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CHAPTEREIGHTEEN

❝BIO-ENGINEERINGQUANTUM

PARADOXFACILITY:PARTFIVE❞

Woohyun blinked a couple of times, expecting to feel something, anything. With everything Kris had been saying about diseases and a human’s immune system, he was almost expecting to suddenly be in pain–the current discomfort in his injured arm did not count. Even the injection itself didn’t hurt.

Kris frowned as he eyed Woohyun. “No reaction…”

“Does that mean…?” Taemin trailed off, not finishing his question. He eyed Woohyun with confusion.

Kris stood up, stepping away from Woohyun. “We wait. If he’s not dead or in the process of dying within the next ten minutes, then, well, he’s obviously not from here.”

Woohyun wondered what kind of disease Kris gave him.

He hoped it wasn’t prostate cancer.

That would really put a damper on his life.

“Mr. Lee, run up to the fourth floor and acquire Yixing’s pickled plum from the refrigerator in his office. I’m very hungry.” Taemin frowned, reluctantly following the order.

What the is a pickled plum?! Woohyun thought. The image of a plum doused in pickle juice conjured up in his mind.

“While he is gone, I’m going to take a sample of your blood.” He sat back down on his stool, and picked up another needle off of the metal table. “How old are you, Mr. Nam?” He pulled the rag out of Woohyun’s mouth.

“Twenty-one.” Woohyun didn’t see the harm in telling him.

“So young…” The brunet flinched in pain as Kris drew blood from him. He bit his lips, trying to stop a moan of pain from erupting from him. “Why are you here, Mr. Nam?”

“You can just call me Woohyun,” the brunet offered. Being called Mr. Nam reminded him of his dead father, and thinking about his dead father made him think about his dead mother.

Kris took the needle with Woohyun’s blood in it and pulled out his tablet, tapping it a couple of times. The screen of the tablet began to glow, and then Kris injected the needle into the side of the tablet. Woohyun raised a brow, wondering exactly where the blood was going.

“Why are you here, Woohyun? Why did Sunggyu want to bring you to me?” Kris repeated, not bothering to look up at the brunet.

“INFINITE wants to know why the BEQP has been kidnapping the citizens of South Hallow, and why they are being experimented on,” Woohyun explained, remembering the long, intense explanation Dongwoo gave him about INFINITE’s existence, one of the goals for this mission, and about how evil YG and his party was. “They want to expose you for the heinous crimes you’ve committed down here.” While he was sitting here, waiting for whatever disease he was infected with to affect him and for Sunggyu to finally rescue him, he might as well try and get some information out of the scientist.

“Heinous crimes, huh? And with what proof? Long before Sunggyu and that motley crew of his came here, Yongguk had us clean the labs up and make sure there was no proof of the heinous crimes that went on down here.”

Woohyun frowned, thinking about what Sunggyu had said earlier.

They knew INFINITE was coming.

Someone had leaked to the heads of the BEQP that INFINITE was coming.

“Who?” Woohyun asked. “Who told you we were coming?”

“I’m still waiting for you to answer my first question,” Kris lowered his tablet to his lap, giving his attention to Woohyun. “Why are you here?”

“I already–”

“You’ve told me why INFINITE is here, but you have not told me why you’re here.”

“I-I…” Woohyun hesitated. He didn’t want to give away too much about himself. From what everyone has been telling him since he had arrived in South Hallow, don’t trust anyone who worked for YG and the BEQP. Always keep your guard up. Although, to Woohyun, the story of how he traveled to South Hallow may not seem that important to Sunggyu and the others or even to himself, telling someone, like Kris, could be dangerous. The man was one of the head scientists of the facility, who specialized in the subject of time travel. Going into a detailed explanations about anything to the scientist could be extremely detrimental.

“Not going to tell me?” Kris gave a small smile, as if he expected Woohyun to not answer.

Woohyun kept his mouth shut. He shifted in his seat, and the dull pain in his left shoulder suddenly intensified. The brunet took a deep breath, closing his eyes. He tried his best to ignore it.

Where was Sunggyu? Woohyun thought, opening his eyes. He avoided Kris’s gaze and looked towards the door to the stairwell that he and Taemin had come through earlier. Why was it taking Sunggyu and the others so long to get here? The brunet hoped that nothing terrible had happened to them during his absence.

Woohyun heard Kris mutter something under his breath, and he saw that the scientist had directed his attention back to his tablet. “Well, it’s been over ten minutes, and you’re still alive. Feel anything?”

“No,” Woohyun answered. Besides the pain in his arm, he felt generally fine. Well, okay, that wasn’t completely true. He did feel a dull and pulsating throb in his head. It wasn’t as bad as it was before, when he passed out. It was more so similar to the mild throbbing in his head he got when he was still in his own time, when he had picked up and examined the infinity necklace on the night of the shooting star.

“Hm, your temperature is a bit higher than the norm. It’s probably nothing, though…”

The screen of Kris’s tablet glowed again, and Woohyun gasped, his eyes widening as a miniature holographic image of Woohyun appeared, suddenly, floating above the tablet. The image was extremely detailed; every visible injury Woohyun acquired today could be seen on the holographic Woohyun.

Kris poked Hologram-Woohyun’s face, and a long list appeared. The list consisted of information about Woohyun. Some of which he never told anybody.

Like his undying love for Hobbits.

Kris began to read from the list. “Nam Woohyun. February eighth, 1991 CE. Seoul, South Korea. Parents are deceased. Is not aware of brother's current location. No other living relatives from your mother’s side of the family. Father, Nam Hyunjun, died of a brain aneurysm. Mother, Bae Suji, died of multiorgan dysfunction caused by Sepsis. She was born in 2842 SE…” Kris trailed off, sharply looking at Woohyun. Said man swallowed thickly, not paying much attention to the look Kris gave him.

Somewhere in South Hallow, at this moment, was a young Bae Suji, running around. His mother wasn’t lying about her time traveling. His mother wasn’t lying about being from the future.

Where was she? What was she doing?

“Now that’s a noteworthy fact. Blood and DNA don’t lie. You are from the past while your mother is from this time.” Kris exited out of the list and poked Hologram-Woohyun in the chest.

Several small pictures of men and woman appeared. Above the pictures, the words ‘Living and Nonliving relatives of Nam Woohyun’ could be read. A red ‘X’ and the word deceased embellished majority of the pictures. The ones that appeared to still be alive, Woohyun did not recognize. But, then again, Woohyun couldn’t recall ever meeting any of his relatives on his father’s side. And it was impossible for him to have met anyone related to Suji.

“Bae Suji… Bae… Suji…” Kris mumbled over and over again as he scanned through the faces and names.  His fingers swiftly swiped through the list before stopping for a brief moment on the face of a man Woohyun had not seen in a long time. There was a red ‘X’ over his face and the word deceased under it.

Woohyun didn’t remember much about his father since he died when he was still a child. The picture frames that decorated the shelves in his house were the only memories he had of his father.

Kris moved on to the next face, and Suji appeared. She looked much younger in her picture than of what Woohyun remembered. There was a red ‘X’ and deceased over her face as well, but under her picture, it said that she was currently alive in the year 2862 SE.

“How interesting,” Kris said aloud. “She traveled well over 5,000 years into the past, but it doesn’t say how it happened.” Kris swiped to the next profile, and for a brief moment before Kris moved on to the next one, Woohyun saw his brother’s face, and it became very hard for the brunet to breathe.

His brother was dead.

Kris stilled for a moment before scrolling back to Boohyun’s face. A look of revelation etched on his visage; his eyes widened.

Woohyun couldn’t control the sob that erupted from him as the word deceased rang in his head. “H-How?” He choked. It felt like the wind was knocked out of him.

How did Boohyun die? When did Boohyun die?

Woohyun hung his head low as tears trickled down his cheeks. Sobs wracked through his fragile frame, rising in pitch as the information trul