Kris and Tao were cousins. Lay was Kris' old friend. Kris and Luhan were classmates. Xiumin was sold to Luhan's family when they were children. The only real outsider was Chanyeol. Kris had paid for him, Luhan and Xiumin he could talk to, Lay was nice, Tao didn't seem to like him very much. All those relationships were superficial at best but Chanyeol still led himself to believe that he just had to do his best and it would improve. Relationships grew with time. But then the time for their first real job arrived and he wondered whether he would ever be able to fit in.

Before he had a hang of the whole thing and probably also to test his loyalty they used him as a scapegoat. He had to act like he was on the lookout for a cheap way out of the country and if anyone started rampaging he could just stop them before the panic spread.

To get inside the country was ridiculously easy. He had to hide inside a hidden storage space just in case they ran into any random security checkups. The barcode behind his ear marked him as a Special Citizen, so although it was the country that had sold him off, was it illegal for him to freely pass the border. Before he couldn't get out, now he couldn't get in.
He knew that normal citizens could easily pass the fences to get inside the Special Districts but he had never thought that it was just as easy for foreigners with powers. It was as if the state welcomed the possibility to get rid of some of its eyesores and turned a blind eye on all the illegal trade of goods and people. In the end only those who were marked as Special Citizens had no rights. It was not really only about their power but about the fact that they, unlike the Chinese with powers, were part of the country. Whatever the foreigners did, it only reflected on whatever place they had come from after all, not on Korea.
That's why it was so easy for the masses of ships to land around the market places of the Special Districts and for the foreigners to freely look for people who wanted to get away.
"Try not to run into any policemen," Xiumin had warned Chanyeol. "They can tell where you're from and they occassionally raid ships, just to keep face." But really, he didn't see the problem. They landed in Special District 34 in Busan but it looked just like District 3, so he knew how minor the security measures inside were. The real trouble would be to get out.

So he walked around, taking in all the familiar scents and listening to the odd dialect he only knew through TV broadcasts, until he ran into Luhan who acted as if he was scouting him. He followed behind, chatted to a few people and listened to Xiumin giving a short introduction to the ship and the costs of the trip to the Outer Colonies, their supposed destination. A middle-aged guy told Chanyeol that he sounded like someone on TV with his prim Seoul dialect and he feared that his cover had blown, when someone else joked that he probably practised it a lot, so that the Seoul people in the Outer Colonies wouldn't laugh at him. Everyone seemed so stupidly hopeful, as if this really was the great turning point of their lives. Chanyeol felt reminded of his friends and family members who had left on their search for a better place and it made his stomach turn. It was all so wrong but he couldn't just tell them that there was no way out, this ship wouldn't help them escape either. Because to him this really was his only chance to survive.
So he swallowed his doubts and went along, playing the cheerful guy with a fake Seoul dialect who was looking for his great new life outside.

The hidden room for the future slaves was deadly silent when they passed the security checkpoint at the border. This was where many ventures ended. All it usually took were the right amount of bribes but every once in a while it happened that officers of the border control made an example of single ships, just to show that they still had things under control.
Everything worked just as planned and no one suspected a thing when Xiumin came back to cheerfully inform them that they had safely left the country. Now all that was left was to bring the new slaves to the casino on a Pacific island that was looking for new attractions. They would bring them there, dump them and get their money. All pretty easy. There were no windows in the parts of the ship the slaves were allowed into and the average Special Citizen couldn't exactly estimate how long it really took to reach the Outer Colonies anyway. To them the moon usually just was that unreachable thing in the sky.

There were no problems whatsoever, at least not until they were almost there. They landed in a hangar, some people of the casino were already waiting and it was only when the last person had walked down the stairs leading out of the ship, that someone noticed that something was off. It was maybe the grim silence or the bulky casino people who did not at all look like they were about to welcome them warmly. Whatever it was, it caused the middle-aged man who had made a comment about Chanyeol's accent to stop and to refuse to go any further. Luhan and Xiumin tried to get him to calm down but then the casino people attacked first.

It instantly became a mess. There were eight slaves in total, some of whom were taken out right away. Tao stopped half of them before they could run off, one was caught by a casino guy who could turn his hair into a sustained rope, another seemed to liquidate himself into slick oil and tried to find a crack to get out. One guy turned into a giant hairy beast and the middle-aged man had bones protruding from his body that he used as spikes. And Chanyeol didn't really know what to do. It was ironical how it was exactly the search for people with really odd powers that started this.
Tao tried to stop the beast and accidentally caused two of the casino guys to slow down as well. Luhan and another guy meanwhile tried to lift up the oil guy who was halfway through a gap between two huge metal doors, as Xiumin caught the middle-aged man in an ice prison, not realizing that Chanyeol was too close.
Chanyeol saw the man inside like a shadow. There still seemed to be enough space for him to move. The man had told him that he wanted to redo his life after his family had been killed in a riot. He wanted to become a farmer because his son had told him that he could just plough with his bones but if this went on, he wouldn't be more than a laughingstock for gamblers. Chanyeol didn't even notice that he himself kept walking closer.
"Stay away!" Xiumin yelled, also shortening the gap between him and the man, but Chanyeol felt as if he was in a trance. He wasn't sure but the man seemed to be looking into his direction.

The man attacked. He must have noticed the ice becoming softer, so he focussed all his energy on penetrating it. If he could be seen from the outside, he probably saw the position of his attacker, too.
The bone pierced through Xiumin's shoulder, causing him to yelp and to fall down on his knees, only held up by the spike that connected him and the man who was kicking down the weakening icy barrier in front of himself. The man was panting and turned his head to look at Chanyeol.
"Now's the moment, boy!" he grunted in his heavy Busan dialect. "He's weak to heat."
Chanyeol didn't really understand what he meant. He didn't understand anything at all. All he saw was Xiumin who had always been nice to him and who was frantically holding onto the bone stuck in his shoulder, as if there was a chance to pull it out through force.
"Time to finish him off," the man muttered and held up his right arm, this time aiming properly.
"Wait, what?" Chanyeol managed to blurt out when the man suddenly stumbled back. A thin layer of ice seemed to crawl along the bone, steadily getting closer and closer.
Xiumin slowly got up, still holding onto the bone. "This is part of your body, isn't it? So I bet it hurts like hell," he said with a shaky voice. "Just stop and I promise you won't get hurt."
The man just snorted. "Bull," he said but when an icicle cut through his bone, separating him and Xiumin, he screamed. And Chanyeol somehow finally woke up.

The man was about to charge towards Xiumin when Chanyeol grabbed his arm to hold him back. "Listen," he said pleadingly. "Just stop, please. You can't escape. These people won't stop, so if you don't submit you'll really get hurt." Xiumin had stopped his pursuit but two of the casino guys were coming into their direction now. "I know it's not easy but this is your only chance."
The man looked him in the eye and held his free hand under Chanyeol's chin. "How is this a chance?" he asked and Chanyeol sighed as he set fire to his hand. Right, it wasn't really a chance. It meant survival but not much more than that.

The man was dragged away and around them everything slowly seemed to calm down. The roars of the caught beast filled the spacy hangar as Xiumin pulled the remaining piece of bone out of his shoulder. "," he gasped as he threw it away with a disgusted face and as his sleeve got soaked in blood. His hands shook as he froze the wound.
"," Chanyeol exclaimed. ", I'm so sorry. That's all my fault." He hurried towards him and Xiumin looked at his shoulder with a funny expression.
"I'm melting," Xiumin laughed as he covered it with his hand and Chanyeol stopped. There was nothing he could do.

All the slaves were finally taken into custody and Kris and Tao had disappeared into the casino to finish the deal. Luhan had helped Xiumin inside the ship, so that Lay could heal his wound, meanwhile snapping at Chanyeol to stay away. And Chanyeol was left behind in the hangar like the outsider he was.

The others were all connected. They had family bonds or friendship and whatever it was Luhan and Xiumin had. They had a common language and knew how to do their job. And here he was, connecting with a man he would never meet again and who hurt one of the people who had helped him all the time.

"You've done your best," Xiumin would later say, as if it really was no big deal and Chanyeol suspected that he had reported the whole thing to Kris in a distorted way that made Chanyeol look better than he was. That at least would have explained why Kris didn't make a fuss either.
And it was exactly that kind of niceness that made Chanyeol feel even more miserable.