Warning: Graphic/Violent scenes

 This one is different.

His eyes look dead even as they are bringing him in. Unlike all the others who come with crazed eyes and wild hands scrabbling at walls and their captor’s faces, thinking they can tear their way out of this place through their epithelial cells. 

It’s not that he looks defeated. No, his head is not bowed, his shoulders aren’t hunched. It’s just his eyes, his half-lidded dead eyes. 

As they pass each other by the man’s dead eyes cut across the endlessness of the blinding white corridor for a flash of a second and Baekhyun’s steps falter. The masked assistant next to him glances side-ways at him with questioning eyes and Baekhyun picks up his pace as if nothing happened. And nothing really did.   Just a momentary distraction, just a single pair of eyes that he has already forgotten by the time he takes his next step. 

And Baekhyun doesn’t think of the man again for a long time. 

“This one is a tough one.” 

The Assistant taps his fingers on the file.  

He is a little fidgety, probably new, probably won’t last long.

Baekhyun shrugs.  They always say it’s a tough one, and well, only the tough ones get sent to Baekhyun. This is nothing new. He scratches at one of his ear piercings with one long finger. 

He adjusts his face mask, almost primly, and steps in to the room. The man is curled up in the corner of the room shuddering and shaking, curled into himself. There are a few Examiners scattered across the room, a few clutching their limbs, disheveled, splatters of blood on their pristine black armor suits. Baekhyun grimaces in distaste. So messy. Unnecessarily messy. 

The Examiners are all in a slight buzz, muttering about what to do next, gesturing with impatient hands this way and that way. It all stops the minute they see Baekhyun. Their gazes are half full of resentful awe and half full of fear. He doesn’t really care, his piercings speak by themselves of his seniority. He tilts his head very slightly towards the entrance of the room. They filter out with quick steps working hard to avoid his eyes, so he stares disinterestedly at the wall. It’s not the eyes of the Examiners he is here to see anyway. 

The room is quiet except for the sobs of the man on the floor and Baekhyun surveys the destruction this man had wreaked on it with the air of a conqueror who is watching over a battle ground already won. Glass crunches under his feet as he steps across the room to the man. A boy actually, Baekhyun sees at closer inspection. 

He takes off his mask and kneels down. The boy, dyed blonde hair, tanned skin and a face cut in angles, shies away from him. “No.” His voice is firm. Unbroken. He lifts his eyes to meet Baekhyun’s. “No, you will not. I will not.”  Even firmer.  Baekhyun places a gentle hand on the curve of the boy’s jaw, his hands graze at the edges of the boy’s lips. 

“What’s your name?” He is close enough to feel the brush of his breath against the bruises on the boy’s face. The boy’s breath hitches and his lips part in answer before he can stop himself. “Jongin.”

“Jongin.” Baekhyun echoes back softly. His long fingers trace the vein on the boy’s next, which beats crazily against his fingertips, so very alive. “Jongin. You can call me the Monster.”

When he leaves the room, the boy is screaming. A high pitched endless keen accompanied by the sound of tearing flesh. 

“He is good to go.” Baekhyun says to the Assistant at the door who flinches slightly as he catches a glimpse of the room behind Baekhyun.

“Is he - is he …tearing out his own finger nails…?”

Baekhyun only shrugs amicably, as if to say ‘oh you know how these kids are’. 

He walks away, past lines of other masked Examiners, as the scent of Jongin’s open heart buzzes underneath his skin. The blinking red lights of the security cameras follow him down his journey back to the lab in the 45th basement. 

He sees another special guest that week, another so-called tough one. It takes him only 5 hours to get him ready and at the end of it he sits by himself in a corner of the room, mask-free, red light free and thinks how how boring things have become lately. Nothing had really been new after Sehun. Sehun. The lucky one.

Rooms of guests are usually well-equipped, carefully censored and selected books, music, movies, magazines, a mini fridge. Although in Baekhyun’s experience the only things this had accomplished over the years is provide the guests with plenty of ammunition to attack the Examiners with, and things to destroy in fits of anger. The boy had been the same, when Baekhyun saw him. Sitting in a room full of destroyed items meant to keep him occupied, with a broken music record in his shaking hands, sawing at his own wrist with its jagged edges.  

He sits next to Sehun, watching him making progress in his attempt to bleed to death. When the first few blood droplets appear on his skin and then start to freely flow, Baekhyun lays a curious finger on the source of all that red and Sehun keens, dropping the broken record and clutching a