Kyungsoo usually liked being alone. But tonight the quiet was crushing, and looking at Jongin’s empty bed ripped a sadness through him that was difficult to explain. He wasn’t supposed to leave his room, but for once, he didn’t care about the rules. Silent, he got up and opened the door out into the hallway. 

It was dead quiet. Maths had only just ended when Mr. Lee’s voice had come through the loudspeaker- “The Academy is in lockdown,” he had announced, much too calm for his words. “All students are to return to their rooms, effective immediately.” 

Several hours had passed now, and it was dark in the halls. Kyungsoo found himself in front of Baekhyun and Chanyeol’s shared room. After only a moment’s hesitation, he knocked. 

“Kyungsoo,” Baekhyun greeted him. He didn’t bother to ask why he was there, and instead just stepped back to let him inside. 

Kyungsoo was only lightly surprised to also find Jongdae and Yixing, sitting on the floor at the foot of Chanyeol’s bed. 

“Where’s Jongin?” Baekhyun asked as Kyungsoo sat down. 

Kyungsoo swallowed, shaking his head. “I don’t know. We started going back to our room after they announced the lockdown, and then a supervisor grabbed him. I...I don’t know where they took him.” 

A beat of silence as the others absorbed this, the weight of what it might mean.

“This is ing stupid,” Jongdae said, by way of reply. “How in the is this happening?” 

Nobody answered him.

Mr. Lee hadn’t explained the lockdown in his announcement. None of the students had even understood what he meant, until the supervisors had rushed at them, herding them down the halls towards the dorms. When they had protested- well, it had been mostly Jongdae- demanding an explanation, their shepherds had only grown more agitated. “There’s been an accident,” one of them had said, loud and clear over the chaos. “The Telepath is dead. Now move.” 

Kyungsoo closed his eyes, numb. 

“There were a lot of people missing from class this morning,” Yixing said in the quiet. His voice was low and careful. 

“Tao and Kris,” Jongdae nodded. “Minseok. And…” he trailed off, but the others heard his name in the silence. And Luhan. 

“Did anyone...did anyone see any of them make it back to their rooms?” Yixing asked.

Kyungsoo shook his head, and glanced up to see the other boys doing the same. 

“Jongin was missing at the beginning,” Yixing said, troubled. “He was late. Do you think him being taken had something to do with that?”  

Again, nobody answered. 

“I don’t understand how they can just expect us to sit here and do nothing, ” Jongdae spit out. “If Luhan is really dead, then what the are they doing to everyone else who’s missing right now?” 

“We can’t jump to conclusions like that,” Chanyeol said, but his voice was shaking. Jongdae glared back, but his anger crumbled at Chanyeol’s expression. A pause, and his face dropped to his hands. Yixing wrapped an arm around him, and nobody said anything when Jongdae began to cry. 

“We should go check on Sehun,” Baekhyun said, voice cracking, and Kyungsoo felt another wave of pain through his chest. Sehun . “If Tao didn’t make it back, then he’s alone.” 

“I’ll go,” Kyungsoo said, not wanting Baekhyun to leave Chanyeol. “You guys stay here.” Nobody argued, and so Kyungsoo left without so much as a goodbye. 

-

Sehun hadn’t moved from his bed since he had gotten back, and he didn’t move when Kyungsoo knocked. He didn’t even move when Kyungsoo called his name. 

When Kyungsoo had finally just let himself in, figuring out the door was unlocked, Sehun had screamed at him for a while. He had nothing to say in particular, and screaming didn’t make him feel better, so when it became too tiring he let Kyungsoo hold him and didn’t say much after that. They cried together and Kyungsoo tried to explain to him that he knew why Tao was missing, but Sehun didn’t care that much. 

Sehun wished he was missing too. He wished he was simply gone, whisked away into the wind, never to return to this horrible place and the emptiness of his body. 

-

Tao was sitting on the floor when Kris walked in. There was a bed provided in the detainment rooms, but it was stiff and hard and rolled away when you leaned against the wall. So he had opted for the ground. 

For once he was not alone. The walls of these cells were entirely glass, allowing the supervisors to see the students inside at all times. On his left side, separated by this nearly-invisible barrier, was Jongin, lying slumped away from him on the cot. On his right side was Minseok. If Minseok was awake, maybe Tao would ask him some questions, but he was passed out cold, hooked up to a beeping monitor. 

Tao had no idea why the Academy was detaining a KAE student, and he supposed he didn’t much care. In the aftermath of Mr. Lee’s announcement, they had Cuffed and dragged him back here, shouting about Luhan’s death and in broken pieces, blaming Tao. 

“Tao,” Kris greeted him. He was nervous, Tao could see it right away, and when he remembered the state they had been in together less than ten hours ago he almost laughed. 

“What are you doing here?” he asked, not bothering to get up from the floor. 

Kris hesitated, rocking back on his heels. 

“Did Mr. Lee send you in to talk to me?” Tao asked, letting a sneer enter his tone. Kris looked at him in surprise, his mouth opening in a wordless answer, and Tao laughed. Whatever closeness they had shared earlier was gone, and Tao felt nothing but anger. “I know you’ve been working for him, Kris. So do you know why Luhan is dead? Because they’re blaming me.” 

At this Tao heard Jongin stir beside him. The clear walls weren’t soundproof either. 

-

At first, Jongin stayed quiet. He had let the dialogue between the two play itself out, catching pieces of sense between Tao’s disdainful scorn and Kris’s sweating nerves. They knew he was listening; he had sat straight up and was observing with intense focus. But they didn’t bother to hide anything for his benefit. And so he put together the puzzle, the ugly, rotten puzzle of which they were all now a part. 

From the very beginning there had been plans for the transfers. Transfer was the word that Kris used, but Tao refused to call it anything but stealing. The exact logistics around the process were jagged, if Kris actually knew how it worked he wasn’t doing a good job explaining, but Jongin did understand that the success of the transfer hinged on a couple things. First, the strength of the Guarder. And two, the strength of his bond with the boy that would be receiving his power. 

Judging the strength of the Guarder was the Academy’s specialty. They needed no help there. But when it came to the intricate relationships between the students, they were lost. And so Kris was placed among them, and it was he, after only a few weeks of observation, who had recommended Luhan and Minseok to be the first pair to undergo the procedure. 

At this Tao had begun to laugh out loud. In between cackles he hurled insults at Kris, calling him stupid and an idiot, and in any other situation Jongin would have been shocked to see Kris respond only with ashamed silence. “Sehun was in love the moment he laid eyes on Luhan,” Tao spit out when he finally stopped laughing. “You are truly on another level of imbecile.” 

“So that’s why he’s dead?” Jongin asked, breaking into the conversation for the first time. One of the supervisors had said it, in the hallway, before he had been pulled away from Kyungsoo. That Luhan was dead. It had been hours since then, and Jongin had spent all of them trying to tell himself he had misheard. But now it was all crumbling. “Because of Sehun?” 

“Hardly,” Tao snapped back. His mouth opened into wide sneer when he faced Kris. “He’s dead because of you.” 

There was a long silence. Kris’s head was bowed, his shoulders trembling. When he spoke he was still staring at the floor. “The Academy thinks otherwise. They think it was you, Tao.” He paused a moment, and then raised his head to meet Jongin’s eye. “Because of what both of you did.” 

At this Jongin was half expecting Tao to get violent, but when he looked over, Tao was in fact staring at the glass. Not the wall that he shared with Jongin, but the far one, on the other side of his cell. 

“Do you guys see that?” Tao breathed, reaching out with his Cuffed hand. 

The glass was sparkling.

Ice was inching its way across the clear surface of the wall of Tao’s cell, blooming into crystalized patterns of frost and snow. All three boys stared, silent, as the air began to go cold. 

Minseok’s machines started to beep.