Kai was starting to frighten him. They had been in China for two weeks now with still no sign of Lay, and the Kai that Chanyeol had met was basically no more. The fact that scared Chanyeol wasn’t that the other behaved more refined than he’d done at their first meeting (who wouldn’t considering the circumstances) but that all his emotions seemed to have seeped out from him. He didn’t even get angry or sad anymore, Kai just… were. He was there but he could just as easily not be, acting like an empty shell of the being he had been. He still talked to them, still reacted to their actions but void of all emotion.

Worried, he had asked Luhan about it but the older had only said that they could only hope to find Lay and D.O. Kai would get better then. However they still had no luck in that department. Sure, they knew which town Lay was supposed to be in but to find one person in the whole of Changsha was easier said than done, especially since they didn’t know which part of the city he lived in. Together they scoured the city during the day (splitting up was forbidden) and at night Luhan scanned the internet for any clues while the two others practiced their powers.

Kai had just started teleporting with Chanyeol in tow. It wasn’t perfected in any way but they still managed to get to almost exactly were they wanted and even if the landing was a bit rough at least Chanyeol got all his clothes with him now. In the beginning Chanyeol always arrived with less clothing than what he’d started with, but he guessed he should be happy that it was the clothes that got left behind and no body parts because that would’ve been harder to fix. One of the few times that Kai had actually shown some emotion: the first time he was supposed to teleport with a living thing. He’d been so afraid of accidentally killing the tiny mouse he was supposed to bring with him. Thankfully no one got hurt and Kai could drop some of his worries. The fear was shown once again the first time he was supposed to teleport with Chanyeol. (Although that’s nothing compared to the panic Chanyeol felt when he accidentally set fire to the curtains when he got startled by the scary movie they’d been watching. Now they had buckets of water randomly placed all over the apartment they’d rented in case of accidental fire usage from Chanyeol. And he also always had a fire extinguisher ready whenever he exercised his powers.)

The problem with fire is that no matter how much control Chanyeol felt he had over it, it still had a will of it’s own. It still had a will to spread and destroy and Chanyeol was afraid of that power. Even though he had gotten so much control that he hadn’t burned anything down since the unfortunate incident with the cactus a week ago he could never know how the fire would act, especially when he was scared or nervous. He knew he would be a key point in their rescue mission for D.O and he just hoped he would be able to deliver when that time came around.

That fear was what had made him tell Kai that he needed more time to practise his own powers and unfortunately couldn’t help him with his as often anymore, Kai was better than him anyway, so now most nights Kai either practised distance and accuracy or something completely different: lock picking. Luhan had told them that they were most likely to come across locks on their journey and since Kai had the most time on his hands he became in charge of that. And he’d gotten quite good at it.

So most of their nights were spent in silence, with Luhan on his computer, Chanyeol with his fire extinguisher and Kai with his locks. And that’s why it surprised Chanyeol when Kai suddenly addressed the two others. Not only because he initiated conversation but also because of the matter he brought up. Something they had all avoided to speak about the entirety of two weeks they had been in this country.

“What do you think they’re doing to him?” He asked softly not looking up from the padlock he was currently working on. Luhan closed the laptop and slid it away from him and Chanyeol closed his hand around the tiny flame he had there, swiftly extinguishing it.

“I don’t know.” Luhan answered “I don’t remember much from what they did to me but I think they were trying to recreate my memories. B.A.P works a lot around the story of the Tree of Life so I believe they had me relive the experiences I had in the book, working with hallucinations and illusions and I don’t even know. The thing is, most of the memories they created were solely Sehun’s and only some of them are real and even fewer of them are mine as well as his, so I don’t know if it was this that made me remember or if it was some sort of self defence that made everything come back. The problem with this theory is that it’s very unlikely that only I thought of it. If B.A.P considered our powers coming back for self defence too they probably have new techniques, far worse than what I went through, to draw out our memories from our subconscious.”

Kai still wasn’t looking up but he wasn’t working either. He just sat there, looking blankly in front of himself, no sort of clue of what he was thinking visible behind his eyes.

“But even though we hope that they don’t do anything too terrible to him, I want you to promise, that when the time comes, don’t touch him without his consent. Not even brush his hand. Okay?” Luhan continued and at this Kai finally looked up at the other.

“Why?”

“Because we don’t know what he’s going through right now. We don’t know what they’re doing to him. We don’t know what trauma this might bring him. We don’t know what bodily contact might do to him.”

~ * ~

He didn’t cry anymore. He hadn’t cried since he saw Luhan die for the fourth time and if he counted correctly that was about five days ago. There was no window or clock to indicate what time it was and he slept whenever he had the time for it so he couldn’t know for sure how long he’d been strapped to the table in that strange white room. At least long enough for them to hook him up to an IV as they weren’t giving him any food or water to consume. His way of counting days were quite morbid, and he hated to do it but it was his only way to have some sort of idea of time. He counted the days by counting what they did to him. More specifically counting the days he had to watch his friends die, as it wasn’t the only stuff done to him. He guessed that they only showed him that treatment once a day and it went in a cycle of three days. First Luhan, then the guy he didn’t know but that looked vaguely familiar and lastly Jongin. Those days were particularly hard and he hoped that today was different and he wouldn’t have to watch Jongin, or anyone for that matter, die. Not that he actually watched these days. In the beginning he had watched, and tried to help but lately he’d just closed his eyes immediately after waking up. It didn’t stop him from hearing it all though. Neither did it stop it hurting. Even if he knew that it wasn’t real and that he’d seen them die several times before, and probably would many times more in the future, it never stopped hurting.

They did other things to him too. The last couple of days they had simulated him falling. Falling from what he didn’t know and he always stopped with a lurch right before he hit the ground just for him to start over from the start. He didn’t know what they were trying to accomplish with it and although it was still just as scary as the first time he didn’t have any energy to scream anymore. They had also started to burn him. They did this combined with asking him questions about his memory and about the Tree of Life. He never answered. That’s why they burned him. He didn’t care. They could hurt him all they wanted, he wouldn’t give in. They had made him sure of that after making him watch Jongin die that first time. And they made him more and more determined to never ever speak to them as they continued to kill the Jongin hologram every third day. He didn’t care if it was just that, a hologram, he would never answer anyone who hurt the people closest to him.

The only slightly less negative thing that had happened was that he had actually found his powers. He didn’t know what they were or how to use them but they were ever present, as a slight buzz throughout his body, serving to keep him sane and not to lose all hope. As long as they were there he knew he had a chance.

He didn’t know why his powers suddenly had appeared, he didn’t complain, he just wished the circumstances would’ve been different.

When he opened his eyes he noticed that he was back in the room where he’d seen Luhan two days ago and a stranger yesterday die. This day too he was cuffed to the cupboard with no way to move. He looked down at his wrists, wishing for the handcuffs to magically vanish or at least for remembering the room wrong so this day wouldn’t be like the day before. He didn’t know if he could live through another day like that.

Someone coughed from the other side of the room and instinctively he looked up to see who it was. And that’s when he broke.

Jongin wasn’t supposed to be there. Jongin couldn’t be there. He needed to get over there. To get over there and get Jongin to get out. Get him out before whatever had taken Luhan and the other guy down before would kill Jongin too.

He strained against his restraints but unlike the day before they actually moved this time. The chains were slightly bending and stretching against his wrists and if he just put a little more power in his movements he probably would manage to break them. Although before he could test this theory he heard a thud and he looked up to see Jongin having fallen down to his knees, blood slowly dripping down his wrists and hands from underneath his white shirt.

The room started to shake. He wasn’t sure if it was just the room or if it was the whole building or maybe the whole world. He didn’t care. All he knew was that he needed to get to Jongin and somehow it felt like the shaking helped him. He felt secure and steady although the cabinets against the walls fell over and their continents were ejected out onto the floor. The shaking didn’t bother him and it made him feel that if he wanted to he could break his restraints. With a tug of his wrists he broke free from the cuffs, chain links flying everywhere, and he quickly stood up to run over to Jongin.

He never made it.

He woke up again some time later in his usual room and the next time he was taken from there he went to a new room with no furniture and stronger restraints. He never used his powers again. Not because he didn’t want to (he still wasn’t sure if he had produced the earthquake or if it was just a lucky coincidence) but because he didn’t have the energy to. Ever since that day they had injected him with something to keep his energy at a minimum. Even when he was awake he felt like he was sleeping and he couldn’t raise an arm even if he wanted to. It felt as if his body wasn’t his to begin with, that it was just there and he was stuck with it not having been given any instructions on how to use it. He wondered briefly what he’d been like if his powers hadn’t surfaced, if he hadn’t had anything to actually make him feel alive, if he would’ve crossed that fine line between dead and alive.

~ * ~

His dreams were getting more frequent.

They would be here any day now.

He could feel it.

And he was looking forward to it.

AN:

Sorry for playing the pronoun game on Kyungsoo's part, I wanted to test it out. I don't know if I like it or not though... So I might drop it til next time oops.
And I'm actually quite iffy on this chapter as a whole too. It's like it followed what I had planned but I couldn't write it in any way that I wanted to... So I might edit and/or rewrite this in a near future, or maybe I'll like it better tomorrow who knows x)

I have to go to the hospital tomorrow... I don't wanna... But I succeeded in calling them all by myself yay :D being an adult is hard...
But hopefully they'll dinf out why I feel this way and not only say that it's because of my low blood pressure, because I already know that it's really low but I haven't felt this way before!! So they better allow me to take a blood test (is that the word for it? meh you get the gist) to see if they can find out what's wrong with me!! Unless my blood pressure has gotten even lower, then I'll be happy with just that diagnosis. Or well not happy exactly but as long as I get an answer to almost fainting and feeling dizzy all of the time I'm all good. 

Is it weird if I spoil my own story in the author's note? Anyway, Lay will appear soon :D like reaaaaally soon ;)