The breath rushed from him and he pressed off the wall, taking off down the hall. 

In a erse sense, it felt rejuvinating to be running. So many days he'd spent stalking down new cracks and drips, skulking around the maze and creeping through the murk of lonely insanity through reflection. So long, it felt like, he'd been trapped in his own skin, hiding as much of himself as possible to keep whatever agenda the researchers had at bay. He would not succumb, Goddess willed or not. 

Now, he didn't know if this was Her way of giving him a second chance, telling him his torture was at an end and that he was free now or whether this was some new test. Certianly, this was of no design of the scientists', because as he ran, their blood smeared the walls and many nurses he'd seen or been subject to were scattered around, bullets still stuck in the walls. With each new twist of the narrow corridors, his skin got tighter and tighter, like his inner beast was waiting for something that wasn't revealed quite yet and it burned inside of him, much stronger than the wispish fancy of the code on his chest. 

Body upon body, blood in blood. When death came, no family name or noble breeding would save them punishment. It hadn't saved him and Nature herself was not one to play favourites - all of her children suffered, in one fashion or another, and she was not so lofty as to exclude any one of them. Predator ot not, he, too, had been at the mercy of her whim. Goddess would not save him, only reward, and he had done nothing yet so far as to please her. 

The blood, feces and organs made his boots slippery and his progress slower than he wanted. He needed to move faster, faster, faster but he could not. 

What weakness had come upon him in his decades spent here? Even as young as he had been at the age of capture, he was sufficent to run through the traces of others' finished meals, organs and bones left to decay to earth. He had been no stranger to speeding along through dimly lit forest paths fast enough to make the scenery blur and his senses come alive. He well remembered the feeling of his eyes shifting and the world lighting up a syrupy red, mammals lighting up an inviting burning phosphorus and plants humming along at their own mellow orange. He knew the feeling of his body cutting through the air sharply enough to push the hair off his face, to reach his skin through his fur. Had he become such a docile being that those once-pleasures taken for granted escaped his abilities now? Should he have been practising them, even if that would allow the researchers to learn far more about him than he was comfortable with? 

He rounded another corner and reached for the beast he knew was there, trying to reconnect with a piece of himself that he shouldn't have ever had to leave behind. 

Seungri was panicking and he knew Daesung knew. 

"Please tell me that's a really terribly chosen tattoo that you got last week and were too embarrassed to show me. Please."

"Close the door."

Against his better judgement, Seungri listened, eyes locked on his hyung. "I was right, wasn't I? You want to be just like Jiyong, with all of his weird number tattoos."

Daesung sighed. "If you're trying to play around this for my sake, don't bother."

"I don't think you quite understand, Dae." Seungri fel the hysteria climbing in the back of his mind and his hands were starting to shake. "I've seen documentaries about the demon facilities - had several shown to me in school. They declassified the facilities' doings some time ago, long after all the experiements were killed and there weren't supposed to be any of them left. We were supposed to be safe from the demons."

"You think I don't know that?" Daesung met his gaze and there was something sharp there. "I went to school. I've been through all human custom and I've lived by it since I got out of that wretched place. You think I don't know about what happened there? You think I don't know about their demon experiments? Seunghyun, I was one."

The shaking got worse and travelled into his legs. "Th-Then what the kind of mistake did you make coming here? Do you have any idea about the kind of danger you bring with you?"

Daesung rolled his shoulders. "I haven't ever killed a human being. Not once."

Seungri wanted to scream, but lowered his voice instead because he was pretty sure he heard Seunghyun roving around outside. "Maybe, maybe not. But I'm talking about from the government. Do you have any idea what they'd do if they found you? What they'll do to us and YG and all of the other artists that work there?"

This time Daesung snarled, hackles raised and eyes flashing white for a brief moment. "Yes, I am aware."

"And you came anyway."

"Should I have gone back to the wild? Should I have gone back to where I belong and get exterminated? I didn't survive eighty-seven years worth of increasingly medieval torture just to finally come home and get killed. Are you going to blame me for going where I would be safest? Are you going to hate me for trying to survive and continue on away from harm?"

His shaking wasn't getting any better. "I don't think-"

"Thinking isn't good enough." Daesung's stance softened and he sighed heavily, running a hand over his face. "If someone offered me the chance to get anything I ever wanted and all I had to do was go back to that place, I wouldn't take it. I would run from them and never look back. It's hard for me to have sympathy for your situation when the fact that I am a thinking and living being didn't ever cross the minds of my torturers."

"So . . . What does that mean, then? Are you going to kill us all?"

Daesung peered out at him from underneath his blonde fringe. "Why would I do that? Why would I harm any of the people I love?"

"I hate to break this to you, but I'm not keeping your secret." Seungri steeled himself and faced down the, the monster in the room with him. "If you're going to do anything, now would be the time."

"I'm not killing anyone, Seunghyun." 

It's wasn't right to hear his hyung sound so defeated, so broken, but this man was a demon. He was evil and there were no two ways about that. His race were exterminated for a reason and that he'd managed to slip past was just a fluke of the system. 

Daesung rubbed his chest and winced. 

"What's wrong?" The words slipped out automatically. 

"You should get back to the others. Tell them I got sick and went home. Tell them not to worry and that I'll see them next rehersal."

"Dae, what-"

Suddenly, Daesung was pressing him into the wall, chest to chest and lips a fraction of an inch apart. He took a shaky breath in, pressing his nose into Seungri's neck. "If you've ever loved me, leave now and keep this between us."

There was something in the thickness of Daesung's voice, the desperation tinged into the natural rasp that made Seungri freeze up, his throat clogging with some unknown sympathy. "Okay. Okay."

Daesung pulled back, eyes closed, and offered a small smile. "I'll see you soon."

Seungri blinked, taken aback by the shadow of agony in his words, and was left with only an empty room and the lingering impression of Daesung's cologne - airy, floral, and cloying like earth after rain.