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It starts with a scream.
The once still air vibrates with the energy of the undead, the acrid smell of melting flesh singing Mark’s nostrils. Beyond the horizon lies the sun, descending mockingly fast, as if acting as a countdown to his and Donghyuck’s doom.
Ahead of them approach two stumbling Cranks, their staccatoed laughter echoing in the two boys’ minds like an alarm. The familiar sight of chunky flesh and branches of black stretching across their faces sends fearful shivers down Mark’s back, but he’s determined to make it out of this (hopefully) minor hiccup alive.
Cloudy eyes. Vicious snarls.
“Run,” Donghyuck mutters, so soft Mark has to turn to check, only to see Donghyuck’s eyes fear-stricken, latched helplessly on the sight of the rapidly closing Cranks. Donghyuck snaps his head to Mark, making him flinch. “RUN!”
Before he can think, Mark feels a sharp yank at his wrist, barely registering his legs tripping over each other as Donghyuck drags him into the tunnels behind them. More shouts. Growls. Mark’s heart crashes against his ribs, his focus constantly flickering from the Cranks behind them to the boy dragging him underground.
“Mark, focus!” Donghyuck shouts, not turning back. He pulls them into an area that forks into two separate paths, hesitating for a fraction of a second before rushing into the one on the right, fingers still pressing five lines into Mark’s wrist. The sounds of the Cranks begin to fade by the slightest in the background, screaming unintelligible words that resemble very closely to what Mark believes incoming death sounds like.
Donghyuck pulls them around a sharp corner, and Mark finds them standing in the doorway of some sort of living quarters. The light here is slight, barely enough for Mark to see Donghyuck’s face. With his wrist still trapped in Donghyuck’s hold, Mark finds himself pressed into the wall, heartbeat so loud that he’s sure half the Scorch can hear it.
“Put your pack here,” Donghyuck breathes after a quick scan of the room, releasing Mark’s wrist and making his way towards one of the corners. Mark suddenly feels cold. “Quick.”
Screams high-pitched and littered with delusion bounce against the cracking walls around them, and the two boys are instantly quicker and quieter as they move, both fighting the panic bubbling within them, threatening to spill over the edge.
Donghyuck yanks Mark over to the doorway and pulls him to the wall, pressing his own back to the space by the entrance. Mark shuffles next to him, mimicking the stance.
“We should split up,” Donghyuck whispers urgently, peering around the wall into the corridor. The footsteps grow louder.
“What? No,” Mark hisses, barely registering Donghyuck swift movement to take his blade from his boot. “We should stick together.”
“No, Mark, it’ll be easier for us to deal with one on one combat.”
“But-”
Donghyuck whirls to Mark, his gaze sharp enough to shut him up. There’s something burning in there, something that looks oddly similar to the desperation Mark saw in his reflection the night he confessed. Donghyuck’s face then softens from the harsh lines of the boy he has become into the kind curves of the boy he once was. For a moment, Mark wants to take Donghyuck’s hand and run, far from WICKED, somewhere safer. A place to grow up together.
“This could be the end,” Donghyuck hushedly speaks, much too fragile for a trained WICKED soldier.
Before he can think better, Mark cups Donghyuck’s jaw and pulls them together, pressing their lips in a fevered kiss filled with unsaid promises and unfulfilled wishes. He pulls away fast, much sooner than he’d like, and Donghyuck’s eyes flash in the darkness at the sudden gesture, unreadable.
“We’ll make it,” Mark says, pulling his hand away and instinctively putting it to the handle of the blade at his waist. “We’re going to go home.”
Donghyuck doesn’t say anything, seemingly stunned to silence, but training takes over when the stampede grows to a thundering chorus of animalistic growls and hungry shouts. Mark’s mind struggles to catch up with the sudden change in pace when he watches Donghyuck slam his blade into a Crank that stumbles into the doorway, black blood splattering all over his arm.
“Go!” Donghyuck shouts, almost losing his balance as the Crank shrieks in pain and blindly scratches at him. Mark wants to do something, anything, but knows he’s better off helping by luring the other Crank away and taking it on himself.
With a final longing look at the boy he loves, Mark dashes out into the darkness with a monster on his trail.
--
“Mark Lee, age 13,” a voice carrying trauma and comfort floats over Mark’s head, the muscles in his limbs automatically pulling him to step forward. “Welcome to WICKED.”
In reality, Mark has already been in the facility for over half of his life, after being stolen away from his parents. His parents who, as sick as they were, as close as they were to ripping his eyes out with tears burning in their own, were the only people he truly loved in the world.
At just six years old, that love was ripped away.
“Lee Donghyuck, age 12,” the same monotone, silvery voice flutters over Mark, reminding him of the other presence in the room, the boy he’d met those years ago. “Welcome to WICKED.”
Donghyuck follows suit in stepping forwards, but not without an unnecessarily loud scoff, and Mark finds himself fighting a laugh that threatens to get him in trouble. He agrees, it’s a pointless process. What they were told was going to be a ‘grand celebration’ to welcome them into the world of WICKED beyond the endless classes and basic training turns out to be a handful of words on a piece of paper, the two boys and Taeyong.
“From now on, you are truly the property of WICKED,” Taeyong says, voice grave. At the words, Donghyuck shifts to a neutral stance, the one that has been drilled to second nature from the moment they got here.
“Anything you say, or do, in terms of interacting with the world beyond this facility is for us, and us only, to control,” Taeyong continues. Mark feels the hair on his arms rise. “You belong to WICKED.”
A strike of anxiety elicits a sharp inhale on Mark’s part, but before he can try to hide it, a warm hand wraps around his own, warm and safe. A single look to the side presents a smooth cheek dotted with a collection of stars, still chubby with the final traces of baby fat, the boy unwavering. Donghyuck’s jaw is clenched, and Mark can tell that he too is scared, but with their hands wrapped in each other’s, he feels the promise of safety and companionship settle in his heart.
“And remember,” Taeyong starts, sparing a single glance at their hands. He catches Mark’s eye when looking up again and smiles, cold, chilling, yet friendly. “WICKED is good.”
--
WICKED fucking sucks for this.
The single line of thought zips through Mark’s head as the burn in his legs grows to a fiery scream, adrenaline, and fear pumping through them. In the last eight days they’ve been in the Scorch, not once did they have an encounter with Cranks this bad. A stroke of bad luck it is for this to have happened a day away from their end date.
Further into the darkness. Turn right. Look back. Crank. Stumbling, hungry, screaming, shrieking . Turn around Mark. Blade in hand, grip firm, reassuring, real. Turn left. There! Peek back. No Crank?
The sand beneath Mark’s soles rolls under his feet as he stumbles to turn into another living space, sure that he has lost trail of the Crank. As soon as he’s in the room, he shuffles into the darkest corner, pressing himself between the wall and what looks like a table. Momentarily, he wonders what the family living here was like, how long they were here for, and when they lost their battle against the Flare, or the monsters the Flare created.
There was no other way to go, not anymore.
Everyone lost to the Flare.
A wet growl snaps Mark to attention. He desperately tries to control his heavy breathing, sweat dripping down the side of his face. One look at the doorway already tells Mark that this is it. Either kill it or die trying. No other way out besides death, whether it be his or the Crank’s.
I’m coming, Donghyuck.
Palms sweaty, Mark tightens his grip on the bandaged knife in his hand. In a matter of seconds, the Crank will come in through the door, his training will kick in, and he’ll make it out alive.
He can only hope the same for Donghyuck.
--
“Tomorrow, huh?” Donghyuck’s tone is light, but Mark sees past it. Downcast eyes, the lack of a smile. Despite Donghyuck looking sadder than ever, a sense of joy and comfort lodges itself in Mark’s chest, grateful that Donghyuck cares that much.
“Yeah,” Mark says, watching his feet. Even without a watch or a clock nearby, he knows that it’s sometime past midnight, and the two of them are on their way to their rooms, muscles aching and skin sticky with sweat rapidly cooled by the air conditioning. Training had been more tense than usual, after the announcement of Mark’s mission three days earlier.
Out of the corner of his eye, Mark catches Donghyuck looking at him, and he turns, curious. Usually, Donghyuck would smile, maybe bump their shoulders and say ‘good spar’, but today, his face remains devoid of that familiar playfulness, all hard lines and worn.
Gradually, the two come to a stop in the space between their doors, the hallway empty.
“Well, um,” Donghyuck starts, back inches from his own door, “good night.” For a second, Mark thinks he’s going to say something, lips parting and closing, focus fluttering around hesitantly. He shakes his head, mostly to himself, dark baby hairs still matted to his forehead. With one final look at Mark, he manages a small smile.
“Good luck,” he says. Little does Mark know, Donghyuck’s heart is breaking with every word. “You’ll do great. You’ll come home.”
Mark nods, acutely aware of the growing distance between them, seeing his window of opportunity closing right in front of his eyes.
Now or never.
Just as Donghyuck pushes his door open, Mark finds his words.
“Hyuck, wait,” he sputters, catching the door before it closes. Donghyuck’s eyes widen by a fraction, but he pulls his door open anyway, completely caught off guard when Mark crashes into him, arms tightening around his waist.
“I love you.”
Donghyuck is stiff in Mark’s hold, but he doesn’t let go and only buries his face further into Donghyuck’s neck, holding him tight.
A shaky laugh sends vibrations rippling across Mark’s entire body as Donghyuck slowly rests his hands around Mark’s shoulders. “I… I love you too.”
“No,” Mark starts again, pulling away. As soon as he catches Donghyuck’s eye, he knows it’s obvious, clear as day. That his eyes are finally betraying all the emotions he’d stacked in a house of cards, crashing down with a single blow in the shape of a mission to the end of the world.
“I mean that I love you. Really.”
Donghyuck only blinks, barely registering the words. “I-”
Mark laughs, surprising the two of them as his head shakes, vision turning blurry.
“I do,” A tear, then another, tracing parallel lines on his skin, reflecting the pain that’s been welling up within him since he was told he was being dispatched. “I love you, so much, and I’m scared that if I don’t tell you now, you’ll never know.”
“Mark….”
“You don’t have to say anything,” Mark says. He’s cracking, breaking, splintering into a thousand shards of glass in front of the boy he promised to be strong for, strong with. “Just answer this one question for me.”
Donghyuck stares at him for a beat, speechless.
Internally, Mark sighs.
“If it were just you and me at the end of the world, would you love me then?”
Donghyuck’s eyes remain dark, concealing everything beyond the mere comprehension of Mark’s words.
Taking that as an answer, Mark feels another tear slide down his cheeks, too tired to wipe it away.
--
Any minute now , Mark tenses.
Another growl.
There.
The ugly face of the virus plants itself in the doorway, steps frighteningly calculative. At this point, with black dripping from their lips and eyes the color of a gloomy sky, Cranks tend to be zombies, running around in aimless fury.
Yet here stands one, seeming to scan the room as the stringy muscles in its neck twitch and spasm.
One stab.
Plunge it in there. Heart. Artery.
Death. Instant. End it.
With one final squeeze of his blade, Mark bursts from the dark, wielding his weapon with a determined shout, maybe his last. The Crank immediately whirls on him, eyes cold with fury.
In the space of a millisecond, panic spikes through Mark when he realizes he miscalculated the distance between the creature and his space, knife still driving forward. The Crank, freakishly fast, is barely nipped with the tip of the blade as it dodges Mark’s attack. The momentum brings him crashing into the wall ahead, dust blowing up in his face, arms tearing against the stony wall. He turns, too slow, and he’s faced with the yellow claws of a Crank.
It’s not long before he feels a burning sensation rip across his chest, yanking a scream from within him. Mark can barely see as the blade falls from his grip, fumbling for purchase on the monster pressing him into the wall, jaws snapping in his face. Clouds of hot, sour air blows infinitely in Mark’s face before he can finally plant his boot square center of the Crank’s stomach, sending it flying to the ground, skull smacking against the floor with a resounding crack.
Mark snatches his blade from the floor and is about to run it through the Crank’s lifeless chest when he hears an all too human, all too familiar scream.
--
“Donghyuck?” Mark’s heart seizes in his chest as he watches Donghyuck exit the door opposite of his with a similar pack on his back. It’s around four in the morning, much too early for him to be awake on a normal day.
“Didn’t you hear?” Donghyuck offers him a tired smile, “I’m coming with you.”
“What?” Before he can think better, Mark drops his bag to the floor, laces still untied, and grabs Donghyuck’s shoulders, the latter tensing. “What are you talking about?”
“Hey,” Donghyuck says gently, peeling Mark’s fingers from his shoulders. It’s odd for Mark to be on the receiving end of the calm voice instead of being it, even weirder for Donghyuck to be the one calming him down. “Firstly, it’s too early for this.”
“Not funny,” Mark grumbles, but backs away slightly.
“I’m coming with you. WICKED’s orders.”
“But-”
Donghyuck shuts him up with a shake of his head. “I can’t back out. Property of WICKED, remember?” He slips past Mark and picks up the discarded pack. “Besides, with me on the mission, there’s no way we won’t make it home.”
Despite himself, Mark manages a weak smile, taking the pack from Donghyuck’s hand.
“Now,” Donghyuck starts again, pursing his lips at the sight of Mark’s boots, “tie your shoelaces. You don’t wanna trip up in front of a Crank.”
--
Mark’s double-knotted boots pound down the hallway, the sounds of his falling steps barely loud enough to cover the sound of blood pumping in his head. Now, more than ever, fear threatens to drown him. Fear for himself, fear for Donghyuck.
“HYUCK!” He shouts, throat dry and scratchy. “DONGHYUCK!”
Mark hears a grunt come from the space they were in earlier, but when he reaches, finds nothing there.
“MARK!”
Farther down the hallway, the echo of a scream reaches Mark’s ears.
His legs are beyond tired, barely functioning on the high of adrenaline, pushing him to his limit as he runs towards the voice, heart begging for mercy as it crashes against the walls of his ribs.
Mark bursts from the tunnel and finds himself at the junction earlier, spotting almost nothing in the dark.
Then, movement.
There in the corner, Mark spies a rabid Crank wrestling something on the floor, and upon realizing that it’s Donghyuck, Mark’s heart catches in his throat.
His next steps are a blur.
One second he’s watching Donghyuck as he’s inches from getting his neck ripped out and the next he’s driving his blade into the back of the Crank, shouting. He barely manages to pull the knife out as the Crank flops sideways, life leaving it for the second and final time.
“Hyuck,” Mark pants, watching as Donghyuck scrambles away from the dead body with more fear in his eyes than Mark has ever seen before. “Hey, hey.”
Donghyuck is still shaking when Mark crawls over to him, trying to pull them together. At first, Donghyuck tenses, still on edge, almost throwing Mark off, eyes searching for his knife.
“Hey! Hey, it’s me, it’s okay,” Mark whispers, cupping Donghyuck’s cheeks, forcing him to face him. “It’s okay.”
Donghyuck pauses first, in disbelief, then presses into Mark, tears soaking his t-shirt, rubbing grit and blood all over Mark’s chest. Mark couldn’t care less as he tips his head to the wall, his own eyes fluttering shut as the adrenaline starts to wear off, limbs leaden. He knows they both have injuries that need to be treated, injuries that will start aching when they’ve calmed down, but for now, they’re here, alive and together .
“We’re going home,” Mark whispers, pressing a kiss to Donghyuck’s hair before leaning his cheek on it. Donghyuck shivers in his embrace, struggling to calm down, and Mark only caresses his hair gently, holding him closer to his heart than ever before.
“We’re going home.”