Music: I’d Love to Change the World - Jetta (Matstubs Remix)

Day 8

Yixing supposes Tao didn’t have to wander around too long on his own.

Yixing hadn’t seen Suho’s face projected on the sixth night, minutes after he’d killed him, the sixth day slowly bleeding into the seventh as Sehun had rested a hand on his back while Yixing threw up into the grass.

But Tao’s face had flashed across the night sky on the seventh night, the barest prickle of shock like ice water running through Yixing’s body because at this point, nothing seemed to really surprise him anymore.

“How?” Yixing had asked Sehun last night after the screen had cleared back to its normal transparency, revealing the night sky again, the two of them lying side by side back inside the cave Yixing had spent the second night in the arena in.

Yixing had had the sudden realization that the sky above them wasn’t real, that it could just be another large screen, that the stars he searched for so desperately every night and never found would merely just be pixels and electricity if he ever did manage to see them, just another creation from the people who had thrown them in here.

The thought had made him unbearably sad.

“I don’t know,” Sehun had answered, breaking Yixing from his thoughts and grabbing his hand. 

Sehun had repeated his words, and his tone had had Yixing wondering if he were talking about more than just Tao.

“I don’t know.”

It’s dawn, the sky lighting up with pinks and oranges, soft and slow and deceiving.

Yixing lies staring at the ceiling of the cave, watching where the sky outside meets the jagged edge of the rock at the top of the rounded entrance, a clashing contrast of light and dark.

Sehun is still sleeping beside him, one arm thrown over Yixing’s waist, heavy but comforting, the other positioned under Yixing’s head like a pillow.

Yixing tries to go back to sleep, tries because it’s too early for him to be up, and for once his stomach isn’t cramping from hunger because Sehun had grabbed the rabbit Suho had been cooking last night, but he can’t help but lie there, fully awake, and realize something terrible.

Suho had killed D.O..

And Kris had killed Kai because he must have seen Suho strangling D.O. and mistaken him for Kai.

The realization makes Yixing feel sick.

It’s funny that Kris will probably never find out, but that Yixing will continue to be haunted by the truth.

Yixing watches the sun rise the rest of the way.

He’s running and running and running.

But it’s almost as if his shoes are stuck in mud, dragging him down, each step heavier than the next.

Yixing can feel his heart pounding, can hear his own ragged breathing, can taste the salt of his sweat against his lips.

And yet, he almost feels like he’s watching himself from outside his body, hovering outside of the nightmare, just a little bit.

It’s bright, so bright, like the sun has exploded behind his eyelids, but Yixing keeps running, nearly blind, because he has to.

He has to.

He’s been here before, and even though he can’t remember it, he knows something bad’s about to happen.

Everything’s white, white, white, no glimpse of the sky, no ground beneath his feet, just white and blank and empty.

Yixing keeps running.

And then the brightness dims.

He’s in a room, four white walls, no windows.

The floor, however, is glass.

Yixing freezes in place, eyes locked onto the scene far below him.

It’s the arena, green grass in the clearing, cliffs to the north and the curved stretch of forest to the south, trees packed so close together in some places that they look like smudges of shadows, even the light from the sun unable to break through.

It’s quiet inside the room he’s in and Yixing can’t see anyone down below, no matter how hard he looks.

Complete and utter confusion fills Yixing from the inside-out as he watches the wind rustle the trees down below.

Where is everyone else?

Where is he?

What’s holding this structure up in the sky?

And where’s Sehun?

For once, the thought doesn’t fill Yixing with terror, which only serves to bewilder him more, because what if something’s happened to him?

What is Sehun’s in a similar room to this one, all of them just waiting for the next deadly obstacle the Makers are going to throw in their paths?

Another question pops up into Yixing’s mind, crowding in with the rest.

How did he get in this box, if you could call it that?

He vaguely remembers watching a sunrise, but he hadn’t gone back to sleep.

It was as if he had just blinked and then this.

But that’s impossible.

Yixing is so caught up in trying to find a logical explanation that he doesn’t realize the suffocating silence has been broken until it’s too late.

A hairline fracture spiderwebs across the floor as Yixing watches, radiating out from the center, right where he’s standing.

And before Yixing can do more than inhale sharply in surprise, the entire floor shatters outward in a glittering display of broken pieces.

And Yixing falls. 

Yixing sits straight up, gasping for air.

He looks around, feels grass under his hands, takes in the clearing spreading out in all directions around him.

Yixing scrambles to his feet, thoroughly freaked out.

He still doesn't see anyone, not Kris or Chanyeol or Jongdae or Sehun or Baekhyun.

Baekhyun.

The thought of him sends a lance of something through Yixing’s heart, something close to fear but there’s something else there, something that Yixing can’t quite grasp even though he’s reaching, reaching, reaching.

Yixing glances up.

There are no boxes in the sky, just roiling gray clouds, and Yixing realizes that the sun has disappeared, that the wind is picking up, that it’s beginning to look like the storm that had hit the arena on the first day.

There’s something off, something about all of this that feels wrong.

And then Yixing sees it.

A door, standing by itself five yards away, metallic and simple.

The wind begins to howl, lightning coming in short, sharp bursts within the clouds, the only light in the darkness that has descended.

Yixing closes his eyes.

This has to be a new test, a new obstacle in the Game.

The Makers must have sent people in to drug everyone, to knock them out just long enough to set all of this up, to scatter all of the players around the arena in such a way that they wouldn’t run into each other all at once when they woke up.

It’s the only explanation that makes any sense.

Yixing opens his eyes at the first drop of rain as it hits his hand, and immediately makes a startled noise of surprise, stumbling backwards.

The door is now directly in front of him, its metal surface glinting with each lightning flash, raindrops running down its length.

As if against his will, Yixing reaches out and turns the knob.

And steps inside.

It’s not real, it can’t be real, that’s not him, not him lying on that operating table, eyes wide open and terrified, wrists and ankles strapped down, dressed in the same clothes his actual self has on.

But it is.

There’s no denying that that’s him, that that’s his voice asking the other people in the room with the white walls and bright lights what’s going on.

The real Yixing remains frozen in the doorway, brain working hard to process what he’s seeing, to understand that he’s watching a group of doctors and nurses wearing surgical masks and goggles and white scrubs move around the other him on the metal table like they’re in a synchronized dance, conversing in whispers and looking at charts on their tech pads, an assortment of sharp instruments lying nearby, glinting in the blinding light.

“What’s happening?” his other self asks desperately, tugging at the straps around his wrists to no avail, eyes trying to meet anyone’s gaze.

The doctors and nurses ignore him, debating something in furious undertones, and the real Yixing just catches the words, “first time we’ve done anything like this” and “test run, but if it works just imagine what we can do in the future” and “these three are the best candidates… could’ve used Jongdae, but a few things were off.”

“Hey!” his other self suddenly shouts, yanking on his bonds hard enough to slide the table across the floor a half an inch with an ear-splitting screech. “Someone tell me what the is going on!”

One of the doctors finally seems to pay attention, his eyes above the surgical mask shrewd and somewhat annoyed, as if he’s dealing with a disobedient child and not someone who’s going to be thrown in an arena with eleven other players trying to kill him.

The doctor turns to another, whispering something quickly, and the second doctor shrugs.

“It’s not like he’s going to remember anything after this anyways,” Doctor Two says, loud enough for both the real Yixing, who’s still watching everything in fascinated horror because no one seems to be able to see him, and the fake Yixing to hear.

“What are you talking about?” the other Yixing asks, confusion clouding the fear in his eyes. “What am I not going to remember?”

“Shut up if you want me to keep speaking before they put you under,” Doctor One says harshly, and Yixing watches his duplicate self glare at the doctor but keep his mouth shut.

Yixing listens closely, taking a few steps forward to hear better, and then jumps when a nurse walks directly through him.

Is he dead then?

Did he actually fall asleep after the sunrise after all?

That would explain why he doesn’t remember dying.

But so many things still don’t add up.

The voice of the first doctor jolts Yixing out of his thoughts, and he hovers right behind the man, eyes locked on his other self over the doctor’s shoulder.

“You’re part of the lucky group for a new factor the Makers decided to use in the Game,” the doctor begins to explain, a sickening tone of excitement thrumming in his voice, muffled slightly by the surgical mask. “They’ve named it the Illusions factor. I don’t know if it’s going to work, but if it does, it’s going to bring in a whole slew of new business to the Game.”

Yixing is starting to feel sick, and by the look in his other self’s eyes, the duplicate Yixing feels the same.

He isn't dead.

This is a memory.

“What does it do?” his other self asks, in a voice that is much more calm than he obviously feels.

The doctor laughs delightedly, as if they’re discussing a new feature for the tech pads.

“You see, it’s got to do with your memories. Not all of them, just the ones from when you were brought here for training. And it’s really not just your memories I suppose. There’s been a lot of work going on behind the scenes. We’ve not just been monitoring your physical abilities, but also the emotional and psychological patterns that have been going on in your group.”

“What does it do?” his other self asks when the doctor pauses for too long, spitting the last word out through gritted teeth.

The doctor leans over, and the real Yixing watches in barely contained fury as he pats his other self on the head, like you would to a small child. 

“You’ll find out eventually,” he says before lowering his voice almost to a whisper, Yixing straining to hear.

The next words out of his mouth send ice through Yixing’s veins.

“And I guess I can say this since it’s all going to be gone in a few seconds, but don’t trust Oh Sehun.”

Yixing just has enough time to see the flash of a needle before the doctor inserts it into the side of the past Yixing’s neck, his other self going limp almost immediately, before there’s a noise like rushing wind and he’s thrown backwards, leaving the doctors and his unconscious self behind.

It’s raining harder now, with a force that makes the rain sting when it hits his skin, but Yixing’s mind is too occupied to pay any attention to it.

He’s back in the clearing, the ground a mess of mud under his feet, clothes and hair plastered to his skin.

“Test run… if it works just imagine what we can do in the future.”

“They’ve named it the Illusions factor.”

“You see, it’s got to do with your memories.”

“There’s been a lot of work going on behind the scenes.”

“Don’t trust Oh Sehun.”

It’s all a jumble, an infuriating mess of words that don’t make the least bit of sense to Yixing, but the last phrase won’t stop repeating itself over and over again in his mind.

And yet, there’s something there if Yixing concentrates hard enough, something just past a wall in his mind, a wall that’s slowly beginning to crumble and disintegrate.

Something that terrifies him.

Yixing turns in circles, eyes straining to see through the deluge of rain, chest constricting with panic, because the sense that something is wrong is so much stronger now.

And what’s most frightening to Yixing at the moment is the sudden realization that he’s not worried about Sehun.

Not like he would have been at the beginning.

There’s no fear for the other’s life, no desperate need to find him.

There’s just emptiness when he thinks about Sehun, an emptiness that is slowly beginning to fill with fear for himself the longer he stands there.

And another name is pushing its way to the front of his mind, despite everything that Yixing has been through.

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