Seungri was running, but he knew it wasn't going to do him any good. Whatever this monster was, it was going to catch him before he even made it to the end of the wall. He could feel the thing's breath along his nape and its teeth had scraped him before he dropped back down into the maze proper and bought himself a precious few seconds. 

"You were easier prey than I imagined, Mr. Lee." The PA voice spoke again, another bitter laugh. "A pity. I was truly hoping that Daesung would be here to die with you, but I suppose I'll just have to send a team to scour for his body. I wonder what the tracker has to say abotu his location. Old technology like this is all well and good, but it can be finicky sometimes. I'm sure you understand, Mr. Lee."

Seungri wanted to yell back, to tell him to go himself, but he needed that oxygen more for running than yelling at a man that couldn't hear him.

"Fancy that, Mr. Lee. The tracker says he's in the complex. I wonder if he managed to rub the tracker off onto you."

The demon behind him yowled and there was the grating sound of claw on concrete. Seungri rounded the corner, taking a moment to glance over his shoulder. 

The demon was on the ground, gripping a shoulder that looked mostly torn off. Massive spotlights lit up sections of the arena, one flashing over and highlighting Daesung's face, black mesh covering his top half and straps across his chest. His eyes were illuminating the other demon's face and barred his teeth, thick and and long canines flashing in the light. The demon growled back, heaving itself to its feet and lunging at him. Daesung caught it with his left hand and sliced off its head with two long black talons on his right hand. Its body fell and he tossed its head aside, turning to look at Seungri, who was huddled behind the corner. 

"What a pleasant surprise." The PA voice said. "The machine wasn't wrong after all."

The gold in his eyes bloomed again, the snarl he released purely animal. Some of the black netting of his mesh released, reaching out from him like tentacles. Concrete within two feet of the blackness started to disappear, the radius of the power building and stretching outwards. 

The PA voice was less sarcastically enthusiastic this time, some kind of passive-aggressive anger seeping in. "Your files are imcomplete. They don't mention this."

Seungri wanted to skitter back from the approaching destruction, but the sound that Daesung made stopped him, the field expanding past him and leaving him unharmed. He couldn't stop himself from shaking, hard, but crawling closer to Daesung eased some of his fear as slowly but surely, all the cover around them vanished. 

"The ante will have to be upped, it seems." The PA voice muttered, embittered, before the distant sounds of opening cages and several dozen genderless, translucent skeletons jumped up from holes in the ground or issued from the walls. 

Daesung reached down, cupping Seungri's shoulder with his taloned hand. This time he roared, the field halting for a brief moment before exploding out, incinerating everything and leaving nothing. There was a thick swell of power and Seungri felt it, getting more and more lightheaded as it rose, clinging to Daesung's leg to keep him grounded and even slicing his hand on the talons to keep himself aware. It was a failing endeavour.

" . . . massive explosion in an old Facility on the north side of the DMZ. No one knows what happened, only that there is nothing that remains of the facility outside of its foundation. Tensions have been heating up between the two countries because of it."

Seungri blinked awake, finding his hand tucked into Daesung's, who was sleeping slumped over a hosptial bed. 

"Daesung?"

The man snapped up, clad in black jeans and a black t-shirt, obviously exhausted and worn out. "Seunghyun, you're awake. Thank God."

"What happened? Is Facility 78 actually gone?"

Daesung's face fell eerily still. "Yes. Everything is gone there."

"What does that mean? For you?"

Daesung cocked his head and his blonde hair fell out of his eyes, which flashed that stunning gold once more. "Without the machine that scribed the code onto my skin, the tracker can't be activated or followed."

"Who was it, Dae? Who was after you?"

"Seunghyun, none of it is important anymore. They're all dead. I've made sure of it this time. No one will hurt either of us again."

He wondered, after it was all said and done, whether Seungri was the reward Goddess had chosen for him. He had endured torture and confinement with unspeakable horror; walked through blood, gore and evil to arrive at the place he was in now. The affection and care of Seungri wasn't enough to erase it, even come to terms with it, but he was sure that the younger man would come to love him, in time, as the bond built its way over to him and settled in the base of his skull the same way it did him. 

He'd waited this long. A few more years wouldn't weigh so heavily on him now.