"It's simple, we want the source code."

Jinki starts. Not that he wasn't expecting it. "Where are you?" he asks again instead. "You agreed that you would be here so we could discuss this in person."

A laugh. "Oh don't worry, we're here. In fact, we can see you right now." He looks around him instinctively, even though he knows he won't see anything. As if reading his mind, the person on the other end of the phone laughs again. "But you can't see us. See, it's simple. You're the main developer behind the source code, aren't you? So you can either give it to us, or we can take... you."

Kibum had been right. This had been a bad idea. "Or neither," he says. He's calmer than he feels, and he's a tiny bit grateful for that. "Not that I would build it for criminals in the first place, but it's not like I could have done it by myself anyway." The criminals part was a guess, but the last bit was true. Kibum had been, well, key to the entire organization.

"Criminals? Oh, we're much more than that. I thought you were smarter than this, but I guess not."

There's the distinct sound of a phone being flipped shut, and Jinki is left staring at his own phone in confusion. And then in the next moment, he's sinking, sinking, sinking and he's never liked the taste of water like this. His lungs are burning, but so is his back so maybe there's more to it than he thinks. Not that he's reall thinking.

He gasps, but his lungs flood cloistered instead. He tries to kick up, but he can't tell which way is up. Or down. Maybe he's kicking down. Or, nowhere, it doesn't seem to be working. 

A strong grip around his wrist, his eyes fluttering open to see a familiar face—

—he coughs, spluttering. It hurts. He hurts. His eyes squeeze shut, but still, fire burns down his limbs, his back—

"This isn't what we agreed on!" A voice, low, urgent. Unfamiliar? No, familiar. Now.

He's tired. Fading. Falling.

"So? Are you going soft, Minho?"

Familiar?

Maybe.

Oh. Maybe.

-

June 13, 20xx, 20:37

Silence greets him when he opens his eyes. The room isn't dark, a small bedside lamp a steady source of lamp nearby. Jinki sits up slowly, eyes glancing around for the screen. "Taemin?" he calls, when he finds it.

The boy rolls into view, a worried expression on his face. Jinki smiles at him reassuringly. "At the harbour, thePrincess," he says.

Taemin stares at him blankly, confusion written all over his face, before something clicks and an eager expression lights up his face. "Are you sure, hyung?"

Jinki nods. "I think," he says. "Where's Kibum?"

"I—let me tell him."

Taemin disappears, and Jinki's left by himself in the room. He flops back down on the bed, sorting out the memories flooding through his mind. It won't last for long—it's just the source code messing with his head, and more likely than not, he'll end up back to where he was, with nothing.

Man, he'd made a stupid mistake back then, hadn't he?

A clatter jerks him out of his musings, and he sits back up just as Taemin reappears excitedly. "Hyung said there were a few officers near there and they questioned a few people and—and I think we found him. We did it, hyung! The source code works."

Jinki matches his grin. "He'll be there. You'll find him," he says.

Taemin laughs lightly, dropping into the chair. "Yeah. I'm glad, especially for Kibum hyung."

"Source code works."

"It does, except..."

The smile falls off of Taemin's face, and Jinki nods, unconsciously mirroring the boy as he bites at his lower lip.

"It's okay," he reassures him. "I know. I'm pretty much dead, right? That's the only way source code could work, since we never got around to fixing the memory bug."

"Hyung, it's... we're... I'm—"

There's tears now, and Jinki feels suddenly guilty. "Don't cry, Taemin-ah, in the end, we found him didn't we?"

"But you, you're—"

"I'm stuck in here. Forever, probably, or at least until I die properly, right?" He shrugs, forces a smile on. "Hey Taemin, could you do me a favour?"

Taemin nods, hesitantly."If I can, hyung."

"Give me access to the code. I think I've figured out the problem."

"You mean—"

"Yeah, if we change the way we process the fermion spins—" he laughs, shrugs, even though he knows Taemin can't see it, that somewhere out there his real body exists, and here it's just the manifestation of his body that his mind is projecting. "Anyway, then we won't have the restrictions and it'll work like we planned it to."

Taemin nods again, and there's the tapping of keys, before a scrolling wall of code appears on one of the walls. Jinki hums as he stands, pulling out a keyboard from a drawer in the wall. He's pretty confident about this, an entaglement problem. Funny what dying a few times can do to your thought process.

It doesn't take too long, now that he knows what the problem is. The answer was always simpler to find when you knew it already. "There, that's done," he says, satisfied. He glances back at the screen, wondering if Taemin had heard him. "Check it, just in case, but that solves the problem we had, doesn't it?"

Taemin is rubbing at his eyes, but he nods and Jinki can hear him tapping at the keyboard again. His eyes open wide as he scrolls down the code, and Jinki laughs at his wonder.

"By the way, could I ask for one more favour?" he says. 

Taemin looks up at the camera again. "What is it?"

Jinki takes a deep breath. "Send me into the source code again."

Taemin stared. "What. But we've already—"

"I have a hunch about this. I think it's possible. I mean, for the source code to last longer than eight minutes—sorry, Taemin-ah, it's... this is like abandoning you guys, but I mean, Minho, I think... I think now, he's... gone too. And I think he deserves a happy ending too. I can't really do anything about Onew, but if I can at least do something for Minho, I think... Onew would've liked that too."

"But it's the pas—"

"The many worlds theory. Every single possibility already exists, we just have to find the right one." Jinki cuts him off, shrugging offhandedly before he remembers that Taemin can't see. 

"That's just a theory!" Taemin protests.

Jinki laughs. "Source code was just a theory too, and look where that's led us." He pauses here, a consideration taking root in his mind. "Tell Kibum sorry for me, okay? And tell him that he was right, I made a stupid choice. He likes being right."

Taemin is staring at him, realising that Jinki is completely serious about this. "...hyung."

Jinki smiles lightly at the serious look on the younger man's face. "Well, maybe tell him after you guys go out to celebrate, make sure Jonghyun's okay." Taemin is still staring at him silently, so Jinki continues. "By the way, I kind of lost your number when I, well, you know. I don't think my cellphone was waterproof. Mind if you give it to me again? I'll text you when I'm done, maybe we can meet up after. I think I'd like that."

"Yeah, I think I'd like that too." Taemin speaks quietly, even as he's tapping at the keyboard again, and a phone number blinks on the wall the source code of the source code had been on. Jinki commits it to memory, mouthing the digits to himself, before turning his attention back to the screen. Taemin is biting at his lower lip, but tears still pooled at the corners of his eyes. Jinki swallows, struggling to keep his smile in the face of Taemin's tears. "Good luck, hyung. And thank you."

Jinki shrugs. "It was the least I could do," he says. "And hey, smile."

"Yeah," Taemin says. He tries one tentatively, and Jinki beams when the corners of his lips tip upwards just slightly. "Yeah."

-

June 13, 20xx, 14:32

"Hey, hyung!" Taemin runs after the older man, finally in range to grab his wrist. 

Kibum snaps around, eyes blazing in anger. "I'm going to kill them," he says, and Taemin takes an involuntary step back. They'd just gotten the call, Jonghyun's shaky voice not too reassuring over the line, but Kibum was taking the news of his friend's attempted kidnapping as well as could be expected. 

"It turned out okay, didn't it?" Taemin says with a shake of his head. Someone had to be the voice of reason around here. Especially since Jinki hyung was—he shakes his head again, this time dispelling the stray thought, although he can't help the glance over his shoulder at the room where they're keeping him on life support. He looks back at Kibum, pursing his lips. "I know you're worried about Jonghyung hyung, but it's not like theyactually kidnapped him, just tried to, right?"

"Like that matters," Kibum scoffs. He shakes Taemin off and stalks out the door before Taemin manages to stop him, the younger boy reaching after him before he sighs and drops his arm.

Taemin sighs again, and heads back to his desk to grab his phone and keys. He had one new message, but he figures he has time to check it later. "Be back soon!" he mouthes in Jinki's direction, before he follows Kibum out the door.

Testing the source code could wait for another day. For now, making sure Kibum didn't actually kill anyone seemed a little more important. Just a little.