Sooyoung stepped closer to the bodies, her hands hovering over the multicoloured stages of bruises and internal bleeding. She struggled to keep the bile rising from when her brother e of the bodies, only to find the spinal cords of the man was jutting out of the skin like a snake underwater.

“Baekhyun.” Tao whispered into his comms, trying to tell them of what they discovered.

The pair in the command centre went silent in their amusement when they heard the serious tone of their youngest, Baekhyun calling out a, “What?”

“We found--” Tao gulped, turning his back on the mass of the dead, “--you need to see this.”

He pulled his phone out and snapped a picture of the room, Sooyoung captured in the corner with her eyes blown wide. Tao sent it to his brother, knowing it was sent and seen when he heard two shuddering breaths.

“Where--What--” Key started, comprehension lacking in his shock.

“The door. I don’t--why?” Sooyoung stuttered, hands gripped in a tight ball around her palms. “This happened when they were still alive.” The oldest woman in the family breathed out, her major being in advanced biology.

Limbs were strewn all over the floor, frostbitten and nearly solid hard, having fallen off their initial body. The racks of the bodies ranged deep into the freezer, view masked from the mist. But they could tell there was at least 30 by the multiples of three in each of two columns the bodies were arranged by. There were labels tagged to their wrists, but they could not read it as it was faded out from the mere condensation and freezing of the mist.

Tao grimaced at the fact his sister provided, silently praying for the souls of the tortured bodies in vain. He went over to his sister, hugging her shaking shoulders bracketed by his frame. “They can’t get away with this.”

“And they won’t.” Key recovered from the horror, compartmentalizing the information to process another time, now he was solely focused, he had to. “You’re in their main server bank. You can get those sons of es, all you need is a hard-drive of it.”

“It won’t be easy.” Baekhyun sighed, rubbing his eyes from the shock. “There’s gigas, maybe terabytes of information in that server bank alone. We don’t have much time to get all.”

Key’s lip twitched in a slight smirk, his eyes a devil’s nightmare. “We just need a terabyte of their most encrypted information.” He pulled the data on the big screen so that Baekhyun could see the access level 10 security on the files. “Get that and we destroy this once and for all.”

“A terabyte of data will still take an hour at least.” Baekhyun tried to reason with his logical side, trying hard to not be emotional and desperate. “They’ll get caught once SM realizes that his bodyguards are dead.”

Sooyoung broke the argument with a cold hard voice, in resonance to the temperature in the freezer that makes her breath cloud against it. “I don’t care. What they did to our parents and what they did here,” She spared a look to the ceiling, trying to catch her single tear, “it’s unforgivable. We have to do this.”

Tao tightened his grip on the woman, knowing by the silence over the communication systems that the two men in the command centre agreed with his sister’s decision. “Where is the server?”

Baekhyun huffed, plopping back down in his seat with aggression. “I’ll lead you there, but you’re going to need a clearance; there’s no way you’re getting in without one.”

“We have a card.” Sooyoung stood straighter, shouldering the hands Tao had on her off, dusting invisible dust of her pants. “Now, take us there.”

They couldn’t do anything for the hopeless fates of the anonymous bodies hanging in the cold. It was no use bringing them down or defrosting them, no matter how insensitive it sounds, it’s the simple truth. They laid forgotten and bare. It makes turning their backs and exiting the freezing space that much harder. Nothing can be done to them. But Tao swore, in return, he would do for them the greatest honour.

Revenge.

~~~

Lee Soo Man stopped in his tracks when he was about to exit the premise of the amusement park. He got that tickle behind his neck whenever something bad happened; saved him from nasty situations and outcomes many times. The man turned around, noticing that some of his bodyguards were missing.

“Where are the rest of you?” He ordered an answer from the three bodyguards left. When he heard no answer he turned to question the chief head of the bodyguard only to find him missing. “Where’s Chief Smith?”

The rest of the goons nervously stepped from one foot to another. Fearing the consequences of their actions.

Lee Soo Man noticed that the package was also missing. , he bit his lip. This is bad. If that package goes missing, they cannot proceed with the trials.

Kicking the tire of his vehicle in anger, he lashed out to is workers. “You worthless pieces of ! Find me my package or you’ll be the next one!”

All the bodyguards flee to do exactly as he had commanded. His secretary sticking behind him, left alone in his presence.

“If things go south, I want you to blow this place up.” He grumbled to his secretary, texting a message to his boss. “This place can not be compromised, it’s better if it’s destroyed than caught in the hands of the enemy.”

The secretary bowed his head to his boss, taking his walkie and put a warning for the red protocol to their men inside the workforce of the amusement park--means of a complete destruction of the facility.

“The package is intact but all our men are dead. The chief is missing. Boss, what do we do?” One of the bodyguards radioed in from his walkie to the secretary, the voice loud and clear from the parking lot.

Lee Soo Man could feel a migraine coming at his sides, massaging his temples while cursing his job. “Issue a go on the protocol red. I’ll go and back up our servers before destroying them.”

The secretary ordered as he wished meanwhile the workforce receiving the order placed the detonation devices all around the park, activating it immediately.

“Be on high alert. They’re here.” Soo Man hashed out, walking back into the aquarium with a deadly glare in his eyes.

~~~

They found the room hidden behind a vending machine on the dark corners of the huge sea creature section. Tao had decided to take all the weapons the bodyguards have and strap it onto the two of them along with several magazines. He had a feeling he’d need them somehow.

The doors opened up to an even darker room, with columns and columns of server banks. The big cupboard-looking server bank with glowing blinking lights of green red and blue. Sooyoung growled at the sight of them, “This will take longer than an hour.”

“We narrowed down the search for you. All you need to do is find Server 1106.” Baekhyun smiled into his mic, glad to be of assistance.

Tao walked through one of the columns. “Well the server is not in order.” Looking from one bank to the next numbered 1050 and 1145. “Well, we better get started.”

Sooyoung and Tao started on opposite sides of the room. Checking the serial number on each server bank. They shouted out to each other after they finished a column, the noise echoing in the dark cold room. The latter reached the end of his row and was about to turn when he found a computer at the centre.

“Hey!” He shouted his sister over, trying to log in to the device. “There’s a desktop here but--” The computer went black. Tao looked to his sister for help, but didn’t need to. Because the screen showed an analog clock, displaying 30:00, before it changed to 29:59.

“It’s a countdown.” Sooyoung whispered, looking around the room.

Tao frowned, face highlighted by the white font in the dark light. Countdowns were always a bad thing. “Yeah, but for what?”

That’s when the door opened.

A loud bang inside the room before voices started streaming in, “Stop! What are you doing here!?”

Tao and Sooyoung ducked for cover while the men rushed inside with their guns out. They all knew better than to use firearm in a place as valuable as this.

Sooyoung sneaked before one of the three men in the room, putting him in a chokehold and breaking his neck.

Tao high kicked the man on his flank, sending a punch to his solar plexus before slitting his throat with his pocket knife. He stabbed the other incoming on his right side, making a move to cut the veins on the wrist he captured before he heard his sister ordered, “Leave that one unharmed.”

The youngest backed down from the attacker, now noticing him as one of the bodyguards beside Lee Soo Man, but kept a firm hold of him.

Sooyoung grabbed the bodyguard’s chin, forcing it to look at her. Before she could ask any questions, a loud static noise radioed from the latter’s walkie, “Red Protocol is a go. Prepare for Evacuation. 30 minutes tops.”

“30 minutes,” The woman repeated, looking to the computer desktop that read 28:49, “What is the Red Protocol?”

The bodyguard kept his mouth shut. Sooyoung tried again, “What’s in 30 minutes?”

When she still could not receive an answer, she grabbed the knife off of Tao’s hands, plunging it into the man’s gut, receiving a loud piercing growl of pain of confession. “Explosives! Red Protocol is destruction of this place.”

Looks of fear and alert dawned on the Khun siblings, Sooyoung pressed on the bloody wound. “How do we stop it? Where are the explosives?”

“All over the amusement park.” The man whimpered through the pain, backing away from the woman’s ruthless ways. “But the explosion is a chain of reaction. If you stop the main explosive from going on, the rest won’t be triggered.” Sooyoung threatened to dive her fingers into the wound. “Stop! No! It’s in the ferris wheel!! In the circle in the middle of the ferris wheel! Please stop.”

Tao nodded at the information, standing from his kneeling position. “I’ll take care of the bomb. You find that data and we get the hell out of here, okay?”

Sooyoung smiled at her brother, knocking out the bodyguard simultaneously. She took his weapon and bullets, watching her brother do the same with the rest.

“Hey!” Sooyoung called out before her brother was out the door. “Stay safe, okay?” The importance of this mission was grave, that’s why she was afraid to what lengths they will go to succeed. “I love you.”

Tao smiled softly at her, his heart warming in spite of the upcoming danger. “I love you too.”

Then he was out the door.

~~~

Key was nervous at the lack of contact from their tac team. Baekhyun was out to get their lunch orders from a place nearby, the clock struck 3 p.m. just a good 5 minutes ago. He frustrates over the complications the mission had escalated to; they started with wanting to just get definite proof like a photograph of the exchange between SM and the mafia. Now it’s who knows what with a million server and an inconspicuous aquarium that might or might not be a Mafia death-trap.

It couldn’t possibly get worse from there right?

Baekhyun came back with the food just in time for the comms to go back on. “Tao?” He shouted, excited for the development.

“Nope,” Sooyoung’s voice sounded. “Just me.” She sounded exhausted and on edge.

“What happened? Where’s Tao?” Key turned the trackers back on, finding Tao in the amusement park near the ferris wheel. “What’s he doing?”

Sooyoung chuckled in a nervous falsetto, her back to the server, guns in her hand at the ready. “Long story. I found the server, though, downloading the hard drive now. I’m speeding the process by cutting the connection to the mainline so all power is diverted here, managed to speed it up to 15 minutes.”

Baekhyun marveled at his sister’s genius, happy for the good news, but something seems off. “Then why do you sound nervous?”

“Probably cause I’m about to go climb a ferris wheel.” Tao barged into their connection line, Sooyoung’s sigh out voiced by the revelation.

Key and Baekhyun took a second to process that information. “What?!”

Tao stuck the guns in the lapels of his pants, tucking the magazines down further his back-pocket. “Apparently, Lee Soo Man figures that blowing this place up five ways to kingdom come, is a lot better option than losing a battle to us once in a while.”

Baekhyun checked for the cameras near the ferris wheel, only to find the place was one of the blind spots in the security footage. “Then what are you doing there?!”

“We learned that the explosives are on a chain reaction, if the mother bomb doesn’t go off, neither will the rest.” The youngest Khun rolled his sleeves, dusting his hands off with flour he stole from a churro stand. “Baek, put a timer for 20 minutes.”

Key caught up with the plan, doing as the younger asked because Baekhyun was still caught in the surprise. “What happens in 20 minutes?” He asked when he was done.

“Let’s just say this place won’t be so amusing with all the bodies about to drop.” Tao grunted a reply, taking hold of the railings on one end of the ferris wheel, hosting himself up and scaling the wheel.

The leg of the ferris wheel was angled from the ground at a 50 degrees elevation, so Tao found climbing the thing much easier than expected.

Baekhyun bit his lips in worry, Sooyoung and Key listening in to their conversation. “Just, be careful.” He looked towards Key, who gave him a weak reassuring smile that even he didn’t believe. Something about this mission bothers him, bothers all of them. Maybe it’s the fact that it was so important; so close to their goal; that no one believed it would go down without a massive cost.

A piercing ringtone ripped through the tension. Key jumped at the noise, his chair flying backwards. He picked up the phone on the table then tossed it to Baekhyun. “It’s yours.”

Baekhyun caught the phone in distress. “Who the hell is calling me?!” He brashly took off his comms earpiece, pressing the button on the table for loudspeaker for the connection. Picking up the call, he harshly called a, “Hello!”

The line was silent for a minute. “I don’t have time for this.” Baekhyun uttered and sighed. “I swear if you’re a telemarketer, I’ll make it so that you’ll have to pick up your phone with your ing teeth.”

“Uh… Baek?” The voice from the other side called.

Baekhyun stilled. Crap. “Chanyeol?”

“Is this a bad time?” The fellow trainee tested the waters with a wavering voice, shocked of the diva’s uncharacteristically brash behaviour.

“What? No. No, not at all. What makes you say that?” Baekhyun huffed out, stressing a look of help to Key’s direction. “But, uh, why are you calling?”

“We’re about to go to the amusement park for our day out, do you want to come?” Chanyeol asked over a commotion on his side.

Key was halfway through laughing or panicking, he just waved his hands away at Baekhyun to deal with it.

“What? Don't go! You can't go to the amusement park! Besides, why amusement parks? Amusement parks are not amusing! They’re just parks, pfft, those self-righteous bastards thinking they’re better than normal parks, ha ha.” Baekhyun fumbled with his phone on his shoulder before finally spotting Tao on one of the camera’s pointing upwards. He’s that high?! “Oh my god.”

“What?” Chanyeol voiced.

At that moment, Baekhyun forgot about the loudspeaker comms, Tao barging in to the conversation with a loud, “I see the bomb!”

“What?!” Luhan shouted from the phone. Baekhyun frowned at his device, what was Luhan doing there?

“Was that Tao?” Yifan chimed in, was he one speaker mode too? “I was trying his phone on earlier but it wouldn’t connect.”

“No, no, more importantly, did he just say bomb?!” Yixing panicked on his side, jesus, was this a public announcement or what?

Baekhyun was about to answer but Tao beat him to the bush by shouting. “, this is too high, it’s in the centre of the wheel. Baekhyun, I swear if I fall to my death in a ing amusement park, I will be haunting you from behind my grave.”

“You’re in the amusement park? What did he say?” Joonmyeon questioned from his seat in the sofa.

Sehun, who was listening in on the conversation with his eyes wide open, realized this was one of their missions and, being the amazing friend he is, snatched the phone from the table despite the outroar from his group members. He disabled the loudspeaker and ran away from the living room. “Hey, Baekhyun, it’s Sehun.” He whispered loudly. “I’ll get the situation under control here and try to stop them from going, so make sure you finish whatever the hell you’re doing with a bomb, oh my god I can’t believe you’re handling a ing bomb. Tell Tao he owes me a bubble tea for this, that little rascal.” With that, Sehun hung the connection.

Baekhyun blinked once, twice in accordance to the dial tone and dropped his jaw. “What the hell just happened?”

~~~

Tao climbed on the railings, avoiding the moving cars from the wheel with much difficulty. He could see the device in the center of the circle holding the bright light characters of ‘Wonder Wheel’.

Slinging his legs up to a dead crawl, he hopped onto the platform behind the circle and stayed down. “Okay, I’m here at the sight.”

“Uh, okay? And Tao, by the way,” Baekhyun wavered in his sentence, putting on a highly fake pitched voice before lowering down into a shout whisper. “What the is Sehun?!”

“A lot of things; annoying, a good rapper and dancer, charismatic, tall, funny-but-not-really, random--like really random, so random, that boy is just the randomest random that has ever randomed.” Tao ranted evasively, trying to calm his nerves from checking the bomb attached to the centre circle of the ferris wheel which happened to be 300 ft off the ground, no biggie, and also from Baekhyun’s oncoming wrath. “You know he keeps saying weird things. Once he replied to my hello with a ‘yehet’ and my questions with ‘ohorat’ … should I be offended?”

Baekhyun was caught off-guard for a minute, shaking his head before focusing. “NO! Tao, I mean he knows.” He shouted into his comms. “Like know knows.”

“Jesus!” Tao nearly fumbled with the top panel of the bomb he pried open, careful of the wiring still connected to it. “I am holding a bomb and trying not to blow up little childrens of dreams and overworked adults going through the torture called parenthood, please do not shout at me.”

Instinctively, Baekhyun clamped his hand over his mouth, uttering a quiet apology. “How’s the bomb going?”

“Oh, it’s going.” Tao cut the wires in order with his utility swiss knife scissor attachment. “It’s going real fast.” He eyes the timer that counted less than a 10 minute detonation.

A few taxing minutes later, the comms disrupted for a second, a distortion of their sister’s cursing and gunfire sounding the next minute. “Sooyoung?!” Tao shouted into his com.

“They’re here!” Was the only thing Sooyoung managed to shout before her line of radio went dead.

Baekhyun froze in his position, Key going to work with trying to establish a new connection. “Why’d we just lost her? What happened?”

“Guys, please tell me what’s going on.” Tao panicked, his hands trembling but forced to be steady. He clipped the last remaining wire and the timer stopped at exactly 00:03:41. “I’ve got the bomb disengaged.”

Baekhyun stopped the timer he had on the clock before rushing to reply his brother. “Go get Sooyoung, now!” He looked over to Key who has sitting back in his seat, nibbling on his thumb. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

~~~

“Boss, the bombs in the park has been deactivated manually.” His secretary reminded him, handing the man a handkerchief to clean the spray of blood from his hands.

Lee Soo Man cursed out loud, punching one of the bank servers. “. How about the explosives here?”

The secretary checked his iPad for updates on the bombs, finding three of the bombs status light up in green. “It’s good, sir.”

“Then blow it up, now.” Soo Man ordered, ignoring the desperate protest of the woman on the ground. He clicked his tongue and kicked her in the stomach, ripping a cry from her. “Shut up.” He snapped his head to his bodyguards. “Destroy all the data.”

The men nodded their heads in unison, uncapping the gallon they got in their hands and started pouring them over the server banks and floor. The woman on the floor dragging herself to try and stop them despite of the gushing wound on her gut.

Soo Man rolled his eyes and got down to squat, he looked at her with something resembling superior pity in his gaze. “Poor woman, you should’ve just stayed out of it.” He sighed, running his hand over his head. “Now what am I going to do with the media, what should I say?” He hummed a playful tune. “A tragic fire in an aquarium from a fuse in the wirings of the old electric relays throughout the compound? Among the many dead animals, there was a number of casualty of which includes one of the nation’s beloved idol.”

“You won’t--” She tried to say but choked on the blood drowning her lungs, “--get away with this.”

Soo Man smiled at the woman cruelly, standing up while dusting his pant suit. “Oh, dear, but I already did.” He glared at his bodyguard. “Light it up.”

The matchstick hit the floor and the fire flowed like water in a river, engulfing the server banks in slowly growing fire. The woman tried to a breath of air, crying hoarsely for the burn of the smoke in .

Lee Soo Man walked out of the room, instructing his secretary to blow the rest of the explosives the second they got out of the building.

The woman coughed, grasping the hard drive in her hands, the only thing she was able to save before the room was smoke bombed and the gunfire started. She tried to shout but all that does is tear her wound up worse. Slumping her head down to the ground she called out softly.

“Tao.”

~~~

Tao was halfway to the Aquarium when he heard the explosion before he saw. He stood his ground, hearing the uproar of the public and screams of children. The park plunged into chaos the second after. Everyone running opposite of his direction to get out of the park. That’s when he realized where the explosion came from. The aquarium.

“What was that?” Baekhyun shouted from his comms, Key checking the feeds to see if any of the park amusement sites blew up. “I thought you deactivated all the bombs, Tao?!”

Tao ran as fast as he can, bumping into strangers and strangers crashing against him. It was like fighting against an ocean wave of people. “I did!” His anger and panic showing through. “It was from the aquarium!”

Key switched the footage to show the one in the aquarium. He gasped. “He’s right, the explosion came from the North Pole section.”

“I didn’t think he would go so far as to blow up his own servers but, .” Tao cursed, running through the crowd. “Sooyoung, do you see Sooyoung?!”

Baekhyun and Key scanned the footages in the building, seeing no sign of her and their anxiety growing. “No!” They were about to switch the footages but all the security feed out. “Tao. The feeds cut!”

Tao could hear the series of explosion arising from the Aquarium, drowning the screams of the crowd. “There’s been another explosion. Sooyoung, please.” He arrived at the entrance, but the security guard held him from going inside.

He ran out the back through the garage, stopping in his tracks when he saw Lee Soo Man and three men behind him enter a car. “You!!”

Lee Soo Man glared at him, the three men rushing forward to take him down. Tao unclipped the gun from his jeans, unloading all the bullets in the magazine into the men’s chest, taking them down immediately.

Seeing Soo Man try to run, Tao shot the man in his knees, watching him fall to the ground with a loud groan. He sped up his pace to kneel beside the man, bunching up his collar and pulling him to face him. “Where’s Sooyoung?!”

Soo Man chuckled painfully, “You’re too late.”

Tao cursed, split between his dilemma of letting him go or running to Sooyoung. He decided to shoot the man once more in his other kneecap to prevent him from running, ignoring the scream. Tao also shot the tires of the car for extra measures. “That’s for Krystal, you bastard.”

Then he left to enter the building. “I’m inside!” He rasped over the puffs of smoke from the explosion, running over and jumping through fallen debris.

“Tao, be careful! We can’t see anything!” Baekhyun warned, his voice loud and echoing in the eerily dark and quiet atmosphere in the command centre. Having overheard the showdown between his brother and Soo Man, his hands were curled into fists, he whispered his worry. “Sooyoung.”

Tao screamed in shock when one of the ceiling almost fell against him, ducking and rolling away before the crash. He ignored the shouts of his brother and cousin to focus on his path to the Sea Creature section. Seeing the Whale tank in view, he ran to the vending machine to see that the secret button didn’t work and the door won’t open.

“Sooyoung!” He banged against the vending machine, trying to get a reply in vain. He pressed against his comms in his ear. “Baek! Key! Sooyoung’s not responding! The door won’t open. I--” He looked around, stopping his update when he saw something red blinking under the one of the benches.

Tao ducked and saw one of the bombs strapped underneath the seat. An idea coming to his head, he grabbed the bomb underneath, watching the red light blink faster. He stuck the bomb to the vending machine, then ran behind one of the pillars.

The bomb exploded through the machine, blowing not only the doors open but the aquarium tank with it. Tao cursed, tried to run but was engulfed by the great water pressure escaping from the Whale tank.

Baekhyun and Key heard the explosion from their side, screaming various versions of Tao’s name and demanding an update on the situation. When they heard the tell-tale sound of water rushing, the comms made a weird high-pitched noise before crackling and stopped working.

Key punched the keyboard he had in front of him, the keys breaking and ricochet around the panel. “!”

Tao coughed out the water from his lungs, his rib cage aching from the hydraulic pressure of the water. “Baekhyun? Key?” He tested his comms, finding it toast and ringing in his ears, he threw it out. He trudged through the pouring water, going to the twisted metal door behind the debris of the vending machine.

His hands made contact on the door, hissing when he found it contrastingly hot to touch, burning. “.” He tore his sweater from his head, leaving him shirtless, before bunching it up on his hands, pushing the door open.

The youngest Khun coughed unexpectedly at the amount of smoke that bombarded him. The place was on fire. “Sooyoung!” Tao waved the smoke out, bringing his sweater up to cover his mouth.

The servers were destroyed, the walls were with flames, he almost gave up. But then he heard a cough from the ground. Tao ran towards the bent figure limp on the floor. Reaching his arms out to cradle the woman once he reached her.

“Sooyoung!” He cried out in relief, only to say it too soon, because then he saw it. The blood. “Oh my god.”

Sooyoung opened her eyes with a weak flutter of her flashes, smiling weakly at her brother. “Tao,” she choked.

Tao couldn’t help the tears that formed in his eyes. “No. Oh god. Sooyoung-noona.” He pressed his sweater against the wound in her stomach, wincing when the white sweater got stained with constant blood flowing from the wound. “, you’re gonna be okay.”

Both the Khuns knew it was a lie. Sooyoung tried to smile wider at the lie her brother told to reassure her. She lifted her hands to bring the hard drive to Tao’s chest, the man grasping the drive and her hand along with it. “Get it.” She gasped. “To Key.”

“We’ll get to him, we will.” Tao cried openly, his words catching between breaths. “We’ll go home and we’ll get this son of a .”

Sooyoung nearly laughed, but couldn’t due to the pain it brought to her abdomend. Tao pushed harder to compress the wound, but the blood won’t stop pouring. Sooyoung lifted her hands from his grasp to trace her brother’s handsome face, wiping the constant flow of tears. “Tao-ah.”

“Noona.” Tao answered back, his hands coming back up to caress the hand that was caressing his face.

Remembering the face she loved ever since he was born, remembering how small he was when she first held him in her arms, promising to protect him forever, tears slipped down her face. She silently prayed to whatever Gods that would listen to her, to do her promise for her, protect her family and let them be happy, because if they have been watching over them, they’d know there’s no one else other than her family who deserved it more. “I’m sorry, Tao.”

“You better be.” Tao tried to joke, his breaths coming in short elapses. “You made me climb a ferris wheel.” He laughed through his sobs, trying to ease the voice in the back of his head telling him it’s too late. “You better make me your baked mac and cheese, or I’ll never forgive you.”

Sooyoung smiled, feeling her eyes heavy to open, slowly closing them against her will. She felt numb. Her fingers losing the grip it had on Tao’s jaws, slowly slipping down if not for the hold Tao has on it. “Noona loves you.”

She closed her eyes. And it stayed closed.

The sob tore from his lungs like a wave, excruciatingly painful and unwilling. “Noona. No.” He shook her limp body, holding it close to him. “Please. Sooyoung-noona.” His face was a contorted sobbing mess, his lungs burning trying to take in oxygen but met with heavy smoke, causing him to cry louder.

“I’m so sorry.” Tao whispered to her unhearing ears, hugging her body closer. “Sooyoung, I’m so sorry.”

He kneeled, screaming, weeping, coughing and shaking. Shouting at his fate, at his parents, at the Company, at anyone. Tao just screamed.

~~~

Baekhyun and Key waited in the command centre for the whole day, having no surveillance or connection to their family, they refused to leave until they got an update, praying that everything would be fine. It was nearing midnight, their prayers hanging by the thread.

They got their answer in the form of Tao, trudging through the door in a loud bang. His shoulders slumped and his face covered by soot, shirtless, gripping a bloody sweatshirt in one hand and a drive at the other.

Both older Khuns sighed in relief running towards Tao, Key laughing in exhaustion when he saw the drive, taking it from Tao’s hands. “You got it! Oh my god! Yes.”

But Tao won’t let go of it, instead he roughly pushed his sweater to Key’s chest, the man’s hand shooting up to hold it, confused. Key’s eyes spotted the blood, his voice wavering. “Tao?”

Baekhyun stood behind the older Khun, afraid to take another step to confirm his suspicions. Because he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to believe. Or know.

“Where’s Sooyoung?”

Tao couldn’t register who asked the question first. He just stretched his hands out to Key’s open ones, dropping the drive and another object that fell with a clink to the drive on Key’s palms. Baekhyun stepped forward to see what the object was. He dropped to his knees when he saw it, a loud thud on the ground. His hands covering his face, the sobs wrecked out of him in surprise.

Key shook his head when he saw it. Tears silently going down his face, his hands growing limp, letting the sweater drop along with the hard drive, the object the only one left on his clutches. Sooyoung’s heart necklace, given by their parents, that she never took off for any reason.

Tao wordlessly caught the oldest Khun when he almost fell forward, hugging the man in the process. “No.” Key uttered, silenced by the breathless sobs from Baekhyun.

Tao refused to cry again, trying to be strong for the storm they were about to face. The last encounter with Lee Soo Man--or not Lee Soo Man, his brain couldn’t keep up--still very vivid in his mind.

He held Key away from him with each hands on his shoulders. “That’s not all.” He swallows his tears. “Lee Soo Man is dead.”

“Good.” Key stressed from his tears, glaring at nothing in particular. “He deserved to die.”

“But--”

“But what?” Baekhyun coughed, his sobs still fresh.

Tao scrunched his nose, angling his face to the sky to catch his tears of frustration. “It’s not--” He laughed, tone unbelieving and ridiculous without humour. “Huh, what the is this?”

“What are you saying?” Key shook his head to Tao, questioning his sanity from losing his sister.

“I don’t know.” Tao slumped, still looking at the sky.

“I don’t know anymore, Sooyoung.”

~~~

Tao went back to the garage, his dark side showing through the smirk he let out when he saw Lee Soo Man dragging himself on the floor, blood pouring on his path. He set in another magazine to his gun, reloading it to aim at Soo Man’s shoulder, then fired.

Soo Man shouted at him like he was a crazy man when Tao fired again into the man’s wrist, getting closer. “What do you want?!”

Tao kicked the man so hard, he rolled over to slam against the car’s flat tires. “What do I want?” He seethed through his closed jaw, firing another bullet into the man’s gut, his smirk satisfying by the painful groan he got from it. “I want you to suffer, like she did.”

Soo Man held his hands up to stop him, only to receive another bullet in his only good shoulder. “Stop!!”

“I want revenge, you mothering son of a .” Tao gritted his teeth, the dried tear tracks on his face visible from where Soo Man was slumped against the car. He bent down, his hands carrying the gun propped on his knees, digging it into the bullet wound in the man’s gut.

“Revenge?” Soo Man pulled from his lungs, breath hitching as he laughed, causing Tao to frown. “You’re the Khuns aren’t you?”

Tao whipped his head back, he was under the impression Soo Man already knew who they were.

“Oh, there’s so much you don’t know.” Soo Man tried to assess his importance, telling him truths to help him survive and kept alive. “You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

Tao shook his head, believing the words as a last hand strategy of lies to stay alive. “Maybe not.” He smiled, propping the barrel of his gun between Soo Man’s eyes, watching them widen with fear and shock. “But I don’t need to.”

“This ends here.” He fires. The sound echoing in the large expanse of the empty basement. Tao wiped his hands and body with his sweater from the blood, dropping it on the ground.

He was about to leave but something caught his eye that wasn’t quite right. Soo Man’s right hand. On the floor. It was clean.

Tao took the hands to inspect it--flawless skin, if not wrinkled by age. But that couldn’t be. Tao knew it couldn’t be because he had been studying the man ever since he was little, memorizing his weakness and appearance including every inch of his body down to the shape of his nails. That’s how he knew. Lee Soo Man had a scar the size of a toothpick across the back of his right hand.

But this man didn’t.

Tao couldn’t even think about what it means. But he collected a blood sample in a small container he had with him. And hijacked one of the cars in the basement to the Khun’s lab facility. He ran the test immediately, a simple blood test to determine the blood type.

That’s when he knew for sure.

The blood sample test turned out to be a B-type blood.

Lee Soo Man has A-type blood.

The man he killed wasn’t Soo Man. He looked like him, sounded like him, acted like him, and was him throughout the whole time Tao was in SM.

But he wasn’t.

So who the hell was he?

The words the man said as his dying words rang in his head, “You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

What the hell was going on?

-- End of Season 1 --

HAPPY NEW YEARS! Here's an update as promised~ Anndd we're finally at the finale. That's the end of season one! This story will be in hiatus for about a month to fix up the early chapters and to start on the second one. Longest chapter so far i think? 6,000 words+. Am really sorry for the character death. I hated that too. But something's gotta give~~ Please comment, and leave a like, subscribe, upvote, and everything~~ I'm so happy with the feedback you're giving. Second Season will be downhill of crazy action, ridiculous plots and just crazy developments so look out for that!! Until then, I leave you here~~