<< Rewind: 1 <<

Luhan had never been terribly superstitious, but when his phone rang for the fourth time that evening, he knew something was about to go wrong.  Even if the first words out of Sehun’s mouth when he accepted the call were: “Hyung, Leigh’s found the fans.”

Leigh wasn’t supposed to have found the fans.  Leigh was supposed to be on her way to the train station so that she could go home.

All in all, he wasn’t too surprised that Sehun’s next words were: “And Leigh’s vanished.”

What raised the alarmbells in his head was what came after that.  “We think Baekhyun and Lay are with her too, and we can’t get hold of any of them.”

It was drastic enough to send Luhan careening across the cabin to grab a microphone so that he could beg the pilot to fly the horrid machine they were in faster.  He thought he was going to have a mental breakdown when the man had rather tetchily responded that they were already maxing out.

Something bad was going to happen, he could just tell.  Leigh had ridiculous luck and had proved so on many occasions, but the combination of Baekhyun, Lay and Leigh going off on a rescue mission together just smacked of absolute disaster.  He already had enough to worry about with his mother and Martyrs’ Park.

Luhan had always found helicopter rides torturous, but this one was actually excruciating.

But when he received the fifth phone call, life as he knew it crumbled around him.

Everything he’d been trying so hard to avoid had happened.

“I’m dreaming,” he murmured to himself, lowering the phone from his ear.  “This has to be some kind of nightmare.”

But five minutes later, Xiumin still hadn’t hung up on him and his words hadn’t changed in the slightest.

Against all odds – and probably against all expectations, too – it was Sehun rather than Kris who took charge once the EXO-M leader had finally managed to persuade (by nearly destroying it) the maknae to open his bedroom door.  One look at Sehun’s blotchy face had been enough to tell Kris the answer to what he wanted to know.

“.  Leigh’s not here either.”

Those five words had been enough to stop Sehun from moping.

“Get the others,” he commanded, brushing past Kris and out into the living room.  “Leigh!”

There was no answer, but from the way Kris had come storming in, Sehun hadn’t been expecting one.  Unsure whether he was worried or angry, Sehun had tried calling Leigh, but after ringing for ages and ages, the call had just gone through to voicemail.

By the time the others had gathered, Sehun was at the computers.  He already knew where Leigh had to have gone, and it wasn’t Martyrs’ Park.  Of course it wasn’t Martyrs’ Park.  She was too impulsive for that.

“Baekhyun’s missing too,” Chanyeol reported.  “And I can’t find Lay, either.”

“Ring them,” Sehun said absently.  “Leigh’s not picking up.”  He was busy keying in Leigh’s number to the phone tracking software.

It took Kris getting through to Baekhyun via text and Baekhyun’s evasive replies for the others to figure out what Sehun had already guessed: both missing boys were with Leigh, and for some godforsaken reason they hadn’t tried to dissuade her.  Or, more likely, they hadn’t been able to.

“So what do we do?” Kris demanded in frustration.  “She’s supposed to be going home.  Luhan’s going to absolutely freak out when he hears about this.  She’s heading off into a town full of riots with a rogue gunman knocking about.”

Sehun had just pointed to the screen with the stalker drone and the coordinates.  “Get hold of a taxi.  She’s probably gone to rescue the girls herself.  The police kind of have their hands tied at the moment.”

And cue long moments of fretting, boy snapping at each other, and all of them cursing under their breath as they tried to get hold of at least one of the three runaways while they waited for the taxi.

Things just seemed to get worse when they were finally nearing their destination and Suho rang.

“We need to get the manager over to sign a few things,” he told Kris over the phone.  “D.O. has pneumonia and it’s bad enough for him to need admitting, though they say it should clear up in a few days.”

“Great,” Kris responded tersely.  “The manager and D.O. will have to wait.  Leigh’s found the girls and she and Baekhyun and Lay have gone to rescue them.”

There was a very long pause.

“That’s… good, right?”  Suho sounded nervous and entirely unconvinced.  Kris had just grunted.  He hadn’t had time for anything else, anyway, because Xiumin had suddenly leant across and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Isn’t that Baekhyun?”

“What?”

“Baekhyun just fell from the sky,” said Chen.  “We should stop and pick him up.  He might be in trouble.”

Baekhyun turned out not to be in trouble, but it was clear he felt like he was as soon as he clapped eyes on them.

“Oh, sh*t,” he whispered, eyes darting around at all of them as he backed up into the wall not too far away from the fire escape.  “You’re not supposed to be here.”

Sehun pushed his way to the front of the group.  “Where are the other two?”

For once, nobody made any joking shipper comments.  Hesitant and obviously a little scared, Baekhyun raised a hand and pointed upwards.

Everybody tilted their heads back to look.  It was Chen who asked the question nobody seemed willing to voice.

“How far up?” he demanded.

“Top floor,” said Baekhyun in a quiet voice.  He still looked like he expected them to jump on him and start beating him up.

“Are they okay?”

There was a long pause.  Baekhyun eventually nodded.

“Are you sure?” Xiumin prodded him.  Baekhyun nodded again.  Everybody breathed audible sighs of relief.

It was Tao who asked the second most important question.  “And the fans.  Are they in there?”

Baekhyun nodded again.  “Yeah.  I left one on the fire escape.”

Everybody turned to stare at the metal construction as if seeing it for the first time.

“Why did you— oh.”  The question Chen had been about to ask died on his lips as they all took in the fire escape, which, on all honesty, wasn’t much of an escape from fire, because it ended at least two metres above ground.

“I wasn’t going to jump down with her in my arms,” Baekhyun explained, slightly more anxious than necessary.  “I had no idea if I was going to make the landing safely and I didn’t want to accidentally kill her or something.  And that thing is kind of rusty at the bottom and I don’t trust it.”

“Tell her to jump down and I’ll catch her,” Chanyeol suggested immediately, going to stand under the cut-off point of the fire escape.

“I can’t.  She’s unconscious.”

Everybody fell still and just gazed at Baekhyun.

“They all are,” he added in a mumble, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt.  “They’ve been kept dosed up on chloroform.”

“Sh*t,” said Kris.  “This makes life difficult.”

Xiumin turned to him.  “They’re all going to need to go straight to hospital to get checked up.  Do you reckon it’s possible to get in a fleet of ambulances while the riots are going on—?”

“Leigh asked the taxi driver who brought us here to get a fleet of taxis in,” Baekhyun said, appearing to pull himself together and pulling out a folded piece of paper.  “I was supposed to be giving them this note to explain the situation.  They’re probably around the other side of the building.”

“I’ll go check.”  Tao snatched the pape