Deer Luhan,

If adrenaline was a drug you could get high on, then I think the sporting world would be in danger.  Also, do you reckon it’s a coincidence that I look like a deer and my flight instinct is almost as good as a deer’s?

Leigh

Fortunately or not, there weren’t nearly so many people in this subway, which meant navigating the passages was easier and much faster, and I came barrelling out onto the platform just as the doors of the train halted there began to close.  Putting on a last spurt of speed, I fairly flew onto the train, clocking my head on one of the doors as I did, and then set about frantically desnagging the corner of Luhan’s coat, which had got caught.

Bye, millions of pounds, I thought as I caught sight of the frayed material when I pulled it free, but then again, the coat wasn’t mine, so Luhan could deal with its price depreciation when I gave it back to him.  Gasping for breath, I slumped down against the train doors and looked around the compartment.

Several people were staring at me, which I guess was kind of merited, given the manner of my entrance, but nobody approached me and most of them looked like they weren’t of an age to be obsessing over Korean boy bands, which comforted me a lot.  In fact, the two women closest to me edged warily away.  I decided to make the best of a bad situation, tucking the beanie more firmly around my hair and closing my eyes as I tilted my head back against the doors.

I was so busy trying to catch my breath that I actually fell backwards out of the train when it rumbled to a halt at the next station and the doors hissed open.  I lay there dazed for a few seconds until somebody hauled me to my feet and said “the exit’s that way”, pointing helpfully at the exit sign.  Thanking her, I trotted off with the rest of the crowd heading out.  My head was spinning and I felt exhausted – my legs were shaking with the sustained exertion of my little night time run, and all I really wanted to do at that moment was topple into bed and ring Sehun to tell him about how traumatic my day had so far been.  I owed him a video call, in any case, and probably one to D.O. as well as we were supposed to be heading over to Zhengzhou in Henan in a few days’ time and there was a possibility I might have to sing.  Needless to say, I wanted to keep the possibility as much of a possibility as possible, because if it got translated into a high likelihood or a certainty, Luhan and I were pretty much screwed.  We still needed to figure out what we were going to do about his aunt – if he’d actually managed to find her – and about swapping back.

Distinctly relieved that nobody appeared to recognise me for the time being, I swiped myself out through the ticket barriers and decided for good measure to do what any normal teenager slouching around in a winter coat and beanie would do if they didn’t want to be disturbed: I unwound the earphones from around Luhan’s phone, popped the buds into my ears, and pretended to listen to music as I climbed the stairs.  I was halfway up them before it struck me that there was nobody else beside me, and also that I hadn’t turned the phone back on after ringing Abbie and that I ought really to get in contact with the EXO-M members and let them know where I was.  And I didn’t have a ing clue where I was, either.

The phone’s start-up tone blared into my ears as I reached street-level, now more concerned with trying to work out where I was than potential hordes of fan girls and police.  I’m still not totally sure how it took me a full fifteen seconds to figure out I was surrounded, though it could have had something to do with the fact that I was looking up, hoping for a brightly-lit landmark that I had about a one-in-a-billion chance of recognising, rather than around me, right up until the moment I bounced off a very muscular guy dressed in black leather and wearing sunglasses.

Sunglasses.  In January, at midnight.

I stopped to gawp at him, tugging one of the headphones out of my ears.

That was when I noticed the subway exit had been hemmed off by a load of really expensive black cars with tinted windows, that the guy I’d bounced off was carrying a gun, and that there were another dozen or so of his ilk standing around me.

I gulped.  I’d seen enough movies to know that tinted windows on black SUVs and skinheads dressed in leather with guns and multiple piercings wasn’t really a situation I wanted to be in.  The SWAT team at the previous station was suddenly beginning to make sense.

There was a long moment as I stared at them and they stared at me, and then I began to back towards the subway again.

Movement behind me and the creepy feeling of somebody breathing down the back of my neck alerted me to the fact that there were more of them who’d probably followed me out of the subway and that retreat was not an option.  Swallowing bile, I came to a halt and plastered my brightest, ditsiest grin onto my face.

“Hi!” I said with forced cheeriness.  “Lovely evening for a stroll, isn’t it?”

The initial guy I’d walked into took a step forwards, folding his arms.  “You’re coming with us, Mr Lu.”

I gulped again.  “Am I?” I asked, half-praying that my Mandarin would give me away as not being Luhan and that they’d realise they had the wrong person and going away.  Unfortunately, I knew my accent was good because Luhan had told me so multiple times, and the conversation thus far hadn’t been difficult enough to expose any limitations in my vocabulary.  I also had no proof on me that I wasn’t Luhan beyond stripping, and I wasn’t totally sure I wanted to do that.

The man growled at me and took a step forwards.  I almost took one back, but then remembered the person behind me and sidestepped instead.

“I’m really sorry,” I said, trying my best to sound apologetic, “but I’d really rather not.”

He lunged at me.

The odds were not in my favour, and realistically speaking, a lone girl should not have been able to get away from a baker’s dozen of fully grown, armed men, but my deer’s flight instinct was stampeding through me again, and so I kneed the nearest guy in the nuts, scrambled down several steps into the subway again, and then channelled my inner Katniss and jumped for the railings that ran around the large descent into the ground to prevent pedestrians from falling into it, swinging myself up and over the rails beyond their circle and out into freedom.  Then I was running again, back into the first alley I saw.  I didn’t even have to check to know they were on my tail – car doors slammed as more of them piled out into the street, and I could hear them yelling after me over the footsteps of the frontrunners.

Why has today gone so wrong? I lamented as I pushed over a can of rubbish into the path of my pursuers, some part of my brain registering that there weren’t bullets zinging around my head so they didn’t want me dead… yet, at least.  Then there was a bang and a crack and shrapnel exploded out of the wall beside me, spraying my cheek with chips of stone.  I yelped.

Okay, they are shooting at me, dammit.

There were three things on my mind right then as I took a left turn into an even dingier alley than the one I’d been in before and started to lose myself in the warren of little backstreets: one, make sure there is always a runner between you and the gunman; two, be a fast, small, moving target that doesn’t move in a predictable or straight line; and three, get the hell back to the dorm.

I nearly tripped up at the last one and had to steady myself with a hand briefly pushing me off the ground.  I knew I was miles from the dorm, and I was definitely not going to be able to run all the way back there.  The problem was that I also didn’t know the address of the dorm, so I couldn’t look up directions on a map (not that I would have been able to follow map directions on Luhan’s phone while trying to run from those gun-wielding lunatics).  I needed help.

Luhan, thank God, kept the other members on speed dial, which meant I didn’t have to do more than jab my finger at a single number on the phone screen and then pray somebody would pick up.  My first choice was Xiumin, as there was no language barrier and he was aware I was a girl.

Pick up, pick up! I begged silently as I raced along, my breathing heavy in my ears, but the phone just beeped at me and I got an automated message that I understood to be something along the lines of the owner of the phone not being able to respond to the call.  Dammit, is his phone off?

I went for Lay next, almost tempted to try a temporary respite behind a large wheelie bin, but a quick glance over my shoulder revealed a burly man not twenty yards behind me, and it was enough to make me squeak and try to up my pace.

The phone rang for what seemed like forever and then went through to voicemail.

“Lay, you b*st*rd!” I choked into it.  “Why do you have to keep your phone on silent?!”  I hung up, skidding to a halt at a t-intersection and whipping my head back and forth as I tried to figure which of the winding alleys was my best bet.  There was another loud ban