravado he’d have after making a deduction no one else had yet. “Even if the mike’s transmissions had been knocked out, it would’ve recorded Jackson for the rest of the mission. It’s worth a shot, I mean, that’s if the mike hadn’t been short circuited completely, or anything-…”

“Yeah, yeah, that’ll work,” Jaebum pats Youngjae on the back, letting out a strained breath. “Jinyoung, you got this?”

“Yeah, I’ll see you guys later,” Jinyoung glances over at Tzuyu, who’s pulling on her gloves, and Jaebum’s relieved to see that she isn’t fumbling with the basics, at least. “Hey,” Jinyoung’s looking at him, slightly reproachfully, now. “Take it easy with Mark, okay? This isn’t easy for him, considering, you know-…”

“Oh, you’re on his side now?” Jaebum mutters, and Jinyoung shoves him slightly with his elbow.

“Jaebum. Make this easier on all of them, okay?”

“Alright, alright,” Jaebum grumbles, following Youngjae out the door, who’s looking back at the two of them hopefully. “You’d better come over soon, I’m not sure how much more I can take of this.”

The door swings shut behind him, throwing the door into a welcomed silence, save for Tzuyu puttering about in a corner, and Jinyoung lets out a breath, body going slack against the hard-backed chair. He casts a partially frustrated, partially sad glance in Jackson’s direction, where the other man’s still in restless sleep, breathing harsh, eyelids fluttering every now and then.

“You’d better come back soon, you jerk,” he mutters, pulling the ruined scraps of Jackson’s shirt off, before tugging the blanket up, tucking him in firmly. “You chose a pretty bad method to take a break.”

For once this time, Jackson doesn’t snark back, the air between them frozen in a stifling silence, and Jinyoung forces himself not to think about it as he stands, rifling through the supplies for an evidence bag.

“Oppa?”

Jinyoung seals the fabric in the clear plastic, stamping it swiftly to mark it as evidence and reminding himself to send the samples down to the labs sometime soon, before turning to face Tzuyu. “Okay,” he shifts the med cart out of the way, before taking a breath. “How far has your training gone, exactly?”

a/n: is this overly dramatic and ridics enough yet????

T.T i forgot to give my usual warning in the front to please lower expectations (like low low low) because i'm still fumbling with the whole spy concept and this is probably going to turn out a lot simpler than most of you are expecting cries T.T please accept my love

i hope this first chapter was okay though, by okay standards??? comments will be honestly and truly appreciated!! thank you all for the subscriptions (61 before the first chapter is cray cray omggg) and hope you like what's to come!

p.s. ok yes there will be other groups i did not mention this but don't worry main focus will def(soul) be on got7 <333 thank you guys hehe