“I’m gonna hurl,” was all the warning Jihoon was able to mutter before he was violently sick on the ground. Even before he had finished his sentence, Seungcheol had jumped out of the way, so quickly that Jihoon wouldn’t have thought he had moved if he hadn’t known that he had been clutching onto him not a second earlier.

Then he remembered exactly who Choi Seungcheol was, and more importantly, what he could do.

Jihoon could only take a few more minutes of retching before his pride caused him to shakily get back up, pushing down the rest of his urge to puke. He felt like he was going to faint, but he ignored it, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his new shirt. There were more important things at the moment, like trying to figure out what exactly had just happened.

“Seungcheol-” he began, but he was quickly hushed with a sharp hand signalling for him to be quiet. Seungcheol’s back was towards him. He seemed to be surveying the area, his head cocked slightly to the side.

“I think we’ll be safe here for a few days,” the other boy said, voice low as he turned back to Jihoon. “We can’t go back to my apartment yet; it’s the first place they’ll look. Jun’s probably already taken the hint and left… after a bit, we can go back and reinforce the wards, to make sure they can’t get in. Then we’ll have a safehouse.” Heaving a great sigh, he dumped himself onto the ground gracelessly, leaning his elbows on his propped up knees, and stared at the shorter boy.

Jihoon glared at him and remained standing. “Where are we?” Looking around, all he could see was bushland and trees. It was nearing sunset, judging by the way the sun hung low against the gradient of purples, pinks and oranges in the sky. “And how do you know we’ll be safe here?”

Seungcheol shrugged. “I have no idea where we are. You tell me; you were the one who brought us here.” He raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you could teleport to places you’ve never seen before. I thought you had to visualise them.”

“I do. This is a fairly new development, and by ‘fairly new’ I mean that I only realised I could do it once bombs were exploding in my building.” He watched for any sign that Seungcheol was surprised by this information, but his features didn’t budge from their slightly nonchalant expression. He’d ask about that soon. “But how do you know we’re safe?” he pressed.

“I…listened. We’re pretty far from civilisation – I think we’re in the middle some sort of national park or something – so it’s a safe bet they won’t be anywhere near us. From the sounds of it, we’re still in Australia. You’ll have to rest up for when we go back to mine – it’s back in Korea, which is a pretty big jump.”

Jihoon’s fingers curled. He could feel himself frustrated, and it was an unfamiliar feeling, considering the monotony he had lived in for the past three years. Every single thing that came out of Seungcheol’s mouth just brought up more unanswered questions, and he was bursting to ask every single one of them.

How and when were you resurrected from the dead?

Whose blood is all over your clothes?

Where did you get an apartment?

Who’s Jun?

Seungcheol watched him, and the longer he did, the more amused he looked. It looked odd and out-of-place, when juxtaposed against the thick scars across his forehead, right cheek and collarbone, as well as the blood which seemed even more conspicuous now that they weren’t in the midst of panic. “You can ask your questions, Jihoon. I know how you love to know everything.” He stretched his arms out behind him and settled back, grinning. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

That was true. At that realisation, his fatigue suddenly washed over him, and he rubbed his face tiredly and made himself comfortable on the ground. “Fine. I’ll ask you everything when I wake up.”

“We’ll have a nice round of Twenty Questions,” he heard Seungcheol say.

The last thing he heard was the other boy’s chuckle when Jihoon flipped him off.

=========

It was pitch-black when he woke up. Somewhere to his left, he could hear some shuffling around, as well as a string of curses.

“What are you doing?” he asked in the silence, causing Seungcheol to shout in alarm and swear some more. There was a small thud, then silence for a few moments.

 “Dickhead!” he growled when he had recovered from his shock. “I almost had it!”

Jihoon rolled his eyes, even though he knew the other boy wouldn’t see it. “As if you didn’t know I was awake. If you can hear a town a few kilometres away, I’m pretty sure you can hear me moving around when I rise from the dead. What are you doing?”

“Trying to light a fire,” Seungcheol replied sulkily. “It’s not as easy as it looks.” There was another silence, before Jihoon heard the dull clatter of wood on wood. “Screw it; I’ve been doing it for half an hour and nothing. We’ll live without it. It’s not like we need warmth anyway.”

Jihoon shrugged. “Whatever.” He sat up, narrowing his eyes at Seungcheol’s dark form sprawled on the ground as his vision adjusted to the lack of light. It was time to get some answers. “I’m going to ask my questions now. Answer them as thoroughly as possible.”

“Direct as always,” Seungcheol replied in the darkness, stifling a yawn. “Hit me.”

“What happened today?”

“Do you want me to start from the breakouts, or from how I found you?”

Jihoon paused. “How you found me.”

“After I got broken out of my Facility – yeah, we got broken out, and yeah, I’ve been in another Facility – me and Jun – he was the only other guy still there who got triggered at the same place – we ran like hell. Everyone at the Facility was dead except for us… I have no idea how that happened, but it did, and we sure as heck weren’t going to be there when the Golden Circle came back.”

Jihoon felt a cold dagger run through him at that name, but he cleared his throat. “Go on.”

Seungcheol began to sound sheepish. “Okay, before you say anything, this is the part of the story where I sound stupid and reckless, but don’t judge me. I mean, it led me to you and now you aren’t dead and-”

“Just get on with it,” Jihoon gritted his teeth.

“I happened to…hear some Golden Circle members regrouping and talking about the breakouts. Don’t worry, I wasn’t close enough that they could have recaptured me. They were in one of the Seoul buildings – I wasn’t close enough to know which one - saying stuff about how ‘recovering the metahumans was the top priority’ and like that, and I overheard them say your name. Apparently someone sent them the security camera footage of you in some department store.”

The air left Jihoon’s lungs in a sharp hiss. “I thought I had disabled all of them.”

“What?” There was confusion evident in Seungcheol’s voice. “How? You’re a teleporter-”

“I’ll tell you later. Keep going.”

Seungcheol sounded irritated. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just talk to me like that. Anyway, there’s not much else to say. My tracking is still top notch, at least for targets I know well, so I found you and we teleported away about two minutes before we were going to die or be recaptured. That’s it.”

Jihoon was silent for a few moments, as he let what he had just been told  sink in.

He had been sloppy. It was a few seconds before he realised that his hands had begun to shake at the thought of just how close he had been to getting recaptured, and he hastily clenched them into fists.

“Right.” Even to his own ears, he sounded nauseated. “Right. Okay. You mentioned some guy named Jun? How is he involved in all of this?”

“Jun’s a metahuman like us. They activated his gene like two weeks ago, so his…power-” Jihoon didn’t miss the way he slightly stumbled at the word, “-is still unstable, but it’s useful and he can help keep us safe.”

Seungcheol’s voice was dead serious now, and Jihoon was reminded of why it was they had become friends in the first place. There was no mistaking the authoritative tone or the determination; it was enough to convince him even slightly that they might make it out of this mess unscathed. Then again, he was really good at being a pessimist, and he knew that once you were involved with the gangs, your life was pretty much forfeit.

“Us metahumans need to stick togethe