Luhan's not able to leave his office until twenty minutes after noon. The traffic into District Four isn’t light even though the day is still early. Despite that, Luhan makes it to the younger models’ apartment in record time.

It’s Kyungsoo that opens the apartment door. His usually large brown eyes are narrowed in fury as he steps aside to allow Luhan entry.

"What's going on," Luhan asks, walking into the living room. Instead of a guilty Sehun, Jongin sits in the middle of his sofa, head resting in the palms of his hands. Kyungsoo stalks around him, and pulls a white sheet of paper from beside the younger model. He s it into Luhan's direction without a single word.

With a frown, Luhan takes the paper and begins to read it. "What..." he starts off saying only to cut himself off. He reads the paper which reveals to be a letter, going over it once and then twice, checking it over again and again to make sure he's reading the words correctly.

"What is this," he asks slowly.  His mouth has gone dry, and so the words tumble from his lips as if they’re being whispered.

"You've read it haven't you," Kyungsoo retorts, his exasperation causing him to scoff at Luhan.

"Have you been able to contact him since finding this," Luhan asks, choosing to ignore Kyungsoo’s tone of irritation. "When did you find this?"

Jongin huffs a shuddering breath and lifts his head. His lips are curled down, and his dark eyes lack their usual brilliance as he gazes at Luhan. "I found it this morning. I've tried contacting him, but he wouldn't answer, and so I called you but you weren't answering either. Kyungsoo was the only one that answered."

There's a hint of accusation to his voice, and Luhan isn't ignorant to the way he dropped the ancient honorific from Kyungsoo's name.

"I left my phone in my car," Luhan mumbles, attempting to excuse himself. He lifts his gaze to Kyungsoo, who has started to glare at nothing. “Have you talked to Suho or Lay recently?"

Kyungsoo's eyes widen at the question, or possibly at Luhan’s unconscious use of their codenames. "No," he says. "I'm pretty sure I shouldn't be consulting with CNS when Sehun has just run away with an Imperfect," he bites out.

"No," Luhan says in reply, breathing in deep and releasing the air. He understands the anger now, and so he does his best to brush away his own feelings of annoyance. "What I meant was that the pair has said for the time being entering, and even leaving the city has become heavily regulated. Depending on how much thought was put into his plan, there’s a chance they could still be in the city.”

"So what are we supposed to do," Kyungsoo asks, "If Sehun still has his cellphone, he's refusing to answer it, and I doubt running around the city calling his name is going to do much besides cause a scandal.”

"We need to check the Red Light," Luhan says, and then glances around the room. "I'll check the Red Light."

"You can't check the entirety of the Red Light alone," Kyungsoo says in return.

"I don't have much of a choice unless you want to tag along," Luhan replies. "I actually know what I'm doing there, and besides someone should stay here and continue calling him. He might have a moment of doubt and try to contact one of us."

"What happens if we don't find him," Jongin asks.

Luhan swallows thickly, as he glances back at the younger male. Jongin eyes still have that trained blankness, but Luhan can see a flicker of emotion deep within them.

"We hope they make it to a compound safely," he answers.

****

The first thing Luhan does when he gets back in his car is check his missed calls. He'd hate himself if Sehun had tried to contact him but he had missed it due to carelessness. There are tons from Jongin and Kyungsoo, but none from Sehun. The second thing he does is call Joohyun, he tells her he will be out of the office for longer than planned thanks to an emergency, and if President Kim contacts her looking for him, he tells her to feign ignorance.

The Red Light is untrusting. The few people that he comes across glares at him with contemptuous eyes, or shy away and pretend not to understand him. It's the result of being ransacked and mistreated by District police, and CNS officers. There's a distrust of all Perfects in the air, and the last thing everyone seems unwilling to do is sell out one of their own to the Perfect appearing on billboards as approved by the Great Ruler.

Thirty minutes later and after most of his money is gone, Luhan finally finds someone willing to give him answers. A balding man, with a moustache infused with grey hairs, and a long pale scar along the right side of his neck, smiles a conspiring grin at him.

"You want to leave the city with an Imperfect, do you?"

His voice is gruff and slurred as if his tongue is too big for his mouth, and although he has a natural low tone, his question sounds like a shout in the silent air.

"Yes," Luhan lies. "Hypothetically," he adds as an afterthought. They're standing behind a closed bar on a near empty street, but Luhan knows it's best not to let his guard down. If this man doesn't kill him in the name of the Red Devils, he's sure President Kim would if word got out that he was looking to smuggle Imperfects out of the city.

"And how can I be sure you're not, ‘hypothetically’ working for the government," the man retorts, spitting the word Luhan used out with a frown.

"You don't have to give me names," Luhan replies. "I gave you the money, the least you could do is give me some answers."

"Is your friend marked," the man asks after a moment of silence. When he notices Luhan's furrowed eyebrows, he huffs a noise of annoyance. "Marked," he repeats tapping at the scar on his neck. "They catch us and tag us like we're damn animals. If your friend's marked and still has it, they'll use it to find and kill you both."

"No," Luhan replies hurriedly, hoping that Tao didn't have a tracker on him.

"Good," the man replies. "Since what happened to the subway, leaving the city has become too much of a hassle for most of us. It'll take a person a few days to get things arranged, but with your money you could probably be gone by tomorrow morning."

"What do I do first," Luhan asks.

"Find someone that can give your friend a mock imprint. There's a lot of people that claim to do it, you'll need someone good."

When he notices the confused look cross Luhan features again he glares at the Perfect. "You know nothing do you," the man retorts, gesturing towards Luhan's right wrist.

"There are people that can do that," Luhan asks, nearly lifting his arm up to examine it. Imprinted in every Perfect‘s wrist was a microscopic chip that held their birth date, birth name, and their identification number. The rumor was the chips were a means to keep track of the first generation of Perfect test subjects before evolving into the country's main identification method.

The man is looking at him with suspicion and Luhan quickly cools his features into a mask of indifference. "Once you've got that, you've got to find a guide. The country is large you know, and the compounds are well hidden, and you'll need an unregistered car."

"Is that all," Luhan asks.

"That's all I'm telling you. You're not as dim as you look, I'm sure you can figure out the rest."

The man departs first, leaving Luhan alone in his thoughts.

If Sehun had known all this, if he had figured out what he needed to do to leave, then he was probably long gone by now. Which meant the logical thing was to give up. There was nothing more he could do if Sehun had left the city unless he decided to follow after him.

He didn't want to give up yet, giving up felt like throwing Sehun to a pack of wolves with a raw steak tied around his neck. He still seemed too young, too inexperienced with the world, too headstrong to think of the consequences of his actions in the long run, but that was the problem with their race.

Each and every one of them were overconfident in their abilities, and the shallow conviction that they were invincible. Luhan didn't see things that way, and he didn't know if it was another First Gen flaw, or if his own overconfident belief in his abilities had been beaten into the single belief that he was only indispensable as long as he was useful. He didn't think others were aware of that. In a greater scale it was the government that decided upon their usefulness when they were created, and if the rumors of Perfect executions were true, then it was the government that controlled their fate when they went against their creators. No matter how Luhan tried to see things, fighting against such an immense force sounded like a death wish.

****

"Sehun, you haven't left have you? Look, I'm sure we can figure out another way, an alternative plan to this if we just tried. Call me, I'll help. I want to help you and… Tao. I promised I'd do what I could to help, so let me make good on that promise."

****

Kyungsoo opens the door at the third rough knock, and Luhan pushes his way into the apartment. "We need to track his phone," Luhan states, walking pass the younger male as he heads towards Sehun's bedroom. "Or find a way to gain access to his bank account, see if he withdrew any large sums of money.

In Sehun's room Luhan opens drawers and books, looking for something that could show him Sehun had put thought into his plan. "You know we can't do that without coming off suspicious," Kyungsoo replies.

"So what do we do," Luhan asks, pulling down more and more books. “If he hasn’t thought through this then…” he trails off, shaking head to rid himself of his negative thoughts.

"We do as you said," Kyungsoo says. "If he hasn't contacted us and you can't find him, then it's time for us to believe he has left, and hope that he stays safe and has thought through this properly." Luhan watches as Kyungsoo exits the room and slumps in Sehun's desk chair, head in his hands.

"Luhan-hyung," he hears, but refuses to lift his head.

"Is this my fault," Luhan asks. "Is he doing this to prove that he isn't some stupid child or something?" He tries to laugh at the situation but all that leaves his throat is a grunt. "Maybe I should have let him sleep with me once, like everyone else."

"Unless you would have slept with him the very night he met Tao, I doubt that would have done much besides distancing him from you," Kai says, and Luhan ignores how the idea makes him regret not sleeping with Sehun even more. Maybe, if he hadn’t been so close to Sehun he could give up now.

"You know we watched the execution together,” Jongin says, “all three of us. It was the first execution we'd seen. We never really cared to watch the other cities,' but this was our city and we had been too young to watch the previous ones the capital hosted. I think that spooked him, and he decided to take his chances outside of the city rather than sit around waiting for his turn at the gallows."

"We could have found an alternative solution," Luhan says finally lifting his head to look at Jongin.

"Maybe," Jongin replies. "I'm angry at the way he left. I won't ever forgive him for that, and if he does join the Red Devils I don't think I can forgive that either, but I do understand his worry. I don't blame him for leaving, and I don't blame Tao for going along with his plan either. I think if I was in either one of their shoes I would have done the same."

Luhan watches as Jongin slides to the floor, head lifting up to gaze along the room. "You weren't wrong when you treated us like kids. I was so ignorant to things at the time, I didn't think things like Imperfects, the government, and the Red Devils had anything to do with me. I think that's also why Sehun got so involved so fast. I think he loves Tao, but I also think he feels guilty. We used to believe that Imperfects were annoying and that they should just get the gene instead of complaining and making things hard on everyone. I used to think that they didn't really have a cause, that they just wanted to make things difficult on Great Ruler, but I get it now."

"I don't," Luhan retorts, and glares into nothing, hating himself for sounding like a spiteful child.

"Sehun's taught me a lot," Jongin says, "about their side. Do you know we use a word, a word that has historically been seen as a negative word to celebrate and talk about the mass killings of Imperfects? The Imperfect Genocide, where we killed hundreds of thousands of Imperfects without any discrimination. I think if their side had done what we did and bragged about it like we do, we'd be a bit peeved as well."

"It was for the greater good," Luhan replies, knowing he’s just repeating what they were taught. The genocide was for the greater good, whatever that meant. “Regardless of the past, it doesn’t justify what they’re doing now.”

Jongin nods his head, "I know that, and Sehun knows that. But, I still understand their side a little better than I did before, and because of that I can understand why Sehun left."

"Then why don't you be the one to tell President Kim" Luhan replies, finally letting the anger he was suppressing get the better of him. "I’m sure he would just love to hear all about why one of his most profitable models has run off with an Imperfect. You know since they're just misunderstood and all, maybe we shouldn't cover it up. You can talk at the PressCon, tell the world why we should all forgive Oh Sehun and his ing Imperfect."

"LUHAN," Kyungsoo shouts out, standing in the doorway of the bedroom. His eyes are narrowed once more into a glare, and his lips are set into a deep frown. That shout is the first show of Kyungsoo’s infamous fury Luhan has seen all day, and instead of feeling regretful at making the younger lose control, Luhan just feels more annoyance.

"You're not my manager anymore Kyungsoo," Luhan says. "You can't yell at me, and you have no right to. You're not the one that needs to appeal to President Kim about this. I don't know what I'm more annoyed by, Sehun deciding to run off, or Sehun running off only after I'm forced to work underneath that monster." He shoves pass Kyungsoo, walking out of the apartment with swift steps.

He doesn’t understand how they’re able to turn him into the villain and martyr at the same time. He has to give up on Sehun, and be the one to tell President Kim. Yet apparently, he needs to hear Sehun’s reasons for running away like it will absolve Sehun of his crimes or make Luhan more inclined to fight for him and his causes. He doesn’t understand why Kyungsoo looks at him as if he planted the idea in Sehun’s head, and then gets upset when Luhan doesn’t want to give up on finding the younger model.

Sehun was the defector, yet Luhan seemed to be the one to hold accountable for his crimes.

****

Luhan has to fight down the urge to scratch at his arms. The rage and frustration crawling just underneath the surface of his skin like imaginary parasites driving him closer to the edge of insanity. He should do it now. He should march into President Kim's office and tell him about Sehun before the press finds out or worse. The sooner he tells him the better, at least that was how it was supposed to go. Luhan wasn’t sure if that could apply to President Kim, his step-father liked to draw his anger out, and the sooner Luhan told him, the worse off it would be for Luhan.

A knock at his window has him jumping in surprise, opening eyes he hadn't even realized he'd closed. To his right, Minseok stands peering into his car window.

"Were you sleeping," Minseok asks him, once he’s sitting down beside Luhan.

"I… don't know," Luhan replies. He glances at the car's radio, but can't seem to recall when he had arrived back at Nessen.

Minseok's frown deepens, his hand reaching up to grab Luhan's shoulder bringing the former model closer to him.

"Are you okay," he asks. "Joohyun said you had to help Kyungsoo with some kind of emergency."

Luhan takes Minseok's hand off of his shoulder, holding onto it instead. "I'm fine," he lies. "It was just a few last minute arrangements we needed to work through."

Tomorrow, he decides. Tomorrow, he'll tell President Kim about Sehun.

An early update since I'm not sure I'll have time next week. You guys who thought something serious was about to happen were correct and it doesn't stop here.

Uh, this fanfic is so long (word count wise) because a good number of these chapters were created to keep pacing and keep you from being overwhelmed, however I'm trying to minimize the amount of what I call "empty chapters" for the future updates.