A/N: And here it is, chapter one! More things will be further explained in the future. For now, just read! xoxo

//

Black and blue.

The Earth wasn’t always like this. It used to be a beautiful place, I think.

You hear stories sometimes, as a kid. People tell you how gorgeous the planet used to be, a place filled with glittering green vegetation and bright blue waters and humans that got along so peacefully. A sort of harmony—unmatched.

But when I walk the grounds today, I sometimes wonder if they were all just lying to us. There’s no sign of anything even existing before our time. Now, it’s different.

Now, the only thing you can breathe is smoke and the only colors that greet you in the form of a sad landscape are charcoal black and neon, fluorescent blue.

It’s overrun with hints of civilization that’s left—people who weren’t taken to the New World. Animals feed on their own flesh and humans gnaw at their fingertips and it’s been so long, being prolonged to the toxins in the air, that everything is all going a little bit crazy.

Sometimes I wonder what our planet looks like to the Others. Did they watch us for entertainment, far away in the galaxy? Did they survey us dying and going insane for fun? Did they never think to help us?

No, of course they didn’t. Why would they even care in the first place?

They only take the people that they want to the New World, anyways.

And I’m not one of the them.

//
 

Panting breaths.

Feet flying across the ground.

Eyes, frantically searching, searching.

Are they still after you?

Stomach empty but blood full of adrenaline, you stop in the middle of your tracks. Assess the situation. Where are you? Where can you hide?

Hair sticky with sweat and your clothes plastered to your skin. Shoes riddled with holes, sand and dirt making themselves comfortable in between your toes.

You’re in the middle of a wasteland. Old automobiles and metal signs, everything encrusted with a thick layer of dirt and rust. The sun beats down on you, more than uncomfortably hot. And there’s that faint buzzing in your ears, drumming a fierce headache into your mind. It’s the toxins—you’ve been outside much too long. But where else can you even go?

Everything around you is dead and soon, you’re sure that you will be, too.

Heartbeat in your throat, you scan your surroundings. Quickly, quickly. There—there’s a nook of some sort. An ancient billboard and various other trashed appliances making a hole of shelter.

You race over to the cramped space, crawling hands and knees to squeeze yourself in. You try to settle your breathing. Push aside a pile of half-finished aluminum cans. Kick away rodents and other vermin. Try not to gag at the filthy scent of trash and putrid waste.

You pull the hem of your shirt over your nose and wish that you could stop breathing altogether.

Who knows what Kind are chasing you.

Images flash behind your closed eyelids, shut tight: curled fingertips. Flames. Homes ravaged and humans rampaged. Crying and blood and sweat and—

There’s a sound.

A soft, soft sound.

Shoes. Boots, the soles crinkling in the sand.

You suddenly realize just how much of a rut you’re in. You should have thought this through.

You should have thought of the possibility that it could be a goddamn Earth Kind chasing you.

Eyes widening, you shove your shirt into your mouth to prevent yourself from screaming from complete hysteria. You taste sand and you taste sweat, but all you can do is keep your eyes glued to the small patch of dirt you can still see from your shelter of trash. Sweat beads upon your temples, your heart rate going so fast you half pray that it just explode altogether.

Because as long as you’re touching the ground, the Earth Kind can find you.

And the Earth Kind can bury you.

Suffocate you.

All as long as you’re touching the very ground that they also stand on.

No, no. You pinch the skin on the inside of your wrist.

Maybe it’s a Water Kind. Or Fire. Or Air, or something—anything that’s just not Earth.

Another step.

You can just imagine the leather of the boot, oh-so gently pressing into the ground. Digging into the poisoned soil.

You suddenly catch the glimmer of silver on your left hand. The bracelet, with a single moonstone. A thought slithers its way into your mind.

Maybe you could use it, for once.

The buzzing from earlier becomes too strong, until your head is a fuzzy static. It’s the toxins in the air—they’re poisoning you from the outside, but there is little that you can do to stop it.

Instead, they imbed themselves into you. Make their thoughts, your thoughts.

Yes, you think to yourself. A sort of heady sense of relief washes over you. It would be so easy.

Escape. All you would have to do is just—

A voice snaps you out of it.

“Tae—”

“Shush.”

And then you it occurs to you. What you were about to do, just then.

You glance down at your bracelet and all you can recall is your mother, pressing it into your skin with her tone serious, eyes dark.

“Never use it. Swear to me.”

She had been on the brink of death. Blood pooling around her stomach, the screams of neighbors and other innocent human beings being slaughtered for no reason other than their Kind, their brand.

And you—you are the Kind that nobody ever wants.

“O-Okay, Momma. I swear.”   

She told you. Told you that you have to keep your mouth shut, got to keep your eyes down. Don’t say anything. Don’t bite back. Follow the rest of the herd on the outside, but remember what you truly are on the inside.

“Sh. I’ve got her.”

A lioness in a herd of sheep.

The voices are low, but they don’t come from the section of dirt you can still see.

No.

They come from…

Behind you.

And you barely have a chance to scream before the earth around you is moving, burrowing upwards and enclosing you in a blanket of pitch black.

//
 

“Oh, lookie here.”

When you finally regain consciousness, you’re woozy. You can’t quite get a grasp of your senses, the ground and gravity not seeming to be stabilized in a way that they should be. Instead, you’re again greeted with the now familiar, yet still fear-inducing blackness. Your wrists are bound behind you in a rope that burns no matter which way you attempt to push or pull. From what you can tell, there’s some sort of cloth over your face. And now you can feel it—the prickling of rocky sand pinching into your knees through the tattered jeans you have on.

Through the cloth, you can smell what you always have, but more pungent now, for some reason: sweat. Dirt. And something that reminds you of the distinct scent of… feet.

All of a sudden, there’s a hand pulling the cloth up and over your head. You immediately wince from the movement, eyes adjusting from the darkness.

From what you can tell, you’re in some sort of bunker. Underground, judging from the tendrils of roots and soil that hang overhead. The small excavated room is crammed with what looks to be a lot of junk: both sides lined with bookshelves that are chock-full of random knicks and knacks. On the far side of the wall opposite you, there are mattresses bolted in three rows, with two in each row. The mattresses, which were obviously once a stark white, are now so dust laden that they seem to be past the point of being clean ever again.

In front of you is a boy.

He peers at you, filling your entire vision. You notice the dirt that’s smudged across his face left and right, but his eyes are anything but dull. They’re slightly slanted, a warm chocolate brown. But something is eerie about them, the way that he leans in much too close for your taste.

You stare back at him and bite your tongue. What is he going to do?

“I’m gonna have to say…”

His voice is light, high. Not exactly what you had expected. In fact, you realize, you had thought him to be husky and rough.

But the way that his eyes glimmer with a childlike essence show you that you are mistaken.

“Water Kind? Maybe a Pisces, like Yoongi.”

You glance towards the ground. . First kidnapping you, now trying to guess what Kind you are? What is this kid up to?

“Jimin,” somebody snaps from behind you. You instinctively flinch from the harsh tone, surprise on the speaker’s side.

Said speaker makes their way next to the boy in front of you—Jimin. If Jimin’s eyes are peering, this guy’s are positively, genuinely curious. They analyse you, look you up and down, and though the man’s face has a certain smooth quality to it, you know better than to think that he’s had it easy. You glance at his chapped lips, dry from a unquenched thirst, and the sand crusted on his jawline, cracking.

The man glances over at Jimin, then gives you a hard look.

“You know you’re not supposed to be playing this guessing game.”

Jimin deflates a bit. Huddled in front of you with his knees up to his chest and arms wrapped around his legs, you could have sworn that he was just a child. But when he stands up, stretching out thick thighs and muscled arms, you suddenly realize that everything that you assess about him seems to be wrong. The opposite.

“Oh, it won’t hurt Tae,” Jimin defends himself. “Besides, what if she is a Water Kind? We don’t need another one of those—we already have Yoongi. And he’s a Peak.”

“Yoongi this, Yoongi that,” Tae mutters. “Do you ever shut up about him?”

And Jimin falls silent.

You can only watch as Tae attempts to ignore the upset way Jimin avoids his gaze, but he lasts a total of two minutes before he’s grabbling for Jimin’s hand.

Or, what’s left of it, anyway.

You try not to gawk as Tae envelops the three fingers left on Jimin’s right hand—one hand over the other in a way that is so natural that you’re positive it isn’t the first time that Tae has done it.

But you still can’t tear your eyes away from the two little stubs. No knuckles. No fingernails.

Just nubs of skin.  

“I’m sorry,” Tae says, low. “I just—”

“I know,” Jimin relents. “The rations are running low.”

All Tae does is nod.

Tae’s eyes suddenly meet yours, and you duck your head. You didn’t do anything wrong, did you? You’re still right here, aren’t you? You haven’t tried to run away, you haven’t even tried to speak or anything—

“Boys, find anything on the hunt today?”

The sound of shoes on gravel comes closer towards you from your left. There’s a doorway there that you hadn’t noticed before, a rectangle cut out of the wall of dirt. Nothing more.

But those who come strolling in from the outside—

You gulp tightly and keep your eyes glued to the ground.

Out of the corner of your sight, you can see pairs of boots. All black, combat. They’ve seen better days. The soles are completely coated with charcoal soot and on some, there’s a faint tinge of that sickening, radioactive blue that makes you immediately want to vomit.

That was what had corrupted your thoughts earlier.

Making you nearly…

If you could have glanced down at your bracelet, you would have.

That thing.

The thing that you know you must have, but every single cell of your body doesn’t want. Doesn’t want. Doesn’t want.

Doesn’t. Want.

You quickly count the number of feet that pass you—eight. Four other newcomers, then. Aside from Tae and Jimin, there’s these others.

There aren’t more, are there?

Everyone seats themselves, whether it be on the mattresses or on the dirt floor. They don’t seem to mind the filth that they are sitting in—compared to outside, this place must be a clean haven.

“Oh, definitely. Get a load of her,” you hear Tae snicker.

It’s the first time that he’s ever addressed you, and it makes you taste bile.

There’s a soft touch to your hair. Fingers, smoothing over the strands, running over them until there’s a harsh grip—

Your chin jerks upwards from the force, the hands that hold your mess of a ponytail not letting up.

Tae leers in front of you, not even trying to hide how smug he is.

“She was an easy catch,” he chuckles.

With a smooth motion, he releases his hold on your hair and dumps you to the ground. You hear snorts, cackles, all sorts of comments on how much of a laughingstock you undoubtedly look. You do your best to sit up again and shake the dirt out of your hair to no avail.

“For a Mid Earth like you, of course she was,” a new voice says.

“Damn straight, Hope. Jimin did jack.”

“Are you ing kidding me?” His voice might be light, but Jimin sure can growl. “If I didn’t force all that ty air into her system she might have had more common sense than to try and hide in one place, you .”

“Alright, alright. Jesus. Wouldn’t want your little Libra feelings to get hurt, am I right?”

“Oh, shut up. It’s not like you’re any better than me. We’re both Mids, you Capricorn.”

“Both of you, stop bickering,” somebody snaps.

And surprisingly, they do.

The voice comes from the right corner—he must be sitting on one of the cots. Maybe lounging on it, seeing how lazily he drawls his words.

“You both know that it’s up to Jin to decide if we keep her or not.”

You steel at this sentence. Keep you? Are they going to keep you as some sort of experiment? Or would it be better to die? Because you know—

You know that there’s no way that you’re getting out of here alive.

The place is completely secluded, and even if you did have a single clue as to where you were, you haven’t eaten in so long. You would last maybe a few hours before dying from a sickly combination of toxic air and exhaustion.

There’s another voice. This time, it sounds from much higher than the other boys’. It must be from a mattress up at the top of the room.

“We already have a good balance. I don’t know why we’re even still here, Jin. I’m just saying—our Elements are pretty balanced here.”

You assume that the last man left standing—you can see just the soles of his boots if you look up the teeniest bit—must be Jin. Everybody else has sat down, found their spots. Even Tae and Jimin, who you vouch for to be troublemakers, don’t dare to even say a single word.

This Jin guy must be powerful.

The man is turned away from you. You hear the faint sound of metal clinking together, as well a few deep breaths being taken. A part of you thinks that he’s going to snap from that comment earlier, from Bunk Boy way up at the top.

But instead, Jin doesn’t say anything.

At least not to the others.

Rather, he speaks to you.

You have your head lowered down to the ground, but Jin fixes that in a snap. Thumb and forefinger on your chin, he tilts your head up so gently, featherlight soft.

You have to fight to keep yourself from shaking. His touch is hot—burning hot. You nearly hiss as you look up, because you thought that this so-called Jin would be a monster. An absolutely grotesque creature who must have survived meals of radioactive poisoning and drunk from goblets of toxins to have lasted this long and yet still be the leader of a gang such as his. You thought that he would be evil and scary and—

And oh, he’s a monster, alright.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

He’s monstrously handsome.

Cheeks that are sallow now, but must have been so full before the Others had come and ruined everything.

Lips that are chapped now, but must have been so plump and juicy when they were at the peak of their youth.

And those eyes, those eyes are an absolutely melting brown but you see something. You see something that makes you want to positively scream.

He’s got those eyes.

Brown irises that have been poisoned with tinges of sickening, vile bright blue.

It clicks in your mind—this Jin must have undergone some serious torture to have the toxins in his eyes, and yet still be standing right in front of you with not a problem in sight.

Jin peers into your face. He’s handsome, but he’s cruel; his smile is something that brinks on the edge of insanity. With his fingers upon your chin, he’s got you at his leverage, and he can maneuver you however which way that he wants to.

Which means that if he wants to, he can kill you.

But you already knew that.

You’re trembling fiercely and your jaw is clenched so tight that it hurts but you can’t move. You can’t move a single inch.

Something cool, something sharp grazes at the skin of your neck.

Something metal.

You inhale sharply, but keep your mouth firmly shut.

“Not going to talk, are we?”

His voice is sweet but his eyes are stone, poisoned, dead.

Every word is enunciated from those lips, teeth and tongue producing each sound with a sort of crackling that seems so foreign but so familiar, like crumpling crisp paper and then trying to smooth it back out.

“It’s quite simple, really,” he coos. The other boys don’t do anything—you can see some of them now. One on the cot on the bottom left and another on the bottom right, and yes. You were right—there’s another seated on the top left bunk as well. Jimin and Tae are off to the side, out of sight.

And Jin—Jin’s in front of you.

He’s got this matted black hair that falls into his eyes, a sort of fur thrown over his shoulder. It’s dirty, just like everything that you all are wearing is. And yet there is something so peculiar about Jin that you just can’t place.

“All you have to do is tell us what Kind you are.” Jin leans in forward, breath caressing the crest of your ear.

“And if we like you, we keep you.”

He knows your question. You don’t need to voice it for him to answer.

And if not?

“And if not,” he tsks.

He tugs sharply at your chin, and you let out a whimper.

“We kill you.”

//

A/N: Let me know what you guys think so far! I've got this uber hot/creepy version of Jin that I've painted in my mind, hopefully he will begin to come across more and more in the later chapters. The planning that I've done for this story is very bare-back right now, so there are lots of details that I haven't thought of yet. Any ideas would be really appreciated though! Thank you for reading, y'all. The response that I've gotten on this story even before I've actually started it is tremendous. Thank you. xoxo