Warnings: violence, torture (no blood!)

Friday nights are Junmyeon’s favourite. It’s the end of a long week and everyone’s too tired to go out but too restless to turn in early. It took him a long time to save up enough money to buy the movie projector and get it installed but the investment seems to have paid off, drawing everyone out of their rooms to gather in the living room together, splaying out lazily all over each other to watch a movie.

Junmyeon finally works up the energy to push himself off the couch, groaning at the painful prickling in his thighs where they’d begun to go numb. He steps over Seulgi and Chanyeol sitting on the carpet and beelines for the kitchen to refill the popcorn bowl that everyone managed to devour in minutes. The movie is still rolling and he hurries, praying that he doesn’t miss anything past the music montage he’d left it at.

“...line is still dead.”

He catches the tail end of a conversation just as he rounds the corner into the next room. Jongin and Jongdae are standing in the kitchen, brooding over Jongdae’s phone screen, sharing the same worried expression.

“What’s wrong?” Junmyeon asks, lowering the empty bowl into the sink to rinse it.

“Kyungsoo isn’t back yet,” Jongin says, the concerned furrow between his eyebrows deepening. “We can’t reach him on his phone.”

Junmyeon turns in surprise, glancing at the time and noting how late it is. It’s way past the hour Kyungsoo would usually get back home .

“Did he say anything about staying later today?” Junmyeon asks, checking his own phone just in case but there are no new messages or missed calls. He dials in Kyungsoo’s number too, seeing for himself, but the line is completely dead.  

Frowning, he scrolls through his contact list to find the office number Kyungsoo had given him when he started working at the firm. The line rings and Junmyeon prays that his boss is still there at this hour. He’s spoken to Kwangsoo before, having called in sick over the phone in Kyungsoo’s stead back when he got tonsillitis and couldn’t speak.

“Hello?”

Junmyeon startles when he actually answers, clearing his throat.

“Hi, sorry to bother you this late; this is Junmyeon, Kyungsoo’s roommate?”

“Junmyeon, of course! What can I do for you?”

“I was wondering if Kyungsoo was still at the office, working overtime? He hasn’t come home yet and he’s not answering his phone.”

“What? But he left hours ago,” Kwangsoo says concerned. He pauses, on the line and Junmyeon can hear the sounds of a cellphone keypad. “I can’t seem to reach him on his phone either.”

Junmyeon’s stomach drops at that, gnawing on his lower lip pensively. He thanks Kwangsoo and ends the call, promising to keep him updated when he finds Kyungsoo.

He turns back to the others, waiting anxiously to see what he says. Junmyeon wracks his brains, trying to think clearly without panicking.

“Okay,” he says, breathing through his nose. He turns to Jongdae, eyeing the phone in his hand. “Start by tracing the electric signal back to the source.”

Nodding, Jongdae cups the phone with both hands and closes his eyes, focusing on the current between his fingers and the device. He’s done this a handful of times before, back when Joohyun dropped her phone on the subway and Jongin left his on the bus. It’s the last resort they turn to because the electric surge from Jongdae’s palms tends to damage both devices in the connection.

Junmyeon leaves him to it, sweeping out of the room to find Taemin. He barely notices the movie still going on on the screen, spotting Taemin perched on the end of the couch and pulls him out of the room discreetly without alerting everyone else just yet. There’s no time for a barrage of panicked questions right now before he’s even figured out what’s going on himself.

“We need your help,” he says simply, leading Taemin back to the kitchen. Taemin immediately gravitates to Jongin’s side, as always, and Junmyeon lets him bring him up to speed, turning his focus back to the connection Jongdae’s working on.

“Anything?” he asks, pressing his fingers to his temple anxiously.

“Almost,” Jongdae says, squeezing his eyes shut tighter in concentration. Junmyeon can see the faint blue spark of his electricity flowing from the tips of his fingers, seeping into the phone the harder he focuses. He looks up moments later, blinking the lingering sparks of blue out of his eyes.

“It’s faint but I got a hit.”

Junmyeon nods, turning to Jongin who’s already got Taemin’s hand clasped tightly in his and reaches out for Junmyeon’s. Jongdae tucks his phone into his pocket and links hands with Junmyeon, right before Jongin teleports them all out of the room.

It always feels incredibly disorienting to travel Jongin’s way. Taemin is perfectly fine, having grown used to it by now, but Jongdae looks as nauseous as Junmyeon feels. He swallows, shaking the queasiness away and tries to focus on the matter at hand. They’re at the mouth of a familiar alley, thankfully out of sight in the shadows since the streetlights have been broken for months. They’re only a few blocks away from home but Junmyeon doesn’t see Kyungsoo anywhere, nor anyone else for that matter.

Jongdae holds up his palm, sparking up a small ball of electricity hovering in the centre to shed what little light he can. He steps into the alley, heading for the dumpster and Junmyeon follows after him warily, ready for anything.

He can barely see anything in the darkness but Jongdae charges the electrical ball up more and blasts it straight into the side of the dumpster, setting off a nasty smell of burning plastic. The line of electricity tethered to his palm seems to latch onto something on the other end and he guides it up, hauling the catch out of the dumpster to drop into his hands.

It’s Kyungsoo's phone, completely shattered and bent but still recognizable. Swallowing tightly, Jongdae hands it off to Taemin without a word, joining hands with the rest of them again.

“Alright,” Junmyeon says quietly, setting a hand on Taemin’s shoulder. “Show us what happened.”

Taemin exhales slowly, tightening his grip on the broken phone and closes his eyes. The pull is immediate, sweeping before Junmyeon’s eyes as fragmented images race through his mind, like a spectator from above.

The first image flickers faintly but he can see Kyungsoo crossing the usual square on the way home and then stopping suddenly in his tracks. The flash crackles shakily, leaping to the next image and Junmyeon watches in alarm as Kyungsoo just barely halts the rock being flung his way, suspended in the air before he lets it drop. Even through the blurry pictures in his mind, borrowed echoes of the past, the fear in Kyungsoo’s eyes flashes urgently. The image blacks out again and then comes back into focus, just catching the way Kyungsoo snaps his hand up to his neck before crumpling on the ground. Nothing moves after that, until a black van pulls up moments later, the door sliding open to let a group of masked men leap out and haul Kyungsoo’s limp body up from the ground. They drag him away, stowing him away in the back of the van and then the image fizzles out completely.

The vision cuts off, snapping them out of the pull and Taemin grunts, squeezing his temples with his fingers when they break out of it.

“. I lost him,” he grits out. Junmyeon blinks the lingering shadows of the vision away, turning to him in surprise.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s something that’s hiding him from me. He just slipped out of my vision, like I couldn’t even sense him there anymore,” Taemin says, frustrated.  

The gravity of it hits Junmyeon in full force now when he turns to see the stricken look on the others’ faces. He in a shaky breath, trying to stay level headed before the b panic bubbling in his chest takes over. It takes enormous effort not to lose it when they have no clue who took Kyungsoo or where they’ve even taken him. Too much time has passed already. Junmyeon feels sick when the thought that Kyungsoo might not even be alive crosses his mind.

Jongin looks thoroughly shaken, rooted to the spot. He’s pale, jumpy when Taemin touches him though he settles easily when Taemin leans in to murmur quietly in his ear. Junmyeon reaches for his hand, taking Jongdae’s too and waits until Jongin is ready to take them all home, where it’s safer for them to start figuring out what to do.

The movie is still blaring loudly in the living room, the sound of the others’ raucous laughter filling the house the way it always does. They stand in the kitchen, still stunned into silence until Jongdae finally breaks away and slips into the living room to break the news to the others.

Junmyeon limbs are heavy, standing there frozen, at a loss for what to do. The panic is finally starting to break through the calm facade he’s been trying to keep up so far. His hand shakes when he pulls his phone out from his pocket, his finger hovering over the screen like it’ll give him the answer for what their next move should be. The screen blacks out again when he does nothing and he clenches his fingers around it tightly, feeling completely useless.  

Behind him, he can hear Taemin still murmuring softly to Jongin, pushing a glass of water into his hands. It’s a deeply private moment and Junmyeon politely slips away, leaving them to it. That old, haunted look is back in Jongin’s eyes again, and it stays with Junmyeon even when he’s out of the room.  

Mulling over it, he looks at his phone again, pulling up his contact list this time. Junmyeon sighs, hesitant before he pulls up a name, dialling up an old number he’d hoped he’d never have to call again.

▸

Kyungsoo can’t feel the ground. The vibrations, the constant low hum that resonates with every fibre in his body, thrumming in his veins. It’s all gone, leaving nothing but the heavy silence and stillness in its wake.

“Who are you?” he throws at Baekhyun, needing more than just a name. “What do you want from me?”

Baekhyun remains unperturbed, lying back on his mattress with a leg crossed over his knee in the air casually.  

“My name’s Baekhyun, I like puppies and long walks on the beach,” he says cheerfully, turning to look at Kyungsoo. “And I’m just like you.”

Kyungsoo stares at him incredulously, but the numb feeling in his fingers tingles under his skin again, spreading to the rest of his body unsettlingly. It feels foreign, hollowing him out like an entire part of him is missing, unable to ground himself without the earth resonating through him.

“What happened to me?” he murmurs, staring down at his palms.

“Well. Me.”

Kyungsoo snaps his head up in shock, narrowing his eyes at Baekhyun. There’s nothing immediately hostile about his appearance but it’s certainly no coincidence that he lost his abilities the moment he woke up to Baekhyun. He must be working for them, the men who took him, whoever they are.

He clenches his fist tentatively, praying that the earth beneath him will respond but still nothing happens. Baekhyun seems to realize what he’s doing because he sighs, pushing himself back up to lean back against the wall.

“That’s not going to work,” he says quietly. “Not while I’m here. That’s what I do.”

That sounds like a threat. Kyungsoo sweeps a glance across the windowless room taking in the rest of his surroundings properly. It’s bare other than the mattresses, a small toilet and a big steel door closing them in here. There’s nothing he can use as a weapon.

“Then you’re nothing like me at all,” he mutters, still trying to find something to defend himself with.

“Well, it’s not like I’m in here on vacation,” Baekhyun says, waving a hand across the dreary room. “They keep me here because people’s abilities don’t work around me, like me just being there blocks it. Not the niftiest power, but there you go.”

Kyungsoo stares at him baffled; he’s never met or even heard of anyone who could do that. He stares down at his hands again, feeling the emptiness echoing through his body before looking up at Baekhyun again.

“Who’s ‘they’?” Kyungsoo latches onto the earlier reference. It could be anyone, any of the growing number of hate groups from the news, rising all over town. The thought that they’ve finally gotten to him this time makes his gut twist. “Are you working for them? Is that why you’re blocking my power?”

“I can’t control it; it just happens, like default. I don’t know who they are either,” Baekhyun insists, defensively. “I’m trapped in here just like you are.”

Kyungsoo mulls over his words, finding it difficult to believe what he’s saying. This place doesn’t exactly inspire trust.

“Then what do they want?” he asks quietly, wondering if this is how he’s going to die; alone in a miserable, dingy little room.

Baekhyun opens his mouth but stops short, snapping his head around to look at the door when the bolt starts to slide open.

“,” he mutters. He turns back to Kyungsoo quickly. “Don’t struggle. It’ll only make it worse.”

“Wha-”

The door slams open before he can finish and four men file into the room, their faces completely hidden behind the gas masks they’re wearing. Alarmed, Kyungsoo tries to back away but he’s no match for them when they yank him up, wrenching his arms behind his back roughly. Baekhyun gets the same treatment, letting himself get hauled out of the room. The men force Kyungsoo to his feet, shoving him forward but Kyungsoo struggles against their grip, clenching his fists tightly before belatedly remembering that the earth isn’t responding to him here. He’s powerless. The act earns him a punch to the stomach, forcing him to double over in pain and he can’t fight back anymore when they drag him out of the room too.

They yank him down a long, dark corridor, completely windowless and dimly lit just like the room he’d woken up in. There’s nothing in this place that gives him any clue about where he is. They round the corner at the end of the corridor, coming into a main room, this time so starkly lit it makes him squint painfully. He can make out a countertop as he blinks through the glare, littered with all sorts of medical equipment, and a shelf balancing tubes of coloured liquids he doesn’t recognize. Kyungsoo gets pushed along again, forced down into a chairs in the middle of the room, right beside Baekhyun. The men force his wrists and ankles into the metal clasps on the chair, restraining him so that he can’t move.

Kyungsoo isn’t ready for the sudden splash of icy water thrown into his face. It takes him by surprise and he chokes on it, gagging when he accidentally inhales the water. His throat burns with the force of his coughing, arching forward as he wheezes but he’s forced backed against the back of the chair, his spine slamming hard against the steel.

“How did you get your abilities?”

One of the masked men addresses him, his voice distorted by some sort of voice changer to make it completely unrecognizable.

Kyungsoo breathes heavily, anger bubbling in the pit of his stomach and he clenches his fists uselessly against his restraints.

“How long have you had them?”

Kyungsoo clenches his jaw, raising his chin defiantly. He’s still not prepared for it when another bucket of freezing water is thrown into his face, coughing wetly as his nose starts to run.

“Who else has them?”

Kyungsoo doesn’t budge, even when his head gets yanked back with a fist tightly wound in his hair. He keeps his lips sealed, determined not to give them what they want. There’s nothing they can do that will make him put everyone else in danger. He suffers for it when the men deal another round of blows, getting another punch in his gut.

From the corner of his eye, he can see Baekhyun getting the exact same treatment, watching him double over, evidently in pain.

“Don’t forget what happened to the last guy,” he hears the man hiss at Baekhyun but he loses track of the conversation when he gets more water to the face.

His face is smarting, blinking the painful sting in his eyes away though almost every part of his body aches and he lets his head fall forward tiredly.

They choose that moment to seize his arm, grabbing onto it tightly and he barely has time to yell before the man jabs a needle into his skin, drawing blood. Kyungsoo grunts in pain but keeps himself from struggling, trying to not to get his own vein ripped open. The masked man pulls the needle out and drops the tube of his blood into a test tube rack on the counter beside the sample they’ve taken from Baekhyun’s arm.

The restraints are removed and Kyungsoo prays that it’s over. They’re both hauled out of their chairs but they’re taken to a different room this time, as bare and windowless as every other room. The door slams shut behind them after they’re forced inside, the bolt sliding into place firmly.

Kyungsoo lowers himself to the floor, slumping tiredly on his side and groans, clutching at his stomach. He shivers when the temperature in the room suddenly seems to drop and he curls up more tightly, trying to keep the chill out.

“You need to get up or it’ll feel worse.”

Baekhyun is kneeling by his side, shaking droplets of water from his soaked hair with the force of his own shivering. There’s a loud hiss and Kyungsoo can smell something strange being sprayed into the air, some sort of chemical that he’s forced to inhale. The temperature plummets more sharply, dropping closer to freezing level.

He coughs, tasting something bitter in the back of his throat but Baekhyun forces him up off the floor.

“Just keep moving,” he says, grabbing onto Kyungsoo’s wrists and forcing him to march on the spot, swinging his limbs around to protect them from the chill he can feel starting to set in his bones. He wonders just how long Baekhyun’s been in here that’s he’s grown so accustomed to all this. The cold is so painful that Kyungsoo feels a sharp throbbing in his ears, and he pulls his wrists out of Baekhyun’s grip, rubbing his palms together. It hurts just to move his joints the colder it gets and he can no longer feel his nose, wondering if this whole thing was just an elaborate ploy to kill him as slowly as possible.

His energy seems to evaporate, shivering so violently he nearly bites his tongue in half. Kyungsoo can even see clouds of his own breath in front of his face. His limbs ache, every inch of his skin prickling with bursts of pain even as his extremities start to go completely numb.

Still, Baekhyun bumps into him, forcing him to keep moving and refusing to let him sit down. He’s struggling against the cold himself, groaning low in his throat through his own pain but he’s relentless, shoving at Kyungsoo, pushing him around and smacking his hands against Kyungsoo’s arms and back. It’s enough movement for the both of them, barely enough to generate any heat but just enough to fight the drowsiness.

Kyungsoo frowns, confused by his motive for helping him. There’s still a lingering cloud of doubt and suspicion, but for now Kyungsoo lets Baekhyun help, reciprocating in kind when Baekhyun starts to falter tiredly, his movements getting slower.

He’s too cold to make any conversation, focusing on not biting right through his tongue, and Baekhyun seems to have the same idea. It hurts just to breathe, the frost making it into his windpipe and wracking painfully inside his chest, freezing him up from the inside.  

Kyungsoo’s reaching his limit, the pain in his frozen limbs peaking to the point where it feels like they might just fall off. His heartbeat is weakening, starting to succumb to the hypothermia.  The door slams back open, not a moment too soon, and the masked men march in to drag them out of the room. He coughs weakly, in lungfuls of the clean air outside and wonders how much damage he’s done to himself inside that room just by breathing.

They’re hauled back into the chairs, strapped back into the metal clamps and Kyungsoo can’t even find it in him to struggle when they jab another needle into his arm to draw more blood.The restraints come off again and Kyungsoo squeezes his eyes shut, not ready for another session of anguish, but instead he’s dragged back along the corridor they first came through and pushed back inside the room before the door is slammed shut again.

Kyungsoo’s knees give out and he crumples to the floor, still shivering from the iciness lingering on his skin. He can’t draw up the energy to drag himself back onto to the dingy mattress, preferring to curl up on the floor until his limbs thaw out.

He hears Baekhyun groan beside him, watching him struggle to pull himself up and drag himself over to lean back against the wall. He looks as drained as Kyungsoo feels.

Baekhyun catches him staring and throws him a small grin.

“So. Welcome to my crib?” he jokes weakly but Kyungsoo can’t find it in him to laugh. He pulls himself up and leans back against the wall at the other end of the room, keeping his arms crossed against his chest tightly in an attempt to trap any heat he can.

“They keep me here because they benefit from it not because I agree to it,” Baekhyun adds quietly, the humour slipping out of his tone this time. “I’m still just as much their prisoner as you are.”

Kyungsoo says nothing, still struggling to figure out if he’s lying or actually telling the truth. He looks away, suddenly noticing the lack of any surveillance systems in here.

“Seems risky, not having cameras in here,” he says curiously, wary of every word he says in case there are actually cameras hidden somewhere.

“They don’t need them,” Baekhyun says simply. “This place is impenetrable, there’s no way out. Not with human strength anyway, and with me here that’s all we’ve got between us.”

The reminder makes the emptiness ring harder through Kyungsoo in the absence of his power he frowns, clenching his fist in frustration.

“Why are they doing this?” he asks, feeling desperate for answers, for anything. They haven’t killed him yet but he can’t be sure that’s not still what they’re going for. “What do they want?”

“I don’t know,” Baekhyun admits, suddenly looking so much younger, scared and small with uncertainty. He looks tired and stretched thin.

The conversation tapers off after that, the magnitude of it all weighing down on Kyungsoo heavily as he crawls onto the lumpy mattress, stretching out on his back and lets the silence fall between them.

He’s completely drained but he’s terrified of letting himself drift off. Everything Baekhyun’s told him could have been a lie, that he is working for them, that he might try to kill him in his sleep or that the masked men will burst in here to finish him off themselves.

Kyungsoo turns his head a fraction, sneaking a glance at the other side of the room but Baekhyun is rolled onto his side, facing the wall with his back turned towards him. He thinks back to everything Baekhyun’s told him about why he’s here and what he does. Kyungsoo’s still not sure how that even works, just that it does. Considering the world they live in, it hardly seems all that impossible.

A stab of guilt prickles in his gut over his adamant distrust of Baekhyun but he just can’t afford to risk his life by letting his guard down completely here. This place is still unsafe, run by dangerous people who seem to know exactly how to control them. There’s no telling who they’ve managed to manipulate onto their side for a good price. Kyungsoo’s self preservation kicks in a little too strongly for him to just let it go so easily.

The exhaustion finally starts to take over, dragging him under and he falls into a restless sleep, drifting in and out.

▸

He’s startled awake by the banging sound of the door slamming open again, still too disoriented to register what’s going on till he’s being yanked up to his feet and dragged out of the room again. It feels like deja vu, going through an exact repeat of the day before.

If it’s even been a day, Kyungsoo thinks to himself, having lost track of time completely now. There are no clocks around, and without any windows anywhere, night and day don’t exist in here.

“Where did you get your abilities?” the masked man starts again, but Kyungsoo firmly grits his teeth, preparing himself for the icy water when it’s splashed in his face this time. Baekhyun endures the same treatment, and they both sit through it till their blood is drawn again. Kyungsoo still struggles when he’s hauled off into another room, but he’s outmatched, shoved inside roughly before the door locks them in. He braces himself for the chill but he doesn’t feel the cold freezing through his skin this time.  

Instead, it’s the deafening peal of a siren that fills the room, blaring loudly and Kyungsoo winces, pressing his palms against his ears. It doesn’t do much to block the sound out, so loud that he can’t even hear himself yelling as he bows over in pain, feeling like his eardrums are bleeding. Another siren joins in seconds later, filling in the brief intervals between the first.

The cacophony then stops as abruptly as it began, and even the jarring silence is painful. Kyungsoo breathes a sigh of relief, groaning as he lowers his hands and kneads his knuckles into his throbbing temples. His ears are blocked and he swallows tightly, trying to clear them. Baekhyun is looking at him, moving his mouth but the sound is muffled and Kyungsoo frowns.

“What?” he says loudly.

Baekhyun shifts closer and presses a palm over his eyes, keeping one shielding his own. Startled, Kyungsoo recoils and immediately suffers for it when the room lights up from every inch of the walls, flooding them with stark lighting, so bright it feels like he’s staring into the sun. He snaps his eyes shut but he can still see the brightness burning through his closed eyelids. The siren starts again, impossibly louder and Kyungsoo cries out, feeling his skull rattling in pain.

He can’t tell how long it goes on, the ordeal alternating between combinations of the blinding light and the sirens and then pitch darkness before starting all over again, overloading his senses.

Kyungsoo is dizzy and nauseous when the door finally opens again, barely registering it when he’s dragged out to get another shot of blood drawn from his arm. He keeps his eyes closed, hearing nothing but the ringing that remains in his ears, thundering in his head.

This time he passes out when they’re taken back to their room, collapsing on the cold floor before he can make it to the mattress and lets the darkness drag him under.

▸

They get trays of food pushed into the room through a small steel flap at the base of the door every couple of hours. The food is dry but thankfully edible enough to fill his stomach. Kyungsoo is just grateful that it’s not mouldy or slimy. Clearly the men need them alive and well enough for whatever it is they’re doing even if they hold little regard for their comfort.

“Pretty sure it’s drugged,” Baekhyun says even as he takes a giant bite out of the small bun in his hands. “But it’s either this or starve.”

Kyungsoo had surmised as much, eyeing the food warily but he’s so famished he gives in to the hunger. Baekhyun’s been here longer than he has and he still hasn’t died from eating it, Kyungsoo reasons.

For someone who’s a prisoner in a tiny, windowless cell with a stranger, Baekhyun is incredibly chatty, keeping a conversation going even though Kyungsoo doesn’t respond as much, still too hesitant to reveal too much. They’re both being asked the same questions and they’re both subjected to the same torture methods. It doesn’t seem too far fetched to wonder if the men have struck some sort of deal with Baekhyun, to get answers from him for his own freedom. All Kyungsoo can do is bait him and see what happens.

It’s interesting how much Baekhyun gives him, even without knowing Kyungsoo or trusting him nor even being reciprocated. It could all just be one big ball of lies. Maybe he’s on the same wavelength as Kyungsoo, baiting him in turn. All he knows is that listening to Baekhyun talk about his favourite food, his old job and his cat makes the stifling silence in this room disappear for a while, offering him some relief from the predicament they’re in.

Kyungsoo gets distracted, thinking back about the session they’d had earlier. It went down the same way he’s already come to anticipate, getting dragged out of the room and shackled to the chair. It had been the same routine of interrogation and punishment to follow, but Kyungsoo had listened out for Baekhyun this time, trying to hear what he was saying to the questions the masked men threw at him.

They were harsher about it this time, violently yanking Baekhyun’s head back by his hair but he’d remained tight lipped, as silent before them as ever. He hadn’t said a word, not even about all the things Kyungsoo had told him about his own life outside, despite none of it being true. He’d fed him stories about nonexistent people and made up lies about how his abilities came to be, even lying about what other people with abilities he has connections with but Baekhyun says none of it.

There hadn’t been space to talk much after they were thrown back to the piercing sirens again but Kyungsoo’s mind had been sufficiently distracted by his racing thoughts that the torture almost seemed to go by faster. Almost.

“How long have you been here?” Kyungsoo asks suddenly, despite himself, snapping back into focus where Baekhyun has moved on to boybands.

Baekhyun pauses, looking slightly sheepish and scratches the back of his neck.

“Sorry. Am I yabbering too much?” he says, giving an abashed chuckle. “It’s been a while since they brought someone new in here. Despite how engaging this room looks, the walls aren’t great conversationalists.”

He’s trying for a joke but Kyungsoo wonders if he’s reading the lonely undertone right. Baekhyun seems to realize it too, slapping a wider grin onto his face and turns away, getting to his feet.

“I figured out a way to keep track of time when i first got here,” he explains, pushing his mattress up flat against the wall to expose the floor underneath. Kyungsoo crawls in closer, peering at the markings on the floor. The surface is littered with rows of tallies stacked next to each other, scratched into the cement. Baekhyun shows him the piece of porcelain he’s been using to carve the markings, broken off from the base of the toilet.

“Every three meals means a day has gone by,” he explains.

Kyungsoo gapes at the markings, his heart sinking. If he’s reading them right, there’s at least three months’ worth of tally marks scratched into the stone. He looks up but Baekhyun turns away, focusing on the next mark he’s scratching by the last row in the pattern for this past day.

“It’s been almost five days since they brought you in here,” he says, stowing the porcelain piece away when he’s done. He looks up at Kyungsoo finally, the smile curving his lips again. “Guess the honeymoon period is almost over.”

“Yeah, this has been a real treat,” Kyungsoo mutters and Baekhyun laughs good naturedly, dropping his mattress back into place.

Five days. It’s already been five days and Kyungsoo feels his stomach churn, the heaviness behind his ribs squeezing tighter. He stares down at the purpling bruise on his forearm where the syringe was driven in, feeling overwhelmingly helpless and frustrated. These people might just be worse than the ones he keeps seeing on the news, toying with him, like cats playing around with their food to prolong its torment.

He can’t stop the guilt from rising in his chest, worried when he thinks about Junmyeon and the others back home and the alarm he must have left with his sudden disappearance. He’s torn between praying that they’re looking for him and terrified that they might get caught and brought here too. The vacant feeling in his palms makes him feel that much more hollow without the comfort that the thrum of the earth usually offers him. He’s completely cut off from everything.

“I’m sorry.”

Kyungsoo looks up, surprised to see the apologetic look on Baekhyun’s face.

“I know I’m the whole problem here,” he says somberly, staring down at his hands on his lap.  “It’s not the first time I’ve literally been the bane of someone’s existence.”

Something about his tone sounds bitter, personal on a different level, under the sadness lacing his tone. It remind Kyungsoo of something.

“What happened to the last guy?” he asks, the echoes of the masked men’s words coming back to him from the other day. The thought has been niggling at him since he’d said it, not sure how to bring it up or if he even wanted to.

Baekhyun frowns grimly. His face is pulled tight and his eyes harden, a flash of anger and sorrow crossing his face before he sighs.

“He threatened to kill me,” he says bluntly, clenching his fists in his lap. “Because as long as I was here, he couldn’t get out.”

He pauses, picking at a loose thread on his shirt. “After that, they dragged him out and never brought him back.”

Kyungsoo reels when Baekhyun’s done, lost for words even though his thoughts are racing. He can’t even deny that it’s crossed his mind before, quick and fleeting though it was purely hypothetical, rather than actually considering it. The thought first came to him when he got here, filled with distrust and fearful desperation.

“I know you probably hate me for what I do; I know you don’t trust me,” Baekhyun says, as though he’s reading Kyungsoo’s mind. “I’ll always have trouble sleeping in here, wondering how no one’s actually tried to kill me before, to get themselves out of here.”

Kyungsoo stares at him quietly, feeling a ball of guilt rising in his throat, bitter and burning.

“How can you be so sure no one will?” he asks, curious for the answer to see how Baekhyun thinks of him, even if he meant it vaguely.

“I can’t,” Baekhyun says, pursing his lips and looks at him dead in the eye. “I just have to trust in our own people. Honestly, I think I’ve just been lucky so far. Or unlucky. Depends which way you look at it.”

He breathes out a hollow laugh but it sounds morbid, dripping with sadness as the words hang heavily in the air.

“You’d think the Masks would treat this state of the art security system with a little more care,” Baekhyun waves a hand over his body loftily, snapping out of his slump to force a smile back onto his face and puffs his chest out grandly. The humour keeps seeping back in at times like these, like a coping mechanism.

It’s just enough to crack through the wall of distrust Kyungsoo had built up, unable to help it anymore. This is exactly the kind of person he never wanted to be; shunning someone away for what they are even knowing first hand what that’s like.   

The silence is broken by the door flap sliding open and another food tray is pushed inside. Kyungsoo retrieves it, setting it down between them and they eat wordlessly, savouring the taste, however bland it is.

Kyungsoo munches on his rice pensively, sneaking a glance up at Baekhyun while he busies himself with his food. Once he lets the facade fall away, Baekhyun looks sick and exhausted, particularly after the ordeal from earlier, more brutal than usual. Kyungsoo bites his lip, trying to reason with himself about what he’s doing and finally gives in. After all, it really is lonely in here. More than that though, it’s the way that everything Baekhyun has done and said so far seems to ring true, no matter how suspicious Kyungsoo may have been. He’s still not entirely sure about this, retaining some of his wariness, but he’s exhausted from keeping his guard up so rigidly.

Against his better judgment, Kyungsoo picks up half of his egg and sets it down in Baekhyun’s bowl without a word. Surprised, Baekhyun looks up, opening his mouth to say something but no words come. He beams at the gesture instead, shoveling the egg into his mouth and munches contently. At the back of his mind, Kyungsoo convinces himself that this is okay. They’re going to need their strength together if they’re going to get out of this alive somehow.

▸

The computer screen lights up, displaying the open message box with the blinking cursor. The man pulls off his gloves, fixing the gas mask on his face to loosen up the straps a fraction. He settles down on the chair and watches the clock tick the seconds down, waiting until it’s hit the exact hour before he starts typing, inputting the code.

-’The world that lives is sick with poison.’

The response comes within seconds, completing the code.

-’The world that dies will rise again.’

The masked man bows his head respectfully, even though no one’s there to see it.

-Updating progress report.

-Proceed.

-We’ve moved into the first phase with the new subject, sir.

The message sits there for a few seconds, before the next message shows up underneath,

-Good. Proceed as planned, be thorough with this one. No loose ends.

This took a little long, sorry! TT hope you guys liked it! ;v;