Chapter Text
It's not your fault. It never was; this could've happened to anyone. Anyone in the world could've been in your position, but it's like they all say- you were just at the wrong place, at the wrong time.
And now you're being carried on the back of a murderer, along with his friends of infamous serial killers, your mind fading in and out of consciousness. For the little time you are awake, the world is spinning and all you see are the blood-stained shoes of the boy behind you. The only thing you can hear is the crunching of leaves and twigs under their dark boots, and the obnoxious croaking of the crows circling above the group. Every time you stirred awake you felt a sudden drowsiness take over you once more. You dangled off of the first boy's back, arms restricted as your hands were tied to your back.
You groaned slightly, but even that took so much energy to do, you couldn't fathom thinking about screaming for help. The world around you was deathly quiet, the solemn breeze pushing lightly against your face and your hair tickling your cheek. A couple feet away from you, someone was humming in a direction you could not see. The song was unfamiliar, but the voice behind it was.
⤜⚘⤛
"That's it?" Asked the girl at the front desk. You nodded, digging out the credit card you had in your back pocket. The cashier put the things into a plastic bag and slid it across the counter to you, printing out your receipt. You took it and left immediately, not willing to dwell any longer.
You had things to do. You debated even getting out of bed to come here, but you decided that your common cold wouldn't stop you from enjoying the perks of staying home today. You had taken the day off because you rarely got sick, and now was the one time you could use the excuse on your boss. Today, you planned on focusing on yourself. Life had been suffocating you too much lately, you deserved this.
And hence why your appearance had little to no effort put in. Literally, you were wearing sweatpants and a crop top under an oversized hoodie that ran down to your thighs. Your hair was carelessly thrown over your shoulders and you wore a face mask, an attempt to show people that today, you truly were not to be fucked with.
It wasn't a very busy day, most adults were at work and teenagers were at school on this lousy Tuesday morning. Looking around, the only people you could see were retired elderly or stay-at-home moms, only the occasional middle-aged person sprinkled among the crowd. It was a bright day, the windows at the tip of the ceiling let in a lot of natural light.
You had not gotten 20 feet away from the store when a chorus of synchronized gunshots and screams echoed throughout the small mall. You turned your head and looked in horror at the figure of a tall man dressed in all black holding up a pistol. He was standing over a dead body, the gun in his hands still pointed at the corpse. Even from where you were standing with his back turned from you, you could tell he held a crazed smile.
You turned again and looked around the scene, the calm before the storm. There had to be at least four of them, all wearing black with guns in their hands, though some wore black masks to cover their face. After another moment of stillness, they turned and started shooting any witnesses that moved.
It was a massacre, people were screaming and running, mothers trying hopelessly to protect their families as the men started pacing around, pointing the weapons and pulling the trigger, not once wasting a bullet.
Having watched too many shows and read too many books, you knew you had to make a choice. Stay and help the people around you fight to their deaths, or run and save yourself.
As gunshot after gunshot rang in your ears, you didn't get to decide. Instinct stepped in and saved you from hesitation, you dropped your shit and ran. Not towards the exit; you were too smart for that. Like hell they'd leave an exit unguarded, the last thing they wanted was a survivor.
No, instead you ran to the small store to the right of you. Even if it was little in size, the columns and columns of useless newspapers and postcards gave you exceptional coverage as you decided to hide. The small postage store was perhaps the most useless and deserted store in the mall. It hardly got any business anymore, not once had you seen anyone in here besides the employee. If money was what they wanted, they wouldn't find it here.
The postal store was attached to a small room that was also connected to the store next door. It was a small antique vinyl shop, where only occasional tourists or hippies would go. Still, you couldn't risk it. You leaned your head against the wall and closed your eyes, a pounding migraine hitting your head as you breathed heavily. Your body was not in the right state for this shit- your nose was stuffed, so unless you wanted to alert the whole world where you're hiding, you had to breathe through your mouth.
You moved your head to look around- there was still absolute chaos outside, but it was quieter, you could even hear the sobs as people begged for their life before they were forever silenced. You felt tears sting your eyes but you knew this wasn't the time to cry. You had to get out of here alive- you had to tell the story. Policemen have been trying to catch these bastards for months, but they never left any leads whatsoever.
No cameras ever caught them. No gun was ever left behind. And most importantly, no survivors either. They were notorious for their precisely planned attacks and clean getaways.
Now was not the time to dwell, you needed a plan. You ran a hand through your loose hair strands and struggled to think clearly.
"Pst." Your heart leaped out of your chest and turned to the direction of the sound. It was a woman your age; she held her lip up to her mouth and motioned you over to where she was. She sat underneath the checkout counter, her small yet plump features looking at you behind the corner. You paused and contemplated your options. It was risky to move across the room to her since the desk was right next to the door and the wall was mostly a window, but you decided it was worth a shot.
You slid across the floor soundlessly and appeared next to her. You never thought you'd find comfort seeing such a stranger, but once you took in her dark complexion and her beautifully thick hair, you felt just a tad safer.
"I pressed the button," She whispered to you, her voice shaking ever so slightly as she pointed to the button above your heads, under the countertop. You recognized it as the security button. "The policeman should have been alerted but..." You saw her gulp audibly. "He was shot a few moments ago."
Your breath hitched in your throat. "What should we do?" You asked, trying your best not to sound more scared for her sake. You could hear quiet murmurs and thought that there were enough people dead for the killers to speak to the others now.
"I..." She looked down at the floor. "I don't w-wanna die..." She mumbled before putting her face in her hands, shaking slightly as you saw tears drip down her arm. You rubbed her back, not entirely emotionally available to comfort someone at the moment.
"Hey, it's okay... we'll be okay." You said and hushed her quietly. You seriously needed to get out of here. "Where did he die?"
"The guard?" She asked sniffling, and you cringed, afraid of being too loud. "J-Just outside, I saw h-him..."
"Okay, listen..." You shifted your weight onto your other ankle. "I'll get us his gun, okay?"
"Are you crazy!" She whisper-shouted, her eyes wide and panicked as she looked at you. "You'll get killed... they'll kill you too!"
You chewed the inside of your cheek. You knew that, but you couldn't think about it. Or else you might not ever get a good chance. Just as you opened your mouth to speak, the voices became clearer and hushed you both.
"Any more survivors?" Asked one, apparently not afraid of being heard.
"There's no way to know for sure," You heard a shuffle and a thud, presumably a corpse. "They could be hiding, but we got Mingi on cameras so he'll know if something's up."
"Wooyoung?" Asked a warm voice as you both heard rapid footsteps approach the voices. The girl beside you reached for your hand, and you squeezed hers assuringly as you continued to eavesdrop. "What's wrong?"
"Sirens," He answered breathlessly. "Sirens. I can hear them, they're approaching fast."
"Someone must've fucking called the cops." Said the first one, and a clatter echoed through the now empty mall as he probably dropped something, presumably a weapon.
You turned to the girl beside you and let go of her hand, holding a finger up to your lips as you looked from behind the counter and into the main hall of the indoor shopping plaza. Bodies littered the ground as you saw five men standing off to the side. After a few moments, you decided it was safe enough to slowly crawl to the body of the sheriff. He was lying in his own personal pool of blood, his gun in his hand and his taser still in his pocket. You gave one last look to the fearful girl behind the counter before mouthing to her, "I'll be okay. Hide."
You got on your stomach and crawled ever so slowly to the corpse. Now you were in plain sight. You had no walls to protect you, no aisles, no nothings. If you got low quick enough, you could probably be passed as a corpse.
You kept crawling and shuffling. You were so close, you could see the details of the sheriff's face. His unshaven beard, oily pores, and the whites of his eyes. The dead, lifeless eyes.
You just needed the gun. That's it, that's your only chance. You reached out your fingertips for it. Holding your breath as you waited. Your mind was blank. You didn't notice the way their conversation stopped. You didn't notice the way one of them turned his body towards your direction. As you reach out, you felt like you had a chance.
Until a curdling yelp reached your ears and you jumped from the daze you were in, just in time for a cold hand to grab your wrist and twist it painfully. You cried and looked up at the source of the evil voice, and you saw a tall figure smiling down at you.
"Hey princess," He said, continued to turn your wrist, causing you to shout a pained groan. "What'cha doing with that, hm?"
You sat up and started to kick at his body, pulling your throbbing wrist away but he had a grip of steel. His cat-like eyes watched you as he so effortlessly muscled through your fighting.
Your eyes widened at the sound of another scream, and you turned to where your ally was hiding. A tall figure you could see through the window had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. He leaned down and grabbed the girl by the neck, pulling her up and off her feet, choking her ruthlessly. Her legs kicked from under his grip, and the strong man slammed her against a wall, her cries interrupted by thuds of the cement hitting her skull.
"Stop!" You cried and pushed your attacker away, but the boy wouldn't let you go. You screamed and kicked and pushed, but he wouldn't release you. Instead, he grabbed your chin and made you watch, putting his chin on your shoulder.
"Isn't it exciting?" His voice asked through a crooked smile of his, his cheek barely touching yours. "How she screams and screams, but can't get out from him?"
You watched in utter horror at the sight. The man wordlessly killed her in seconds, using his bare hands and a wall. You watched as she dropped to the floor, drenched in her own blood as her attacker wiped his own mouth with his bloody hand. He turned to the rest of the group, who seemed unphased by his behavior.
She didn't deserve to die. She didn't want to, all she wanted to do was help but you got her killed. You didn't know how much of this you were saying out loud, apparently, you had been choking on your own sobs the whole time. The boy next to you chuckled curtly before dropping you to the ground, knowing you'd be too weak to stand up on your own.
The ringing in your ears drowned out the voices of the males in the room. You could only hear a few words; "bullets", 'police", "storm", and "time". Moments later, the sound of glass breaking broke you from your hole of despair, only to find out they hadn't killed you yet.
No, instead, you were being held in front of them, facing a wall of policemen and SWAT members as they held their guns up to the killers behind you. Someone new was behind you, shorter than the person before, but still held the same crazed look as him.
"Shoot us, and she goes too." He said, shoving the face of the gun deeper into your now bruising neck. He was out of breath. He had you in his grasp, and was slowly backing away from the barricade of armored men. "You wouldn't want another innocent to be killed, would you?"
Everything was a blur, one moment you were inside the mall with your wits held together by threads, and the next you were thrown over someone's shoulder, running in the pouring rain where you couldn't comprehend anything.
The body you were draped over was strong and obviously held a lot of strength. You felt a hand grip your hair tightly as the man pulled your face up so your eyes could meet his.
"Sleep now," He said lowly. "You're exhausted."
And that's when you blacked out.
⤜⚘⤛
The smell of mustiness and metal filled your senses as you moved in and out of consciousness. The feeling of cold metal stung your back and you arched your spine in a lazy and tired attempt to get away from it, but blinked open your eyes when you discovered that you can't escape it- that you were tied to it. You moved your muscles in your arms, but with no response. You were tied to something metal. Your arms were wrapped around it like a backward hug, the length of your arms too short for your hands to find each other.
You blinked again, this time patiently letting your eyes adjust to the darkness, but it was still way too unlit to see anything. You made a noise with the back of your throat as you moved back closer to the pole and straightening your spine once more. A rattling noise put you on high alert, and your senses suddenly came back better than before. You shuffled the farthest away from where the noise came from and watched the inky black space in front of you.
Horrifyingly slow steps started towards you, and you couldn't tell how many people there were in the room. Your head screamed at you and begged you to go back to sleep but your adrenaline kept your mind wide awake.
"No, no, no-" You whispered as they started to near. "S-Stop... don't fucking touch me." You glared at them from your spot on the ground and watched as someone squatted down in front of you. His arms rested on his knees as he tilted his head to the left a little bit, admiring your fearful expression. You recognized him as the man who put you to sleep before. You could barely see an outline of a smile on his face.
"Hey," He said, his voice calm and soothing. "Don't worry. I won't hurt you right now. I just wanna talk."
You felt like your ability to speak was ripped away from you. "What? What d-do you want to s-say?" You didn't think speaking clearly could be so difficult, but your voice was trembling so much you had to put effort into it to make it audible.
"Do you know why you're here?" He questioned and reached a hand out to touch your greasy, tangled hair. You flinched slightly but were unable to push his hand away. Instead, you remained focused on his eyes as you shook your head.
"No." You gulped. Why didn't they just kill you?
"Aren't you happy to be alive?" He asked and tilted his head again, this time to the other side. "Aren't you thankful for a small hope for life?"
You didn't speak, tearing your eyes away from his and looking at the ground in front of you, dark silhouettes that were too far away to see were watching in silence.
"You shouldn't be," He scoffed and stood up, walking around the metal post you were tied to while examining your situation. You gulped once more and listened to the sound of his taunting footsteps.
"Life is cruel, and it's better to just give everyone a sweet escape to death." He grabbed something from behind you, and it made a small clutter sound against the floor. "So let's keep you alive, shall we?"
You watched as he kneeled down towards you once more, this time a dirty wooden bat in hand as he looked at you, his face only inches from yours as he smiled at you kindly.
"Will you try and escape me, sweetheart?"
Your throat ran dry as you looked at him in panic. Your eyes felt engulfed by his stare and you rendered yourself speechless. He took that as his answer and stood back up, stepping back just in time to swing the club forwards towards your leg.
You shrieked, your voice cracking as the harmless baseball bat made contact with your skin, snapping the bone of your ankle and crushing your skin. Your own screams sounded so foreign to you, and it was a pain you had never dealt with before. The killer in front of you seemed unphased as he continued repeatedly, blow after blow, utterly destroying the length of your calves. It only lasted a minute, but after that, the damage had been done. You were shaking and sobbing, your throat erupting in a pain that couldn't even compare to your feet. Your vision was blurry, but even through the tears you could see your bloodied legs, and the bat he had used had been dropped to the ground. He was out of breath and looked at you with an emotion you couldn't place.
"Please understand, sweetheart," He kicked the bat aside and out of your reach, it rolled and hit the wall with a small tap. "It's just a precaution."
You watched as he and his men retreated further into the darkness with tears in your eyes. You sobbed and cried uncontrollably, feeling completely pathetic and weak. You were crying harder than you could ever remember, your moans and hiccups filling the room with inescapable loneliness.
You wish you could say that you stayed strong and got over the pain quickly. But as the memories came back and you remembered the lives that were lost in front of your eyes, the weight only felt heavier. You could only stay awake for so long before you blacked out once more.
⤜⚘⤛
Hongjoong left the basement, immediately walking away from the group of boys who watched after him silently. He needed space to clear his head and just... breathe. He could feel his head throbbing and ambled to the kitchen to pop a painkiller. He took the small pill from the plastic container on the counter and swallowed it dry, only using water to wash it down when it got caught in this throat and he started to choke on the aftertaste.
A taller male slowly approached him from behind, he knew something was off with his friend. Never had they ever kept someone hostage, especially after the stunt Hongjoong pulled off at the outlet mall when he showed her off as a means to get away.
He stayed silent for a moment more before speaking up, his voice low and cautiously gentle.
"Why did you keep her?"
The shorter male swallowed the rest of the drink before placing the empty cup down with a small clink. He wasn't ready to let him know everything just yet, so he had to bluff. "We can't kill her. And she can't be released because she will report us to the authorities."
"Why can't we kill her? Why did we bring her here?" He had so many questions but he didn't want to agitate him with an interrogation.
"We can't kill her just yet. She has something of ours." He turned to face the man, his back leaning against the counter and his legs crossed in a relaxed manner. "Who's watching her right now?"
"San... he's taking first watch, but she's close to passing out, so I don't think he'll see anything important." As if on cue, a sob was heard from downstairs, and the blue-haired male looked off to the side on the ground.
"You're keeping something from us, right?" He looked at the shorter man across from him and crossed his arms as he tried to decipher his emotions.
"Seonghwa, what could I possibly be keeping from you?" He smiled, now making eye contact with him once more. Seonghwa was filled with confusion, fear and just a little bit of distrust.
"It's her, isn't it?" He questioned further. "There's something about her you're not telling me."
Hongjoong didn't confirm or deny it, which was enough for the older male. He spoke again,
"She's one of us, isn't she?"
The atmosphere turned dead silent, just the two of them in the room, staring at each other. Seonghwa's expression was stoic, lined with just a dash of concern. Hongjoong on the other hand was slightly amused, the shadow of an approving smile on his lips.
"...How'd you know?" He questioned, and neither of them moved, the world was still. Hongjoong's smile grew as he felt the worry grow in Seonghwa, so much that it overcame the fear he was once feeling.
Seonghwa's eyes fell to the ground and Hongjoong immediately lost the connection. "Because... we're the only people you wouldn't kill. You wouldn't protect someone if they weren't one of us."
"...And yet she is one of us." Seonghwa finished his thought and looked back up at a smiling Hongjoong. "Why are you smiling?"
"Because you figured it out, I'm impressed. I didn't know until I looked into her, and yet you did it without any ability."
"It's only because I know you well enough. I know you're very picky with who you save."
"We all are," Hongjoong said as he put a hand on the taller male's shoulder. "And that's why I'm asking everyone to avoid hurting her. She's too valuable to discard."
"Do you know what ability she has?" He asked quietly, his voice just above a whisper.
"I have an idea, but I'm not sure. I'll need to toy with it a bit more..."
Seonghwa nodded, trying to process everything before he looking at him once more. "Then... what happens now?"
It's been too long since they have talked to someone that wasn't a part of their group, let alone a girl. It was difficult to predict how everyone will react to someone new being introduced, and how else things will change. The future was unknown that scared the oldest male, but he was ready to do what he had to protect everyone. "Surely not everyone is going to agree on keeping her." He mumbled.
"We can vote. I'm sure some of them want to kill her, but I don't think all of them do. If the majority doesn't have a problem with her, then we'll keep her."
"And if not?"
"We will have to keep her alive anyways. I'm positive that most of them are curious about having a girl around. But for the ones that do vote against her, we just have to keep an eye out when she's around them. Understand?"
"Yes." Seonghwa nodded, it made sense to him.
"... do you want to kill her?"
He looked up at him for a second, meeting his eyes. "I...I don't think so."
"Good," He said. "You shouldn't."
⤜⚘⤛
You groaned outwardly and opened your eyes. The room around you was dark and the humidity caused your clothes to stick to your skin. Ignoring the tiredness in your muscles you lifted your head, which caused multiple popping sounds to come from your neck.
The shadows around you were hauntingly dull, which caused you to only see a vague outline of the things around you. You tried to move your knees closer to your chest only to discover the flaring pain that surged from your ankles all up to your shin. You hardly noticed the inhumane cry that escaped your throat as tears stung your eyes and poured hotly down your cheeks. No pain that you have ever encountered could compare to the amount of hurt your body was under right now.
It took you a bit to gain control of your breaths- your eyes were squeezed shut and your hands were shakingly holding the area of your injury. The most pathetic thing of it all was your crying. Never had you thought that you would be in such a terrifying position such as this, but you couldn't think like that now. You shouldn't pity yourself or else this really will become a living hell.
Somehow you got yourself to fold your limbs so your legs were off to your side, you leaned against whatever it was that was behind you and looked at the ceiling. You couldn't even see what it was made of, that was how lightless it was. If tears were streaming down your face, you wouldn't be able to tell. It felt like all your senses went numb.
A few minutes passed and you heard a distant sound. In a panic, you closed your eyes and pretended to be unconscious. Your ears could pick up the quiet footsteps that were traveling towards you. There was a pause, a small plat, and a swish before the footsteps resided. There was no hesitation on the owner's part for there was no intention to linger.
Your eyes opened once the person left and you tried desperately to focus on the thing in front of you. You saw two orange dots, one perfectly round and the other seemingly messier. They were both surrounded by a ring of light grey.
After a few moments, you finally deciphered what it was. Two eggs, sunny-side up, placed on a paper plate. You pushed away at the confused thoughts that came to mind as the primal instinct to eat took over.
Miraculously, you used the little bit of flexibility you had to grab the piece of plate with your teeth and yank it over closer to you. You had assumed you were alone, so you messily ate the food without the use of your hands. You had tried to wiggle free of the restraints but they were tied so tightly your arms went numb.
Seriously, why give you food if you had no way to eat it? There's no point.
And why keep you here if they plan to kill you? Just to suffer?
You felt like a mess. You were sweating, your hair stuck to your face and your arms were starting to go numb once more, you were panicking every other minute or so. The hole in your stomach was being filled, but it still hurt. You were unsure what bloody mess was happening below your knees, but whatever it was it hurt like hell. The floor had been stained with your blood and it was a disturbing sight all in all.
You closed your eyes and prayed it would all end soon.