Title: Drenched, Drownded

pg-13, adventure, hurt/comfort
(MAMA!AU) After a mission on earth gone horribly wrong, EXO-K is missing and feared dead. EXO-M is tasked with the impossible; to bring the 12 back together and come out of Earth alive. What makes it worse - EXO-K's powers are now corrupted, and they would stop at nothing to kill EXO-M. 

Chapter 1 (Before Earth)

I think I’m left with none but pain

Will you stay with me

- Nell, Tokyo

It was peaceful for those precious five seconds. The pounding of his heartbeat drummed in his ears, and pressure rippled on his skin as the sea water pushed him along with its currents. Then, he inhaled.

Suho’s eyes flew open. He immediately regretted it. The salt from the green water around him stung his eyes, making him cry out. To do so, he opened his mouth and inadvertently gulped down water. He begun twisting his body in the water, choking. His dark hair floated like a halo around his pale face. Panic filled his mind, and his heartbeat picked up its pace. He tipped his face upwards, trying to find the surface of the water where the sunlight would be refracted. There was only endless green around him. Not even the dirty brown rocks or the seabed greeted him in sight.

There was only so much time he had left. Still, he fought the black tendrils that threatened to take away his sight and consciousness. With his last rational thought, he squared his shoulders and kicked his legs with all his might, wading upwards against the strong current that kept pushing him back.

He knew he couldn’t make it. It was a given. As the pressure in his lungs forced his mouth open to in air – and instead causing his lungs to fill with water – he could only wonder in fearful confusion how he landed himself in the water. He was – wait, what was he doing before that? If possible, his eyes widened for that brief second as the next thought struck him. Who was he?

Then, his body surrendered, and darkness enveloped him.

There was a dark-haired boy watching the entire set-up. There was a cola-flavoured lollipop stuck in his mouth, making his left cheek bulge out. He was leaning in the shadows near the back of the control room that looked into the giant aquarium. The boy inside was already sinking to the bottom of the aquarium, his features wiped blank as if he was settled into a sleep.

A murmur of chatter warmed up around the control room, and it quickly rose to an angry buzz. One of the intern white-coats cautiously edged away from his mentor, who was being particularly volatile and vocal. He was flinging a thick brown file onto the ground, shouting a string of nonsensical words and numbers to his colleagues. The intern accidentally bumped into the boy.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” the intern was quick to apologise, bowing down. The boy gave a disinterested glance at the plastic nametag that dangled from where it was pinned at the coat lapel. JINO.

“What is wrong with the experiment?” the boy asked, jerking his head towards the aquarium. Divers suited up in shiny black swimming gear were already making their way towards the drowned boy.

Jino straightened up and looked hesitantly at the boy. He was dressed in a white uniform, with a baggy long-sleeved shirt and white pants. It was the exact same dress code as the boy they were currently fishing out of the aquarium.

“My name is Chen,” he introduced, holding out his hand in his first show of friendliness, eventhough the bored expression on his face did not change. “I’m allowed to know.”

“Well, Suho–”

“The experiment?”

Jino clasped his hands together behind his back like a schoolboy, and tightened his right hand’s grip on his left wrist. “Yes, the ‘experiment’.”

Chen’s eyebrows rose. “I’m not mocking him,” he said passively, and heat rushed to Jino’s cheeks. “I’ve only heard him – Suho – being referred to as the Water Guardian. He just drowned; he doesn’t seem to be doing a very good job of being one.”

“Yes,” agreed Jino, letting out a small sigh. “This is the fourth time we’ve ‘awoken’ him, and this is the fourth time he’s drowned. We don’t understand why he’s not responding to his power.”

There was an obscene pop sound, as Chen took out the thin lollipop stick from his mouth. It could barely be heard over the cacophony of noises the scientists were making, as they rolled whiteboards completely filled with tiny black squiggles into the control room to compute the latest statistics directly from the graphs in the computers. Snatches of conversation were audible; they were going to ‘awaken’ the guardian again in another few hours. Time was against them.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Jino asked tentatively, eyeing his mentor who was starting to calm down and talk in more reasonable tones. “Is this how all guardians are awakened?”

Chen considered the question, chewing the tip of the white stick. “By ‘this’, you mean getting killed by their element, in hopes of their own powers getting revealed?”

Jino regretted the question straight away. “Uhm, yes.”

“No. Only the test-tube guardians are treated like this,” Chen answered quietly, and Jino felt as though these words were only meant for his ears, and maybe not even that. There was a hardened look in Chen’s face while he studied the scientists in their natural environment. “Even then, Suho was made to be powerful, which is why they are trying so hard to make him succeed. He will be treated better later; on equal footing with the naturally-born guardians.”

“But there is only the record of the Lightning experiment,” Jino pointed out in confusion, just as his mentor yelled for him. Jino raised a hand in acknowledgement. “There aren’t any naturally-born guardians.”

“This is only the North facility,” Chen replied. He nodded dismissively for Jino to go. His mouth twisted into a wry grimace, dwelling darkly on Jino’s choice of words. The Lightning experiment. The Water Guardian.

If naïve interns were already discriminating against him, he hated to think how the Trainers would treat him once he was moved to the Central facility.

XXX

Time Skip

Kyungsoo walked quickly to the study room in their training building, his white sneakers making squeaky sounds against the polished dark marble flooring. His arms were laden with thick, brown paper files that threatened to burst if it weren’t for the colourful raffia string that was tied haphazardly over them. The files blocked his face, but Kyungsoo knew the place like the back of his hand. He had grown up in the training building – literally; the dormitories were in the top two floors of the building, and Kyungsoo had shown the first signs of power at the age of twelve.

When he passed a particularly ornate, black table with a porcelain vase on top of it, he knew he had overshot. His sneakers suddenly did a moonwalk two feet backwards. He barged into the room, pushing the white doors open with his left shoulder.

Within seconds, wisps of grey smoke swirled in front of him and Kyungsoo walked straight into another boy. The top of the stack fell neatly into the boy’s outstretched hands. When Kyungsoo could finally see what was in front of him, he saw Jongin’s triumphant glance.

“Hi,” Jongin greeted, following Kyungsoo from behind as he approached the long, rectangle table that occupied most of the room. The room was small comparative to their training facilities, which were as wide as school gymnasiums and divided into sections catering to specific needs. The floor was bare but polished to a shine and black bookshelves lined all four walls, filled with all sorts of educational books that nobody except Suho touched.

There were only a few of them in the room that day. Kyungsoo rubbed the side of his nose in disappointment. There were only a few precious minutes when the training of all twelve guardians did not clash; and that half hour break was supposed to be it. When out of training, they were expected to be studying.

Like regular teenage boys, all of them were on some kind of electronic device that they had brought in for entertainment instead. Xiu Min and Tao were sitting side by side with earphones plugged into Xiu Min’s laptop, a silver notebook with a frosted snowflake engraved on the cover. There was a holographic simulation of Chinese martial arts, a sparring of hands that enthralled Tao. Xiu Min was just lending him the laptop. Luhan was slumped in his seat at the end of the table, frowning in concentration. A Rubik’s cube was spinning in the air by itself in front of him, a blur of colours that only Luhan was used to seeing and sorting into its respective faces.

“Where is everybody?” blinked Kyungsoo, dumping the files on the table with a resounding ‘bang!’ He was completely unaffected by loud noises, but the others winced at the sudden sound and looked up.

“Where is Sehun?” asked Luhan, stretching out his hand. The Rubik’s cube stopped moving abruptly and dropped in mid-air. It was solved. He looked worried; his wide doe eyes downcast. “I know he has no schedule now and I’ve been waiting.”

Jongin put his own load onto the wooden table, and headed over to Luhan. One of the hard chairs pulled back by itself, and Jongin nodded his thanks. Kyungsoo remained standing at the head of the table between Xiu Min and Tao, and Jongin and Luhan.

“Someone is in punishment,” Jongin offered, making a face. “I just passed the Neutral Room, and it was locked. Three guesses who.”

Simultaneous groans went around the table. “What, again?” Tao protested, his gaze flickering from the computer-generated fight to Jongin’s solemn face momentarily.

“Sehun was supposed to be good today,” Luhan sighed. He pushed the Rubik’s cube onto the table, no longer in the mood to play.

“What’s so special about today?” Jongin asked, turning to his left look at Luhan better.

Kyungsoo opened his mouth to interject, but Luhan cut him off. “Today’s his ‘awakening’ day,” Luhan reminded, slumping back into his seat.

“Oh.” Kyungsoo and Jongin said together. Then, Jongin said flippantly, “Well, that could explain why he was especially stubborn during training this afternoon.”

Luhan scowled at that, but made no further comment. Kyungsoo seized the momentary silence as an opportunity to swoop in.

“I was expecting more people to be here,” he began, “but never mind. The Council just placed its stamp of approval on the Project Earth. And they put me in charge.”

XXX

Sehun was the youngest Guardian – no, experiment. He was the third and last test-tube born experiment to come from the North facility. After the moderate success of birthing the Water Guardian, coupled with the inability to scout for naturally-born Guardians, the scientists had taken to create an Air Guardian to compliment Suho.

It had taken three tries to awaken Sehun. The first time, he had been thrown into a vacuum and the air inside was slowly siphoned off, creating an intense pressure from within. His bones had been fractured and broken, before he suffocated to death.

It was when he had been reawakened for the second time that Chen noticed something off about him. Sehun was in the same vacuum room that he had vacated two weeks earlier. Unlike Suho, he was already looking around wildly from the moment his eyelids flew open. He begun to yell, or at least Chen assumed so because all sounds from within the set-up were muted.

“What’s he doing?” Jino asked, staring open-mouthed at the glass panel he was standing in front of.

Sehun looked up suddenly. His face turned several shades paler, and he stumbled back quickly. Not used to physical movements, he fell down hard on his bottom, but he did not stop scrambling back.

“I think – I think he remembers,” Chen guessed, astounded. His voice unintentionally echoed around the quiet room, as they watched the boy panic even before they had started the experiment.

“That’s impossible,” snapped Jino’s mentor. “We learned from the Lightning experiment to erase all traces of previous attempts to awaken.”

Sehun doubled over, cradling his left arm. The experiment had begun.

Chen walked towards Jino. They stood so close to the glass that the panel was barely an inch away from their faces. “They screwed him up, like they did to me.” Again, it was quiet whispers, only meant for the intern’s ears.

Jino’s face was contorted in pain, a mirror image of the expression on Sehun’s face. “He wasn’t meant to,” he tried desperately. “We modified Suho’s and your diagnostics to create Sehun. He’s supposed to be perfect. We even used a younger body, so he could adapt better.”

“You used my diagnostics,” Chen repeated. He jeered, before a horrified look descended upon his face. “Did they tell you? I wasn’t supposed to be able to strike lightning. I was made to be more powerful, to manipulate the weather.” He pointed towards Sehun, whose lips were turning blue. “If he’s as screwed up as I am, you had better check what lesser power he got instead. So you can try not to kill him the next time. It’s traumatising enough to remember how you get killed just once.”

XXX

Suho was walking down the corridor. It was not his way to outwardly show his feelings – like the rest of the guardians from the North facility – but if he did, he would have been dragging his feet and keeping his gaze on the ground. He hated, hated training with the Fire Guardian from the South facility. He could hardly keep up with Chanyeol’s aggressive progress, and it was by luck that he had dodged that last shot of flame aimed towards his torso. The wall of water he had thrown up, and subsequently shoved to drench the other boy only served to quell the fire momentarily, before it flickered and burst into blue flames. Suho had swallowed a cry of frustration at that – blue flames were more intense, and showed the leaps in Chanyeol’s magnitude of power.

Someone clapped him on the shoulder, and Suho twisted around. He reflexively shoved the person against the white walls. The training gymnasiums were a far cry from the ornate, luxurious environment on the first floor – which was opened to public, and included the study room. Rather, they were cold, white sterile environments.

Luhan raised both hands in a surrender position, smiling gently so that both eyes disappeared into half-moon curves. Suho could scoff; the people of the East facility were docile beings. Luhan’s reaction was typical of a prey pretending to appear more harmless, before a great escape. As if on cue, a powerful surge ripped the air and Suho was shoved to the ground.

“You’ve grown stronger,” acknowledged Suho, and played along, supplying Luhan with one of his own kind smiles he had perfected.

A hand was shown in his view, and Suho grasped it firmly to pull himself to his feet.

“Where are you going?” Suho asked, as they both walked on.

“Neutral Room,” Luhan told him, sticking his lower lip out in a pout.

“Ah. Sehun is in there.” It was not a question.

“Why does everyone assume it’s Sehun?” muttered Luhan agitatedly. “Has he been behaving worse than usual?”

“No, he’s behaving as Sehun does. But I don’t think you would show this much emotion for Chen.”

“They shouldn’t be sent there so frequently, Suho. Your people are cruel, to build such a room.”

Suho let the insult slide. There was no retort for the truth.

The Neutral Room was the product of the North facility. Since it was the only facility to provide test-tube Guardians instead of naturally-born ones to the Central facility, its people were anxious to make up for this disgrace. By contributing their high-end technology, they constructed the unforgiving training gymnasiums. They made a punishment room out of their own courtesy, having seen the need for it when training the two anomalies.

When the Guardians were shifted into the Central facility, the Trainers had stuck closely to their previous training regimes. They had studied the Neutral Room warily, not having seen it before. Once, they had gathered all the Guardians to watch it work. Nobody had volunteered to be inside, but Chen had lost the round of scissors-paper-stone to Sehun. Midway, in tears, Tao had tried to stop time and demand for the punishment to stop. Tao was another of the East facility’s Guardians. It was futile though – no outside powers can affect the Neutral Room. But still, the gesture shocked Chen, and he was the first person outside the North facility that he became marginally nicer to.

Sehun was already waiting outside, wrapped in a fluffy white towel. His hair was damp and stuck to his forehead, while the back of his hair stuck up like a duck’s tail as if he had been running a hand through it. He was sitting on the ground, making himself look as small as possible so it was easy to forget that he was already over 1.8metres in height. His entire frame was still trembling. He saw the sneakers within peripheral sight first; one a clean pair of white shoes and the other tattered to pieces, scorched with burnt marks and held together by single strands of thread.

Suho crouched down beside him. The younger boy was shivering badly in the cold air-condition. “What time is it, Sehun?” he asked plaintively.

A tongue darted out for a brief second to the dry, chapped lips nervously. “7 o’clock in the evening?” he guessed weakly, and his face fell when Luhan made a noise of discontentment in his throat.

“It’s nearly one in the morning,” Luhan said, his eyes brighter than usual. “How long were you in there?”

“Let’s get him back to the dormitory,” Suho told Luhan, when Sehun refused to answer, settling for closing his eyes in apparent exhaustion. “We have a Guardian’s meeting at one-thirty, and we need to clean him up first.” He helped Sehun onto Luhan’s back, and Luhan piggy-backed him down the corridor and up six flights of stairs.

“He never would be able to climb the stairs in this state,” Luhan muttered under his breath, pausing for a moment to hoist Sehun into a more comfortable position on his back. “Who did he think he was waiting for, sitting out there? We’re never informed properly of each other’s schedules.”

You, Suho thought simply, but Luhan already knew that.

XXX

“Explain in simple words,” demanded Kris, folding his arms. The twelve Guardians were gathered around the common space in their dormitory. The dormitory was circular in shape, with the ceiling being a thick glass dome that allowed the natural sunlight to fall in during the day and to give an ethereal feeling, seeing the endless black, at night. The different rooms lined the circular edge, and there was a hidden staircase behind a bookshelf that led to the lower level dormitory. When they had meetings as twelve, which was few and far apart in between, they met at the upper level dormitory common space.

Kyungsoo did not miss a beat, and said straightforwardly, “I can’t.”

“You have to,” Kris did not budge, “for Chanyeol’s sake, if nothing else.”

Chanyeol rolled his eyes towards the other giant man in the opposite end of the room. Then, he pulled a sleepy Baekhyun roughly from the cold floor. Baekhyun had been leaning against Chanyeol’s white pyjamas-clad legs, snoring softly. He never functioned properly in the dark.

Baekhyun made a whimpering sound, like a disgruntled puppy disturbed from its sound sleep. “Wake up, Baekhyun,” Chanyeol said loudly, pulling the said boy onto his lap and hugging him tight from the back. “Kris is insulting me again. Do something.” The steady warmth from Chanyeol’s body soon became uncomfortably, making Baekhyun open an eyelid a slit.

“It’s not daytime yet,” Baekhyun brushed dismissively, and snuggled into a more comfortable position, throwing his legs over the armrest of the leather-covered couch, and settling into Chanyeol’s arms.

“There aren’t any lights because Chen took out the electricity,” explained Lay patiently. Chen leaned sullenly against the glass balcony door, looking out into the night. Rain had come, and the lightning flashes were too frequent to be normal. A brief flash of light flooded the room momentarily, so that Baekhyun raised his head, suddenly much more wide awake. “Whatever we’re going to say, we’re going to do it on our own terms.”

“You’re going to say things that They don’t want to hear,” hissed Baekhyun, and he pushed himself away from Chanyeol. “That is a very foolish thing to do.”

He glared angrily at Kyungsoo, who met his gaze levelly. Lay appeared supremely unconcerned, turning to Sehun who was sitting next to him on the high chairs on the kitchen counter that looked into the common space. “How’re you feeling?” he asked, playing his part as the resident doctor well. “You took a hard knock in the Neutral Room today.”

“They can do a lot worse than the Neutral Room to us, if they find out you’re leaking confidential information!” shouted Baekhyun, startling the rest of them. He was actually standing up, and instead of anger, the fear radiating from him was palpable. It made him look even smaller than he already was.

“Baekhyun…” murmured Chanyeol. He reached out to tug gently on Baekhyun’s arm, still sitting down albeit upright. Baekhyun turned sharply, and his newfound willpower seemed to disintegrate on the spot.

“Actually, they can’t,” Kyungsoo retorted. “Project Earth is the worst possible project that our planet can concoct, and it’ll affect all of us greatly. I’m from the Central facility as much as you are, Baekhyun, and I’m aware of the risks I’m making now. Do you trust my judgement in proceeding with this Guardian meeting?”

“Lay?” Baekhyun said unconvincingly, in his last ditch attempt to do damage control.

Lay straightened up and squared his shoulders, before leaning both elbows on the counter contemplatively. “Me and Kyungsoo are privy to some things,” he admitted, “being the–” He cut off his words, but Baekhyun understood. In the shadows, Chen’s mouth twisted into a small leer. The Central facility had their discriminatory version of Guardian and Experiment. Baekhyun was indeed a natural-born Guardian, but he had a unique background.

“What’s going on?” Jongin asked, bored and annoyed. He leaned back into his bean bag in the corner.

“Today I’ve been put in charge of Project Earth,” Kyungsoo told the room at large. “It’s been in talks for years in the Central facility, so Lay and I know a substantial chunk of information that they did not tell me during the debriefing for the Project. It affects us all, so I’d like to share this information with you.”

“Why wouldn’t Baekhyun want you to tell us?” Chanyeol spoke up, defensively. He had pulled Baekhyun back to him, and was his dark hair gently. His tangible fear lessened considerably at each touch.

Kyungsoo and Lay exchanged glances. “When Baekhyun joined us –” Lay began diplomatically, but Baekhyun cut in.

“I was curious, and pried into information that I shouldn’t have,” Baekhyun said miserably. “I got punished for it.”

“Badly,” Lay added.

“I don’t want Sehun to hear this then,” Luhan announced suddenly, standing up from his position on the frayed forest green rug.

“Luhan,” Sehun said, annoyed.

A particularly loud and frightening crack echoed around the room, and everyone was blinded for a second. Chen ignored Suho’s accusing glare. An extended silence filled the dormitories.

“Please hear me out,” Kyungsoo pleaded wearily. “Trust me.”

The silence stretched on.

Then, jerkily, Suho spoke up for the rest of the Guardians. “Go on,” he consented. He threw a sideways glance at Kris. “But in simple words, please.”

XXX To Be Continued XXX