Chapter Text
“Drifting,” Anna Croft, a pilot of one of the first Jaegers, Devourer, had said during an interview two years after the apocalypse started, “is easy. Anyone can go into the Drift.” She was humble and wore a polite, unwavering smile. Beside her, co-pilot Selena Kim had nodded in agreement. The pair was infallible, undeniable proof of the strength of their Compatibility, until they weren’t. The world had watched as a vicious Category II Kaiju tore Devourer apart limb by limb, and left both pilots half drowned in the Pacific Ocean. Rescuers got to the pilots as Jaeger Underworld descended on the Kaiju, effectively ending the battle.
They’d been heralded heroes, and a seventeen year old Yoo Joonghyuk had watched the resulting newscasts with a strange sense of apathetic curiosity. Nations paraded Jaeger pilots around, celebrating the defeat of yet another alien beast. No one cared for the fallen and regular citizens preferred to carry on the lives they had before the Breach opened and the first Kaiju trampled through San Francisco.
At nineteen, five years after the apocalypse began, Joonghyuk was accepted into the Jaeger Academy. Pilots had repeated Anna’s words on the simplicity of Drifting enough to convince him that giving his mind to another would be a simple action in exchange for Mia’s promised protection. He was confident in his mental strength, if nothing else. Training would take care of the rest.
He hoped.
The preliminary examination to test Drift affinity of Jaeger Academy recruits was the first time that he entered the Shatterdome, an intimidating building much bigger on the inside than it appeared from the outside, extending deep underground to ensure space for Jaegers up to 80 meters tall. Joonghyuk was led through winding corridors, leaving him dizzy by the time he reached the examination room. As far as he could tell, recruits were called in staggering intervals such that he passed a set of identical twins on his way.
A chair similar to the kind found in a dentist’s office was positioned ominously in the middle of a sterile looking room, facing a mirrored wall. Directly behind the chair, viscous amber liquid bubbled soundlessly in a pillar that stretched from the tiled floor to the metal ceiling. The pillar hid another identical chair turned to face the opposite direction, also looking at a mirrored wall. He approached the one closer to the door and sat down as a tall woman in a lab coat walked in.
“Yoo Joonghyuk?” she asked. He nodded. “You’re a few minutes late. I’m the Academy’s Psych Analyst, you can call me Dr. Alison Choi.”
Joonghyuk betrayed no emotion and focused on following her direction in getting everything set up for the test. Before coming here today, he had been asked to take several personality tests, none of which he was allowed to see the results of. The recruiter he spoke to assured him that the information gathered was going to help him in the long run, promising that if he became a pilot, a series of vigorous analyses into his psyche would properly pair him with another lone cadet.
Unfortunately, as Dr. Choi informed him, everyone that applied this round did so with a partner, which left Joonghyuk uncertain if he’d actually even get to see the inside of a Jaeger. He took a risk in enlisting alone, one that he wasn’t sure would pay out, but he had little other choice. Those that didn’t involve themselves with the PPDC, whether battling on the frontlines, helping with strategies and engineering, or otherwise offering volunteer services, were spending their lives outright ignoring the reality of an ongoing apocalypse, and Joonghyuk couldn’t live with himself if he succumbed to that fate.
Piloting it was then, even if it involved digging around his mind.
“Thinking too much will only negatively affect your performance,” Dr. Choi said. “Relax, sit back.”
He did as told, and she reclined the chair back slightly. Beside him, a computer cart with a dual monitor sitting atop it had been rolled in. He exhaled and tried to clear his head as she untangled wires attached to both the pillar and the computer.
“I’m assuming you read the guide that was emailed to you, yes? It should have walked you through what is going to happen today.” She spared him a glance before getting back to the screen. Her constant back and forth set off a spark of anxiety in his chest. Did she know what she was doing? It was his life, his brain on the line if she didn’t.
“I did,” he agreed.
“Remember: this isn’t completely accurate to Drifting,” said the Psych Analyst. She placed a dark band around his forehead, connecting it at the back of his head to a tangle of wires that led to a monitor on a computer cart. His arms were restrained to the arms of the chair, a precaution, they had explained. “You’ll experience a small percentage of actual Drift.” All of it at once would kill a man on his own, the entire reason that Jaeger pilots were paired up in the first place. A momentary dip into the Drift was all that was needed to determine what a candidate needs in a partner, and to see if they were cut out for piloting in the first place.
She typed something on the keyboard, though he couldn’t twist around to get a glimpse at what exactly she was doing. Even if he wasn’t restrained, the anticipation would keep him in place.
He knew he was at a distinct disadvantage by not enlisting with a partner. Everyone else had their preliminaries performed alongside their partners, wires connecting them together before they were attached to technology. He had one person in his life who could be considered close enough to Drift with, but he would never ask Mia to do that. She was a child, and he enlisted to ensure her safety.
“How are you feeling?” the Analyst asked.
He continued to stare forward at the mirrored wall. “Fine.”
She hummed, and turned back to him, holding electrodes in her hands. “These are so I can monitor your physical state.” The Analyst stuck them onto his bare chest strategically.
“And the ones on my face? The headband?”
“Headband is for Drifting.” She stepped in front of him and adjusted the tightness of the headband until it dug into his skin. “These—” she tapped at an electrode on his temple “—are to better monitor your psychological activity.”
She returned to her computer, clicked the mouse a few times, and looked back at him. “Any more questions?” The heart monitor noted his unsteady pulse in loud beeps.
Joonghyuk was silent for a moment too long. As an afterthought, he asked, “Is this going to hurt?”
The last thing he saw was the Psych Analyst’s pitying gaze through the mirrored wall.
And then, he felt as though he was drowning.
*
Breathing wasn’t easy with his head held underwater. His eyes didn’t open no matter how much he tried to force them. Everything around him was cold, the chill seeping deep into his bones. He pushed up and met resistance.
The only way out was down.
He inhaled, and filled his lungs with something denser than water, and let himself turn upside down to paddle further in. More strength than he had was needed to push through.
Maybe he should have given up.
“Don’t leave me.”
He stopped paddling. Mia. Her voice had been muffled, almost incoherent, but he could pick it up from a crowd of a thousand if he needed to.
“I don’t get why you have to go.”
Again.
He’s heard her say these exact words to him before. When?
Where was she?
Finally, he forced his eyes to open, only to be met with absolutely nothing.
Darkness surrounded him, leaving him floating in empty space alone.
“Mia?” he asked, tentatively.
No response.
Louder, he yelled, “Mia!”
A lack of echo. With no walls to bounce off of, his screams were swallowed.
He swam, walked, ran. Cried and screamed. He did everything. How did he end up here? What kind of nightmare was this that he couldn’t wake up from?
He heard his own voice, broken and quiet, but he didn’t speak.
“We are leaving Mia in your care.”
His voice, reading a paper that was more a note than it was a letter.
A crying toddler.
He was barely seventeen.
Memories in the form of voices.
Mia… Memories… A haunting darkness… Leaving and being left…
The Drift.
He needed to wake up. He needed to stop panicking.
He squeezed his eyes closed even as the voices got louder, more agonized, more painful.
There’s one he focused on, one that he heard most recently.
The Psych Analyst called his name calmly, assuredly, and only once.
*
He inhaled, sharp and fast and enough that it sent him into a cough attack. The beeping of his heart monitor returned to normal as he steadied his breathing.
Aside from the monitor and his own breaths, there was an eerie silence. Sweat clung to his face and torso, and he raised his hand to push a curl of damp hair back from his face.
He raised his hand.
Joonghyuk glanced down and found that his arms had escaped the restraints, skin sporting red indentations and rubbed raw.
He didn’t dare try and remove the electrodes or headband. The Analyst’s reflection in the mirror was still, facing her computer. In anyone else it would have been a posture of diligence.
After several long minutes, she spoke, “Have you Drifted before?”
“No.”
There had to be something wrong. He saw old videos of the exams, from when they were just starting out. Never once had something like this been asked.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” she said, voice bathed in awe.
The wheels of the computer cart screeched as she pulled it around so he could take a look. She minimized irrelevant tabs and left a series of graphs open. Black lines denoted baseline readings—what appeared before he was sent into the Drift—and blue showed the average of current pilots.
The red lines, the ones that were his Drift readings, were what made the Psych Analyst concerned. And for good reason, Joonghyuk thought, because each one exceeded both baseline and average.
He frowned. While the graphs were interesting, he had no idea what the significance was. “What does this mean?” he asked.
She scanned over the readings again and then turned to him. “You have the makings of the best Jaeger pilot I have ever seen.”
***
Despite the declaration made by the Psych Analyst, the first month of the Academy was hell. Mornings were spent in classes, afternoons were designated for more analytics and testing, and nights were reserved for learning combat.
By far, Joonghyuk liked combat the most, and hated analytics. The idea of having someone picking his brain was distasteful, even if piloting involved another person in his mind. Between feeling like needles pierced through his brain and fighting until he physically couldn’t stand on his own two feet any longer, he chose the latter.
He stayed in the Fightroom for hours after combat training ended. The rhythmic punches to the boxing bag were calming, helping him clear his head. He settled into a defensive pose, both fists raised in front of him. Quickly, he lifted his nondominant leg, jumped, and swung his right leg out to roundhouse kick the bag. He landed on both feet, panting from the workout.
“Impressive,” said a voice from behind him. “But useless. Jaegers don’t fly.”
Joonghyuk froze. He hadn’t heard anyone come in after him. He reached out to steady the boxing bag, then turned one-eighty degrees. A man dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt depicting a grainy sonar image of the Breach sat at the bottom of the bleachers a few meters away. He had his elbows propped up on his knees, and chin resting in his hands, bored.
“And who are you?” Joonghyuk asked. An aura of nonchalance surrounded the guy in a particularly arrogant way that set off his nerves.
The man shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to you.”
“It does when you insult me unprompted,” he counters.
He raised an eyebrow, shocked that he said something against him, and straightened his posture, placing his palms on the metal of the bleachers. “It’s telling that you believe I was insulting you. I wasn’t.” He pushed himself up, standing, but didn’t approach. “I merely pointed out that fancy jumps and kicks are impractical tactics when it comes to defeating kaiju. Jaegers are bottom heavy. They can’t kick with the same speed their pilots can. Use your arms, strengthen your upper body. Fightmasters Namgung and Rodgraim won’t be nicer than me.”
Joonghyuk’s jaw clenched. “What makes you qualified to talk like that to me?” The man didn’t have dog tags hanging around his neck that separated pilots from everyone else, nor did he wear an identification card stating which department he was in.
“Don’t you get tired of asking questions?” He toed off his sneakers and stepped onto the mat with socked feet. Not quite appropriate, but at least he wasn’t wearing shoes. “Start finding your own answers. What week of the Academy is it for you? First? Second?”
“Third,” he said through gritted teeth.
His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “You’re more behind than I feared. I can help you.”
Joonghyuk recoiled, but kept his feet grounded as the man came closer. “I’ll manage.”
“You didn’t look like you knew anything about what I was saying, so excuse me if I don’t really believe you.”
“I’ll manage,” he repeated, harsher. Joonghyuk walked around him to the direction of the showers. The stranger didn’t make a show of following, and Joonghyuk didn’t look back to see what he did afterwards, letting the door slam behind him.
***
“You’re in my seat,” Joonghyuk warned. The man who happily stole his spot in the lecture hall wasn’t wearing a cadet’s navy uniform pants and shirt, but the gray jumpsuit worn by Jaeger Engineers.
He leaned back in the chair and looked up at him with a smile too big and ingenuine for his face. “Yoo Joonghyuk. Did you ever figure out how to throw a punch?” said the imposter. He spoke casually, and it rubbed Joonghyuk in all the wrong ways. He remembered this person well from their brief encounter a few days back, and he seemed just as arrogant now as he did then.
Amidst the million words he wanted to scream, he chose to ask, “How do you know my name?”
At the same time, the door at the front of the hall swung open, punctuating the end of his question. He grabbed the back of the seat next to his usual, prepared in case the Instructor walked in early. The last thing he wanted was to be seen as disobedient before he had the chance to graduate.
The man raised an eyebrow, lips curling into a bemused smile. Asshole. “Don’t tell me you can’t read.” He tapped the ID tag that hung from the chest pocket of his jumpsuit.
Joonghyuk wordlessly reached out with the hand that didn’t have a chair in a death grip and took hold of the other man’s card, bringing it closer so he could read it. The man leaned forward with the action begrudgingly, refusing to move from the chair to get the card if it unclipped. “Kim Dokja,” he said the name with a hint of disbelief. He thumbed at the grease that coats it, trying to get a better look at the picture. Who knows, maybe he stole this card and the real Kim Dokja was running around without one. The image was difficult to make out, but it was definitely an older picture of the guy, maybe from a few years back, if the shaggy hair that hung over his forehead and the cocky smile only a teenager could have was anything to go by. There was no other detail on the card, nothing about what role he has at the Academy or the shatterdome entirely. Nevertheless, he let go, the card snapping back on its connector string and hitting Dokja in the chest.
“Ow!” Dokja pouted. “Hope you’re happy, because I’m sure as hell not leaving now.” To cement this, he pulled his chair into the table, holding the edge of it in case Joonghyuk would pull him out anyway.
He had his taste of revenge; Dokja didn’t matter now. He took the seat beside him as the Instructor walked in, calling the attention of the cadets to the front. While she set up, everyone took out PPDC issued tablets to take notes on.
Well, everyone except Dokja.
To Joonghyuk’s annoyance, the seat stealer seemed content to simply relax in the chair and watch blankly during the lesson as the rest of the cadets actually put in an effort to learn. And to think that Joonghyuk actually considered the brief bit of advice he’d been given from him in the Fightroom. If somehow Dokja got transferred into the Academy this late, he didn’t look like he was going to last long. There was no need for Joonghyuk to worry.
“To defeat an enemy, we must first understand it. Who wants to tell me about the Kaiju?” The Instructor projected her voice, standing behind the podium and staring into a sea of raised hands.
A throwaway question, and he was sure he raised his hand first. She even made eye contact with him only to call on Dokja instead.
He shot Joonghyuk a self-absorbed smirk before answering, “they’re colossal amphibian beasts, ones that we know little about even after studying their remains for so long. We don’t know their origins, beside a giant rift in the ocean that we can’t close, and they seem to only be destroyed individually by brute force. Jaegers are only a temporary solution to delay inevitable disaster. What we’ve seen so far is only a fraction of the destruction they can, and will, cause.”
Joonghyuk clenched his jaw to keep it from dropping at the gall he has. His gaze flicked between the Instructor and this enormous idiot. The Instructor didn’t do anything, simply returning Dokja’s smile as he continued.
“Kaiju are becoming more powerful, too. In 2009, the first one in San Francisco was a Category I. It had been steady—just Category Is and IIs—like they were getting a feel for Earth for four years. This past year has seen a sharp increase to Category IIIs. Recently, we’ve even gotten multiple Kaiju at once. Wouldn’t you say that’s concerning?” He sounded more frantic now, excitement dancing in his eyes. “One day, even an army of Jaegers won’t be enough. I don’t know if I want to be alive to see that.”
He stood from the (stolen) chair as he finished and glanced over the auditorium. “Maybe this group of cadets will finally be the ones to end this.” Dokja’s gaze landed on Joonghyuk briefly. “Or maybe we should call it quits while we’re ahead. Good luck.” He slipped towards the stairs and left without a word.