Happy early birthday to TaemJinki and exoshalol! My schedule's hectic next week so I don't know if I'm going to be online and I thought I'd post this now as it's basically February.

Warning: violence

The sheer panic was something Xiumin hadn’t felt for a long time.  It tasted bitter at the back of his tongue and he was convinced he was going to throw up before he was even halfway home.  Somehow, he needed to tell Luhan what had happened, but he didn’t want to ring when he knew that the car was bugged.

It didn’t help that rush hour traffic was starting, either.  He knew that he was speeding, but he couldn’t hop through lights in case he caused a car crash, and when he got caught at a stop light, he nearly vomited with anxiety.

His phone started ringing.  Anticipating the light turning green, Xiumin fumbled to get it on Bluetooth as he didn’t like driving on the phone, but before he could pick up, there was a fizz of static and the car’s speaker system sprang into life.

“Jump the light,” said Kyungsoo’s voice.  “All the electricity’s gone off in your apartment block and the backup generator’s been taken out – I think it’s an EMP and it’s going to take me at least another ten minutes to get it back online if I’m lucky.  Semi wasn’t far from the building when the electricity got wiped and given this is exactly what happened at the prison, I don’t want to take any chances.”

Xiumin floored the accelerator.  “Did you see anyone suspicious?”

“No.”

He swerved to avoid a couple of cars and horns blared loudly around him.

“Don’t go into the underground carpark when you get back.  Park on the street by the main entrance – and be as quick as you can.  You’ll have to take the stairs.  We want you to get in, get Semi, and get out.  If Byun Baekhyun or any of Suho’s men are there, do not engage—”

“I might not have a choice!”  Xiumin ran a second red light at well over twice the legal speed limit, resulting in more blaring horns and screeching brakes as cars came to abrupt stops.

“Jongin’s on his way over too; leave all of that to him.  Your life is just as important as Semi’s right now, so you both need to get away.”

“The intern?” Xiumin exclaimed in disbelief.  “He’s so clueless he can’t even hold a gun properly.”

Kyungsoo’s response was sharp.  “He and you are currently the two closest to the building and at the very least he can provide a distraction for you to get out.  Don’t question it and focus on the task at hand.”

Xiumin wanted to complain more, but a lorry hurtling in his direction distracted him and he had to focus on swerving out of the way without crashing into any other cars.

The walk back from Sehun and Chanyeol’s new condo wasn’t a particularly long one, but it was absolutely freezing.  Now well into January, the weather had hit the cool box and sunk even further, and even with gloves on, Semi was so cold that she couldn’t feel her fingers.

It had been a very relaxing weekend with her brother, who was still reeling from Xiumin’s intervention in her abduction.  He hadn’t changed his opinion much on Xiumin, but he had admitted to a grudging respect for the man’s audacity in kidnapping Byun Baekhyun in return.  She’d also spent two hours talking to Chanyeol and sorting her tangled thoughts and emotions out.  Jongin had also come over for lunch and spent some of the afternoon with them before heading off to meet Song Qian about fifteen minutes before Semi had left.  Sehun had spent some time spluttering over the fact that Jongin actually had a girlfriend and Chanyeol and Semi had spent more time laughing at how mortified Jongin was.

“She’s really nice,” she’d assured her brother and Chanyeol, even though she’d only met Song Qian once.  She still had difficulty imagining Jongin being even remotely suave on a date.

Due to her frozen fingers, she had to fumble for quite some time for the key to get in through the front door of the apartment building.  It was around six in the evening and already pretty dark, but that didn’t bother her until she was a couple of steps into the foyer and the motion-sensitive lights didn’t automatically flicker on.  The porter wasn’t by the desk.

Assuming the man had gone to deal with the power cut, Semi put her gloves and keys into her pocket and headed for the stairs by the lift, chafing her hands together in an effort to get the blood circulating again.

The further up the stairs she got, the darker her surroundings grew.  The emergency lighting appeared to have failed, and when she went to dig out her phone for light, she abruptly remembered that she didn’t have it – she’d left it on the table in the café and hadn’t yet had an opportunity to retrieve it.  She was pretty sure there were candles in the apartment, though – she knew that Minseok had lit them on one or two occasions.  With any luck, he’d already be back and have them out.

It was more by feel than memory that she managed to open the three locks on the apartment door, and then she was in familiar territory.

“Minseok?” she called out, shedding her coat and leaving it on the shoe rack by the door because she couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of trying to get it on a hanger in a cupboard in the darkness.

She didn’t get a response and resigned herself to the fact that he probably wasn’t yet back.  After all, Lay probably wanted him to help with the aftermath of the kerfuffle of getting her back from Suho.  Going into the kitchen, she fumbled blindly through several cupboards until her hand closed round some stubs of wax, and then she headed over to the living room, where she thought she remembered seeing matches on one occasion.  In any case, the place in the apartment with the most light was going to be the balcony, and she didn’t fancy trying to light a candle when she couldn’t actually see the matchbox.

The living room door swung open with a faint swoosh against the carpet, and Semi blinked at the sudden brightness of about thirty candles invading her retinas.  As her eyes adjusted, she saw that they had been arranged in a ring on the carpet in front of the sofa.  Not just that, but there were candles everywhere, on the piano, under the piano stool, on the shelf of the coffee table, balancing on the TV, elsewhere on the floor, that were unlit.

A toilet flushed faintly and Semi frowned, wondering exactly what Minseok was up to.  Was he trying to be atmospheric, or was he making the most of the fact that they probably had about a good hundred more candles than she’d thought, or was it some kind of religious ritual?  He had been pretty consistent about going to church every Sunday.  That said, Semi wasn’t sure if there were branches of Christianity that actively encouraged turning your living room into a candle rack of some kind.

There was a click behind her and a soft breath on the back of her neck had Semi whirling around and stumbled further into the living room.

“Minseok, you scared m—”

The words died in as pale fingers flicked at the lighter again and a flame sprang briefly into existence, illuminating Byun Baekhyun’s hood-shrouded face in a manner that made him look demonically deranged.  Dried blood spattered faintly across the light grey material of the hoodie and Semi thought she saw flecks of it on his forehead and cheeks, too.

“Fire,” he breathed reverently, playing with the lighter as he stared at her without blinking.  “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Backing up, Semi tripped on a candle and nearly went flying.  It knocked over another nearby candle and started a domino effect rippling around the room and closing in on the ones that were alight.

So silent and so graceful that it was hard to believe he’d even moved, Byun Baekhyun stopped the last candle before it was about to topple one of the lit ones, his gaze transfixed by the way the light danced off a razor-sharp knife i