Chapter 6: The calm before the storm (P2)

“!” Wooyoung cursed loudly.

He had already scanned Jinyoung and found two more chips on him, one on the base of his brain and the other on his wrist. Now…

“Why the f*uck would a mutt have four trackers?!?” he cried out in frustration.

Chansung frowned while Minjun just sighed.

Amidst the outburst, Jinyoung’s soft voice whispered, “believe me now?”

Chansung and Wooyoung turned sharply towards him but his gaze was trained on Minjun. Again, Minjun sighed.

“Jeez, why does it feel like I’m missing something?” Wooyoung asked, voice full of sarcasm as he glared at each of them in turn, first Jinyoung, then Minjun, and lastly, Chansung.

“Yeah, Minjun. Care to enlighten us?” Something flashed in Chansung’s eyes as betrayal laced his voice. He had never thought Minjun would hide something from HIM.

Wooyoung did not think Chansung could be scarier than his usual cold and distant self. However, seeing the fury in his eyes sent a chill down Wooyoung’s spine.

“I can’t say for sure now and I won’t say it until I’m sure we aren’t tapped. That is, until those trackers and every other foreign thing that could be in our body is out of our system,” Minjun answered instead in a voice brooking no argument.

Chansung’s jaw visibly clenched as his hands turned into fists. Wooyoung sat straighter in his chair, ready to bolt at the first sign of Chansung exploding. Even Jinyoung and the mutt tensed as if sensing the danger in the air. Minjun, on the other, disregarded the tense atmosphere as he turned calmly towards Wooyoung.

“How long do you need?” he asked.

Wiping his sweaty palms together as he glanced nervously at Chansung,  Wooyoung answered in a feeble voice, “two hours till half reserve.”

“How long have we been here?” Minjun turned towards Chansung this time.

Wooyoung clutched the bundle in his arms tighter to his chest as Jinyoung and the mutt retreated further from Chansung, the mutt releasing a low whine. They watched as Chansung evidently tried to calm himself down, the air around him fizzling as if every particle were energized and ready to combust. Through it all, Minjun just waited, seeming like nothing dangerous was about to happen. Wooyoung had no idea he was holding his breath until the air around Chansung finally calmed and he breathed a sigh of relief.

“You were unconscious for about thirty minutes. So less than an hour,” Chansung grunted, not looking at Minjun, then suddenly disappearing.

Minjun sighed again. He felt like that was all he was doing these days.

“Half reserve is enough for everyone?” Minjun asked Wooyoung for clarification, including Chansung and himself too.

“Yes, I’ll burn out by the end but it’s enough,” Wooyoung confirmed.

Minjun nodded and gestured towards the bedroom. Wooyoung got up, returned the baby to Jinyoung and made his way into the bedroom. Sleeping would help him to recharge faster.

“Not a word about this again until the time comes. Understand?” Minjun warned Jinyoung the moment Wooyoung’s figure disappeared into the bedroom.

Jinyoung nodded hesitantly. Then said instead, “he pooped,” while gesturing to the baby, “and he’s hungry.”

“Hmmm… That’s only normal. Good job in keeping him quiet by the way. I see your mental strength is quite impressive.”

Jinyoung puffed up in pride at the compliment. He had been communicating with the baby through a mental link, keeping him calm through all the outbursts and foreign environment.

Minjun took a second to think through their situation. Chansung could not stray far from the cabin as he had to maintain the barriers disrupting the trackers. Minjun himself could go out in search for food but he still has his tracker in him. Leaving the premises within the barriers would immediately alert their captors. Wooyoung needed to recharge, and the kids should never be left unattended. So, food had to wait.

“We can take care of the diaper issue now, but food is going to have to wait until we get the trackers out,” Minjun said apologetically.

Jinyoung nodded in understanding. He watched as Minjun got up from his seat and made his way towards the main door. Turning the knob, he opened it and snuck his head outside.

Minjun saw Chansung leaning against the wall by the door the moment he stuck his head outside, his arms akimbo and one leg bent to rest against the wall. Minjun could have telepathed him instead of going all the way to the door, but he was currently burnt out and could not use his abilities. His reserve which were recharged during his sleep had been used up when he cut off all the dead connections.

“Hey,” he started.

No response.

“I know you’re not happy, but you can’t deny that talking is a risk.”

Chansung turned towards him so fast Minjun had to take a step back.

“Then telepath!” he whispered harshly through gritted teeth, “you could have told me long ago!”

“I was not sure-”

“F*uck, Minjun!” he threw his hands up in exasperation, still keeping his voice low, as he tried hard to stop himself from punching or destroying something since they could not leave any clues behind. The air around him fizzled until there was an audible buzz.

“Look, the more we talk about this, the more they might know. Can you please…just,” Minjun reached out to touch Chansung but then stopped himself, “trust me?” he continued in a small voice.

“You know this is not about trust!” Chansung grabbed Minjun’s collar and shook him, “I watched you dying right in front of my eyes and- ”

“And I’ll do it again!” Minjun interrupted him but still had a mind to keep his voice low too. “Whatever I do, it’s for us, our survival! You, me, everyone!”

“Our survival?” Chansung huffed, “like I said, you were dying!”

“What is one death, when many more could live?” Minjun muttered under his breath.

Chansung took a deep breath, really feeling like he was going to lose it.

“What if it was me? Huh?” He tilted his head to look Minjun in the eye, “what if I was the one bleeding out on that couch?”

Minjun huffed, then turned back towards the door.

“Enough of this. We need you back inside.”

Chansung gritted his teeth as he watched Minjun step into the cabin.

“A*sshole.”

“J*erk.”

He rolled his eyes and followed the retreating figure into the cabin.

Minjun sat back on the couch as Jinyoung took off the baby’s diaper on the coffee table.

Chansung looked at Minjun.

Minjun gestured towards the baby.

Chansung glared at him.

“Well, what do you suggest we do?” Minjun asked as if annoyed. “We can’t just throw the diaper out. For one thing, there’s no other diapers lying around. For another, we’ll leave a trace.”

Chansung groaned. He couldn’t believe his abilities would be used for this.

“To where?” he asked, albeit reluctantly.

“Just put it in another bowl or together with the blood. We’ll bury them somewhere away from here. Or throw them into a stream if we can find one,” Minjun suggested.

Sighing, Chansung sat on the couch beside Minjun and stared into the soiled diaper. Few seconds later, it was cleared. A whiff of poo mixed with blood reached their nostrils for a breath before completely disappearing. Chansung had not wanted to dirty another bowl so he had put the poo with the blood. Knowing the smell would be horrible beyond imagination, he had manipulated the air particles around the bowl to quickly diffuse the smell out of the cabin.

“Thanks!” Jinyoung chirped as he happily put the dry diaper back on the baby.

His mannerism was as if the baby was his. Chansung raised a brow.

“That your brother?” he asked, curious.

“No,” came the answer, “he was already in the cell when they put me in.”

Chansung glanced at Minjun but Minjun just shrugged.

“The mutt?”

Jinyoung shook his head, “they brought him in after me.”

“How many days?”

“Twelve, I think.”

Chansung glanced sharply at Minjun. Minjun scratched the back of his neck with guilt written all over his face as he looked everywhere except Chansung.

~ “ ~

Minjun was looking out the window when an idea struck him. By the time Woouyoung had woken up, Minjun had already recharged fully and finished repairing his mental barriers.  While waiting for Wooyoung to extract all the trackers from the kids, mutt and Chansung, he had leaned against the window sill, staring into nothing, bored out of his mind. That was when he noticed a bird on the forest floor, pecking the soil for worms, maybe. For lack of better things to do, he probed into the bird’s mind to find it full of images and white noise. He thought it made sense since birds communicate differently to humans. He could not understand their “language” but thought that maybe he could still insert some ideas. Curious, he injected a simple image of a nearby tree brunch and nudged it to the forefront of the bird’s mind. Immediately, the bird flew up to that exact brunch. Minjun felt his heart rate speeding up at his discovery. It dawned on him that he could manipulate other beings other than humans as long as they have a brain. He probed further into the bird’s mind to get to its memories, careful not to hurt it too much in the process. He sifted through its small collection of memories and smiled in satisfaction. He found that there were no other human establishments for miles - which was a relief – and that there was a stream a few miles away from the cabin.

Minjun then made himself comfortable on the floor while facing the window. Breathing in as he gathered his focus, he spread his mental reach as far as he could in all directions, keeping in mind to make the connections as weak as possible so as to not trigger any radar. Just in case the area was being scanned for psychic traces. He tapped into as many bird minds as he could, nudging one common idea into all their minds – to bring him food that would not require cooking, like berries, shrooms or herbs, according to their diets. Within minutes, he had a lap full of berries, shrooms and other assortments of plants, as the birds flew in through the window either in groups or one by one. Thinking he had collected enough, he retracted his command and released the birds. Since he did not establish a permanent connection with the birds, he did not suffer any blowback from releasing them.

“Whoa! Where did you get all that?”

Minjun looked up at the surprised tone to see Wooyoung standing behind the couch with both hands on the backrest for support. His face was drained of blood, his lips pale and chapped. Minjun set his bounty on the floor then grabbed two handfuls, bringing them to Wooyoung.

“Eat.”

Wooyoung shook his head. “I need to do you first.”

“Eat,” he pushed a berry against Wooyoung’s lips, “or you’ll collapse.”

Wooyung parted his lips and took in the fruit. A burst of flavor hit his tongue as he bit into it and he held back a moan. He had not realized how famished he was. Not to mention he had never tasted something so sweet. The food they were given while growing up had always been tasteless and bland.

“Have you tasted this?” he asked Minjun.

Minjun shook his head.

Wooyoung picked a berry of a different colour and pressed it against Minjun’s lips. Minjun raised a brow at him but still parted his lips. Wooyoung watched as his jaws moved to bite into the fruit and waited excitedly for his reaction. Instead of the delight that Wooyoung expected, Minjun’s eyes scrunched tight as if in pain. He spat the fruit onto his hands in disgust.

“What the f*uck?!”

Wooyoung’s eyes widened, “isn’t it sweet?”

“Sweet, my a*ss!”

Minjun had never tasted something so sour!

Curious, Wooyoung took the same fruit he had given to Minjun and put it in his mouth.

“Oh f*uck!” he exclaimed and spat it out onto his hand too. “Sorry, try the one I ate.”

Minjun did as Wooyoung suggested.

“Oh…” he said in wonder, then took the sour berry and put it in his mouth again.

“Dude, why…?” Wooyoung asked, perplexed.

“I don’t know. The sour feels like it has more impact on my tongue,” Minjun explained with a shrug.

“Huh… Maybe I missed a nerve when I healed your brain,” Wooyoung reasoned.

Instead of responding, Minjun pushed more berries into Wooyoung’s hands before going back to his stash on the floor. He scooped up as much as he could then went into the bedroom. Wooyoung heard a few surprised gasps before all of them came out of the room to sit around the stash on the floor. They started digging into the stash, Minjun noticeably picking out the sour berries. Wooyoung shook his head at that.

“Come on, it’s your turn,” Wooyoung announced when all the food was gone.

Minjun moved closer to Wooyoung before presenting his back.

Wooyoung sighed, “you’ve got f*ucking three.”

Minjun winced he thought he only had one.

“Wait,” Minjun said as he remembered something, “just the trackers. Leave the programs behind.”

“Yeah, I know. Chansung said the same. Heck, even the kid said it,” Wooyoung answered while shaking his head.

 Minjun turned towards Jinyoung at that. There were shadows behind his eyes as if he had seen something no child should see. He turned away to break the eye contact but Minjun patted his head in understanding. Soon, Minjun felt a burning sensation on his left shoulder blade and new Wooyoung had started the extraction. It took much longer for him since Wooyoung was at the end of his reserves. Aside from the shoulder blade, Minjun had one on his nape and the other at the forefront of his brain. The last one was the hardest for Wooyoung and as soon as he was done, he slumped against Minjun.

“I have two in me,” he murmured weakly, fighting hard to keep awake.  

“Where?”

“Back…neck…ears… can’t take…out…myself,” he answered, slipping in and out of consciousness.

Minjun shared a look with Chansung.

“I can’t teleport it out. I don’t have a clear image of it.”

“But you know what it looks like from ours,” Minjun reasoned.

“But I don’t know it’s surroundings. It might cut into something vital.”

Minjun frowned as he shifted Wooyoung in his hold so that he would be in a more comfortable position. He was already unconscious.

“But I can destroy it,” Chansung voiced out a thought that just came to him, “I know the specific parts, and it will be contained within the trackers’ capsules.”

“Okay we can do that,” Minjun agreed.

“But destroying it will produce heat. It might burn…”

“Do it…” Wooyoung’s weak voice broke into their discussion.

Chansung’s ever-present frown deepened but he moved closer to Wooyoung. Instead of contactless telekinesis which he had been doing all along, he touched Wooyoung’s neck, concentrating his telekinesis on the tips of his fingers. Sharpening them into strands thinner than a hair, he injected them into Wooyoung’s nape. He used the strands to “feel” the “structures” around it, just like a blind man with a cane, until he “touched” the tracker. He enveloped it with a layer of telekinesis before sending more inside to destroy the parts. He tried to contain us much of the heat released as possible, but it still has to escape somewhere. Gathering the heat, he used the memory from the “feel” to control the flow of the heat so that it did not touch any “structures” until it exited the skin. He could not do anything to prevent the skin from burning though. Hence, as soon as some smoke came out from the skin, it turned red as if scalded.

“That’s gonna leave a scar,” he commented, then moved on to the one behind Wooyoung’s ears.

Minjun was glad Wooyoung was unconscious through it all.

A few minutes later, Chansung looked up to indicate he was done.

“Where to now?” he asked.

Minjun sent him the image of the stream. Nodding, Chansung got up and went around the small cabin to check that everything was as it was before they came in. Not even one stray hair left behind. He then teleported the contents of the wooden bowl and metal pot into the stream and the bowls back from where he took them. He even cleared the debris from their food area. Going around once more just to be sure, he finished his short patrol and stood in front of Minjun. Taking Wooyoung from Minjun’s arms, he indicated that it was time for them to leave. Once he was sure they all had physical contact with him, he teleported them out.

~ “ ~

The next day…

Two figures teleported into the same cabin Minjun and the others had previously occupied.

“F*uck! We missed them!” one of them cursed as he directed a blast of telekinesis towards the coffee table, blowing it up into smithereens.

The other grunted.

“F*ucking animals think they could just break away from their cages!” the first guy continued his tirade.

“Scan all the dead guards’ backgrounds, their relatives, friends, anyone connected to them. That little is using their memories. But too bad, he only has so many places to hide,” the other guy sneered, “We’ll catch up to him in no time.”

“This is gonna be fun,” the first guy chuckled as he his lips in glee.

A second later, they flashed out and the cabin was empty again.

You can tell how stressed I am by the amount of cussing in the chapter lol

Sorry if this whole chapter is just rude. It's my outlet, so I just let loose heh

Anw, hope you guys enjoy this too!! See you in the next chap! xoxo

P.s: I really encourage you guys to read this in wattpad cos i post pics there. It's hard to do it here with 3rd party sharing...sigh... But up to your preferences of course! As long as you read hehehe <3