It was probably part of the human nature to always look for a better place, a place where everything was good and nice. The harsher the conditions, the greater the need to flee to this uncertain place. The more desperate the people, the more risks they would take to get there.

It was because life became less and less bearable for Special Citizens of the Korean Peninsula that more and more people tried to get away.
A few years after it became known that some people started to gain weird unnatural powers, the various governments tried to find ways to deal with them. There supposedly were countries were all the 'freaks' could live like average people but Korea apparently wasn't one of them. They weren't put in concentration camps but they barely had any rights. Chances were slim that the so-called Special Citizen would ever get out of their ghettos.
When they started to get forged papers to find work because no one wanted to hire a person that was marked as a Special Citizen, the government started to brand them like cattle. The day they were born they all got a bar code tatooed behind their right ears.

Life in the ghettos was like hell for those who couldn't get out.
About 80% of the Special Citizens were male, so most parents giving birth to girls tried to find a way to get their daughters out before they could be marked as the children of the freaks. They sold them off to normal families or just dropped them in front of orphanages. That way they at least had a chance to have a decent future. Because they all knew that there could come  a day when the government decided that Special Citizens weren't meant to exist at all.

The crime rate steadily grew within the ghettos. Theft, assault, vandalism, , murder. Not a day passed without another newspaper article about another gruesome crime committed by a Special Citizen. Their lack of any future prospects caused them to turn their powers against each other and the more violent they became, the more scared the general public was.

It really was no wonder that there were hundreds of Special Citizens who embarked on dubious Chinese aircrafts that were supposedly going to bring them to any of the 'free countries'. The cheapest mostly went to Pacific islands, the more expensive ones even went as far as the Outer Colonies on the moon. It was a well-known fact that most of them were slave traders who sold people to China as private slaves or as fighters for the Killing Games but even the slightest chance of finding a way out was enough for most people. All it took was one person who spoke fluent Korean on a ship and there would be people who boarded it.

The only legal way to make a decent career was to turn against one's own. The police always needed a certain amount of strong and qualified Special Citizens who could take care of any serious situations within the ghettos that spread to the normal parts of the city.
Working for the police of course meant to be hated by literally everyone within the country but the benefits included a steady income and better living conditions. To people like Kim Jongin that was enough.

It had been almost five years now since he joined the Special Forces.
The first time he came home to a lonely apartment after a drunk guy almost killed him with a laser beam from his hands, he regretted it. No one thanked him, no one told him that he did all right. But there was no way back. He didn't want to be the idiot who backed down.
It became easier the moment he tried to think of himself as a weapon. He had these powers for a reason and the only contructive way was to use them. It wasn't that he used them against his own, he just made sure that they couldn't scare the normal people anymore than they already did.

He could teleport, so he soon became an important asset within the Special Forces. The problem only was that there wasn't really a promotion system. He would never be more than a foot soldier and they made him believe that it was good enough for him to be tolerated.
It was maybe because he got bored and because he stopped caring about his own life that he accepted the position as an undercover agent. They were going to frame him for a crime he didn't commit, so that they could get him into one of the Chinese vessels.
The plan was for him to be approached by a certain ship, one that was known for selling off future fighters after promising that they would get them to the moon. It was essential for them to know that he was strong because they only took those that were likely to make good profits. Everyone who turned out to be weak was either not taken to begin with or being discarded of before reaching any destination. With his history as a member of the Special Forces he was more likely to be taken than other agents. He also knew though, that he was likely to not make it at all in the end.
But that risk was still better than to rot away in the ghetto he came from.

And now here he was, boarding the ship. He ran around for hours like all the others who looked for a cheap way out, seemingly aimless and desperate, when a friendly short guy approached him. He introduced himself as Kim Minseok and seemed incredibly trustworthy.
It really was a nice trick. The only crew members they met were that guy and another smiling guy who spoke almost perfect Korean but was obviously Chinese.
The Chinese knew that it was important to gain their future slaves' trust but most ships seemed to think of it as below them to actually have someone who either was fluent or who even was Korean. To them Koreans were like scum, things that could be sold but were not meant to be kept. Or so he had heard.

There were six Korean refugees on the ship and they were all put in the same windowless cabin with bunk beds that was hidden within the machine room.
Jongin knew it would be bad. It had been ages since he actually was among the people he tried to flee from and just being in a room with them made him feel the desperation that caused them all to try and get away. It didn't really help that not all of them were unfamiliar faces.
There was Do Kyungsoo for example who used to live in his neighbourhood and Oh Sehun who went to the same school. Two persons, a guy who called himself Suho and a Byun Baekhyun, he didn't know but they seemed to know who he was, judging by the way they looked at him warily. And then there was one of those people he never wanted to see again in all his life. Park Chanyeol.
Park Chanyeol was meant to be dead or in prison but here he was, alive and annoying as ever. The last time he saw him was when he set fire to a road blockade during a riot. He saw how they had taken him away and he knew that Park Chanyeol was never meant to be free again. But it wasn't really neither the time nor the place to mention that now, so he just tried to ignore him.

Kim Minseok told them to stay in their cabin and to not wander off before they officially left Korean territory. The ship was officially carrying cargo, so only registered crew members were allowed to be seen as it left.
When Suho asked why Kim Minseok wasn't hiding then, no Special Citizen was allowed to leave the country after all, he just smiled and explained that he was a citizen of China. He pointed at his ear and the lack of the barcode to prove it and left them behind in their new prison.