The plan to knock out Minhwan or Youngdo when they next came in through the door almost went disastrously wrong.  Tired, weak and dehydrated, Baekhyun and Jinsu had both agreed pretty quickly that it would take both of them, but also that combined they might not have enough strength to do it, so the idea was that they’d watch the door carefully and, as soon as it opened, slam it back into the person and hopefully stun them.  Then Jinsu would throw lithium lumps at them and Baekhyun would jump on them and. . . things would go from there.  As Baekhyun had said when they settled with their backs to the lithium boxes, Jinsu plucking the chunks out one at a time to stack in pyramids, it was a terrible plan, but they were hardly going to come up with something better.  And besides, they’d probably do something completely different when the moment came anyway.  Five minutes later, he was piling the lithium back into the boxes because Jinsu was getting a little too fussy about needing the perfect sizes or her pyramids would be lopsided.

“These are weapons, not building blocks,” he told her.

They were both in such a dehydrated daze that neither of them realised they were about to have company until the key scraped in the barrel.  Baekhyun was more alert and sat up at once, startling Jinsu back into full consciousness, and she immediately grabbed some lithium chunks as Baekhyun crouched, ready to fling himself at the door.

He hit it with quite a lot of force, and it immediately rebounded into the boy on the other side with a sharp crack, accompanied by a cry of pain.  Jinsu hesitated as the door swung wider, not totally sure that it was either Youngdo or Minhwan and convinced that the voice had been familiar.

It was definitely familiar when the boy spoke, though.

“Stop!  Stop, I’m friendly, I swear!”

Baekhyun was already in midair, and he landed heavily on Junmyeon, who was already floored from the door and clutching at his head, driving the breath out of him.

“Sorry, sorry!”  Baekhyun scrambled off him.  “I thought you were someone else.”

Wheezing, Junmyeon nodded and sat up.  Jinsu put down her lithium and came over to help him.

“My fault,” he rasped.  “Should’ve said or knocked or something.”

“Are you okay?”  Baekhyun and Jinsu asked simultaneously, Jinsu trying to pry Junmyeon’s hand away so she could look at his head.

He nodded and looked up at them both.  “It’s not bad.  I’ve been looking for you both for ages.  Thought I’d never find you.”

“What’s going on?” Baekhyun asked.  “We can tell the machine’s sped up, but that’s about it.”

“Kyuhyun and Youngdo got into a massive fight several hours ago,” Junmyeon told them once he had caught his breath.  “I don’t know what it was about – something to do with computers, I think – but several of the others joined in and Hyunwoo and Kyuhyun need to go to hospital urgently.  We still can’t access the computers, so Minhwan took a risk and opened up the fuel injection rods figuring that more fuel burnt more quickly would make us accelerate, but we’re going far too fast and the machine’s very unstable.  Minhwan and Youngdo have been trying to calculate, but they both reckon there’s a ninety-percent chance the machine will explode if we stop at this pace.  They’re barely managing to keep the engines together.  It’s dangerous just trying to go through the rooms.”

“The ups,” Baekhyun groaned, tilting his head back.

“How did you get through here, then?” Jinsu asked, pointing at the keys Junmyeon still had in his hands.

“Well, you vanished, and when I went to ask Kyungsoo where you were, he said he hadn’t seen you or Baekhyun since before I had, and then I overheard Minhwan and Youngdo arguing about what to do with you some time back.  Minhwan said Baekhyun wouldn’t cooperate for some reason and Youngdo said beating you up should get him to change his mind, but then he couldn’t find the keys.  Minhwan was looking shifty, so I checked when he went to sleep and he had them, and I’ve been looking since then.  I didn’t know this little corridor existed, though.  I’ve passed it so many times.”

“Thanks,” said Baekhyun, hauling Junmyeon to his feet.  “At least somebody on this d*mn thing has a brain.”

Jinsu looked at him.  “What are we going to do?”

Junmyeon produced a familiar piece of paper covered in equations.  “I found this in the corner of the engine room and it looked pretty comprehensive. I’m guessing it’s what you used when you started the machine back up?”

“Yeah,” said Jinsu before Baekhyun could jump in, “but it’s pretty useless now.  We have no idea what speed we’re currently travelling at, though it’s likely to be somewhere around Temp 3 or possibly even above if crashing is that dangerous, and depending on exactly what Minhwan’s done to the fuel injectors, we might not be able to get things down to Temp 2 or below so easily, especially if we can’t get an accurate reading on how much oil’s going through the injectors, and we’re also going to have no idea where or when we’ll land because all the timings on there are now completely butchered.  Plus if any further damage done to the machine is in any way permanent, landing from Temp 2 or even Temp 1 speed is going to be very dangerous and put us at risk of exploding anyway.”

“But you can do something, right?” Junmyeon pleaded.  “You’re the only ones with a chance.”

Jinsu exchanged a dubious look with Baekhyun.

“We can try,” was all he said.

Kyungsoo looked like he would have launched himself out of bed to smother them both in hugs if he’d been able to when they a