October 10th, 2016 - Unnamed Cluster

“No.”

Heechul’s head whips around so he can look at Jungsoo in disbelief, not entirely trusting that he’s heard correctly.

“You’re giving my plan a ‘no’? I thought I was the Strategist!”

“And I’m the leader. Donghee trusted us with this mission, and we’re not going to let his information go to waste just because you don’t trust anyone besides yourself.”

“I trust you, don’t I?”

“Heechul.”

“Fine,” the man in question relents. “But for the record, if things go south because these people won’t cooperate, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

It’s almost maddening, Heechul thinks to himself, that the success of their first operation as the Resistance is dependent on how willing this family is to believe them. Maybe they’ll surprise him, but Heechul prides himself on not being wrong.

(Often.)

“Now or never,” he says aloud. “You want to do the talking, fearless leader?”

Jungsoo elbows him in the side, but doesn’t argue. Their position is abandoned in favor of going straight up the path to the front door.

It feels...strange to be doing something so seemingly normal when they’re technically still on the run. Kind of hard to picture themselves as Resistance fighters when they’re walking around unarmed in broad daylight.

Have to start from somewhere, I guess.

Jungsoo knocks twice on the door, giving Heechul a few short seconds to twist his own face into an expression that doesn’t read “I am incredibly annoyed by this current situation”. The thought of this being over se he can take about a month-long nap almost makes it work.

The woman who answers the door looks exhausted, her hair pulled up into a frazzled bun and an apron tied around her waist. It seems almost cruel to have to tell her that whatever has her so tired is about to become the least of her problems.

“Can I help you?” she asks, not unkindly but still understandably wary.

Heechul sees Jungsoo noticeably straighten his spine, trying to look as respectable as he can in his worn-out clothes.

“Actually, ma’am,” The Resistance leader says, “We’re here to help you, if you’ll let us.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t know if you’ve heard, ma’am, but the Capital is sending teams of policemen to forcefully take resources from people who refused to move to the city. We’ve heard from a reliable source that they’re planning on targeting you and your family next.”

The look on the woman’s face is...less than ideal. Instead of curious or worried, she looks ready to call the police on them.

Which is quite ironic, given the circumstances.

“Look, young man, I have no idea what you’d hoped to gain by tricking me into believing that my family is in danger━”

“It’s not a trick. They honestly━”

“But I would suggest that you and your friend take your schemes elsewhere before I call my husband. Good day.”

She begins to shut the door.

“Ma’am, please!”

The desperation in Jungsoo’s voice makes both the woman and Heechul freeze.

“Please,” Jungsoo repeats. He’s so much more convincing like this, real and raw instead of the act he’d been putting on earlier.

“I’m telling you the truth. It’s been less than a week since policemen killed my parents, and I wasn’t even given the chance to say goodbye.” He bows his head. “I can’t have the same thing that happened to my family happen to someone else’s.”

There’s a moment of silence before the woman visibly shudders, opening the door a little wider. Heechul still thinks she might kick them out, either from disbelief or panic, but her next words are steady.

“When are they coming?”

~*~

After Jungsoo’s speech, it’s relatively easy to convince the woman to help them with their plan. She agrees to arm them with the most effective weapon in her home’s arsenal (also known as a solid wooden baseball bat), as well as let them hide behind the dying trees by the entrance, where they are now.

“Stall them,” Jungsoo had told her. “Just keep them talking and don’t let them know we’re here. The moment it looks like they’re about to get violent, we’ll protect you.”

Heechul has to admit that he sees Jungsoo in a different light after his little display earlier ━ not a bad one, just different. It had seemed like an obvious choice for Jungsoo to be the leader of their budding group, simply on principle of being the oldest, but now it appears to be an even wiser one. Things Heechul hadn’t known about Jungsoo: he was a natural leader.

They might not be as crazy as Heechul had thought for kicking the Capital’s metaphorical wasp nest.

Motion catches his eye, and he looks up to see Jungsoo signalling him from the opposite side of the door, still hidden. The policemen are here.

Heechul carefully maneuvers himself so that he can keep an eye on the two approaching men without being detected.

Jungsoo better have that bat ready.

How cruel, Heechul wonders, does someone have to be to carry out an order like this? How heartless did someone have to be to murder entire families simply because they were commanded to? Or, as the case probably was, how much did they have to be paid?

Heechul’s blood boils beneath his skin.

The men knock on the door, and are immediately greeted by who Heechul assumes is the man of the house. Their conversation starts out civil enough, but Heechul still re-balances himself on the balls of his feet, ready to pounce. In his peripheral vision, he sees Jungsoo doing the same.

“We have an official order from the Capital,” one policeman is saying. “If you’ll sign the agreement, we can confiscate the necessary supplies. I’m sure you understand the importance of pooling resources together in the city.”

Heechul wonders if this is the same bull they’ve tried to sell Jungsoo’s parents ━ the same bare-faced lie to justify making the rich even richer.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Officer. In fact, I disagree.” The man of the house crosses his arms defiantly. “Our property isn’t yours to take.”

“I would advise you to think twice about your answer when your wife and child are just inside.”

“Is that a threat?”

The tension in the air suddenly spikes.

This is it, Heechul thinks with a grimace. Any moment now.

He catches Jungsoo’s eye, and sees the other take a deep breath before he nods his head, mouthing, “go!”.

He leaps. The guard nearest to him doesn’t even get the chance to turn around before Heechul’s arms are locked tightly around his neck, cutting off his air supply. Next to him, there’s a sharp crack! as Jungsoo knocks the other man out cold with the baseball bat.

Two for two, and not even a scratch. Maybe they’re cut out for this, after all. That, or there’s just a hell of a lot of luck on their side.

Either way, Resistance: 1, Capital: 0.

~*~

“I can still remember the expression on that father’s face,” Heechul says with a snort. “To be fair, I’d be shocked, too, if I was him. It’s not everyday that someone ━quite expertly, I might add━ takes out two lawmen standing a foot from your front door.”

Jungsoo takes over for him. “The family was generous enough to give us food and water in return for keeping them safe. It started a trend that, in all honesty, kept us alive, since the only money we had to buy supplies with was whatever Heechul and I took with us when we left our Cluster.”

“And this is why I’m glad I joined after you stopped being dirt poor,” Kyuhyun pipes up.

Heechul shoots him a look. “Good to see the past few months haven’t made you any less of a brat. Don’t worry, we’ll get to the pretty rich boy in a little while.”

On the other side of the room, Sungmin gives a coy smile.

“After we accepted the family’s gifts,” Jungsoo continues, with a pointed look at Heechul, “we reported in with one of the policemen’s radios telling their captain that the family had been killed. It would either slow the system down enough for them to move somewhere safe, or it would ensure they were protected if they stayed. I’m still not sure which ended up being true.”

“Then we stripped those bastards of their weapons and ammo,” Heechul adds. “This mission had turned out fine, but we weren’t about to walk into another without at least having a gun.

“They were still unconscious, so we carried them to a clearing about a mile out from the Cluster. I personally thought we should tie them to a post in the middle of the neighborhood and tell everyone what they tried to do, but according to Jungsoo that would have been ‘inhumane’ and ‘wrong’. It was a shame.”

More seriously, he says, “That was when we had our first...moral crisis, let’s call it. Keep in mind that these weren’t Drones; they were people, even if they’d been willing to murder entire families. Jungsoo and I discussed it, and we made it a clear-cut policy going forward: we would do everything in our power to not kill the people working for the Capital. And actually, I think we’ve managed to uphold that policy even until now, so good job.

“But, of course, just because we agreed not to kill them didn’t mean that we weren’t going to send a message. We wrote a few sentences on the back of their bull agreement they were carrying around ━ something along the lines of ‘the people are under our protection’ and ‘we’re not tricked by your lies’, signed with ‘The Resistance’. It’s not like we were naive enough to think they would take it seriously, but it would be ironic, wouldn’t it? After we became a threat, they could look back and regret letting us get away with so much.”

Jungsoo’s lips press together in a thin line. “Not that they would have had the time to deal with us anyway. They were too busy test-driving their new Drone program.”

“That was…?” Heechul trails off for a brief moment. “Hell, you’re right; it was that early. Turns out that instead of just killing Outsiders off, the Capital was also kidnapping them for tests. I don’t know how many they took, but it must have been so many people...it took them less than a month to perfect the process: imprisonment to wear you down, an injection to wipe your humanity, and a microchip to ensure you became part of the horde. Like something straight out of a dystopia. Of course, we didn't know all of that at the time; we knew about the process, not the scale of the kidnappings. But I digress.

“We did two or three more rescues missions after the first, all very similar, but it was still policemen we were up against. We’d only heard about the Drones, not seen them.”

“Until the first raid,” Jungsoo says gravely.

“Right. Speaking of which…” Heechul looks up at the pair on the opposite couch, unusually hesitant. “Hyukjae, Donghae...I can skim the raid, if you want. It’s not entirely my story to tell.”

The glance Hyukjae exchanges with the man next to him is brief, but clearly meaningful. When he turns his eyes back to Heechul, saying “we’ve made peace with it. Go ahead,” the expression on his face is a resigned sort of sadness. But there seems to be truth to his words: even Donghae looks like he’s come to terms with this stain on their shared history.

“If you’re sure.” Heechul turns back to the rest of the group, slipping back into his narrative role.

“Soon after Mayor Park’s mad scientists got their Drones fully functional, they started planning larger-scale operations, raids on entire Clusters instead of house-by-house extortions. They weren’t short on firepower with an army of mindless husks, so they got away with it.

“Donghee got wind of one of the earlier raids only because there was a warning. A few policemen had come to this particular Cluster a day earlier, demanding that all the Outsiders there turn themselves in to the Capital ━ probably to become Drones, if you ask me ━ on the threat of extermination. A handful of them agreed out of fear, but the majority stayed. So we headed over to warn them about the impending raid…”