WARNING! This chapter contains mentions of blood, and death. This chapter also features a panic attack at the end.

In the lightest of traffic, abiding all proper driving laws, it takes a good two hours to get to Yixing’s location. Luhan gets there in under ninety minutes.

On the outskirts of the city, down the narrowed asphalt road from the city’s inspection office, stood in all its imposing glory Capital City’s sole hospital. With multiple levels above and below ground, and secret entrances and passageways, calling it just a hospital was a crass understatement. Known simply amongst civilians as The Institution, it’s here that every scientist and physician, that didn’t have their own office in a more commercial district, worked. His mother was implanted with the gene here, he was born here, both his parents had died here, and he was sure Minseok had been brought here once.

The dread keeps him rooted in place, staring at the beige building with dark slits for windows, but the worry pushes him forward and inside. His steps make the slightest of noise as he walks into the entrance hall, stepping deeper into the open space. The smell of disinfectant cleaning agents stings his nose and numbs his brain as he stands and waits in the too clean, too bright, too empty room.

There are three doors opposite him, and a memory of being led through the door closest to the left the two times he’d come with his father surfaces.

He hears the steps before he sees the person and he turns towards the middle door just as it slides apart and a woman approaches, her shoes echoing with every step. The woman has her brunette hair in a bun, and a long white coat covers most of her outfit. In one hand is a black tablet which she types away at in a languid manner using her other hand.

 “How may I assist you today, sir,” she asks in the crisp tone Luhan has associated with physicians and scientists.

“I’m looking for a man,” he answers, “Zhang Yixing. CNS First-Class, Codename Lay.” The woman doesn’t say a word as she begins typing the information into her tablet. A frown graces her otherwise controlled features moments later.

She looks up to him for the first time, blinking her hazel eyes, and breathing in deeply through her nose. “Follow me,” she commands, turning swiftly on her heels and walking off, back through the parting white doors she had emerged from and into a just as brightly lit corridor.

****

Luhan notices the blood first. His hands are stained red, and flecks of it coat his face and highlight his hair. His head is pressed against the wall behind him, and his gaze is far off as if he is watching something behind the pair of them.

“What’s wrong with him,” Luhan asks, glaring at the woman that brought him to Yixing in accusation.

“Nothing external,” the woman replies, she’s back to frowning down at her device. “We want to give him a more thorough checkup, but he has refused to move.”

Luhan steps in front of the younger male, squatting down so that they can be at eye level. Yixing eyes are bloodshot. “Yixing,” he mutters, fingers attempting to rub the drying blood off his face. “What happened,” he asks in a whisper.

Yixing’s unfocused eyes snap to him, but instead of responding he slaps Luhan’s hand away and leans forward, resting his elbows on his thighs, hands clutching onto his messy hair. He doesn’t say a word, but Luhan watches as his teeth clamp down hard on his split bottom lip, and a dribble of blood blossoms.

Luhan draws back a bit and stands, he doesn’t want to take his eyes off Yixing, doesn’t want to leave the younger male in such a state, but he has questions. He turns towards the woman with reluctance, “Junmyeon, First-class, Codename Suho. Where is he?”

The woman types the information in quickly, and then raises her gaze, a grim look in her eyes as she looks towards Yixing. Luhan turns his head to look at his friend as well. The Perfect’s head is still being supported by his hands, and Luhan feels the dread return.

“Follow me,” she says stiffly. Luhan’s eyes linger on Yixing, he doesn’t want to leave, he wants to stay and comfort his friend, but he needs to know what has caused his friend to behave in such a way.

She leads him through more corridors, all empty and bare until they’re standing in front of a gray door. The door to the room slides open as soon as Luhan’s finishes keying in the passcode, and a burst of cold exits, leaving Luhan’s arms with trails of goose pimples in its wake.

Luhan follows her inside as the lights flicker on one-by-one with the softest clicking noise until they’re bathed in the bright white. He takes a look around the room, stopping when his eyes catch sight of the bed, no, the table in the middle of the room.

He shuffles backward, crashing into the door behind him, heart rate picking up, and stomach quivering in nausea. He forces his eyes away from the table to the woman in front of him. She’s looking at him with something he can only describe as professional disapproval, but as their eyes meet she begins talking.

“It happened in action,” she intones, voice low, yet still stiff and formal. “The pair were in pursuit of a group of rebels by the docks, Special Agent Kim was shot in the chest. He died almost instantly.”

Luhan pushes off the door and moves forward, steps as heavy as his heart feels. He wants to leave, to grab Yixing, and never come back to this place. He doesn’t turn away. Instead, he pushes down the despair, and tries to grasp onto something else within him, something hopeful and light, but those emotions don’t exist. So he focuses on logic, on the desire in him to confirm that it’s actually a case of mistaken identity, or possibly some grotesque trick to show him his anger at being lied to was childish when things like this could occur.

Luhan gets to the table and steels himself, gripping the thin white sheet with a surprisingly steady hand. He pulls it back as he exhales, and the breath gets caught in his throat as he nearly whimpers at the sight. Junmyeon’s eyes are closed, a hint of blood that no one bothered to clean away has dried onto the corner of his lips. He’s cold, colder than any person, any living person should be. His hair is still soft to the touch, and Luhan runs his hand through the brunette strands as he blinks away the tears at the edge of his eyes.

“Were—were they caught,” Luhan asks. His voice cracking a bit at the question, fingers still caressing the soft locks of hair to keep from embracing the too cold body, or running out of the room.

“One was apprehended,” the woman replies. Luhan looks down again, eyes searing the image of Junmyeon cold and unconscious to his brain, as he continues pushing down the emotions within him. He’s glad for the woman’s presence in the room, but he also hates it, hates that he’s forced to control his emotions in such a situation.

He draws away from Junmyeon with even more reluctance than he had felt for Yixing. It feels like a betrayal to do so, to leave Junmyeon lying on a table in this cold room. There’s nothing he can do, nothing he can say to fix this. Junmyeon is lying there because he’s passed the point of help, but with every step, he takes away from his friend’s motionless body it feels as if he’s throwing his friend away.

“Take me back to his partner.”

****

Luhan doesn’t bother turning the radio on during the car ride back into the city. It is only a matter of time, before the news breaks and Luhan doesn’t want to hear his friend’s death used as political propaganda like it will eventually be.

Without any sound, the car ride is a quiet yet stifling affair. Yixing is withdrawn, lost in his own mind as he stares in a daze at the cityscape before them. Luhan is no better, as he drives further from the Institution, he feels a pressure against his back. It still feels wrong to him, leaving Junmyeon behind in that cold empty room, driving away from the man he’d known for over a decade. He tries to focus on the cars around him, the road signs, and street lights, but images of Junmyeon’s cold lifeless body flashes behind every blink of his eyes. It takes every bit of his willpower to keep from pulling over and shouting at the haunting presence he feels.

When they finally reach his apartment, Luhan busies himself. He directs Yixing to the shower, and then calls Kyungsoo and Kris, demanding the pair to hurry over to his home. Once out of the apartment, he goes back to the car garage and stares down at the blood staining his interior, he feels nauseated once more as he recalls that it is Junmyeon’s blood in his car. He puts in an order to have the car cleaned, and returns to his apartment when there’s nothing left for him to do.

The bathroom is steamy when Luhan enters it, but he can make out Yixing’s red flushed body through the slight fog and condensation on the shower glass. He raps his knuckles against it, and then opens the door. The blood on Yixing’s hands is gone, yet on his face specks of it remain, as well as in his hair. He pauses for a moment, unsure of what to do or say, but then he pushes forward stepping with bare feet into the shower. He’s fully clothed, and the searing water turns him a blushing pink upon contact with his skin, but he reaches out grabbing his untouched shampoo as Yixing stares at him with glossy brown eyes.

****

Yixing sits on his couch, clean hands buried in clean hair, and Luhan leans against the wall nearest to the tall glass windows of his apartment, occasionally glaring at the skyline when looking at Yixing gets to be too much.

The sound of his apartment door opening breaks him out of his thoughts of contemplation as Kris walks into his living room, followed by Kyungsoo.

No one speaks at first, everyone just stares. It makes Luhan curious. He wonders if Junmyeon’s death has left him in a visible state of despair as it has Yixing. He wonders what the pair of them are thinking as their gazes move from Yixing to him, back and forth.

“What’s wrong,” Kris finally asks, breaking his gaze from Yixing to stare at Luhan.

Luhan doesn't know how to answer that with tact. He doesn’t know how to answer it at all, how to translate the sight of Junmyeon’s body cold and lifeless into words, or relay that woman’s tale of Imperfect rebels and gunshot wounds with Yixing sitting there so broken.

“Junmyeon’s dead,” Yixing whispers and in the otherwise silence of Luhan's apartment, it sounds clear and concise.

“What,” Kyungsoo asks, and Luhan finally looks at him. His eyes are wide and expressive. He looks confused and disbelieving at Yixing as if pleading to be told something different.

“We were on a mission, he defied protocol and now he's dead,” Yixing says, lifting his head to glare at Kyungsoo. It’s silent then, well almost silent. Yixing has gone back to looking at his lap, glaring down at it this time, while Kyungsoo falls into the seat beside him. Kris has yet to say a word, and if he has Luhan’s not sure he’s heard it. His breathing has begun to pick up, coming out in ragged breaths, and much quicker than what would be considered normal.

He pushes off the wall, breath caught in his throat, and stumbles his way out of the room. A hand clutches at his throat while the other pounds hard against his chest once he’s locked in his bathroom. His heart is beating too quickly, hammering away as if seconds away from jumping through skin and bone. He tries to control the breathing, but each breath comes out as a wheezing gasp. His head feels light, tethered to limbs too heavy to hold up.

He comes crashing to the ground as a disturbing thought surfaces from the panicked torrid state of his mind. He was going to die. His breathing seems to grow faster at the thought, slipping through his parted lips in a speed to match the pace of his heart.

His vision is beginning to blur around the edges. He tosses his head back, hitting it hard against a wall he had no idea was behind him. Nausea's beginning to climb up his throat, and he tries to swallow between the gasps of air, trying to push it down and away.

He is going to die, he can feel it, and the thought repeats itself in his mind. Lying on his bathroom floor, covered in his own vomit, he is going to die. While the rest of his friends sit in his living room, mourning the death of their friend, he’ll be here dying of asphyxiation. Dying of grief.

It's a bit dramatic at the end, but I had no idea how hard it would to write out a person with no knowledge of panic attacks having one. So, I figured someone with very little understanding of the science of their own body would assume they were dying in such a situation. Anyway, I start school next week and have zero idea how busy I'll be so I decided to update now.