[CONTENTID1] CHAPTER SIXTY - OUT OF TIME [/CONTENTID1]

[CONTENTID2]

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“What the hell was that, Hyuk?” the person asks, struggling to keep the other one standing. “Are you ok— ! GET OFF ME!” The Sanghyuk person tears off his helmet and sinks his teeth into the his friend’s neck.

“!” I hear Karim curse for the second time. Then, he comes out from behind his cover and starts running towards the two people.

“Karim!” Sehun and I both exclaim. 

“What the does that boy thing he’s doing,” Sehun growls, before also breaking into a run. It only means one thing for Oh Sehun to be going after someone other than myself: he cares about Karim. “Stay there, Hyerim!”

“Like ,” I scoff, prepared to follow him. I hear a shriek and stop, letting out a tired sigh. “Oh, for ’s sake.” I take out my combat knife and wait. I hear footsteps nearing me and spin around, arm raised, just in time to slam it down, into an Infected’s head. The creature gasps before dropping to the ground.

“ing hell!” someone exclaims. I look over my shoulder and see six more people on three snowmobiles. They all take off their helmets, though they keep on their snowboarding face masks. 

“Amber eonnie! No, Amber eonnie!” one of the six, it sounds like a girl, screams. She puts her helmet back on and restarts her snowmobile. The person with her gets off, letting her go barrelling down the hill to get to where the Sanghyuk person and his friend are. “Oppa, get off her!”

“Krystal, get the back here!” one of the remaining five at the top of the hill hollers. Their voice sounds so familiar, so damn familiar and, yet, I can’t quite pin it. That name, Krystal…I feel like I should know it. 

“What the hell is going on?” I ask myself. I hear another scream and my heart stops.

Karim.

“KARIM! KARIM, WATCH OUT!” Sehun roars. I whip around so fast, I almost lose my balance. My eyes zero in on both of them and I curse as an Infected, neither Sanghyuk nor his friend, comes sprinting out of a half-demolished house near us.

Karim is busy killing both Sanghyuk and his friend, the Krystal girl closing in on her snowmobile. Sehun is fighting off two Infected and me? I’m rooted in place. The Infected reaches Karim.

Karim lets out a roaring “!” as it jumps on his back. He throws it off him and the thing bounces off the snowmobile that has just come to a stop.

“KRYSTAL!” 

“NO! EONNIE, THEY’RE DEAD!” the girl, Krystal, cries out. 

“KARIM!” Sehun bellows. He kicks off an Infected and rushes towards the fifteen-year-old. Just as another Infected makes a move to attack Karim, Sehun shoves the boy out of the way with one arm.

The Infected latches onto his shoulder, its needle-like teeth piercing through the fabric of his coat. Sehun winces but makes no noise, except for a grunt as he uses his other arm to bury his knife into the creature’s head.

However, it’s all too late.

NOW:

“Sehun,” Karim utters from the ground, his green eyes fixated on the older male’s shoulder. Sehun tears off his coat, revealing a gaping wound right between his neck and the head of his humerus. My heart explodes in my chest and, finally, my legs find the will to move.

I bolt in his direction.

“No, no, no, no!” I repeat the same word as I reach him, grabbing his arm and inspecting his trapezius. Tears are already streaming down my cheeks, dripping onto his gushing wound. “You ing idiot. You ing idiot!” I smack his chest amidst my sobbing. “Why weren’t you more careful?”

“It’s not that bad,” he jokes as he attempts to look at it. “Doesn’t even hurt.” I let out another sob and hit his arm.

“Don’t lie to me,” I whimper. He smiles warmly and cups my face, his thumbs my cheeks. “Don’t you dare say goodbye to me, Oh Sehun. You can’t die on me, not after everything we’ve been through.”

“Hey, I’ve made it this far, right?” he asks, raising his brows. I nod, sniffling. “Then I’ll make it further. I won’t die.”

“S-Sehun…” Karim stutters, inching over. “I’m— I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t-”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Sehun cuts him off. “You couldn’t have taken them all on, but you tried. If you were in fault, I’d kick your .” The teenager nods, looking down at his feet. Sehun uses one hand to ruffle Karim’s hair and then places it back on my face. “Hey, look at me.”

“No,” I mumble, keeping my gaze averted. He gently knocks our heads together, connecting our foreheads. I slide my eyes to meet his and he smiles. “What are you smiling about?”

“You.”

“Well, stop it,” I grumble, wiping my tears with the back of my hands. 

“You…you got bit.”

We stop and turn our heads in the direction of the voice. Karim, too, is looking at the girl. She takes off her helmet and then her snowboarding mask. Her long hair is blown across her face, snowflakes dotting the dark brown colour.

Holy .

Why does she look like—

“Your neck,” the girl says, pointing at Sehun with a shaky finger. “You got bit…I’m so sorry.”

“Why?” Sehun asks, his voice devoid of any emotion. I glance at him and see his expression is just as bleak or, rather, cold. He looks lethal, despite the gash in his trapezius. “Why do you care?”

“Hyuk oppa, Amber eonnie,” the girl points at the newly turned Infected and his friend, both of whom Karim killed. “My friends. They attracted all those things. One of them bit you. I’m sorry.”

“Too late now, isn’t it?” Sehun replies coolly. He presses a kiss to my forehead before releasing me, stepping back. “Karim, give me your scarf. I’ll try to wrap my wound to stop the bleeding.” Karim does as he’s told. Meanwhile, I can’t stop staring the girl as she covers , silently weeping over the death of her friends. Though, she makes sure not to go near them.

Smart.

“Krystal!” one of her other friends shouts. I look up the hill to find that all five of them are descending it on the snowmobiles, though one of them is barely hanging on. I flick my eyes back to Sehun, scanning his wound.

I’m trying real ing hard not to lose my mind right now.

“Hyerim.” Hakyeon returns with a somewhat content look on his face. Then, he sees Sehun and mutters a ‘’ under his breath. “Not you. . Are they all dead at least? I took the other ones out, on the way to the village. I cleared out a bar, too, so we can spend the night there.”

“Good job,” I say, patting his back. “The ones here are dead, including the one that bit Sehun. Fresh one, over there, too.” I point at the late Sanghyuk. Hakyeon glances at the body, then at Krystal, before looking back at me.

“Do we know them?” he asks.

“No,” Sehun answers at the same time as I respond with ‘maybe’. “What?”

“She looks…familiar,” I mutter, frowning. I look back at the girl. Her other friends have no joined her and she’s being hugged by one of them, someone of shorter height. They all have their helmets removed, but their masks are still on. 

“Wait,” Hakyeon freezes, his eyes lightening up. “The cold is messing with my hardware but…I think there’s another of my kind here.”

“Taeyeon and Ta—”

“No, I have them registered and they haven’t moved from where we left them,” the AI cuts Karim off. He turns around, facing the girl and her friends. Instantly, one of them look up. The four of us watch in anticipation as the person takes off their mask.

My eyes widen.

Sehun curses.

“Taekwoon!?”

The red-haired AI walks over and bows at ninety degrees.

“Commander,” he says before standing back up. I’m still too stunned to respond. Sehun, beside me, is also frozen. We glance at each other, then at the people behind Taekwoon, and finally at the AI itself. “You’re alive. I calculated that you’d die within a year of my departure. I was wrong.”

“Did…did I used to sound that monotonous?” Hakyeon sort-of-whispers to me. I nod dumbly, still gaping at the red-haired AI. “Project JT. Nice to finally meet you, after all these years.”

“Project CH,” is Taekwoon’s curt response.