Still Here: Chapter 3 - Survival
↳ summary: Inside the ominous Yeongdongpo police base, the elite team and EXO face a desperate situation as they attempt to escape. Tensions rise as Seo-ah presses Ji-won with difficult questions, forcing her to confront secrets that threaten their fragile trust. EXO is left wondering - what does Level Four really mean? Could they really trust any of them?
↳ wc: 12.5K
↳ progress: Foreword, Chapter 1: The Message, Chapter 2: The Collapse, Chapter 3: Survival
↳ a/n: mwahahahaha!!
Min-jae’s kit snapped open, the sound tiny but fatal in the dark. He braced a knee against the concrete and unrolled a sodden towel, laying out vials, wipes and a staple gun that glinted in the dark. The others—Ji-won, Ha-yoon, Tae-ho and EXO—huddled in a loose spiral, backs to the wall, faces bleached to a sickly turquoise by the glowstick wedged in a crack above them.
“Everyone. Sit,” he said, not a command, just gravity, and they did. No one argued—not even Ji-won, whose expression, somewhere between collapse and calculation, registered every micro-move in the room.
He started with Tae-ho, tilting the man’s head into the dim light. The cut above his eye was shallow but long, a ragged split that had clotted to a gummy black. Min-jae blotted it with the towel, the smell of blood and alcohol filling the air.
Ha-yoon watched, chewing her lip, then inched closer, hands hovering, useless. “You need stitches, Oppa. I can see the bone.”
“Barely a scratch.” Tae-ho’s smile was a quick flicker.
“Liar,” she whispered, but let it drop.
"It looks worse than it is."
She folded her arms into an exaggerated pout while Min-jae disinfected the wound, pinched it with butterfly strips. He worked in silence, methodical, the way his hands always did even when the rest of him vibrated with nerves.
"What are these things?" she muttered. "Where did they even come from?"
No one answered her. Her voice grew quieter. "… Where are all the people?"
Tae-ho finally spoke. "I don't think those were…things."
Everyone looked up. "They were wearing uniforms… like us. I think I saw a name tag on one of them."
Silence.
Min-jae finished him with a strip of gauze, then turned to Seo-ah.
Seo-ah was slumped against a breaker box, jacket and shirt both torn and stuck to her skin with dried blood. Her eyes didn’t quite focus, and the way her breathing hitched every few seconds told Min-jae more than she ever would.
“Your turn, Han.”
She didn’t move.
He crouched in front of her, pulled her arm out gently. The bite mark was ugly—a crescent of torn skin, the flesh around it mottled purple and yellow. The staples on her back had held, but the flesh under them wanted to give. He pressed around the wound, watched her flinch, gauged the reaction. Bad, but not fatal. He doused the pad with alcohol, then pressed it to the wound until she snarled and tried to pull away.
“Hold still.” His voice didn’t rise. “You want to keep the arm, or not?”
She bit down on something that might have been a laugh.
“So, if they were once people…” she rasped, head tilting to the bite on her arm, “does that mean I am getting the zombie expansion pack?”
Nothing. Not a single laugh.
“Too soon?” She chuckled.
She turned to Baekhyun. This whole time, Baekhyun had been staring, the muscles in his jaw trembling until he realized Seo-ah was watching back. She took a fresh pack of gauze from Min-jae’s kit and flung it at him. He flinched as it hit his face. “You’re next,” she said. She had noticed how he’s been grimacing at the slightest touch, how he kept wincing and holding his palm shut, until she noticed the makeshift napkin-bandage. Baekhyun had no idea she had noticed him.
No one spoke for a long time, just the clockwork of Min-jae’s patching and the low mechanical hum from the emergency lighting, which they found eventually, somewhere far above.
Ji-won unzipped one of the emergency packs she found with careful, deliberate movements. The sound was both too loud and not nearly enough. Inside: six protein bars, eight vacuum-packed bread rolls, a pocketful of bottled water. She counted them twice, as if she’d misread the first time, but the math refused to improve with repetition.
Min-jae’s eyes flicked over the spread. “… Maybe we should ration.” His voice was neutral, the sort of neutrality that only made the deficit seem sharper.
No one reached for the food. Even the EXO members, who sat huddled together like boys at the principal’s office, kept their hands tight in their laps. No one wanted to be the first to admit how bad hunger could get.
Seo-ah shifted against the wall, the breaker box digging into her spine, and reached for a bread roll. A dozen eyes tracked her, as if the simple act of taking food was an affront or a dare. She stood, walked to the far side of the room, and unceremoniously dropped the roll onto Soo-jin’s lap, who hadn’t moved from her post by the vent.
“Had mine already,” Seo-ah said. It was almost convincing.
Soo-jin’s gaze flicked up. “When?”
“Earlier,” Seo-ah said. “The gummies in my vest.”
Soo-jin’s mouth twitched. “They were expired.”
Seo-ah grinned. “Worth the risk.”
The air in the room warped around the exchange, tension stretching and then, impossibly, relaxing by a hair. Within EXO, Baekhyun watched her—the way her left hand trembled, the hollow under her eyes, the way she tried to pass off the pain as nothing.
Ha-yoon, who had been clutching her knees to her chest, tore her own bread roll in half and nudged a piece towards Seo-ah. Seo-ah nudged it right back, expression flat. Ha-yoon pushed it forward again, now with a pleading look. Seo-ah batted it back, the motion more stubborn than playful.
The loop repeated, two, three times, the world’s slowest ping-pong, until Tae-ho, quiet and steady, reached over and split his own roll, dropping half onto each of their laps.
“There,” he said.
Seo-ah stared at it, then at him, then at nothing. Her smile, when it came, was lopsided and a little sad. “You’re my favorite,” she said, voice raw.
“You say that every week.”
“Because it’s true every week.”
A beat. Even EXO smiled, just a little. The fragile peace held.
Min-jae broke it, as always, with practicality. “Eat. You need the calories. You especially,” he pointed at Seo-ah’s arm. “You’ll heal faster.” Baekhyun watched Seo-ah’s trembling fingers as she took the roll, his own hunger a dull ache beneath the sharper pain in his palm. He’d been quietly tearing his single bread roll into six tiny pieces, a nervous habit from years of group meals where you made sure everyone got something. “Someone should tell our manager we need a better per diem,” Baekhyun muttered, not looking up from his task. His voice was too quiet, meant only for the members circled around him, but it landed in the new silence anyway. He didn’t flinch when Sehun elbowed him lightly in the ribs.
Ji-won exhaled. She took the last roll, broke it in half, and gave the bigger piece to Ha-yoon, who looked like she might cry from gratitude or exhaustion or both. Across the circle, Chanyeol nudged his own half-eaten portion toward Kai, who shook his head once, sharply. A silent argument passed between them in glances until Suho reached over and split his roll three ways, pressing a piece into each of their hands. “Eat,” he said, his voice imitating Min-jae’s flat command, and they did.
They ate in silence, bread sticking to the roofs of their mouths. Every bite was a relief.
The introductions came only after everyone had eaten.
Ji-won set down the empty wrapper in her hand and straightened. The room came to attention without being asked. “We haven’t introduced ourselves properly.” No preamble, no softening. “Kim Ji-won. Captain of the Elite Special Missions Squad. We operate under a classified mandate—direct authorization from the highest level of national security. Standard chain of command doesn’t apply to us. We go where no one else is cleared to go.” She let that settle.
She gestured down the line. “You’ve already met Han Seo-ah, our point operative. Close-quarters, threat assessment, extraction.” Seo-ah was examining the gauze on her arm and didn’t look up. “Choi Tae-ho, tactical coordination and field command.” Tae-ho gave a nod that was almost imperceptible. “Kang Ha-yoon, intelligence and comms.” Ha-yoon offered a small, almost too cheerful, wave. “Yoo Min-jae, field medic.” Min-jae had already returned to cataloguing the kit. “Moon Soo-jin, recon and surveillance.” Soo-jin, still at her post by the vent, acknowledged this with nothing at all.
Across the supply room, EXO had gone very quiet. Chanyeol’s eyes moved over each of them in turn—the torn gear, the dried blood, the economy of movement that came from people who had done this before and expected to do it again. Something behind his expression did the math and settled on an answer.
“And you?” Ji-won asked.
Suho rose. He dusted his palms on his jeans out of habit, then seemed to realize how strange the gesture was, and shook her hand anyway. “Kim Junmyeon. Most people know me as Suho.” A brief pause. “We’re EXO.” He said it the way you’d say it to someone who might not know, which was the only honest way to say it right now. He introduced them left to right, each name landing in the silence. “Lay—Yixing—isn’t with us. He was in China when—” He stopped. Started again. “We haven’t heard from him…” The small fake laugh he attempted didn’t land anywhere.
The unfinished sentence sat in the room with everything else.
Chen, or Jongdae as he referred to himself, was the first to speak after. “When you say classified mandate—” He stopped, reformulated. “Is there a command structure still running somewhere? Does anyone above you know what’s happening?”
Ji-won looked at him steadily. “There was a command structure. We lost uplink contact within the first hour.”
Kai absorbed this with his eyes fixed on the middle distance. Beside him, Sehun’s hands had gone still in his lap.
“Other units,” Xiumin said. Not quite a question. He had the focused, unhurried quality of someone who had already prepared himself for the answer. “Are there others deployed right now?”
“There should be other units active in the city, however…” Ji-won said. “We haven’t been able to contact any of them either.”
Chen exhaled through his nose, a short, controlled sound. D.O just murmured, his gaze moved to Seo-ah’s arm, then back to the floor, and stayed there. Baekhyun turned his bread roll over in his fingers and said nothing, which was, for Baekhyun, its own kind of answer.
The silence that followed had a rough texture to it.
Ji-won was the one who dissolved it, without meaning to. “I know who you are, for what it’s worth,” she said, offhanded, the way you’d mention the weather.
The members blinked. A few of them exchanged glances—the particular glance that meant: do not make this weird.
“I liked your debut album,” she continued, with the flat certainty of someone stating a fact they had no reason to doubt.
A beat.
Baekhyun turned to look at her fully for the first time. “... Captain.” Something in his voice had gone fragile at the edges. “That was fourteen years ago.”
Seo-ah exhaled a laugh that clearly hurt her. She pressed her forearm to her ribs anyway. “She said it like she was complimenting their recent work.”
“Wasn’t it recent?” Ji-won said. The furrow in her brow was genuine.
Ha-yoon made a sound of pure suffering and pressed her face into Tae-ho’s shoulder. “Unnie, please…”
Seo-ah raised her good arm across the circle. Ha-yoon met it. The high-five echoed off the concrete walls, sharp and ridiculous.
Chanyeol laughed before he could stop himself—a short, involuntary thing. He pressed his fist to his mouth. It didn’t help. Across from him, even D.O’s expression had shifted by a fraction, the corner of his mouth doing something against his will.
Ji-won looked around at all of them, faintly wounded.
The room didn’t become lighter, exactly. But something that had been pulled very taut went slack by one degree, and for a moment the dark felt less total than it had.
As the minutes passed, the laughter faded away, wrung dry by the stale darkness. Silence settled, heavy as concrete, until the talk spun back to its origin: the Samsung tower.
Seo-ah pressed her back against the cool wall, knees drawn up, arms locked around them. In the low light she seemed even smaller, her edges blurring into shadow. “When I got there,” she said, voice flat, almost mechanical, “there were people. Everywhere.” She let the word hang like a stone.
“They were jumping,” she added, voice rough with memory. “From the fifteenth floor.” Each breath came with a soft grunt, as if pain had taken root in her chest. “I tried to shout, but they didn’t stop.”
Across the room, Ha-yoon’s jaw tightened. She touched her wrist, as if reading a pulse she couldn’t trust. “But there weren’t any bodies,” she said, slow and firm. “Not outside.”
Seo-ah’s head lifted. “What?”
“When we reached the site there were no bodies,” Ha-yoon repeated. Her voice wavered at the edges, as though she doubted her own words. She shot a glance to Soo-jin and the others for confirmation.
Silence answered. Even the boys—Tae-ho and Min-jae—hovering near the stacked crates, were frozen.
Seo-ah frowned, lines creasing her forehead. “That’s not—” She stared at her hands, searching them for answers. “I saw them hit the ground. I heard them hit the ground…”
Her voice trailed off. The only sound was Tae-ho shifting to brace himself, and the pulse of the emergency lights overhead.
Min-jae’s hand hovered in midair, then fell. “The sign came down from afar,” he muttered. “We watched it detach. But after—nothing.”
Tae-ho rubbed the back of his neck. “I walked the perimeter twice. No skid marks, no trails.” His voice wavered. “If they fell, where did they go?”
Questions spiraled in Seo-ah’s mind. Had her adrenaline been so high she hallucinated? Or did something unthinkable devour the bodies? Her heart hammered. “They landed like… like sacks of meat.”
A long beat.
Ha-yoon broke the tension. “Did anyone check the alley behind the east entrance?”
Soo-jin shook her head. “We searched. It was empty.”
Ji-won watched them all, chest tight with dread. In her head, a question burned-Did we see the same world? She tried to steady her voice. “We write exactly what we observed. No spin, no theories. Full report.”
The chill in the cramped supply room deepened. Seo-ah pulled her knees even tighter. Fear ricocheted through her veins, but she forced a nod. The others followed suit, though their eyes flicked around in confusion and disbelief.
She waited until the talk moved on—rations, batteries, a half-formed plan for morning—before she let herself press her forehead to her knees, feeling the bruise beneath the skin, the way her body still remembered the impact. She wondered if it would be like this, if the world would keep emptying itself out, taking bits of her with it.
Inside each of them, a storm raged—doubt, terror, guilt. They had witnessed something impossible. And now, alone in the shadows, they weren’t sure they could trust even themselves.
Ji-won couldn’t tell if ten minutes or an hour had passed. She pressed her palms into her temples, head bowed over the kit’s chaos of blood-soaked gauze and crumpled wrappers. The image of those stitched-shut eyes—eyes that might once have been human—kept replaying in her mind. And the dreaded question that lingered but no one dared ask yet.
She forced herself upright. The squad huddled in the flickering glow of the overhead lamp, silent. Finally, she broke it. “Min-jae,” her voice cracked, “the bite—could it be viral? Like those outbreak films?” She flinched at her own words. “Some kind of infection?”
Min-jae’s silence hit her chest like a bullet. He adjusted his glasses—knuckles black with dried ooze—then stared at Seo-ah’s arm, the ragged edges of the wound, the angry bite pattern again. For as long as she’d known him, the man had never admitted, not once, to not knowing the answer.
Twelve hours ago he’d have scoffed. Now he dared only whisper, “Honestly? I don’t know.” He admitted at last. “This isn’t in any papers I’ve read. Even if I analyze Ha-yoon’s sample, I need a full lab—days, minimum. And by then…” He let the thought hang.
Tae-ho’s voice trembled. “Days? Will it spread?”
Ha-yoon crossed her arms, defiant. “What if it doesn’t? I mean—maybe she’s fine.”
Baekhyun sat frozen, trying not to think what he’d do if she snapped. His mind immediately went to the worst-case scenarios from every zombie flick he’d ever seen, and cried out in his mind, Don’t let it be real. Could he pull the trigger? He didn’t know.
Seo-ah laughed—a brittle, hollow sound. “Great. So if I go rabid, someone’s gotta put me down, right?” She winked at Tae-ho. Her bravado was a shield. Baekhyun caught its tremor.
Ji-won shot her a flat look. “Let’s not joke.”
Seo-ah shrugged. “Just trying to keep us from panicking.” Her smile wavered. “Besides, I’d hate to miss dinner.”
Ha-yoon’s eyes darted to the hallway. “We should—”
Seo-ah cut her off, pushing to her feet. Her legs bowed, nearly giving out, but she masked it by stretching high above her head. Then she dropped her arms. “I’ll stay in the storeroom. Out of the way.”
Chanyeol, sitting at the back, paled. He pressed a hand to his mouth, focusing on not getting sick.
Seo-ah grabbed the only working flashlight, its beam flickered like a dying heartbeat.
Before she could step out, Ji-won caught her by the wrist. “Don’t be a hero,” she said, and the words landed heavier than any order.
“Never was one,” she replied, forcing a shrug, twisting her fingers free. She brushed hair from her face. “Just… Don't wake me if I start craving brains.” Her smile wavered. She tossed a wink over her shoulder and limped away.
Chanyeol shivered. “Is this actually happening?”
“I don’t know,” Baekhyun whispered to himself, but loud enough for Tae-ho to hear. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
Tae-ho’s jaw clenched.
Seo-ah clicked the storeroom door shut behind her. The lock snapped. The beam swung across their faces—Ji-won’s impassive, Min-jae’s haunted, Ha-yoon’s pinched, Tae-ho’s pale. Baekhyun’s chest tightened; he felt like the last living soul in a graveyard.
A hush smothered the group. Ji-won wanted to say something, anything, but the right words were a luxury she had never learned. She watched the closed door and counted her own pulse, slow and hard. If anyone self-isolated at the first sign of trouble, of course it would be Seo-ah. The impulse to protect, inverted into the instinct to quarantine.
“She’ll be fine,” Ha-yoon murmured, as if the volume of the thought might make it more true.
Min-jae slipped the kit into his pocket, eyes on the dark door. “We coordinate, quarantine, and do what we can,” he said. His voice was tight, brittle. “Unfortunately, time’s not on our side.”
Ji-won nodded once. No more words left. They turned away from the storeroom, each carrying their fear like a loaded gun—ready for whatever came next.
Several hours had slipped by, time turning slurry with exhaustion and the slow creep of dread. The painkillers thinned to a memory—Seo-ah felt the bite’s ache radiate, rhythmic as her pulse, a new center of gravity in her arm. She imagined the blackness inside her, slow as ink dispersing in water, and for a while she counted each breath just to prove she could.
Seo-ah sat against the storeroom wall, jaw clenched. She curled tighter, an animal trying to shield itself, trying to hide the voices coming from within, as another wave of pain rippled across her back.
Min-jae’s footsteps scuffed the concrete and found her.
“Come here,” he said through the door.
She groaned dramatically. Then clicked the door open.
He knelt beside her but didn’t bother with small talk, just swabbed her skin with icy disinfectant. She watched his hands, the steady way he handled the needle, the way he kept his own injury hidden from her. She wondered if he was afraid he’d catch whatever it was she had, or if he was just being a martyr in case she went feral.
His gaze flicked up. “Ready?”
She nodded, jaw locked. The syringe slid in—sharp pinch, burning blaze, then emptiness. She could handle the needle. What she couldn’t handle was the room’s slow tilt, the way everyone recoiled, eyes averted, hands hovering as if she might strike.
A brittle laugh tore out of her. “What now? You all scared of me?” She raised her uninjured hand. “Still here.”
Silence pressed in, thick and unyielding.
“If I turn into one of those things,” she said, voice thick and low, eyes sweeping their averted faces, “would any of you actually kill me?” She watched their jaws set but no one volunteered. “Don’t make me haunt you out of spite.”
Still nothing.
Her eyes found Soo-jin by the vent, rifle resting across her knees. “Soo-jin-ah,” she said, voice softening despite her trembling insides. “I can count on you, right?” She tried for a smile.
Soo-jin’s fingers tightened on the stock, brows knitting in conflict.
Seo-ah laughed again—this time the sound stuck in her chest. “Oh, come on.” She swallowed. “Don’t make me do it myself,” she finished, imagining the storeroom door barred from the outside, her body seized by something alien. “If it comes to that…”
Min-jae knelt by her leg, wrapping the wound. The antiseptic burned, but the sting was clean, a lucid anchor. She savored it.
When he withdrew, Seo-ah leaned her head against the cold cinderblock, letting the dull ache pool until it morphed into something she could name: rage, fear, doubt.
Footsteps skittered outside. Through the doorway, Ji-won appeared, silhouette sharp against the flickering light. Seo-ah stayed still, eyes flat.
Ji-won stepped in cautiously, as if facing a caged beast. She said nothing.
Seo-ah let the silence stretch. Then, voice thin and steady, “I just want to know one thing.”
Ji-won held her gaze, unblinking.
Seo-ah’s words slid out thin and even, a knife, not a plea. “What am I fighting?”
Seo-ah had suspected something was off the moment the mission briefing ended—her gut twisted like barbed wire, but there’d never been the right moment to voice it. Now, leaning against the chipped concrete wall, her doubts spilled out.
The words hung between them, brittle and precise. Ji-won’s face didn’t betray a flicker, yet Seo-ah saw the subtle tightening at her jaw, the sliver of hesitation in her eyes. She’d watched Ji-won construct lies before, and she knew the machinery of deception whirring just beneath the surface.
“You know me,” Seo-ah pressed, voice low but carrying. “If you asked me to walk through fire, I’d do it—ten times over. But I need something, too.” Her laugh was thin, almost a whisper. “I need to know why.”
Her eyes drilled into Ji-won’s, as though sheer will could crack open the truth.
“So tell me.” Pain flared up her arm, but Seo-ah curled her fingers white-knuckled around her sleeve. “What are we fighting?”
Ji-won inhaled slowly, as if every breath might betray her. Still—silence.
From the corner of her eye, Seo-ah caught Min-jae’s stiff shoulders and Ha-yoon’s bated breath. The rest of EXO had recoiled, folding inward, as if forcing themselves to disappear.
With a low timbre that rattled the empty space, Seo-ah filled the silence herself. “We’ve done some shit for this country. Stuff the brass would never admit. No questions asked. We did it together.” She counted the years, each scar a shared ghost. “We’ve seen things no one should ever see.”
She paused, letting the weight settle. “Now… I’m not scared of dying.” She spoke the truth. “But if I’m dying, I want to know why. Because I refuse to be someone’s lab rat— some rich fuck’s sanctified science project.”
The words struck home. Ji-won’s eyes glimmered; a tremor ran through her, but her face held.
Seo-ah slid back against the concrete wall, head resting heavy. She spoke softer now, cautious. “Is this like Hongdae?” Her voice was an almost-whisper.
Ji-won’s gaze snapped up— sharp as a pistol shot.
Seo-ah watched the ripple. The way every head twitched at the name, the place. Min-jae’s shoulders stiffened so hard his breath hitched, Ha-yoon’s fingers twisted the hem of her jacket, Soo-jin’s eyes darted between Seo-ah and Ji-won, lips parted. The Hongdae Incident—a sealed-off memory so grim no one dared discuss it at reunions. EXO’s faces went pale. Guilt and fear flickered in their eyes.
She felt cold satisfaction at having scored a hit, at seeing Ji-won's grip clench hard enough to blanch bone. She’d hit bullseye.
"Yeah, that's what I thought," she said, softer, then let her head thump back on the wall. “You knew this was Level Four before the call came in. Is that why you pulled in me and Soo-jin?”
Before Ji-won could answer, Tae-ho’s voice cracked out, “Seo-ah—” he said, half-plea, half-command.
She cut him off, tense. “They didn’t warn us then, did they? Sent us in blind— rats in a maze, no exit.” Her injured arm throbbed in sync with the memory. “Half our team never came out. And what did Command say?”
Her lip curled. “Operational loss.”
Ji-won’s glare could’ve sliced steel, but Seo-ah met it without flinching. “So,” she said, pushing herself upright on her good arm, “what are we now? Expendable?”
“HAN SEO-AH!” Tae-ho’s roar crashed through the corridor.
Everything snapped silent.
His voice cracked the tension like thunder. EXO shrank further into the corners, eyes cast downward, burdened by the truth finally spoken aloud. Minseok’s heartbeat thudded loud in his ears, Suho swallowed past his lumped throat, Sehun blinked back sudden tears. They exchanged hollow looks—none daring to breathe too loud, as if the sound might shatter the fragile web of trust. They felt guilty for intruding on this raw moment, yet their own minds raced: What does Level Four really mean? How many others have died without knowing why? Could they trust Ji-won—or any of them—ever again?
Seo-ah closed her eyes, inhaled one slow, steady breath. Then, quieter than before,“… Sorry.”
She tugged her cap low and let her body slide down the wall, the fight drained from her limbs. Around her, EXO sat in the aftermath, minds racing with the secret now laid bare—haunted by the question: if they’d been sent in blind, what else had they been kept from seeing?
Ji-won stood stone-silent, every muscle in her jaw locked tight. Around them, the low hum of the generator trembled against the walls—the only witness to the tension choking the room.
Min-jae bent over Seo-ah’s bite, swathing it in white gauze with the same gentle precision he always showed. When he finished, he met Ji-won’s eyes—no joke, no levity—just an unspoken question hanging between them.
“Min-jae, maybe just inject poison and save everyone the trouble,” Seo-ah said, loud enough to bounce off the dark walls. The words hung in the air, rancid and unwelcome.
Min-jae flicked her head and half-smiled—his version of comfort—and let the empty syringe clink into the kit. The sound echoed. He lingered, watching Seo-ah struggle to hold her anger in check, then reached for the next syringe.
They all waited. EXO sat against the walls, backs drooping. Chanyeol tapping his boot, eyes darting to the cracked windows, Kyungsoo fiddling with an empty gauze pack as if it might answer all their doubts, Jongdae’s fingers drumming, every beat a question: Why are we here? Could we even survive without each other? What had happened to their families outside this base? Would they ever get home?
Finally, Ji-won spoke.
“My knowledge is no better than yours.” Her voice was flat, like a floorboard creaking under a hundred pounds of guilt. “This morning— 03:12 a.m.— I got a call from Command. Level Four. We were ordered to report to Seongnam Base. That’s all I knew.”
No one moved. The squad waited for more truth.
She didn’t mention the stench of slaughter that had greeted her before the convoy even hit Myeong-dong. She scanned every face in the circle—Min-jae’s nervous knuckles, Ha-yoon’s trembling breath, the others’ silent dread— as if apologizing for not having answers she didn’t possess. But Ji-won said nothing else. Instead, she swept her gaze across the dark panes lining the wall, at Seo-ah’s hollow eyes, at the looming questions they all shared and dared not voice.
“Everything after that…” Her hand gestured vaguely at the pain, at the bite, at the fear pressing in on them. “…is as new to me as it is to all of you.”
Min-jae hovered over the next syringe, thumb poised on the plunger, ready anyone flinched the wrong way.
Seo-ah looked at Ji-won. Wanted to speak—wanted to tear a hole in this lie—but instead she met Ji-won’s steady gaze. Ji-won looked at Min-jae, then at Seo-ah, and gave a single nod. “Let her go.”
“But—” Min-jae said. He’d already wrapped the wound, but his hand lingered just above her shoulder.
“For now,” Ji-won cut in. “If she turns… I’ll do it myself.”
Something hot and animal flared behind Seo-ah’s eyes. She met Ji-won’s stare, nodded once, then forced herself to stand. Every movement seemed to shout she didn’t belong here anymore. She shrugged on her ruined jacket as if that one gesture proved she still had somewhere to be. “I’ll be out,” she said, glancing toward Ji-won, voice low and hollow. “Don’t want to be an inconvenience.”
“Seo-ah-ya!” Ha-yoon scrambled to her knees, almost toppling a box of IV bags. “Wait—”
Ji-won caught Ha-yoon’s wrist with iron calm. “Leave her.” The single sentence was final as a gunshot.
Ha-yoon froze, mouth open, then slumped back against a crate. She stared at Ji-won, bewildered.
Ji-won pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose—someone who knew pain could be endured, if not erased.
“I’ll take first watch,” she told the silent circle. “The rest of you, sleep if you can.”
She turned and walked out without waiting for answers.
Once the hatch closed, the tension twisted tighter. In the gloom, EXO shifted, each lost in a private storm.
Ha-yoon exhaled dramatically at Tae-ho. “Oppa! Seriously… can you handle the lot?” Her tone strained between exasperation and humor, but everyone felt the edge of something darker. She pressed a quick kiss to his lips—soft, distracted—and slipped out to follow Ji-won, shoulders bunched as if bracing for the worst.
Sehun’s brow shot up. “Did she just—?” Tae-ho only nodded, but his eyes stayed fixed at the thin streak of blood Seo-ah left, dark red against the concrete floor under the emergency light’s flicker.
An uneasy hush settled. Min-jae exhaled, rubbing his temples. “She needed rest, but that attitude…” he said, but even as he spoke, his voice trembled with doubt. “She’s always pushing herself. What if this time she goes too far?” He glanced at the others, their tired faces mirroring his concern, then cleared his throat and clicked his medical kit shut. “Well, I’m the medic here. If anyone’s running a fever, can’t sleep, or suddenly decides to go full zombie…” He snapped his kit shut. “… please let me know.”
Minutes ticked by before Min-jae’s voice cracked again, sharper this time. “You know what scares me? Watching two people snap at each other like that— and knowing you’ll never have it. You can’t even tell if it’s love or hate.” He aimed a rueful half-smile at Tae-ho. “Whatever it is.”
Tae-ho stretched his shoulders and asked without heat, “You thinking about your ex again?” It sounded like a stale in-joke, but Baekhyun saw the flicker in Tae-ho’s eyes—he’d heard that tone before.
Baekhyun braced for Min-jae’s usual snark, but the medic only clenched his jaw, eyes fixed on the blood-stained gauze in his hand.
Baekhyun swallowed, voice low, “I honestly thought she’d get herself shot with that attitude.” He flinched at the bluntness of it, but the question hung in the air.
Tae-ho exhaled. “She probably thought that too. So did we.” He tilted his head toward the ceiling pipes, veins of metal overhead. “Without Ji-won watching her back, she’d be toast. They’ve been through worse—together.”
Baekhyun bit his lip. “Sounds like blind faith.”
“More like absolute certainty,” Tae-ho said softly. “Seo-ah only takes that tone with someone she knows will stay.”
He flicked a thumb toward Baekhyun’s shoulder—toward the door where Ji-won had gone. “Those two are all that’s left of their old unit. Them and Soo-jin over there.”
“They met as teens,” Tae-ho continued, voice low. “Survived missions that broke people. Buried friends together. Time and again, they pulled each other back from the edge.” He laced his fingers around his knee. “They spar like cats—stubborn, screeching. But if one vanished, the other would rip this place apart looking.”
Baekhyun stared at his knees, uneasy. “Then why let her go first?”
Tae-ho met his gaze. “Because forcing her would shatter that bond. They’ve nothing left if we mess with it—even for their own good.”
The words settled, heavy. Baekhyun imagined someone who’d tear the world apart for you. It felt impossible.
A soft cough at the door. Ha-yoon edged in, eyes wide with concern.
“Captain’s out in the hallway,” she whispered. “Just sitting there. And Seo-ah’s nowhere to be found.” Her voice trembled between humor and panic, and nobody dared guess which would come next.
The hours that followed had a hollow quality—even in the thin, blinding light of the emergency lantern. Baekhyun drifted on the edge of sleep, fingers fidgeting with the hem of his borrowed jacket, as if he could undo the day’s ugliness one loose thread at a time. The storeroom shrank to the sound of dull breathing and the distant click of Ha-yoon’s comms, punctuated every so often by Min-jae’s gentle, methodical rummaging through the med kit. D.O. loitered nearest Min-jae, shadowing his every move, his own hands busy with folding, organizing, cleaning—as if tidiness could banish what waited outside.
There was a hush to everything now, a kind of mutual agreement not to speak unless necessary. Xiumin, Suho, and Kai had claimed arranging makeshift beds for everyone, a fortress of shipping blankets and torn cardboard.
Baekhyun let his own head loll back, feeling every vertebra in his neck, and tried to imagine tomorrow. The notion felt obscene, like trying to forecast weather on a dead planet. He closed his eyes, but every time he drifted, he felt the soft jolt of Tae-ho jerking next to him—another nightmare, another return from the bloodier side of memory.
The first rays of sunlight crept through the broken ventilation shafts, turning the floating dust into ribbons of gold. For a fleeting moment the maintenance floor looked almost peaceful.
Outside the window, the city glowed as if the night had never happened. Neon crawled up the sides of buildings and died against the sky. Down below, the world was a hush of morning—Seoul before the day’s engines started, before the heat settled in, before anyone had a chance to remember what had been taken from them. In those first moments after dawn, even the monsters seemed to keep their distance.
Baekhyun woke shivering, not from cold but from the kind of dream that left teeth marks. At first, he couldn't tell what had woken him. The others were still arranged where they'd fallen: Min-jae with his chin on his chest, Ha-yoon curled fetal position, head on Tae-ho’s lap, D.O. propped against a crate like a marionette with cut strings.
He listened. Nothing. Not even the static from Ha-yoon’s comms, which had died with the night. He let his head thud back against the wall and waited for his heart to catch up. Through the dust, the morning rays painted stripes onto the floor, bright enough to blind if you stared long enough. He blinked, and the afterimage was a memory of hands gripping his shoulders, shaking him out of sleep.
At the far corner of the room, Baekhyun spotted the shape of Soo-jin slouched against a pillar, the battered stock of her rifle wedged beneath her chin. Her chest rose and fell in a slow, stubborn rhythm. He wasn't sure if she’d slept at all. Her eyes never really closed, not fully. Instead, she drifted on the edge of waking, a sentry in a world where staying awake meant staying alive. She looked really young for someone in her role.
The rest of them—EXO, the famous, the untouchable—had abandoned all pretenses of dignity. Seven grown men fused into one tangle of limbs, shoulders pressed tight, some cradling others, all of it desperate, childlike. Sehun had commandeered two jackets, rolled up as a makeshift pillow under his head. Chanyeol sprawled out full length, one leg thrown over Jongin, whose face was half-buried in the crook of Suho’s arm.
They looked less like survivors and more like a pile of casualties, resting in a heap until someone came to tag their toes. Baekhyun’s own body had become numb, first from exhaustion, then from the cold that seeped up through the concrete. He held onto the sensation just to prove he hadn’t slipped out of awareness. Not yet.
Only Ji-won moved, a slow pan of her rifle toward the door, as if expecting the next thing to arrive would be human-shaped and hungry.
Ji-won was already awake. Not that she'd slept. She remained seated against the cold concrete wall exactly where she'd taken first watch hours ago, rifle resting across her lap. The untouched bottle of water she'd left beside the door the previous night was gone. She didn't know whether that made her feel better or worse.
She stood up to watch out the window, the muzzle of her rifle just brushing the glass, eyes fixed on the skyline. The captain’s silhouette was sharp enough to cut, but even from across the room, Baekhyun saw her shoulders quiver, minutely. Yesterday, they'd been soldiers. The day before, legends. Now, they were a handful of strangers, failing to keep each other warm.
He watched Ji-won break her stare, gaze falling on the heap of idol bodies. She looked at them with something like awe, but stripped of all sweetness. If she blinked, it was to keep her eyes from burning. If she exhaled, it was to keep from making a sound.
Ji-won waited, letting the silence plaster over every crack in her armor. On the floor, Tae-ho’s breathing guttered and caught, the prelude to a speech.
“She’s not back yet,” he said.
Ji-won didn't look away from the doorway. "No."
Silence settled between them. After a while, Tae-ho rubbed a tired hand over his face. "You should've gone after her."
Ji-won's expression barely changed. "And said what?"
Tae-ho didn't answer immediately. The corners of his mouth lifted into a weary smile. "I don't know. You've always been better at that part."
Ji-won let out the smallest huff of air. "You've known Han Seo-ah almost as long as I have. You know exactly what would've happened."
A quiet chuckle escaped Tae-ho. "She would've yelled."
"Mhm."
"Probably walked away."
"Mhm."
"Then come back five minutes later pretending nothing happened."
For the first time that morning Ji-won smiled. "Mm-hmm"
Another silence.
Then Tae-ho looked toward the doorway again. "She'll be back."
Not because he believed it. It was because he knew her. Han Seo-ah always wandered off. But she never left them behind.
Never.
A faint shuffle sounded from the hall. Baekhyun’s breath snagged in his throat. Something in it was familiar, bone-deep. He saw Ji-won jerk her head up. The entire nest of bodies snapped awake, EXO’s famed choreography traded for graceless chaos—knees thudding, limbs tangling, several of them yelping as they collided in the scramble to get upright.
“What—?”
“Move—!”
“My leg—shit—”
“Who’s under me?”
Baekhyun reached for the wall, used it to lever himself up, only to be bowled over by a panicked Sehun. The barrel of Soo-jin’s rifle was already trained on the door, finger knuckle-white on the trigger.
He heard someone—Chanyeol, probably—bang his head and curse, muffled.
Then a shadow passed the frosted glass, lingering. A voice, hoarse but unmistakable, drifted through, "Morning."
The door opened a crack. Seo-ah’s face appeared, pale and smudged with something that looked like engine grease, lips parted around a mouthful of food. She let the door swing wide, stepped in with a nonchalance that bordered on contempt for her own mortality.
She stepped in, and the room went still. Every breath hitched. Eyes tracked her, waiting for a snarl, for her pupils to dilate into something not human. Her movements were too casual, too loose—the kind of ease that felt like a disguise. Was this still Seo-ah? Or had something else come back wearing her skin?
She wore that bloodstained jacket, the wrong size, sleeves rolled twice to show her wrists. Over one shoulder, a battered backpack sagged with the weight of things recently looted. She chewed, swallowed, and assessed the weapons aimed at her with only the faintest twitch of amusement.
No one lowered their guns.
"Well." She held up the half-eaten protein bar she'd found somewhere. "I was going to offer breakfast."
Baekhyun’s pulse stuttered in relief. He recognized the cadence, the way she spat the words like a challenge. He felt something like awe, but the raw kind—admiration cut with fear. Seo-ah was the kind of person who could make an entrance even as a corpse.
"Tough crowd." She took a last bite of her protein bar and tossed the rest at Soo-jin’s boots.
No one spoke. They just stared, the silence a vacuum. Across the room, Tae-ho caught Ji-won’s eye. The corner of her mouth moved, barely. His did too.
Seo-ah slung the backpack onto the nearest crate, where it thudded with the promise of salvage. She rummaged with one hand and, without looking, tossed a pack of batteries in Ha-yoon’s direction. “For your comms. Or your laser pointer. Whatever gets you through the night.”
Ha-yoon caught it, blinking, as if she’d forgotten how to move.
“Next,” Seo-ah announced. She fished out a tangle of cable ties—bright yellow, industrial strength—and lobbed them toward Min-jae. “Restraints. Or arts and crafts. No judgment.”
Min-jae let them hit the floor, face unreadable.
She produced a crowbar next, hefting it with an exaggerated grunt. Seo-ah’s knuckles whitened around the crowbar’s taped handle. She dropped it on the crate, where it landed with a satisfying metallic thunk. Finally, a tool worth the weight. Underneath, she placed a folded paper map, edges wrinkled, the kind only government offices still printed.
Ji-won unspooled the map, pressing it flat with her palm. The city grid shimmered in red and blue highlighter, dotted with Xs and frantic notations. Seo-ah caught Ji-won’s eye, then flicked her gaze to the map’s center. Neither apologized.
“I wouldn’t use the main staircase,” Seo-ah said. Her voice was casual, almost bored, as if she were suggesting a quicker route to the cafeteria. She could feel the doubt in the room, a cold draft at her back, but she pushed on. “It’s not worth it.”
Half the room looked up. She crouched beside the map, tracing a finger down the ghost-outline of the Police Command base. “There are maintenance tunnels. They run all the way from here to the next block. But—” She hesitated, jaw flexing. “They’re flooded. Knee, maybe thigh-high. Not worth the risk unless you like swimming in darkness.”
Ha-yoon stared, lips parted as if she might protest, but no sound came.
Ji-won tapped the sheet. “What about the elevator? Service lifts?”
“They’re out,” Seo-ah said. “Power’s cut on every upper floor. But if you’re desperate, the emergency ladders are still clear. Nobody’s posted up there yet.”
“Yet?” Suho echoed. His voice quivered.
“They’ve moved.” Seo-ah didn’t look at him, or at anyone. Just the map. “All of them. They’re on the lower floors now.”
Ji-won leaned in. “Moved?”
“Mostly in the lobby. Parking. Some outside. They’re not hunting. Just—” Seo-ah’s hand hovered over the building outline, as if feeling heat radiate from the paper. “Standing there. Kind of waiting. Like…” She groped for a word, then let it drop. “Like they’re saving their spot in line.”
Baekhyun felt a ripple move through the tangle of bodies behind him. A rustle of fear, or maybe anticipation.
Ha-yoon’s voice was small. “So they’re gone?”
Seo-ah finally looked up, and for a moment, Baekhyun saw nothing in her eyes but the memory of what she’d just returned from. “No,” she said. “More like…gathering.”
No one spoke. The sound of breathing went thin and sharp, as if the air had turned to glass.
“And the ones we dropped?” Seo-ah asked, but the question was rhetorical.
Baekhyun cleared his throat. “Dead?” he said, hopeful.
She turned to him, a slow, deliberate pivot. “No. Still there. Some are crawling now, but…” She shrugged, like it was a math equation nobody liked the answer to.
He swallowed, hard. “Alive.”
“Parts of them,” Seo-ah corrected. “Slower than before. Missing chunks. One was dragging a leg behind, grinding it into the floor.” A pause. “But it was moving.”
Min-jae let out a breath, a razor slice of sound. “So… the headshots didn’t work?”
Seo-ah shook her head. Ji-won watched Seo-ah as if the right angle might let her see beneath the skin. The question—how are you feeling?—came so softly that it half-missed its mark, ricocheting off the edge of a joke.
Seo-ah blinked, mouth already prepping a retort, then shrugged with one shoulder. “Still alive.”
It was supposed to land lighter than it did. Ji-won’s lips didn’t move. Her gaze flickered, despite herself, toward the sleeve where Seo-ah’s arm was exposed, the fabric just a shade too dark over the wound.
Seo-ah set her jaw. “It’s not worse.” She waited, a heartbeat. “Yet.”
Ji-won gave the barest nod, as if the word itself were a fragile thing she’d cradle, rather than test.
Seo-ah tapped the map, her fingertip making a new circle near the building’s edge. “We don’t have to go through the main floor. There’s an old sewage pipe along the west wall—bolted on.” She scanned the room, measuring how ready they looked for bad news. “It’s a drop though. Eighty feet, maybe more. But we can use the cable ties, and that broken ladder.”
Soo-jin pressed her mouth flat, eyes jumpy. “You sure it isn’t blocked?”
“Not unless mold counts,” Seo-ah said. She paused, then corrected herself, softer, “It’s clear.”
Baekhyun exhaled. “Eighty feet is… reassuring.”
Seo-ah ignored him, drawing a second line on the map. “Tae-ho can lower the group. I’ll go first. Soo-jin, you cover from up top. Ji-won comes down last.”
If there was a protest, no one voiced it, not even Ji-won. It was that kind of plan—brutal, simple, impossible to argue with.
Only when the logistics were splayed out like an autopsy did Seo-ah hesitate. Just a split second, but enough for even the sleepy ones to notice.
“My only concern,” she said, and her eyes flicked to the heap of EXO, “is them.”
The room followed her gaze.
Baekhyun felt the weight of her words settle with all the mercy of a slab dropped from a rooftop. It was not an accusation, but a diagnosis. He could sense every detail in his bones. They weren't trained. They didn't know how to move quietly. They had never climbed anything higher than a stage rig. If something went wrong, they'd slow the others down, or worse, get everyone killed.
The silence was so taut it could have been strung between their necks. Baekhyun clenched his jaw, the familiar heat of humiliation rising up. He heard Sehun’s breath hitch and saw Chanyeol’s head dip, a hand scrubbing the back of his neck like he could erase his own embarrassment. Baekhyun wanted to protest, to crack a joke that would break the tension, but found nothing good enough.
Then Xiumin moved. Not dramatically, not with a rallying shout, just levered himself upright and dusted drywall powder from his palms. He didn’t look at the others, only at Seo-ah, as if he could will her to see a layer deeper.
“We know,” Xiumin said. Not flinching. His voice was so deadpan it was almost reassuring. “We’re scared. We’re not trained enough. That’s obvious.”
Baekhyun hadn’t expected that. He’d expected some counterpoint, a defense, a plea for leniency. Instead, truth, stripped raw.
Seo-ah’s expression shifted, barely. There was a flicker of something Baekhyun almost recognized, a sort of challenge.
“But we’re not asking you to carry us,” Xiumin went on. “We’ll do whatever you say. We’ll learn it on the way down if we have to.”
He pointed at the map, the tunnel lines, the crude Xs and notations. “If you tell us to crawl, we crawl. If you tell us to run, we run. If you tell us to stay quiet, even Baekhyun will try his best.”
Baekhyun made a face. “Hey.”
A couple of tired smiles rippled around the circle, barely there, like static on a dead channel.
Xiumin folded his arms, looked back to Seo-ah. “We won’t be dead weight. Just…give us a chance.”
Seo-ah didn’t answer right away. She let the moment hang, as if waiting to see if the sincerity would evaporate. Instead, it held. Baekhyun found himself staring at the dirty floor, at the useless tangle of cable ties, at the crowbar, at anything except her face.
“… Just give us the chance,” Xiumin repeated, voice even, gaze unblinking.
The room shrank to nothing, time suspended on the aftertaste of those words. Seo-ah didn’t blink. She surveyed each of them—Sehun’s panicked set of jaw, Chanyeol’s knuckles blanching, the crowbar between Min-jae’s knees. She met Xiumin’s stare last, unwilling to yield even a centimeter, and she let the moment breathe until even Ji-won’s patience began to fray.
“Okay,” she said. The syllable dropped like a coin. “You got it.”
No celebration. Baekhyun didn’t dare look at the others. The relief was too raw. Instead, he stared at the grime under his nails and waited for the real test.
Seo-ah’s next words came lighter, almost joking. “Just, if any of you panic halfway down—” She pointed at the map, then at the window, and finally at Chanyeol. “I’m cutting the pipe. Clean break.”
Chanyeol’s mouth popped open. “You’re shitting me, right?”
Her smile surfaced, dark and thin. “Try me.”
He made a sound that was mostly vowels. Somewhere behind Baekhyun, Ha-yoon barked a laugh. The tension, for a fraction of a second, broke.
Plans materialized with terrifying speed after that. Cable ties looped into makeshift harnesses, crowbar lashed to a length of pipe for leverage, dry runs with the ladder against the wall. There wasn’t time to process, only to act.
Baekhyun was first. He felt Ji-won’s eyes on him, the silent command to get moving. The adrenaline threaded into Baekhyun’s muscles, hot and jumpy. Eighty feet of open air. A pipe, a ladder, cable ties as thick as his thumb. No harnesses. No safety. He tried to swallow but nearly gagged on the dry taste of the room. The apocalypse had a flavor—metal, sweat, and the lingering ghost of disinfectant.
Tae-ho said nothing, just braced his weight against the window frame and ran the cable ties through his hands. He gave the pipe a final, violent jerk. It held, vibrating with a sound that made Baekhyun’s teeth ache.
He was first. No argument in that, no time to negotiate. Baekhyun pressed his palm to the glass, feeling the chill leak into his skin. He looked down. The city, veiled in a new layer of fog, refused to reveal the ground. He couldn’t see the bottom. Maybe better that way. He forced his gaze upward, toward the horizon, and tried to pretend he was gearing up for a stadium stunt.
"We're seriously doing this?"
"No better option." Ji-won's answer was immediate.
He nodded once. Arguing wouldn't change anything.
He swallowed hard and reached for the pipe.
Just as he leaned over, hands pressed lightly on both his shoulders and jolted him.
His heart slammed against his ribs.
He spun around and saw Seo-ah standing there, that infuriating smile on her face.
"What is wrong with you?!"
Seo-ah shrugged and gave him a bright wink.
"See you downstairs."
And before anyone could stop her she swung over the ledge.
Baekhyun nearly lost his balance at the way she just launched herself. The clang of her boots on the pipe echoed up the concrete shaft, louder than gunfire in the hush. He waited for the scream, the sound of flesh and bone meeting the street, but all he heard was the rasp of hands, the metallic squeal of descent, and then that muffled hit. It was impressive, and in a way, he hated it. It left him with a hot shame in the pit of his stomach.
Chanyeol muttered behind him, “She’s insane. She’s actually insane.” His voice was pitched low, the joke already stale with terror.
He glanced back at Ji-won for the briefest second. She stared through him, rifle at her hip, a silent metronome ticking in the set of her jaw. No sign of approval. No sign of doubt. He felt like an insect pinned to a slide. She didn’t have to say anything. Her silence was a threat - if he didn’t go, she’d throw him herself.
Baekhyun wiped his palms on his pants. The damp made the cloth cling. The wind coming through the open window was a razor. He swung one leg over the sill and clamped a hesitant grip on the cable ties. The city below might as well have been the moon—cold, unfamiliar, promising worse things than gravity.
He tried to remember the steps: let your foot find a groove, hug the pipe with your knees, go slow. He didn’t trust his memory. He didn’t trust his arms. He trusted nothing, except maybe the bruises he’d earn if he hesitated.
“Come on, superstar,” Ji-won said, barely a whisper, but the words carried enough ice to sting. “She’s waiting.”
He went. It was less a climb than a controlled fall. His shoes slipped on slick metal and every instinct screamed to claw his way back up. His hands burned on the descent, shredded by microscopic grits of rust no one had bothered to sand down. At the third floor, his body started to shake from the effort. At the second, his vision tunnelled. He thought of the stage, the blinding lights, the way the crowd’s noise vibrated in his chest. He never thought he’d want that again.
He landed harder than Seo-ah had, nearly twisting his ankle, but she caught his elbow, steady and shockingly warm. The ground buckled in his knees and his teeth clacked. He tasted blood—maybe his, maybe not. He blinked against the tears in his eyes. Seo-ah grinned at him from the gloom, her breath plume-white in the cold.
“Not bad,” she said. “For a rookie.”
He tried to laugh, but it came out as a gasp. He wanted to punch her, or hug her, or both at once.
Behind them, the next body dropped. Chanyeol’s shadow stretched huge and monstrous as he rappelled down, limbs too long for coordination. He landed like a sack of laundry, wheezing, but upright.
One by one they trickled down: Xiumin, then Suho, all of them evacuating the building like survivors abandoning a sinking ship. No one wanted to be above the eighth floor. Not anymore.
Only Ji-won, Tae-ho, and the others remained above, orchestrating the retreat with military precision. Baekhyun could still hear their voices, the clipped commands, the low hum of something dreadful approaching in the silence.
“Ha-yoon,” Ji-won said, and Ha-yoon straightened like she’d been summoned for execution. There was no tremor in Ji-won’s voice—just that dead calm that made it impossible to say no.
“Yes, Captain,” Ha-yoon answered, her own voice tight. She shuffled to the open window, peered down, and immediately went green around the edges.
Baekhyun, wiping blood from his palm, watched her shoulders hitch.
“It’s fine,” Seo-ah called up. Not quite a taunt, not quite comfort. “You got this!”
Ha-yoon pressed her lips together, then wiped both hands on the thighs of her jeans, leaving parallel stains. The city, eighty feet below, waited with all the patience of a predator. She took the pipe in both hands and closed her eyes.
Tae-ho stepped up behind her and clipped the cable tie around her waist, double-checking the buckle. He leaned in, voice low. “I’ve got you.”
She nodded, once, quick as a pulse, then swung her legs over the sill and vanished into the white cold. The only sound was a hiss, the friction of coat on pipe.
Baekhyun heard her boots scrape the lower ledge, then another grunt as she landed.
A hand shot out, Seo-ah’s, of course, steadying her with a grip that was almost gentle. “Nice landing,” Seo-ah said, and for a moment, Ha-yoon thought she might actually throw up on her.
She bent, hands on knees, and spat onto the concrete. “Hate this,” she muttered.
Another body dropped, Min-jae, landing catlike. His first move was to check Ha-yoon for blood, then check himself. “Nothing broken?” he asked.
Ha-yoon shook her head, already straightening. “I’m fine.” Her mouth buzzed with adrenaline, the aftertaste of fear.
Above, a silhouette moved to the window. Soo-jin. Rifle slung, hair tied back so tight it looked painful. She didn’t hesitate—just slithered out, touched down with barely a sound. By the time she reached the street, she’d already covered them, eyes hunting for anything that might move.
Ji-won and Tae-ho were the last to drop, the pipe almost giving away under Tae-ho’s weight.
As soon as he had landed, he snaked his way through the others and linked hands with Ha-yoon. “Sorry babe. I know this was tough for you.”
Ha-yoon just smiled and pecked his hand.
The streets remained unnervingly silent. Only the distant creak of metal somewhere far away. Ji-won raised a closed fist and nodded at Seo-ah.
Seo-ah led them away from the building, deeper into the fog. She didn’t look back.
Neither did they.
They moved through the city like old tectonics—steady, silent, shifting with every step. The route was ugly, but clear, up the vacant pedestrian mall, past the emptied designer stores with their rolling steel grilles punched in like a mouthful of broken teeth, through the glass atrium where the early sunlight fell in watery slabs.
Baekhyun followed, throat dry, ankle throbbing from the descent. He tried not to notice how every window reflected him a dozen different ways—dirtier, more haunted than before. He kept his eyes on the line of backs ahead, Tae-ho’s hunched bulk, Ji-won’s taut stride, Ha-yoon quick and low to the ground. He couldn’t see Seo-ah. She was already gone—through the threshold, barely a ripple in the air, as if she’d never existed at all.
“Where is she?” he whispered, mostly to himself.
Ha-yoon looked back, her voice barely a breath. “Scouting ahead. She’ll double back when she’s sure it’s empty.”
“And if it’s not?” Baekhyun said.
Ha-yoon shrugged, the movement fragile, almost apologetic. “Then we keep moving anyway.”
At each block, they waited, pressed against whatever felt solid—a concrete planter, a stairwell, the skeleton of a bus stop with its glass all atomized—and listened. Every sound was an event - the wind, tickling loose some banner that beat itself to death against a lamppost. A distant, irregular thud, like a body falling at the far end of a parking garage. The static on Ha-yoon’s comm, as she cycled through dead frequencies until she reached the same answer every time.
They moved, then stopped again. Each stretch felt longer, more exposed. Baekhyun’s palms ran with sweat, the cold air now spiked with a distant tang—oil, maybe, or the long-settled rot of something left too long in the sun.
Then, at the edge of a pharmacy, Seo-ah appeared. She didn’t materialize so much as step out from between two vending machines, as if she’d been waiting for them to catch up. Her face was flushed, hair matted to her forehead, but she grinned when she saw the group.
She waved. “Road’s blocked ahead. This path’s clear,” she said hinting back at the pharmacy. “But there’s… a thing.”
Ji-won moved up, quick. “How many?”
“Not sure. One in the stairwell, maybe few farther in. It’s—” Seo-ah hesitated, scratching at the gauze on her arm. “Yeah we need to keep an eye out.”
And then she was gone again. She didn’t even leave a footprint behind. Baekhyun watched the shadow where she’d been, his own pulse making the world stutter. She moved like physics didn’t apply—like her body had decided on a different set of rules and no one had the guts to stop her.
Ji-won checked the corners. She led them through the glass-raked lobby, her hand tight around the rifle. Baekhyun tried to map the space as they moved, pale marble tiles, shattered windows, posters hanging limp over nothing. He barely made out the words—DOREMI PHARMACY—before the next turn.
They waited in a small, choked vestibule for what felt like twenty minutes. Baekhyun tasted rust in the back of his mouth. Every second that Seo-ah didn’t return, the group’s silence thickened. He tried to distract himself, counting the beads of water on the shattered window, five, seven, twelve, before the next breath.
Inside, the shelves were mostly picked clean, but a few boxes still clung to the racks—painkillers, bottled water, some unfamiliar blister-packs labeled in Hangul. Min-jae took point, rifling through the counter for anything useful. Baekhyun watched him empty a drawer into his backpack, his movements fast and clean.
When Seo-ah materialized again she was crouched behind a cigarette vending machine, eyes dark and wild. She held up a hand—five fingers, then three, then a flat palm.
Ji-won nodded, then called over her shoulder: “Move.”
They cleared the landing and exit through a back door.
Five minutes later, she dropped from the second-floor fire escape of a karaoke bar and landed in a low crouch in front of the group. Baekhyun sucked in a breath he’d been holding and stared. He’d been watching the street, he’d been watching the windows, and yet somehow, she’d appeared exactly where he wasn’t looking.
“Clear,” Seo-ah said, voice raw. “Office tower. Eight floors checked. Elevators are down, but the stairwells are clear.” She rolled her neck, wiped a palm on her pants.
She barely paused for breath before she was gone again, vaulting a turnstile with her good arm and slipping into the lobby of a convenience store like a ghost in a bad dream. He counted—one, two, three—then saw her again, three shopfronts down, squatting behind a rolling steel gate. She waved them forward, a sharp flick of her hand, then was gone once more.
D.O. pressed his lips together. He glanced at the cluster of them shuffling into the shadow of a bus shelter, then at Ji-won. “Where are we going?” He tried to sound casual, but the words came out like a surrender.
Ji-won barely turned her head. “Seongnam Base. We were told to report there after sweep. It should be secure, if anywhere is.” Her voice carried a conviction that dared anyone to suggest a better idea.
D.O. kept quiet after that, but Baekhyun could feel the question hanging in the air, a silent dare. They all wanted to ask: What if the base is empty? What if they’re walking into another dead end?
But his attention couldn’t let go of Seo-ah, the way she’d reappeared, then vanished, as if she could step through walls. He watched her sprint the length of a block, leap a curb, duck beneath a caved-in shop awning, all without losing momentum. She gave nothing to the world around her—no fear, no hesitation. He wondered what it must be like, living in a body that moved because it wanted to, not because it had to.
Tae-ho caught his lingering stare. “She’s slow today,” he said, voice pitched so only Baekhyun would hear. Not scornful, just matter-of-fact. “Usually she makes the rest of us look like we’re standing still.”
Baekhyun couldn’t help it. “She’s not afraid?”
Tae-ho shrugged, the movement barely visible beneath his jacket. “She’s always afraid. That’s why she’s good at this.” Then, softer, “It’s the ones who stop being afraid that don’t make it out.”
Baekhyun watched the mouth of the alley where she’d vanished. “Doesn’t feel right,” he said. “Sending her out there alone.”
Tae-ho glanced at him sideways. Ji-won answered instead, without turning her head.
“Nobody sends her anywhere.” A beat. “We look at what’s ahead, and we send whoever’s most likely to return. That’s the whole calculation.” She shifted her grip on the rifle. “We wouldn’t put her somewhere she couldn’t survive. We can’t afford to.”
Tae-ho added, quieter: “And she knows that.”
Baekhyun looked at Ji-won’s profile—jaw set, eyes already on the next corner. He understood then that it wasn’t coldness, it was the opposite. It was the most careful thing they had left.
The group pressed on in staggered bursts, always waiting for Seo-ah’s return at each intersection. Sometimes she brought news—three on the next corner, one in the alley. Sometimes she just gave the all clear, and they jogged for it. She never led them into a trap. Baekhyun wondered if she was mapping the city in her head, plotting safe lines around horrors only she could see.
“There are dozens,” Seo-ah said. “Maybe hundreds. In the buildings—just standing there. Not moving.” She raked a hand through her hair, found a knot of blood, and laughed. “I almost walked straight into a crowd. Good news is, they’re not looking for us. Not yet. We stick to the alleys, and we can skirt them.”
Ji-won nodded, already plotting three moves ahead. “Did you see a way through the intersection?”
“Yeah. But we’ll have to go single file. And keep low—the glass is everywhere.” Seo-ah glanced at the group, then at EXO. “If anyone’s going to freak out, do it now.”
The city changed as they moved south—more glass, less neon. The storefronts grew taller. Whole banks and clinics loomed overhead, their lobbies lit by the hard white of emergency lights. The creatures stood inside, silhouettes against the glass, unmoving. They watched them against the window displays, in rows of two or three, never moving a muscle.
It was like running a gauntlet of mannequins. Occasionally one would turn its head, its creepy eyes sewn shut. The others didn’t move at all.
“Are they hibernating?” Chanyeol whispered, voice dry as static.
Jongin shook his head, eyes locked on a thing still in what looked like the aftermath of a suit, its body pressed flat to the glass. “Not hibernating. Just waiting. Dormant.” He tried to mask the terror with a low laugh, but the sound didn’t clear his throat.
In front, Seo-ah held up a closed fist. The group bunched up, breathing ragged, every eye tracking her as she pointed to a city bus tilted half-off the curb. “Next stop’s a ride,” she said. “It’s empty. We move, fast and quiet.”
The bus was an old city model, paint blistered to a dull blue, the windows bandaged with tape and plastic. At some point, someone had tried to torch the interior—char lines crossed the seats and dash, the air thick with the memory of melted vinyl and singed hair. There was no blood. That felt like a blessing. There was no driver either, not even a trace. Ghost bus, ready to be haunted by the next set of fools.
Seo-ah was first in, boots crunching on shattered glass. She swept the aisle with the muzzle of her pistol, every step bracing for the lurch of another not-quite-dead thing lurking behind a seat. Nothing. Just the dust and the silence, and the echo of her own ragged breath.
She slipped to the back, checked the emergency exit, found it jammed shut with a bent crowbar. Good sign, or terrible sign. She let her hand rest on the cold metal, then turned, watching the rest pile in.
Ha-yoon went straight for the driver’s seat, her hands already shaking out the comm wires and prying at the access panel beneath the dash. Min-jae followed, hauling Baekhyun and the others up the steps, herding them like a sheepdog with a limp. Tae-ho and Ji-won lingered outside, scanning the block, rifles at low ready, eyes stretched to the horizon and back.
Ha-yoon crouched under the driver’s dash, her voice muffled by the tangle of wires. Her hands flew over the dash, flicked switches, yanked the key. Nothing. The engine didn’t even cough. She checked the battery lights, saw the flatline, and spat a curse. “Battery’s dead,” she called out.
“What about the spare?” Seo-ah was already moving, rifling through the glove box, the overhead racks, anything dumber than hope.
Ha-yoon shook her head, fingers already probing the panels under the wheel. “It’s not just dead, it’s fried. Something shorted it.” She hit the main breaker, tried again, and got a thin, whistling whine, as if the machine was learning to beg for mercy. She yanked the service hatch, dove under the dash again.
She was already at work, popping the fuse box, stripping wires with her teeth when the clippers jammed. The rest of the group huddled in the aisle and under the windows, heads ducked, bodies pressed so close Baekhyun could feel the cold sweat of Sehun’s arm through both their jackets.
Chanyeol pressed his face to the glass, breath fogging the window. “Are we just gonna sit here?”
Seo-ah shot him a look. “Unless you want to jog to Seongnam, yes.” Her lips curled, but the joke tasted bitter. She eyed the row of buildings across the street, counting silhouettes, then counting again. It felt like each shadow moved a little closer every time she looked away.
Outside, the city’s hush frayed at the edges. Baekhyun looked through the grimy windows and saw the figures in the glass lobbies, their faces pressed to the cold, just as before. They weren’t moving. But it felt wrong now, like they were holding their breath.
Behind him, Soo-jin kept her rifle aimed through the rear doors, but her focus was pinched, eyes darting left to right. Ji-won hovered behind Ha-yoon, voice tight, “How long?”
“Fuck this,” Ha-yoon mumbled, wrenching a chunk of wire free. It sliced her thumb. She sucked at the blood and kept working. “If this doesn’t spark, we’re walking.”
“Don’t think about it,” Min-jae said. He wasn’t talking to Ha-yoon, or to anyone; just narrating the air. “In and out. We get it running, we’re gone.”
Baekhyun edged into a seat across from them, knees knocking. His hands wouldn’t stop moving—tapping, flexing, then fisting against his knees as if he could suffocate his own nerves. He watched her, waiting for some sign, some miracle, before it was too late.
Above them, a faint rotor sound pulsed through the buildings, so distant it could have been a memory. The new sound cut through the air—a low, distant chop, thicker than anything he was used to hearing in the city. The vibration built and built, a heavy thudding that made the bus windows buzz in their frames. It was a helicopter.
The sound grew into a presence, not just a noise but a judgment trembling the glass. Baekhyun’s first thought was: rescue. For a second, he let himself believe. He craned his neck, tried to catch a slice of sky through the bus’s crusted windows, but the angle was wrong, the city too tall and narrow. The sound became a scythe, slicing the air, and then the helicopter was overhead—so close the frame of the bus seemed to breathe with it.
Sehun grabbed his sleeve. “Can they see us?”
He wanted to say yes, but the beam of the searchlight swept the intersection and moved on, not pausing, not even slowing. It didn’t linger over the bus or its cargo. The light was clinical, uninterested in the ground, scanning for something bigger, or smaller, or not them at all. The sound expanded, then receded, and as abruptly as it had arrived, it was gone.
Baekhyun’s ears rang in the vacuum left behind. Then something worse filled it.
A new sound, one he’d only ever heard in nightmares and disaster drills—an emergency siren, the kind that flattens your insides, the kind that means missile, flood, catastrophe. It bellowed from every direction at once, a city-wide shriek pouring from hidden speakers in the concrete, a banshee wail that slammed into Baekhyun’s skull so hard he nearly hit the floor.
Ha-yoon shrieked, a curse or a prayer, he couldn’t tell. Her hands flashed, splicing a last wire, and the dash lights coughed to life. The engine didn’t start, but the faint blue glow of the display was an answer worth anything.
Outside, the mannequins in the glass lobbies began to move. Not fast, not all at once, but horribly in unison. Their heads turned together, like sunflowers seeking dawn, every face now pointed at the bus. The siren bored into Baekhyun’s teeth, made his tongue buzz. He felt the urge to move, to run, but there was nowhere to go. He thought of the old apocalypse movies—how the monsters always looked fake, how the real terror was the camera lingering on the faces of the terrified. He’d never understood it until now.
He saw Chanyeol’s jaw go slack. The others pressed lower, as if a few centimeters might save them from what was coming.
Ji-won’s voice was a wire through the panic. “Get it started.”
“Almost—” Ha-yoon gritted, she yanked the fuse with her teeth and jammed it into a new port. The bus’s engine whined, caught, then died. She tried again, and this time it stuttered and coughed, a sound like drowning. Baekhyun’s hand found the headrest in front of him, squeezed until the vinyl cut lines into his palm.
The figures from across the street broke from their window displays, moving with a violence that made Baekhyun’s stomach twist. The first ones hit the street, stumbled, adjusted, then began to sprint—full-tilt, all limbs, like wild dogs let out of an elevator. More joined. From every building, every alley, every shadow—dozens, then scores, then too many to count. They converged on the bus.
“Ha-yoon NOW!” Ji-won shouted, and Ha-yoon slammed her fist into the ignition, kicking the underside of the dash. The bus coughed, choked, but this time roared to life.