Requested by: Train_girl

Characters: Tao [EXO] & Kang Lina [OC]

Premise: Cold kidnapper Tao captures Kang Lina.  Between long hours spent in the car and hotel rooms, they find love.

Author: Admin K, DivinestSense

The Universe in a Second

Silently making his way up the stairs, Tao mentally counted each step as he went.  Twenty four—just like yesterday, just like last month, just like always.  The hallway that met the top of the stairs was outlined by two long expanses of gray wall.  There were no other options but to continue straight down the hall to lone door.  It was a cold door, welded from the darkest metals found on the Earth.  Blank, narrow walls that lead to an unwelcoming slab of metal; this was his home.  As he made his way to the door, Tao counted sixteen; it took him sixteen swift, efficient strides to reach the end of the hall—just like yesterday, just like last month, just like always.

His fixation with numbers was a quirk that no others knew of.  Naturally taciturn in nature, he never felt any reason to share it with people not only because he had been trained not to trust others—even those who were also in the Cave—but also because he didn’t want to deal with the onslaught of questions that were sure to follow regarding his mental health.  Though taught to keep his emotions in check, Tao could never help the small spark of annoyance that ignited over the mere consideration that people would assume his counting as a sign of insanity.  They didn’t understand what it was like to live in a world where the universe’s one constant—time—was futile. 

He did.

With the ability to stop time, go back, and speed it up, Tao had always been aware of the gravity of his power.  From the first time he had frozen time to now, when he restricted himself from using wielding his ability, he had carried the unforgiving resentment towards it.  Normal humans worried that time went too fast or at times too slow.  They fretted over spending time with one another and they would wish for moments to last forever.  They depended on time to heal wounds yet lived with the uncertainty that their wounds would heal before death struck, for it was unpredictable.  Everything about time that plagued their minds—every comment he heard in passing—was a blade through his heart, a reminder that he would never feel the way they did. For to him, time meant nothing.

Numbers were what mattered. 

From counting exactly three beeps of his alarm clock before he slammed it off, to counting the forty seconds it took to drink his coffee, Tao counted everything.  In a world where he could warp the one, continuously ticking timer, he had learned to worship numbers.  For even if time was frozen or even if he traveled back, it would always take him twenty-four steps to climb up the stairs to the Cave and sixteen steps to reach the metal door.  Numbers withstood time and for that, he depended on them.

Standing in front of the door, Tao checked his watch.  He was supposed to meet Suho in three minutes.  Even though the door was thick, he could still hear voices, which only meant one thing—someone was yelling and that someone was probably Sehun.  With a temper like wind-manipulator’s, it was best to be out of the range of fire.  Moving to stand against the wall, Tao closed his eyes as he counted down the seconds.  It was strange, to Tao, how even though all of the members of the Cave went through the same training, they all came out so differently.  Tao had become the stereotypical spy, cold and quiet, while others like Sehun and Chanyeol had become wild cards, loud and outgoing.  But the more he thought about it, the less strange the reality became.  Their personalities were reflections of their abilities.  Sehun was forceful, Chanyeol was warm and Tao—Tao didn’t know about himself and quite frankly, he didn’t care to.  All he knew (and cared about) was that he was given a mission and that he completed it.

With the purpose of conditioning and preparing the next generation of special spies, the leaders of the Cave subjected each “student” to harsh physical workouts and sessions that pertained to how to use one’s power in the field.  It was up to each individual’s discretion as to when to use his power.  Some liked to use it each mission and some, such as himself, rarely used it.  In a sense, if he used his power correctly, his was the safest of all of them.  The one rule they had to abide by upon carrying out their assignments was that no regular human should know that special powers existed.  There was no side effect to pausing time, for when he un-paused it, everyone resumed their activities without a second thought.  He could pause it for seconds or hours and no one would notice.  But with powers like fire and strength, control and secrecy was essential—they had gone centuries without being exposed. 

The Cave had been around almost as long as the stove.  Yet even though it had been a part of society as important as the government, it wasn’t famous.  In fact, the knowledge of its existence was limited to only a handful of people and even then, they only knew that it existed and worked in undercover, outside of the law matters—such as Tao’s usual assignments: kidnapping. 

The members of the Cave were all descendants of family lines known for bearing children with special powers; one could call it a cult.  Once a child was born to the twelve founding families, he or she was subjected to training then thrown into the “family business.”  It was all Tao knew.

Currently, Suho was in charge of the active members.  Their parents’ generation had all officially retired and now busied themselves with random concerns for grandchildren.  Unlike the leader before him, Suho was gentler—kinder.  When he had taken over (the eldest member of the new generation becomes the leader) there was a definite change in the atmosphere of the work.  The jobs themselves were the same as ever and Tao continued out his assigned kidnappings the same as ever, but Suho’s ideals had slowly made their way into the minds of his other ten brothers. 

“The world is not black and white; we are not the bad guys just as others are not the good guys.  There are always circumstances unbeknownst to all.  We do our jobs—dirty work—because it’s the lifestyle we were all born into, but that doesn’t mean we have to see the world through the eyes of our parents, who saw it through the eyes of theirs.  What we do isn’t always right, surely you know that we aren’t only assigned to take care of corrupt people, but innocent as well.  It was the founders’ belief that people were just people, and no weight could be placed on one life—no assignment was ‘more right’ than the next.  That is not my belief and always remember that it doesn’t have to be yours either.  We are kidnappers and spies, not robots.”

Suho had always been in tune with his morals and values—something that Tao assumed resulted from his vast education in philosophies and other sciences—but himself on the other hand, not so much.  It wasn’t that he embraced the motto of the founders, but rather that he didn’t know anything else.  Work was just work, good or bad.

Sure enough, as Tao’s mental clock hit zero, the metal door flew open with a bang.  He watched as Sehun marched out, some of Suho’s spare papers following him, caught in his furious wind.  Smoothly gathering up the files and making his way into Suho’s office, Tao counted three steps to the desk.

Upon seeing who stood in front of him, Suho gave a tired smile. 

“Good evening, Tao.”

Nodding a greeting, he waited.

“We’ve received a kidnapping job.  Normally I would just give you the file and send you off, but I’d like to brief you on this one face to face, if I may?”  Suho asked.

Giving his silent okay, Tao waited.  Truthfully, there was no point in asking his permission—Suho was the leader, he could force them all to listen to him recite the periodic table—but Suho believed in freedom of sorts.  He wanted to remind them all—who had been given instructions since birth—that they had the right to choice.

“As you know, the national elections for the education board are coming up.  Competition is always tense and corrupt.  We’ve been hired by one of the candidates to kidnap the daughter of another—Kang Lina.  The reasons behind it are not disclosed, simply categorized as ‘personal.’ You are not to hold for her for ransom, but rather to bring her to the country side and hold her until the elections are over, releasing her immediately afterwards,"  Suho explained.  “Do you understand your assignment, Tao?”

Do you understand your assignment, Tao?

Do you understand why I chose to explain it to you?

Do you understand that this assignment is but a personal grudge?

Do you understand that Kang Lina’s only an innocent girl?

“Yes.”

Seeing Suho’s small smile, he bowed and took his leave.  He had a lot of preparation to do.

And a lot of thinking.

Hands resting readily on the door handle, Tao watched the people pass.  His file had stated that she visited this coffee shop every day, spending approximately thirty minutes inside before exiting.  He had been waiting outside in his car for twenty-two at this point.

Immediately he picked her out from the crowd of caffeine addicts.  The reason was far from romantic, for she was not necessarily the most beautiful girl in the small café, but how familiar she was with her surroundings.  From the way she walked to the way she interacted with the staff, it was obvious that she was a regular.  She must have really loved it there; she was practically glowing.

Even if he had been unable to see her face, he could tell that she was his target (victim, sneered the small voice in his mind).  She had long, pale, smooth fingers that were well practiced through years of piano lessons.  She had a carefree smile, typical of a girl her age yet her ankles were crossed under her seat, typical of a girl with an image to protect (or someone else’s). 

She sat in the front of the café, right next to the large window that Tao looked through at a distance.  All around her, people animatedly chatted and moved about, yet she sat there, perfectly still, reading a book.  Not moving, she appeared like a beautiful, serene statue, adorned with a golden halo by the sun shining in. 

Suho’s strange attention to this job ran through his mind as the small voice jeered at Tao: This was Kang Lina in her natural habitat, peaceful and innocent; this was Tao in his natural habitat, dangerous and waiting to strike.

And time was up.

His movements were fast and fluent, a result of years of kidnapping.  The time it took to walk out of the car, escape random eyes, grab her wrist and throw her in the back was a minute and sixteen seconds.

In a minute and sixteen seconds, he had completed phase one of his mission.

In a minute and sixteen seconds, he had been cold and calculated. 

In a minute and sixteen seconds, he had been called every cuss word in the dictionary.

In a minute and sixteen seconds, he had robbed a girl of safety.

“Let me out, right now!”

Hearing no response, Lina thrashed he body against the car seat.  Her hands were bound behind her back with what felt like rope and her feet were tied at the ankles.  She had not even had time to properly react—this guy had come up to her so quietly, bound her hands as they walked so efficiently that she couldn’t even yell (she hadn’t even thought to yell).  Even as she was placed in her the middle back seat, strapped in with two crisscrossing seat belts, she remained dumbfounded.  She felt so stupid, sitting in the back of this strangers car; she had done nothing to prevent her own kidnapping.  She had seen all the movies, yet she could not quite figure out how she was supposed to react.

Her first instinct was to yell a lot.  So she did.

And that did nothing.

The guy acted like he couldn’t even hear her as she threw herself around, banging every surface she could with any part of her body.  It took ten wasted minutes for her to realize that the windows much have been tinted.  After that, she had resulted to weakly pleading to be released, accompanied by the occasional hitting of the armrest in front of her. 

But he never spared her a glance.

Lina wanted to slap herself, for even her situation, she found the time to admire her kidnapper’s looks.  His face was blank as he drove and from what she could see in the rearview mirror, hi