-

The streets look completely deserted in the utter darkness. Even when he walks by a row of brick apartments, Kai frowns at how unlit and shadowed the windows are.

He looks down at a leather watch Lay gave him before they jumped back in time. It’s been about five minutes since he and Taemin entered the central district.

“So where do we go now?” Taemin mumbles, cradling his left arm with a wince. Kai desperately wants to weave through the tall buildings ahead of him, to find the factory Lay told them about, and more help. Twenty-five minutes, waiting to be ambushed at any moment, is too cruel a game.

“Where’s a good place we can take cover in, if they find us?” Kai manages, and he can’t believe what he’s saying. As if on cue, his ears pick up the distant noise of a car, its oxygen pumps gliding across the dirt.

“, they’re here already?” Taemin lets out. Kai’s ears pick up more sounds. Definitely more than one vehicle.

Suddenly, the huge inner district doesn’t seem so huge. The number of large factory buildings ahead of them seems limited. “, forget where!” Taemin swears. “Let’s just go!”

Kai’s friend takes off running, into a wide street surrounded by tall buildings.  Kai follows, instinctively pulling out the semi-automatic pistol from his belt.

They dodge through street after street, the sounds of vehicles getting closer and closer. Kai looks back, in the cracks in between the buildings, where he sees flashing headlights.

In front of him, the alleys turn darker and darker, and all Kai can see is the blurred movement of Taemin.

“Don’t bother trying to hide,” a loud, crackling voice announces, through some sort of megaphone, Kai guesses. “We know exactly where you are.”

Legs still pumping, Kai’s finger pulls at the trigger lock of his pistol. Taemin ducks into a narrow street, coming to a stop, clutching his shoulder.

Kai’s feet slide to a halt right next to him, and they look at each other, ears perked.

Running footsteps seem to surround them from all around the streets. In the darkness, Kai sees Taemin’s pale hand rummage and grasp a door handle against a  low, wide building. Taemin pulls the door open, and flicks his head at Kai. They enter the open door, and find something that looks like a huge auto mechanics shop.

Large car parts are spread around the middle of the open space. Wires hang loose from the ceiling, and all around the space, barrels and jars full of black oils, as well as huge mechanical tools, occupy enough space to fill up the building from floor to ceiling.

Patters of heavy feet, about five to six pairs of them, sound way too close to the building for Kai’s liking. He darts to a space against a wall, right under a small window. Taemin joins him a few feet away, under an adjacent window.

Kai raises his head just enough for his eyes to peek through the window glass. He sees a group of five gunmen in all-black combat uniforms. One of them holds a flat device in his hands, peering into it intensely. “It looks like they’re inside that building, both of them,” the one with the device says. The other four nod, and a few of them pull out black pistols from their uniforms, ones not too unlike the one in Kai’s hand.

A layer of perspiration forms over Kai’s forehead and upper lip, his finger hooked in front of the trigger, the pistol pointing out the window toward the group of men. With a frustrated sigh, Kai realizes that the closed window would only allow his gun to break the glass and tell the men exactly where he is. The beads of sweat on his forehead snake down the side of his face, and Kai’s other, trembling hand reaches up to the window.

He doesn’t know how he does it, but somehow, he slides the window up and open, without the gunmen outside noticing. “Their body temperatures are decreasing,” the man outside grunts, and once again, Kai’s gun point is aimed out the window, this time, no glass in its way.

Kai breathes out, the trigger on his finger feeling way too tiny and fragile. He almost wishes one of the gunmen wasn’t standing right in the line of his fire.

The force of the gun firing jerks Kai’s arm back, pain shooting up his shoulder. The harsh outcry of the bullet launching rings so loudly in Kai’s ear, he’s sure he’s going to be deaf. Grimacing, Kai fights the shuddering in his muscles to look out the window. The man that had been standing next to the man Kai had been aiming for is crumpled on the ground, and the other men around him are still recovering from the shock.

It’s only a second before they begin fire in Kai’s direction. A bullet shatters the window he just opened, and Kai ducks his head, his shaking hand still clutching the pistol. His body crouched on the ground, he makes eye contact with Taemin, just a few feet away from him, who has pulled out his pistol as well.

Buzzing bullets ricochet off the car parts inside the building, and Kai can’t muster enough courage to point his gun out the window again. A sharp crying bullet flies through the air right in front of Kai’s eyes, and as he watches, it makes contact with a metallic barrel. Black liquid begins to seep out of the hole the bullet leaves.

Taemin sticks his good hand out of his window and fires his pistol, not looking where he’s shooting. A good three or four shots respond right above his head, and Kai watches as a few of the bullets rip through the wires in the ceiling, causing showers of sparks to brighten up the space.

Popping sounds of something that aren’t bullets distract Kai, and he scans the building around him. Wires are cut open and drooping all over, loose sparks interacting with raw wire tips they’re not supposed to interact with. In an instant, bright flashes dance before Kai’s eyes, and he thinks he’s been blinded, too.

But the fire is just enough to give Kai the clearest vision he’s had since he’d stepped foot into the district. A harsh rattling from the entrance he and Taemin had used earlier jolts Kai in his crouched position. He can see the doorway lit in the amber glow of the fire, and as soon as the metal door opens, Kai fires his pistol right at it. A man staggers to the floor, and Kai pulls the trigger again, his arm muscles ready for the force of the shot this time.

Taemin turns and lets out a cry as he sees the two dead men just a few feet away from him. “Oh Kai…” the boy mutters, looking at Kai with wide eyes.

“There’s a fire in the building! It’s interfering with the heat sensor!” A man cries from outside.

The amber glow in the building brightens before Kai's eyes, and his ears pick up the sound of thick liquids leaking from their containers. The terror hits him as bad as a bullet to the chest, and his eyes begin searching frantically for an exit.

“Taemin, we have to get out of here, NOW!!” he cries. Taemin shoots down another black figure at the entrance, his body whipping back from the force of the gunshot.

Kai thinks it’s either a miracle or some sort of sick trick of his eyes, but he catches sight of a pair of double doors on the other side of the building, shadowed, not yet reached by the flames. “Taemin, this way!!” he waves his hand furiously, and Taemin begins to crawl over to him with trembling arms.

They don’t dare to get up from their crouched positions. They advance to the far doors, as fast as their hands and feet can take them. The gun in Kai’s hand is a bother, and Kai clenches his teeth at the thought of Taemin on his tail, gun in his one working hand, the other, useless from his bullet wound.

Right before Kai’s eyes, a snaking flame edges its way to a thin stream of leaked black oil on the ground. The two objects come in contact with swiftness and fervor, and the resulting flame leaps at a height much taller than Chanyeol or Kris.

Kai makes it to the metal doubles doors and finally gets on his feet. The door opens easily enough, and he feels Taemin right behind him. He steps out into the much cooler outside, and Taemin follows, but what happens next doesn’t quite register in his mind.

His feet lift from the ground, and his body is flung forward. He lands with all of his front side in the dirt covered street. He loses his grip on the semi-automatic, and his eyes clench shut in shock.

“Where did they go!? Were they in the building!?!?” The man’s panicked voice sounds much more distant than it had been in the building. Kai struggles to his hands and feet, noticing warmth on his back. Taemin coughs a few feet to Kai’s right.

“This is our chance Kai, let’s run while we can,” Taemin says in a scratchy, miserable voice. Kai stands up and finally puts two and two together. The building they had been in just a second ago is now completely engulfed in flames right in front of him.

Taemin limps toward Kai and hands his friend the gun he dropped. “Let’s head for the factory,” Taemin’s craggy voice has the boldness Kai needs to start trotting away from the burning building.

Kai decides not to care about a flickering car light in the distance past dark buildings and streets. He secures the semi-automatic in his belt and looks at Taemin, running beside him. His friend is fine, except for the dirt covering his clothes and a few cuts here and there, and his bullet wound from before.

They get away from the burning building and the rest of the hunters, once again surrounded by pitch blackness. When they stop running, Kai's muscles scream at him from all places. He wants to collapse in the black street and forget about the hunters.

"Show us the shoelace or we'll shoot you both down," a voice blurts from the darkness. Kai freezes on the spot.

"Kai... The shoelace..." Taemin mumbles. Kai's arm is slow to respond. He has trouble pulling the shoelace out of his pocket, and while his fingers pull, his eyes dart around him for any sign of a figure hidden in the shadows.

He holds the shoelace up so that it's as visible as possible. The silence that follows reminds Kai of his deathly fatigue.

"You made it," a different, calmer voice says.

Two men step out from a wall of blackness. "Come with us," they direct.

Taemin lets out a sigh of relief. Kai looks at his friend, who has already taken several steps toward the two strangers. Running a hand through his hair, Kai's own feet begin to move as well, but just barely. They tell Kai, this is his last wisp of strength.

-

Again, if anything seems confusing, please ask :) I get so confused myself when I try to write this! But I hope you're enjoying it!

And alternatively for your enjoyment, our precious leader Suho~!

I really hope having these kinds of pictures don't distract people or make people not want to read the story... T^T