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He wakes to darkness, dampness, and pain ricocheting through his head.
That’s all there is for the first five seconds of consciousness – the suffocating blackness that surrounds him, coupled with his awful headache and wet seeping into his clothing.
Soon, his eyes adjust to the environment, and he realises it’s night. There’s no moon, but he can just make out that he’s curled up next to a bed, that there is water-sopped carpet underneath him, and that his name is Taeyong.
Taeyong. It rolls off his tongue – Korean, he must be Korean.
(is he korean?)
His throat hurts, and he can’t find it in himself to cough against the uncomfortable itch settling in him. Instead, Taeyong pushes himself into a sitting position and catches his breath.
There is something horribly wrong. Taeyong can feel it in him – tingling from his toes, clutching at his heart, tugging at his tongue, stealing his breath. He’s in danger, and he needs to leave now.
It takes longer than he would’ve liked to make it downstairs, because everything hurts and he didn’t want to collapse down the stairs, but he makes it and the first thing he sees is that the lights are on.
That’s nice.
The light doesn't take away from the blood spattering the living room; the couch is soaked in it, the floor is slick with liquid, and there is unidentified ... something in the corner.
(who put that there?)
Gagging, Taeyong turns and stumbling feet drag him into the kitchen. He scrambles to lean on the counter, heaving and gasping, before he sobs and falls backwards. His hands are slick with red blood, obviously fresh, and an outstretched hand is holding a note that’s fallen into the mess.
The body is clearly dead, covered in blood so much that Taeyong can’t begin to see any features, but they look like they would’ve been young. Perhaps in their twenties.
They’re staring directly at Taeyong, and not staring at the same time, and it’s so unsettling that another sob rips from Taeyong and sick splashes onto the ground. He whimpers whilst wiping his mouth, the oily feeling spreading across his stomach and clutching him in an endless cycle of nausea and uneasiness.
He’s not safe yet, there’s something coming, but that note is important and he needs it. Picking himself through the blood and vomit on the floor, Taeyong gingerly plucks it from the mess and smooths it out. The paper is grey and looks important, but blood is splattered and soaked into it. Certain symbols and sections are unintelligible due to the red, but Taeyong can easily gather the messages.
‘We know you are harbouring 0701 (Taeyong Lee), and we have sent you a warning. Return him to us in three days. He must complete his testing.
We will be back if you cannot confirm compliance. Be here in three days.
SM-E.N.T’
SM-E.N.T … Johnny and Yuta.
A gasp tears through the male at those names, head throbbing in sudden pain, and tears leak from his eyes. Pictures flash through his mind, faces and moments, and he is assaulted with vibrant memories of two boys whose love he could never forget. He sobs and clutches the paper tighter, as if they are his missing pieces and not a written warning with threats and a location –
A location. For once since he woke up, hope blooms in Taeyong like fire flickering to life, sparking at once before roaring against anyone who ever tried to oppose it.
He needs to find Johnny and Yuta, he knows they will be wherever this letter came from. He just knows it.
It is the only thing he’s been sure of, ever since waking up.
(phase one is complete.)
He’s been resting in the house for all of five minutes, catching his breath and scouting the place, when dread settles in him again. Taeyong knows he’s not safe, not when fear prickles at his skin and tears at his lungs. It only descends on him stronger as the seconds tick by, until there is a loud crash upstairs and an awful scream.
Pain erupts in Taeyong at the sound, as if the agony transfers from the owner of the voice to him purely through listening. His knees buckle, and he sobs again, grabbing at the counter as he goes down. Another crash can be heard, Taeyong’s heart jumps into his throat, and he’s scrambling to crawl out.
He’s sliding in the blood, the ceiling shaking with the force of whatever is up there, and as soon as something hits the stairs he is up and out of the archway, leading into the living room. There’s another scream, choking with tears, and Taeyong’s own eyes blur as he stumbles to the front door and slams it open.
The cold, night air is bracing against tear-slick cheeks and he runs out on unsteady legs and shaky breaths. The screams mute just a little, a factor that goes unnoticed by Taeyong, and he tears down the street only to pull around the corner and find himself heading further out of the …
(where even is he?)
He didn’t even know what really surrounded him. It was the very edge of suburban lifestyle in the countryside, the street he’d been in surrounded by open desert. He could just see skyscrapers in the distance, where the broken roads lead into the concrete jungle.
He doesn’t want to go there, he doesn’t want to go where there are more buildings, more things that could kill him, but Johnny and Yuta are there, and he needs to find them.
He needs them.
The ground is hard, and the air is cold as Taeyong walks down the street, passing the corner where it turns back down that alcove. He can hear muted screams and howling, as if the sounds were trapped in that one house, but he continues through pain and adrenaline alone. The streets are empty and cracked; large, jagged holes rip through the tarmac like someone clawed their way along the roads. It’s eerily quiet, as if they are in the eye of the storm, and Taeyong knows that peace is tentative in this moment.
He can see a flickering light up ahead after wandering for a bit too long, legs aching and lungs burning, and the dying lamp inside a house garners his attention. It’s getting darker, and he should rest now, because the screams could come back and his head could hurt and –
(get him inside now.)
Taeyong found himself moving to the house, rubbing his eyes from exhaustion, and he pushes the door open to find a similar layout to the first house. There’s no blood or body parts, however, and it’s completely calm and still. It’s almost … too still, but Taeyong is tired and he knows he needs to sit down for five minutes after walking for … however long it had been. Flopping onto the couch, Taeyong tucks his legs under himself and closes his eyes for a second.
He regrets it immediately.
Howls and screams kick up again, banging at the ceiling – is it there? Did they really get there so fast? – and shaking the walls. Taeyong bit back a scream as he vaults over the furniture to run outside again, tripping over himself to make it up the road and away from another danger.
God, tears were brimming in Taeyong’s eyes, knees giving way as he sunk to the road with a soft sob. He was so lonely and scared, he just wants Yuta and Johnny to hold him, and kiss him, and remind him that life is pure and good and nothing like what he’s experiencing right now. He wants to remember everything, back when he’s sure it would’ve been better, because the world can’t be this broken if he can remember such happiness.
Time passes as he grieves on the tarmac – three, four minutes, Taeyong isn’t sure what time is anymore – before he’s stumbling to his feet to move. He needs to keep going, he needs to stay strong because if Johnny and Yuta can hold out for him, he can do the same for them.
His throat burns, and Taeyong can’t find it in him to whisper those promises into the wind that whips around him, but it burns through him like a wildfire that consumes his every thought.
It’s all for his boys.
(he needs to move faster.)
It’s a wasteland.
If Taeyong could remember anything else, he knows that there would be an example of this setting on television.
In those post-apocalyptic shows.
Houses on the outside were cracking; bricks were broken, paint was peeling, windows were smashed. The grass in the yard was torn up and the fences were laying in pieces.
However, Taeyong notes as he looks around the living room of a house, perfectly immaculate and spick – it would always be perfect as soon as he walked in. The same layout of living room leading into kitchen, which leads to the stairs, which leads to the loud screams and intense banging of the infrastructure.
Something was off, and Taeyong could feel his mind melting with sheer exhaustion from trying to figure it out.
The screams were happening every time he relaxed in a house, so Taeyong soon learns to avoid houses and stay on the road. He avoids the cracked holes and stumbles along in the dark, waiting for some other horror to pop out from behind a corner. His heart was keeping a steady pace of frantic beating, and his legs would melt like jelly at inopportune moments, but Taeyong knows he must keep moving. He can’t stay in one place for too long, or they’ll get him, and he can never get to his boys –
(what’s happening to him?)
A fluttering at the foot of a fence catches Taeyong’s eyes, and he’s moving over to grab it before it can fly away. Across the front is printed the date – first of July 2022 – and large, blocky words denoting the title.
‘VIRUS SPREADS FURTHER. SAFE CITIES AT RISK. IMMUNE MOVED TO ‘THE ROCK’.’
Virus … is that what happened to the world? Taeyong reads further down the paper, finding words like immune and safe cities and apocalypse. Chills travel down his spine at each new piece of information he digests, fingers trembling and threatening to rip the paper in his hands.
There was a virus, he can gather, that did something to people. There were also safe cities, now threatened, and there was ‘The Rock’. Taeyong’s breathing quickens as he pulls out the letter he’d kept, holding it next to the newspaper.
‘The Rock’. Where Johnny and Yuta were, where he would find them. Taeyong had a feeling he was in the outskirts of the fabled city, as the newspaper was labelled TR Outer, obviously focusing on this section of outer suburbia.
Taeyong’s skin crawls at the mention of a virus, realising that he’s in an area of the city that was clearly decimated by it. He looks up to see the skyline, barely illuminated as hints of dawn shone through. There was a round building, just barely peeking over other rooftops, appearing smooth and shiny.
That was it. That had to be it.
Taeyong bundles up the paper, folding it and shoving it into his pocket, and continues to stumble on in the dark. He needs to move faster, work harder. He has a feeling he’s on borrowed time, and he needs to get to the city before anything else can happen.
Before he can lose Johnny and Yuta all over again.
(he’s on his way. phase two is complete.)
He’s sleeping under the awning of a house, camped in the backyard.
Here, the screams don’t affect him. Sure, they’re terrifying, and Taeyong can’t shake the bone-chilling dread that haunts his waking moments, but here he can close his eyes and just breathe.
As he leans back against the house, one hand protectively clutching his chest, Taeyong’s attention is captured by something in the distance. Past the few trees just dotting the edge of suburbia, out on the horizon of empty desert, a flickering can be seen. The colours are … indescribable, Taeyong can’t pick them apart, but they’re there and he can’t help but feel both fear and awe settle further in him.
Fear at the notion of something else unknown, of another factor that he cannot control – something that could hinder his attempts to reach the city centre. Taeyong doesn’t think he can handle something else stopping him, not when he’s already so close to breaking. He needs to make it there, to find something else other than screaming houses and his own sobs.
Awe, however … the sight is gorgeous. It is beautiful, how unknown the world is, and if the situation was different Taeyong would’ve loved the sight. To sit with his head in Johnny’s lap, Yuta curled around his back, and to talk about the world and everything between existing and not.
(where did that come from?)
No, no, he can’t think like that – thinking about stuff like that when he’s so exhausted and broken only serves to feed into Taeyong’s feelings of hopelessness. He can’t risk it, not when he can’t let himself fall behind. There is too much danger, too much around him, and he needs to keep going or he’ll succumb to his own failures.
Cold settles deep in Taeyong’s bones, he’s yawning, and he closes his eyes to drift off. He needs to sleep, get whatever he can. It’ll be even harder when he wakes up, he’s sure of it – this brief moment of peace is something he’ll let himself indulge in.
Taeyong doesn’t dream – he thinks it was something he used to do a lot, because when he wakes with no recollection of a dream, he feels an ache in his bones that meant he must’ve dreamt before.
He can’t even remember enough to miss it.
Instead, Taeyong swallows around a burnt throat that renders speaking impossible and pulls himself up, stumbling for a moment, before he tentatively pushes open the backyard gate and walks onto the road.
The daytime changes the environment drastically – it looks closer to an actual street, less foreboding and horrific, and Taeyong feels he can walk easier along the street without constantly fearing for his life.
He’s entering the inner circle of suburbia now, he can tell, with the nicer houses and less destruction. There’s still no sign of life, nothing to give Taeyong hope that he’s not alone, but there are no jagged cracks in the road and he can sit in a house without there being screaming somewhere. He still refuses to stay in a house for more than five minutes, terrified that something will break his temporary luck.
(he’s moving too slow. he’s almost there, speed him up)
Taeyong was sitting on the step of a house, catching his breath, when it happens. His head was cushioned by his hands, and his breathing came slow and steady. A sudden crack! and Taeyong was looking up immediately, fear and adrenaline coursing through him. Lightning crackles in the street just beyond, loud claps of thunder reverberating deep in Taeyong’s bones. A sob catches in his throat as forked lightning strikes the ground, and Taeyong is on his feet and running faster than he thought he could ever move.
Time blurs as Taeyong runs, electricity licking at his feet and spurring him onwards. He stumbles and vaults through yards, shimmying over fences and hiding under doorways before running further and faster.
He doesn’t realise that the lightning is long behind him until he trips and plants face-first on concrete pathways, trembling as adrenaline wears off. Tears pour down his cheeks, mixing with the blood from hitting the ground so hard, and he pushes himself up only to realise that he’s now surrounded by towering skyscrapers and intimidating buildings, immaculately kept.
Cars are parked in parking spots, and there’s absolutely no one.
Alive, that is.
(was this how it was meant to go? something’s changed.)
Bodies litter the road, blood dried on the black tarmac turning it red, and Taeyong finds himself sick again before he can stumble around and right himself again. This … this is where everyone else, dying in the ‘safe city’. The virus is too much, it’s gotten this far, and Taeyong can feel his body rejecting something at the mere thought of the air contaminating him.
Logically, he knows that he must be one of the ‘immunes’, people he can only assume aren’t affected by the virus. Taeyong can guess this purely from the fact that he’s not dead yet, that he’s still alive for some awful reason.
The only thing that isn’t sending his faith to Hell is that there is a building in front of him, round and lit-up and loud with life.
Taeyong’s finally made it to ‘The Rock’.
His legs move before he realises, taking him to the entrance, and he looks in with tears brimming in hopeful eyes. There are people – God, there’s people! – and he can see teenagers sitting against a vehicle as others mill around. There are no adults, but that means shit to Taeyong when he sees two boys at the front.
Yuta, who’s more beautiful than his memories, is curled up in someone’s arms, and he’s half asleep and bound by his wrists. Wrapped around him is a taller male, bigger and broader and so Johnny. Taeyong stifles a sob at the image of them, surrounded by younger boys that would trigger so many more memories if he took the moment to stop.
He’s running in before he can stop himself, the group looking at him, and to see the smiles spreading across Yuta and Johnny’s face is enough to spur him on until he’s falling to his knees in front of him.
(get ready.)
“Taeyong-” Johnny sounds relieved, happy, and Taeyong is hit with visuals of Johnny murmuring his name when he’s in his lap, kissing his jaw and giggling as the older holds him closer. Taeyong nods around his tears, wiping the mess off his face, and manages to choke out a “Johnny-”, his throat just barely forming the words from how torn it was.
(wait, wait, what –)
Taeyong reaches out to grab Yuta’s hand, leaning forward to press his lips to his forehead, and Yuta makes a relieved sound as he’s held so lovingly by the boy who’s fought so hard to get back to them.
“You’re back – back with us,” he murmurs softly, curling into Taeyong’s chest as best as he can, and Taeyong can’t help but sob against into chestnut-brown hair.
He is happy, he is happy, he is happy-
(- now.)
Chilling fear slams into Taeyong when he hears a scream, when he feels Yuta and Johnny melt in his arms. Taeyong pulls back to see them liquefy slowly, to see the other boys – Chenle, Jaehyun, Kun, Yangyang, everyone he’s ever known – liquefy slowly. The entire room, everything around him, disappears into white – suffocating, dreadful white walls in a room that’s too familiar.
Taeyong looks down where he’s sitting, smack-bang in the middle of a small room. The walls are white, there’s a toilet and sink in the corner, and a mattress in the other corner. There’s a door that he already knows is constantly locked, and every surface he can see is covered in scratches.
His head hurts – he hurts, he hurts, he hurts, and he wants to cry. Yuta and Johnny still linger on his skin, and a scream erupts from Taeyong’s broken body before he can stop it.
“Thank you, 0701.” A voice booms into the area, too loud and too painful for the screaming teenager, and he finds himself falling onto his side and sobbing loudly as the voice continues. “Results will be recorded now. Again, thank you.”
Blackness settles around Taeyong again, and his screams are the only thing accompanying him as he goes down further and further.
He wakes to darkness, dampness, and pain ricocheting through his head.
That’s all there is for the first five seconds of consciousness – the suffocating blackness that surrounds him, coupled with his awful headache and wet seeping into his clothing.
Soon, his eyes adjust to the environment, and he realises it is day. He’s on a boat, bobbing just off the coast of some country, and there’s crumpled paper in his hand and one thing that he can sure of.
His name is Taeyong.
“Thank you, 26.”
The figure pulls off his headset, and when the lights turn off and he’s sure everyone’s gone, he buries his face in his hands and weeps.
Nakamoto Yuta weeps over the console, where he can see Taeyong. Lying on the floor of his white room, versus the big monitor where he’s just waking up on a boat in the ocean.
He’s finally seen him, finally recognised one of the pieces to his soul, and to know the horrors he’s done to him - that Johnny has done, oh God-, to see how fractured and broken Taeyong is becoming …
Yuta weeps for his humanity.