Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The city was quiet and Hongjoong knew that was never a good sign.

It was the kind of silence that followed violence, the kind that settled after the last scream stopped echoing, the kind that made you feel like even the buildings were holding their breath.

Ash drifted through the air, fine and pale, falling from a sky that didn’t bother with sunlight anymore. The horizon was nothing but the outline of torn buildings against a sky the color of bone, no birds or voices, just the low, distant hum of machines still doing their job long after the people were gone.

This was their world now, empty of color and joy. The Dominion was training hard to make their country be the ‘best’ but in their eyes basic human life was not a priority. They wanted their people to be bland and gray.

History in schools has been rewritten to justify the government's actions. It has been going on for decades, Hongjoong can only remember glimpses of his childhood where laughter wasn't a reason to be investigated by the government, but he remembered it. In a small place of his memories, it existed and he wanted it back.

He wanted back that world that had color, where people could just be, he wanted it again, so he created The Outlaws. Only a few members knew the chain of command, where Hongjoong was situated on the very top of it being followed closely by the six men around him.

The Outlaws were against everything that was told to them, they were fighting to free the people so that happiness is no longer a privilege but a right.

Every wall around them was scarred, a single poster that said ‘Obedience is Greatness’ and shattered windows, left jagged like teeth, bullet holes painted in neat little lines across doorframes and blood on the cornerstones, dry and almost black now. A drone passed overhead, quiet, slow and blinking red.

They had come to this part of the city to liberate a detention block, intel said there were over a hundred prisoners waiting in cells but that intel was wrong, there had been no prisoners waiting for them.

Then a siren wailed somewhere in the distance, long and cracked like a dying animal, no one screamed anymore, no one dared.

Curfew had passed three hours ago, there were no civilians left on the street, only them.

Seven shadows moved down the alley, soaked to the bone and dragging their breath like a corpse. Mingi coughed blood into his sleeve while San carried the weight of a barely conscious Yeosang. Their faces were pale and unreadable, the kind of numbness born not from fear but exhaustion that outlived it.

When they entered the building they were faced with violence, men dressed in military gear were waiting for them, they were hit and dragged but they managed to escaped.

“They knew,” Hongjoong rasped. “They were waiting.”

No one answered.

They didn’t speak of betrayal, they didn’t have to. The blood on their boots said enough. The Dominion had laid a trap and The Outlaws had walked right into it.

They’d split the city in half last week. Tonight, it folded in on them like a closing wound.

A gun clicked behind them. “On your knees.”

The seven rebels froze, they had no choices left and no miracles coming. They thought they could get away but they were crearley outnumbered.

Yunho dropped first, silent. Jongho stood still until they shoved him down. Wooyoung looked like he might spit in someone’s face but San’s hand was already on his arm pulling him down. Yeosang’s eyes were barely open, so he had no choice. Mingi trembled but Hongjoong didn’t, he tried to fight back one last time.

“I don't kneel to anyone,” he pulled out his gun and managed to shoot one soldier in the head, taking him out instantly but he was soon enough pulled to the floor by three others. He struggled but there was no escaping, he had to resign, they were outnumbered.

None of them ran, they didn’t have anywhere to run to.

Hongjoong felt hands lift him up and throw him into a dark van. It smelled of oil, sweat and antiseptic. None of The Outlaws spoke.

Their hands were cuffed, their ankles too, they didn't have blindfolds on but it was worse when they let you look. Rain streaked down the windows, the city blurred behind them like something already dead.

They’d been in the van for what felt like hours maybe more, time was hard to measure, there were no clocks. No stops and no words from the guards just the occasional jolt as the wheels hit uneven road.

Every turn felt like the last and every silence dragged longer than it should have.

Wooyoung breathed too fast at first, then not at all, then fast again. His knee bounced uncontrollably. “Where do you think they're taking us?” He whispered.

“Jail, they'll probably give us the electric chair or something to finally shut us up.” Hongjoong couldn't be optimistic in a moment like this one.

The stayed silent for the rest of the ride. They knew that what they were doing was dangerous, that they could be caught any moment, they knew it but it doesn't make the thought of dying any less scary.

Hongjoong tried to think of a way to escape, maybe kick the door or break the window but before he could speak his mind, the van stopped and when they got out. When they did, they didn’t have to wear orange suits, they weren’t dragged into court and they weren’t even given numbers.

Everyone went still. They didn’t know if they were meant to brace or run or breathe. They waited and for a full five seconds, there was just silence. It felt final.

It was a long drive into nowhere, all he could see were big trees, almost blocking the sky from the size of them. He was pushed around the back of the van and then he saw it, a gray building made of concrete. Hongjoong wanted to think of something but his eyes couldn't leave his crew, if they separate them he wanted to know where they took everyone.

When the doors opened, the world had gone even more colorless and even ash was drifting in the air like snow.

The building was windowless, halfway sunken into the ground like a bunker that forgot the war ended. The walls didn’t scream institution, they whispered graveyard.

Above the entrance, there was no name just a single number burned into the cement, 8.

They were marched inside, too beaten and wounded to resist. Their shoes scraped the tile, the light was too white and the place clearly had no warmth. Hallways turned and doors locked behind them.

They were processed and separated. He tried to engrave into his head that San was taken to the left while Mingi to the right but after a couple of turns he couldn't remember it anymore.

The guards didn't speak, they just dragged him, his handcuffs were taken off of him and he could see how his wrists were already turning purple.

He was put into a room that had no echo, the walls were padded, and it had no windows, just a white room. They stripped him fast, his black clothes tossed into a sealed bag and taken away by a guard.

Someone handed him a white uniform, everything had a clinical feel to it, as if they were trying to take away his personality.

“Where are the others? Where the fuck did you take them?”

He was met with silence, no explanation given to him no matter how much he screamed. He was only given instructions.

He held the fabric of the shirt for a second too long before pulling it over his head. It didn't feel like surrender, not yet, but it felt dangerously close to it.

He stepped back into the hallway where two armed guards were waiting for him. He was dressed like a patient, but he walked like a prisoner.

Hongjoong was dragged around hallways, until they stopped in front of a white door. The door creaked open like it hated its own hinges. Hongjoong barely had time to register the room before a hard shove sent him stumbling inside. The door slammed shut behind him, lock turning with a mechanical click.

Part of his crew was there and they just looked tired, dressed in white just like him. Then, the rest were being thrown into the room, one at a time.

“Sleep, tomorrow you get up and have breakfast, after that you have therapy. Don't do anything stupid,” a guard warned them before leaving and closing the door.

San sat down on the floor, Jongho leaned against a wall like it held his spine together, Mingi curled his fingers into fists but didn’t unclench them, Yunho reached for Wooyoung without saying a word and Yeosang, who was the last one to be thrown into the room, laid unconscious beside them.

“This certainly doesn't look like jail,” Wooyoung spoke first.

“Where the fuck are we, Joong?” San asked, clearly worried.

“I don't know, Sannie,” he felt like the worst leader in the world, his team was captured because of him and now they were trapped in an unknown place.

“You're in Facility 8, a psychiatric hospital,” a voice came from the other side of the room, voice strained as if it hadn't been used in a long time

The words settled like dust, quiet but impossible to ignore.

They turned and saw that there was a man there, they hadn’t seen him before, hadn’t heard him but he was clearly not one of them, just a pale figure, cross legged on the lower bunk with his back against the wall. He looked like he’d been there forever, almost like the bed had grown around him.

His eyes were half-lidded, somewhere between asleep and indifferent but not empty, like there was something being trapped behind them. He didn’t speak again and Hongjoong stared.

It took a second to even register the words, not a prison and not a labor camp, they were in a fucking mental institution.

The realization hit like cold water. They hadn't been killed, they'd been fucking erased.

A slow, crawling feeling wrapped around his chest, tighter with every breath. He didn’t know how long he stood there, watching the man who didn’t move.

“This is…” Wooyoung broke the silence again, scanning the whitewashed walls. “This is worse than jail.”

“How will we get out, Joong?” Yunho asked, urgently.

“I don't know.”

The words tasted like failure.

He was the one who’d led the mission, the one who’d said they could win this, the one who didn’t see the trap until it was already closing around them. He was the one who got them caught.

Now they were here, wherever here was, and there was a man on the bunk who looked like he’d been forgotten by the world years ago.

“Hey,” Yunho’s voice cut in gently, nudging Hongjoong back into his body. “This wasn't your fault.”

“They knew we were coming,” Yeosang added, suddenly conscious again. “That wasn't your mistake.”

Mingi nodded, still hugging his arms close to his body. Wooyoung gave Hongjoong a tired shrug, like yeah, we’re here but at least we’re here together.

San just sat down on the nearest cot with a heavy exhale. “We’ve been through worse, right?”

No one agreed, not out loud because this sterile silence, this place, it felt wrong in a way none of them could name. Like the walls had teeth, like they were inside something that could digest them slowly.

And that man, that quiet man on the bed, he didn’t even look at them.

Hongjoong looked at the stranger again, still unmoving, still watching nothing. His hair was dark and stuck to his forehead like he’d sweat through a nightmare, his knees were pulled to his chest, hands relaxed over them, thin fingers pale and scarred in a way only time could carve.

He didn’t ask who they were, he didn’t ask why they were there. He simply existed, like he’d already seen a hundred versions of them before, and maybe he had.

They stayed silent, trusting that Hongjoong would come up with a plan tomorrow and waited for the lights to go out, but they didn't.

That was the first thing they noticed, no dimming, just the same cold, humming brightness, buzzing through their skulls like static electricity.

Jongho had tried the door handle twenty minutes ago, it didn’t move.

“They locked us in,” he said flatly.

“We’re not prisoners, remember?” Wooyoung muttered. “Just mentally unstable citizens in need of compassionate rehabilitation.”

San snorted without humor. “This is compassionate?”

Hongjoong sat on the edge of a cot, head in his hands. The bed creaked under his weight, thin springs threatening to snap beneath something heavier than just his body.

Guilt, maybe.

Mingi was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, legs curled up. He hadn’t said much since they got separated for processing and thrown back together in this white room like animals in a cage. Yeosang paced the length of the room three times before finally sitting. He hadn’t blinked in a while.

Yunho was trying to talk to everyone, keep them grounded but it clearly wasn’t working.

“Did you notice how many beds there are?” he said and nobody answered, he tried again. “Eight, just eight, like they knew exactly how many of us were coming.”

“They did,” Yeosang said. “They’ve known for a while, I think. The question is why this place.”

Wooyoung looked around. The walls were so white they seemed to blur at the edges, like their eyes weren’t meant to hold onto them. “This doesn’t feel like a psych ward,” he muttered. “It feels like a fucking freezer.”

“There were no other patients in the common rooms,” Jongho added. “I didn’t see anyone, no one in the halls, no one in intake, just him.” He nodded at the man resting in on of the beds.

“I saw one nurse,” Mingi said. “But she didn’t say a word to me, just pointed.”

“Are they trying to convince us we’re insane or just keep us gone?” San asked slowly.

They all fell quiet, from the far side of the room, the eighth bed sat still and occupied.

The man hadn’t moved since he first spoke. He was lying down now, one arm folded beneath his head, the other resting on his stomach. His eyes were closed.

“They said he’s been here for years,” Yunho whispered.

“Years?” San asked.

“That’s what the guard said when they threw me in. Just one patient other than us, him.”

Hongjoong looked at the pale man again. Almost transparent against the white of the mattress. He didn’t shift when they talked, didn’t seem to care at all. His breathing was so shallow it barely stirred his chest.

“Think he’s drugged?” Yeosang asked.

“Think he’s listening,” Wooyoung said.

They watched him for a long moment but he didn’t open his eyes.

“I don’t think he cares,” San muttered.

“Good,” Hongjoong said finally. “Let’s not bother him so he won't bother us.”

His back was now on the mattress and he stared at the ceiling. The light buzzed overhead.

None of this felt real, none of this felt earned. He had led missions into fire, past gunshots and checkpoints and screaming civilians. He had tasted blood and loss and victory. He had sworn that if they ever went down, they’d go down fighting but this, this was wrong.

A quiet room, a locked door and a man who looked like death in white clothing.

“Joong?” Yunho said gently but he didn’t respond. “We’re alive. That’s still your doing.”

“I brought us here,” Hongjoong said.

“You didn’t bring us to hell,” Yunho said. “The government did that.”

“They want us gone,” Yeosang said. “This place does that without firing a bullet. If we stay, we'll go actually crazy.”

He watched the ceiling, then the light, then at the mysterious man, he looked like someone who knew exactly how much energy it cost to survive and had spent years learning when not to waste it.

And somehow, that made Hongjoong feel even more trapped, like the room had a center of gravity and it wasn’t him.

The room had a weird smell, not like disinfectant or just sterile. It was too clean, so clean it made Hongjoong’s throat itch, so clean it felt wrong, like it was trying to cover something else, like if you peeled back the layers of bleach and floor polish, you’d find something rotting underneath.

No one slept. They lay down, sure, moved around the room but sleep never came.

Everything was too bright, too quiet, too watched.

The camera outside made him spiral, there had to be more all around the place. They could feel it, mechanical and patient. Like it didn’t matter if they plotted because the cameras would know.

Hongjoong sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees, head bowed. His hands wouldn’t stay still, first the hem of his shirt, then the sheets, then his wrist but it didn’t matter because nothing helped.

He wasn't used to being powerless. Strategy, leadership and calculation, those were his tools but now his mind was blank. The rules have been rewritten in a language he didn't understand.

The guilt and the fear are building in his stomach, he can feel the tension twisting and turning. He can't do anything, they were in an unknown place, it had no windows and it was filled with cameras.

He doesn't know how to get his men out. He can't think with the bright lights staring at him and the walls were so white that he couldn’t helo but stare at them.

Hongjoong has to plan something, he has to get them out before they get killed or go insane. There are people out that need his help and he can't help them bu staying there.

He will plan something.

Wooyoung kept glancing at the door like it might open just to mess with them.

Yunho had tried to talk again, tried to say something about strategy, escape, maybe even contacting the network on the outside but his voice had gotten smaller with every sentence until finally, he just stopped.

And then there was the man, still in his bed, on his side now, he had one hand under his cheek and his hair stuck slightly to his temple, he was breathing so shallow it was hard to tell if he was even awake, but he was.

Hongjoong knew it, he new it by instinct.

The man wasn’t sleeping, he was listening. Not to them, not in a curious way but the way animals do, the kind that have spent so long in cages, they know the sound of danger without needing to lift their heads.

He looked fragile and sick but comfortable, like the lights didn’t bother him, like the silence didn’t scrape at his skull like it did Hongjoong’s and like this wasn’t a prison but a home.

Hongjoong stared at him for a while trying to figure him out, trying to understand why the sight of that quiet man in that bed made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

He looked like nothing but he wasn’t. There was something heavy about him, something dangerous in the absence of movement like still water that went deep.

“I can’t sleep,” Wooyoung whispered.

“None of us can,” San replied, voice flat. “Place is too fucked.”

“I swear I heard something outside move when I scratched my nose,” Mingi said.

“Let them watch,” Jongho muttered. “They already knows we’re not a threat. Their guns still had the security block, they don't think we will fight back.”

Hongjoong didn’t say a word and eventually, he laid down.

He didn’t want to since the mattress was too thin, the sheets felt like paper, the pillow was flat and smelled faintly of antiseptic and sweat but his body gave out before his mind did.

He closed his eyes and tried to breathe but the light never left, neither did the silence. He rolled over to face the wall but it didn’t help.

Hongjoong felt a preasure on top of him, as if the ceiling was coming down. He was the one with the plan, he was the one that promised them freedom but now they were stuck inside concrete walls.

Behind him, he could still feel it, the smell, the cold weight of Facility 8 pressing in from all sides and the man, still awake, still quiet and still watching.

Hongjoong didn’t know what terrified him more, that this place existed or that someone seems to be surviving it.

Then morning came but no one saw it.

The lights never turned off so there was no difference between night and day, just exhaustion and the steady buzz of electricity humming in their skulls.

Most of them didn’t remember falling asleep, just closing their eyes and opening them again, their bodies aching like they’d slept on concrete.

Hongjoong sat up slowly, neck sore, back worse, he rubbed at his eyes. The air still smelled like antiseptic and plastic, like every inch of the building had been dipped in bleach and regret.

He blinked once, then twice and then he froze.

The pale man, the one already there when they arrived, was no longer in his bed. He was standing by the far wall. Dressed and clean.

He wore the same shapeless white uniform as the rest of them but it looked sharper on him somehow, more deliberate. The sleeves were rolled just slightly, his collar sat flat and his hair was damp from a sink rinse and even in the flickering fluorescence, his skin looked nearly translucent.

He didn’t look at anyone just stood there, staring at nothing, calm as still water, like he’d done this a thousand times.

“He’s already up,” Wooyoung murmured, sitting up and rubbing his face. “When did he-?”

“I didn’t hear anything,” Jongho muttered.

None of them had.

The man moved before anyone could speak again, just as the door burst open and two armed guards stepped inside. They wore black gloves and carried thick batons on their belts, their faces were unreadable and their boots echoed hard against the tile.

“Get up,” one of them barked.

“Line up by the door, it's time for breakfast.”

No one moved at first but then the guards stepped forward.

“Now.”

The Outlaws scrambled to their feet. Hongjoong was the first to stand, San helped Mingi, who still looked half asleep and Wooyoung cursed softly under his breath.

But the man didn’t flinch, he walked forward without waiting, calm, with a straight posture and no hesitation, as if the guards weren’t even there.

He passed them like he couldn’t see them and they didn’t stop him, they didn’t even look at him, they just moved a bit aside to let him through.

Hongjoong stood frozen for half a second.

What the hell was that?

“He’s done this before,” Yunho said quietly.

“He lives here,” Yeosang muttered.

They followed the guards through the colorless halls. It was the kind of place designed to erase time, distance and hope. The tiles were scrubbed too clean, the walls were lined with thin metal strips and cameras blinked slowly from every corner. They passed empty corridors, sealed doors with no signs and mirrors too high to be useful.

There was no other patient aside from them, and him.

The mess hall was rectangular, white and silent, it only had one table and a guard near every wall. There were no windows, the only light came from the fixtures above, humming like insects.

Trays were already set out, one per seat and exactly eight seats. The food was bland and gray, something like oatmeal, something like broth.

They sat down and the mysterious man was already finishing his breakfast at the far end of the table and he leaving.

Mingi poked the food once and sighed. “No seasoning and no salt. They’re going for complete sensory flattening.”

He thought back to the unnamed man, his movements were precise but listless, like he was going through the motions of being alive.

The others were too busy whispering plans, testing the weight of spoons and counting guards with sharp eyes but Hongjoong couldn’t stop thinking of the man.

He looked too thin under that stiff white uniform, his hands were elegant but fragile, like they hadn’t held anything solid in a long time. His face gave nothing away, but it was clear something had hollowed him out.

This was who they fought for, not the rebels with guns, not the soldiers of the cause, it was for the ones left behind. The silent, the broken, the discarded, the ones no one else noticed.

He’d thought the man was medicated at first, maybe that was why he was so calm, so still but there was a difference between sedation and silence and this was something deeper.

Maybe he’d been in here longer than anyone else, maybe he didn’t even remember what it was like to be free.

Hongjoong lowered his spoon, appetite gone.

They had to get out of here for themselves, yes, but also for him because even if the quiet stranger wasn’t speaking, wasn’t moving, wasn’t resisting, he deserved a way out too.

“Eat fast,” Hongjoong said, voice low. “After this, we check for exits. Vents, back doors, anything. Don’t look too interested just notice.”

The team nodded slightly, chewing slowly.

“And if someone speaks to you,” Yeosang added, “say as little as possible, let them underestimate you.”

Yunho nodded. “Let’s find out what kind of schedule they’re working with. Everything’s got a pattern.”

Wooyoung leaned in, whispering. “He’s didn't say anything. Do you think he can talk?”

“He told us where we were last night,” San muttered. “He can talk, he just probably doesn’t want to.”

After the trays were half empty, the man stood up and left. A nurse came around and without words she just set a tray of small cups, each one of them held a single red pill.

One was dropped in front of each of them.

Mingi picked his up slowly and examined it, he didn’t move for several seconds.

Then carefully, he pressed it between his fingers and cracked it, he used a nail to scrape a bit of the powder out and touched it lightly to his tongue. His face twisted and spat it immediately onto the floor.

“Sedative,” he whispered. “Heavy dose with a short-term compliance, this stuff would turn a bull into a houseplant.”

They all stared at the pills.

“Don’t swallow it,” Hongjoong whispered.

One by one they pretended to tip them back, using sleight of hand to palm them, tucking them into sleeves, cuffs or the inside of shoes.

The guards didn’t watch too closely, they didn’t need to since that was the whole point of the pills.

A shadow moved and the silent man approached the table again.

He walked over calmly, holding his own cup and without asking, sat down beside Mingi after he tapped the chair twice, where he had sat before. His tray was already cleared and he placed the pill cup neatly beside it.

They all stared at him.

“Don’t take it,” San said urgently. “It's a drug.”

“Seriously,” Yunho added. “Just hold onto it and pretend.”

Hongjoong leaned in slightly. “Don’t swallow the pill, dude.”

He turned to look at him for the first time and then, slowly, the corners of his lips lifted, not in warmth but in something colder, a bit sadistic.

Like they were children explaining the rules of a game he invented. Still staring at Hongjoong, he reached into the pocket of his uniform and pulled something out, a small cloth pouch and he opened it.

Dozens of identical red pills tumbled softly onto the table.

The Outlaws froze.

He watched them with unreadable eyes and a smirk still ghosting his mouth. He hadn’t swallowed any, not ever.

“I'm not stupid and my name isn't ‘dude’, it's Seonghwa.”

He simply reached forward, picked up the fresh pill and added it to the pile and then, as if nothing had happened, he hid his pouch, stood and walked away.

No one spoke right away, they didn't really know what to think of the situation.

“What the fuck?” Wooyoung muttered, with a expression that looked between confusion and amazement.

Jongho only managed to look over his shoulder at man walking away, his face back to the emotionless mask he had on before.

“How long has he been here?” Yunho asked, his mouth was wide open.

“Long enough to collect a museum of sedatives,” Mingi answered just as shocked.

Hongjoong’s shocked was gone soon enough because of course the man already knew, he had been here who knows how long, but there was something about the man that made Hongjoong's arm hairs stand up, something unsettling.

Mingi had a chemical background that helped them with recognizing unknown substances, but this man didn't seem to have the same, this fragile, sick man, had seen through the institution’s facade and had been avoiding the pills.

He was physically weak, but Hongjoong could only imagine how smart the man was, and clearly he had to, to keep on surviving in this place.

Two guards approached them after they “took” the pills, to tell them their schedule. They had around two hours to rest and walk around only inside the facility, and then one by one they were to have therapy sessions, also group therapy and they had tasks too, clean the hallways, wash their uniforms and sorting trays among other things.

They stood up once the guards left them alone, and with a silent look the seven of them went walking in different directions to start figuring out the place.

Hongjoong saw his crew walk around and leave through hallways, he went through the main hallway, it was the biggest one. He walks to the very end of it and there was not one window in sight, and every single door was locked meticulously.

“What's wrong with this fucking place?” He couldn't understand what even was the point of them being there.

They could have killed all of them easily and that would've been enough.

So why put them on this place?

He walked back into the main resting place, it had white couches and a white rug but there was no television or a single board game to pass the time.

He wasn't the first to arrive, Yunho was there already seating and Hongjoong sat down right next to him. He looked around and surprisingly they weren't being watched by the guards, they could talk freely then.

“I found their schedule. To sum it up, they wake us up and then we only see them when it's time to eat or to fetch us for therapy, other than that, we're free.” Yunho had a serious expression on.

He was his physical power, a strong and wild power that had helped them a lot before. He was their shield.

“How many of them?” He asked.

“Forty, they rotate during the day but they stay here. If we try to escape they will all appear,” he murmured.

“Fuck.”

Forty fucking guards, even as good as they were, they can't fight forty armed men. They had to escape silently then.

Mingi and San arrived just at that moment.

“So, we know the pills are sedatives, but the damn drinking water is spiked too. Tasted like metal, maybe lithium or something. Also, pills aren't as strong as I thought, they are made to supress higher cognitive functions but not knock us out cold,” Mingi had a somber face.

Hongjoong nodded, filing that away. “Water’s off-limits for now, you spit everything unless you absolutely have to swallow.”

Mingi was his scientist, he studied everything with laser focus, uniforms, air vents and even the steps to make a gun out of nothing, he was the brain.

Then it was the time for his chaos agent to speak, San.

San leaned forward with both elbows on knees, fidgeting like a live wire. “We know they want their patients to be like ghosts, but also the staff. Nobody talks, nobody looks, they just give instructions. This place doesn’t just drug the patients, it wants to break them. That's the purpose of this place. I think they keep it cold on purpose, to leave you with no memory of what normal warmth feels like. It isn't to help people with mental illnesses, is to break rebels and make them into puppets with no thoughts.”

“Then we don't break, no matter how hard it is. We stay strong, we have each other still, if any of you feels even a little bit eerie or in a bad state of mind, you tell each other. Understand?” He asked, and they answered, his crew always listened to him.

He truly hoped they didn't break, they were physically strong, but mentally was another story.

The rest of the crew arrived. Yeosang, his shadow was the first to speak. He was the expert in surveillance in The Outlaws.

“There are too many cameras, I think most of them must be fake and are there just to make you think that you're being watched,” he whispered quietly.

Then, it was Wooyoung’s turn to speak, his infiltrator, a man that can get in and out of a place unnoticed or get caught on purpose to help others get away.

“I saw a fucking padded room, it even had nail scratches on the walls. This place is fucked up in ways I can't even describe, like it was built to make you go crazy instead of helping you stay sane.”

Jongho, the youngest, was the last to speak, always one to wait for his orders to go first. He is all muscles but he also has good brain, Hongjoong can always count on him to keep the rest grounded.

“I found a chart with Seonghwa’s name on it, but it had the information scratched out. I don’t know what to think of it but something’s up and it must be important.”

“Can we trust him?” Mingi asked, staring at the ground.

“I wouldn’t,” Wooyoung snapped. “He’s here for a reason and we don’t know it, maybe he was placed here to spy on us or something.”

“I don’t think so.” Hongjoong spoke softly. “I think he’s actually meant to be here. He hasn’t been investigating, he didn’t even ask us anything, he… he’s been here longer than we think. His eyes show it.”

It was hard to explain, but something about the way Seonghwa moved slow and methodical, like the lights weren't there, like he was a part of the walls, wasn’t performance. It was familiarity. He moved like someone who belonged here. As if the building breathed in sync with him.

“He's like the people we help outside these walls, a victim of the system,” he stopped talking before he got too riled up about the situation.

Hongjoong's sense of justice could grow too big to control and they needed to act slowly and carefully if they wanted to get out alive.

The room fell quiet, the kind of quiet that lingered too long.

That’s when the door hissed open with a mechanical sigh.

They all looked.

Seonghwa entered the common room with a blank face like always. His arms were loose at his sides, but his posture was just a little too perfect. Face wiped of expression, gaze flat and distant.

He had come straight from his solo therapy.

Hongjoong watched him first, Seonghwa’s eyes never looked up. He walked a line invisible to everyone but him.

Yunho stood immediately, calm but alert. A step forward, not aggressive, just defensive.

Seonghwa stopped, one foot lifted back. His weight shifted without hesitation.

Yunho tilted his head, just slightly, like a dog testing instinct, his brow cocked and his eyes sharp.

And slowly, Seonghwa mirrored him, same angle, same tilt. Except his expression remained dead serious, the corners of his mouth didn’t twitch.

Yunho gave a small smirk, subtle and wry.

Seonghwa didn’t.

The two of them stared at each other, not a word between them. The room held its breath.

“He’s watching,” Yeosang murmured finally. “All the time, even when we think he’s not.”

“Then let him watch,” San said under his breath, still tense. “He can’t stop us from leaving.”

At that Seonghwa blinked, just once. He turned his head slowly, his gaze settling directly on San like a weight.

He didn’t speak, he didn’t need to.

Then, like nothing had happened, he stepped away, walking past them toward the far wall, where he sat cross-legged and stared at a blank section of it as if it was the most interesting thing in the world.

No one said anything for a while.

Hongjoong could only hear the distant buzz of the ceiling lights and the low mechanical hum coming from the vents. The scent of antiseptic was starting to stick to his clothes or maybe it was already in his blood.

“I don’t like him,” Wooyoung finally muttered, arms crossed, jaw tight. “I don’t like how quiet he is and I really don’t like that he’s comfortable here.”

“He’s not comfortable,” Yeosang said, still watching him from across the room. “He’s familiar.”

“That’s worse,” Jongho murmured.

San rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not scared of him, I just- I don’t know, I agree with Hongjoong, he needs saving.”

“We don't know that yet, he hasn’t said a word since breakfast,” Mingi added. “No questions, no reactions.”

“Maybe we should talk to him,” Yunho’s eyes didn’t leave Seonghwa’s figure, still standing.

Everyone looked at him.

“Sorry?” Wooyoung’s voice jumped an octave. “Talk to him? As in, approach him willingly?”

“He’s been here longer than all of us, he nows the layout, the guards and the routine. If we’re going to break out, he’s a map.”

“Or a trap,” Mingi countered.

“Look at him.” Yunho didn’t raise his voice, didn’t flinch. “He’s not trying to impress us. He’s not trying to manipulate. He’s not even curious.”

Hongjoong was quiet, something in Yunho’s words clung to him.

“He’s a ghost,” Jongho said softly. “But ghosts know the walls better than anyone.”

Yeosang nodded once. “And he doesn’t blink when we look at him.”

Wooyoung looked unconvinced. “That’s not comforting.”

“I didn’t say it was.” Yeosang’s eyes flicked back to the far wall. “But it means he’s not scared of us.”

Hongjoong crossed his arms, gaze locked on the man by the wall. “If he is what I think he is… then we’ll need him but we can’t rush him.”

“No rushing,” Jongho agreed. “Just… planting the idea.”

“And who’s gonna be the gardener?” San asked, eyebrows raised.

“I will,” Jongho said. “He’s already watching us. Might as well give him something worth watching.”

The room was filled with silence but a second later, somewhere behind the white walls, something buzzed and something clicked, as if the room was also watching them.

Jongho was about to walk to Seonghwa when a guard approached them.

“Kim Hongjoong, your therapy is about to start. Follow me.”

Chapter Text

The hallway was too quiet, like it had swallowed every scream that had ever echoed through it and didn’t plan on letting them out.

Hongjoong followed the guard, keeping two paces behind and the guard never looked back, never slowed, never spoke. It was like being led by a shadow.

His uniform itched at his shoulders and every step made him feel smaller.

His thoughts were a riot.

He was supposed to protect them, he was their leader, but now Mingi was drug testing red pills with his pinky and San was barely speaking. They were injured and completely trapped. He doesn't know if he should trust Seonghwa, he believes he's a victim, yes, but he could also tell on them once he learned their plan.

His mind came back from the spiraling as the hallway turned left, then right, again and again. It had no doors or signs, it was hard to keep track so Hongjoong just stopped counting the turns.

The guard finally stopped and he saw a metal door that didn't have a handle. He heard a beep and it opened. It made a heavy and rusted sound when it moved, a mechanical groan.

The guard didn't speak, he just gestured with his head for Hongjoong to enter and then he left.

The rebel hesitated for a second, just enough to for the air to change and then, he stepped in the room.

The door slammed shut behind him with a sound like a coffin lid and the silence inside the room was different from the hallway, it was thick and heavy, like something in the walls wasn't very friendly. The walls were still white, but this white was somehow colder, tinted with emptiness. 

It wasn’t what he expected.

There were no chains or torture devices, but there also weren't any couches or rugs. The room only had a white chair that had rusted legs, and another one in front of it with a man sitting on it with his legs crossed.

He wore no uniform like the others, instead he wore a gray suit with a pale blue tie and a name badge clipped askew on his chest that read Dr. Jinwoo.

His posture was too straight and his smile was too soft. He looked like someone who read bedtime stories in the voice of a butcher.

“Kim Hongjoong,” the doctor said warmly, folding his hands over the clipboard he was holding. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

Hongjoong didn’t sit, not immediately.

He stayed standing, eyes on the clipboard, then on the man, then back to the doctor. The doctor didn’t flinch under the scrutiny, he kept on smiling like this was a polite meeting between friends.

Finally, Hongjoong sat with his back straight and his hands in his lap. 

Dr. Jinwoo glanced at the clipboard with interest, not surprise. “Kim Hongjoong,” he said again, as if trying the name out like a flavor. “Why do you feel the need to go against the grain?”

Hongjoong didn’t answer. He didn't know what he expected, but it definitely wasn't that.

Jinwoo tilted his head, pen ready. “Do you have a rebellious impulse, or is it more of a superiority complex?”

Still nothing, Hongjoong could feel his rage build up.

“Interesting,” the doctor murmured, scribbling something down. “You’re very young to think you know better than an entire system. Where do you think that comes from? Narcissism? Trauma? A need to be seen?”

Hongjoong stared at him, he tried to keep his breathing steady and even, but the things the doctor was saying made his ears buzz.

Jinwoo looked up again, this time leaning forward slightly. “You know, most people don’t act out without wanting attention and yet here you are, silent and with your eyes sharp, like you think you’re above the process but you’re here, Kim. Same walls, same floor. You’re not better.” That smile never left his mouth. “But you think you are, don’t you?”

Hongjoong’s voice was low when he finally spoke. “You think if you ask the same question in different ways, I’ll start doubting the answer?”

Dr. Jinwoo’s grin widened, just a touch. “So you do believe you’re smarter than me.”

“No,” Hongjoong said. “Just less desperate.”

The pause was only half a second but it was enough to see the glint behind Jinwoo’s teeth dull. He wrote something again and took longer this time.

“This institution is about healing,” the doctor said, voice perfectly measured. “But healing can only begin when delusions are put aside. You’re not a revolutionary here, Kim. You’re not even a threat. You’re just another patient who made the wrong decision and ended up here.”

Hongjoong didn’t flinch but inside, he filed away every word. Every tick in the doctor’s tone, every little weakness, because if Facility 8 thought it could break him quietly, it had no idea who it had just locked in.

Dr. Jinwoo leaned back in his chair, he crossed one leg over the other as if this was suddenly a casual conversation.

“Let’s look at the bigger picture,” he said smoothly, like he was about to explain a school lesson to a difficult student. “In the past twenty three years, our government has made major improvements. The economy has stabilized.”

“For the higher-ups,” Hongjoong replied, his voice sounded dangerous. “Meanwhile, people in the outer cities ration rice for a week and fight over clean water.”

Dr. Jinwoo’s pen tapped twice on the clipboard, the smile still fixed to his face. “Employment is up.”

“Because citizens are forced into government-owned labor programs. That’s not work, it’s slavery.”

The doctor lifted an eyebrow. “Violent crime has dropped.”

“No one has the freedom to speak, let alone commit a crime. You silence everyone and call it peace.”

There was a flicker now, barely perceptible but the smile thinned at the edges.

“We’ve brought order to chaos,” Jinwoo said, slower now, testing.

“You’ve replaced chaos with fear.” Hongjoong didn’t blink. “Order born from fear is still chaos. You’ve just taught people to hide it better.”

Silence stretched between them for a beat.

Then Dr. Jinwoo stood up, smoothing his shirt as if nothing had been said at all. He walked toward a cabinet in the corner, opened it with a key from his pocket and pulled out a small paper file.

“I want to help you, Hongjoong,” he said as he flipped it open. “But I think you’ve confused your cause with your self-worth. You’ve made it your identity and when that’s stripped from you, what will be left?” He stepped closer. “Who are you without the rebellion?”

Hongjoong’s answer came without hesitation. “The same man, just louder.”

Dr. Jinwoo blinked and then smiled again, but this time it didn’t reach his eyes.

Hongjoong didn’t look away, even as Dr. Jinwoo closed the file with deliberate calm, even as he returned to his seat and folded his hands again like they were just getting started, Hongjoong saw it.

“This isn’t fucking therapy,” Hongjoong murmured. “There’s no healing here, no questions meant to understand. You’re just repeating mantras with a softer voice, hoping I’ll start repeating them back.”

Dr. Jinwoo blinked slowly, lips still curled in something pleasant.

“You’re not here to fix me,” Hongjoong continued. “You’re here to make me forget who I am outside of these walls.”

The silence that followed was heavy, as if the man was realizing how hard headed Hongjoong can be.

Jinwoo tilted his head, like he was looking at an injured animal that didn’t know it was bleeding.

“Most patients resist at first,” he said softly. “The smart ones, the proud ones, but even the strongest man… eventually hears the voice inside tell him what he did wrong.”

He stood, smoothed his pants and walked to the door. As it hissed open after a beep, he paused in the frame.

“You will too, Kim Hongjoong,” he said without turning. “It always starts with a whisper.”

Dr. Jinwoo’s hand hovered just over the panel by the door.

Then, almost as an afterthought, he glanced back over his shoulder.

“Oh,” he said, voice light, almost playful. “Before I forget… do you know who’s leading that little group of yours?”

Hongjoong didn’t answer.

Jinwoo smiled. “The seven of you came in as a package but we never got proper intel on the hierarchy, just names. Some minor priors, vandalism, unregistered tech and illegal gatherings among other things”

He stepped back inside, slowly, like he had all the time in the world.

“Nothing serious enough to send you to hail,” he added, voice smooth. “So the assumption is that one of you… knows who the head of the snake is but we’re still sorting that out.”

He studied Hongjoong with something sharp now, something intentional. “It’s funny actually, none of you stood out during intake, no resistance or hero speeches.” A pause. “But your resilience inside this facility makes me think you seven were in a higher rank than we thought.”

Hongjoong kept his expression still, neutral, bored but inside though, something burned.

They didn’t know, they had him locked in a room with one of the regime’s psychologists and they didn’t know who he was.

And that meant one thing, one amazing thing. He still had leverage.

Dr. Jinwoo took one step closer. “You don’t strike me as a follower Kim, but then again, neither did the others.” He looked amused now, like he was dangling a thread just to see who’d twitch first. “If you do remember anything useful,” he said, turning back to the door, “just mention it during your next session. We’re always listening.”

The door opened completely now and this time, Jinwoo didn’t wait for a response. He stepped through and disappeared into the hallway without another word leaving the door open for Hongjoong to go too.

Hongjoong sat there a moment longer, surrounded by white walls, listening to the hum in the walls. Then he stood, his eyes sharper than before.

They didn’t know who he was and that meant the game was still his to play.

Hongjoong walked out and the hallway was just as quiet as before, the same sterile hum in the lights and the same smell in the air, like bleach and something underneath it that no one talked about.

The guard was waiting outside, the same one from earlier. He didn’t speak, just turned around and began walking, assuming Hongjoong would follow and he did.

The hallways twisted again and again until they didn’t even feel like hallways anymore, more like the inside of a machine. One that kept moving even when it didn’t seem like it was doing anything.

When they reached the common area, the rest of the Outlaws were sitting on the couch and floor, backs to the wall, their eyes finding him immediately. Some of them stood but they didn’t rush over.

He stepped closer with the guard by his side.

“Song Mingi,” the guard called.

Everyone turned and Mingi stood slowly, his eyes landing on Hongjoong before he left. He didn’t say anything, just gave him a small nod, one that said you’re okay? and you’re still you? all at once.

Hongjoong didn’t nod back but he didn’t look away either. Then Mingi followed the guard into the hallway and the room seemed to relax just as the guard was out of sight.

Wooyoung spoke first. “Hey.”

Yunho looked at him carefully. “How was it?”

Hongjoong just stared at them for a moment, then let out a breath that didn’t sound like relief.

“It’s definitely not therapy,” he said. “It’s calculated. They’re trying to find cracks in your head and in what you believe.”

“What did they ask?” Jongho said.

Hongjoong shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. They don’t even know who we are.”

Wooyoung frowned. “What do you mean?”

“They don’t know our ranks,” he said. “They’re still guessing, that means we still have time to think of something and get out.”

“But how? This place is basically a maze with no way out,” Wooyoung said desperately.

“There's no windows and the doors don't have handle, but there has to be a way the guards and nurses get in and out. Find it.”

“Yes, boss,” they answered in unison but in a lower tone than what they usually use.

They started looking around for something, anything that helped them with their goal, but they were interrupted by a loud clock type sound, it came from everywhere and it lasted around ten seconds.

 It wasn't loud enough to hurt, but it was enough to startle them.

San was the first to get out of the suprised state and he looked at Seonghwa, he had to know what was going on.

He watched as the man walked on the far side of the room and stood in front of the wall. He was just standing there, eyes scanning something none of them had paid attention to before.

“What’s he looking at?” San asked quietly.

Yeosang moved toward him. “I don’t know,” he said, and then he walked closer too, “It's a chore list.”

Pinned to the wall, typed in clean letters and marked with a red stamp at the bottom. The paper looked old and used but the ink was fresh. There were names, all of their names.

“Laundry,” Yeosang read. “Bathroom scrub, cleaning the room… they’ve given us jobs.”

“Are you kidding?” Wooyoung muttered, walking closer. “They’re making us do chores?”

Hongjoong stepped up behind them and read the list silently. His name was there, so was Mingi’s and so was Seonghwa’s.

Every name had a task.

“They’re trying to normalize it,” Jongho said. “Make it feel like we’re part of something.”

“No,” Yunho muttered. “They’re watching how we obey.”

Seonghwa still hadn’t moved. He stood in front of the paper like he was reading something no one else could see. Then, after a long moment, he reached out and gently tapped one name with two fingers.

His own name. Then, nodded once to himself and walked away.

He didn’t say a word, didn’t even look back. Seonghwa just crossed the room and turned down one of the long white hallways with quiet steps and straight posture.

For a second, no one moved.

Then Hongjoong’s eyes went back to the chore list to look for his name. He read one that said floor scrubbing and beside it were two names. His and Seonghwa’s.

He sighed through his nose, ran a hand down his face and stepped away from the others.

“Be careful,” San said lowly.

Hongjoong patted him in the shoulder and followed were Seonghwa had walked.

He found him near a supply closet. It was already open and a bucket of water was beside him. Seonghwa didn’t say anything when he noticed Hongjoong. The man just handed him a pair of gloves without looking and put his own gloves on.

Hongjoong noticed that the floor was already spotless but it didn’t seem to matter since they scrubbed anyway.

Then, curiously, Seonghwa spoke first. “They made you go first.”

It wasn’t a question but Hongjoong answered anyway and he didn’t stop scrubbing. “Yeah.”

“They always start with the ones they think won’t break fast,” Seonghwa said. “But they still expect you to break.”

Hongjoong looked over at him but Seonghwa wasn’t looking back. “How long have you been here?”

Seonghwa wrung out the sponge slowly. “Long enough that they stopped calling me by name.” The man dipped the sponge again and kept working.

Hongjoong hesitated for a second, but he realized that he had nothing to lose, so he asked. “Hey uh… do you know how many guards are assigned per wing?”

Seonghwa didn’t answer right away. He finished the square he was working on first with exact precision, it looked methodical.

“Two in the morning, three in the evening and none after lights out,” he said quietly. “Unless the cameras pick something up.”

“And how do the cameras work?”

“Most work, a few don’t but they don’t fix the broken ones. They just leave them there to keep people guessing.”

Hongjoong pressed his hand against the floor. It was clean, almost too clean, it smelled like chemicals and control. “Are there any blind spots?”

Seonghwa finally looked at him. “Not on this floor, not unless you know where to stand.”

They worked in silence after that, the only sound between them was the drag of sponge against tile and the occasional drip of water hitting the floor.

It was strange, how natural Seonghwa looked doing it, he didn't look like someone being forced or like someone pretending to be calm. He just looked as if he’d done this a thousand times, maybe more.

Hongjoong kept his eyes down, but his attention stayed on the man beside him.

He didn’t trust him completely but he didn’t think Seonghwa was trying to deceive them either. He wasn’t calculating in the way spies were, he was just there and yet somehow, that made him more dangerous than any soldier Hongjoong had ever faced.

Seonghwa didn’t need to posture, he didn’t need to prove himself, he didn’t even seem interested in being understood.

He was either deeply broken or completely rebuilt, maybe even both.

Whatever he was, he wasn’t afraid and that made Hongjoong more uncomfortable than anything else.

The minutes passed slowly, like the walls were stretching time just to see what they’d do with it.

They moved from one patch of tile to the next, there wasn’t a speck of dirt in sight but they cleaned it anyway.

Hongjoong’s arms were starting to ache from the repetition, from the way they pressed down hard with every stroke like it made a difference.

He glanced at Seonghwa again. The man was completely focused, like he was doing something delicate. Like this wasn’t cleaning but it was precision work.

Eventually, Hongjoong broke the silence again.

“Why’d you tell me?” he asked, not looking at him. “All that stuff about the guards and the cameras. Why answer?”

There was a pause but not a long one and Seonghwa didn’t stop scrubbing.

“I don’t care if you leave,” he said with a voice so calm and so casual that it felt as if he was talking about the weather. “I don’t care if you stay, either.”

Hongjoong looked over at him.

Seonghwa sat back for a moment and took off one glove, then the other. His hands were pale and wrinkled from the water, and he flexed them once before continuing.

“But if you try to leave and get caught,” Seonghwa said, “I want to be there. I want to see your faces when you realize it’s not going to work.” Then he looked at Hongjoong, expression unreadable. “So I can laugh.”

Seonghwa looked down at the floor again, dipped the sponge back into the bucket. “And if you do get out,” he continued, “I want to see the guards’ faces, the doctors and the nurses. The ones watching through the walls.” A beat passed. “So I can laugh at them too.”

He went back to scrubbing like nothing had been said, like the words hadn’t dropped in the space between them like stones. Hongjoong stared at him for a while longer and then he went back to scrubbing too.

He didn’t know if Seonghwa was helping them or watching a play unfold, and he also didn’t know which answer was worse.

Hongjoong kept scrubbing and scrubbing until eventually, Seonghwa stood up.

He didn’t say they were finished, he didn’t look over or nod. He just wrung out the sponge one last time and dropped it in the bucket.

Hongjoong watched him start cleaning their supplies and he assumed they were done. He pulled his gloves off slowly and dropped them next to a sink where Seonghwa was already rinsing the bucket. 

The gloves were cleaned and the water dumped. Not a drop spilled even when none had told them to do any of it, Seonghwa just knew. He just dried the bucket, folded the rags and returned everything to the closet.

Then he walked out and Hongjoong followed like a lost duck.

They arrive at the common room, it was quiet when they returned and San was sitting on the floor, back against the far wall. Wooyoung next to him, arms crossed and eyes on the door like he’d been waiting.

Yeosang stood near the chore list again, he was still reading or just thinking, and Mingi was back. He was sitting with Jongho, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, his expression was hard to read, but there was something off about it. 

Hongjoong scanned the room and realized that Yunho was gone. He didn’t need to ask where, clearly on his therapy.

He walked over to them and they didn’t speak at first.

Wooyoung looked up, then away, Mingi gave him a short glance and San barely moved.

Only Jongho nodded, slow and solid. Yeosang stepped back from the wall and crossed the room. He didn’t sit, just stood near the group.

“They made us work,” Mingi said.

“They gave you a job too?” Hongjoong asked.

Mingi nodded. “Cleaning hallways, first floor, south wing.” He didn’t sound angry, but tired. “Guards don’t walk that hallway often,” he added. “Didn’t see anyone the whole time.”

“What about doors?”

“Everything was locked and they don't have labels.”

Yeosang was next, his voice was quiet. “They had me in the kitchen. They don’t store anything there,” Yeosang said. “No cold storage or dry goods, it just had burners, one fridge for the day’s ingredients and nothing else. They have to bring it in from somewhere else. They don’t keep anything inside.”

“Controlled,” Jongho said.

“Planned,” Wooyoung added. “No one here has access to anything.”

San leaned his head back against the wall. “Bathrooms are spotless,” he muttered. “Too clean.”

“They gave you scrubbing duty,” Mingi said to Hongjoong and he nodded once.

“With him?” Wooyoung asked and Hongjoong gave another nod, no one said anything for a moment.

Then Yeosang looked at the hallway. “Yunho’s still in.”

They sat close, but not huddled, still too exposed for that.

“We need to start,” Jongho said. “Something, a base plan.”

“Recon first,” Yeosang added. “We’re still blind.”

“Find the delivery entrance,” Mingi said. “If the food comes from outside, it has to come through somewhere.”

“I don’t think they let the staff in and out either,” Wooyoung muttered. “Haven’t seen a single door that didn’t need a guard’s badge.”

San shifted beside him. “We’ll find one.”

They weren’t loud but they weren’t careful either. They were used to speaking like this, used to making plans in corners or hallways. They kept talking until Seonghwa walked up.

He stopped next to them, not close enough to crowd, but close enough to be heard.

“You guys are funny when you make fake scenarios,” he said in what sounded like fake amusement, the words dropped like cold water.

Hongjoong looked up. “What?”

Seonghwa didn’t explain but he turned his head and tapped the wall just beside him, his fingers pressed twice against a small, round black spot near the baseboard, it was barely noticeable unless you were looking for it. It was the size of a coin, flat, glossy and it wasn't blinking.

Then he pointed to his ear while making direct eye contact with Hongjoong.

The man didn’t smile and he didn’t wait for a reaction, he just turned around and walked away, slipping back toward the hallway without another word, like none of it had been worth lingering for.

The silence that followed stretched long and wide across the room.

Wooyoung was the first to move. He stood slowly, with his arms crossed tightly over his chest and then he paced in a short circle like the air was too thin where he’d been sitting.

“I hate him,” he said and no one corrected him. “He was standing there,” Wooyoung continued, not looking at anyone. “Listened to everything, he let us keep talking. He could’ve warned us earlier but he waited.”

Jongho shook his head. “He warned us before we got to the real stuff.”

“Yeah, but he watched,” Wooyoung muttered. “He waited until it was funny to him.”

Mingi leaned forward, arms on his legs, hands clasped and his voice was lower than usual. “He didn’t have to say anything, but he still did.”

Yeosang hadn’t moved at all, he was still staring at the spot on the wall where Seonghwa had tapped. His eyes didn’t blink much when he was thinking.

San’s gaze lingered on the hallway Seonghwa had disappeared into. “He knows this place, all of it and he doesn’t owe us anything.”

Hongjoong hadn’t spoken. He sat the same way he had when he’d left the therapy room, hands loose in his lap, spine straight but now there was a tension in his jaw that hadn’t been there before.

They were used to being watched, by drones, by checkpoints, by their own people in case someone talked too loud, but this was different. This wasn’t surveillance, this was performance.

Seonghwa hadn’t interrupted to stop them, he hadn’t come over to join in, he had pointed at the stage. He reminded them that they weren’t alone in the audience and then walked off like none of it was worth remembering.

Hongjoong didn’t know what bothered him more, that Seonghwa might be mocking them… or that he might’ve actually been warning them.

They didn’t talk for a while but they shifted closer. Shoulders angled, voices low, eyes flicking to the hallway every few seconds.

Old habits weren’t dead. They were buried shallow.

“We don’t make a full plan,” Hongjoong said. “Not yet.”

“Fragments,” Jongho added. “Separate. Spread out.”

“No more than one idea at a time,” Yeosang said. “Just enough to move.”

“If we get to three solid points,” Mingi murmured, “we might find a crack.”

“Any further,” San said, “and we’re doing their job for them.”

They nodded. The conversation ended like that, nothing drawn out and no resolve. They knew what they meant.

Three guards walked in.

“Time for lunch, get your asses up.”

They stood, slowly. Wooyoung didn’t stop glaring and Mingi rolled his neck like it ached. They sat down in the same seats, same as breakfast, same as before.

The guards set the trays drown in front of each one, the food looked the same, bland and processed, like it had been drained of anything human before arriving at the plate.

The guards stood against the walls, not watching one person but watching all of them.

The tension stayed in the room like steam that couldn’t escape and then Seonghwa walked in, in the same white uniform and the same careful steps.

He walked toward them, quiet and unbothered, he stopped at the end of the table and looked at the chair, tapped it twice and sat, like he was just another part of the schedule, like nothing about him was strange at all.

No one told him to leave and no one looked up to invite him, but no one stopped him either.

One of the guards walked toward Seonghwa with a tray in hand. He was younger than the others, maybe new. His grip on the tray wasn’t steady.

Seonghwa hadn’t moved yet and the guard stepped closer, one step at a time. Then Seonghwa lifted his hand to receive the tray. The movement was slow and calm, barely even a gesture, but the guard flinched and took half a step back.

He caught himself quickly and his eyes darted to the other guards across the room. No one said anything, but the tension was loud.

Seonghwa didn’t say a word. He took the tray from the boy himself, fingers brushing just barely against the plastic and began to eat. He didn’t look at them, not once.

He sat at the edge of the table, back straight and hands precise. 

The others kept eating, but their rhythm shifted. Their forks moved slower, the bites were quieter and no one stopped watching him. 

Yeosang was the stillest, his tray untouched in front of him. He didn’t say anything, didn’t move his head, but his eyes flicked to Seonghwa’s hand as he picked up a spoon.

He watched how he brought it to his mouth, chewed and counted, exactly eight times. Then he swallowed and did it again. Spoon, chew eight times and swallow. Like it was a rule or a ritual. 

Yeosang didn’t look away, not immediately. Mingi noticed too, he lowered his head like he was adjusting his tray but his eyes stayed up.

“He’s counting,” he whispered, barely audible. “Every bite.”

Hongjoong didn’t respond. He was already watching, already counting with him.

The guards didn’t seem to notice or maybe they didn’t care.

Seonghwa kept eating woth no change in pace and no signs of discomfort.

After lunch, the nurse came and she held a tray with eight cups of small red pills, same kind and had the same shape. Each one was placed into their hands without explanation.

The Outlaws didn’t react, they’d already learned.

Mingi swallowed air and tucked the pill under his tongue. Yeosang pretended to chew. San kept it between his molars until no one was watching. Wooyoung smiled while he slipped his into the sleeve of his shirt.

Hongjoong didn’t bother pretending. He just tilted his head back, made it look convincing and kept the pill tucked in his cheek.

None of them swallowed and none of them blinked.

Then they were moved, down another hallway. They were brought into a new room.

It was big and it had the same white walls as the whole building. A man was already sitting in front of them holding a clipboard. He had glasses and was wearing a black sweater.

Dr. Minho, is what his name badge said. The man didn’t smile like the last one, he didn’t pretend to be warm.

They sat in the eight chairs that were all next to each other. Seonghwa didn’t hesitate, he just sat at the end, quiet and with perfect posture.

Dr. Minho looked at them one by one, not quite like a doctor but like someone trying to guess what kind of explosion each of them might be.

Then he began. “Why do you think rebellion is a sign of strength?”

No one answered but he still clicked his pen and wrote something on his clipboard. The words dropped into the room like weight.

“Do you believe disobedience makes you righteous?” He looked down at his clipboard and clicked his pen once and twice. “Is it worth it?” he asked. “Throwing your lives away over something you’ll barely be remembered for?”

Mingi’s hands didn’t move. Jongho was still, but his eyes didn’t leave the man’s face and Hongjoong didn’t blink.

Dr. Minho paused and turned his head to look at Seonghwa.

The doctor didn’t look confident anymore but more like someone who’d walked too close to a cold room and remembered too late what was inside.

His voice shifted slightly when he spoke, a bit lower bu not softer. “Do you still think some things are hallucinations?” he asked. “Do you still believe what happened to you was worth it?” He didn’t wait long before adding, quieter now, “Or do you finally see it for what it was, a waste?”

The air thinned and Seonghwa who was staring at the floor, turned his head slowly up toward him. His expression didn’t change bit something in the silence pulled.

“I know what’s real and what’s not,” Seonghwa said, voice level, calm. He paused, then tilted his head just slightly. “I know the woman who lives in Busan, on Third Street and house number four is real. I know she makes coffee every morning and feeds the stray cat that sleeps on your doorstep.” The doctor didn’t move. “She’s your wife, isn’t she?” Seonghwa added. “She’s real.”

Then he looked down again and didn’t say anything else.

Dr. Minho said nothing. He marked something down on the clipboard with a shaking hand and moved on.

"All eight of you are here because you have a need for attention and I'm here to let you understand that what the government is doin is for the greater good."

Hongjoong can't decide if what the doctor said was because he was brainwashed or if he actually believed the stuff he was saying, but either way, it was nonsense.

"Are you actually stupid?" Wooyoung is voice was raising and he stood up, letting his chair fall back from the force. ""Children die from starvation and you call it 'greater good' you fucking psychopath!"

He started to walk toward the doctor, when Hongjoong saw the man click a bottom that was placed on the chair's armrest. As he did that, two guards stepped into the room urgently going toward Wooyoung. San was the first to stand up to stop them, followed by the rest of them.

When they got close the men started hitting them with their batons to throw them to the ground. Hongjoong felt a hit on his head that made him see stars, but for some reason, he only felt one when they stopped. He was kneeling on the ground when he opened his eyes and saw a bizarre image in front of him. Seonghwa was standing between Wooyoung and the guards.

"Stop it, or you know what will happen to you," his voice was cold and dangerous, it made Hongjoong shiver a bit or maybe it was the coldness of the room. "I'll go with you, they don't know any better."

And as if it was a magic trick, the men seemed to accept that simple request. 

"All of you, leave." The order came from the bigger guard.

They left fast and breathlessly. All of them hurting from the hitting. 

"What the fuck just happened?" Wooyoung asked.

"I don't know, but what you did was stupid."

"What? He was being stupid!"

"Wooyoung, we want to get out, not get punished and moved to an even harder place to get out of," Hongjoong was a bit disappointed in him, but he also understood where he was coming from. He felt it too, the rage, but they had to keep calm.

"I won't do it again, but it just made my skin crawl hearing that."

They walked to the common room and sat down on the couches where all of them looked at each other in a way that let all of them know they were  thinking the same thing.

"Why did he help us?" Yunho was the first to say it out loud.

"I don't know but he had to have a reason," Mingi answered.

"They obeyed him, like he has power here," Yeosang pointed out the obvious.

"I think we were all wrong," Jongho spoke next.

"What do you mean?" Wooyoung asked as he paced around the place, unable to just seat down.

"He's not a patient or a victim, not even a spy. He has to be something else entirely."

"Clearly, but what is he?" San sounded desperate to know. 

"Stupid, that's what I am," the man suddenly appeared behind them, surprising all of them. "And all of you are too. If you actually want to get out, that definitely wasn't the way to do it."

Chapter Text

“And what were we supposed to do? Sit and let that dumb fucker talk nonsense?” Wooyoung approached Seonghwa close enough for it to be threatening, but the man didn't look threatened.

“Exactly, I thought you were supposed to be smarter than that, but clearly you aren't,” he gave a sadistic smile to Wooyoung, making him even more upset.

“Then why did you step in? That makes you more stupid than us,” Wooyoung raised his brows at him and lifted his chin.

“I told your boss already. I want to see how this plays out, I can't do that if you get caught before you try,” he answered simply, as if stating an ordinary fact instead of saying something that makes all of them look at him as if he was crazy.

“Excuse me? Are we just some type of entertainment for you?” It was San’s turn to look bewildered now.

“Yes.” That's all he said before leaving the room.

“That man makes me angry in ways I can't even describe,” San said in a flat tone.

“Hey uh…How does he know Hongjoong is the boss?” Jongho was the only one who seemed to have picked that up.

Hongjoong went still as a board and tried to think back to the moment they spent together cleaning, he didn't say anything that could let the man even suspect that he was the boss.

“I don't know, but even if he is fucking weird, he knows things that can help us get out,” he said finally.

“Yeah, but at the cost of being his fucking toys,” Wooyoung was clearly upset by the idea.

They stayed silent for a moment, all of them trying to think if it was worth it, if they had any other options of getting put that didn't involve asking the man for help, but they couldn't think of anything.

“We have to rely on him, wether we like it or not,” Hongjoong had decided that they were making no progress, the things he knows about the place were thanks to the weird man.

“Maybe we can try to get close to him, so he sees that we are more than what he thinks,” Yeosang, the always down to earth man, made a great point.

“And how the fuck do we do that? All we know about him is his name,” Wooyoung went to sit dow finally, after what felt like hours of seeing him walk in circles.

“We investigate, Jongho said there was a file with his name on it and information scratched out,” Hongjoong reminded them.

“Yeah, maybe there are more archives on him,” San second him.

“Should we try to find them?” Yeosang asked Hongjoong directly.

“Yes, quietly and carefully.”

And so, they did. The seven of them started their new mission, find who the man was.

They went to different directions. Hongjoong decided to who through the farthest hallway and made his way down. He walked and walked but not even one door appeared.

When he was about to turn back and look for another hallway, he saw it, a door. He approached it and was surprised to see that it was open, just barely, as if someone had thought they closed it but didn't.

He peaked inside first, making sure that the room was empty before entering. He stepped in and left one of his shoes between the door and its frame. If it were to close, he doesn't know the code to open it back again.

He started looking around while his chest was thumping inside his chest from the adrenaline. If he were to be caught, he doesn't want to know what kind of punishment this place liked.

He looked through cabinets and archives. The papers had a picture of the patient, a name and their information. He saw name after name, all of them scratched out in the end. He saw one of a man who made him froze up completely, he had been diagnosed with paranoia, nothing out of this world, what made him react that way was his face and name.

Hongjoong knew him, he was part of The Outlaws, but he disappeared one day and never came back. His stomach turned and he almost threw up on the floor, but he had to keep his mind on the mission.

He kept looking at the faces of the men the had the displeasure of stepping into this facility, he could only imagine what happened to them.

After what felt like hours, he found what he was looking for.

On his hands he had a document, it said Park Seonghwa in big black letters.

But the man on the picture wasn't the same man he knew. It had the same features, but in the paper, he looked more alive.

“What the fuck happened to you?”

It had his date of birth and diagnosis, it said depression, hallucinations and PTSD. It also had some of his behavioral issues but after that, where there should be his personal information and background, it was scratched out.

It didn't give him what he was looking for. He left with the document folded inside his clothes and tucked into the elastic band of his pants.

He put his shoe back on and attempted to walk back to the common room but for some reason he started to get more lost as he walked around.

He almost went dizzy as he turned and turned form hallway to another hallway, until he finally arrived at the common room.

He stumbled into the room, the lights buzzed overhead like nothing had changed, like time hadn't shifted.

The others looked up at once.

Yeosang’s eyes narrowed, assessing him. San straightened up from where he sat on the floor, his body tense like a coiled spring. Wooyoung stood quickly and walked toward him.

“You were gone too long,” Wooyoung said, his voice low but laced with concern.

“I found it,” Hongjoong replied, slipping the folded document from his waistband. He glanced around. “Not here, we talk later.”

They all understood. No one asked questions, not with Seonghwa sitting in the far corner again, cross-legged on the floor and staring at the blank wall like it might tell him a secret.

Jongho entered a few minutes later from his own therapy session, his face was unreadable but walking steady. His jaw clenched when he saw Ho gjoong, but the relief in his eyes was obvious.

Later, they followed Seonghwa when he walked to their room, assuming it was time for bed. They didn't speak right away, even whispers felt risky now.

Finally, when they thought the man was already asleep, Hongjoong pulled the document free and unfolded it.

“I found his file,” he said quietly.

Jongho leaned in. “And?”

Hongjoong hesitated. “It's him, but it's not him.”

“What does that mean?” San asked, already frowning.

“He looked…different,” Hongjoong murmured. “Healthier, the picture looked like someone who still had something to lose.”

“What else?” Mingi asked, but it wasn't really a question.

Hongjoong didn't answer, he just passed around the file, each of them carefully glanced, they didn't linger too long with the document. As it reached Yeosang, the man's finger ran lightly over the lines where words have been scratched out.

“They didn't just react his information,” Yeosang muttered. “They erased it, scratched it until the paper almost tore.”

“Why?” Jongho asked.

“To make sure no one remembers who he was,” Wooyoung said, his voice bitter. “To make sure he forgets, too.”

The silence that followed was heavy.

Then Mingi said. “Important enough to hide.”

They looked across the room. Seonghwa hadn't moved, still sitting with his spine too straight but his eyes were closed.

“What if he led something?” Jongho whispered. “Like us.”

“Or worse,” Yeosang said. “What if he was survived it?”

The words hung in the air like smoke.

“I don't think he's broken,” Yunho said suddenly. “I think he's paused.”

They all turned toward him. Yunho crossed his arms. “Like he's waiting for something”

San swallowed. “Waiting for what?”

Yunho looked toward Seonghwa. “To believe it's worth unpausing for.”

They stayed silent until they fell asleep without realizing. All sitting and close together, not even using the beds.

They were suddenly woken up and started the same routine as the day before.

Tasteless food, pills that none of them swallowed.

After breakfast, San was called for his therapy session.

Hongjoong saw him walk away calmly while they sat on the common room couches, waiting for the alarm to start cleaning. The atayed silent for a long moment, until they heard it.

A scream.

They stood up urgently and ran to the therapy room but the next time they heard it they realized it didn't come from there.

The six of them followed the sound and arrived at another door that was almost closed, but not enough.

Hongjoong was the first to burst in, but what he saw made him stop for a second.

San was strapped to a metal cot, there was a rag on his mouth and two guards had cables too close to his friend.

Suddenly, more guards arrived and they tried holding them down.

“Let him go, you fucking psychos!” Wooyoung was screaming and trying to break free from the arms around him. He looked angry, but there were tears running down his face too.

Hongjoong heard all of them scream and fight, but he was frozen in his place and restrained from behind by a guard. San, sweet and loving San, was being tortured because of his incompetence.

Then, as if the electricity was on him, he was able to move again. He closed his eyes and as hard as he could, his pushed his head back right into the guard's face.

The man fell to his knees while his hands went up to cover his bleeding nose. Hongjoong used that momentum to steal the guard's baton and hit the man that was trying to take Wooyoung away.

The baton hit him hard on the head, the man faltered and Wooyoung was able to break free. He rushed toward San and took the restrains off.

More guards arrived, so many that they almost didn't fit inside the room. Hongjoong tried his best, but when one of them made Yeosang bleed, he knew it was over.

“Stop!” Hongjoong shouted, he looked at his own and got down on his knees. He wasn't a man that yielded, but Yeosang was worth it. His crew followed him, their eyes wide as if they couldn't believe their leader had just surrendered.

Wooyoung hesitated for a second, but he kneeled too, still holding San’s hand.

“Dear patients, I understand your shock, but you must know that this is a normal procedure to make patients heal. San was too wild to get better only with therapy, he needs this.” Dr. Jinwoo appeared through the door and he spoke softly with a smile on his face.

“This is torture, you're not healing him,” Hongjoong spat back.

“Oh, please! He’ll be fine, just less…wild. Guards, take these men to the padded rooms. Separately.”

They were dragged around the facility. Three guards per person.

Hongjoong felt dizzy from the fighting and the sight of San on that metal bullshit. He knew there wasn't a point on trying to resist, so he just let it be.

He opened his eyes when he was suddenly shoved into a room and all he could see was white. The door closed, his breathing quickened and his heart was pounding wildly. They fucking trapped him on a padded room.

The walls had scratches on them and if he looked closely, he swears he could see specks of blood around.

He laid down on the padded floor and closed his eyes again. He was alone and he never quiet liked the loneliness.

His thoughts went wild. Flashes of San laying barely conscious, Wooyoung screaming and fighting, and himself. He saw himself being useless.

One leader he was, he let his crew get trapped, hurt, almost get drugged and now tortured. He wandered what would happen to San now, they weren't there to help him. He was all alone, being given electric shocks on a dirty room.

Hongjoong crawled to the door and started pounding on it with his fist.

“Let him go, you monsters!”

He screamed and shouted until his throat was sore, and then, he cried. His head fell onto the floor, and he cried until there weren't any tears left.

He was a disappointment. San could be dead now and all he could do was cry. He had to get out, for San, for his men, for the people that came to this place before him and the ones that could come after.

Therapy my ass. Healing, they said.

They want to make them go crazy. To break them. He was now wondering if dead was the better option, if jail would have been more merciful than this place.

His body went numb, he turned around so that he was looking at the ceiling.

He didn't know how long he was there, just staring and thinking of what he could've done differently. He saw trays of food go in and out of the room, but he couldn't make himself eat.

He could still hear it, San’s pain and Wooyoung's screams as he was pulled away from from San.

Hongjoong didn't notice when the door opened, not until a guard dragged him out and he was thrown on the common room’s floor.

When he tried to stand his legs gave out. His legs wouldn’t hold him, so he stayed there. He didn’t know if the others were back yet. If they’d been released too or if he was the first.

He blinked once and twice. The light was too bright again, even here, as if the padded room had bled into the rest of the building.

The rebel pushed himself up with shaking arms, back against the nearest wall, and sat. Breathing deep and alow. His throat was dry but all he could taste was metal.

He rested his head back against the wall and let his eyes close for a second, just one.

San.

His scream had torn something in all of them but it was Wooyoung’s voice that kept replaying, cracking and desperate, refusing to let go even when they’d pulled him away.

He had to be okay, he has to be, but there was no way to know. Not until they were all back, not until he could see for himself.

The weight of it sat on his chest like someone pressing a knee down and he breathed through it.

The white walls around him felt too close, too empty. He remembered what Seonghwa had said about watching the guards if they failed, about laughing.

Were they laughing now?

Was someone watching a screen somewhere, waiting to see how long it would take before he cracked, too?

Hongjoong forced himself to sit straighter. His hands curled into fists and took one slow breath at a time.

His breathing was slowly going back to normal when he saw a guard again. The man came fast, threw someone on the ground and left.

Hongjoong crawled to the man. It was Wooyoung.

His eyes were red and puffy, his cheeks blotchy and flushed. For a second, Wooyoung didn’t move but then he saw Hongjoong.

“Joong…” he got up on his knees and his voice cracked. Wooyoung’s fingers hovered in the air like he didn’t know where to touch without breaking something.

Hongjoong reached up and rested a hand lightly on Wooyoung’s shoulder. “I’m here,” he said, low and rough. “I’m okay.”

It was a lie but Wooyoung nodded anyway. He swallowed hard, then wiped at his face with the sleeve of his uniform.

“They didn’t-” he started, but his voice shook. “They didn’t let me see him after. They pulled me out before I could see him open his eyes.” His jaw clenched and his fists shook in his lap. “I don’t know if he’s okay,” Wooyoung whispered. “I don’t even know where he is.”

Hongjoong didn’t answer, he didn’t have the words for it. He just sat beside Wooyoung and let their shoulders touch, warm through the fabric. “We’ll find him,” he said.

Then Mingi walked in, he was being pushed by a guard instead of thrown like they were.

He looked… not broken, but not whole either.

His shirt was wrinkled, one of the sleeves torn slightly at the seam. A red mark trailed across his cheek like a slap or the pressure from something. His eyes darted around the room, wide and sharp, until they landed on Wooyoung and Hongjoong.

He didn’t say anything, he just walked over and sat beside them. His legs folded beneath him like they couldn’t hold much weight either. He didn’t ask questions, he didn’t cry but his hands were trembling.

A minute passed or maybe more. Then someone was arriving again.

Yeosang stepped inside as if he didn’t belong in his body, like it had betrayed him. His uniform was clean, but his eyes were hollow. His mouth was tight and his shoulders squared like he was holding the pieces together with sheer will.

He scanned the room, locked onto Wooyoung, and walked straight to him.

He sat without a word. Rested his hand lightly over Wooyoung's shaking one and squeezed once just enough to say I’m here.

More steps.

Jongho, who looked furious. There was blood on his knuckles and a cut across his temple that hadn’t been cleaned properly. His breathing was short and his nostrils flared, but when he saw Yeosang, still and pale, he exhaled and moved faster.

He sat next to him, knees knocking together. His hand found Yeosang’s shoulder like gravity pulled it there and Yeosang didn’t flinch.

Then came Yunho. He wasn’t limping, but he walked like something in him had shifted. His eyes found Mingi first and they didn’t leave.

He crossed the room without hesitation. His knees hit the floor too hard, arms wrapping around Mingi’s body before anyone could say a word. Mingi didn’t resist, he just curled in.

The six of them sat in a loose huddle now, bruised and quiet.

Suddenly, Seonghwa stepped inside and he looked exactly the same. Unmarked and unbothered, not even a wrinkle in his uniform or a flicker in his expression.

His eyes scanned the room once with no urgency, before landing on the empty couch in front of where they sat on the floor. He walked to it and sat down. Tapped it twice before letting himself rest fully, like always, and then he just… stared ahead as if he hadn’t been gone at all.

The Outlaws didn’t say anything. They were watching him now, all of them, bruised and aching and red-eyed.

Hongjoong stared longest.

There was no guilt in Seonghwa’s face, no sympathy. He looked like someone at a museum exhibit, like they were the ones behind glass and yet he was the only one without injuries. The only one who walked back like he chose to. The only one who hadn’t screamed.

Hongjoong sat up straighter.

They were stuck, watched and hurt. The walls whispered back and the guards had too many hands, but Seonghwa had survived here for longer than them. Long enough to blend into the system, long enough to map it.

He was dangerous and detached, maybe broken, but he knew things and if they were going to get out of here alive, they needed him.

Hongjoong didn’t say it out loud but the plan, the real one, was forming, and Seonghwa was at the center of it.

The room felt heavier now, like the silence was breathing too, thick and humid and watching them from the corners.

Seonghwa just sat there, back straight, gaze forward and hands folded on the table. Hongjoong’s throat was raw but he didn’t hesitate.

He looked up, voice steady. “Is San alive?”

The others froze.

It wasn’t loud and it wasn’t demanding, just the question, stripped bare.

Seonghwa didn’t blink. He just sat there, still and slowly, like it didn’t matter at all, he spoke. “Yes.”

A single word with no comfort in it, no detail but the weight of it hit them like a full breath after drowning.

Wooyoung let out a sound, not a sob, not quite relief, just something real and shattered at the edges.

Mingi squeezed Yunho’s hand.

Hongjoong nodded once, tightly, like the answer hurt and helped at the same time. “Where is he?” he asked.

Seonghwa didn’t answer that, he just stood up, adjusted his collar like he hadn’t just said the most important thing in the room and walked away.

But Wooyoung stood, too fast.

The floor made such a sound that even Mingi flinched at it.

Seonghwa was already walking away, quiet as a shadow, hands tucked into the pockets of his uniform like nothing had happened. Like he hadn’t just dropped the only thing keeping Wooyoung from falling apart.

“Hey,” Wooyoung called and his voice cracked. Seonghwa didn’t stop. “Hey!”

His shoes hit the tile hard now, quick and angry, matching the beat of his pulse.

“You don’t just say he’s alive and walk off like- like it’s not important. Like he’s not- fuck, like he’s not everything to us!”

He grabbed Seonghwa’s arm and for a second, everything stilled.

Seonghwa didn’t yank away, he didn’t react at all. Just turned slowly, eyes falling to where Wooyoung’s hand clutched his sleeve, he watched it calmly. That same eerie calm that never broke.

“You’re shaking,” Seonghwa said, quiet. Stating a fact.

Wooyoung didn’t let go. “I should be. You would be too if you actually gave a shit.”

“I don’t,” Seonghwa replied plainly. “But I listen. The guards don’t know how to keep quiet when they think I’m not hearing.” He tapped his heel twice against the floor, barely making a sound. “Your friend’s sedated in the infirmary wing. They won't kill…yet.”

“And you knew this?”

“Yes.”

Wooyoung’s hand dropped from his sleeve. “Why the hell are you only telling us now?”

Seonghwa’s voice didn’t change. “I was waiting to see if you’d figure it out yourselves.”

Wooyoung’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. He tilted his head, confused by what the man in front of him was saying.

Seonghwa tilted his head too, just slightly. A gesture too mechanical to be casual. “You seven are supposed to be trained, aren’t you?” he asked and it didn’t sound like sarcasm, more like genuine confusion. “Why are you letting your emotions ruin your chances of getting out? I don’t understand.”

It wasn’t cruel, it was honest. Like someone who had never been taught what it meant to care about anyone at all, and couldn't understand why they cared for San so much.

Wooyoung couldn’t even find the words to snap back. His mouth moved but his throat felt full of stones. Seonghwa looked at him one last time before walking away again.

Wooyoung walked back to the common room slower than how he’d left. His hands were in his pockets now, head down, brows drawn in like something had gotten under his skin and settled there.

The others turned when they heard him.

Hongjoong stood halfway, like expecting him to collapse or explode, like both were possible, but Wooyoung just sat. He didn’t say anything at first. His knees bounced, nervous energy burning through what little calm he had left.

Then he finally looked at Hongjoong. “I agree,” he said, voice low. “About Seonghwa.”

Hongjoong blinked. “What?”

Wooyoung nodded, still weirded out, still trying to make sense of the man he’d just cornered. “We need his help. He knows things we don’t, he hears things we don’t, he’s been here longer and somehow he hasn’t lost it. At least not in the way we expected.”

Mingi frowned. “You think he’ll actually help us?”

“That’s the thing.” Wooyoung ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t think he wants to. He doesn’t care if we get out or if we rot. He’s like- he’s like one of the walls here, built into the place.”

Hongjoong stared at him for a second. “What did he say to you?”

Wooyoung shook his head. “Nothing you’d expect. He wasn’t rude or threatening. He just… asked why we were letting our emotions mess up our chances. Like he didn’t get it, it confused him why I was upset.”

Mingi looked away and Yunho tensed. Yeosang watched with sharp eyes, unreadable as always. Hongjoong finally sat all the way back down and his hands clasped in front of his mouth, thinking.

“He doesn’t care about freedom or justice or rebellion,” Wooyoung said. “But if we want him on our side, we need to make him care. At least a little.”

“He doesn’t even believe in people,” Jongho added, voice quiet.

“Then we show him something real,” Hongjoong said, eyes not leaving the wall across from him. “Something worth following. Something he can’t calculate or predict.”

“Like what?” Mingi asked.

Hongjoong didn’t answer but deep down, he knew. It had to be them. They had to be so real, so stubborn, so human, that even a ghost like Seonghwa would feel it.

Hongjoong leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, fingers locked tight under his chin. “He doesn’t respond to threats, he doesn’t care about consequences,” he said. “He’s not afraid of the guards or us. We’re noise to him, a background.”

Yunho nodded slowly. “So we stop being noise.”

“Become familiar,” Jongho added.

Wooyoung looked up. “You want us to befriend him?”

“No,” Hongjoong said. “We don’t have to be his friends. We just have to become something he notices, something that sticks.”

Mingi tilted his head. “So what? We compliment his mop technique? What exactly are we talking about here?”

Yeosang’s voice came quiet, but sharp. “He watched us when we were eating. He listens when we talk, even when he pretends not to. He doesn’t tune us out.”

“Yeah,” Wooyoung added. “He just… files it away like it’s information.”

“That’s because it is,” Hongjoong said. “Everything here is. The layout, the guards, the staff, us. He’s constantly analyzing everything.”

Yunho’s brow furrowed. “You’re saying we let him analyze us?”

Hongjoong gave a slow nod. “Let him hear how we work, how we think and what we care about. Be honest, but careful. Show him we’re not like the other people who go in and out of this place.”

Wooyoung scoffed. “That’s a fine line.”

“It is but we’re out of time and out of options.” Hongjoong glanced at the wall where Seonghwa had tapped earlier. “We don’t even know who’s really watching us anymore.”

Silence settled over them for a moment. The kind that didn’t feel heavy, but focused.

Jongho broke it. “So… one of us makes contact again.”

They all looked at each other and no one volunteered.

Until Yeosang tilted his head slightly. “I’ll try,” he said.

That got everyone’s attention.

“You?” Wooyoung asked, surprised.

Yeosang didn’t answer right away, he just lifted a shoulder. “He mirrors, it’s not just behavior, it’s survival. I’ve done it too, not like him, but… I know the feeling.”

Jongho watched him with quiet worry, but didn’t say anything.

Hongjoong nodded. “Keep it light, no pressure. Just… let him see we’re not a threat.”

“And if he still doesn’t want to help?” Mingi asked.

“Then we make him want to,” Hongjoong said. “Not with begging bit with proof that we’re serious, that we will get out of here and that he might want to be on the right side when it happens.” He looked up, eyes sharper now. “People like him, they don’t believe in things but they remember how it feels to want to.”

Lunch was served without a word. The trays were dropped with dull thuds in front of them, like always, one by one, the guards watching with half bored expressions and weapons.

Seonghwa arrived last, like he always did, walking in a line that barely curved toward their table. He tapped the chair twice before sitting down and didn’t look at anyone when he did. He was between Yeosang and Yunho, as they had purposefully left that seat empty, so that he was forced to be use it.

Yeosang’s eyes flicked to the guard closest to them. He was still watching, arms crossed over his chest, his baton hooked at his hip.

So Yeosang leaned forward, elbows on the table, pretending to study the pale vegetables on his tray. He kept his voice low and soft. “Is there even a way out of here?”

No one else moved, not even Seonghwa, but a second later, he shifted just enough to lift his hand. Two fingers tapped against the metal table.

Tap. Tap.

Yeosang’s eyes widened. That wasn’t nothing, that was yes, but before he could say anything else, Yunho spoke just above a whisper. “If there’s a way out, why haven’t you used it?”

Silence.

Seonghwa didn’t look at him, he didn't even pause his eating. He just brought the plastic fork to his mouth, chewed eight times and swallowed. Then he spoke still staring straight ahead.

“I could leave any day I want,” he said. “But I don’t.”

Yunho stared at him. “Why?”

Seonghwa finally turned his head. There was no smugness there, just a flat truth that made Yunho’s stomach twist. “Because I deserve to be here.”

And that was it.

He went back to eating like nothing had happened and he stayed silent until the guards left once the trays were cleared.

Yeosang was the first to speak again, once they were alone and safe to do so. He leaned in slightly, voice low but steady. “He answered me.”

Jongho looked up. “What?”

“I asked Seonghwa if there was a way out. He said yes.”

Wooyoung blinked. “Wait- like actually said it?”

Yeosang shook his head. “Tapped it in morse code, actually. Two taps.”

Hongjoong sat up straighter. “And then?”

“Yunho asked why he hadn’t used it.”

All eyes turned.

“And?” Mingi asked.

Yeosang hesitated. “He said he could leave anytime he wanted… but he stays because he deserves to be here.”

Jongho rubbed a hand over his mouth, slow. “That’s not normal. That’s-” He trailed off.

Wooyoung’s brows furrowed. “What does that even mean? What does he think he did?”

“He’s punishing himself,” Yunho said quietly. “We don’t know for what.”

Hongjoong’s fingers curled into fists on his knees. “He knows a way out and he stays? Why? What kind of person does that?”

Before anyone could answer, San stepped inside and everyone turned.

He looked pale, exhausted, still sluggish but he was standing. Bruises around his wrists and red skin at the back of his neck, but alive.

Wooyoung stood immediately, didn’t even hesitate. He was at San’s side in two steps, helping him sit down before his knees gave out. San leaned into him without a word.

The others watched with a mix of relief and barely contained rage.

“They let you out,” Hongjoong said quietly. “How long ago?”

San rubbed a hand over his arm. “Just now but… he was there.”

“Who?”

San looked up, eyes still a little unfocused. “Seonghwa. He was outside my door just standing. He didn’t say anything but he didn’t leave either.”

Yunho’s brows pulled together. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” San said. “It was like he was waiting… to make sure I got out.”

Silence spread across the group again but was different this time. Less tense and more uncertain.

Hongjoong swallowed hard. “Maybe,” he said slowly, “he doesn’t want to get out for himself.” He looked up, eyes scanning the group. “Maybe he just needs a reason.”

Seonghwa scrubbed the countertop until the cloth turned gray.

The smell of bleach clung to his fingers, sharp and sterile. He preferred it that way. Anything strong enough to burn away the copper scent that never quite left his memory was a welcome replacement.

He worked in silence as he always did.

The kitchen was empty now, the staff long gone. He liked it better like this, quiet, predictable and clean. The hum of the overhead lights was steady. The sink dripped once every twelve seconds. He’d counted.

He turned the cloth over and scrubbed again. It didn’t matter that the surface was already clean. It never did.

He’d been assigned the kitchen for the day. He didn’t mind and he never asked to switch, never complained, never did anything that might suggest he was trying to change his circumstances because he wasn’t, because he wasn’t supposed to leave.

He kept scrubbing and before he started on another tile, he tapped it twice first. Some things you had to test.

He didn’t help the seven new men, not because he didn’t want to or because he didn’t care but because maybe they weren’t even real.

What if they were just another trick?

Another part of the punishment?

They talked too loudly, moved too fast and believed in things that didn’t exist anymore like freedom, justice and trust. People like that didn’t survive long, people like that weren’t real and if they were, they’ll disappear soon enough. They always did.

He stepped over the threshold and walked back into the hallway, fingers curled loosely around the bucket handle.

The hallway hummed.

That low, electric buzz from the lights above, always too bright, always too loud. It followed him everywhere. A constant reminder that silence didn’t really exist in Facility 8, not truly.

He walked slowly, each step matching the rhythm of his breath. The bucket sloshed with leftover water, faint chemical ripples brushing the rim like it might speak if he listened long enough, so didn’t listen.

He stopped in front of the supply closet, tapping the door twice before opening it, just to be sure. He always did.

He’d once reached for something that wasn’t there. Thought he could rest his back against a wall and fell through empty air, but not again, not when he could help it.

The closet was dark, colder than the rest of the hallway. The mop leaned in its corner like it hadn’t moved in days. The shelves were stacked with faded rags and plastic bottles that had long lost their labels.

He placed the bucket down gently. The smell of bleach hit harder here or maybe he just imagined it. He took one step back and stared at the space in front of him, as if expecting something to shift but nothing did.

Maybe it was all still real, or maybe this was the part where the hallway stretched too long again, where the floor pulsed beneath his feet, where the ceiling bowed like a ribcage above him. Where voices echoed even when no one had spoken.

He pressed his fingers against the closet door before closing it. Cool metal and sharp edge, it was reak but he still counted the seconds after shutting it, because sometimes, if he didn’t, the world changed while he wasn’t looking and then people wondered why he didn’t trust what he saw.

They were watching him. The seven men were whispering and staring. They probably thought he was a ghost and he was okay with that.

Ghosts weren’t expected to talk or care, or bleed. Ghosts couldn’t help people, either, and that meant he didn’t have to.

Chapter Text

Breakfast came early, too early.

The lights were still on in a way that felt violent and Hongjoong sat up before he was even fully awake. He didn't really sleep, just closed his eyes long enough for his body to forget how to fight it.

The routine dragged them through the morning like machinery. They line up, have breakfast and hide pills.

Hongjoong moved on autopilot now. His hands steady and eyes flat. He didn’t remember the last time he genuinely tasted the food and he noticed his thoughts were getting slower.

He could feel it, how his mind was turning to static around the edges. His body ached in places it hadn’t before and there was always a new corner of the room to hate.

Facility 8 was doing its job. It wasn’t just trying to control them, it was trying to hollow them out. He’d started to lose sense of time, of days and rhythm.

The only thing keeping him grounded now was the others, and him.

Hongjoong sat down at the table and looked up as Seonghwa approached. Same as always, a tray in hand, silent steps and distant eyes. He tapped the chair twice before sitting. The gesture was strange the first few times but now it just felt like him.

This was the moment to start the plan. Start small and subtle.

Hongjoong picked at the bread on his tray, watching the group. Yeosang was the closest to being composed, still and alert beside Jongho, who hadn’t said much since San returned.

Mingi whispered something to Yunho that Hongjoong didn’t catch.

San barely touched his food, Wooyoung didn’t look away from him even once and Seonghwa ate the same as always. Eight chews, swallow and repeat, like the act of nourishment was a math problem only he knew the answer to.

“Good morning,” Yeosang said. It was soft and casual, as if it was directed to no one, but his eyes flicked to Seonghwa and there was a pause.

Seonghwa blinked once and quietly, just loud enough to be heard over the clatter of trays, he said, “…Morning.”

It wasn’t warm by any means but it wasn’t nothing.

Hongjoong sat back, he let his fork rest on the tray and felt the weight in his chest shift just slightly.

This place was breaking him slowly and efficiently but if even Seonghwa could speak, if he could respond, then maybe they could still beat this place before it beat them.

After the quiet answer, breakfast continued in silence, the kind that dripped down their spines like cold water.

Yeosang didn’t try again, but the damage was done, Seonghwa had responded and The Outlaws moved carefully with that truth.

Subtle glances passed across the table, small nods and unspoken agreement.

Hongjoong tried to focus on the moment, on the people in front of him but it was hard, harder than it had been even a few days ago.

Facility 8 was seeping into his bones and it wasn’t the bruises or the harshness of the floors, not even the pills they never swallowed.

It was the lack of color in everything. The way everything tasted the same, the way the lights above made his head throb just enough to forget what normal felt like. His thoughts didn’t spiral, they frayed. Each day a bit more thread pulled loose, but this plan gave him something to hold on to.

“You’re paired with him,” a guard said after breakfast, not even glancing at the paper he held.

Hongjoong blinked. “Sorry?”

“You and him. Hall maintenance.” The guard motioned lazily toward the end of the corridor and even if the guard didn't explicitly say who him is, Hongjoong just knew.

Seonghwa was already standing without a word, he tapped he floor twice with his foot and turned toward the exit.

Hongjoong stood too, following a step behind and ignoring how the others stared. He could feel Wooyoung’s nerves like heat on his back. A small price to pay.

He needed to talk to Seonghwa again without all the others around. Hongjoong caught up, falling into stride beside Seonghwa as they moved toward the supply closet.

“You eat exactly eight chews,” he said softly. “Every time.”

Seonghwa didn’t stop walking. “I count everything,” he replied.

“Why?” Hongjoong asked.

“Because numbers don’t lie.”

They reached the closet and Seonghwa tapped the door twice, before opening it.

Hongjoong watched him closely, the way his fingers hesitated just barely before touching anything and how he carried the mop like a weapon disguised in wood and string.

Seonghwa looked at him then just once. “You’re trying to get close to me,” he said.

“We need you,” he said. “You know this place. You know how it works.”

Seonghwa just picked up a second mop and handed it over. “You clean left to right,” he said and then he started walking away to clean, ignoring what Hongjoong just told him.

Hongjoong worked quietly beside him, mimicking the rhythm of Seonghwa’s strokes. So repetitive that it was almost meditative.

“You’ve been here longer than anyone,” Hongjoong said after a while. “How long exactly?”

Seonghwa didn’t glance his way. “Does it matter?”

“It might.”

“It doesn’t to me.” His mop slid across the tile, steady and clean.

“You don’t want to leave?” Hongjoong asked.

“You already asked me that,” Seonghwa replied.

“Not directly.”

Seonghwa paused, just for a second, then kept going. “Maybe you should try being direct and it might get you further.”

Hongjoong exhaled slowly through his nose, bit the inside of his cheek. “You talk in riddles.”

“And you ask the wrong questions.”

The floor gleamed behind them, but the hallway still felt dirty and not in a way that could be scrubbed.

“What made you stop trusting people?” Hongjoong asked.

Seonghwa stopped this time. He turned with a mop held loosely in one hand, gaze sharp and unreadable. “What makes you think I ever did?”

Hongjoong studied him carefully. The pale skin, the shadowed eyes and the too still hands. “You watch us, even when you think we’re not looking.”

“I watch everything.”

“Why?”

“Because I know what happens when you don’t.”

They stared at each other in the middle of the corridor and Hongjoong felt something shift in the air. “What’s your real role here?” Hongjoong asked suddenly.

Seonghwa’s head tilted just slightly, a familiar movement now, something calculated and old. “Same as yours, a prisoner.”

Then he turned away and kept cleaning.

And Hongjoong followed, because he still didn’t know what he was chasing, but it was already ahead of him, quiet and in a white uniform that never wrinkled.

Lunch was gray rice, limp vegetables and some kind of protein that was probably not meat, but no one wanted to know for sure. The room buzzed low with tension, forks scraping against trays and guards watching from every corner with the kind of boredom that always turned violent if provoked.

The Outlaws were silent but Hongjoong wasn’t ready to be. He was getting tired of the cryptic answer from the only man who could help them get out.

Seonghwa sat across from him, tapping the edge of his tray once before eating, same as always.

“Who were you before this?” Hongjoong asked suddenly, voice low and sharp under his breath. Seonghwa didn’t flinch, he just kept chewing. “You clearly aren't just a patient, you know things. How to walk, how to listen and how to move as if you were part of these walls.”

Seonghwa’s fingers stilled on the tray.

Wooyoung glanced between them, stiffening and Yunho shifted forward like a storm about to start.

“Hongjoong…” Jongho said quietly, warning under his breath.

But Hongjoong didn’t stop. His blood was up. He hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten more than two bites, hadn’t stopped hearing San’s screams in his head and he wanted fucking answers.

“You don’t belong here, not like we do, you clearly don't have enough courage to go against the government” he said. “So why are you here, Seonghwa? What the fuck did you do?”

The name hung in the air between them. Seonghwa looked up then and it wasn’t with the dull exhaustion they’d seen before. This time it was quiet rage, pure and pointed.

“You think this place keeps people like me for nothing?” he said, voice like ice cracking down the middle of the table. “You think they built this just for your little rebellion?”

He stood up making the chair scrape violently against the floor, and Hongjoong stood too, his heart pounding and teeth clenched.

One of the guards nearby took a step forward. “Sit down,” he barked, already reaching out.

But it happened in less than a second, just before the guard could even touch Seonghwa’s shoulder. Seonghwa’s hand moved with surgical precision, two fingers finding the nerve in the man’s neck and pressing The guard’s knees buckled and he dropped like dead weight, a silent thud against the ground, limbs loose and eyes rolled back.

The room froze. Another guard shouted, chairs scraped, hands twitched toward weapons and The Outlaws surged to their feet but didn’t move forward, not out of fear, but awe.

Hongjoong’s breath caught in his chest. He’d expected a reaction, maybe even a shove, but this was very different from what he thought.

Seonghwa didn’t even look at the body, he looked straight at Hongjoong. “You want to know who I am?” he said, voice flat and steady. “Ask yourself why I haven’t done that to you yet.”

Then he stepped back and sat down again. He picked up his spoon and continued eating like nothing had happened.

The guard was still on the ground, unconscious and crumpled like someone had flipped a switch in his spine. Another hovered nearby, unsure whether to step forward or pretend he hadn’t seen what had just happened.

The Outlaws stared. Frozen, not in fear, but something deeper, something that felt like watching lightning hit the earth and realizing it had been walking among them the entire time.

Seonghwa kept on eating in silence. The spoon moved to his mouth, he chewed eight times and started back again.

“Holy shit,” Wooyoung whispered.

It slipped out before he could stop it, his eyes were wide and surprised from the way Seonghwa had looked at Hongjoong, like he was barely tolerating him or like he was barely tolerating anyone.

Mingi leaned in slightly, voice low and sharp, “He didn’t even touch him hard. Did you see that?”

“He knew exactly where to hit,” Yeosang said, not blinking. “That was… precise.”

Yunho’s fingers drummed against the table and his jaw was tight. “That wasn’t self defense.”

“No,” Jongho muttered. “That was a warning.”

They all turned to Hongjoong, who was still standing. He hadn’t moved since the guard fell and still felt that flash of Seonghwa’s words under his skin like a fresh brand. He sat back down slowly with his hands curling into fists under the table.

The line between ally and threat had never been so thin but one thing was clear now. If they wanted out of Facility 8, they’d need Seonghwa and if they wanted Seonghwa, they’d need to earn his trust.

Hongjoong saw the other guards, one of them kneeling beside the unconscious man, two fingers checking his pulse, then waving over another. They lifted the body between them and carried him away like he was nothing more than a stack of dirty laundry, while the others went back to their posts.

A message in that silence, a quiet understanding. They all clearly knew who Seonghwa was, as no one stopped him, no one even looked at him for too long. It meant that whatever Seonghwa was, they expected it.

They didn’t talk after that. Not about the guard and not about Seonghwa. They just sat, food gone cold, each lost in thoughts that were beginning to tangle and thread themselves too tight to speak aloud.

The guards lingered, tense, but pretending not to be.

Seonghwa finished his tray, set his spoon down and he stood up. He didn’t look back, didn’t speak, didn’t even hesitate as he moved toward the bin to drop off his tray and exit like nothing had happened, but just before he stepped away, someone stood.

Wooyoung caught up to Seonghwa with two strides, his fingers clenched tight around his tray. His face unreadable, like he was working through too many feelings all at once.

Seonghwa turned only slightly, the sharp edge of his profile waiting and Wooyoung stared at him for a beat too long.

“I don’t get you,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell you are, or what you’ve been through, and I’m not sure I want to.” Seonghwa blinked once, slow. “But you were outside his door. You waited and you didn’t have to.” Seonghwa didn’t confirm or deny it and Wooyoung didn’t need him to. “So, thanks or whatever.”

He shoved his tray into the bin and walked away before Seonghwa could say anything but Seonghwa stood there a second longer than he needed to, his eyes on Wooyoung’s back and when he turned away again, the lines in his posture weren’t quite so sharp.

Time didn’t exist anymore in Facility 8, not in a way you could hold.

There were no clocks, no windows, no changing weather. Only the cycle, food served, pills offered, therapy, chores, again and again until it all folded into itself.

Hongjoong didn’t know how many days had passed since the moment they were dragged through those doors. It could’ve been five, could’ve been fifty. The exhaustion was constant and the static in his thoughts never left.

Every day, they tried and every day, the same. They chipped at Seonghwa, carefully. With small questions and small efforts.

How many guards work nights?

Where do the pills go if we don’t swallow them?

Which hallway leads to the staff wing?

Sometimes he answered briefly, never volunteered more than a sentence, a phrase and sometimes, he’d say nothing at all, just stare past them like the air was more real than they were.

Hongjoong couldn’t tell if it was working or if they were getting anywhere. Seonghwa didn’t push them away but he never stepped closer either.

Until that morning.

Right after breakfast. The lights were buzzing louder than usual. They were standing up from the table, trays already in hand, when the cafeteria doors opened and it felt wrong.

A man in a suit.

Sharp black fabric, tailored perfectly. Shoes polished enough to reflect the flickering overhead lights. He had two guards flanking him, but they didn’t look like Facility 8 guards. They stood straighter, hands twitching near their holsters, real weapons.

The man walked in like he owned the room, as if he built the room.

Hongjoong’s tray stayed frozen in his hands and everyone turned but not before Hongjoong saw something he had never seen before.

Seonghwa moved just a bit but his face changed. His back straightened, his jaw locked tight, his hand twitched slightly near his leg and his eyes, they didn’t go cold. No, they went furious.

“Park Seonghwa,” the man said, his voice smooth. “You’ve been letting these men learn too much about Facility 8.” He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Come with me. We’ll have a little chat.”

“May I wash my hands first? I just ate,” His voice sounded like usual, but Hongjoong could feel in his stomach that something was different.

“Make it quick.”

He went to the bathroom and came back just as fast, his face sharp and his hands still wet.

The room didn’t breathe and Seonghwa didn’t say anything else. He stepped forward, walked past the Outlaws without a glance, shoulders rigid but head high and stood behind the man, ready to follow him.

He didn’t tap the door before walking away this time and they watched him disappear through the corridor, the suited man behind him and the guards following like shadows, until there was nothing left to see.

Wooyoung was the first to move, half stepping toward where Seonghwa had vanished before stopping himself, his hands tightening around his shirt. “What the hell was that?” he said, eyes darting toward Hongjoong but he couldn’t answer.

San stared at the floor, jaw locked and his chest rising too fast. Mingi turned in place, scanning the walls, like he expected someone else to walk in.

“Who was that guy?” Yunho asked, quieter. “He wasn’t a guard.”

“He looked like someone from the outside,” Yeosang muttered. “Government, maybe or military.”

“He knew his name,” Jongho said. “And Seonghwa seemed to knew his, too.”

No one missed the way Seonghwa reacted. Tight and sharp, controlled fury like something pulled out of a cage too soon. It wasn’t fear but it was recognition.

Hongjoong still hadn’t sat down. His pulse echoed in his ears. The man in the suit had walked in without explanation, with confidence that only came from authority and hee called Seonghwa by name.

“Why did he say that?” Wooyoung pushed. “About us learning too much? Is someone monitoring him too?”

“He’s supposed to still be empty,” Mingi said. “But he’s not anymore, at least not how they want him to, and they know it.”

“And they just took him,” San added, voice low. “Like property.”

The weight of the word sank fast and Hongjoong’s hands curled into fists at his sides.

“He didn’t argue,” Jongho said. “Did you see that? He didn’t even ask where they were going.”

“Like he knew,” Yeosang finished for him and no one said it out loud, but they all felt the shift.

Seonghwa wasn’t just a patient. He never was.

They didn’t speak of it again, about the man who walked in like he knew how everything worked, because they couldn’t.

There were too many guards watching now. Too many eyes in the halls and cameras that never blinked. The doors felt heavier, the pills more suspicious and the stares lasted longer. So they swallowed it down. The fear, the questions and the instinct to act.

They were all still at that table, still watching Seonghwa walk away, still waiting for the door to open again. They took him because of them. If the man doesn’t come back, they feel as if the guilt would eat them alive.

Later that afternoon, the man in the suit passed through the common room. Two guards at his side, same polished shoes and same stillness in his face. He didn’t stop, didn’t even look at any of them.

He left as if he didn’t take Seonghwa with him, and he didn’t return even after the man left.

He wasn’t in the halls, he wasn’t cleaning, didn’t show up to therapy, he didn’t sit at lunch or tap his chair or chew eight times or tap the wall before crossing through a threshold.

He was just gone and they didn’t know what was happening to him.

They all felt the same thing clawing inside them, quiet and sharp. That whatever it was that he was experiencing, he might not come back from it.

The day ended and the next morning came like it always did.

Doors opening, footsteps in the hallway and metal trays sliding into rooms with the same rhythm as the day before.

The world in Facility 8 hadn’t changed but the table had.

They sat in the same seats. Out of habit, out of order, out of some need to pretend routine still meant something. The food was the same, nothing to bite into and nothing to feel.

But Seonghwa’s chair was empty, still pulled slightly back and untouched. No tray in front of it, no familiar finger taps before sitting, no measured chewing, no quiet glances and no presence folding itself into the background.

He was gone but none of them said it.

Jongho ate slowly with his eyes fixed on the floor. Yeosang didn’t touch his food. Mingi stirred the porridge without purpose. Yunho sat too still. San glanced at the door every few minutes. Wooyoung hadn’t spoken at all.

And Hongjoong sat at the the table, his tray untouched and staring across the gap where Seonghwa should’ve been. He hadn’t expected it to matter this much.

They didn’t know who Seonghwa was, not fully or maybe not even a little, but his absence pressed into the room like a second light overhead, hot, unblinking and brutal.

“He hasn’t come back,” San said finally, voice rough.

“He’s not dead,” Yeosang said after a moment, like he needed to say it aloud.

“How do you know?” Mingi asked.

“Because they wouldn’t let us see the man in the suit if he was.”

Hongjoong reached for his spoon and his hands didn’t shake but they didn’t feel steady either. “He was protecting something,” he said quietly. “When he let that man take him.”

Wooyoung finally looked up. “You think it was us?”

“I think he knew what was coming,” Hongjoong said. “And let it happen.”

Yunho glanced at the door again. “Then what do we do now?”

Hongjoong didn’t answer because the truth was, he didn’t know.

The day passed like it didn’t notice anything was missing. Therapy, chores, hallway surveillance, lunch without appetite and through it all, the chair stayed empty.

Even the guards were quieter, fewer jabs and fewer commands. As if they were told to leave the Outlaws alone or as if they were waiting for something else to fall apart. They didn’t say Seonghwa’s name, not out loud but it echoed anyway.

When the time for chores came once a-fucking-gain, Hongjoong was assigned to cleaning the common room. He didn’t really know what time it was, he didn’t even know what day it was.

The others were also doing their tasks, scattered around the facility and Hongjoong felt it before he saw it, a shift, like the weight in the room had tilted half a degree off its axis. He stood slowly when the others appeared behind him.

“Follow us,” Yeosang said while they crowded around.

He followed them to their shared bathroom without a word.

“Look at it,” Jongho whispered and he did. He looked around the place but he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “Lower.”

It was carved into the white paint near the floor, barely visible in the light. Thin and precise.

A single dot, two dashes and a final dot.

Hongjoong crouched, fingers brushing the wall. “Seonghwa,” he breathed.

Then Jongho said, “It’s Morse.”

Wooyoung leaned in. “It’s a message?”

Yunho nodded slowly. “That’s a P.”

“P for what?” Mingi asked.

But Hongjoong wasn’t listening anymore. He was staring at the message like it had burned its way through the wall, like Seonghwa had reached out from wherever they’d taken him and left a fingerprint behind. It was faint, the kind of thing only someone watching the walls would notice. Only someone like him.

“He’s alive,” Hongjoong said. “must’ve left it before they took him.”

The dots and dashes haunted them through the day.

The next day, no guards commented on the way they leaned closer together, no one mentioned the way their trays were barely touched but Hongjoong felt it, the shift in their rhythm and that buzz beneath the skin.

Something had broken. In a quiet, deliberate way. He wasn’t gone, not yet.

After they dropped their trays off and filed into the common room, they didn’t go to their usual spots. They sat in the far corner, where the camera blinked slower, where the hum of the overhead light was just loud enough to cover whispers.

San sat cross-legged on the floor and Yeosang stood with his back to the wall, arms folded.

Mingi leaned in, voice low. “We look for him.”

“Where?” Yunho asked. “We don’t even know what part of the building they took him to.”

“There are doors we haven’t touched,” Yeosang said. “Service halls and the locked corridor behind the therapy wing.”

“They won’t let us wander,” Wooyoung said. “Not all at once.”

“Then we don’t wander,” Hongjoong answered. “We split up. Stay subtle and stick to your chores, but look. A little more every day. Watch for symbols, scratches, anything out of place.”

“What if we’re caught?” Mingi asked.

Hongjoong’s eyes sharpened. “Just don’t get caught.”

They all fell silent for a moment. The weight of the risk settled between them.

“He left that message on purpose,” Jongho said, voice steady. “He wants us to find him.”

“Or warn us,” San added.

Hongjoong looked at the mark again in his mind. “No,” he said. “That wasn’t a warning.” They all turned to him. “It was a P for permission to search for him.”

The group split after common room, quietly an on rhythm as if it was any other day.

Jongho and Yeosang were sent to wipe down the stairwells, Yunho got floors again, long corridors with no corners. Mingi was alone in the maintenance closet, tools, inventory and shelves. San and Wooyoung took the laundry carts, wheeling through the halls with baskets too light to be worth anything.

And Hongjoong, again, was given kitchen duty.

None of them asked to switch, one of them hesitated. They didn’t need to because the plan was already in motion. Look for him, find a sign or anything that could help.

Jongho wiped the stair rail slowly, cloth in one hand, the other skimming along the underside of the steel. He kept his head down and had his ears tuned for footsteps.

Yeosang moved ahead of him, pausing every so often to glance at the small maintenance panels tucked between flights.

Yunho watched the corners, his mop dragged slow behind him as he turned each bend. Every closed door made him slow his steps and he counted them, noticed which ones had fingerprint smudges near the base.

San and Wooyoung kept their pace normal. They rolled the cart through the hallway, Wooyoung in front and San trailing behind. They passed two doors, both locked and a supply chute built into the wall.

Wooyoung stopped, leaned on the cart for just a second too long. “I’ll check it,” he said.

San nodded and pretended to adjust the sheets while Wooyoung checked the supply chute, but it was empty.

Hongjoong was cleaning the common room looking for a sign, when a guard came with a blank stare. “Kim Hongjoong. Therapy.”

He walked down the hallway in silence, feet heavy, pulse steady but sharp around the edges. Like something was building under his skin and he didn’t know where it would go when it broke.

They brought him to the same room. White walls, two chairs and the soft hum of a vent that never turned off.

Dr. Jinwoo was already waiting with his back straight and a polite smile.

“Welcome back, Hongjoong.”

He didn’t respond but he sat down.

The doctor opened his folder, probably empty and stared at him for a long moment before speaking. “You look tired.”

“You don’t,” Hongjoong said flatly.

Dr. Jinwoo smiled wider, but it was the same as always. Cold and detached. “You know, the longer we do this, the more you start to resemble the others who came before you.”

Hongjoong raised an eyebrow. “Others?”

“Rebels. Idealists. Young men who thought fire could outlast stone.”

Hongjoong leaned back in the chair. “Some things are worth burning for.”

“And yet,” Dr. Jinwoo said, “here you are in my chair, eating what we serve, sleeping where we put you and talking when we tell you to talk.”

“I haven’t broken.”

“Not yet but you’re cracking.” The room went quiet again. “You don’t have to be a rebel anymore,” Dr. Jinwoo said, softer now. “Let the idea of revolution go, be a normal person again.”

Hongjoong stared at him. “I’d rather rot.” Dr. Jinwoo’s smile finally slipped and that’s when Hongjoong said it. “Where the fuck is Seonghwa?” Hongjoong leaned forward, voice low but steady. “Don’t act like you don’t know, you let that man walk in here and take him like he was furniture and he hasn’t come back.”

Dr. Jinwoo tilted his head. “That’s not your concern.”

Hongjoong’s hands curled into fists in his lap. “If you’ve done something to him-”

“You should worry about yourself, Hongjoong.” The smile was gone now, the calm cracked at the edges which meant he knew.

The room was cold but not the kind of cold that bit at your skin but the kind that settled in your bones, like it had been there long before you arrived and would stay long after you broke.

Seonghwa sat on the floor, back against the wall, wrists chained above his head. The metal cuffs cut into the skin just slightly but not enough to scar. He knew the difference.

There was blood on the floor, not his or at least, not all of it. Some of it had dried before he got there and some of it was fresh. He didn’t look at it anymore, he listened.

The buzz of the light above him stuttered every few minutes, the hum of the vent overhead was weak, useless. The walls were damp, not from water but from neglect. The only door didn’t have a handle on the inside.

He knew what this was.

He had lived it before, not exactly this room but close enough.

The silence, the waiting, the way they asked questions they already knew the answers to. How they measured your pain, not by how loud you screamed, but by how long you stayed quiet.

It was always about control and he’d been trained to understand that. He’d been trained to be that, but now they didn’t look at him the same, not since the man in the suit came. That man saw him as a liability because Seonghwa had looked too long at the seven new prisoners, because he’d answered too many of their questions, because he hadn’t crushed their hope, and that was enough.

A drop of something ran down the side of his face, sweat maybe. His shoulders ached from the position but pain wasn’t new, pain was predictable. It was the change he didn’t trust, like the way Wooyoung thanked him, like the way Jongho looked at him with calculation and not fear, like the way Hongjoong stood at the center of them all, never saying too much, never showing too little, eyes always five steps ahead.

He hadn’t needed for them to say it out loud because Seonghwa had seen the way the others watched him. The way they shifted when he spoke and the way they waited.

Hongjoong was someone important, someone dangerous and that meant they weren’t just rebels. They were the core and that changed everything.

He had been content to rot, to exist. To stay here, because maybe that was the sentence he deserved, but they could get out to change something and he could help them.

If they failed, it wouldn’t matter, but if they succeeded maybe this place would fall, but not if he stayed chained to a wall.

He closed his eyes. The pain was familiar but so was discipline. He could survive this, one more time and when they opened the door again, whenever they made their next mistake, he’d be ready.

Because someone had to open the way out and it has to be him.

Chapter Text

Hongjoong woke up to the same ceiling, the same unblinking lights and the same thin mattress pressing into his spine. Facility 8 didn’t give them nights or mornings, just the buzz of electricity in their skulls and the smell of bleach that clung to their skin no matter how hard they scrubbed. Another day, he doesn’t even remember when Seonghwa was taken, he just repeated the routine over and over.

This morning should’ve felt like nothing had changed too, but it didn’t.

San was sitting cross legged on his bed, his head tipped forward and elbows braced on his knees. Normally, he’d have been whispering some joke to Wooyoung by now, prodding him until the younger man snapped back with something sharper. This morning, Wooyoung didn’t look at him at all. He sat with his back against the wall, knees drawn up and eyes fixed on some invisible point across the room.

Mingi’s frame looked thinner. He’d pushed the food around until it looked eaten but Hongjoong had noticed the slow chew, the way he swallowed like it hurt and the restless scrape of his tongue against his teeth like he could still taste the metal in the water.

Yeosang was still, too still. His eyes tracked the wall nearest the vents following something. Hongjoong didn’t see what but he’d learned to trust Yeosang’s attention.

Jongho barely spoke anymore. Yunho was still trying, still wearing that half smile when he asked if anyone needed anything but Hongjoong saw the way it dropped the moment no one was looking.

The Dominion hadn’t even touched them yet, not really but already, they were changing and Seonghwa wasn’t here to see it.

Hongjoong didn’t have to imagine the room they’d taken him to, white walls, cold floor and no windows. The quiet between questions would be worse than the questions themselves. Facility 8 didn’t need to shout to hurt you, it could strip you down with a whisper, with the sound of metal shifting behind you.

He hated that he was thinking about it at all, hated more that he couldn’t stop. Every hour Seonghwa was gone was another hour the Dominion had to chip at him, to turn that precision and control into something else entirely.

And yet, Hongjoong wasn’t sure which possibility made his stomach twist more, that Seonghwa would come back broken or that he’d come back exactly the same.

Hongjoong has to take his men out. The routine was breaking them, the therapy was starting to actually get in their heads and Seonghwa's absence felt like a ticking bomb.

They start again. They get up, make their beds and by the time they're ready, the guards are opening the door to guide them to their breakfast.

They eat in complete silence and hide their pills after. They wait in the common room for their chores to be assigned and start working.

“He gave us permission to look for him, but I don't even know where to start,” Wooyoung was the first to speak.

“If they kill him, we have fewer possibilities to get out. I may not be his biggest fan but we need him,” Mingi followed.

Hongjoong knows this, they need the weird man to get out. The seven of them can't possibly try to leave without his help, it felt impossible. The thing is, Hongjoong doesn't know if he wants to find him only for that reason.

Something in his stomach feels tight when he thinks of what may be happening to him. They could be torturing him and for some reason it makes his heart ache. Yes, they need him to get out, but he is starting to realice that he also wants to help him because his body wants to do it.

The man is weird and blunt, he has strange habits and a weird way of moving, but he also is a prisoner. A man that the system failed in kept trapped on a cage that even animals wouldn’t be able to survive.

Hongjoong's entire existence was made to help the ones in need, to free the people from The Dominion’s grip, and Seonghwa was a victim.

“Let's wait for our tasks, we follow the orders and while doing it we watch. We watch and listen for something, anything that may give us a hint as to where he is.” Hongjoong gives the orders to his men and they nod in unison.

“But we need a plan. We can't expect to free him and just lay around, we may have to run instantly after getting him.” Yeosang’s usual reasoning came though.

“I know,” he whispered. “But we need him, he knows this place like the back of his hand, he is our only hope.”

They fake innocence the moment a guard approached them with a sheet of paper with their chores on it. He sticks it in the usual wall and leaves wordlessly.

Hongjoong is assigned the kitchen, he walks there slowly after giving his crew a look that told them everything they need to know without actually saying anything.

He gets the cleaning supplies and starts with cleaning the floors. He looks at the ceiling trying to find a tile that may be out of place, looks at the trays to find some type of sign carved on them, he even checks under the metal tables where the workers cook their food. Nothing.

There isn't a single thing to help him find the man and as if the universe was conspiring against him, something in his head makes him remember San’s screams while he was being electrocuted.

He shuts his eyes, trying to make it go away while his fucking brain morphed San’s face as if it was Seonghwa’s.

He can't give up just like that. The man must be suffering and his chest tightened.

In a sudden burst of emotion, he lets the broom fall and it clattered onto the tiles, the sound unnaturally loud in the sterile quiet.

Hongjoong didn’t remember deciding to move but suddenly his legs were carrying him, fast. First walking, then a half run, then full sprint. The corridor walls blurred past, white and endless, lit by lights that seemed to buzz louder the faster he went.

He tore around corners, ignoring the burn in his lungs, ignoring the faint echo of his own boots that sounded like someone chasing him. Supply closets, locked doors, storage rooms stripped bare, every handle rattled in vain, every room sterile and empty.

It wasn’t until he almost collided with a cleaning cart that he realized Yeosang was staring at him from the hallway floor, a rag in one hand and disbelief in his eyes. Jongho appeared seconds later, stepping into his path, his broad frame like a wall.

Hongjoong didn’t stop until his knees hit tile, the breath punched out of him. The shock of the cold floor hit his palms, his ribs aching with every inhale.

“Joongie,” Jongho’s voice was low but steady, “let’s calm down.”

His pulse was hammering too hard to think straight, images flashing uninvited. San screaming in that chair, Seonghwa’s face replacing his, wrists bound and mouth silent.

The fight drained out of him all at once. He let Jongho’s hands guide him up and back toward the common room. He sat there, with an empty head and a silent mouth. Until everyone came too.

“You should be doing your chores, not babysitting me,” he managed to blurt out, almost slurring.

“We already did, even finished yours.” Mingi answered and he couldn't thank them, only trying to stabilize his head again.

“We have to stay calm or we'll alert them in the plan.” Jongho was the second to speak, softer than normal.

They sat down while waiting for their therapy, silent and with shadowed eyes. They all were losing their damn minds and every second inside Facility 8 was making it worse.

He got up from the couch and sat on the floor, it always seemed to ground him, even as a child. He sat there quietly, and he didn't notice the others moving until they were surrounding him, all sitting on the floor too.

They stayed there for what seemed like hours. Eventually they had to stand up to start their rounds of therapy. Hongjoong wasn't called this day, fortunately.

They ate again, what they could manage to swallow. The tension was growing and every time The Outlaws brought the spoon to their mouths, they couldn't help but look at the empty chair.

The get escorted to their bedroom where they unconsciously and silently, all sit in one bed.

“I don't like to admit it,” Wooyoung murmured, “but I kind of miss him.”

“Yeah, his weirdness made this place feel less eerie for some reason,” Yunho added with a soft voice.

Hongjoong was about to start talking too, when a voice cut him off.

“Well, this is not a normal sight for a fucking mental institution. Have you big bad rebels gone soft?”

Seonghwa.

His arms hurt, his wrists felt like they were bleeding and his hands were definitely losing feeling. He didn't know how long he’d been there, chained to a wall and hurting all over.

Guards came in and out, in what he believed to be a four hours interval. They came and checked if his cuffs were still tight before they hurt him in every way they seemed to find adequate and left, only to come back again, and again.

And he just took it, Seonghwa didn't fight back, because in some unsettling way he thought he deserved it.

The last set of guards had punched him on his side multiple times, kicked him wherever they seemed it was fit to do it, and he was fine. He can handle a beating, what he couldn't handle though, were the words.

He couldn't even pinpoint as to who said what, everything was jumbled together in his head, words moving around in a way that felt's more like torture than the hitting.

“Did you actually think you could be good? Please, you're here for a reason and it's not from being nice.”

“You're a disgrace, no wonder your father sent you here.”

“How does it feel to be on the other side?”

“The seven of them will die because of you, the moment you tried to help them was their sentencing.”

He knew all of those things, he knew he had always been a disgrace, a pawn and now, he may be responsible for a whole movement to disappear. He knew those things, but hearing them aloud carved deeper.

Seonghwa could hear their laughs, the mocking, he could feel it. But he could also hear their cautiousness, how they checked his cuffs to make sure he couldn't fight back, how when they mocked him they always did it from further away.

He can feel the physical pain, but the rumbling thoughts were making him restless. The seven men could be dead for all he knew, and it would be no one's fault but his. And there was maybe a twenty percent chance, that they are alive and if they are, he has to get out because they won't be for long.

He tugged at the chains but the nails that kept them on the wall didn't move, they didn’t budge. Seonghwa breathed through his nose, calming down his body and slowly, he moved his chin down enough to be able to bite into his shirt. Then he breathed once again and launched his body forward with all his strength.

He heard the nails fall and also a bone move in a way that couldn't be good. He let his shirt fall into place again and threw his head back, trying to make open his eyes through the pain, this was only the start.

His arms fell down, finally. Seonghwa's hands rested on lap and he prepared himself for the next part.

Seonghwa’s eyes fell on a rusty iron rod a guard had used to hit him on his stomach, he crawled to it until he sat right next to the menacing object.

His hands were still chained together so he awkwardly moved the bar around until it rested right under his left armpit. Seonghwa gritted his teeth and while biting into his shirt again, he pulled his elbow down enough to pop his shoulder back to where it should be.

The pain is agonizing but he had no time to think about the buzzing in his ears. He used his chained right hand to move the bar upwards until his bone made the sound that he was looking for.

The man let the bar fall onto the ground and rested his back on the wall. The world swam for a moment and his heaving was the only sound filling the room.

He waited until the pain was replaced by a stinging sensation, it hurt but it was better than a broken bone.

He took his time to breathe, then got up and walked to the door only to realice, the handle was on the outside. There was no way to get out from the inside of the room.

Seonghwa decided to wait, he took the rusty rod in his hands and waited. He didn't know how long he stood there, prepared and aware, expecting for a set of guards to open the door.

And it did. The door opened slowly and threateningly, letting in two guards who were talking to each other about mundane things. They were so distracted that they couldn't see the iron bar until int hit the first one in the head. The second guard lifted a hand to reach for his weapon but Seonghwa was faster.

The two men were laying on the floor, he kneeled and searched their pockets, finding the key. He freed his bleeding wrists and left closing the door behind him, not before he took one of the guard’s identification card.

He limped through the hallways, his legs forgetting what it felt like to walk. He realized it was night time from the lack of staff around, making his way back easier.

Seonghwa reached the bedroom’s door and used the guard's ID to open it. Inside there were the seven men, all on the same bed as if cuddling together.

“Well, this is not a normal sight for a fucking mental institution. Have you big bad rebels gone soft?” His voice came out rough, letting his pain be known.

“Seonghwa?” Hongjoong was startled. The man was standing in front of them, as if it was any other day, but he was wearing blood on his clothes like it was a part of the fabric.

“Did they let you out? What happened?” Wooyoung's eyes were wide and terrified at the same time.

“Of course not, are you crazy? I let myself out.” The man answered calmly, as if they were asking him what he had for lunch.

“But- how? Are you hurt?” Yunho stood up to touch him, but Seonghwa was faster and stepped away right before his hand reached his left shoulder.

“No, and don't make more questions. You seven have to leave. Now.”

Hongjoong heard it, he did, but he couldn't take his mind off the fact that the man was standing before them like nothing had happened to him.

He could see it. The blood, the pain on his face, how his left shoulder sagged more than the other and the limping as he came into the room. He was hurt, badly, but he was more concerned about helping them get out.

“How do we do that? We don't know a way out and you clearly aren't in any condition to leave either.” Hongjoong could see that the man's injuries would make leaving hard, it would be hard enough with healthy men.

“I never said I was leaving, I’ll just help you get out. You have to win, Kim Hongjoong. This country can't keep on being the way it is, and for the first time I think I finally met a group of men that have enough fire in their eyes to achieve it.”

He was flattered, in a sick way. He felt acknowledged but also defeated. He can't let the man stay, not after whatever he did to escape, they’ll probably kill him as soon as The Outlaws make it out.

“You're coming with us, you can't stay,” Jongho’s voice sounded desperate.

“I have to stay, this place is my cage. It was made to keep me in.” Seonghwa's voice felt smaller, for the first time the man looked small and fragile.

Hongjoong wanted to analyze what the man just said, but the time wasn't on their side. They have to leave.

“Let's move, lead the way.”

The others stand up and they start following a limping Seonghwa around Facility 8.

They move silently but steadily. He feels like throwing up from the sheer anxiousness of their mission.

Seonghwa leads them around, hallway after hallway. They passed doors and storage rooms, until the man stopped at a certain door. It looked just like the other ones, the same white paint, the same handle and lock.

Seonghwa used a card on the reader, and it opened.

The lock gave a soft click and the sterile white door swung inward. Beyond it, a dime corridor stretched out, lit by softer lights than the blinding strips of their block.

Seonghwa stood in the doorway but didn’t step through it. Instead, he glanced over his shoulder at the group, eyes narrowing like he was making a mental roll call.

“This is it,” get said simply. “Follow this hallway and you’ll be free. Then, follow the road, don’t walk on it, but close to it.”

Hongjoong’s jaw tightened. “You’re walking with us. No more fucking heroics.”

“No,” Seonghwa said, without a shred of hesitation.

“Seonghwa-”

“This place was built to keep me in. You get to the outside, I’ll only slow you down. I’m more useful distracting them from inside than running out there.”

Hongjoong took a step closer, his voice low but sharp. “Do you hear yourself? You’ve just survived days of torture, you’re limping and bleeding, you probably took down a guard too-”

Seonghwa cut him off with a smirk that didn’t reach his eyes. “And now you want to ruin my record by dragging me somewhere I’ll get shot in the back of the head before we even reach the fence?”

From behind them, Wooyoung muttered, “Wouldn’t be the first time you’ve been a pain in the ass.”

Seonghwa arched a brow. “Careful, kid. Without me, you would still have to go to therapy tomorrow.”

“Seonghwa.” Hongjoong’s tone dropped and his smirk faltered. “You’re coming with us.”

“No, I’m not-”

Somewhere deeper in the facility, a metallic slam echoed. Followed by the steady rhythm of boots. Too many to count are first, then growing clearer as they closed in.

Every head in the group snapped toward the sound.

Seonghwa’s mouth opened, maybe to protest again, but Hongjoong moved first. His hand shot out, fingers wrapping hard around Seonghwa’s wrist.

The older man stiffed. “Hongjoong-”

“Shut up,” Hongjoong hissed and yanked him through the doorway.

The jolt of movement made Seonghwa stumble, his bad shoulder brushing the doorframe. He hissed in pain but didn’t pull away, he felt too much pain to do so, and the pounding of the boots closing in didn’t make him want to stay too much either.

For the first time in years, Seonghwa’s feet crossed the threshold of his cage and Hongjoong didn’t let his wrist go.

Chapter Text

The hallway beyond was narrow, painted in that same sterile white that seemed to swallow sound but Hongjoong’s grip was warm, unyielding and grounding in a way Seonghwa hadn’t expected.

He should’ve pulled away. He’d told himself, for years, that no one could hold him without taking something but Hongjoong’s fingers didn’t take, they anchored.

The others moved ahead in a tight line, their footsteps quick but measured. Seonghwa kept his eyes forward, watching the rhythm of their movements, the way they kept checking for him over their shoulders. He wasn’t used to being checked on.

“You’re slowing,” Hongjoong murmured, low enough that only Seonghwa could hear.

“My legs aren’t used to this much walking,” Seonghwa replied, matching the tone. His voice was rough from disuse but steady.

Hongjoong’s grip tightened, just slightly. “Then lean on me.”

Seonghwa almost laughed, not because it was funny but because it was dangerous. Leaning meant trusting, trusting meant falling and he knew better than to fall for anyone in these walls. Yet something in the steadiness of Hongjoong’s hand made him take one fraction of a step closer, just enough that his shoulder brushed the rebel’s arm.

They moved like that through the corridor, the dim lights humming above them and for the first time since his chains had been cut, Seonghwa wondered if there was a way out of Facility 8 that didn’t just mean leaving the building.

The corridor narrowed, air growing warmer as they descended a shallow slope. Every sound felt amplified. The scrape of a boot, the soft rustle of clothing, the distant hum of a generator somewhere above. Seonghwa’s steps were uneven but stubborn and Hongjoong matched his pace without thinking.

Ahead, Yeosang raised a hand, halting the group. They froze in unison, bodies pressing into the walls as a shadow passed across the far end of the hallway. Heavy footsteps and then silence.

Seonghwa’s pulse thudded against Hongjoong’s fingers but the rebel didn’t loosen his hold.

When the coast was clear, they moved again, and this time Seonghwa could see a faint and unnatural glow spilling through the cracks of a heavy metal door. It was too warm to be from the facility’s lights, too alive.

Sunlight.

It pulled at something in his chest he hadn’t felt in years, something small and defiant that The Dominion had never managed to crush. The last time he’d seen daylight, it had been from a barred window in an interrogation room. Now it was right there, leaking into the stale air like a promise.

They approached in silence, every step stretching into an eternity.

“Leaving so soon?”

They froze and Dr. Jinwoo stepped into view as if he’d been there all along, the sun at his back turning his white coat into a stark silhouette. His hands were tucked into his pockets, his expression too calm for someone who’d just caught seven rebels and a missing patient in the middle of an escape.

His gaze skipped over the Outlaws before settling on Seonghwa. “You’ve made it quite far for someone in your… condition, but tell me, Seonghwa. What will you do out there? You know your father won’t be happy about this.”

The words landed like a blade pressed against skin, not deep enough to draw blood but enough to warn.

Hongjoong felt the Outlaws’ attention shift, their eyes flicking toward Seonghwa with something sharper than curiosity. Mingi’s brows drew together, Wooyoung’s lips parted like he was about to speak and even Yunho’s posture tightened, suspicion threading into his stance.

Seonghwa’s jaw clenched but he said nothing.

Dr. Jinwoo’s smile was small and knowing. “You can run, all of you, but you’ll find the world less forgiving than these walls. Out there, people will want you dead. In here…” His gaze swept over them, slow and deliberate. “…at least you know the rules.”

Seonghwa’s expression didn’t shift but Hongjoong could feel the tension in the wrist he still held, a coiled resistance, the kind you only saw in people used to being cornered.

He stepped forward just enough to put himself in the full light spilling through the door. “You make it sound like I have somewhere to go,” he said, voice even. “Like there’s a home waiting for me out there.”

Jinwoo’s smile didn’t falter. “Isn’t there?”

Seonghwa tilted his head, almost curious. “You’ve spent years telling me I belong here. That the outside would chew me up. So forgive me if I’m not convinced you suddenly care what my father thinks.”

The Outlaws shifted subtly at the word father but Hongjoong caught it. Mingi’s eyes narrowed, San’s head turned sharply and Yeosang’s gaze sharpened like he was lining up a target in his mind.

Jinwoo took a step closer, the sunlight casting his face into half shadow. “It’s not me you should be convincing, you know that.”

For the first time, Seonghwa smiled, small, sharp and entirely unreadable. “If he wanted me back, doctor, he wouldn’t have left me here.”

The words hung in the air, thin as a blade. He didn’t confirm anything but he didn’t deny it either, just enough for the Outlaws to start threading their own versions of the truth.

Then Seonghwa glanced sideways at Hongjoong and the smallest flicker of something passed between them, an unspoken agreement.

“Move,” Seonghwa murmured, stepping toward the last door again and Hongjoong tightened his grip on his wrist, ready to drag him through it.

Jinwoo’s gaze stayed locked on Seonghwa but his words were meant for everyone in the room.

“What will your new friends think of you when they learn who you really are?” His voice was steady, almost conversational, like he was asking about the weather. “I know for a fact you haven’t told them. They’ll leave instantly when they do.”

Seonghwa’s eyes flickered, the smallest crack in that perfect stillness. Hongjoong felt it in the faint twitch of the wrist he still held.

Before he could speak, Wooyoung stepped forward, his voice cutting sharp through the stale air. “We won’t. Whatever it is, we won’t. We’re leaving thanks to him, nothing could make us betray him.”

Jinwoo’s lips curved, just slightly. “Are you sure about that?”

The words lingered, heavy as the metal door behind him. Wooyoung didn’t answer but his jaw was set, eyes unblinking. Around him, the rest of the Outlaws stayed silent, not because they agreed but because the question was already working its way under their skin.

Hongjoong saw it, the flickers of curiosity, the shadows of doubt and he hated that Jinwoo had planted them in seconds.

Seonghwa’s lips curved, but there was nothing warm in it. “You’ve been trying to crawl inside my head for years, doctor. You’d think by now you’d know what’s locked in there stays there until I decide to open it.”

Jinwoo’s eyes narrowed, the first crack in his composure.

Seonghwa stepped forward, pulling Hongjoong with him until the sunlight grazed the edge of his face. “How’s your brother?” he asked casually.

The words landed like a stone dropped into still water and Jinwoo’s posture stiffened.

“I heard he finally got that promotion,” Seonghwa continued, voice smooth, unhurried. “The one in the Central Ministry. Shame about the audit they’re running on his department. Messy things, especially when the numbers don’t line up.”

Jinwoo’s hands flexed inside the pockets of his coat. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Seonghwa tilted his head, studying him like an insect under glass. “Don’t I? I’ve been in here for years, Jinwoo. How could I possibly know about something that happened last month?” He let the question hang, heavy and deliberate. “Imagine what else I might know.”

The sunlight cut a bright line between them, and Jinwoo didn’t cross it, he stepped back and not because Seonghwa had pushed, but because something in those words had sunk its claws in deep enough to make him hesitate.

Hongjoong didn’t wait for permission. He tightened his grip on Seonghwa’s wrist and together they moved toward the open door.

No one spoke as they slipped past him, the door groaning wider on its hinges until the light swallowed the corridor. Hongjoong kept his grip firm on Seonghwa’s wrist, like the connection itself was the only thing keeping them tethered to reality.

Every step away from the doctor felt heavier, the adrenaline draining, leaving behind the weight of exhaustion and the sharp edge of disbelief. San’s shoulders were tight, Yunho’s jaw set and even Wooyoung, still defiant and still burning, had gone quiet.

They didn’t look at Seonghwa, not directly after what he’d just said.

The silence pressed in as they moved, their breathing the only sound. Hongjoong’s mind raced, replaying the words over and over. Something from the outside, something Seonghwa shouldn’t know. It had unsettled Jinwoo enough to let them go and that alone was terrifying.

For a long moment, none of them moved. They just stood there, staring at the door like it might vanish if they blinked.

Hongjoong tightened his grip on Seonghwa’s wrist, feeling the steady thrum of his pulse beneath his fingers. Then he nodded once.

Yeosang pulled.

Blinding, golden and unfiltered light. After weeks, maybe months of nothing but sterile white fluorescence, the sun was a knife straight to the eyes. San shielded his face with an arm, Wooyoung squinted hard but refused to look away and Yunho laughed once, the sound breaking sharp and breathless like he couldn’t stop himself.

Air rushed in, thick and wild. It carried dirt, grass, the tang of rust from unseen pipes and underneath it all, freedom.

Mingi stumbled forward first, his hand curling against the frame like he needed to anchor himself or else he’d be swept away. Jongho’s shoulders dropped for the first time since Facility 8 swallowed them, the rigid tension bleeding out with a shuddering exhale. Yeosang just stood there, wide eyes drinking in every shadow, every leaf quivering in the distance, as if his gaze alone could memorize the entire horizon.

It wasn’t quiet, wind whispered through weeds, insects buzzed faintly, something alive moved far off in the brush but compared to the mechanical hum of the facility, it was deafening.

They had stepped into a different world.

For Seonghwa the light didn’t blind, it burned.

The sun seared against his skin that had only known fluorescent cold, filling every pore with heat so real it felt violent. His eyes watered instantly but he didn’t blink, couldn’t blink. The color of it was wrong, too warm, too alive and for a moment he felt like the world itself might split him open just for daring to stand beneath it.

The air cut deeper than any blade the Dominion had pressed against him. The smell of wet dirt, sharp and unfiltered dragged memories he hadn’t permitted himself to feel.

His chest ached so much that he thought his heart might stop entirely.

Beside him, Hongjoong’s grip hadn’t loosened. Seonghwa realized dimly that his hand had started to tremble, the tremor betraying what he’d worked years to cage.

The others breathed like they’d been drowning and had finally broken the surface. Seonghwa didn’t, he stood still staring at the vastness beyond the door.

Their silence shattered.

Sirens wailed from deep within Facility 8, shrill and urgent, slicing through the open air. The Outlaws flinched as one, instinct jolting them into motion.

“Run,” Hongjoong snapped.

They bolted.

The earth gave under their feet, uneven and unpredictable compared to the flat floors they’d been trapped on. The tall weeds clawed at their clothes, sticks catching in the fabric as they crashed through. Their lungs burned, sucking in air too thick but none of them dared slow.

The road appeared like a gray scar cutting across the wild grass and they skidded to a halt at the edge, instincts screaming. Asphalt meant eyes, eyes meant surveillance and that meant Dominion patrols.

“Not on it,” Seonghwa hissed, already veering away. “Stay close, use the forest.”

They walked parallel to the road with their bodies hunched and heads low, the roar of the sirens still chasing them. The sound seemed to cling, echoing against the inside of their skulls even as the facility shrank behind them.

Every car that didn’t appear was worse than one that might, every moment without pursuit only wound the tension tighter until the Outlaws were listening for footsteps in their own breathing.

Hongjoong’s grip still anchored Seonghwa, dragging him along with a pace that wasn’t merciful. The man’s limp showed now, every step was uneven but he didn’t stumble, he didn’t slow down. His face was unreadable, only the faint flare of his nostrils betraying the strain.

The road stretched beside them like a lifeline they couldn’t touch but close enough that the smooth surface gleamed in the dying light, whispering temptation and above it all, the sirens kept screaming until it was impossible to tell if the noise was still behind them or if it had already caught up.

The wail of the sirens pitched higher, then a new sound joined it. Engines.

The low, grinding roar carried down the road, too heavy to be civilian and too deliberate to be chance. The Outlaws froze for half a heartbeat, just long enough to see the shadows cresting the horizon. Dominion vehicles, black and armored, their headlights cutting twin scars through the fading light.

“To the field!” Yunho hissed.

They scattered, diving into the tall grass just as the first floodlight swept the asphalt. The beam cut across the field, scouring the weeds with a brutal white glare. Hongjoong shoved Seonghwa down with him, his hand still locked around the man’s wrist like letting go would mean losing him in an instant.

The ground was damp, earth pressing cold against their bellies as they crawled low. Breath came ragged, too loud, too sharp. Every rustle of grass felt like an alarm.

Engines rumbled closer, the vibration running through the soil into their bones.

Mingi muttered a curse under his breath. Wooyoung pressed so close to San that Hongjoong couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. Yeosang didn’t move at all, his stillness somehow louder than the sirens.

Then the searchlight swung their way.

Hongjoong yanked Seonghwa against him, flattening them both into the earth. The light blazed over them, bleaching the weeds pale, searing the back of his eyelids even when he shut them tight.

Beside him, Seonghwa didn’t flinch. His chest moved slow and steady as if he’d trained for this kind of hunting. It unsettled Hongjoong and steadied him at the same time.

The vehicle slowed, gears grinding as it lingered. For a breathless stretch it felt like the light pinned them in place, exposed and inevitable.

Then with a lurch, it moved on. The engine growled past, the searchlight dragging away until only the dark returned.

The Outlaws didn’t rise. The sirens still screamed behind them, the engines still haunted the road and the night had only just begun.

“Stay with me,” Hongjoong whispered and Seonghwa didn’t pull away.

The moment the searchlight passed, Yeosang lifted his hand in a sharp signal. They rose together, low and quick, weaving deeper into the tall grass. The road’s hum stayed with them, engines prowling like beasts but the fields stretched wide and dark, their only chance.

“Woods,” Yunho panted, pointing toward the jagged line of black trees in the distance.

But the field was open and every step felt exposed, every gust of wind against the grass a possible giveaway.

“Not straight,” Seonghwa said suddenly, his voice low but firm.

The others glanced at him surprised he’d spoken at all but Hongjoong didn’t hesitate. “Explain.”

Seonghwa’s gaze swept the field, sharp even in the half light. “The Dominion sweeps in grids. If we run direct, the beams will cross us. We stagger and pause at uneven counts. It’ll confuse their pattern recognition.”

He didn’t wait for agreement, he jerked his chin toward a broken patch of ground to their left and moved, dragging Hongjoong with him. The others followed, half out of trust and half out of instinct.

They darted in sharp diagonals, cutting across dips and rises, never long enough in one line for the lights to catch them. When a searchbeam raked across the field, Seonghwa raised a hand and every single one of them dropped flat, breath locked in their throats, until the glow passed. Then he lifted his hand again and they surged forward.

Mingi muttered under his breath, “How the hell does he know this?”

“Later,” Hongjoong snapped, though the question gnawed at him too.

The woods loomed closer with every desperate push, shadows thick and jagged, a promise of cover. Engines roared behind them, searchlights crisscrossing more frantically now, the Dominion realizing their prey was slipping further away.

Seonghwa staggered once, his limp dragging, but Hongjoong caught him before he fell. Seonghwa didn’t even glance at him, he just whispered, sharp and cold, “Three more drops, then we’ll be safe.”

And somehow, Hongjoong believed him.

The last drop carried them to the tree line. One more blinding sweep of the searchlights tore across the field and then they were gone, swallowed by the woods.

Branches clawed at their clothes, the undergrowth snarling around their ankles. The earth here was uneven, thick with roots and hidden stones, but the darkness worked in their favor. The Dominion’s lights couldn’t pierce the canopy, only brush the outer leaves in pale streaks.

Still, the engines followed. They heard the vehicles pulling off the road, the heavy crunch of tires forcing through the field. Dogs barked in the distance, sharp and wild.

“Keep low!” Yunho hissed, ducking under a branch.

Wooyoung stumbled against San but righted himself quickly, teeth bared in something between fear and exhilaration. Mingi’s breaths came harsh, audible even over the crunch of leaves. Yeosang was silent as ever, his eyes darting upward, marking the trees, plotting paths none of them could see. Jongho stayed at the rear, watchful, ready to turn and fight if it came to that.

Seonghwa led.

Limping and bleeding but precise. Every shift of his body had purpose, which trees offered cover, which hollows would hide their silhouettes. He guided them like he knew the Dominion’s rhythm, like he’d studied their hunts.

“Go right,” he whispered suddenly. “They’ll sweep left.”

Hongjoong’s mind screamed to ask how he could possibly know that, but there was no time. He signaled the others and they followed Seonghwa’s lead, cutting sharp into a ravine that dipped them below the ground line. The lights above swung wide, just as Seonghwa had predicted, beams slicing empty air.

For a moment they were shadows, invisible, breaths rattling in their chests.

The woods pressed close, every crack of a twig a thunderclap, every heartbeat too loud. The Dominion was hunting and the Outlaws had become prey.

Hongjoong stayed at Seonghwa’s side, one hand still brushing his sleeve, refusing to lose contact. He didn’t know if he was protecting him or being pulled forward by him anymore.

Above them, the searchlights swept again, closer this time and somewhere behind, the dogs barked louder.

The barking grew closer, sharper. Then the snap of twigs, the crunch of boots.

“Down!” Hongjoong hissed.

They dropped low into the brush just as two Dominion soldiers broke through the trees, floodlamps strapped to their rifles, beams slicing the dark. Shadows jittered across the trunks, light scattering over leaves and dirt. The soldiers moved with methodical precision, voices clipped over radios.

“Sector D clear. Moving east.”

But the dogs gave them away lunging forward, snarling and straining against their leads. The soldiers followed their pull, right toward the Outlaws’ ravine.

For a split second, the rebels and soldiers locked eyes across the thin veil of brush. Then everything exploded.

San surged first, a blur of motion. He slammed into the nearest soldier before the man could aim, knocking the rifle aside. Wooyoung followed instantly, all teeth and speed, striking low and cruel, a knife he had stolen before flicked from his sleeve burying into the soldier’s thigh before the man could cry out.

On the other side, Yunho rose like a wall, his fist crashing into the second soldier’s jaw with enough force to snap his head sideways. The man dropped his rifle only for Jongho to scoop it up mid fall and swing it like a club, the butt smashing into his helmet with a crack that echoed through the trees.

Mingi was already on the dogs. His hands moved fast and precise, a pinch to a pressure point at the collar, a twist of the leash and both beasts yelped, stunned just long enough for Yeosang to slip past and silence them with another strong push on a pressure point making them faint.

The entire fight lasted less than thirty seconds.

By the time the forest stilled again, both soldiers lay unconscious on the ground, their weapons stripped, radios smashed. The dogs were down, breathing but harmless.

The Outlaws stood in the shadows, panting, alive and for the first time since they’d escaped, they looked like who they were not prisoners or prey but a rebellion’s sharpest edge.

Seonghwa watched it all with sharp, calculating eyes. Even bleeding, even limping, he studied the efficiency, the brutality, the way they moved like a single organism. Hongjoong caught his gaze, something electric passing between them, an unspoken this is why we’ll win.

But before the triumph could settle, a distant roar cut through the woods. More engines and soldiers.

Hongjoong turned, voice low but steady. “We move. Now.”

And with Seonghwa at his side, they vanished deeper into the trees.

They didn’t stop running until the sirens dulled to a distant echo, the engines smothered by the thickness of the forest. Branches clawed at their arms, their lungs burned but finally in a hollow beneath a tangle of trees, Hongjoong raised a hand.

“Here. Rest.”

The group collapsed where they stood, Wooyoung leaning against San’s shoulder, chest heaving; Mingi tearing at a strip of his sleeve to wrap a cut; Yunho crouching with hands pressed to his knees, eyes darting, already alert again. Jongho and Yeosang kept watch at the edges, silhouettes tense against the shadows.

Seonghwa lowered himself onto a fallen log, his limp more pronounced now, blood soaking through the thin fabric at his thigh. Even in exhaustion, he held himself with rigid control, every movement deliberate, as though admitting pain would give the Dominion one more victory.

Hongjoong crouched in front of him, voice low but sharp. “How did you know?”

Seonghwa blinked once. “Know what?”

“The sweep patterns,” Hongjoong pressed. His words came quick, like he couldn’t afford patience. “The way you guided us through the field, the drop points, the angles. That wasn’t luck.”

The others stilled, even Wooyoung, still catching his breath, lifted his head to listen.

Seonghwa met Hongjoong’s gaze without flinching. Then, instead of answering, he reached down and pulled a handful of leaves from the damp earth, crushing them between his fingers. He brought them close, sniffed once, then cast the pulp aside.

“We need to move north,” he said, ignoring the question entirely. “The air’s clearer. Less smoke, less Dominion activity. If we follow the slope, it’ll funnel us toward water.”

Hongjoong’s jaw tightened. “You didn’t answer me.”

“I wasn’t aware it was a question worth answering,” Seonghwa said, tone even, almost bored. He pushed himself to his feet, staggering once before regaining balance. “Decide quickly. The longer we stay here, the easier their grid closes around us.”

The Outlaws exchanged looks of suspicion and frustration but also something else, a reluctant acknowledgment that he was right.

Hongjoong rose slowly, his eyes still locked on Seonghwa. Every instinct screamed at him to push harder, to demand truth but the forest around them hummed with danger and he couldn’t risk tearing the fragile thread holding them together, not yet.

“North,” Hongjoong said finally, his voice hard. “Move.”

Seonghwa gave no smile, no gloat. He only adjusted his torn sleeve, turned his back on them all and started walking.

Night fell thick and fast, the forest swallowing the last trace of sun until only shadows remained. The Dominion’s noise faded, distant now but none of them trusted the silence. Every crack of a branch had them tensing, every gust of wind felt like pursuit.

They pressed forward, slower now, until Seonghwa suddenly stopped beneath a break in the canopy.

“Wait.”

He tilted his head back, eyes scanning the sky. The stars glinted faint through gaps in the branches, fractured pieces of light. Hongjoong watched him trace invisible lines with his gaze, lips parting slightly as if counting.

“We’re drifting east,” Seonghwa murmured. “We need north.”

“North looks the same as east to me,” Mingi muttered, leaning against a tree.

Seonghwa didn’t reply. He simply adjusted their course, stepping off through the brush like he’d always known where to go.

Hours bled together. At some point he crouched beside a trickle of water barely audible under the chirr of crickets. “Stream,” he said, brushing aside moss. “Drink carefully. It’ll carry us to a river by dawn.”

Yunho dropped beside it instantly, cupping his hands to drink. The others followed, exhaustion giving way to relief.

It was Wooyoung, though, who broke the silence as he splashed cold water onto his face, shaking like a wet dog. “So let me get this straight.” He jabbed a finger toward Seonghwa. “You can read the sky, sniff dirt, sniff water and somehow you’re still the one chained up in a room like a creepy ghost?”

“Wooyoung,” San warned softly.

“What? I’m just saying!” Wooyoung’s voice pitched higher, frustration and awe tangling into something messy. “We’ve been stumbling around like idiots, and he-” He waved a hand at Seonghwa, who knelt calmly filling a flask from the stream. “he’s out here playing survival guide like it’s nothing. What the hell are you, Seonghwa? A compass in human skin?”

Seonghwa didn’t look up. “Survival is repetition. If you live long enough, you learn patterns.”

“That’s not an answer,” Wooyoung shot back but his tone had softened, curiosity bleeding through his sharp edges.

Hongjoong caught the exchange with narrowed eyes. Seonghwa’s evasions were starting to feel deliberate and calculated, yet even now, with dirt on his hands and blood still darkening his clothes, he was the only reason they hadn’t collapsed hours ago.

The Outlaws followed him again when he rose, this time without question.

The forest thinned with the slow bleed of dawn. Gray light spread through the canopy, soft at first, then stronger, brushing the edges of every branch and leaf. For the first time since leaving Facility 8, the Outlaws saw each other clearly, faces gaunt, eyes red, dirt smeared across skin. Freedom looked nothing like glory, it looked like exhaustion that refused to break.

The trickle of water Seonghwa had found deepened as they followed it, swelling into a narrow river cutting through the trees. Mist clung to its surface, curling off into the pale morning air. The sound of running water was almost too much, alive, unfiltered and real.

San let out a shaky laugh. “Haven’t heard anything that beautiful in weeks.”

“Drink and wash up, but don’t linger,” Hongjoong ordered. His voice was rough, frayed from the night, but steady, always steady.

They crouched by the banks, splashing cold water over their faces, filling stolen flasks and letting the chill jolt them awake.

Wooyoung flopped onto the grass with a dramatic groan. “So, what’s the next miracle trick? Gonna wrestle a fish out with your bare hands? Or- oh, I know, make fire by glaring hard enough?”

Seonghwa was kneeling at the water’s edge and he didn’t look at him. He was scanning the far bank, eyes flicking over tracks, broken branches and the rhythm of the current.

“Don’t tempt him,” Mingi muttered, wiping water from his mouth.

“I’m serious,” Wooyoung pressed, sitting up. His voice pitched higher, frustration wound tight with awe. “You just knew where to go. The stars, the river, you walk like you’ve done this a hundred times before. You gonna tell us how? Or do we just keep guessing what else you’ve been hiding?”

Seonghwa finally looked at him but his expression didn’t change. Calm, distant and almost bored.

“Keep walking,” he said simply, rising to his feet. He glanced at the river’s bend, then pointed northward through the trees. “If we follow that ridge, we’ll put another mile between us and their patrol routes. Dominion doesn’t push too far without vehicles.”

Wooyoung scowled, opening his mouth again, but Hongjoong cut him off with a look. The group gathered their things in silence, exhaustion pulling at their bones.

The sun rose higher, gilding the mist in pale gold and still they walked. Step by step, away from Facility 8. Step by step, deeper into a freedom that didn’t feel safe, not yet.

Chapter Text

They reached the river by dawn, stumbling out of the tree line like ghosts. Clothes torn, shoes ruined from mud and water, hair plastered to their faces. The cold mist off the current clung to their skin but none of them cared enough to move.

They were alive, out and free.

It should have felt like victory but it didn’t.

Mingi sat first, dropping hard onto the rocks with a hiss. “I can’t feel my legs anymore. Someone tell me we’re stopping here for more than five minutes.”

“No one’s chasing us,” Yeosang said, glancing back the way they came. “Not yet.”

“That’s the scary part,” Wooyoung muttered. He crouched near the water, dunked his hands and splashed his face. “It's like they’re letting us go.”

Jongho ran a hand through his soaked hair, exhaling slow and he looked at Hongjoong. “So what’s the next step?”

All eyes turned to him.

Seonghwa sat apart, his back against a tree and long legs stretched in front of him. He wasn’t shaking like the others, he wasn’t even breathing hard. His head tilted slightly, eyes on the river but not watching it, like he was somewhere else entirely.

Hongjoong swallowed. “First step is rest. We regroup, make sure everyone’s in one piece. Then we figure out how to get to the base with the others.”

“Assuming they still think we’re alive,” Mingi said.

“They do,” Yunho said quickly. “They have to.”

“No one’s gonna say it? Fine, I’ll say it. We’re alive because of him.” Wooyoung's voice was sharp as he pointed to where Seonghwa was resting. “And none of us knows why. That doesn’t bother anyone else?”

“Of course it does,” Hongjoong said, rubbing at his temples. “But we can’t push him now.”

“So what, we just wait? Pretend nothing’s weird?” San leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

“Maybe waiting is safer than finding out.” Yeosang’s voice was calm, but his eyes weren’t.

“Safe?” Wooyoung laughed, bitter and short. “You think any of this is safe? Look at him. He’s been there all this time and he knows every way in and out. He could’ve left whenever he wanted but he didn’t.”

Finally, Seonghwa’s gaze shifted and the air went still.

Hongjoong stepped in before it could spiral further. “Enough. We don’t tear each other apart, not now. We’re free but that doesn’t mean we’re safe. Until we know more, we move as one.”

Seonghwa just closed his eyes again, as if he hadn’t heard a word.

“My whole body feels like it’s been run through a grinder. If this is freedom, I want a refund.” Mingi rubbed at his knees, groaning.

“Shut up, at least we’re not in padded rooms anymore,” Wooyoung muttered.

San nudged him with his shoulder. “You mean you’re not. You screamed louder than me when they pulled you away from that therapy room.”

Wooyoung shot him a glare. “Oh, sorry for caring that they were frying you like a piece of meat. Next time I’ll clap and cheer.”

San smirked faintly but his hand crept to Wooyoung’s arm like he needed the contact.

Yunho stretched his legs out, his voice steady. “Doesn’t matter what they did in there, what matters is we got out. We stick together now.”

Yeosang shook his head. “Sticking together isn’t enough. We don’t even know where we are, we don’t have food and we don’t have weapons.” He turned his gaze toward Hongjoong. “We need a plan before this freedom kills us.”

“Plan?” Wooyoung barked out a laugh. “Sure, let’s make a plan. Step one, figure out what he’s planning.” His chin jerked toward Seonghwa again.

Seonghwa’s eyes opened again, landing squarely on him. They stared at each other for a beat too long, like two predators circling.

“Wooyoung.” Hongjoong’s tone was a warning.

“What?” Wooyoung’s voice rose, sharp enough to cut. “We’ve been fighting, bleeding and running for hours. And this guy? He just sits in the middle of it like he’s watching a play. He’s either a miracle or a fucking trap, and I’d like to know which one before we all wake up in that place again.”

The words hung, heavy and hot.

Jongho finally spoke, voice low but firm. “He got us out of there. That’s not nothing.”

“And you trust that? Just like that?” Wooyoung turned on him.

“I didn’t say trust,” Jongho said evenly. “I said it means something and if you can’t see that, you’re letting your mouth run faster than your brain again.”

“Say that again-”

“Stop it.” Hongjoong’s voice cut through, steel under the exhaustion. “All of you. We can’t afford this, not now.”

Hongjoong looked at his men, distrust boiling just beneath their skin and he felt the weight of it press down harder than any chain.

The night dragged and they huddled near the riverbank, taking turns keeping watch but no one really slept. Every crack of a branch had them on edge, every rustle in the grass felt like the government’s men were about to drag them back.

When the pale light of dawn bled into the sky, they looked more like survivors than rebels. Their faces drawn, shadows under their eyes and then there was Seonghwa.

He hadn’t moved much all night, just sat against a tree with his head tilted like he was listening to something no one else could hear.

At breakfast, if it could be called that, Mingi ate berries he found around the forest. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Seonghwa lifted one, chewed exactly eight times, then swallowed. He did it again and again, like a machine running on rules only he understood.

Yunho noticed too. “He’s… counting,” he muttered under his breath.

Wooyoung’s gaze followed Seonghwa’s hand as he tapped twice against the log before sitting down. “Yeah and that. Every time, he taps.”

“It’s not random.” Jongho frowned.

Hongjoong stayed quiet but his eyes never left Seonghwa.

The silence grew heavy again, until Yeosang finally broke it, his voice low, careful. “I’m going to ask him.”

The others looked at him but Yeosang didn’t wait for permission. He shifted across the damp grass, slow and deliberate, until he was near enough that Seonghwa’s eyes flicked open. They were sharp, too sharp for someone who’d barely slept.

Yeosang hesitated only a second before speaking. “Why do you do that? The tapping and the counting.”

“Sometimes things aren’t real.”

The group stilled, watching from their side of the fire and Yeosang swallowed. “And us? Are we real to you?”

Seonghwa’s eyes stayed on him, unreadable, his fingers resting loose against his knee. Then with deliberate precision, he tapped Yeosang’s leg twice.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “You are.”

The words landed heavier than any speech.

Yeosang froze, caught between relief and unease, and the others exchanged silent looks.

Seonghwa leaned back again, gaze drifting toward the river, as if nothing had happened at all.

Wooyoung let out a sharp whisper, almost a laugh. “That was… creepy as hell.”

San elbowed him hard. “Shut up. He answered you, Yeosang. That’s more than he’s given any of us.”

“Yeah, but what does it mean?” Mingi rubbed his face, muttering.

“Doesn’t matter what he meant, he said yes. That’s something, we hold onto it.” Jongho shook his head.

Yeosang sat very still, eyes fixed on the ground, as if replaying the tap on his knee over and over.

Across from them, Seonghwa hadn’t moved again, body loose but his gaze far away. Detached, as if the words hadn’t mattered to him at all but to the Outlaws, they had.

The whispers died out, leaving only the rush of the river and the weight of Seonghwa’s silence.

Hongjoong leaned forward, elbows on his knees, eyes sweeping over his men one by one. They were bruised, exhausted, frayed at the edges but they were alive, and they were looking at him, waiting. 

“We can’t stay here,” he said, his voice steady, low enough not to carry. “Every hour we waste puts us closer to being found. The government doesn’t stop looking, not for people like us.”

Wooyoung scoffed softly. “People like us? You mean criminals?”

“No,” Hongjoong shot back, sharp but calm. “I mean rebels.”

That word seemed to pull them straighter, even if their bodies ached.

Hongjoong’s gaze hardened. “We’re not just seven men, son’t forget that. We’re part of something bigger, a movement, a fire too large for them to stamp out and right now, our people are waiting for us to come back.”

“Waiting for you to come back.” Yunho’s jaw set.

“Waiting for all of us,” Hongjoong corrected. His eyes flicked briefly toward Seonghwa, who sat unmoving under the tree. “But they need their leader, they need to know the heart of the rebellion still beats. We get back to base, that’s the plan.”

And though Seonghwa gave no sign he’d heard, Hongjoong couldn’t shake the feeling that those unreadable eyes had been listening the whole time.

He kept glancing at the pale figure under the tree. Seonghwa looked like he was part of the landscape, carved into it, still and cold.

Could he trust him?

That was the question that burned hotter than the flames.

Seonghwa had led them out of Facility 8. Without him, they’d still be trapped inside, waiting for the next round of shocks and needles but trust wasn’t that simple. The rebellion wasn’t just seven men, it was thousands. An entire network built in secret, moving in shadows, risking everything.

If he gave Seonghwa the location of their base, it wouldn’t just be their lives on the line. It would be all of them.

The movement, the people and the hope they’d fought for.

Hongjoong clenched his jaw. He wanted to believe Seonghwa was on their side or could be but belief wasn’t enough, he needed proof and until then, Seonghwa would stay on the outside of their circle, no matter how much they needed him.

They stayed by the river for a full day, hidden under the cover of trees. No one said it out loud but they all knew why. Their bodies needed it and their minds even more.

By the time the fire burned low that evening, Hongjoong knew the rest was over. He stood, brushing dirt from his uniform and the others looked up automatically.

“We can’t stay here another night. Rest was necessary but if we linger, we’re dead. We need to get back to the city.”

“That’s the first place they’ll look.” Wooyoung frowned.

“Exactly,” Hongjoong said. “Which means it’s also where our people will be waiting. The Outlaws didn’t stop moving just because we disappeared. They’re still there, hiding, planning and they need to see us alive. They need to know the fight isn’t over.”

“So we walk back into the wolf’s den.” Mingi rubbed his face.

“No.” Hongjoong shook his head. “We walk back into our home. Dangerous, yes. But it’s where we belong. Our people have risked everything for us and I won’t abandon them now.”

Yunho nodded once. “Let's start moving then.”

Hongjoong’s eyes flicked toward Seonghwa. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t even looked at him but for a moment, Hongjoong thought he saw the faintest lift of his chin, like a silent acknowledgment.

They started walking that night. Back into danger, back into the city and back into the war.

The trees thinned as they walked, the ground soft with moss and roots. Their breaths came out in clouds as they pushed forward.

It was Yunho who stopped walking, turning to Hongjoong. His expression was serious, his voice steady. “Hongjoong… we should talk about him.”

The group slowed, eyes flicking toward Seonghwa, who trailed behind them at the edge of the line.

Yunho continued. “We can’t ignore it. He knows things we don’t, places we’ve never seen. If we’re heading back into the city, he could help us a lot.”

Wooyoung groaned. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am,” Yunho said. “You saw it too. He knows the facility like the back of his hand. You think he doesn’t know the city as well? He could make the difference between us getting there alive or not.”

Jongho nodded slowly. “He’s right. Even if we don’t like it, we can’t afford to waste an advantage.”

Mingi shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, but trusting him? That’s like hugging a viper and hoping it doesn’t bite.”

San crossed his arms. “I hate to say it but if he can get us home, maybe it’s worth the risk.”

The group looked at Hongjoong.

He exhaled, eyes on the dirt path ahead. “We bring him back. If he’s willing but we keep our eyes open, no mistakes.”

That’s when Seonghwa’s voice cut through the air, flat and precise. “You didn’t ask me if I even wanted to do that.”

“What the hell do you mean, ‘don’t want to’?” Wooyoung blinked.

Seonghwa just looked at him, face blank. “Exactly what I said.”

Mingi swore under his breath. “Unbelievable. We’re out here breaking our backs trying to stay alive and you-”

“And I already kept you alive once,” Seonghwa interrupted, voice calm and almost bored.

That shut Mingi up fast.

Yunho stepped forward, hands half-raised like he was trying to reason with a cornered animal. “Seonghwa… look. You don’t have to like us, you don’t even have to talk to us but you know things and we-” he glanced at Hongjoong, then back, “we need you.”

San crossed his arms, glaring. “You think we want you? We don’t but we don’t have a choice.”

“San,” Jongho warned but San just shrugged, muttering, “It’s true.”

Yeosang’s voice cut quieter, more careful. “You don’t want to come back with us. Fine but if you stay out here, what then? Alone, hunted, waiting for them to drag you back? Is that really better?”

Seonghwa tilted his head slightly at that, like he was turning the question over in his mind but his expression didn’t change.

Hongjoong finally spoke. “We’re offering you something. A way out, a way forward. You can walk away right now, sure, but if you do, you’re throwing away more than just yourself. You’re throwing away a chance to hurt the people who made that place, revenge.”

The group watched him, breath held, waiting for Seonghwa’s answer, but he didn’t give one.

He just stepped past them, walking along the path like he hadn’t heard a word, leaving the decision hanging in the cold air.

The group kept moving in silence.

Their boots sank into the damp earth, birds called somewhere far off, but otherwise the world was still.

Hongjoong kept to the middle of the line, eyes on the man walking a few paces ahead. Seonghwa.

He didn’t move like the rest of them. The rest stumbled sometimes, on roots or on uneven stones hidden under the leaves.

Seonghwa never did, not once did his boot scuff a branch or make a sound that didn’t need to be made. His steps were measured and deliberate, as if he’d mapped every inch of the path long before they set foot on it.

Even his breathing was quiet and controlled.

The forest should have made everyone clumsy. Wet soil, hidden holes and low branches.

Seonghwa just glided through it, smooth and silent, the hem of his uniform brushing past ferns without so much as stirring them. It wasn’t luck, it was training.

Seonghwa wasn’t a rebel, that much was obvious. He didn’t have the restless fire the Outlaws carried, the hunger to push back, but he wasn’t just some poor soul swallowed by Facility 8 either, no one moved like that by accident.

So what was he?

Hongjoong had spent years studying people and Seonghwa showed nothing. No hesitation, no falter in his step, no stray glance over his shoulder.

The question crawled deeper under Hongjoong’s skin the longer he stared at the man’s easy, noiseless gait.

The forest floor was treacherous.

Roots curled up like dark fingers, damp moss slicked every stone and the ground dipped without warning.

More than once Wooyoung cursed under his breath when his boot caught on something. San stumbled twice and caught himself on a tree. Even Jongho, usually steady as a rock, had to adjust his footing now and then.

But not Seonghwa. 

Where Wooyoung’s boot cracked a twig, Seonghwa’s foot slid past it without brushing the bark.

Where the rest of them fought for balance over a slick rise in the ground, Seonghwa shifted his weight as if he had known it would be there.

Even low branches didn’t catch him, his head dipped an inch at the right moment without ever breaking stride.

Hongjoong found his eyes tracking the man’s feet at one point, the way the toes angled slightly before each step, testing the ground’s give before settling. The way his heel never came down too hard, the weight rolling forward so lightly that it barely disturbed the wet leaves.

There was a moment when they had to cross a stretch where the forest floor had sunk into a narrow trench full of stagnant water. Mingi splashed through it with a muttered curse and Yunho nearly lost his balance on the far bank.

Seonghwa simply shifted his body, stepped on two exposed roots and crossed the trench as easily as if he were walking a flat road. Not a splash or a sound and Hongjoong’s jaw tightened because of how much a talent like that would benefit their cause.

The wind picked up, shaking loose a rain of small branches from the high canopy and a twig dropped straight for Seonghwa’s shoulder but without looking up, he shifted half a step and it fell past him to the ground.

Every step, every move Seonghwa made was a reminder that this man didn’t fit into any of the boxes Hongjoong knew.

He wasn’t a rebel, he didn’t care for the cause, didn’t speak like someone broken by the government’s cruelty and yet the way he moved said he wasn’t just an ordinary man lost to the asylum either.

Hongjoong’s chest tightened with a sharp, unsteady thought that if Seonghwa decided to disappear right now into the trees, he could and none of them would even hear him go.

After hour of walking, they stopped when the sun was just beginning to tip west, the shadows lengthening under the trees.

Yunho found a fallen log and sat heavily, stretching his legs and Wooyoung flopped down beside him, wiping sweat from his brow.

San crouched near the edge of a mossy rock, staring at the river they’d been following and Mingi wandered a little farther from the group, scanning a low bush heavy with dark, glossy berries.

“Hey,” he muttered, reaching out. “These might be-”

“Don’t,” Seonghwa’s voice cut in, sharp and flat.

Mingi turned, startled. “What? I wasn’t-”

Seonghwa stepped closer, his movements quiet enough that Hongjoong hadn’t even heard the leaves shift under his boots and he pointed at the berries without touching them. “Two of those are enough to stop your heart before we can carry you a hundred steps.”

Mingi dropped his hand as if the berries had burned him. “Okay,” he muttered, backing off.

Seonghwa didn’t add anything. He simply crouched, moved through the nearby brush and plucked a sprig of some small, green leaves with tiny buds and he dropped it in front of Mingi. “You can chew that for water if you need to. Won’t make you sick.”

Then he turned away again, as if the matter was already finished and the others exchanged looks.

Wooyoung raised his brows, muttering, “How the hell does he even know that?”

“Like he’s been living in the woods his whole life.” San shook his head.

When they moved again, Hongjoong kept watching.

Seonghwa’s head turned occasionally, scanning the treeline like he was reading a language written in the angles of branches and the direction of the wind.

He tapped a tree trunk twice before leaning a hand against it to cross a muddy patch.

Once, when Wooyoung’s foot hovered over what looked like solid ground, Seonghwa reached out and caught his arm, guiding his step an inch to the side, right onto firmer soil.

Wooyoung pulled his arm back, muttering under his breath but didn’t complain further.

It was like Seonghwa could see things they couldn’t. Dangers they didn’t even know were there and it made Hongjoong’s unease sharpen.

This man wasn’t wandering blind in unfamiliar territory, he was moving like someone who had already learned the shape of the world and the ways it could kill you.

After more walking, they made camp in a hollow between two leaning pines. The ground was uneven and damp, the air heavy with the smell of wet leaves and smoke from their small fire.

No one really slept, they drifted in and out of shallow dozes, jerking awake at the snap of a twig or the whisper of wind through the trees.

Hongjoong’s eyes had just begun to close again when he felt a hand clamping firmly over his mouth.

His body went rigid, instincts flaring, until his eyes found Seonghwa’s face above him, pale and unreadable in the glow of the dying fire.

Seonghwa put a finger to his own lips, gesturing to him to stay silent, Hongjoong nodded once and the hand slipped away.

Seonghwa leaned close enough that Hongjoong felt his breath against his ear.

“Someone is near,” he whispered, so low it was almost part of the wind. “Wake your men quietly and follow me.”

He was already melting back into the dark, moving toward the treeline with that same silent, deliberate grace.

Hongjoong touched Mingi’s shoulder first, then Jongho’s, just a squeeze, a warning.

One by one he roused the others without a sound, the seven of them shaking off the last threads of uneasy sleep and rising into the night’s chill.

Seonghwa was waiting just beyond the glow of the fire, eyes fixed in the direction of the slope below. He gestured for them to move, no words wasted.

They followed, boots soft in the pine needles, breath held as if the air itself might betray them.

When they had put enough distance between themselves and the small circle of light they’d camped in, Wooyoung hissed under his breath, barely more than a whisper. “Why the hell didn’t we just put the fire out and hide?”

“Because the smoke would’ve risen straight up into the cold air.” Seonghwa didn’t stop walking, didn’t even glance back. “Would’ve told them exactly where you were.”

The group slowed for a heartbeat, glancing at one another while the realization sinking in that not one of them had thought of that, even Hongjoong felt his stomach twist.

Seonghwa hadn’t just seen the danger, he had been ahead of it, always one step further into the thought of how to survive.

The forest closed around them again, the glow of their abandoned fire fading behind the trees, leaving only the sound of their own careful breathing and the soft, controlled steps of the man leading them deeper into the night.

They moved as one, a line of shadows slipping between the trunks. The forest was damp and black, the canopy so thick the moon barely broke through.

Hongjoong stayed near the rear, keeping the others moving, eyes fixed on Seonghwa’s back as the man guided them forward without hesitation.

They’d been walking for maybe fifteen minutes when Seonghwa froze. His raised hand stopped the whole group in an instant, no one spoke and they listened.

At first there was nothing but the sigh of the wind and the soft drip of water from leaves but then, faint and distant, there was the clatter of something metallic.

A voice carried through the trees, sharp and clipped, too far away to make out the words and the short bark of a dog.

Wooyoung’s eyes widened, Yunho’s jaw tightened and Mingi swore under his breath, barely more than a hiss.

Seonghwa crouched, his head tilting slightly as if listening for the direction of the sound. He didn’t speak, just motioned with two fingers and moved to the right, leading them off the faint deer path they’d been following.

Hongjoong’s heart thudded as they went deeper into the woods, picking their way around roots and fallen logs. He caught the brief flash of light far back through the trees, thin beams sweeping in slow arcs.

Patrol lanterns.

Every time he thought the forest would give them away, a snapped twig or a rustle of branches, he realized Seonghwa was guiding them along ground that made no sound, slipping from shadow to shadow as if the forest itself were helping him hide them.

The only sounds were the low rush of their breathing and the distant voices of the patrol, fading, then growing clearer again as the group adjusted their path to keep just out of reach.

Hours passed this way and they didn’t stop, they didn’t dare.

The sky had only just begun to pale behind the trees when the forest thinned and the ground sloped downward.

The smell of damp soil gave way to something else, faint smoke, old metal and the tang of rust.

Hongjoong stepped up beside Seonghwa and saw it, far in the distance, past the ragged treeline, was the outline of the city rising out of the early dawn.

Blocky gray buildings with harsh angles, half-lost in morning mist.

It didn’t look welcoming, it looked like a cage waiting to close but it was still their city, still home and somewhere in its shadowed streets, the Outlaws were waiting.

Yunho crouched behind a fallen log, scanning the ground ahead. “It's too exposed. If they’ve set patrols outside the gates, we’ll be spotted before we’re halfway across.”

“We’re running on fumes. We need food and water but we can’t risk a full out sprint.” Mingi leaned against a tree, wiping sweat from his brow. 

“Patrols will shift at sunrise. We wait, we watch and we move with the gaps.” Yeosang had his eyes fixed on the horizon.

No one looked at Seonghwa but everyone thought about him.

He stood a few paces away, where the grass met the first broken stretch of concrete. His posture was loose but his eyes were scanning the skyline with the same slow, deliberate focus he’d shown in the forest, as if he were reading something in the pattern of rooftops and empty streets that the rest of them couldn’t see.

Hongjoong watched him for a long moment.

This man who had led them through the forest without a single wrong step and who had spotted danger before it reached them.

Hongjoong turned back to his group, keeping his voice low. “We can’t do this like before. We’re not sneaking in as a pack of kids with nothing but anger. We have to be smarter, we have to use every advantage we have.”

Jongho nodded slowly. “That means him.”

“I still don’t like it.” San shifted uncomfortably.

“Neither do I,” Hongjoong said, his tone sharper than he meant. “But liking it isn’t the point, we need him. If we can get him to stand with us, really stand with us, he could be the edge we don’t have. If we don’t… we’re walking in blind.”

Wooyoung muttered, “That’s assuming he even wants to go back into a fight.”

Hongjoong’s gaze went back to Seonghwa’s still figure. “Then I’ll make him see why he should. We can’t afford to leave him on the edge of this war, not anymore.”

The wind moved through the grass, carrying the distant sound of the city, a low hum, like the growl of something alive and waiting.

When the first sliver of sun cut the horizon, they moved.

The grass was slick with dew and their feet made almost no sound as they pushed through it. Hongjoong adjusted his shirt and fell in step beside Seonghwa.

The man didn’t so much as glance at him, his eyes still fixed ahead on the city and for a while, they walked in silence.

The others kept their distance behind them, as if some unspoken boundary had formed.

“There’s a place waiting for you,” he said, keeping his voice low enough that the rest wouldn’t hear. “A place where people who don’t fit anywhere else go, people like us.”

Seonghwa’s eyes didn’t shift from the path. His steps were even, deliberate, each one avoiding loose stones and brittle twigs as if it were instinct.

“You think I’m like you,” he said finally. His voice was calm. “You think I’m someone who needs a cause.”

“I think you don’t belong locked in a place like Facility 8. I think you deserve a chance to choose something other than a cage.”

Seonghwa was silent for a long time. The city ahead grew a little clearer, the early light catching on rooftops and wire fences. At last, he gave a short nod, not quite agreement but acknowledgment.

“I’ll go with you,” he said. “But I won’t fight your war. I won’t lead and I won’t follow. I’ll stay until I’m healed enough to leave but after that, I’ll be gone.”

Hongjoong studied his profile, the unreadable expression, the way the words came out with no weight of anger or promise, just a fact.

“That’s enough for now,” Hongjoong said quietly.

Seonghwa inclined his head once, as if to end the conversation and focused back on the ground ahead. His stride never faltered, his balance as precise as ever, even as the path grew rockier and the city walls loomed closer.

Behind them, the others exchanged glances but said nothing, sensing the fragile truce forming between the two men at the front of their line.

By the time the treeline thinned and the ground turned to dirt, the sun was climbing higher, filtered through a dull veil of smog.

They stopped just short of the last trees and Hongjoong crouched behind a fallen trunk, scanning the city that stretched out ahead.

The city looked almost like an abandoned carcass. The buildings were all the same gray, tall concrete blocks with chipped walls and windows like dead eyes.

There were no flowers, no trees and not even weeds creeping up the sidewalks, only cracks in the pavement and puddles of murky water catching the weak sunlight.

A thin column of black smoke rose in the distance, curling lazily against the pale sky. The streets looked hollow, emptied out, as if the people who once lived there had been scraped away.

Wooyoung whispered, leaning close to San, “Feels like a graveyard.”

Hongjoong’s eyes moved to the distant checkpoints. Two soldiers in dark uniforms stood at an intersection, their rifles slung lazily across their shoulders, their posture bored but watchful. A dog nosed at the ground near them, sniffing at the cracks in the concrete.

“Stay close. We keep to the shadows and no sudden noise. The fewer eyes on us, the better.” Hongjoong ordered and they nodded. 

Seonghwa stood a little apart from them, watching the city like a man who’d already memorized it. He didn’t look worried, if anything, he seemed to be studying the rhythm of the distant patrols, the pauses in their pacing.

“The checkpoints don’t watch the side streets between blocks. We can slip through there if we time it right.” He stated.

Hongjoong glanced at him but didn’t argue. He didn’t trust him, not fully, but he trusted Seonghwa’s eyes.

They waited for the moment when the soldiers turned and then they moved, single file, keeping low.

Their boots were nearly silent on the cracked asphalt. Every block they crossed felt like another mile added to their journey.

They ducked behind rusted cars, pressed themselves against walls, waited out the sweep of a distant patrol light before slipping across the next intersection.

Yeosang whispered once, barely moving his lips. “Feels like the whole place is holding its breath.”

Hongjoong didn’t answer. His eyes stayed ahead, fixed on the path that would take them through the maze of streets and eventually, if they made it far enough, to the entrance of their hidden base.

Seonghwa walked near the front, as silent as he had been in the forest, his steps never catching on loose rubble.

The closer they got to the worse part of the city, the less it looked like streets and more like ruins, the buildings thinned out until they were nothing but skeletal frames of concrete and rusted beams.

There were fewer patrols here, no one cared much for the outskirts, it was where the forgotten ended up.

Hongjoong led them past a row of collapsed shacks, through a gap in a fence that was half swallowed by weeds.

Their steps were careful, the quiet between them heavy but focused.

Finally, they came to a narrow street that ended in what looked like the collapsed mouth of a storm drain and Seonghwa’s eyes lingered on it, expression unreadable.

“This is it,” Hongjoong said in a low voice.

The others followed him down the slope of cracked concrete until they reached what at first glance seemed like nothing more than a stretch of debris covered ground.

Beneath the broken slabs and trash, a dark opening waited, a tunnel that slanted down, damp and smelling of old water and rust. The tunnel walls were slick with moisture, cold against their shoulders as they went in single file.

Water dripped somewhere unseen, the sound echoing in the hollow space. The further they went, the darker it became, until even their breaths felt too loud.

At the end of the tunnel was a wide concrete door, stained and chipped with age. To anyone else it would have looked like part of the wall, unmoving and lifeless.

Hongjoong knelt in front of it, brushing away a layer of grime to reveal what looked like an ordinary patch of stone, he pressed his thumb against the edge of it and it shifted slightly under the pressure. A small square of metal slid open, revealing a digital keypad.

Seonghwa’s brow lifted just slightly, the first real sign of interest on his face.

The rest of the group stood back, the sound of their breathing and the distant dripping the only noise as Hongjoong entered a sequence of numbers. He paused once, almost as if bracing for something, then entered the final digit and a faint click echoed in the tunnel, followed by a deep, mechanical hum.

The concrete door groaned as it shifted, pulling back into the wall with the slow weight of something ancient. A wash of faint, stale air drifted out to meet them and Hongjoong looked back at the group.

“This is home,” he said quietly. “Or what passes for it.”

Seonghwa didn’t say anything, he only glanced at the opening and then at Hongjoong, as if weighing something unseen, before stepping forward with the same silent precision he always had.

The rest followed him inside. The air inside was damp and carried the smell of earth and rust, the narrow entryway opened into a wide basement hollowed out beneath the city’s bones.

Old pipes crisscrossed the low ceiling, some dripping steadily into buckets below.

There were rows of mismatched tables, bedrolls spread out in corners, piles of supplies stacked against the walls, the heart of the rebellion hidden beneath the filth of the outskirts.

The moment they stepped in, a wave of sound broke the stillness.

“Hongjoong!”

Voices rose in disbelief and relief, faces turning from every corner. Men and women rushed toward them, some of them grinning through tears.

A few older ones clapped Hongjoong on the back. One woman, Jihye, covered her mouth as if holding back a sob.

The noise was loud but warm, and for a heartbeat, the Outlaws felt the weight of Facility 8 lift just a little.

Hongjoong allowed himself a faint, tired smile as people reached for his shoulders and arms.

San got his back clapped a few times, Wooyoung tried to joke his way through the attention and Yunho’s tall frame disappeared for a moment in a tight hug from someone he recognized.

Mingi and Yeosang nodded and bowed slightly, quiet but smiling faintly as they were welcomed home but not everyone’s eyes were on them.

A few rebels lingered at the edge of the crowd, their attention caught by the silent figure who had entered last.

Seonghwa stood a little apart, pale in the low light, his eyes unreadable as he took in the room. He neither smiled nor greeted anyone.

Thinking him a new ally brought in from the outside, one of the younger rebels, a boy no older than twenty, with a hopeful grin, stepped forward to welcome him.

“Hey, you made it out with them, huh?” he said brightly, reaching out to pat Seonghwa’s shoulder.

It happened in an instant.

Seonghwa’s hand shot up and caught the boy’s wrist mid-air. He didn’t yank or twist, he only squeezed, firm enough that the boy’s grin faltered. The look in Seonghwa’s eyes was enough to stop him cold, a silent warning.

The boy quickly pulled back, rubbing his wrist and looking startled. From behind them, Wooyoung barked out a short laugh.

“Oh, yeah… big mistake,” he said, shaking his head with a grin. “Rule number one if you wanna keep your bones intact, don’t touch this guy, ever.”

A few of the rebels chuckled nervously at Wooyoung’s remark, others just exchanged looks, unsure.

Seonghwa let go of the boy’s wrist and lowered his hand, his face as impassive as if nothing had happened. Hongjoong, watching the exchange, felt that familiar knot tighten in his chest.

Seonghwa’s presence already bent the air around them, a reminder that he wasn’t here as a recruit or a friend, not yet or maybe not ever.

They gathered around one of the long, dented tables. Plates and bowls were passed down, full of whatever the kitchen crew could scavenge that day, Canned beans, dried rice, a bit of bread that crumbled too easily but no one cared, it was food and it wasn’t Facility 8.

The room buzzed with low laughter and soft voices. People kept sneaking glances at Hongjoong, eyes bright with something like hope.

For months, he’d been the ghost they swore they’d see again, the name they whispered when things got bad but now he was there, their leader, alive and scarred but breathing.

He smiled once or twice, tired but genuine, letting his men eat and laugh as if they hadn’t spent what felt like years in hell.

Seonghwa sat at the far end of the table, just within the circle of light. He ate in silence, movements precise.

Every cut, every bite, it was deliberate. Chewing eight times before swallowing, tapping the table before picking up his spoon again.

Nobody said anything at first, most of them were too caught up in their own joy to notice, but it was only a matter of time.

A young recruit sitting two seats away, Minjae, barely twenty and eager, the type who talked too much when nervous, tilted his head.

“Why does he keep doing that?” he whispered to the guy next to him. “Like, he taps things before-”

“Leave him alone.”

The tone cut through the chatter like a blade. Hongjoong hadn’t raised his voice but everyone at the table looked up.

Minjae blinked, startled. “I- I was just-”

“I said leave him alone,” Hongjoong repeated, sharper now. There was no anger, just that quiet, commanding weight that made people listen.

Minjae swallowed and nodded quickly, staring down at his plate.

The others shifted uncomfortably before going back to eating, softer now, the laughter thinning a little.

Across the table, Seonghwa hadn’t even looked up. He finished chewing, swallowed, and set his spoon down with the same calm precision as before.

For a second, Hongjoong wondered if Seonghwa had even heard but then, just barely, he saw the corner of the man’s mouth twitch. It wasn't a smile, not quite, more like acknowledgment and that alone made Hongjoong’s heart feel tight in a way he had never felt before.

Chapter Text

The meal ended quietly, the last bit of laughter dying down under the hum of the old pipes.

After they changed out of their dirty hospital clothes, Hongjoong finally stood, the chatter around the tables softened into a hush.

The Outlaws might’ve called each other equals but here, underground, in the safety of their base, he was still their leader. They looked at him the way people looked at light after too much dark.

“Everyone, listen up,” he said, voice steady, carrying through the room. It had been a long time since he’d used that tone.

They moved to the far end of the base, an open area cleared for meetings. Chairs scraped the concrete floor as people gathered, the air filling with quiet expectation.

Hongjoong felt all their eyes on him. Loyal, desperate and curious. He looked over them, faces he knew, faces that at some point he thought he’d never see again and exhaled.

“We were captured during a raid,” he began, his tone measured but sharp. “They didn’t take us to prison, they sent us to a place called Facility 8.”

A murmur rippled through the crowd, low and uneasy. 

“They keep people there,” Hongjoong continued, “not to punish them, to break them. It’s a mental asylum in name, but it’s built for something worse. They don’t want you dead, they want you obedient.”

Someone from the crowd, a woman near the front, clenched her jaw. “How did you get out?”

“We had help,” Hongjoong said simply. His gaze flicked toward the corner, where Seonghwa stood.

Seonghwa leaned against the far wall with his arms crossed, head bowed slightly, like he was trying to fade into the background but it was impossible, even standing still he drew the room’s attention in quiet gravity.

“He’s the reason we made it out alive,” Hongjoong said.

He didn’t explain further and though heads turned toward Seonghwa, no one dared ask.

Hongjoong went on, outlining the events inside Facility 8. The daily sedatives, the therapy that wasn’t therapy, San’s torture, the guards and the structure.

He spoke clinically, like he was taking apart a weapon to understand it. Every word was meant to remind them what they were up against.

“I think the government has built more places like that,” he said finally. “Facility 8 isn’t the only one. We’ve seen their methods, what they’ll do to erase us. We can’t keep hiding and waiting for mercy.” 

There was a beat of silence, heavy and thick. Then someone called out, “So what do we do?”

Hongjoong looked around the room.

His team, San, Wooyoung, Yunho, Mingi, Yeosang and Jongho, were sitting among the other rebels, their faces a mix of exhaustion and steel.

And just beyond them, Seonghwa. 

“We rebuild,” Hongjoong said. “We plan smarter, hit harder and this time, we don’t get caught.”

The Outlaws cheered with strength, the want to fight could be touched in the air and Hongjoong sat down tired, finally in his home again.

Later that night, the base had gone quiet.

Hongjoong sat at a small table in his office with the rest of his team, all gathered around the dim light of a single lamp.

The air was heavy, exhaustion mixing with unease and Wooyoung was the first to speak.

“I still don’t like him,” he muttered, picking at the corner of the table. “He’s too calm, like he’s not human sometimes.”

“He’s human,” Mingi said, though his voice wasn’t entirely convinced. “Just… something’s off about him. The way he moves, the way he looks at people, like he’s always calculating, like he's still in that place.”

“Exactly,” Wooyoung snapped. “That’s what I mean. He’s dangerous, Joong and not in the good way.”

Hongjoong rubbed his temples, feeling the weight of the day settle behind his eyes. “We all know that but he got us out. We wouldn’t be sitting here if it weren’t for him.”

“He’s right. He saved us but that doesn’t mean he’s one of us. We still don’t know what he wants.” Yunho leaned back in his chair, arms crossed.

“What if he doesn’t want anything? Maybe he’s just waiting for something. For us to mess up.” San exhaled sharply, his knee bouncing under the table.

Yeosang, who had been quiet until now, spoke softly, “He doesn’t seem like he wants to destroy us. He could have left in the woods, but he didn’t. That means something.”

“Or it means he’s waiting for the right time.” Wooyoung scoffed.

Jongho’s voice was calm but firm when he cut in. “We need him and you all know it. If we want to take down this government, we can’t afford to turn away a person as smart as him. He got us through the forest and the city without making a sound or a mistake.”

That shut everyone up for a second.

Hongjoong looked at his men, the people who had trusted him through every plan, every mission and every close call.

He saw the same frustration mirrored in all their faces, the mix of pride and fear that came from realizing they weren’t in control anymore.

“He’s not one of us,” Hongjoong said finally, voice steady. “Not yet at least, but he’s part of this now, whether he wants to be or not. We need his knowledge, his instincts and for that, he stays. He's smart.”

“Yeah, too smart.” San frowned, his jaw tight. “And what happens if he turns on us? We don't know who he is.”

“Then we deal with it,” Hongjoong said. “But right now, he could be the one man that helps us tip the scale.”

Yeosang looked at the door, his voice quieter this time. “He’s not sleeping, you know. He’s just sitting there, in the dark, like he’s waiting for something to happen.”

“Yeah. That’s the problem. With Seonghwa, something always does.” Wooyoung sighed.

Hongjoong didn’t answer. He just leaned back in his chair, staring at the flickering light and the shadow it threw against the wall.

He didn’t know if Seonghwa was a survivor or a ghost, but he knew one thing, the war outside wasn’t half as dangerous as the quiet one now living under their roof.

By the time most of the base had gone quiet, Hongjoong found himself walking the lower hallway with Seonghwa at his side.

The lights were dim, most of them flickered from bad wiring and the smell of damp stone clung to the air.

It wasn’t much but it was home.

He stopped by a corridor lined with doors, the walls marked with chalk numbers.

“Sleeping quarters,” he said, glancing at Seonghwa. “You can pick whichever’s empty. Most of the rooms have bunks, but…” He hesitated for a beat. “You’ll have one to yourself.”

Seonghwa’s eyes flicked over the doors, slow and assessing, like he was mapping the exits before even stepping inside.

He didn’t answer, he just nodded once and walked ahead, stopping at the far end where the corridor bent into shadow.

Hongjoong followed. “That one’s isolated,” he said. “It gets cold down here.”

“I’m used to cold,” Seonghwa replied quietly, his tone even but final.

“You’re not very curious, are you?” Hongjoong leaned against the wall, folding his arms.

“About what?”

“About us, about this place or about what you walked into.”

Seonghwa turned his head slightly, studying him for a long second. “I already saw enough,” he said.

“Enough to know what?”

“That you don’t trust me,” Seonghwa answered simply.

Hongjoong let out a small laugh, not denying it. “You’re not exactly easy to read.”

“I don’t have to be.”

Silence stretched. The only sound was the hum of the light overhead and a slow, distant drip from somewhere behind the walls.

Hongjoong tried again, softer this time. “You know… I would think most people who end up in a place like Facility 8 don’t walk out sane but you did. That makes people wonder.”

“Wonder about what?”

“What you did to survive.”

Seonghwa’s expression didn’t move, not even a flicker of discomfort.

He simply looked at Hongjoong and for a heartbeat, the air between them felt like it thinned, sharp and cold, like standing too close to a blade.

“I did what I had to,” he said, voice low. “Like everyone else.”

Hongjoong held his gaze but didn’t push further.

He wanted to pull the truth out of him, peel back the layers of control but something in Seonghwa’s stare made it clear he wouldn’t get far tonight.

Finally, Hongjoong nodded toward the room. “You’ll find blankets inside and a change of clothes. If you need anything, the kitchen’s two halls down.”

Seonghwa’s eyes flicked toward the door, then back at him. “I don’t need anything.”

“Right,” Hongjoong murmured. “Of course you don’t.”

He turned to leave, but before he took the first step, Seonghwa tapped the doorframe twice with his knuckles before entering the room.

The sound was soft, almost insignificant, but it echoed down the hallway all the same.

Hongjoong paused, watching him move, silent and deliberate, that eerie kind of grace and the thought crossed his mind again.

Who the hell was Park Seonghwa?

He left the question unanswered for now and went on his way to his own bed.

Hongjoong’s room was small, a square space carved into the concrete with barely enough room for a bed, a metal table and a single chair.

The air was cold, heavy with that familiar underground smell of iron and dust but it was his.

For the first time in weeks, maybe months, there were no cameras, no white walls and no guards standing just out of sight.

He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, letting the quiet sink in. It wasn’t comfort, it was… absence.

No footsteps pacing the corridor, no fluorescent buzzing and no timed pills after breakfast, just silence that pressed too close, filling the space until he could hear his own breathing again.

He sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees.

It should’ve felt like freedom, the kind he’d dreamed of back in Facility 8, when even the idea of darkness without supervision had seemed impossible but now, the quiet felt wrong. It felt too still and his body didn’t trust it yet.

He rubbed at the side of his face, eyes half-closed. The faint echo of the past days clung to him, the smell of bleach, the hum of lights that never turned off and the screams he couldn’t forget.

San’s voice, Wooyoung’s rage and even Seonghwa’s silence.

He looked down at his hands.

They weren’t shaking but they felt unsteady, like his body hadn’t caught up with the fact that he wasn’t fighting anymore.

He wondered if it would ever go away, the constant readiness, the way his heart beat faster at every sound.

He laid back, staring up at the cracked ceiling. The bed was too soft and the air too still. It was strange how even freedom could feel like another kind of prison when you’d been inside too long.

His eyes drifted shut for a moment but sleep didn’t come easy.

He thought about Seonghwa, about the way the man had moved through the base like he’d already memorized every corner, how he’d said so little and yet managed to shift the entire room’s energy just by standing in it.

There was something about him that didn’t fit.

Hongjoong turned onto his side, the dim lamp still flickering by the door.

Maybe tomorrow he’d try again, not as a leader, not as a strategist but as someone trying to understand what kind of man could survive a place like Facility 8 and walk out looking untouched.

He closed his eyes, the hum of the underground settling around him like static.

Freedom didn’t feel like he thought it would, it felt temporary.

He woke to the sound of footsteps and for a second, Hongjoong didn’t move, his body went tense before his mind even caught up.

The sound wasn’t loud, just soft taps against the concrete outside his door, steady and even. Too controlled to belong to someone half awake or careless.

He sat up, running a hand over his face before opening the door.

The hallway was dim, washed in the pale yellow of flickering lights and there he was, Seonghwa, standing a few meters away, already dressed and already moving like he’d been awake for hours.

He wasn’t wandering, he was studying.

Every corner, every pipe, every weak spot in the wall. His eyes traced the ceiling vents, the door locks, the old cables running through the concrete.

Hongjoong leaned on the doorframe. “You’re up early.”

“I don’t sleep much.” Seonghwa didn’t look at him.

“I noticed.”

That earned him a brief glance, nothing sharp, just detached acknowledgment before Seonghwa continued inspecting a row of old fuse boxes.

He tapped one of them lightly with his knuckles, twice, before crouching to check the wiring beneath.

“You don’t trust this place,” Hongjoong said quietly.

Seonghwa’s voice came back just as soft. “I don’t trust any place built by hands that can turn on you.”

“You think we’re like them?” Hongjoong stepped closer, watching the precision in his movements.

“No,” Seonghwa said, still focused on the exposed wires. “You’re different, you think chaos makes you free and they think order does. You’re both wrong.”

“And you? Which side do you fall on?” Hongjoong frowned.

Seonghwa finally looked up at him then and there was something in his eyes, not defiance, not arrogance but a quiet emptiness that felt older than either of them.

“I don’t fall,” he said simply. “I just endure.”

He straightened and started down the hall again, slow and soundless.

Hongjoong watched him go, realizing how every step seemed intentional as if the man’s body had been trained to erase its own presence. Even the way he breathed was measured.

It wasn’t paranoia that made Hongjoong uneasy but the fact that Seonghwa’s calm looked earned, like something beaten into him long before Facility 8.

He followed at a distance as Seonghwa continued his silent inspection, through the storage rooms, past the mess hall, into the narrow tunnels that led deeper under the base.

Each time Seonghwa paused, he’d tap a wall, a doorframe or a railing twice, always twice.

When he finally stopped near the armory, Seonghwa spoke without turning.

“This place is safer than it looks,” he said. “But your exits are too obvious. You should build another one.”

Hongjoong blinked. “You’re giving us advice now?”

“You said you wanted to survive.” Seonghwa’s tone didn’t change.

And then he walked away again, leaving Hongjoong standing there, caught somewhere between gratitude, curiosity and that growing, gnawing thought of whi taught that man to see the world this way.

By the time breakfast rolled around, the base was awake and alive again, voices echoing off the concrete, metal trays clattering, the smell of burnt coffee cutting through the stale air.

Hongjoong sat at one of the long tables with his core men, the ones who’d survived Facility 8, when Seonghwa appeared. He didn’t blend in, he never blended in.

Even surrounded by noise and chatter, he looked detached, almost misplaced in the blur of motion. He moved through the room with quiet purpose, no wasted steps and no unnecessary glances.

He picked up his tray, filled it and sat at the end of the table like he’d been doing it his whole life. Except, the room shifted when he did. People noticed him, they always did and not because he wanted the attention but because he carried that quiet, heavy stillness that made others uneasy.

A few of the younger recruits whispered, maybe about the way he tapped his cup twice before drinking or how he cut his food into perfect pieces before eating.

When someone dropped a plate across the room, Seonghwa’s head snapped up first, his body reacting faster than anyone else’s, his eyes sharp and assessing before relaxing again. He went right back to eating.

It was nothing to him but everyone else noticed.

Hongjoong caught it too, the way Seonghwa’s presence seemed to anchor the table.

Even when no one spoke to him directly, his quiet control pulled at their attention like gravity.

After breakfast, Hongjoong called his senior rebels, the people who had the most skills, into the meeting room and his six men followed without needing to be told, but he also called Seonghwa into the meeting.

The room was a large underground chamber that still smelled faintly of smoke from the last planning session.

Maps and blueprints were scattered across the main table, red strings connecting sectors of the city.

It felt familiar, the kind of place where wars were whispered into existence.

Hongjoong began outlining their next move, rebuilding their communication lines, checking what Outlaws had done during their disappearance, planning small strikes before the regime could stabilize.

His voice carried with authority, calm and measured but what caught his attention was how often the others looked at Seonghwa and not just his six men, even the other commanders.

When Hongjoong mentioned Facility 8’s structure or the patrol routes, or security flaws, their eyes flicked to Seonghwa instinctively.

He didn’t say a word but they watched him anyway, waiting for a nod, a small gesture or something that told them the information was sound and Seonghwa gave it, a single, slow nod. Barely noticeable but enough.

Hongjoong paused for half a second, realizing the shift that had happened without anyone meaning for it to.

In Facility 8, Seonghwa had known everything. Here, without saying a word, he still commanded.

Mingi noticed too. He leaned closer to Hongjoong and muttered, “It’s weird, isn’t it? We’re supposed to be the ones teaching him how things work down here.”

Hongjoong didn’t answer right away. He watched Seonghwa trace a finger along the edge of the table map, his expression unreadable, his movements precise and quiet.

“He doesn’t need to learn how we work,” Hongjoong said finally, his voice low. “He’s already adapting, faster than any of us.”

The others went silent for a beat and when the meeting ended, no one needed to be told what they were all thinking, that somehow, without rank, title or even trying, Seonghwa had started to become the one they instinctively looked to for direction.

He’s demeanor just gave off waves of knowledge and authority.

Hongjoong finds Seonghwa near the kitchen, where the light is thin and the air smells like oil. The others are still talking maps and lists in the next room, their voices low and eager but Hongjoong wants this quiet, wants to try and close the distance without making it look like a command.

He walks beside him instead of in front, shoulder brushing Seonghwa’s the way one man walks with another who might be a stranger tomorrow. Seonghwa doesn’t look at him, he never looks at him the way the others do, never searching or pleading, just a flatness that can read a room like a sensor.

“You agreed to stay,” Hongjoong says and keeps his voice steady. “We gave you a room, food and a place while you heal.”

Seonghwa taps the metal table once, twice, instinctive. “You let me stay because I got you out,” he says, finally looking up. His eyes are the same, faint, exact. “I’m not your charity.”

“You’re not charity,” Hongjoong answers. “You’re an advantage, you're smart. If we want to know what Facility 8 is, we have to look at the people who built it. At their papers and their orders. There are files, blueprints, memos and lists, locked away in a health ministry archive. If we get those, we know whether there are more centers, who signed off on them, what they call ‘rehabilitation’ on paper.”

Seonghwa’s mouth twists, half-interest and half-boredom. “And you want me to walk into a government building to fetch a folder.”

Hongjoong lets a short laugh out. “I want you to guide us through it. We’ll get some security videos from the inside and I want you to look and see what we don't, I want you to tell us when the guards’ routine changes, where cameras blind spots could to be, which doors are only symbolic versus which ones actually lock people in. I want you here so we don’t walk in blind and hand them more people to send to padded rooms.”

He watches Seonghwa consider, the way the man tilts his head like a scale balancing two cold facts. “I’m staying until my foot is better,” Seonghwa says finally. “That was my condition, shelter until I can go on alone. I help so you let me, I do not owe you anything.”

“Then don’t owe us anything,” Hongjoong says softly. “Do this for yourself, for a reason to be here while you heal or do it because you hate the people who built that prison. Either way, help us get those files. Once we see what’s on paper, we can decide how to stop them making more Facilities.”

Seonghwa stares at him like he’s assessing whether Hongjoong is offering a transaction or a trap. “I will help,” he says finally, concise as a verdict. “I will not lead an assault and I will not promise loyalty to your cause but I will show you how to move through spaces without being noticed and I will make sure you are not children in a hallway. After that, when I am able to leave, I will leave.”

Hongjoong nods, the edge in his chest easing just a fraction. “We’ll accept that. We don’t ask for promises we can’t keep. We only ask you don’t disappear on us between the walls when we need you.”

Seonghwa taps Hongjoong’s forearm once and twice, the smallest motion of agreement, more ritual than friendship. “I will not disappear on my own accord,” he says.

They go back to the map room together. The others look up as the two of them come in, tired faces brightening at the sight of Hongjoong’s return to command. Hongjoong doesn’t make a show of it, he sits, unrolls the map and speaks in the quick rhythm of a leader who knows time is a knife.

“This is the next operation,” he says. “We’re not going to blow the place up, we’re going to get in, get the records and get out. The files from the ministry’s archive could tell us where Facility 8 came from, who authorized it and whether there are more. That information is worth more than a single raid. If we shiw the people real proof of what the government is doing, it might be the final nail to their downfall.”

They break it down into roles. The plan is described in broad, non-technical strokes, timing, cover, division of tasks, the sort of plan that fits on a page of pencil scratch, not a blueprint that could teach a stranger how to break a lock. Hongjoong assigns the parts he trusts his men with.

“Jongho and Yeosang, you two will handle entrances and exits, get us into the building and keep watch on movement around the perimeter, signal if changes happen. Yunho and Wooyoung, distraction and extraction, draw attention where we need it diverted and be ready to pull us out if things go wrong. Mingi, you keep an eye on the tech side, communications blackouts, radio windows, anything to slow the alarms but we’ll use what we have, nothing fancy. San will be on backup and medical help, if anyone gets hurt, you're the one getting people out. I’ll enter and lead from inside.”

He pauses and the room looks toward Seonghwa without needing to ask. The man stands at the edge of the map like a shadow that could move a piece with a single motion.

“Seonghwa,” Hongjoong says plainly, “you’ll guide us through their layout, from where they keep administrative records to the office where the archive is stored. You’ll tell us what routines matter and what can be ignored. You do not have to fight, you will help from here, we won’t force you to but we need your eyes and the way you move. Mingi got the recordings of the security cameras, watch them and tell us what you see.”

Seonghwa’s reply is lean and to the point. “I will tell you what I learn. I will not do more or less.” The line in his voice is thin but definite. 

They argue details for a while after that, which city sectors to avoid, when to move. It is a planning session heavy with caution, heavy with the knowledge that they risk lives and that the best thing they can take is information rather than trophies.

When the meeting breaks, the men mill away to check gear, to rest for a few hours, to sharpen minds that haven’t yet learned to stop ringing with adrenaline. Seonghwa retreats to the far corner of the armory and sits like a rock. Hongjoong watches him and for the first time in a long while the leader lets himself feel something close to hope and fear braided together.

If Seonghwa keeps his word, they could uncover the law that made monsters. If he doesn’t, if anything in that thin, guarded face changes when the lights are wrong, there are consequences none of them will survive.

Hours later, Mingi brings it in like a thief with a prize.

He slips into the armory doorway holding a battered laptop, the case taped in two places. His fingers are still stained with oil from the maintenance closet and his eyes are bright. 

“Got it,” he says, voice too loud for the room but perfect for the moment. “Security cams from the Health Archive. Three days of footage and eight cameras in fixed positions. I grabbed the last forty eight hours and the pattern repeats.”

Hongjoong motions for the others to close in. They form a tight half circle around the screen, Jongho and Yeosang at his right, Yunho and Wooyoung to the left, San next to Mingi. Seonghwa stands off to the side, arms folded, as if he’s only marginally interested but Hongjoong knows the man is all in, the body doesn’t betray it because it doesn’t need to.

Mingi plugs the laptop into the projector. Grainy, gray footage fills the wall, two hour chunks compressed into a few tense minutes. Cameras tilt, the timestamp crawling in a corner like a heartbeat. 

Seonghwa watches without comment. He doesn’t blink more than anyone else, his face is a flat plane but his eyes track everything, angles, timing and micro movements of men who think they are alone.

“Start at midnight,” Seonghwa says when Mingi pauses. “Fast forward to the change of shift window.”

Mingi obeys and the footage jumps. The archive’s back corridor is empty at first, a utility hallway, ceiling pipes and a janitor cart left near a supply door. A guard appears at 00:12, slow footed and cigarette in hand, pacing a narrow route. Another guard walks the opposite aisle at 00:22. They pass and nod but exchange nothing. At 00:30 the dog handler walks through. Dog visible, sniffing a trash can and the timestamps blink as they pass.

Seonghwa’s voice cuts the hum of the projector, low and dry. “Two man patrols. Not efficient but they rely on the dogs for detection. The dog handler’s path overlaps the rear service entrance once every forty two minutes on average. That’s your variable.”

Hongjoong nods, noting it. “So we avoid that window.”

“Not enough,” Seonghwa says. He taps the table twice with two fingers, a small, ritualistic click and points to the footage where the guard at camera three stops and checks his radio at 00:47. “Radios on these guards are set to a thirty minute check-in. They switch channels to talk to the control room while the other guard patrols the atrium. That’s a blind spot if you move while they’re talking. They don’t watch cameras at that second.”

Jongho leans forward. “We create noise at that exact time,” he says. “Divide attention.”

“Noise draws attention,” Seonghwa replies. “Noise also triggers the dogs. Use the channel, use the radio schedule to your advantage but never on the same frequency they use to call the handler. You’ll want to jam one node, the southern stairwell camera, so their feed resets and control room focuses on playback, not live.”

Mingi’s hand goes to his chest pocket, where he keeps scavenged radio parts. “I can create a short reset spike, two seconds maybe. It’ll look like a glitch.”

“Good.” Seonghwa glances at him and then he points at the projection. “Their administrative wing has three doors, staff entrance with badge reader, supply entrance with mechanical latch and an internal basement hatch that appears locked but is manual from the inside, we can only see a bit of this. Cameras cover badge readers but their blind spots are the service tunnels and the window above the archive’s delivery door.”

“So we come through the service tunnels?” Yunho points

“You go through the service tunnels only if you use the cart cover,” Seonghwa says. “There’s one camera that hangs high and watches the tunnel’s curve. Its angle is fixed. If you shove a maintenance cart in front of it and keep movement low, you’re in its blind angle for eighteen seconds. That’s the window to reach the delivery door.”

Wooyoung whistles softly. “Eighteen seconds is tight.”

“Eighteen seconds is enough,” Seonghwa answers. “If you’re precise.”

He rewinds the footage and slows it to human speed. A guard in the corridor pauses, glances at the clock on the wall, hums under his breath and steps into the stairwell for a smoke. The camera lingers on the stairwell’s shadowed mouth and Seonghwa points. “The stairwell door has a mechanical latch that fails if pulled from both sides. If you grab it from the inside and pull in sequence, it disengages and bounces outward. Then you have two minutes before the auto lock resets, two minutes to hit the archive rack and pull main files.”

Hongjoong’s hands tighten around the edge of the table. He pictures the timing in his head like a metronome. “Two minutes,” he repeats. “Team enters, secures the archive and copies the files. Extraction?”

“Extraction is the same route back,” Seonghwa says. “Timing is cardinal. Distraction teams active in the atrium at the forty seven minute mark. Use the radio jam to create a glitch, move through the blind angle behind a cart, hit the latch sequence, get in, copy and out. No shots, no chases and if they see you, the dogs will find you in under ninety seconds.”

Mingi rubs his temple. “How do we copy? Their archive is paper, locked drawers and sealed cabinets.”

Seonghwa taps a series of frames on the footage showing the archive’s inner door. “Administrative staff use paper transfer for originals. The archive room has a slip drawer and a ledger. It’s staffed by one clerk overnight between 02:00 to 06:00. He takes his break at 03:12. That’s your window for the least human interference. The paper drawers are in metal cabinets marked with file codes. Copy what you can in 90 seconds, fast photography, not scanners. Mingi, you should go in with Hongjoong and you can do a seven second burst with a phone camera at full resolution and do as Hongjoong said. San, you handle the medical kit in case of exposure. Jongho and Yeosang, you learn and run the latch sequence. Yunho and Wooyoung, are in charge of distraction.”

Seonghwa leans back once the list is set, his jaw barely moving. “I will talk you through the sequence when you’re inside. I will give timings from the feed and if anyone deviates, extract immediately.”

“And if the clerk is present?” Hongjoong asks.

“He’s predictable,” Seonghwa says. “He walks to the window at 03:12 to watch the patrol switch. If he’s there and awake, take pictures anyway. He doesn't look trained, he'll probably freeze before he calls alarms.”

“We’re counting on a dumb man to be incompetent.” Wooyoung snorts.

Seonghwa’s eyes flick to Wooyoung. “He does the same everyday without fail. Patterns matter.”

Hongjoong feels the blood in his face thin into ice. He looks at each of his men, hungry, tired, alive and knows the risk. “Walkie plan,” he says finally. “Seonghwa, you give us timestamps on the radio. Mingi runs the jammer on 46 and goes in with me. Jongho, you and Yeosang have latch. Yunho and Wooyoung run perimeter disruption. San on med. If anything goes wrong, I signal ‘whiteout’ and everyone should fall back, no heroics.”

Seonghwa nods once, slow. He taps his fingers twice against the map board, habit and seal both. “I will call the moments, I will tell you when to move but I will not tell you where to hide afterward.”

Hongjoong exhales, the shape of the plan forming into something sharper. He turns to Mingi. “Can you make the jammer clean? Two seconds at 46 and 47. Then we move through the cart blind for 18.”

Mingi half grins. “Done but you owe me a night where I don’t have to hotwire anything.”

Jongho cracks a rare smile. “And more coffee.”

Seonghwa’s reply is a quiet murmur. “Make it fast, keep the lights low and do not arrest pace if a guard hesitates. A dead man makes noise.”

Hongjoong looks at him, then down at the map. The names, the routes and the pins, they are not trophies, they are a lifeline. He wants to ask more, about who this man is, about the way his eyes measure risk as if it were a commodity but there isn’t time. The window is finite, like everything they have left.

“Everyone knows their roles?” Hongjoong says.

A chorus of grunts and nods answers him.

“Then rest two hours, we move at 02:30.” He meets Seonghwa’s gaze before the others melt away. “We count on you.”

Seonghwa lifts his chin almost imperceptibly. “I will be on the radio,” he says. “I will not be indebted.”

Hongjoong accepts the terms for now. They’re not friends, they are a transaction of survival and he lets the fact sit on his shoulders like armor. They’ll take what they need and hope the man at the edge of their circle stays where they can see him.

They disband and the room empties into the soft shuffle of preparation. Mingi tightens cables, Jongho checks the latches in his kit, San folds gauze into a neat stack, Yeosang pauses over the map and traces the delivery door once more.

Seonghwa remains, a pale island of stillness in the armory. Hongjoong watches him a second longer, then turns toward the bunk room, the plan ticking in his head like a clock. The night ahead looms merciless. The city sleeps, or pretends to. They go after paper that names monsters, they go because knowledge is a blade and Seonghwa, Seonghwa watches the footage again on his own screen, slow and deliberate, as if he’s counting the heartbeats of a place he needs to memorize.

After they rested, the night had swallowed the city whole.

The streetlights flared like tired moons, then dipped back into half-life. The concrete smelled of burnt oil and rain left in the gutters, the world felt thin, like a sheet pulled over sound. Hongjoong watched his men move as if watching the last measure of a song he couldn’t stop. Each face, Jongho’s quiet flinty focus, Yeosang’s eyes like little pinpricks of light and Yunho’s jaw set, was a map of what he knew he could lose.

They slipped from shadow to shadow, a single living thing walking between buildings. The outline of the archive building rose ahead of them, a squat block of institutional gray with little warmth in its windows. The city was mostly hollow tonight, the noise came from the distant arteries, not from here.

Seonghwa stayed at the base with the radio. Hongjoong felt the absence of him like a hand removed from his shoulder. He’d said he wouldn’t go inside but he’d said he’d speak. So they had a voice at the seam of the plan, not a pair of hands. That would have to be enough.

They reached the long, service lane and crouched there. Jongho’s whisper was a stone drop. “Now,” and Hongjoong stepped.

Everything in the world narrowed to breathing and the sound of boots that made no sound if you refused to hear them. They cut across the first yard like a shadow. Wooyoung’s laugh, an impulsive noise, almost left his lungs but Hongjoong clamped that down with a look. The air felt electric, as if the city could crack open and spill secret things at any misstep.

The radio clicked and Seonghwa’s voice was low into Hongjoong’s ear. “Move when the light lifts, keep your shoulders low. One drift, not six.”

It was advice without manuals, a reminder of eyes that had already counted the room.

At the delivery entrance, a small group paused. A dog’s distant bark rose and died like a hiccup. Yeosang’s fingers found Jongho’s, then let go, the world shrank to the immediate. Jongho slid forward, hand on the small door and Hongjoong felt the air change. The building tasted corporate, a faint bleach and the memory of post office coffee. A window upstairs glowed, a pale rectangle and for tiny, impossible seconds they were seen only as movement at the edge of perception.

“Go,” Seonghwa breathed and their legs obeyed.

Inside, the archive room smelled of paper and old dust. Rows of cabinets marched like small, metal tombs. The clerk’s desk sat empty but for a single mug and a pad of paper with a pen laid across it as if the owner might return at any moment. Hongjoong’s pulse beat loud in his ears, felt Mingi beside him, a steadying weight and the papers came alive on the table as they worked.

Over the radio, Seonghwa narrated in soft, clipped phrases they all knew to obey. “Left side, third shelf. No light, two steps to the cart, move now.” He never gave them more than what was needed, he gave them the feel of the room and the rhythm of the people who kept it. That was all they needed, a voice that reduced doubt.

A step in the corridor sounded wrong, closer than it should have been. The sound was a human shadow, not the programmed sweep of a camera and Hongjoong froze, breath arrested as he watched Mingi’s jaw flex. Then a muffled cough cut the silence, small and human, and the clerk’s door opened just far enough to reveal a face, sleepy and confused, a flashlight in hand like a beacon. Mingi’s fingers tightened around the stack of papers.

“Wait,” came Seonghwa’s voice, soft as a blade. “Hold the breath, let him pass.”

The clerk hummed to himself as he padded by, a harmless, human sound that kept the world from turning into panic. For a moment Hongjoong thought he might reach the table, the hand craving to move, to take hold but then the clerk turned away and walked into a room that sponsored no drama. The city felt like a staged set again and they breathed.

They didn’t stay for more than the slightest eternity. Mingi’s movements were quick, practiced, fingers snapping photos of ledgers, a phone held steady and shots taken in tight bursts. Each image was a pulse saved and a history stolen. Hongjoong watched the numbers on the pages, the stamped codes and columns that read like dry, clerical applause, until one line caught his eye and his breath went cold, a mention, bureaucratic and mechanical, that echoed with a truth they’d feared. The files spoke of a project, a code-name, a series of “rehabilitation” contracts signed years prior. Hongjoong felt the room recline into a heavier weight.

Outside, the dog’s voice rose like a storm, a shadow moved in the atrium, someone on the other side of the glass would look twice at a security feed and make a choice. Noise would be drawn like a moth. Hongjoong’s radio crackled, Seonghwa’s voice in his ear. “Extraction, now. Back the way you came. Two breaths, then move.”

They stole back into the corridor like smoke. Jongho’s hands where on the latch and when the dog’s bark became two deeper, panicked notes the team was already halfway across the yard. They slid into alleys that smelled of old gasoline and city rot. Wooyoung flung his shoulder into a rusted gate, a practiced theatricality meant to pull eyes, not to lead a chase, while Yunho and San moved the others like an echo of intention, distraction and extraction, hate into motion.

The radio, a thin lifeline, kept Seonghwa’s voice inside their skulls. “Left, stop, down. Now go.” It was a cadence, not a plan, a heartbeat that matched their own. The city gave them a step, one, two, three and then the siren sounded, high and small, not yet a hunt but a warning.

They ran. The world telescoped into urgency. Hongjoong tasted fear, metallic and sharp, then pushed it down. He moved like he had to move, not like he wanted to. Their boots pounded the pavement and then were gone into alleyways and shadowed folds. Behind them, the archive’s lights bloomed into frantic beams and the clipped yips of handlers and dogs fractured the night.

They collapsed into the low light like men returning to a ship after rough seas. Hongjoong sat, exhausted and wired. He watched his team breathe, watched the way they clung together like living things glued to luck. He thought of Seonghwa in the armory with the radio, a man who had kept his hands clean and his mind sharp and he felt both relief and the old hollow tug of doubt.

They had what they’d come for, they had the proof, they had the files that could make monsters lie on paper but the night had shown Hongjoong something sharp and dangerous, they had needed a man they barely knew to bring them this far. That debt, invisible and heavy, sat on his shoulders like a stone.

Hongjoong kept his eyes closed a heartbeat longer, feeling the slow, dangerous bloom of hope and knowing, as all leaders do, that hope would cost them blood.

They had started the mission, they had survived it and now the war inside the papers would begin.

They came back to the base with the city still on their backs, the tiresome ache of running etched under each step.

The tunnel mouth bit at their faces with damp air when they shoved the door open, boots slipping on the same slick concrete they’d crossed that morning. They moved as a single, exhausted body into the armory, shoulders sagging, clothes smelling of grease and wet stone, and the room greeted them with the same low hum of generators and the small breath of people settling back into something like safety.

Someone had taken apart a chair and left the pieces like a sentence. The map table had pins rearranged into studies of angles. A mug sat cold where someone had abandoned it. Little signs of life, little signs of movement but Seonghwa’s place, the space he’d used to sit with the radio, was empty.

For a second Hongjoong didn’t notice, he should have, he had been the one to ask Seonghwa not to go inside with them, the one who’d trusted the man with a voice and a sequence and a promise, but seeing the seat empty was a different thing than agreeing to the terms.

“Where is he?” Wooyoung asked first, voice raw and too loud for the small space. He moved around the map, looking for a silhouette like a child hunts a missing toy.

“No one saw him after we left,” Mingi said. He was wiping a smear of dust off the projector with automatic motions. “He helped us and then he left.”

“Just left?” Yunho’s voice was thin. “No note? No-”

“No trail,” Jongho cut in, his hands folded like he was keeping himself from moving too fast. “He packed nothing, he just walked out. Maybe toward the north road or maybe beyond.”

The words landed in the room like a stone thrown into still water and the ripple was a quiet panic.

Hongjoong heard them all, but the sound they made seemed far away, muffled by a pressure behind his ribs. He moved slowly to the radio table, to the chair Seonghwa had used and sat down. The fabric felt the same under his hand, the radio unit, the one with the taped antenna, hummed with the ghost of the night before. He put his palm flat on the radio, as if he could feel through it the cool certainty of the man who’d been on the other end.

“It’s his choice,” Yeosang said, softer than anyone had the right to be. “He said he would leave after he was free to leave.”

“He agreed to stay,” San said. “He agreed to hell’s bargain.”

“He also said he wouldn’t be indebted,” Mingi reminded, voice small. “He said that clear as glass.”

Hongjoong let out a breath that tasted like metal. His chest ached in a way words never quite matched. It wasn’t rage, it wasn’t betrayal in the blunt sense. It was an empty, ridiculous hurt like someone had taken a piece of him without asking and then walked away whistling as if everything were normal. He thought of the way Seonghwa had kept his distance, the way he had refused to belong even as he kept them alive. He thought of the quiet nods, the tap rituals, the way the man had moved like a ledger in a world of pulp. He felt something tighten that felt almost like grief for a person he did not know.

“He earned his leave,” Hongjoong said finally, because he had to anchor the room with something, his voice plain and low. “He did what we asked, he told us he would go once the job was done. We can’t tie him down.”

Wooyoung spat on the floor, a small, stupid, petulant gesture. “Of course he leaves. Figures the one man who keeps his hands clean takes the easy exit.”

Jongho’s hand steadied his friend’s shoulder, not unkind. “He didn’t take the easy exit, he took a choice, maybe he paid a debt in a way none of us understand.”

Hongjoong rose from the chair then, the ache in his chest like a living thing that needed action more than words. “We don’t mourn him,” he said. “We honor the fact that he helped us but right now, the files. That’s why we did it.”

They crowded around the projector as Mingi set the burner to receive, the small machine whirring like a trapped insect and then settling. Images came through in a slow, patient trickle, pages scanned by cheap phone cameras, time-stamped and awkward, but legible. Yeosang fed each image onto the wall while the others peered, leaning in until the light burned the backs of their retinas.

The documents were bureaucratic at first glance, letterheads and stamped seals, columns of numbers and lists of suppliers, budgets couched in polite brutality, but beneath the clinic language the paper told what the men had feared and half-suspected. It spoke of projects given names designed to sound medical and safe, lines in a ledger for “patient management” that included allocation of staff, equipment and funds for construction with contractor names. There were references to evaluations and performance metrics that read like cruelty measured in spreadsheets.

One page had a line that made Hongjoong grip the table until the wood creaked, a funding schedule that was not a one-off, but a plan, a program in phases. The language was careful, almost clinical, but the implication struck like a hand across the face. It was planned, it had been budgeted and someone high enough had signed the papers.

“They called it rehabilitation,” Wooyoung muttered, eyes burning. “They called it compassion on paper.”

“Compassion for who?” San whispered. “For the people who write checks while others disappear?”

Yeosang pointed at a signature, small and blocked, a name that meant nothing to most of the room and everything to Hongjoong because the name had appeared in rumors they’d never confirmed. “This is the guy, Minister Park. He signed it.”

Hongjoong’s throat tightened. A name on paper turned rumor into a target, paper made the shadow a real person, it made the war anatomically possible.

Mingi traced a line with a finger. “There are other sites,” he said. “Not just Facility 8. Looks like a program rolled out years ago, a centralized order, funding coming from a health division labeled ‘Containment and Compliance.’”

The room breathed out together, the sound like a dozen small concessions to an ugly truth. They had stolen numbers and names, they had stolen intent in dry, literal ink. What they had was dangerous, true and combustible.

“We have what we need,” Hongjoong said, voice steady but thin around the edges. “This proves there’s a system, this proves it’s not a mistake, it’s policy.”

Someone whispered, “So now what?”

Hongjoong looked at the rectangular glow of the documents and for the first time in days felt the old calculation settle into him again, the thing the facility had tried to burn out, strategy. He thought of their people scattered around the city, of cells waiting for a signal, for proof that the Outlaws were more than stories underground. He thought of Seonghwa, of a chair left empty and a radio that hummed like a wound.

“We make it public,” he said. “Not loud enough to get us killed where we stand, but loud enough that people who matter hear it. We leak, we spread and we force inquiry. We get the press, the networks that still bleed truth in small corners. We don’t attack a building with names, we attack the lie and we prepare for the retaliation that will come.”

Yeosang’s hand went to his mouth. “They’ll come for us.”

“They will,” Hongjoong agreed. “Which is why we move fast, which is why we secure these files, copy and scatter the truth where light can find it. We won’t be the only ones acting on it, the city will do the rest once they smell the blood on paper.”

A long silence followed, loaded and ferocious in its own way. No one spoke for a moment, not because they had nothing to say, but because the thing they had stolen had changed the frame of the room into something sharp. The files were a blade, now they had to learn how to use it.

Finally, Wooyoung laughed, a short, breathy thing that sounded almost like a sob. “We came for papers,” he said. “We always come back with more questions.”

Hongjoong closed his eyes briefly and then opened them again, the hurt of the missing chair still lodged in his chest like a small, deliberate stone. “Get ready,” he said. “We move within the hour. Find secure lines, send the copies to safe places. If any of you have contacts that can push this without being traced back to us, get them now.”

They stayed where they were for a moment, the room shrinking as the projector washed the paper into light.

San, who’d been fidgeting with a loose thread on his sleeve, stopped and pointed startled before anyone could realize what he’d seen for his face to look like that. The others turned reflexively, the projector frame filled the wall with a single header in black, official type.

“Park Seonghwa.”

Chapter Text

The name hung there like an accusation.

For a beat nobody moved. The noise of the base, the drip of water and the soft scrape of someone stacking boxes far away, all receded until the only sound was the hum of the projector and the quick breath they all suddenly took.

Yunho read it out loud as if the letters themselves needed pronunciation to mean something real. “Park Seonghwa, formerly enlisted in the Special Division and the son of Minister Park Jaesung, showed clear signs of misbehavior. Minister Park authorized a dedicated containment program. Multiple containment attempts documented. Seven facilities, Facility 1 through Facility 7, recorded as containment failures. Facility 8 commissioned as a final measure. Subject did not escape.”

The words on the page were clinical, small and monstrous in the same moment. They landed on the group like a verdict.

Wooyoung made a sound that could have been a laugh or a sob and let it die in his throat. Jongho’s hand tightened on the table edge until his knuckles paled. 

“He was trained,” San whispered. “A soldier.”

“He escaped seven times,” Yeosang said, the number hollow and enormous when it left his mouth. “Seven facilities and they kept building.”

Hongjoong felt a cold turn under his ribs, a slow, bitter thing uncoiling. The man they’d leaned on, the quiet and precise ghost who never stumbled or spoke for himself, bore on the page a shape they hadn’t known, not just patient and victim but trained, forged into something meant for war. 

Seonghwa’s picture next to his name was staring back at him in a way that made his skin crawl.

“Why did they want him locked away?” Yunho muttered. 

Mingi pointed at a diagram. “Look, Facility one through seven are small, dispersed units, they were experiments. Then there’s a line, ‘Consolidation at Facility 8, secure architecture with psychosomatic controls.’ They designed eight to be the last.”

“Designed to hold him,” Jongho said flatly. “Was he dangerous?”

The projector flicked to a page stamped with a signature, Park Jaesung. Seeing his name there was like seeing the face behind a mask. The Minister’s hand, legal and decisive, had authorized the chain of containment. The paper turned rumor into target.

Hongjoong thought of the chair that had been Seonghwa’s and how empty it felt, he thought of the radio that had hummed with the man’s voice, he thought of the way Seonghwa had moved and now it all made sense, he moved like a soldier who’d learned silence as armor and steps as prayer.

“Why would he help us?” Wooyoung asked, rawer now. “Why guide the people who fight the system that he protected?”

“Maybe he hates what he was made to be,” Jongho said. “Or maybe he hates the men who ordered him more than he fears the rest of us. Either way, he used what he had to get us the papers.”

“Seven failed facilities,” Yeosang repeated, voice small. “They failed to break him seven times. He didn’t escape eight, he survived it in whatever way he had left.”

The room seemed to tilt. The files on the wall were no longer just proof of bureaucracy, they were a ledger of someone’s life intersecting with state violence. Park Seonghwa’s name, printed in clinical type, had weight to it now, the weight of a childhood bound to influence, of training given by a state that then sought to erase that same product when it became inconvenient.

Hongjoong pressed his palm flat on the table until the joints ached. Hurt and a darker thing, something like protective fury, both rose together. He had felt the absence of the man at their table before but the papers changed the ache into a sharper instrument. The man who had saved them was not only connected to the regime by blood and paper, he had also been a soldier who knew how to move through their systems.

The door banged open before anyone could react. Hyunwoo stumbled in, breathless and bright eyed, his hand still on the handle. “Hey, uh, Minjae said to tell you food’s-”

He stopped when words on the projection caught his eye.

He blinked, once and twice, his voice tripping over the air. “Wait- was that the guy you brought here?” No one answered and the boy’s face shifted from confusion to surprise, his mouth falling open just a little. “Oh my god,” he said, half whisper, half shout. “You brought him here? You brought the Ghostmaker?”

The room went still, the hum of the projector suddenly deafening.

Wooyoung frowned, leaning back in his chair. “What the fuck’s a Ghostmaker?”

Hyunwoo turned toward him, disbelief flickering across his young face. “You don’t know? He’s- he’s famous. People used to tell stories about him where I’m from, they said he makes ghosts.”

Mingi exchanged a wary glance with Hongjoong. “Ghosts,” he repeated flatly.

“Not real ghosts,” Hyunwoo said quickly, his words spilling fast, nervously. “He tortures people so bad they stop being… people. They go quiet and hollow, like they’re still alive but everything inside’s gone. They said if the Ghostmaker came for you, you’d rather be dead.”

The color drained from Yunho’s face and San’s jaw tensed.

Yeosang stared at the young recruit. “You’re saying Seonghwa- he was one of those soldiers?”

“Yeah, my uncle was in the southern patrol before he became a rebel and he said Park Jaesung trained his own son to break rebels. Said he was a genius, too smart for anyone’s good but what most people don’t know, what they said in my town at least, is that before they made him do that, they… they did it to him first.” His voice faltered there, small and uncertain in the silence that followed. “They wanted him to understand pain and to know how it worked, so he could use it.”

The room was a vacuum, no one moved. The air itself felt heavy, thick with the realization that every quiet gesture, every cold stare, every strange habit Seonghwa had carried came from somewhere darker than they could have imagined.

Wooyoung was the first to breathe again, his voice thin and hoarse. “You’re telling me the man who got us out of Facility 8… used to be the one who ran places just like it?”

Hyunwoo just swallowed, eyes darting from one face to another. “I don’t know, maybe not Facility 8 but everyone knows the name Park Seonghwa, The Ghostmaker. They say he disappeared after his last mission, no one knew where they’d taken him.”

Mingi muttered under his breath. “Now we do.”

No one said it aloud, but they were all thinking the same thing. The man who’d freed them from their prison had been built to design it.

Hongjoong closed his eyes for half a second, a slow exhale dragging out of him. When he opened them again, the projector light caught his expression, sharp and grim.

“Enough,” he said quietly. “Not another word about this outside this room.”

Hyunwoo stiffened, nodded quickly and backed out, the door closing behind him.

The silence left behind wasn’t simple anymore. It wasn’t confusion or shock, it was a quiet edged with grief, disbelief and a fear that felt far too much like respect.

Hongjoong sank into the chair. The projector light still bled across the wall, spilling Seonghwa’s name into the space like a wound that wouldn’t close.

Nobody moved for a long time. The hum of the old machines filled the room, the faint sound of electricity crawling through old wires and it made the moment feel almost alive.

Finally, San rubbed a hand over his face, the movement slow, unsteady. “What do we do now?” he asked, voice rough. “We can’t just… pretend we didn’t see that.”

“We don’t do anything,” Hongjoong said, sharper than he meant to. “We keep this to ourselves. The moment people hear that name out loud, they’ll stop seeing him as one of us.”

“But he’s not one of us,” Wooyoung said quietly. It wasn’t cruel, just tired. “He’s something else.”

Yeosang exhaled, his chair creaking as he leaned back. “He’s the reason we’re not still inside that hellhole,” he said. “That has to count for something.”

“Does it?” Jongho murmured, almost to himself. “Or did he just help because it gave him an excuse to do something different for once?”

Hongjoong stared at the papers, the government seals stamped clean and impersonal on each one. Facility 8 commissioned as a final measure. He could hear Seonghwa’s voice in his head, calm and unbothered, perfectly controlled and it twisted something in his chest.

He was trained to kill, to break, to silence and yet, in Facility 8 he’d saved them.

Hongjoong’s throat tightened. “I don’t care what he was made into,” he said. “What matters is what he did when he had the chance. He got us out, he gave us this.”

“But he left,” San said. “He didn’t even say goodbye. He just-”

“Maybe he couldn’t.”

The words left Hongjoong’s mouth before he even thought about them. They hung there, quieter than the projector’s hum and for some reason they sounded truer than anything else.

He looked up, meeting the others’ eyes one by one. “He was built to destroy and maybe walking away was the closest thing he’s got to saving anyone.”

Yunho’s lips parted, as if to argue but then he just nodded slowly, his face caught somewhere between understanding and unease.

Mingi rubbed at the back of his neck. “Still. The Ghostmaker. That’s the kind of name that gets whispered in training camps to scare people. If the others in the base find out-”

“They won’t,” Hongjoong cut him off. “We don’t spread myths, we protect truth and right now, the truth is that we have the documents. We have proof the regime built those places, we move forward with that.”

He killed the projector with a flick of a switch. The room dimmed, leaving only the thin yellow light of a lamp by the corner.

“We eat, we sleep and then we start planning what comes next. If Seonghwa’s gone, then fine but while he’s alive… he’s part of this whether he likes it or not.” Hongjoong stood and let out a breath that felt too heavy for his lungs.

The others stayed seated, watching him go. For a long while, no one said anything.

It was Wooyoung who finally broke the silence, voice soft but certain. “He will still help us.”

Yunho frowned. “What makes you so sure?”

Wooyoung shrugged, eyes down on the empty chair. “People like him don’t just disappear, they haunt you. He won't leave a job unfinished, even if he doesn't really supports our fight.”

The lights buzzed overhead, faint and tired, no one left the room.

The silence that followed Wooyoung’s words was heavier this time, thicker, not just grief anymore but the sharp taste of uncertainty.

Mingi was the first to voice it. “He knows where we are,” he said. His tone was careful, low, as if saying it too loudly might make it real.

That one sentence snapped them all to attention.

“You think he’d tell them? After everything?” Yunho turned to him.

“I think he could. He’s the son of Park Jaesung, for fuck’s sake. The regime’s monster and their minister’s heir. Blood like that doesn’t just disappear.” Mingi’s jaw worked as he tried to find the right words.

“He probably wasn't a father to him,” San said immediately, too quickly.

“No,” Wooyoung muttered, “but he was made by him.”

“If he wanted to hurt us, he had the chance. He could have killed us in Facility 8. He could’ve walked us into a trap and watched us burn.” Yeosang sat forward, elbows on his knees, voice quiet but steady.

“He could’ve,” Jongho agreed. “But what if he didn’t because he didn’t need to? What if this was all a plan? Get us out, get our trust, find our base and-”

“Enough.” Hongjoong’s voice cut through them, sharp enough to make them flinch.

They turned toward him. His expression wasn’t angry, not really. He looked tired, that kind of exhaustion that sits deep in the chest where leadership turns into weight.

“You think I haven’t thought about it?” he said. “That the son of a minister knows the location of the Outlaws’ main base? That he could walk right back into the city and trade us for a pardon?” The room was so quiet they could hear the faint hum of the underground pipes. “I’ve thought about it,” Hongjoong said again, quieter this time. “Every second since I saw that file.”

Mingi ran a hand through his hair, restless. “So what do we do?”

Hongjoong leaned on the table, his knuckles pale against the wood. “We do what we’ve always done. We stay alert, we prepare for both possibilities. Either he left us for good and went to his father or he’s planning to still help and whichever he picks, we’ll be ready.”

Yunhi snorted softly, but it didn’t sound like amusement. “You talk like he’s not one of us, like you think there's a possibility that he could go back to his soldier life.”

Hongjoong met his gaze. “He’s not one of us, not completely yet.”

“But he could be.” San’s voice cracked the stillness again, soft but certain and no one answered him because none of them really knew if they wanted that to be true.

The name Park Seonghwa still glowed faintly in their minds, tied now to the words soldier, son, Ghostmaker. He had escaped seven times, survived an eighth, walked out of a nightmare and right into theirs.

If the regime ever learned he was alive, they would hunt him down. If he’d already gone back to them, they’d all be dead by morning.

Hongjoong sank back into his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose, his head pounding. Trusting him was a risk, distrusting him was a mistake. Either way, they were standing on a knife’s edge.

“He knows where we are,” Mingi said again, almost to himself.

“Yes,” Hongjoong said, not looking up. “And we’re still alive.”

That single truth hung in the air, impossible and terrifying. It didn’t mean they were safe.

It just meant that, for now, Park Seonghwa, the Ghostmaker, had chosen not to destroy them.

Wooyoung shifted in his chair, restless energy running through him like static. He never could sit still when the room felt too quiet, when the air pressed down with things no one wanted to say. His hands reached for the nearest pile of papers, as if movement could undo the weight.

“Can we just-” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else and began straightening the messy stacks on the table.

The motion was sharp and distracted. A few sheets slipped loose, sliding to the floor in a soft scatter of sound that made everyone look up.

“Careful,” Mingi started but Wooyoung was already kneeling, scooping them back together until his hands stopped.

There, in the middle of the scattered pages, were several sheets not stamped or typed, not government issued. The ink was darker, smudged slightly on the edges. Handwriting, neat and exact.

Hongjoong’s chest tightened as he leaned closer. He didn’t have to read the name at the top to recognize the writing, none of the men in the room had handwriting that precise.

It was Seonghwa’s.

Wooyoung turned the pages over slowly, eyes flicking across lines of tidy script. “What the hell is this?”

Yeosang reached over and took one of the sheets, reading the first few words under his breath before his lips pressed into a line. “It’s… instructions,” he said finally. “Plans.”

Hongjoong took the top page from him and scanned the neat rows of letters, detailed, methodical and cold in their precision. The ink was steady, deliberate, like someone who knew exactly what they were building toward.

He didn’t need to read all of it to know what it meant.

Seonghwa hadn’t just left them the files, he’d left them directions, a blueprint for what came next.

Hongjoong set the papers down, careful not to crumple them. The others were still watching him, waiting for him to say something, to make sense of what this was supposed to mean but he couldn’t, not yet.

All he could do was stare at the immaculate handwriting and feel that ache in his chest twist into something sharper, something that wasn’t quite fear and wasn’t quite hope.

Even gone, Seonghwa was still moving pieces, always multiple steps ahead of others.

-

The radio crackled once and then went quiet.

For a long time, Seonghwa didn’t move. He sat in the chair by the comms desk, the last bits of static fading into the low hum of the underground power lines. Somewhere above, the world was still asleep, unaware that something enormous had just shifted.

He listened to the silence, he’d always liked silence. It didn’t demand anything and it didn’t lie.

On the desk, beside the still warm receiver, the stack of mission directions sat in neat piles, his handwriting clean and precise as he was taught. Everything the Outlaws would need to finish what they’d started.

He had written down everything and left nothing missing. Debts had to be paid cleanly, he could only hope they would find the files.

Seonghwa stood slowly, the ache in his leg sharp enough to remind him that he was still human. The base around him was quiet, the air heavy with that kind of exhaustion that only comes after victory. They’d done it, they’d survived and they’d never understand just how close it had come to breaking apart.

He looked once toward the hallway that led to the sleeping quarters. He could almost see them there, huddled in their bunks, skin still marked by Facility 8, dreams probably tangled in its fluorescent lights.

For a moment, he considered staying, just a moment but moments were dangerous.

He reached for a coat, pulled it over his shoulders and paused only when his fingers brushed against the pocket where he used to keep the small pouch of pills but it was empty, gone like everything else he’d decided to leave behind.

He took one last glance at the radio, the machine that had carried his voice through miles of concrete and fear. Then carefully, he switched it off and the click echoed louder than he expected.

In the dark, the reflection from the monitor caught his eyes, pale and still, the faintest hint of movement behind them. He didn’t look like a man leaving, he looked like someone returning to where he’d always belonged, nowhere.

Outside, the tunnel air was cold and damp. The walls here were carved stone, uneven and alive with the memory of dripping water. He tapped the frame of the exit door twice before stepping through it, old habits, small rituals that made the world stay solid.

The night was gray, fog hanging low over the ruined outskirts of the city. In the distance, the skyline was broken and sharp, the towers of the regime still lit even at this hour, cutting through the dark like polished knives.

He pulled his hood up and started walking. His footsteps were soundless, practiced. He didn’t need to think about where he was going. 

Behind him, the base sat quiet and hidden, and the people inside still believed he was part of something human. He’d given them what they needed, he owed them nothing more.

Still, as the fog swallowed him, a thought slid uninvited into his mind. If they find out who he is, they’ll hate him but if they find out what he had done… they’ll never sleep again.

He didn’t know which truth scared him more, so he walked faster.

The city waited, gray and endless, and for the first time in a long time Seonghwa felt the weight of his own name pressing against his throat like a secret too heavy to carry.

The city swallowed him whole.

Fog hung even lower over the old industrial sector, a graveyard of forgotten factories and half collapsed warehouses. Seonghwa’s steps carried him toward one of them after hours of walking, a squat concrete building with its windows blacked out and its walls veined with rust. From the outside, it looked like nothing more than a ruin that time had abandoned.

That was the point.

He paused at the door, tapping the rusted handle twice before gripping it. The sound echoed, hollow and small, and then the metal groaned open. Inside, the air shifted, colder and sharper, too clean for a place that looked dead.

He stepped through.

The change was immediate. Beneath the thin layer of dust and darkness, the world came alive in soft, mechanical hums. The lights flickered once, responding to a motion sensor, and the hidden room breathed awake.

Banks of old computers lined the walls, their screens blinking to life with quiet obedience. Racks of weapons stood against the far corner, polished and oiled, untouched but ready. Guns, knives, tactical gear and shelves of ammunition arranged with military precision.

A life sealed away, like the man himself.

Seonghwa moved through the space without hesitation, fingers brushing along the edges of metal and glass. His hand rested briefly on a side panel, the screen flashed blue, asking for a code. He typed one in without looking and the lights warmed. The base was listening, it had always been listening.

He sat down on the edge of the desk, the glow from the monitors throwing pale light across his face. Facility 8’s files were still fresh in his mind as he didn’t need to read them to know what they said. They would read them soon, the Outlaws.

They would read the reports, the minister’s signature, the records of every failed attempt, the list of procedures and orders that bore his name. They’d learn who he was, what he’d done and the weight of the blood that still followed him.

They’d hate him for it, maybe they’d even try to kill him and he wouldn’t blame them.

His eyes moved to the far corner of the room, where a cracked mirror leaned against the wall. The reflection stared back at him, still and almost ghostly, only his hair was different, now falling to his shoulders, but the man in the mirror didn’t look like someone who’d escaped anything, he looked like someone who’d outlasted everything else.

He stood, walked to the console and opened the encrypted communication logs, lines and lines of messages to nobody, coded coordinates, transmissions sent to frequencies that no longer existed. His old world, sleeping beneath dust.

This was who he had been before Facility 8, this was what they’d tried to bury and he had let them because locking himself away had been the only way to stop becoming what they made him.

Seonghwa rested his palms against the edge of the desk, his head bowed for a moment. In the sterile light, he looked both fragile and indestructible.

“They’ll know soon,” he murmured, voice low, almost to himself. “And they’ll finally see me for what I am.”

He reached for the nearest pistol, checked the chamber and set it down again with care. He wasn’t planning to use it, not yet. He simply needed to feel the weight of it again, the familiarity.

Outside, the fog pressed against the cracked windows, turning the world into a gray blur. Inside, Seonghwa’s hidden base hummed like a sleeping beast, full of the ghosts he had made and the ones he still carried.

Facility 8 hadn’t been his prison, it had been his refuge and now that he’d left it, now that they knew who he was, there would be no going back.

A cigarette flared to life with a soft crackle, the only sound in the room. Seonghwa watched the ember glow between his fingers, steady and orange, a small, breathing thing in the dark.

He hadn’t smoked in years, not since before Facility 8. The taste was sharp, bitter and almost chemical but it didn’t calm him, it just made the silence louder.

He leaned back in the chair, one arm resting on the desk beside the cold pistol, the other bringing the cigarette to his lips again. The first exhale curled upward, thin and silver. For a moment, it reminded him of smoke on the training grounds, of the guns, the drills and the endless repetition until your body forgot what it meant to stop.

The Special Division hadn’t raised soldiers, it had built machines.

He still remembered the smell of the room, iron and disinfectant, the echo of boots against tile, the hum of the light that never turned off. They’d taught him how to break people by breaking him first.

To torture someone, you must first understand them and to understand them, you must become them.

He had.

He learned the human body like a map, where pain lived, where fear hid, where the soul could be cornered and strangled without killing the host. They’d called him efficient and brilliant, a weapon too precise to waste.

For years, he’d watched rebels with raw wrists and burning eyes beg for freedom, for their families, for mercy. They all said the same thing, they just wanted to live and each time, something inside him had listened.

Each time, that small part had begged alongside them, silent and invisible, but his father never looked at him, not once, not through the glass, not in the barracks and not when he was decorated for service. He was a project, a product, a thing that breathed on command.

Until one day, something inside him cracked and after that came the facilities. One through seven. Containment, reprogramming and erasure.

Each time they locked him away, he learned how to break out. Until Facility 8.

Facility 8 was different because he didn’t escape, he stayed.

He’d told himself it was atonement, that he deserved the walls, the pills and the silence. That if he stayed still long enough, the ghosts would quiet down but the ghosts never did, they just waited.

He stared at the cigarette burning down between his fingers, the ash long and trembling. His other hand tapped the edge of the table twice, a habit that had once kept him sane, a reminder that the world was real.

Then he thought of them. The Outlaws, their noise and their unrefined, reckless fire.

Hongjoong’s voice cracking with anger and purpose.

Wooyoung’s defiance, San’s heart and Jongho’s quiet strength. The way they’d looked at him with suspicion, with disgust and with something that almost felt like belief.

He had seen them as naive once, men too soft to survive in a world that demanded obedience but inside Facility 8, they’d burned brighter than anything he’d seen in years and for the first time, the silence in his chest had shifted.

He took another drag, slow and deep, the ember glowing hot enough to light the side of his face. The taste burned, bitter enough to make his eyes sting.

He could stay here, in this empty shell of a base and let the world keep turning, he could hide while they, those untrained, stubborn, alive men, tore at the foundations of the regime that had made him.

But could he forgive his father?

The thought came fast and final, a blade sliding clean through hesitation. There was nothing to forgive.

His father had turned his child into a weapon and then tried to bury the evidence.

The ember reached his fingers, singed the skin and he didn’t even flinch.

Seonghwa crushed the cigarette in the ashtray and stood. The movement was slow, deliberate, every muscle knowing its purpose again.

If the Outlaws had taught him anything, it was that even ghosts could burn and if the regime thought he’d gone quiet, they were about to learn what silence really sounded like.

He stood there for a while, in the dim hum of his hidden base. 

His gaze drifted toward the far corner, to a rusted locker buried under dust. He crossed the room and opened it with a push that felt heavier than it should’ve been. Inside were the clothes he’d worn before Facility 8, back when he was nothing but a soldier on the run, still trying to remember what freedom was supposed to feel like.

Black, every piece of it. Functional, quiet and sharp. The color of absence, of hiding.

He brushed a hand over the fabric before pulling the shirt on. It still fit him like a second skin, heavy with the memory of movement.

He tied the holster around his leg, slid a knife into its place and fastened the belt.

The mirror across the room caught him in its fractured glass, not a ghost or a weapon but something in between. And yet, as he looked at his reflection something else crept into the space between thought and breath. A face with brown eyes that didn’t flinch when they met his. A voice that had told him, they couldn't leave without him. Hongjoong.

He blinked hard, as if that would erase it but the image stayed.

The fire in that man’s eyes burned clearer than the fluorescent lights above him. There had been defiance there, not the kind born from orders or duty but from something raw, belief.

Something Seonghwa had forgotten people could still have.

He didn’t understand it, he didn’t understand why his mind kept circling back to that man, to the sound of his voice on the radio, to the way he’d looked at him like there was more to see than a monster who’d survived too long.

He’d seen hundreds of eyes in his life, most of them filled with fear but Hongjoong’s weren’t afraid, not of him, not of pain and not of the world that built Facility 8.

That fire, it unsettled him. It made something restless crawl beneath his skin, something he thought the years had burned out of him completely.

Seonghwa fastened the last button and exhaled slowly. He didn’t know why his thoughts lingered where they shouldn’t but he knew one thing, if Hongjoong and his people were going to burn down the world that made men like him, he wanted to be there to watch it burn.

Seonghwa lit another cigarette, the tip burning orange as he exhaled smoke toward the ceiling.

Lines of code and surveillance feeds flickered across the screens, pale blue light cutting through the smoke hanging in the air. Seonghwa sat down, fingers hovering over the keyboard, the motion as natural as breathing.

His mind began to shift into order, plan routes, identify safe zones, calculate guard rotations, power grids and supply points. The muscle memory of a soldier never died, no matter how much you tried to kill it, nut something shifted in the air, a weight, faint at first, then crawling across the back of his neck.

He turned, instinct leading before thought and there was a man standing in the middle of the room.

Mid-thirties maybe, broad shoulders beneath a worn gray clothes, the edges of his form just slightly wrong, like he didn’t belong in the same light as everything else.

Seonghwa straightened instantly, muscles coiling tight, his stance low and ready to strike, until the man spoke.

“You killed me.”

The voice was raw, human and angry. Familiar in the way every scream eventually becomes.

The man stepped closer, the light catching on his face and Seonghwa knew him. Not by name, he never remembered their names, but by the eyes. Eyes that had once begged.

“I told you my son was waiting for me,” the man said, the words shaking, breaking apart like glass. “I told you he needed me and you- you didn’t stop.” His lip curled, trembling somewhere between rage and grief. “You still did it, you watched me break, you watched me beg.”

The voice cracked something deep in him. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard those words but it never stopped hurting.

Seonghwa didn’t move and the man took a step closer, eyes full of rage that wasn’t fully human anymore.

The man’s breathing hitched. “I tried to live with it. I tried to go home after they let me go but I couldn’t. Every time I closed my eyes I saw your face.” His voice turned sharp and unsteady. “I killed myself to make it stop, I killed myself to be free from what you did to me.”

The man’s voice rose. “You tortured me for wanting a better future for my son!” He took another step closer and the flickering monitors behind Seonghwa seemed to dim. “How the fuck do you still get to breathe?”

Seonghwa’s body went rigid, every nerve alight and then, the air shifted again.

He blinked once and the man wasn’t there anymore leaving just the hum of the machines, the smell of smoke and the echo of words that weren’t really said.

He dropped to his knees before he realized he was moving.

His palms hit the cold floor first, then his fists. The sound echoed against the metal walls, dull and final.

He bowed his head forward, breathing through his teeth until the air turned sharp in his lungs.

He didn’t ask for forgiveness, he didn’t deserve it, he’d stopped believing in the mercy of the dead a long time ago, but the ghost stayed. Not visible, not real but still there. Sitting behind his ribs like a memory that refused to fade.

And for the first time since Facility 8, Seonghwa wished he could cry but nothing came.

Only the steady ache of a man built to hurt and left with nothing but the sound of his own pulse.

Seonghwa stayed there, his body folded in on itself, hands shaking against the floor. The taste of smoke and blood filled his mouth. He could feel the sting in his knuckles where skin had split, where the metal bit back.

Then something broke loose inside him.

A raw, animal noise tore its way out of his chest. It wasn’t a sob, wasn’t a cry. It was something lower and deeper. A sound that could’ve belonged to a wounded thing that didn’t know how to die. It scraped the walls, ripped through the air until his throat burned, until he was gasping like he’d been underwater too long but still, no tears. There never were.

He screamed again, hoarse, his voice cracking until it sounded like two people fighting to get out of the same body. It echoed in the hollow metal room, ricocheting off every surface until it came back to him smaller, strangled, a ghost of itself.

Then silence, heavy and absolute.

He stayed still, his chest heaving and his head bowed. The air smelled like rust and smoke. His body trembled, every muscle drawn tight, but his face was blank.

He looked like someone remembering how to breathe.

Minutes or hours, passed before he forced himself up, not knowing how much time passed. Every movement mechanical and disciplined. He wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his hand, glanced once toward the empty space where the ghost had stood and turned away.

Enough.

He lit another cigarette, the ember shaking faintly as he inhaled. The smoke curled in front of him, slow and ghostlike. “You’re all dead,” he murmured under his breath, voice rough and calm all at once. “And I’m still here. That’s my punishment.”

The words were for no one, not even himself.

He moved through the room, boots hitting the metal floor in steady, measured beats. The soldier inside him, the part he’d spent years trying to kill, began to rise again. Cold focus slipped back into his veins like a drug.

He sat down in front of the monitors, hands hovering over the keyboard. The screens flickered to life, casting his face in pale light. Lines of code rolled fast, security feeds opening one by one, maps overlaying the city.

Facility 8, government networks and movement routes.

His mind shifted gears, mechanical and merciless. The pain was gone, replaced by something clean, sharp and dangerous.

He didn’t know what he was yet, revenant, soldier or sinner but he knew one thing, the regime that made him had made a mistake leaving him breathing.

His fingers stilled above the keyboard, cigarette burning low between his lips.

He thought fleetingly of Hongjoong.

Of the way his eyes had burned, not with hatred or pity but with defiance, the same kind of fire Seonghwa hadn’t seen in years. The kind that made people dangerous. It was the kind of fire he once had to put out with torture but that now, he had the chance to save.

He exhaled smoke through his nose, the faintest twitch of something that might’ve been a smile on his face.

“Maybe,” he whispered, voice barely audible, “it’s time to see what happens when ghosts stop running.”

The cigarette hit the floor, ember dimming out.

He straightened, his shoulders square and his eyes fixed on the glowing monitors. The soldier in him was awake now and there would be no putting him back to sleep.

Chapter Text

The papers smelled faintly like dust and cigarette smoke.

Hongjoong smoothed one out on the table, the edges creased, the handwriting sharp and deliberate. Seonghwa’s script was clean, each line steady and absolutely no hesitation. Even here, he wrote like a soldier, it was efficient and precise, as if the act itself were a command.

The seven of them gathered close, half awake, eyes drawn to the words as if they might hear his voice between them.

Mingi leaned in first. “This one’s got my name on it,” he said, finger tracing the margin where Seonghwa had written ‘Mingi, check the second floor maintenance room. The broken machine there isn’t useless. Replace the left fuse with a resistor and the right relay with any uncorroded switchboard. It’ll work again.’

“The printer?” Jongho said, blinking. “That giant rusted thing we thought was decoration?”

“Apparently not,” Mingi muttered. “He even drew the wiring.”

San gave a low whistle. “It's as if he memorized the base like it was a mission file.”

“He did memorize it,” Yeosang said quietly. “That’s what he does.”

Hongjoong didn’t answer, he kept his eyes on the page, not really reading anymore. His gaze had gone somewhere distant, tracing invisible lines between words, between memories. The note wasn’t just an instruction, it was proof. Proof that Seonghwa had kept watching, kept helping even after he’d left.

He found himself thinking of Seonghwa’s eyes when they first met, they were clear and unreadable, not cruel but not kind either. He remembered the way he moved, the deliberate control that seemed inhuman. A man built for something that didn’t involve softness.

He cleared his throat. “Read the rest.”

Wooyoung picked up another sheet. “He says the printer can run enough time for maybe two thousand copies before overheating. Wants us to spread the papers where people gather, the main streets when people get off work. Where the regime thinks the people are too tired to look up.”

“Spread what exactly?” Yeosang asked.

“Here.” Mingi flipped through the next few sheets and read. “He wrote the headlines himself. ‘Facility 8: The Minister’s Secret Prison. Built to break minds, funded with your taxes.’ And under that it says that we should add Minister Park Jaesung’s signature authorizing torture on citizens labeled rebels.”

“He really left us the blueprint for a revolution,” Jongho said softly.

Hongjoong nodded once slowly. His hand tightened around the paper until it crinkled. “Then we follow it, every word.”

“Smart bastard,” Wooyoung muttered, a reluctant smile ghosting his lips.

San leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. “So we fix the printer, make the copies, and hit the city at dusk. That’s the plan?”

“No,” Hongjoong said. “That’s his plan and we’re following it.”

He glanced at the last sheet of Seonghwa’s notes, one line, smaller than the rest, written like a whisper meant for no one in particular: ‘If this reaches the people, the ghosts will finally sleep.’

Hongjoong folded that page carefully, almost reverently and slipped it into his pocket.

The ache behind his ribs pulsed again, something wordless, confusing and unwanted but too real to ignore. He’d tell himself later that it was respect, gratitude, maybe even guilt but deep down, it wasn’t any of those things.

It was something heavier, something he couldn’t name yet.

He straightened and looked at his men. “You heard him, get that machine working. We start the distribution at dusk.”

And just like that, the room came alive. Mingi gathering tools, Yeosang pulling blueprints, San and Wooyoung arguing over routes.

Hongjoong stood back, watching, the faint hum of purpose crawling up through the noise.

Still, his thoughts lingered where they shouldn’t.

On a man who wasn’t there, on silence that had somehow started to mean safety and on a ghost who wrote instructions in perfect, steady ink.

He moved with his thoughts still moving all around, following his men to where the printer was.

The machine looked ancient, a rusted carcass of iron and wire shoved against a concrete wall.

They had to move three broken desks and a stack of unused crates just to get to it, dust rising thick enough to make San sneeze.

“Seonghwa really said this can print?” Wooyoung asked, squinting at the corroded frame.

Mingi crouched, prying open the back panel. “He’s not wrong. It’s old but the structure’s military grade. If we can get the power grid to feed it-”

“Then we can wake it up,” Yeosang finished.

For hours, the room filled with low talk and the clank of tools. Mingi’s hands moved like he was rebuilding a heartbeat, pulling out old wires, rerouting power and cursing softly when sparks flew too close to his face. Hongjoong stood beside him, watching in silence. Every screw and every hum of current felt like pulling something out of the grave.

Finally, the machine stuttered to life, coughing out a long mechanical whine. The rollers spun once, then twice and the printer’s internal light blinked dimly to green.

“Holy shit,” San whispered. “It’s alive.”

Mingi laughed once, short and disbelieving, wiping his brow. “Seonghwa’s diagrams were flawless. Down to the capacitor placement. The man could probably build a nuke out of spare parts if he wanted.”

As he reached into the lower compartment to check the ink feed, his hand brushed against something smooth, a folded paper wedged beneath the wiring. He frowned, pulling it out carefully.

“What’s that?” Jongho asked.

“It’s another note,” Mingi said, eyes narrowing as he unfolded it. The same writing, sharp and unmistakable. “The city is not forgiving. The main blocks are full of soldiers and officials. If you go, you do not come back the same. You will see what the regime calls “order” and what it truly means. You can choose to stay and live or go and risk dying for something that might never change.”

The words hung there, stark and deliberate, like Seonghwa was still in the room watching them decide.

“He’s giving us an out.” Yeosang leaned forward.

“Or testing if we’ll take it,” Jongho said quietly.

“I don’t know about you but walking straight into the capital with our names on every wanted list sounds like suicide.” Wooyoung ran a hand through his hair.

“It is suicide,” Mingi said simply. “But so is living under this regime.”

The silence stretched, thick and uncomfortable, full of the weight of choice.

Hongjoong’s hands tightened on the table’s edge.

When he finally spoke his voice was low but steady. “What the citizens of this country are doing, it can’t be described as living. We move during the hours the workers leave for home, as to have as many people as possible see what’s actually happening.”

He looked at each of them in turn, his jaw set and no one argued.

“Then it’s settled,” Jongho said after a beat. “We print until the machine dies.”

Mingi hit the power switch and the printer roared louder, gears grinding and the ink spilling into motion. Paper began sliding out one by one, crisp sheets marked with truth.

The smell of ink and ozone filled the room. Each new page felt like defiance, like oxygen in a place that hadn’t breathed for years.

Hongjoong watched the words spill into existence, words that would soon scatter through streets into trembling hands and onto government walls.

For the first time in weeks, he felt that old pulse again, the one that had made him start all this.

Rebellion wasn’t a roar, it was a hum, steady and dangerous, and it was back.

Hongjoong walked out of the printing room with the taste of ink in his mouth and the hum of the machine still thudding in his chest. The corridors felt narrower now, the base alive with the small noises of preparation. Boots scuffed, someone tightened straps and a child of the movement, barely more than a boy, moved past carrying a stack of paper like it was the most dangerous thing in the world.

He found the main hollow where the others gathered, the tall room under the earth that had become their town square, their barracks and their temple. Lanterns hung from cables, faces half-lit and waiting. When he stepped into the glow, conversation dipped into a hush. They all knew what was coming.

He didn’t soften his voice, he couldn’t. “We have a plan,” he said and laid the papers on the table, letting them catch the light.

He told them everything Seonghwa had left, how the machine could run for so many prints, how the routes were chosen and the places people would gather on their way home. He told them what the papers said, he told them the risks and told them that the main districts were full of soldiers and men who answered only to orders, men who would shoot at anything that looked like revolt.

“When you go,” Hongjoong said and the room shrank around his words, “you might not come back. If you go to the main blocks, there’s a good chance you die out there. You can choose to stay here, work and live in the cracks or you can walk out and cut a path with a single sheet of paper.”

Silence followed, not the empty kind but the waiting kind. He looked out at their faces, older hands stained with oil and fresh hands still soft at the knuckles, faces worn and young, the tired and the fierce side by side. He expected fear, bargaining or hesitation.

Instead, there was one step forward and then another.

A woman with a scar across her forehead moved so close her shadow touched the table. A man who hadn't been away from the base in a long time stepped forward and set his jaw. A group of factory women, late shift workers who had come to the base asking for bread and decided to stay, all rose and took a step. A group of teenagers, faces hollow with hunger and too much courage, stepped in time like drumbeats.

They didn’t speak at first, each movement was a small, terrible promise. When the room settled, there wasn’t a volunteer list so much as a wave, hands lifting, shoulders squaring and eyes answering his as if they’d all been waiting for the invitation.

Hongjoong felt his chest open and something much older than himself answered. The sound was not pain, it was a pulse. His heart felt like a bomb, heavy and ready, every beat a promise that would not be broken. Excitement poured through him, electric, dangerous and bright. 

He glanced at the papers one more time, then at the faces that had chosen. They were not soldiers by trade but they were people with reasons to be furious, with hands that had held children and too many griefs. They were ordinary people being made dangerous by truth.

Hongjoong stepped forward into their circle, into the light and for a beat he let himself feel the sweetness of it, the hum of readiness and the sharp intake before a storm. He thought of Seonghwa briefly once, a ghost of a man who had left them with ink and a voice, and somewhere under the fear a new thing began to move.

He gave them orders, precise and short, and they listened like the world depended on each syllable. They would split into pairs, they would move when the factories spit their workers into the streets, they would place the papers in hands and on doors and in pockets. They would not shout from rooftops. They would whisper the truth until it sounded like thunder.

When he finished, something private and dangerous settled on his face. He let a smirk spread slow and sharp across his mouth, the kind of smile that promises ruin and salvation in the same breath. It was the craziest, scariest thing he’d shown in years and it was also the most honest.

“Everything will change,” he said with his voice low, not to them but to the space itself. “Even if I don’t live to see it.”

They answered not with words but with a march of feet and the rustle of paper being folded into packs. The base thrummed beneath their hands, alive, loud and ready. 

The air felt too clean when he changed, cold water against his face and the rough fabric of black cloth pulling tight across his shoulders. Hongjoong pulled his hair back with shaking hands, the last remnants of ink still staining the tips of his fingers. 

When he stepped back into the main hall, everyone was already there. Rows and rows of them, dressed in black. Men, women and teenagers barely grown, their eyes hard and ready. The base’s dull lights caught on the sheen of their jackets and the faint red tint of rebellion hidden beneath.

They looked to him as he entered and something like pride twisted behind his ribs, not ego, never that but the weight of knowing these people trusted him enough to follow him into hell.

San approached through the people, his expression calm but his hands trembling slightly. In his grip was a folded piece of cloth, white and stark against the black around them. The red “A” in its center looked like it had been painted in blood.

He didn’t say a word as he handed it over.

Hongjoong held it for a heartbeat, the fabric soft but heavy. Then, with slow and deliberate precision he wrapped it around his right arm, just above the elbow and tied the knot with his left hand and his teeth. The red “A” settled against his sleeve bright even in the dim light. The symbol of leadership, of the one who would burn first if the fire failed.

A quiet murmur moved through the room, the kind that vibrates in the bones. San stepped back beside him with his face unreadable.

Outside, the world was still gray and it was time.

Hongjoong could feel the pulse of the city beyond their underground shelter, mechanical and empty. He could almost see it, the factory gates opening with the tired bodies spilling out, hundreds of workers walking home in silence, all in their assigned lines and all of them with their heads down. The world above had forgotten how to look up but not for long.

He looked back at his people, his Outlaws, and nodded once. The command didn’t need words. They all moved, fluid and quiet, the sound of feet echoing against stone and metal. They climbed the tunnel stairs that led to the surface, the concrete door hissing open as if exhaling for them and when the air hit their faces, it didn’t feel gentle. It was harsh and cold, like a spotlight.

They stepped out anyway.

Each one of them carried a stack of flyers pressed tight against their chest, paper edges digging into palms. The wind caught the first few sheets as they emerged, scattering them across the empty street, fluttering white against gray pavement, like ghosts freed from their cages.

Hongjoong adjusted the red “A” on his arm, lifted his chin and stepped into the road.

The clock would strike six soon. The workers would appear and when they did, they would no longer walk with their heads down.

They moved fast through the outskirts, their boots silent against broken pavement, the air thick with that metallic city smell, oil, smoke and something dying slowly. As they neared the main sector the difference clawed at the eyes. The roads widened and the buildings grew taller, cleaner, too bright for a place so rotten.

Neon signs flickered in the distance, painting sharp color over the polished streets.

The homes of the higher-ups gleamed, glass windows spotless while blocks away workers dragged their feet home in uniforms too thin for the cold.

Hongjoong’s jaw locked, the sight made his stomach twist, the divide too sharp, too visible and too wrong.

This was the city they wanted people to believe in, this was the empire they’d built on silence.

They split without needing to speak.

The Outlaws scattered like shadows, hundreds of them blending into alleyways and stairwells, their black clothes swallowing the last of the light. One by one, they began to climb the sides of apartment towers, office buildings and empty billboards. Gloves gripped onto metal and boots dug into grooves, no one slipped and not a single paper fell.

From below, they looked like a swarm of ghosts, silent and steady, scaling the bones of the regime.

Hongjoong reached the top of one of the central towers, his breath harsh from the climb. The wind at this height bit deep, smelling of concrete and electricity. From there, he could see everything, the city stretched wide and tired, the workers spilling into the streets, their steps mechanical and their faces dim under the orange light of the lamps. The sound of the factories still clung to them.

He stood straight with the red “A” on his arm burning bright against the dark.

For a second everything was still. The hum of the city, the slow shuffle of the workers and the sound of Hongjoong’s own heartbeat pressing in his ears.

He lifted his hand slowly, fingers curling once and gave the signal.

Then, a storm of paper erupted from the rooftops.

White sheets flew through the dusk air like snow, like feathers, like a thousand whispered truths breaking free. The wind carried them, scattering them across the city, over cars and windows and faces that hadn’t looked up in years. Workers froze in their paths and heads tilting toward the falling sky.

The first to land stuck to the wet pavement near the main road, someone picked it up, then another and another.

The first scream wasn’t terror, it was disbelief.

The kind that cracks something inside a crowd and lets the air rush in.

A man in a gray worker’s coat bent to pick up one of the fluttering papers. His hands trembled as he unfolded it, his lips moving soundlessly over the words. He stared for a heartbeat too long and then he turned to the man beside him and thrust it into his chest.

“What is this?” the other asked, his voice brittle.

“It’s real,” the first man said, his voice breaking around the edges. “They wrote names, they fucking signed it.”

A woman dropped her bag, the contents spilling across the street. She reached for one of the fallen sheets, pressed it to her chest like it was holy scripture. Others followed, hundreds, hands reaching up to catch the truth falling from the sky.

The streets that had been silent for decades filled with sound.

First whispers, then shouts.

The kind of noise no government could control once it started.

Hongjoong could see it all from the rooftop, the way the workers froze, then surged. Like something ancient had just been remembered. The lines that once walked in rhythm, heads down, now broke apart. People were pointing, shouting and talking. A thing banned for years, connection, bloomed wild.

Then came the soldiers.

Their black trucks rolled into the main square, headlights cutting harsh through the crowd. Uniforms poured out, rifles raised and orders barked. The government’s response was fast but not fast enough to kill what had already begun. 

A paper landed on the windshield of one of the armored cars, sticking there with the words “Built to break minds.” The driver hesitated just for a second and that hesitation was everything.

A worker threw the first rock and it hit the ground near the soldiers’ boots, bouncing uselessly. Then another came and another.

The crowd roared, not coordinated, just furious and alive.

Gunfire cracked into the dusk.

People screamed and ducked but they didn’t scatter, they rose. Some threw bottles and others tore down propaganda posters, hands shaking as they ripped the faces of their leaders in half.

Hongjoong gripped the ledge, heart pounding and eyes burning from the smoke that started to curl upward as fires caught in trash bins and old tires. The revolution wasn’t a whisper anymore, it was a sound he’d only ever dreamed of hearing.

He wanted to watch forever but then movement below caught his eye.

A soldier, breaking from his unit.

He’d seen them, the Outlaws on top of the buildings. The soldier saw a young rebel clinging to the railing, maybe nineteen, one of the newer ones, eyes too wide for what was happening. The soldier raised his rifle up and his finger already squeezing the trigger.

“NO!” Hongjoong shouted, pushing forward, but there was nothing he could do. He wasn’t close enough, couldn’t climb fast enough.

But the shot never came from below, it came from across.

A single, clean crack tore through the chaos.

The soldier’s body jerked backward, the rifle slipping from his hands as he hit the ground hard. The crowd gasped, the sound rolling through them like thunder.

Hongjoong froze.

Blood pooled beneath the soldier’s head, like a dark flower blooming on the concrete. The air seemed to still, the fires flickering in time with his heartbeat.

Then, as he lifted his eyes, his breath caught.

Across the square, atop another building, framed by the bruised sky, stood a figure, tall, composed and terrifyingly calm. The rifle rested against his shoulder, its barrel still smoking faintly in the dying light. The posture was unmistakable.

Park Seonghwa.

Even from this distance, Hongjoong could see the perfect precision of his stance. The way his clothes caught the wind, black against gray, almost blending into the night. His face was unreadable, all edges and silence but his aim was flawless. The kind only learned through years of training.

For a moment, the world below didn’t matter, not the soldiers or the chaos, not even the revolution.

Just that one impossible sight, the man who had vanished, now returned as both weapon and reckoning.

Seonghwa shifted his stance slightly, lowering the rifle but not breaking his gaze.

The message was clear, he had chosen their side.

Hongjoong’s breath stuttered out of him, his throat dry and his chest tight. He wanted to shout something, anything, but the words never came.

And then more soldiers appeared, crawling up the scaffolding, shouting to one another, their rifles clutched tight. He barely had time to register the movement before the first one fell.

One after another, each one hit the ground before they could even aim. Clean shots, perfect and controlled.

By the time the fifth soldier hit the pavement, Yeosang had made it to his side, breathing hard, eyes wide with awe and disbelief. “It’s as if there were multiple people firing,” he said, voice trembling just slightly. “But it’s just him.”

Hongjoong couldn’t answer, his throat felt tight, his hands gripping the concrete edge in front of him until his knuckles ached.

The others gathered around, San, Wooyoung, Mingi, Yunho and Jongho, each of them staring across the cityscape at the single man keeping them alive.

Every time a soldier raised a rifle, Seonghwa fired and every shot landed exactly where it should.

Never a second too early and never an inch too far. No stray bullets, no hurt civilians and no mistakes.

He wasn’t panicking, he wasn’t rushing. His body moved like something ancient and trained, every shift precise, every motion deliberate. The recoil of the rifle was just another heartbeat in his rhythm.

“Holy shit…” Wooyoung breathed, eyes wide, voice caught somewhere between fear and admiration. “He’s too perfect, how the hell does someone do that?”

They all just watched as one man, once a ghost, now turned the tide of an entire revolution with the same steady grace he’d once used to destroy it.

And when Hongjoong’s gaze found him again, Seonghwa’s expression hadn’t changed, just calm focus as if he’d done this his entire life, as if violence was the only language his body remembered fluently.

Hongjoong’s heart pounded hard enough to hurt.

This wasn’t the same man who had sat quietly in Facility 8, tapping chairs and staring at walls.

This was something else entirely.

And God help him, Hongjoong couldn’t look away.

He looked down from their rooftop, the chaos below was a blur of noise and motion, civilians shouting, alarms wailing, boots pounding against pavement but Seonghwa remained the only constant in it all. 

Mingi broke the silence first, voice low and awed. “He looks… a little bored.”

And it was true. Seonghwa’s face was calm, almost detached. Every time he reloaded, the movement was too clean, too smooth. His hands didn’t fumble, his breath didn’t quicken. It was mechanical, effortless, like he’d done this a thousand times before and it had long stopped meaning anything.

“Too fast,” Yeosang murmured, watching him change his magazine in one practiced motion. “I know some trained soldiers but they don't move that efficiently. He’s not even checking his aim, he just knows.”

San exhaled through his nose, tension cutting through his voice. “It’s like watching a storm that knows exactly where it’s going to strike.”

They all went quiet again, their eyes following the rise and fall of his movements. Seonghwa crouching low, switching position, and firing again. Below him, soldiers kept dropping like dominoes. 

And then, because the world wouldn’t be the world without him, Wooyoung elbowed Hongjoong in the ribs, a grin blooming despite the smoke and death below. “You’ve been staring too long, boss.”

Hongjoong blinked, pulled half out of his trance. “What?”

“Your eyes are sparkling. Careful or people are gonna think you’re in love.” Wooyoung’s smirk widened, wicked and sharp.

Yeosang groaned under his breath, San bit back a laugh, and Jongho muttered, “Wooyoung, maybe shut up for five seconds.”

But Wooyoung wasn’t done, he leaned closer, sing-songing just loud enough for Hongjoong to hear, “Look at you, all heart eyes for the Ghostmaker. Never thought I’d live to see the day.”

Hongjoong’s jaw flexed, torn somewhere between punching him and looking back at Seonghwa again because even if Wooyoung was being an ass, he wasn’t wrong.

Up there, across the madness stood a man who’d once been a weapon, now using that same precision to protect his people and Hongjoong couldn’t decide if the feeling clawing at his chest was admiration, guilt or something far more dangerous.

Hongjoong hadn’t realized how tightly his hands were gripping the ledge until Yunho’s voice cut through the chaos.

“Hongjoong,” Yunho said, half-breathless and half–disbelieving. “Look at him.”

Hongjoong followed his gaze just in time to see Seonghwa lowering his rifle and turning from the ledge. The street below had turned feral, civilians screaming, flames licking at the sky, the acrid stench of burning fuel from a soldier’s truck set ablaze. Smoke coiled upward, swallowing whole buildings in its heat.

But Seonghwa didn’t flinch.

He moved with that same eerie stillness, stepping through the haze like he was walking through a dream. The roof beneath him glowed faintly orange, catching fire at the edges but Seonghwa only crouched, gathering his scattered ammo, checking each cartridge with the same measured focus.

“He’s too fucking calm.” Yunho swore softly.

“That building’s on fire. He knows it’s on fire.” Wooyoung leaned forward, eyes wide.

“Yeah,” Yeosang said, voice low, “and he’s acting like it’s a minor inconvenience.”

From across the street, Seonghwa slung his rifle across his back, knelt once to retrieve the last of his spent shells and then simply slid down the side of the building, gripping a metal drainpipe like it was nothing, landing lightly on his feet as if he’d just stepped off a sidewalk instead of a collapsing rooftop.

“Holy shit,” San breathed. “He’s insane.”

“Not insane,” Mingi muttered, eyes fixed on the shadow of Seonghwa moving through smoke. “He’s trained. You don’t learn that kind of composure unless they’ve already taken everything that makes you human.”

Hongjoong couldn’t look away. Even now, with the inferno behind him and chaos rising all around, Seonghwa didn’t run. He walked through the riot calmly, like someone who didn’t belong to either side of the fire, untouchable and terrifyingly focused.

Wooyoung gave a short, stunned laugh, shaking his head. “If that’s him calm, I don’t ever want to see him angry.”

Hongjoong said nothing, his throat felt too tight, because while the city burned and his people scattered their message, the man who’d once been their ghost of Facility 8 walked right through hell itself and never looked back.

The heat was unbearable, the smoke started clawing down their throats, metallic taste of ash coating their tongues. Hongjoong shouted for his men to follow and together they vaulted down from their perch, boots hitting the pavement hard. The air was chaos, sirens, screams and gunfire, but through it all he could see him.

Seonghwa.

Walking through the fire as if the world around him wasn’t collapsing.

There were still soldiers left, barking orders into static radios, their eyes wild with panic as the crowd turned feral and right in the middle of it, the man who had once been their ghost, and their mystery, was cutting a path straight through flames and ruin, rifle steady, movements too smooth.

“Go!” Hongjoong barked, leading the charge down the ruined street. The others followed without question, all of them sprinting through the smoke until the familiar shape of Seonghwa’s frame came into full view.

The man turned fast when they got close, the muzzle of his rifle snapping up toward them before recognition flickered in his eyes. His grip eased and he lowered the weapon, exhaling sharply.

Hongjoong stopped a few feet away, chest heaving. For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of burning and breath.

Then Seonghwa handed his rifle to San.

“You’ll know how to use this.”

San stared, caught between awe and confusion. “Wait, what-”

But Seonghwa was already moving, unsheathing the knife strapped to his thigh with a motion too fluid to be human. The blade caught the light of the flames, bright silver against the red chaos around them. Hongjoong’s pulse tripped, a sharp, shameful spike of heat shooting through him.

“Holy fuck,” Wooyoung muttered beside him, eyes wide. “He’s gonna hand fight that guy? That dude’s got a gun!”

The soldier in front of Seonghwa didn’t even have time to shout. He sidestepped the rifle’s aim, twisted the man’s arm until bone cracked and brought the knife down in one precise motion, disarming, not killing. The soldier went down with a strangled grunt. Another came running and Seonghwa met him halfway, blocking a swing, elbowing his jaw, fluid and terrifyingly beautiful.

“Does he even bleed?” Yeosang said under his breath.

Wooyoung barked out a stunned, hysterical laugh. “Bleed? He’s enjoying this! Look at his face! That’s a man on his coffee break!”

Hongjoong couldn’t even scold him, he couldn’t speak at all. He was watching the impossible, Seonghwa moving through armed soldiers like the laws of physics had decided not to apply to him. Knife flashing, body bending and striking in rhythm, brutal, efficient and almost graceful.

When it was over, Seonghwa straightened, breathing hard but steady, knife still in hand. He didn’t look at the carnage, didn’t even seem to see it.

Hongjoong’s ears rang with the sound of chaos, the heavy crack of gunfire, the thud of boots against pavement, the hiss of something burning close by. The smoke thinned just enough for him to see Seonghwa again, his figure moving through the haze like a specter of precision and violence.

The man didn’t just fight, he calculated.

Every strike, every step, every pivot was measured, purposeful.

He ducked beneath a soldier’s rifle swing, slammed his shoulder into the man’s ribs and drove his knee into his gut so hard the air left his lungs in a single scream. Another soldier tried to flank him, but Seonghwa spun, knife flashing once and twice, two bodies dropped before the echo of the first had faded.

Hongjoong couldn’t tear his eyes away.

He’d seen fighters before, rebels hardened by war, but this was something else entirely. There was no wasted motion, no stumble. He didn’t even miss a breath.

“Is it just me,” Mingi said between clenched teeth, firing a shot that took down a soldier creeping behind them, “or is he-”

“Not human?” Wooyoung finished, reloading. “Yeah, been saying that since Facility 8, thanks for catching up!”

Yunho had his arm around San, guiding him toward the right flank. “We have to move, Joong! They’re regrouping!”

And they were. From the far end of the avenue, new troops were spilling out from armored trucks, their weapons glinting under the orange glare of fire. 

Hongjoong’s instincts kicked in, he looked around, the civilians were still rioting, some running, some screaming and some fighting back, throwing rocks and kicking over barriers.

It was working, the city was awake, but they wouldn’t survive if they stayed here.

So he gave a signal that cut through the mayhem. He looked up with his right fist up, making the groups of outlaws from above move, trained enough to obey without hesitation. 

They climbed down the walls they’d scaled, boots hitting the ground, scattering into alleys and side roads like dark rivers. It was the rhythm of discipline and desperation combined, the one thing that had kept them alive this long.

When the last group disappeared behind the ruined market, he exhaled.

A sharp, shaky breath of relief.

They’d made it out, they were safe.

He turned back and the relief shattered like glass.

The street had turned into a battlefield again. Soldiers poured in from both ends of the avenue, a flood of black armor and rifles gleaming under the burning sky. There were too many and in the middle of it, still fighting alone, was Seonghwa.

 His knife flashed silver and red as he ducked and countered, the bodies piling around him in ugly, rhythmic patterns. His movements were a language of their own, precise, brutal and beautiful, but even Hongjoong could see it now, he was being surrounded.

“Seonghwa!” Hongjoong shouted, voice tearing from his lungs. He moved forward without thinking, boots pounding the broken pavement, mind blank except for the image of that single dark figure in the storm.

“Joong, wait!” San’s voice came from behind, but it was drowned by gunfire.

Seonghwa was fast, but they were faster in number. Ten men at once, closing in, pressing forward. Hongjoong saw the flash of Seonghwa’s blade again, saw two soldiers fall, but more came. He struck one in the throat, another in the ribs, but a rifle butt caught him across the face.

“No!” Hongjoong’s throat burned. He pushed through the smoke, heart slamming against his ribs, the world narrowing to Seonghwa’s form going down under the weight of ten armored bodies. The sound was a crash of fists, shouts, and boots, the noise of something unthinkable happening right in front of him.

He just ran, until something cracked against his temple and everything went white.

Consciousness came back in fragments, first the sting in his temple, then the ringing in his ears and finally the slow realization that he couldn’t move his arms.

Hongjoong blinked hard, the world was blurry at first, just light and shadow, shapes that wouldn’t stay still. His breath came shallow, metallic, and he felt the cold bite of metal biting into his wrists, handcuffs.

He tried to lift his hands, but the sound of chains stopped him, a heavy clink against steel. The motion sent a fresh wave of dizziness crawling behind his eyes.

When his vision cleared, the scene around him unfolded like a cruel déjà vu.

A room, white again, sterile and humming with fluorescent lights.

The air smelled of antiseptic and blood, the kind that clung to the back of the throat.

On his right, three chairs, San, Wooyoung and Mingi, all handcuffed and silent. San’s head hung low, a dark bruise blooming across his cheek. Wooyoung’s chest rose and fell fast, jaw clenched, eyes darting between guards that stood by the walls like statues. Mingi’s hands twitched against the cuffs, knuckles red from struggle.

To his left, Yunho, Yeosang and Jongho, his men, his family, all bound and all beaten down, but alive.

They were here, they were all here.

And directly in front of him, in another metal chair, sat Seonghwa.

Even in restraint, the man looked unshakably composed, shoulders straight and chin lifted. His wrists were cuffed in front of him, bound to the arms of the chair, chains coiling like silver veins down the steel frame, but he didn’t move against them. His eyes were calm, too calm, fixed on something beyond the walls.

For a long second, no one spoke. The only sound was the faint electric hum of the overhead lights.

Hongjoong swallowed hard. “Seonghwa,” he rasped, his voice breaking on the edges.

Seonghwa blinked once and turned his head toward him slowly. No emotion crossed his face just that same unreadable stillness.

“Joong,” Wooyoung croaked somewhere beside him. “Where… where are we?”

But Hongjoong didn’t answer, he couldn’t. His gaze was locked on Seonghwa, on the faint line of dried blood running from his temple down to his jaw, the dirt smudged across his collar, the quiet defiance in every inch of his posture.

For a moment, Hongjoong’s heart stuttered with relief, before the rest of it hit him like a collapsing wave.

They were all handcuffed again, all captured. Right back where it all started and Seonghwa was here, too. He didn’t know if that made it better or worse.

“They didn’t kill you,” Seonghwa said quietly. “That’s something.”

Hongjoong wanted to ask who, who took them, who captured them, what had happened after he blacked out, but the door on the far side of the room opened before he could speak.

The sound of the door opening sliced through the silence like a blade.

Heavy boots stepped against the polished floor, deliberate, unhurried.

Minister Park Jaesung walked in first, tall and sharp in his pristine suit, flanked by two guards in black. His presence filled the room like a toxin; every inch of him screamed power, the kind that didn’t need to be proven because it already owned the air it moved through.

Behind him came another familiar shape, smaller and leaner, wearing that same patronizing calm that made Hongjoong’s teeth clench.

Dr. Jinwoo, Facility 8’s therapist.

The man who’d tried to dissect him with words, to pull the rebellion out of his head like a weed.

“Welcome back to Facility 8,” he said.

The words hit harder than any blow.

Hongjoong’s stomach dropped and across from him, Seonghwa’s eyes finally moved just barely, but it was enough.

The faint twitch in his jaw, the shadow crossing his expression. He knew, he’d brought them full circle.

Hongjoong’s blood turned to ice.

Beside him, he could feel the others tense, San’s jaw locking, Wooyoung’s breath catching and Jongho’s shoulders going rigid, but no one said a word. Their gazes all shifted, inevitably, to Seonghwa.

Waiting and watching.

Surely this would be the moment, the moment he’d flinch or glare, or something at the sight of the man who had built the walls around his life.

But Seonghwa didn’t move.

Not a breath, not a twitch, not a single muscle gave him away. His eyes stayed steady, focused on the empty space ahead of him, as if the two men had never entered the room at all.

The silence was unbearable.

Dr. Jinwoo was the first to break it, he adjusted his glasses and gave that thin smile Hongjoong remembered too well, gentle on the surface but rotten underneath.

“Well,” he said softly, stepping closer, “that explains it.”

His gaze fell on Hongjoong’s right arm, on the white cloth banded just above his elbow, the red “A” stark against the sterile light.

“So you were their leader.” Jinwoo’s voice dripped with condescension, every syllable too smooth. “That’s why you didn’t break. You were more important than we thought, Mister Kim.”

Hongjoong clenched his fists around the metal cuffs, the edges digging deep into his wrists. He could feel the heat of anger rising in his throat, but he forced it down. He couldn’t afford to give this man the satisfaction of seeing him lose composure.

Jinwoo tilted his head, studying him like a specimen. “You caused quite the mess outside. The citizens are… agitated. Your little papers seem to have inspired the wrong kind of hope.” He clicked his tongue. “You really don’t know when to stop.”

Minister Park finally spoke, his voice calm and cold, a tone that could freeze blood.

“So this is what my son has been doing,” he said, not to Seonghwa, not to anyone in particular, as though the words were beneath direct address. “Running around with criminals, leading children into ruin.”

Seonghwa’s eyes shifted just barely, a flicker of motion that almost didn’t exist but Hongjoong saw it. A small, sharp breath caught between his teeth.

Father and son stood in the same room for the first time in years, and there was no warmth, only distance and the kind of silence that could kill a man.

“Don’t worry, Minister. We’ll handle it. We have new procedures for rebels like them now.” Dr. Jinwoo smiled again.

Hongjoong met his eyes, a cold smirk twisting his lips despite the ache in his head. “I already told you once, Doctor,” he rasped. “You can’t cure what doesn’t want to be healed.”

The slap came fast and sharp, echoing through the room and Seonghwa still didn’t move, but his fingers, bound in steel, curled just once. A tiny, controlled motion.

Hongjoong saw it and knew, in that heartbeat, that stillness didn’t mean surrender.

Park Jaesung stepped closer. The soft echo of his shoes on the concrete floor was the only sound that filled the space for a long moment. He stopped in front of Seonghwa, studying him with a calm, surgical sort of disgust, like he was looking at something that had failed to meet expectations rather than a person.

“You’ve done a fine job embarrassing me,” he said finally, his voice smooth, cultured and venomous. “Years of training, years of conditioning, years of funding diverted to your program, to make you into something the country could use and this is how you repay me? By consorting with criminals? With the very kind of people you were meant to destroy?”

Seonghwa’s head tilted slightly toward the sound, but his eyes didn’t rise. He sat there, wrists still chained to the chair’s arms, spine straight, shoulders held with military precision. To anyone else, he might’ve looked empty but Hongjoong had seen him before, had seen the tiny movements that meant something was building beneath the surface.

Minister Park took a step closer, lowering his voice. “Do you have any idea what it costs to build those facilities for you? How many people I had to answer to every time you slipped out of one like a phantom? I gave you everything, a name, a purpose, a chance to prove yourself to this nation and you spat it back at me.”

The Outlaws watched, silent. Even Wooyoung didn’t move, his usual sharp tongue locked behind his teeth.

Jaesung’s tone hardened, his voice dropping into something colder. “And for what?” He leaned forward just slightly. “To run? To sulk in the dark with the same animals you used to drag screaming out of their dens? Tell me, Seonghwa, did they look at you the way these ones do? With confusion? Pity?”

A pause.

“They never understood what you were,” Jaesung said. “Not even when you were doing what you were made to do. They begged, didn’t they? They always begged. You broke them until they begged and then you let them break themselves. You made ghosts out of them, all in my name and you were brilliant at it.”

Something changed. It was so subtle Hongjoong almost missed it, just a twitch in Seonghwa’s jaw, a single inhale that came too sharp, too sudden.

Yeosang flinched and San’s fingers tightened on the armrest.

Jaesung smiled faintly, sensing the shift. “But now look at you. I should’ve known you’d start to rot eventually, too much empathy from your mother’s side, perhaps, too soft to finish the work properly.”

That was when Seonghwa lifted his head. 

The air in the room changed and grew heavier, quieter, like every breath had to push through something invisible.

His eyes met his father’s and for the first time, Hongjoong saw what people must have seen when they whispered about the Ghostmaker. There was no rage there or wildness, just an icy calm that made the skin crawl.

“I wasn’t soft,” Seonghwa said quietly, his voice was rough, the sound of something that hadn’t been used in too long. “You just mistook obedience for loyalty.”

Park Jaesung’s expression froze.

“You wanted a weapon,” Seonghwa continued, voice gaining just enough strength to be heard clearly now. “And you built one, you just didn’t expect it to stop listening.”

The Outlaws looked between them, between the man who’d built the machine and the one who’d broken out of it.

“Holy shit.” Wooyoung whispered, almost reverently,

Minister Park’s face hardened but Seonghwa wasn’t finished.

“You’re right about one thing,” he said, voice low. “They did beg, but they didn’t beg me to stop. They begged for someone to remember them, to know what was done to them and I fucking do.”

For a moment, nobody breathed.

Then Seonghwa’s eyes dropped and his voice softened to something colder, almost detached. “You can live with your ghosts, Father. I’ll live with mine.”

Hongjoong’s pulse thundered in his ears, his mind spinning. He had never seen Seonghwa look more terrifying or more human.

Park Jaesung took a step back, his face twisting with something like offense. The kind of reaction a man gives when someone has dared to speak to him as an equal.

He let out a low, humorless laugh. “You think you’ve won, Seonghwa? You think running away and playing martyr makes you righteous?”

Seonghwa’s head tilted again, that same unsettling stillness overtaking his movements. “I don’t think I’ve won,” he said, his voice was soft, but it cut through the air like a wire. “You still sit in your glass towers, calling yourself a savior while you bleed the world dry but you haven’t won either, you never will.”

“Big words from a man in chains.” Jaesung’s lips thinned.

Seonghwa’s wrists rattled against the cuffs as he shifted, the sound small but sharp. “Chains mean nothing when I’ve already learned how to live with them,” he said. “You built seven cages for me, Father, seven. Each time I just walked out.” His gaze met his father’s, steady and unflinching. “Facility Eight wasn’t a success,” he said, each word deliberate, dangerous. “I stayed because I deserved to, because I needed to see what kind of monster you made. I stayed because I thought maybe if I lived in what I’d done, I could at least stop it from spreading but don’t flatter yourself into thinking you built something that could hold me.”

The Outlaws were silent, completely still, trying to absorb the weight of what they were hearing.

Minister Park’s nostrils flared, his jaw tightening. “You chose to stay in that place?” he asked, incredulous. “You call that strength? That’s weakness disguised as guilt.”

Seonghwa smiled faintly and the expression was worse than a snarl. “No, weakness is convincing yourself you’re saving a country while you destroy everyone in it.”

Jaesung’s composure cracked for the first time, his voice rose, the smooth politician’s tone giving way to something rawer. “You should’ve been executed the first time you disobeyed an order!”

“Then why didn’t you?” Seonghwa asked, quiet but merciless. “Why am I still breathing?”

Park faltered just enough. Then he straightened, pulling back into that familiar politician’s mask. “Because it would’ve been a bad look,” he said coldly. “A Minister’s son dying in a rebel facility? You think I could explain that? I needed the public to believe in the system, to believe that we fix what’s broken. Killing you would’ve made me look weak.”

Seonghwa’s head lowered, a bitter, humorless sound escaping him, half laugh, half exhale. “So it wasn’t mercy, just optics”

Jaesung’s lips curled. “Everything is optics, Seonghwa. That’s what you never understood. You think these rebels are fighting for freedom? They’re fighting for a fantasy that will crumble the moment they realize there’s no food, no structure and no one to lead them. When this is over, you’ll see, your name will disappear, theirs will die with you and I’ll rebuild this country on your ashes.”

Seonghwa leaned forward just slightly, enough that the light hit his face, casting his eyes in shadow. “Then I guess you’d better start digging,” he said and Park froze, his own son’s voice slicing through the air like a scalpel. “I escaped every cage you built,” Seonghwa went on, tone sharpening. “And I’ll keep doing it, not because I want to win, but because I can’t let you.”

The silence that followed was so sharp it felt alive. Even the guards, hands tight on their weapons, seemed to hesitate.

“Enough,” Jaesung snapped, his eyes didn’t leave Seonghwa. “You want to defy me, then die with your little rebellion, but make no mistake, you’re still mine, boy. Every piece of you that breathes belongs to me.”

Seonghwa’s reply was a whisper, almost too quiet to hear. “Not anymore.”

And in that moment, Hongjoong knew something irreversible had just shifted. The minister had lost control, not just of his son but of everything that his son symbolized.

The revolution had already begun to burn and Park Jaesung didn’t even realize that his own creation had lit the match.

Seonghwa’s voice was quiet but it cut the room like a blade.

“When I get out of here again,” he said, eyes fixed on Minister Park Jaesung like a promise forged in ice, “you’ll be the first one I kill.”

The words landed and the room inhaled as one.

Park Jaesung’s face did not blanch. For a single, jagged second something like admiration flashed and then was gone, replaced by a fury so controlled it was almost ceremonial. He smoothed his suit with a slow motion, as if rearranging fabric could rearrange the threat. “You’ll get your chance,” he said, voice low and venomous. “And when you miss, your failure will be recorded. The state will correct what you call justice.”

Dr. Jinwoo’s fingers tightened on the clipboard until the paper crinkled. He cleared his throat, desperately officious. “Minister, perhaps we should-”

But Jaesung waved him back, the gesture final. He stepped to the door, turned once without looking fully at his son and with the same slow, immaculate composure he had worn on his way in, he left. The two guards followed, boots clicking, the door’s seal whispering closed like a verdict.

The second the door shut the room erupted, not in sound, but in movement inside every chest.

San’s jaw worked, the anger there was raw and immediate, a physical thing that showed itself in the way he caught the edge of his chair and flexed his fingers as if he could already be at Jaesung’s throat. Wooyoung’s mouth hung open in something like giddy disbelief, the wild, stupid grin of someone watching a dangerous and beautiful thing unfold. 

Yeosang stared at Seonghwa with a fragile, incredulous softness that made his own hands tremble. Mingi’s face had gone pale, his eyes shone with a mix of calculation and something almost like reverence. Yunho’s fists closed and opened, the tension of a man who would throw himself into harm without a second thought.

Jongho, quiet, steady Jongho, was the first to speak, voice low and fierce. “He said it,” he breathed. “He talked back to his father.”

Hongjoong’s reaction was the most complicated. Relief and dread folded over one another inside his chest, relief that the line came from Seonghwa’s mouth and not Park’s, dread because the promise made the future harder and bloodier. 

His heart felt full of a dozen quick things, pride at the man who’d just defended them, fear for what that vow would make necessary and a cold, swift resolve that sharpened around his ribs. He found his hand tightening on the chain of his cuff until the metal bit white into his skin, an almost-pleasure at the knowledge that the man who’d been their ghost would not be passive anymore.

Seonghwa watched them a moment longer, his face still composed, the faint trace of blood at his temple drying into a line like a scar. He said nothing more, he did not need to. In their eyes he could already see the futures dividing, some paths straight to victory and some to ruin, all now inevitably crossed with his own.

Wooyoung’s voice broke the quiet before anyone else could think of how to fill it. “What did you do, Seonghwa?” He didn’t look away, hr never did when he asked a question. “Tell us everything. How many did you- how many did you make into ghosts?”

Seonghwa’s face was a pale mask in the fluorescent light and for a long moment he didn’t answer. The room seemed to hold its breath, as if even the walls were listening for the wrong kind of noise.

“I broke people,” he said simply. “I broke men and women who had names and reasons to live. I made them go silent.” He let the words sit. “I taught myself where a person’s will could be chased out and how a body could be left moving while their soul left the room.”

Wooyoung’s face whitened. “Tell us how. How do you look at yourself after something like that?”

“I was trained,” he said. “They taught me to catalog pain the way other men learned to catalogue plants. It was science to them, input, response and dissolution. Names became data and faces became variables.” He swallowed and for the first time a small, ugly sound, like the creak of an old hinge, escaped him. “I did it because it was what I was told to do, because it worked, because the men who signed the orders counted the bodies as numbers on a page and not lives.”

San flinched, finger curling against the chair’s metal. “How many?” he whispered.

Seonghwa didn’t answer with a number. “Enough to know the shape of torture,” he said. “Enough to dream the way it smells, enough to never trust a quiet room.” His eyes drifted to the ceiling, to some place where memory and the present met and did not reconcile. “I learned every sound, the hush that comes after a man stops shouting. I remember faces because every face I broke kept coming back to me when I slept.”

Mingi’s hands twitched. “You said you were trained. How?” He spoke the question like a man testing the edges of a blade.

“They needed me to feel it before I could inflict it properly. They made me taste the thing I would later hand to others.” He flexed his fingers against the cuffs as if testing the weight of iron. “I learned to hold a blade before I learned to hold a toy, I learned to steady my hand before I learned to steady my heart. They put orders and procedures before a life, my life included. They called it thoroughness, called it craft.” His voice rusted with a truth that had been carried too long. “The first time I understood what I was, I was ten and they showed me how to make a man small enough to fit into a whisper.”

Wooyoung let out a noise that was almost a laugh and almost a sob. “That’s a fucked up thing to have taught a kid,” he said bitterly. “You were… you were a child.”

Seonghwa’s face did not show the pain the words should have carved. “They broke things in me so they could build an instrument out of the pieces. That’s different from being a child or being a soldier. I became trained in cruelty because it made me useful.” He met Wooyoung’s stare then, direct and flat. “I don’t ask you to forgive me. I don’t expect it, I told you I deserved the walls.”

Yeosang’s fingers trembled when he found his voice. “And the families?”

Seonghwa’s jaw tightened. “I took fathers from their children, I took mothers from beds where they used to sing, I watched faces dissolve into nothing. I was the instrument that made them look smaller, I carried their silence on my back for years.” He closed his eyes, a brittle motion. “Sometimes I imagined that if I could be punished enough, the scale of what I’d done would even out but it never did.”

Hongjoong’s throat worked, he remembered the sterile lights, the smell of the institution, the way a man could be broken until he was still. He remembered telling himself that they had been monsters. He felt, suddenly and sharply, how thin the line between being the hunted and the hunter could be. “Why help us?” he asked, voice hoarse. “Why take a risk for us if you were the cause of so much pain?”

Seonghwa’s answer came like a small, cold thing. “Because you made me see what I couldn’t while I was hungry for orders. You showed me people who acted out of something other than command, you were riot and righteous noise. The first time I heard you talk about saving people, not breaking them, something inside me that had been trained to follow started to remember a different ledger.” He gave a short, humorless sound that could have been a laugh. “I can’t wash what I did, I won’t pretend I can but I can choose now whether my knowledge saves or destroys. If I stay silent, their deaths are on my hands too.”

Wooyoung stared at him, a thousand words banging against his teeth. “So what now? You tell us this and expect us to… what? Invite you to dinner?”

“No,” Seonghwa said, the word was flat. “I expect nothing.” He let the silence swell, then added, “But if a thing I did can be reversed even a little by telling the truth and making sure the people remember names, I will do it.”

San’s anger broke then, a low, furious sound. “You think that's enough?” he spat. “You think saying ‘I did harm’ fixes blood?”

Seonghwa’s eyes flicked to him with something like pity. “I don’t, it won’t fix bones or stop hunger. They can’t pull a father back to his son, they can make it harder for men like my father to call it mercy and get away with that word. That is small. It is not redemption, it's a tool.”

For a moment none of them spoke, the weight of what Seonghwa had admitted made ordinary gestures seem obscene. Then Wooyoung, who had a capacity for bluster that kept all their edges sharp, let the silence break with something that was part anger and part honest, rough curiosity.

“So you were taught to break people,” he said, leaning forward. “You lived what you inflicted on others. Does that mean you feel it now? When you do something that keeps someone alive, do you feel… different?”

Seonghwa’s face, for the first time since they’d captured the moment of revelation, revealed a crack of private shame. “Different,” he said slowly. “Not clean or better, but different. When I watch a man run home to his children because of something we did tonight, there is a sound inside me that isn’t guilt exactly. It’s recognition,” he stopped, searching for a phrase that wouldn’t make him sound foolish. “It's a small relief, like smoke letting out. It doesn’t cancel anything, it just means I can no longer pretend the work was neutral.”

Jongho, who spoke rarely and with weight, added quietly, “Then fight for that relief, even if it’s ugly. If you can make others breathe again, maybe one day we’ll not need to be this raw.”

Seonghwa’s lips twitched, almost a smile, and it didn’t reach his eyes. “I don’t look for thanks,” he said. “I look for movement, for the smallest difference between silence and sound.” He lifted his head as if hearing something beyond the room, beyond the cuffs and the lights. “I owe them that.”

The others watched him then with an odd mix of suspicion and something softer, an understanding that didn’t erase horror but allowed space for strategy and, infuriatingly, for hope. They were not absolving him, they were not embracing him, but they were seeing him with a clarity that made the room feel marginally less dangerous.

Wooyoung scratched at his cheek, voice suddenly small and direct. “If we survive this, you earn your place by doing. Not words, actions.”

Seonghwa’s nod was almost imperceptible. “I know.”

In that cramped room, wounded, cuffed and fragile, they had unpeeled another layer of truth. It did not heal them, it did not erase blood but it shifted the shape of the next thing they would do together, which, in that battered moment, felt like the only plan worth making.

The silence in the room was thin as paper, stretched to breaking. Eight of them, cuffed to metal chairs bolted to the floor, breathing in the same stale air.

Then Seonghwa exhaled, a slow, deep and deliberate breath, the kind that sounded like someone making a decision. He dropped his gaze to his wrists.

Without a word, he pinched something from the inside of his sleeve, a scrap of wire, thin and twisted, probably torn from the lining of the chair itself. The others barely noticed at first. His movements were so careful they looked casual, a flex of fingers and the faintest metallic click.

Then, snap.

A clean, quiet sound and the chain fell slack between his wrists.

For a full second, no one spoke. Then chaos came.

“What the fuck!” Wooyoung blurted out, his voice way too loud for the tiny room. “Did you just- did you just Houdini that shit?”

Mingi nearly choked on his breath. “Wait, wait, wait, how the hell did you-” He leaned forward, trying to see the cuffs, eyes bright and offended by the impossibility. “You can’t just do that, Seonghwa! That’s not normal!”

San let out a bark of laughter that sounded like relief mixed with pure adrenaline. “Of course he can! Of course the quietest man alive just decides to unlock himself like he’s opening a damn soda can!”

Yunho, always the soldier, didn’t waste a second. “Free the rest of us,” he said, dead serious, already shifting his chair closer. “Now.”

Seonghwa didn’t answer, he just moved in control. He crouched by Yunho first, slipping the bit of wire into the cuff’s lock. Another click, a precise twist of his wrist and the lock popped open like it was made of paper.

“Holy shit,” Yunho muttered, rubbing his freed wrists. “Remind me never to piss you off.”

Seonghwa moved to Mingi next, ignoring the stunned gazes tracking him.

Wooyoung couldn’t keep quiet. “I’m sorry, does he have a whole degree in breaking out of places? Is this a hobby? Are we dating a criminal mastermind or what?”

“We’re not dating him,” San hissed, elbowing him.

Wooyoung grinned, unrepentant. “Well, somebody’s looking at him like they wanna be!”

“Shut up,” Hongjoong muttered automatically but his throat was tight, eyes locked on Seonghwa’s hands, the absolute precision of each motion, the silence between clicks, the calm that didn’t fit the chaos of everything else.

Seonghwa’s face never changed. He worked Yeosang’s cuffs open next, then Jongho’s, moving like he’d done it a thousand times before. Every lock surrendered with the same effortless grace.

When the last cuff hit the floor, the group erupted into movement, stretching sore arms, rubbing bruised skin, laughter bubbling up because it was easier than panic.

Wooyoung, naturally, was the first to speak again. “Okay, new rule. No one pisses off Seonghwa, ever. If he can break cuffs with a staple, imagine what he can do to a spine.”

“Wooyoung,” San warned, voice low but with the ghost of a grin.

“I’m just saying!” Wooyoung laughed. “You saw that, right? He didn’t even flinch, not one sound, like he’s done this before.”

“Because he has,” Mingi said, crouching to pick up one of the broken cuffs, eyes analyzing it like a lab specimen. “These locks aren’t simple. You need exact pressure on the inner gear, he must’ve memorized the mechanism.”

“That’s…” Yeosang began softly, eyes on Seonghwa. “That’s terrifying.”

Jongho crossed his arms, a small, impressed nod. “That’s useful.”

Hongjoong hadn’t said a word. He stood now, rubbing the red marks at his wrists. The sound of the chains hitting the floor still rang in his head. Seonghwa stood across from him, quiet and sharp, a ghost who looked more alive than anyone else in the room.

Their eyes met for a fraction too long, long enough for Wooyoung to notice, of course.

“Oh my god,” he said in a whisper that was anything but subtle. “He’s so in love with him.”

Hongjoong didn’t even glance his way. “Shut up, Wooyoung.”

Seonghwa, still kneeling by the last chair, didn’t react at all. He just picked up the small wire piece, tucked it back into his sleeve and said flatly, “We should move, they’ll check soon.”

That was all. No pride or explanation, just a soldier’s voice, practical and cold.

But the Outlaws couldn’t help it, every single one of them was grinning, shaking their heads or muttering curses under their breath, because that was the single most terrifyingly cool thing they’d seen in weeks.

And Hongjoong, though he’d never admit it out loud, had to fight not to smile.

Because somewhere between the start of Facility 8 and here, the broken man who’d sat silently in the corner had turned into their sharpest blade and he didn’t even need a weapon to prove it.

Chapter Text

The hallway outside the interrogation room was dim and narrow, the kind of corridor meant more for ghosts than people. White bulbs buzzed overhead, flickering with the steady pulse of failing power. It smelled like metal and the cloying sweetness of antiseptic, Facility air. The kind of air that lived in bone memory.

Seonghwa slipped into the hall first, silent as breath. He didn’t check if they were following him, he didn’t need to. His presence pulled them forward like gravity, the Outlaws falling into step behind him on instinct alone.

They moved fast.

Seonghwa’s gait was smooth and precise, a kind of predatory rhythm that made the group more aware of every sound they made. His steps landed exactly where they should, never brushing a wall, never hitting a patch of uneven floor, every stride the product of training none of them could fathom.

Hongjoong watched him with a tight knot in his chest. It wasn't fear, it was something sharper, something that made his pulse catch in a way he didn’t have the language for.

They reached a junction of two fluorescent-lit corridors. Seonghwa didn’t pause to evaluate, didn’t check for footsteps, didn’t even glance their way. He turned left as if guided by a map no one else could read.

Yeosang’s whisper barely filled the space. “This isn’t the way we came from.”

“I know,” Seonghwa murmured, tone devoid of apology.

Mingi frowned. “Then where-”

Seonghwa’s pace never faltered. “Just follow me.”

It was a command, not a suggestion and somehow Hongjoong felt the weight of it settle in his spine.

They pressed deeper into the facility, past half-lit rooms and abandoned terminals, then Seonghwa stopped and the group nearly collided behind him.

Before them towered a reinforced steel door, three massive locks, two analog clamps and a biometric panel blinking red with denial. It looked more like a vault door than anything meant to protect paperwork.

San whispered, “What is this…?”

Seonghwa reached into his sleeve and pulled out a thin metal pin, the same one he had used on their cuffs.

He bent to the first lock, then the second lock and the third. None of them even breathed.

Then Seonghwa stepped back and rolled his shoulders with the faintest trace of amusement tugging at his mouth.

“You didn’t actually think I let them capture me,” he said quietly, almost indulgently, “did you?”

The silence that followed could have cracked open the door on its own.

Mingi’s mouth fell open. “You what?”

“You planned this?” Yunho stared at him, stunned.

Wooyoung rubbed a hand over his face. “This man is a menace. A terrifying, gorgeous menace.”

Hongjoong felt his pulse stutter violently, he forced his voice steady. “You let yourself get captured… to get here?”

Seonghwa tipped his head toward the newly unlocked door. “There are documents inside,” he said simply. “On the minister, on the program and on me.” A brief pause. “I needed access to them.”

He touched the biometric pad with two fingers, something sparked internally with a hiss and the panel died without protest.

With that, the steel door unsealed and slid half a meter open.

Seonghwa looked at them over his shoulder, eyes unreadable in the dim light. “This is what I came for,” he murmured. “And you needed it too, so here we are.”

Wooyoung let out a strangled noise behind him, pointing at Seonghwa like accusing him of witchcraft. “Hongjoong, your man is insane. Insane! Do you see that? He scheduled his capture.”

Hongjoong elbowed him sharply, but there was fire in his cheeks he couldn’t blame on anger.

Seonghwa pushed the door open the rest of the way. “Let’s go,” he said.

Hongjoong was the first to step beside him. “Lead us.”

The Outlaws followed him, their fear and awe twisting together in their throats, because one thing was becoming terrifyingly clear, Park Seonghwa trained himself to dismantle the regime.

The room swallowed them.

Cold air rolled across their skin the moment they stepped inside, a sterile chill that felt nothing like Facility 8 and everything like the heart of something older and deeper. The place wasn’t large, no sprawling archive or endless maze, but it felt enormous, heavy, as if the walls were packed too tightly with secrets to breathe.

Rows of shelves and locked drawers. A humming terminal at the far end with blinking green lights and file boxes, so many file boxes.

All stamped with a symbol the Outlaws had only seen once before, SDU, Special Division Unit.

Seonghwa’s old division.

The place was a mausoleum of violence.

Seonghwa walked ahead of them slower now, not hesitant, but intentional, as if each step was a memory he had to crush beneath his heel to keep moving.

Hongjoong watched him, something serrated twisting in his chest at how Seonghwa’s shoulders tensed with each shelf they passed. As if he knew which ones had his handwriting in them, which ones had his victims in them and which ones had his father’s signature approving it all.

Yeosang was the first to whisper, voice low, reverent and horrified all at once. “What… is this place?”

“It’s where the state keeps the things they don’t want the world to know.” Seonghwa didn’t look back.

He stopped at a specific shelf, didn’t scan for names, he didn’t even search. He knew where to go.

Hongjoong felt the weight of that realization hit him like a blow, Seonghwa had been here before.

He reached up and pulled out a thin metal drawer. Inside were documents, unlabeled except for numerical codes burned into their pages. Mingi leaned forward to read one.

“SD–04–HWA–17.”

He blinked.

“…That’s literally his name.”

Yunho swallowed hard. “What’s on those?”

“Training.” Seonghwa’s voice was even.

“Training,” Wooyoung repeated faintly. “For what?”

San elbowed him sharply, but his own voice cracked when he spoke. “Hwa… what kind of training needs to be hidden in a locked vault?”

Seonghwa’s fingers tightened around the drawer’s edge.

Hongjoong stepped closer, placing himself between Seonghwa and the group without thinking, instinctive and protective. “If he doesn’t want to say-”

But Seonghwa answered. “Interrogation,” he said softly.

The Outlaws went silent and the air froze.

“And counter-interrogation. Pain conditioning, coercion drills, breaking techniques and how to withstand them.”

Yeosang’s breath stuttered. “You mean… they trained you to torture?”

Seonghwa corrected him with the coldest precision they’d ever heard from him. “They trained me to erase threats.”

Wooyoung whispered, “Holy shit.”

Seonghwa ignored him, he set the drawer down and walked deeper into the vault, stopping at a cabinet with a biometric lock that looked nearly impenetrable. The kind of lock they saw only on government treasury rooms or weapons vaults.

Without hesitation, Seonghwa entered a code and The Outlaws froze.

San let out a tiny whisper, trembling. “You… you knew the code?”

Seonghwa’s lashes lowered. “I was given the code.”

Then the biometric panel lit green and the vault door clicked open.

Inside were no tapes, no weapons and no files about missions or rebels or strategies.

Just one black binder, thick and heavy, sealed with a red strap.

Hongjoong couldn’t stop himself. “What is that?”

Seonghwa stared at it for a moment before answering. “My psychological file.”

Silence choked the air.

“What they did to me,” he continued quietly. “What they documented and what they were planning to change.”

“Hwa… do you want us to… look?” Mingi stepped closer, voice barely audible.

Seonghwa hesitated, his hand hovered above the binder, his voice was fragile glass. “You should.”

Hongjoong felt something crack inside him at how small that sounded.

Seonghwa didn’t open it himself, he stepped aside, letting Hongjoong take the front. As if he couldn’t bear to be the one to unfold the pages of his own undoing.

Hongjoong unbuckled the strap and the binder opened with a dry whisper.

The first page was a photograph.

A boy, no older than twelve, tied to a chair, restraints cutting into thin wrists, eyes swollen but defiant.

Park Seonghwa.

Yeosang covered his mouth, stumbling back and Jongho made a low, murderous sound.

San whispered, “Oh my god.”

The second page listed “Procedure 1.” The description was clinical, electric nerve desensitization protocol. Subject unresponsive after 47 seconds, retried with voltage increase.

Hongjoong felt bile rise in his throat.

The next page, “Procedure 2.” Simulation of drowning resistance. Subject demonstrates high tolerance, increase duration next session.

Wooyoung backed into the wall, eyes huge and glassy. “This is- this is a kid. They did this to a kid.”

Seonghwa finally spoke, voice a dead calm. “Keep reading, it gets worse.”

And it did. Every page, every paragraph and every cold note scribbled in the margins by his father.

Promising responses, escalate fear impulse conditioning, emotional detachment developing as intended, increase isolation period, prepare for field application by age 15.

By the tenth page, Yunho was sitting on the floor, hands in his hair. By the fifteenth, Yeosang had turned away, shaking. By the twentieth, San was whispering curses that sounded more like prayers.

Hongjoong felt something inside him burn, a rage he had never, ever tasted before. He looked at Seonghwa, standing perfectly still, unreadable and unshaken.

Except Hongjoong saw it now, he saw the stiffness in his shoulders, saw the way his fingers twitched once every few breaths and he saw the faint tremor in his jaw.

The man had sat through childhood torture and the destruction of his will. He could stand through the retelling of it too.

The binder closed with a soft thud when Hongjoong reached the final note.

Subject broke protocol and refused to proceed with interrogation of rebel child. Recommendation, isolate permanently.

Hongjoong looked up at him.

“You refused,” he said and it wasn’t a question.

Seonghwa’s eyes met his.

“I escaped,” he corrected quietly. “Seven times.”

The Outlaws finally understood that Facility 8 wasn’t a prison, it was a coffin with a lock his father believed was unbreakable and Seonghwa had ripped the lid off by sheer will.

Before Yeosang could speak, before Wooyoung could curse, the lights in the vault flickered and alarms began to wail.

Mingi whipped around.

“Someone tripped a sensor, shit, they’re coming!”

Hongjoong shoved the binder into his jacket.

“Seonghwa, which way-”

Seonghwa was already moving. “Follow me,” he said, voice steel. “We’re not dying here.”

And they ran.

Back into the choking hallways, back into darkness, chased by the ghosts of Seonghwa’s past and the soldiers of his father’s empire.

Seonghwa didn’t speak, didn’t gesture, didn’t even look back, he just moved and the seven of them followed because the alternative was getting hopelessly lost in a maze designed to break human minds. He took turns before they realized there were turns, stopped in front of doors that looked like dead ends and opened them with codes none of them had ever seen him learn.

He walked like someone who wasn’t escaping, but returning, each hallway they passed through felt less like an exit route and more like he was piloting them through a place that had belonged to him all along.

By the time the cold outside air hit their faces, Hongjoong felt lightheaded with relief.

Yeosang pulled in a shaky breath and San rubbed his arms to chase away the chill that wasn’t from the weather.

Mingi, meanwhile, looked at the documents in his arms with pure misery. “Oh my god,” he groaned. “We’re walking again, we’re walking all the way back to the base with eighty pounds of paper. Please just kill me directly and humanely.”

He didn't sound like he was joking, he truly meant it.

Right on cue, Seonghwa, who had been scanning the empty loading bay with bored precision, turned his head.

“Walk?”

Mingi blinked at him, exasperated. “¡Yes, walk! With our legs! Unless you plan to magically teleport us home?”

A faint beep cut through the air. Beep-beep.

They all froze.

Hongjoong’s head snapped toward the sound.

Nestled between two white cars, almost invisible in the shadows, a government SUV flashed its headlights twice.

Wooyoung whispered, “No way.”

Hongjoong stared at Seonghwa, stunned and already afraid of the answer.

“When did you-?”

Seonghwa pressed the key fob again, the second beep sounding almost smug. “Earlier,” he said simply. “Before we left.”

Mingi’s mouth hung open. “Before? Before what? Before we even got to the restricted wing?!”

Seonghwa shrugged one shoulder. “The guard with the grey badge wasn’t paying attention.”

“You stole his keys then?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t tell us?”

Seonghwa paused, looking genuinely confused. “No.”

Mingi scrubbed a hand down his face. “Unbelievable… I would have complained so much less if I knew we had a ride.”

Seonghwa only walked to the driver’s side, opened the door and glanced back at them with a blank expression that somehow managed to feel like judgment.

“Well,” he said, “you can stay here if you prefer.”

The seven of them scrambled into the car so fast they nearly jammed the doors.

Hongjoong was the last to enter, hand on the frame, staring at Seonghwa in the driver’s seat with a mix of awe, suspicion, admiration and something warmer he didn’t dare name.

Hongjoong shut the door.

“Drive,” he said.

Seonghwa did.

The engine hummed low beneath them, steady and cold, the kind of sound that faded into the bones until it felt like part of the bloodstream. Facility 8 shrank behind them in the rearview mirror, a concrete smear dissolving into the darkness. No one spoke at first, no one dared.

Seonghwa drove like he did everything else, with surgical precision, with no wasted movement, with the kind of awareness that made the whole car feel too small to contain him.

His eyes didn’t flick to the mirrors, he already knew what was behind them. He didn’t grip the wheel tight, he didn’t need to.

He didn’t even glance at the Outlaws in the back, he didn’t need to.

Hongjoong sat in the passenger seat, his knee bouncing once before he forced it still. Mingi and Yunho were squeezed behind him with the stacks of stolen files. San leaned against the window, face pale from pain but awake, Wooyoung clinging to him like gravity was optional, and Jongho and Yeosang anchored the back row, shoulders tense from too much adrenaline and not enough certainty.

It had taken them months to escape the first time, but now it took Seonghwa minutes.

Hongjoong kept his eyes on the stretch of road ahead, but his voice, when it finally broke the quiet, was low, steady, a thin thread pulled taut.

“So,” he said, “what’s the plan now?”

Seonghwa didn’t answer immediately. He breathed once, quietly, like he was sorting through a thousand possible responses and discarding all but one.

“Your plan,” Seonghwa said, gaze fixed on the road, “was to stay alive long enough to overthrow a government.”

Hongjoong exhaled through his nose. “Right.”

“That hasn’t changed.”

Hongjoong glanced sideways at him. “And yours?”

Seonghwa shifted gears with a soft click. “My plan,” he said, voice even, “is to kill my father.”

Silence detonated inside the SUV.

San blinked slowly, Mingi made a thin sound that might have been a squeak, Wooyoung sat up straighter, mouth open, Yunho muttered something that might have been a prayer and Jongho’s brows shot up so fast it was almost comical.

Hongjoong didn’t even breathe at first.

He searched Seonghwa’s profile, the rigid line of his jaw, the steady way he drove, the absolute lack of hesitation in his voice.

“You say that like you’re discussing the weather,” Hongjoong said quietly.

“I’ve never cared much for weather,” Seonghwa replied.

Mingi mumbled, “He’s serious. He’s so- he’s actually- oh my god.”

Seonghwa continued as if he hadn’t heard.

“He knows you’re alive, he knows you’re together, he will know you escaped and he will come for you, all of you.” His eyes slid to the mirror, watching the seven men without turning his head. “He won’t make the same mistakes again.”

“Then why are we not driving somewhere far, far away?” Wooyoung hissed.

“Because,” Seonghwa said, “running only buys time and you’ve wasted enough of that already.”

“Wasted?” Yeosang echoed, offended.

“Yes.”

San leaned forward, tired and frayed. “And what do you suggest we do instead? Go back and knock on the government's door for fun?”

Seonghwa’s lips twitched, not a smile, but something sharper.

“You’ll need somewhere to work fast,” he said simply. “Somewhere secure, somewhere off-grid. Your current base isn’t hidden enough. It’s impressive for rebels, but not enough for what comes next.”

Mingi frowned. “And how do you know that?”

Seonghwa paused. “I just know.”

The headlights cut across an empty stretch of road, river on one side, the dark outline of ruined buildings on the other and in that moment Hongjoong realized something he had suspected but never allowed himself to fully consider, Seonghwa wasn’t following them, he was leading them.

Hongjoong swallowed. “So… you already know where we’re going.”

“Of course.”

“And you already know what we have to do next.”

“Yes.”

“And you planned for this.”

Another small pause. Then, softly, “I plan for everything.”

The road curved and the SUV followed, smooth as breath. The headlights illuminated an old turnoff, overgrown and forgotten, and Seonghwa took it without slowing down.

Jongho leaned forward, voice low. “Where are we going?”

“To the place he prepared,” Hongjoong murmured, eyes fixed on Seonghwa’s hands on the wheel. “Long before we ever met him, probably.”

Seonghwa didn’t confirm it, but he also didn’t deny it. He only drove.

They drove in silence for a long stretch. Through the windshield, Seonghwa guided them down a narrow road that opened into nothing but darkness, old trees lining it like silent sentinels. The stars above were cold and distant, but in the car, their breaths felt loud enough to fill the space.

Hongjoong couldn’t stop watching him, how his hands were on the wheel, how his jaw wasn’t tense but quiet, like someone staring straight into a storm he already knew how to survive. For once, he let himself feel the weight of this, Seonghwa was their path forward, not just a tool, but something more dangerous than that.

Finally, Hongjoong broke. “So what now, really?”

Seonghwa tilted his head, not looking at him. “We go to the ministry.”

It hung in the air like a promise or a threat.

“You mean, infiltrate?” Someone in the back whispered. Mingi, always practical, his voice taut with calculation.

Seonghwa’s eyes flicked to the side mirror. “Yes.”

“Broadcast everything. The files, the corruption with my father’s name, all of it. We stream it live. Every channel, every TV and every phone.”

The car felt too small for the enormity of that plan.

Yeosang let out a shaky breath. “If we do that, there’s no going back.”

Seonghwa’s gaze returned to the road. “There wasn’t going back when I left Facility 8 the first time.”

Yunho’s hand tapped on his leg, restless. “If we’re doing this… people will watch. They’ll see.” His voice was hard to hold steady. “They’ll know why they should be angry.”

Seonghwa nodded slightly. “They’ll know.” Then his tone sharpened. “They’ll have a choice. It's bigger than any pamphlet.”

Hongjoong swallowed. “And after that? What do you want from this?”

The question made the car still, the engine suddenly loud. Seonghwa’s eyes flicked over, and for a moment Hongjoong wondered if he regretted bringing them this far, but then Seonghwa’s expression hardened, a strange kind of calm taking over.

“I want the people to decide what comes next,” he said quietly. “Not him, not his guards and not his lies.”

Mingi, clutching the files on his lap, looked at Seonghwa like he could break just by seeing that he was serious. “And we’ll help you.”

Seonghwa didn’t laugh, but his eyes softened for a second. “Thank you, but this isn’t about me being saved. It’s about everyone being free.”

Hongjoong felt something twist in his chest. He brought a hand up, almost touching Seonghwa’s shoulder, but he stopped himself. Instead, he leaned back, breathing in, letting the moment settle.

Seonghwa turned down an unmarked road so narrow that the branches scraped against the SUV’s sides. There were no streetlights, no houses, nothing but shadows thick enough to cling to their windows. For a moment, Hongjoong thought they’d gotten lost.

Then the trees opened.

An old building stood alone in a clearing, so run-down it might’ve been abandoned for decades.

Seonghwa killed the engine, got out and the others followed in a messy, uneven line, hearts pounding, legs unsteady.

Hongjoong watched him approach the door, press his palm flat against the concrete and the door slid open.

Inside, the world transformed.

Bright lights and metallic floors. Screens everywhere, flickering with maps and data feeds. A row of computers lined the wall. Weapon cases, shelves, tools and cables. A full tactical command system hidden in a building that had been nothing but a corpse on the outside.

Yeosang whispered, “Holy shit…”

San actually stepped back. “This is-”

“Mine,” Seonghwa said simply, already walking ahead.

They clustered together instinctively, absorbing the scale of it, a secret operations hub. One man had built this.

Hongjoong swallowed hard. “You did all this alone?”

Seonghwa didn’t answer, he’d already moved deeper into the room, picking up a tablet, placing files on the main table, scanning maps and connecting wires like someone who’d done this every day of his life. The Outlaws spread out slowly, stepping around the space like it might bite.

Mingi set the stolen documents down with trembling hands. “So… the broadcast?”

Seonghwa nodded. “We stream everything from the Ministry’s central hub. They control every screen in the country from there.”

Wooyoung raised a brow. “Okay but that place is a fortress.”

Seonghwa tapped a screen. The entire building appeared in a 3D model, rotating. “It was, before they moved two squads south three months ago. They left a gap.” He zoomed in with a swipe of his fingers. “Here.”

Hongjoong leaned in, pulse quickening. “How big a gap?”

“Big enough for all of you,” Seonghwa said. Then, as if remembering, he added quietly, “Big enough for me, too.”

The Outlaws exchanged looks, that word again. With them, not behind them or separate, not withdrawn.

Mingi pointed at a set of servers. “We’ll need a way to upload the files into the system.”

Seonghwa was already two steps ahead. “The building uses fiber lines under the east wing. You get a device into the main terminal and you can override the network from here.”

“And once the files go live?” San asked.

Seonghwa typed something, hit enter and the screens exploded into simulation, thousands of televisions flashing the same images, the Facility documents spreading like fire.

“One truth,” he said softly, “to a million people.”

Hongjoong didn’t know he’d stepped closer until he felt the warmth of Seonghwa’s shoulder near his own. “And then?” he asked.

“Then the country remembers what freedom feels like,” he answered, eyes cold and burning all at once.

Yeosang exhaled shakily. “This… this is real.”

Wooyoung grinned, sharp and feral. “You’re telling me we’re about to hijack every screen in the entire country?”

“Yes,” Seonghwa said. “Everything.”

The group fell into motion immediately, checking gear, reading maps and soaking up every detail. Seonghwa moved among them like a ghost, silent and perfect, carved from something sharp and unbreakable.

But Hongjoong watched him more closely.

Seonghwa paused sometimes, touching the edge of a screen twice, tapping a table before leaning on it, making sure reality stayed solid under his palms. Hongjoong saw every flicker, every habit.

And, somehow, he wasn’t afraid of them anymore.

The night hummed with plans and tension, with something that felt like the world about to tilt.

Hongjoong went to join them, but Seonghwa caught his wrist lightly.

“Kim Hongjoong,” he said, voice low. “This will change everything.”

Hongjoong met his gaze without flinching. “I know.”

“And you’re still going to do it.”

“Of course.”

Seonghwa’s expression softened, not much, but enough to make Hongjoong’s pulse stumble. “Good,” he murmured. “Then let’s end this.”

“Do we move tomorrow?”

“No,” he said. “We go in one hour.”

“What?!” San sputtered. “We haven’t rested!”

“You won’t rest,” Seonghwa cut in firmly. “You’ll only think and the more you think, the more fear will slow you. You move now, while your bodies remember adrenaline.”

Wooyoung whispered, “He’s terrifying. Hot, but terrifying.”

Hongjoong elbowed him.

Seonghwa already turned away, pulling open a reinforced cabinet. Black tactical gear gleamed under the harsh lights, holsters, blades, communication units and enough firepower to take down a small army.

He tossed a vest at Hongjoong, who nearly lost his balance catching it.

“Gear up.”

Hongjoong stared at him. “You’re… serious.”

Seonghwa looked right into his eyes. “Hongjoong,” he said, low and certain, “I am always serious.”

For a moment, just a moment, something warm brushed Hongjoong’s chest, something sharp and unsaid, but there wasn’t time to feel it, or name it, or fear it.

Because Seonghwa stepped past him, shoes silent on the metal floor, opening a final locker at the back of the room.

Inside hung a black uniform, nothing like the white asylum clothing they’d met him in.

This was clean, tactical and tailored. A soldier’s skin, a ghost’s clothing. The past he’d buried under dust.

Seonghwa brushed a hand across the fabric. “Help me change frequencies on the comms,” he said, voice steady again. “We don’t have long.”

Hongjoong turned to his men. “Let’s get ready,” he ordered.

And as they moved, checking gear, loading weapons, learning routes and memorizing codes, Seonghwa stood in the center of it after changing into that black uniform, straps tight, gloves on and blade strapped to his thigh. No longer a patient, no longer a ghost and no longer a man hiding behind the walls of Facility 8. They also got dressed in the same black clothes.

He was something else entirely and he was going into war with them.

Hongjoong tightened the straps on his vest, fingers moving on instinct, mind racing ahead of his body. “My people,” he said suddenly, looking up at Seonghwa. “They’ll want to help. All of them, not just us.”

Seonghwa didn’t even pause in the motion of checking the magazine of his handgun. “I already accounted for that.”

Hongjoong blinked. “What?”

“I have a phone,” Seonghwa said, slipping the weapon into his thigh holster. “And I gave Minjae another one.”

Hongjoong froze as the weight of that landed. “You contacted Minjae? You trusted him?”

“No,” Seonghwa corrected calmly. “I trusted you to recruit good people.”

For one heartbeat, Hongjoong’s chest burned so fiercely he forgot how to breathe.

Seonghwa continued, voice level, businesslike. “They’ll know exactly where to be, when to move and how to enter. In two hours, they will arrive at the Ministry, just after us.”

San swallowed. “And Minjae understood all that?”

“He did.” A small, almost imperceptible nod. “He said he’d tell Hyunwoo and the others. The moment they receive my signal, they’ll move.”

Hongjoong let out a low, disbelieving laugh, half awe and half fear. “You planned all of this while pretending you weren’t coming back.”

Seonghwa’s gaze softened just a fraction. “I never pretended.”

Hongjoong felt that sentence like a hand around his ribs.

“But,” Seonghwa continued, tone hardening back into steel, “I will say this once. Your people must be prepared to fight and to run, and to disappear. Not all of them will come back.”

A chill moved through the room.

Hongjoong stepped closer, steadying his breath. “They’ll still choose to come.”

“Good.” Seonghwa finally holstered the last of his own weapons, closing the cabinet with a heavy metallic thud. “Because when the truth broadcasts across this country, your people will be the ones holding the line while I break into the Ministry’s core.”

“While we break into the core,” Hongjoong corrected softly.

Seonghwa gave a single, decisive nod, then turned toward the heavy door leading out of his hidden bunker.

“You need weapons,” he murmured. “We move now.”

And as they followed him out, armed and dressed in black, Hongjoong felt a certainty settle deep in his bones. If there was ever a chance to win this war, it started with Park Seonghwa walking beside them.

They moved through Seonghwa’s hidden base like ghosts, hushed, almost reverent. Racks of weapons lined the walls in metallic rows, each polished and oiled, perfectly maintained.

“Take everything you need,” he ordered, clipping a fresh knife to his thigh. “If you see a weapon you know how to use, grab it. If you don’t know how to use it, ask before touching it.”

They moved cautiously at first, unsure, but then Seonghwa reached up, removed a sleek matte-black pistol from its rack and tossed it without warning.

San caught it mid-air with a startled grunt.

“You’ll handle that one,” Seonghwa said, as if assigning chores.

San stared down at it, awe creeping slowly across his face. “This is… heavy.”

“It won’t be once you’re used to it. Bring at least three magazines.”

Yeosang reached for a compact knife, but Seonghwa shook his head sharply. “Not that one.” He stepped close enough to brush Yeosang’s sleeve. “Take this instead.” He handed him a longer, balanced blade, the kind used by people who didn’t miss.

Yeosang swallowed. “Why the switch?”

“That one suits your wrist better. Smaller blades flick too far when you panic. This one follows motion instead of fighting it.”

Yeosang stared at him, stunned into quiet thanks.

Mingi wandered to the tech station, hundreds of cables, chips, modded radios, encrypted routers and Seonghwa almost smiled.

“Bottom drawer,” he said. “Take the black case.”

Mingi opened it and let out a reverent whisper. “This is unreal, Seonghwa. This is like military-grade times ten.”

“It’s better, military gear is for show.” Seonghwa tightened the strap on his vest. “This is for survival.”

Hongjoong didn’t take anything at first. He watched, watched the calm precision, the way Seonghwa knew every Outlaw’s instincts better than they knew their own. Watched how naturally Seonghwa stepped back into the role of someone who led armies in silence.

By the time they finished, the room looked pillaged. The Outlaws looked like they belonged here, shrouded in black, armed to the teeth and faces sharpened by purpose and fear.

Then Seonghwa grabbed one last thing. A small black device, shaped like a pager, but heavier and older. Like a phone that had been modified beyond recognition.

He slipped it into his pocket.

“Move out,” he said.

They filed into the SUV again. The air was thick, tense, humming with adrenaline. This time, Seonghwa didn’t hesitate behind the wheel. He moved like he was born in that seat, adjusting mirrors, checking angles and starting the engine with a hum that vibrated through the floor.

Hongjoong climbed into the passenger seat again, refusing to look anywhere but forward. Because if he looked at Seonghwa for too long, he wasn’t sure what would happen inside him.

The others piled in the back, metal clinking with every shift of the vehicle.

For a minute, no one spoke.

Then Seonghwa reached into his vest, pulled out the device he took before and powered it on.

A secure line blinked and he pressed call. It rang once and Minjae picked up so fast it was almost a gasp.

“Seonghwa?”

The nervous relief in his voice made Hongjoong stiffen.

Seonghwa kept his eyes on the dark road ahead. “Listen carefully, you have an hour now.”

There was rustling on the other end, Hyunwoo somewhere behind Minjae was breathless and anxious.

“Where should we go?”

“The Ministry,” Seonghwa said. “You and the others will meet us there.”

“The Ministry?!”

“Minjae.” Seonghwa’s tone didn’t rise, it didn’t need to. “This is the only time we strike.”

Then Hyunwoo’s shaky voice in the background. “We’re coming.”

Seonghwa continued, voice crisp and precise. “Take only who can follow orders. No children, no elders and no one who can’t run thirty meters under pressure. Anyone who hesitates stays in the base.”

“We understand,” Minjae murmured.

“You’ll enter through the east service tunnel and then run to the main street. The doors of the tunnel will be open, I took care of the locks already.”

Hongjoong turned sharply at that. “You what?”

Seonghwa ignored him.

“Move silently. Do not engage unless fired upon first, do not chase any soldier and do not stop to help fallen civilians, the other guys will handle that.”

“What other guys?” Mingi muttered.

“Later,” Seonghwa said. “Minjae, you know what this means and you know what this starts.”

A breath, a tremble.

“Yes,” Minjae said. “A revolution.”

Hongjoong closed his eyes.

The word hit different when spoken by someone who had never used it before.

“Good,” Seonghwa said. “Then meet us there.”

He hung up.

Silence settled over the SUV again, heavy, cold and electric.

Hongjoong swallowed. “So that’s it? We go straight from Facility 8 to toppling the government?”

Seonghwa’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, knuckles white under leather gloves. “That’s it,” he said quietly. “No more waiting, no more hiding, no more running.” He pressed harder on the gas. “The Dominion falls tonight.”

Seonghwa slowed the SUV long before anyone realized why. The road ahead wasn’t really a road just a torn stretch of cracked cement, broken lamp posts leaning like drunks and wind scraping dust across the ground. No houses, no witnesses and no cameras alive enough to matter.

He pulled over with a low growl of the engine and killed the headlights.

Silence wrapped around them like a shroud.

Before anyone could ask, he opened the door and stepped out into the cold. The night curled around him, welcomed him, made him look like something carved out of shadow.

Hongjoong followed, confused but unwilling to stay seated.

The others stayed inside, watching through the windshield as Seonghwa reached into a pocket, pulled out a cigarette and sparked it to life. The flame illuminated his face for a heartbeat, high cheekbones and unfathomable eyes, calm carved from something that was never gentle.

He took a slow drag and exhaled smoke like it was a confession.

“You’re the leader,” Seonghwa said, voice low. The wind tugged at his hair, cold fingers threading through black strands. “So lead.”

Hongjoong blinked, thrown. “I am leading.”

“No,” Seonghwa murmured, looking past him, toward the distant dark outline of the Ministry. “You’re reacting, you’re following the current.” Another inhale and another soft cloud of smoke. “From here on, you lead the wave.”

Hongjoong didn’t like how those words felt, so heavy. Meant for someone who didn’t get to step back once things started burning.

“What are you planning?” Hongjoong asked.

Seonghwa turned his head just enough to meet his eyes.

“We split inside the Ministry,” he said. “You take your people to the third floor, the servers, the broadcasting hub and all the tech you need to show the country the truth.”

“And you?” Hongjoong pushed. “You’re coming with us.”

“No.”

Hongjoong’s chest tightened. “Why not?”

Seonghwa flicked ash to the ground, his expression unreadable. “I have something to do first.”

Hongjoong almost laughed, almost. “Seonghwa, we are about to walk into the most dangerous building in the country. You’re telling me you’re just going to wander off for a side quest?”

Seonghwa stared at him, cigarette burning quietly between his fingers. “Not wander,” he said softly. “Finish.”

“Finish what?” Hongjoong demanded.

The soldier didn’t answer immediately. He took another drag, eyes half-lidded as smoke curled from his lips and drifted off into the dark.

Only when the cigarette burned down near his fingertips did he finally speak again.

“The second floor,” he said. “That's where the Minister’s office is.” A pause. A cold, lethal pause. “My father will be there tonight.”

The realization hit like cold water.

Hongjoong inhaled sharply. “You’re going after him?”

“No,” Seonghwa said, voice calm in the way that meant the opposite. “I’m finishing what I should have done a long time ago.”

Hongjoong’s stomach dropped.

“And if you get killed?”

“That won’t happen.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Seonghwa crushed the cigarette beneath his boot heel, the ember dying in a soft hiss. He looked at Hongjoong fully then, really looked, and Hongjoong hated the way his ribs tightened like they were trying to build a cage around his heart.

“For this to work,” Seonghwa said, “you cannot hesitate. You cannot split your focus worrying about me, your people trust you. They will follow you into hell if you tell them to.” He stepped back, toward the car, his silhouette sharp and dark against the starless sky. “Lead them, Kim Hongjoong.”

The air felt too cold, sharp and real.

Inside the SUV, the others sat without a trace of fear, San with his jaw set, Yunho checking his ammo calmly, Yeosang tightening straps, Jongho steady as a boulder, Mingi gripping the tech case like it was a lifeline and Wooyoung with a grin that was all teeth and madness.

Hongjoong swallowed hard.

“We’re really doing this,” he murmured.

The Ministry rose from the ground like a monolith carved out of nightmares.

All angles and not a single window low enough to see through. just concrete, steel and the kind of architecture meant to remind everyone who walked past it that they were owned.

The SUV rolled to a stop in the shadow of an abandoned courier building two blocks away. The streets were empty, too empty. Even the curfew guards were thin tonight. The government wasn’t expecting anything. They thought Facility 8 had solved all their little problems.

Hongjoong opened the door, the cold biting through his sleeves the moment he stepped out. The others followed silently, boots hitting the pavement in a rhythm that felt like the prelude to war.

Seonghwa stood at the front of the group, the only one who didn’t seem to feel the chill. The wind cut across the street, tugging at the hem of his black jacket, but he didn’t flinch. He stared at the building like he had stared at the files, with precision and murder in his veins.

Hongjoong moved to stand beside him.

“How do we get in?” he whispered.

Seonghwa lifted his hand and pointed to a narrow service entrance on the west side, nearly invisible unless you already knew to look for it. A keypad glimmered faintly under a broken security light and he simply stepped forward, typed a code Hongjoong didn’t recognize, then forced a secondary lever open with a metal tool he’d pulled from inside his sleeve, a soft mechanical sigh as the service door eased open.

Yeosang stared. “How did you-?”

Seonghwa didn’t even look back. “I helped build the original version of this lock.”

Hongjoong’s throat tightened, his mind, unhelpfully, whispered that he was made to break people, no wonder he can break buildings too.

“Inside,” Seonghwa said.

They slipped into the maintenance corridor, lit only by the emergency strips along the floor. The air smelled like dust and metal and the kind of sterilized darkness he had breathed his entire youth.

Halfway down the hall, Seonghwa stopped. “This is where we split.”

Hongjoong turned sharply. “No, not yet.”

“You want your rebellion to die in the lobby?” Seonghwa asked, tone almost soft. “We split.”

San whispered behind them, “He’s right…”

Mingi swallowed. “We have to get to the servers fast.”

Seonghwa faced Hongjoong fully now. In the low blue light, his expression looked carved from stone, hard, beautiful and inevitable.

“You go to the third floor,” Seonghwa instructed. “Mingi will disable the camera loops. Wooyoung and San take point. Yunho and Jongho keep you alive.”

“And you?” Mingi asked, barely containing the worry crawling up his spine.

“The second floor, to my father.”

“And you’re going alone?”

Seonghwa’s jaw ticked. “Some doors should be opened by only one set of hands.”

Hongjoong felt the weight of that, heavy and cold. “Seonghwa,” he said quietly. “If you go up there-”

“I won’t die.”

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

A charged silence. Seonghwa’s eyes flickered away first and Hongjoong hated that, hated how much he cared, hated how every second felt like a thread tied around his ribs, tightening with every breath Seonghwa took.

But there was a mission.

A country on the brink, a war already ignited.

No time for a conversation. Later, he told himself, if they live.

“Minjae and the other outlaws will strike from the outside, you trigger the broadcast and I handle the second floor.” Seonghwa said.

Hongjoong nodded, slow and reluctant, like every muscle was protesting. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll do it your way.”

Seonghwa stepped closer, too close and lowered his voice.

“Hongjoong.”

The name sounded different in his mouth.

“Lead them,” Seonghwa said. “All the way. Don’t you dare stop.”

Hongjoong swallowed the burn in his chest. “And you?”

Seonghwa reached into his jacket, pulled out another magazine, loaded it into the handgun with a single clean motion.

“Me?” He glanced toward the stairs leading up to the second floor. “I finish the past.”

He moved then, silent anf sure, a shadow cutting through deeper shadow.

And Hongjoong felt it, sharp and blinding, the fear of losing him, the anger of even caring and the fire of wanting him alive more than anything else in the world, but he couldn’t say it, not now.

He turned to his men.

“Let’s move.”

They nodded, San fierce, Wooyoung grinning with death wish excitement, Yunho steady, Jongho unreadable, Yeosang tense and Mingi clutching his kit like a promise.

As they headed for the third floor, Hongjoong looked back once, but Seonghwa was already gone. A ghost, walking toward the final door he would ever open as a son.

The second floor was quiet, too quiet.

Not the quiet of an empty building, the quiet of something held still, something waiting. Seonghwa moved through the corridor with steps so light the polished floor didn’t dare echo them back. The lights hummed overhead, a low mechanical drone that only sharpened his focus.

He reached the corner and two guards stood outside a reinforced door, his father’s office.

They were tense, guns slung across their chests, murmuring to each other in bored monotony. Boredom was the easiest thing in the world to exploit.

Seonghwa stepped forward. One breath in, one breath out.

His hand snapped around the first guard’s mouth just as his arm drove into the man’s throat, a silent collapse. He used the body to pivot, slide and hook the second guard by the collar. The man didn’t even manage a sound before Seonghwa’s elbow crashed into the base of his skull.

Two bodies down, laid out gently as if asleep.

He straightened, adjusted the cuff of his sleeve and finally let himself look at the door.

Minister Park Jaesung never liked anything plain, even the door looked expensive.

Seonghwa pulled the master pin from his pocket, sleek metal, the kind of thing that felt like an extension of his own hand and slid it into the slot hidden beneath the lock plate. The mechanism gave way with a quiet, obedient click.

He pushed the door open and walked into a room that did not match the world outside its walls.

Mahogany floors, imported rugs, a chandelier dripping crystal light and a glass-topped desk with carved gold trim.

Minister Park always needed his power to shine.

The man himself sat behind that monstrous desk, pen in hand and posture immaculate. He didn’t look up immediately, of course he didn’t.

Seonghwa stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

Only then did Park Jaesung raise his gaze and smiled coldly. Familiar as a blade pressed to the throat.

“It took you long enough,” the Minister said. “I expected you sooner.”

Seonghwa felt nothing, absolutely nothing, just a steady awareness of his own breathing and the faint beating of his pulse at his wrist.

His father’s presence didn’t crack him, didn’t move him, it only irritated him.

He walked further into the room.

“You’ve redecorated,” Seonghwa said, his voice low, even. “New desk.”

“I got a raise,” the Minister replied smoothly. “I suppose I should congratulate you. Escaping twice the same place in one lifetime, few men manage that.”

The jab slid off Seonghwa like water. “You put the guards in the wrong positions.”

His father chuckled. “Still arrogant.”

“And you're still incompetent,” Seonghwa answered.

The smile on Park Jaesung’s face didn’t falter, but something behind his eyes shifted, the smallest flicker of irritation.

“You know why you’re here,” the Minister said. “Sit.”

Seonghwa didn’t move. “No.”

“You’re still my son.”

“I was your experiment,” Seonghwa corrected. “Don’t rewrite history.”

His father leaned back, fingers interlacing. “History belongs to those who survive it. Something you should have learned long ago.”

Seonghwa’s jaw tightened just barely. A movement small enough no one else would have noticed, but his father did.

The Minister stood, slow and graceful, and walked around the desk. His shoes made no sound, a habit Seonghwa had subconsciously mirrored. The man stopped in front of him, studying the face that mirrored his own only in bone structure.

“You could have been great, Seonghwa,” Park said. “Unmatched and unstoppable. You were perfect.” A beat, a pause filled with ghosts. “But you threw it all away.”

Seonghwa looked him dead in the eye.

“I didn’t throw anything away,” he said. “I walked out.”

“And went where?” Park scoffed. “To rebels? To criminals? You’re still chasing shadows you don’t understand.”

“I understand enough to know they’re human.” His voice sharpened now, honed into something dangerous. “Something you never were.”

The Minister’s lips curled. “Listen to yourself.”

“I have,” Seonghwa said quietly. “For years.”

“You think joining them will erase what you did?” Park asked. “Your ghosts will follow you whether you crawl back to me or die in their streets.”

Seonghwa stepped closer, his voice falling to a near whisper. “My ghosts follow me,” he said, “because you built them.”

Something cracked then, not in Seonghwa, but in his father. The Minister’s face tightened, the mask slipping enough to expose disdain.

“You want to know why Facility 8 was built?” Park asked. “Because you needed it, you were becoming-”

“Human?” Seonghwa cut in.

“No,” Park said. “Weak.”

The word landed like an old bruise reopening and Seonghwa finally felt something. He exhaled, long and quiet and stepped back.

“You know,” he said, voice steady, “I came here for one thing.”

Park tilted his head. “And that is?”

Seonghwa let the truth fall between them like a blade. “To end this.”

The Minister lifted his chin, composure snapping back into place like armor falling over steel.

“And what exactly,” Park Jaesung asked slowly, “do you think you are going to end, Seonghwa?”

“You,” Seonghwa said simply.

Park took a step forward, cold confidence returning like a second skin.

“You forget,” he murmured, “that you are standing in my building, you forget the power I have, you forget who raised you, who molded you and who gave you the skills you flaunt against me.”

Seonghwa didn’t waver. “You didn’t give me anything worth keeping.”

A faint tremor moved through his father’s lip, half fury and half disbelief. “I built you from the ground up.”

“You destroyed me from the ground up,” Seonghwa corrected, stepping closer, their faces only inches apart now. “You tore a child apart and called it training. Torture wasn’t discipline, it was your language and I learned to speak it too well.”

Park scoffed. “You were a weapon, a magnificent one. You were meant to cleanse this country of filth.”

“By creating ghosts?” Seonghwa asked. “By turning men into hollow shells? You had me torture rebels who wanted freedom for their children.”

“And you executed your orders flawlessly,” Park snapped. “Until you didn’t.”

Seonghwa didn’t blink. “Until I realized you were the monster the rebels were fighting.”

The Minister raised a hand as if to strike him, an old reflex, but stopped when he saw Seonghwa’s expression, impassive and unshaken, bored even.

“You don’t scare me anymore,” Seonghwa said quietly.

The words hit harder than any weapon.

“You think joining those filthy idealists makes you righteous?” his father spat. “You think they’ll forgive you when they learn what you did? When they learn whose son you are? They’ll kill you and you know it.”

Seonghwa thought of Hongjoong and the others, of their fire and their belief, and how they still trusted him after learning his truth.

“I’m not asking for forgiveness,” Seonghwa said. “I’m asking for justice.”

Park barked out a sharp laugh. “Justice? From you?”

Something inside Seonghwa snapped into perfect, terrifying focus. “I escaped seven facilities you built to break me,” he said. “Seven.” The Minister's smile faltered. “I didn’t fail to escape the eighth,” Seonghwa continued softly. “I stayed.”

Park Jaesung blinked hard. “Why?” he demanded.

“Because I deserved it,” Seonghwa said. “I deserved to rot in the silence I created and that’s why you will never win,” Seonghwa finished. “Because you mistake survival for victory.”

Park glared, venom dripping. “You’re delusional.”

“No,” Seonghwa said, stepping past him toward the door. “But you are, by believing that it's control means happiness.”

“You think this country could function on happiness?” his father said. “You think stability is built on mercy? That’s what makes you dangerous, Seonghwa. You learned the methods, you mastered the techniques, but you never learned the philosophy.”

Park stepped around his desk, hands clasped behind his back as he began to pace, like a lecturer in his favorite classroom.

“We kill rebels because rebels are infections,” he said. “They spread faster than ideas and faster than hope. You remove infections before they become epidemics. We torture them because pain is the fastest teacher,” the Minister continued. “Most of them are cowards. They fold once their pride is peeled away.”

Seonghwa’s jaw twitched.

“And the workers?” Park went on. “You think they deserve more than minimum wage? They are replaceable, they exist to keep the country functioning. They do not need leisure or comfort, or opinions.”

Park sighed like he was explaining kindergarten arithmetic.

“If we pay them more, we lose profit. If we give them rights, we lose control. If we let them speak freely, we lose order.” He glanced at Seonghwa. “Order is worth any price.”

This time Seonghwa let the silence breathe, let it coil tight enough to choke the room.

“You think the people want freedom?” he scoffed. “No, they want to survive and they will obey anything that guarantees it. Fear is stable, fear is predictable and efficient.” He angled his head toward his son, eyes sharp. “That is why I made you what you are.”

Seonghwa finally looked up slowly, like raising his gaze was an act of violence in itself. “What I am,” he said quietly, “is the result of your mistake.”

Park laughed at that, harsh, humorless and unhinged. “Mistake?” he echoed. “No, Seonghwa. You were my masterpiece.”

A beat of silence and then Seonghwa stepped forward. one, precise step, his shadow cutting across the polished floor.

His voice was calm enough to freeze marrow.

“You call killing civilians ‘order.’ You call crushing hope ‘stability.’ You call torture ‘teaching,” and you call breaking your own child an achievement.”

Something flickered in his father's eyes, the smallest fracture.

“And for what?” Seonghwa continued. “So you could stand here in your polished suit, pretending you’re a god? You’re not.” He tilted his head. “You’re a coward with power.”

Park’s nostrils flared. “You will regret speaking to me like that.”

“I regret much worse,” Seonghwa said. “But talking back to you isn’t one of them.”

“You forget what I can do.”

“No,” Seonghwa said. “I remember too well.”

“And you forget,” Park hissed, leaning in, “that the workers, the rebels and the poor, they exist under our boots because we put them there.”

“You talk about boots,” he said quietly, “as if you won’t be under mine soon.”

Park blinked, then smiled a slow, venomous twist.

“You can kill guards, you can break cuffs, you can pretend you have a conscience, but you will never kill me, Seonghwa and not because you can’t.” He leaned in. “But because you’re still my son.”

And that, more than anything, was what made Seonghwa speak next.

He didn’t yell, didn’t snarl, didn’t tremble, he just whispered it, the promise he had been forming since the moment he first bled under this man’s orders.

“I am your weapon,” he said. “But I’m done being turned against the innocent.” He let the words hang, sharp and absolute.

Jaesung gave a soft, patronizing chuckle.

“You ran to those little rebels and played soldier for them. Did you really think rebellion would give your life meaning? You were made for more, I built you for more.”

Built like a weapon, like a machine and not like a son.

“You were supposed to finish what we started,” Park said, voice sharpening. “To cleanse this nation of its filth, to break those who threaten order, to keep the country upright and instead.” He gestured vaguely, dismissively. “You disgraced us. Let yourself be taken, hid in a hole like a scared animal. I spent millions on you. Years of training, eight facilities and each one you threw away.”

Seonghwa crossed the remaining distance quietly and calmly, like a shadow taking form.

Jaesung didn’t notice until Seonghwa was standing directly in front of the desk.

Then he finally leaned back, eyes narrowing. “…You wouldn’t dare.”

Seonghwa’s voice was soft enough to be mistaken for gentleness. “I should’ve done this the day I learned what you made me.”

Park laughed, sharp and incredulous.

“You won’t kill me. You’ve had twenty five years to try and you never once did. Because you are mine, because even at your worst, you obey-”

Seonghwa moved, a single, fluid motion.

No hesitation, no noise and no mercy.

The knife slipped beneath Park Jaesung’s ribs with surgical precision, clean, deep and final.

The sound he made was a soft, strangled choke, barely human.

His father's hand scrambled weakly at Seonghwa’s sleeve, desperation replacing arrogance.

“You-” he gasped, blood bubbling. “Ungrateful-”

Seonghwa leaned down, voice steady as steel.

“You created a monster,” he whispered. “You don’t get to complain when it finally turns around. Be grateful I let you die fast.” He twisted the knife just enough for his father’s body to sag, knees buckling. “You should’ve killed me when you had the chance.”

The Minister's eyes widened and then dulled. The body slid sideways off the chair and hit the floor with a dull, heavy thud.

Seonghwa stood there a moment, breathing evenly. Watching the life drain from the man who had drained so many others. No smile, no tears, no triumph, just release. A clean, hollow quiet.

He wiped the blade on the Minister’s expensive coat, sheathed it and finally exhaled.

Then he stepped over the corpse and walked out of the office without looking back.

The stairs ended in a long corridor lit by flickering fluorescent strips, the kind of light that turned everything sickly and gray. Seonghwa could still feel the warmth of his father’s blood drying on his gloves as he walked, not rushing or lingering, but moving with the same quiet purpose he’d been carved into since childhood.

He heard them before he saw them.

They were already at the broadcasting station, a narrow room with a wall of monitors and a central computer that buzzed under the weight of its own power. The screen was filled with the files they’d collected, already broadcasting them. The Outlaws stood in a half-circle around it, shoulders tense, waiting for something to ignite.

When Seonghwa stepped into the doorway, not one of them noticed him at first, but Hongjoong did almost instantly.

His gaze snapped to Seonghwa with a jolt of electricity, a flicker of fear, recognition and relief.

Seonghwa didn’t say a word.

He walked forward, stepped around Yunho and San as if slipping through smoke, and held out a dark, rectangular device, matte black, military-grade and blunt as a punch.

Mingi blinked at it, then blinked again. “You- what is that?”

“What will get the people moving,” Seonghwa said simply, his voice was flat and steady. “Connect it.”

Mingi hesitated only a heartbeat, then snatched the device with a sudden, fierce determination. “You heard the man, move.”

The Outlaws scrambled.

Hongjoong slid beside Seonghwa without touching him, but close enough for Seonghwa to feel the heat radiating from his skin.

Before Hongjoong could ask what the device holded, the computer let out a sound, a deep, low click, like a lock snapping open. The monitors flickered, static washing over the room in thin, violent waves.

Mingi’s hands flew across the keys, connecting wire to port, port to terminal and then, a voice crackled through the speakers.

Cold and authoritative.

Park Jaesung. Even dead, his voice hit like a slap.

“We kill rebels because rebels are infections.”

The room froze and every Outlaw turned rigid, breath caught halfway up their throats.

“We torture them because pain is the fastest teacher.”

Wooyoung closed his eyes slowly, jaw clenching like he might crack a tooth.

“Most of them are cowards. They fold once their pride is peeled away.”

A trembling silence crawled across the room. San’s hand pressed flat against Yeosang’s back, grounding. Yunho’s fist tightened around a metal chair until it groaned.

“If we pay them more, we lose profit. If we give them rights, we lose control. If we let them speak freely, we lose order.”

Hongjoong’s eyes darkened, something violent and bright lighting behind them like a flame finding oxygen.

The broadcast system beeped, meaning Park’s voice now echoed across every screen in the country. In the cities, in the factories, in the dorms and in the government offices.

The truth was out.

And the Outlaws stood there, breathless, trembling and electrified, while Seonghwa remained a stone in the center of the storm.

Hongjoong exhaled shakily and murmured, almost to himself, “…You did it.”

For a fraction of a second, Seonghwa’s eyes flicked to him, but it was softer than anything he’d ever shown and then the alarms began to scream.

They looked out the window and saw it, the streets moving.

People, hundreds of them.

Men and women stepping out of gray buildings like shadows peeling off the walls, all looking up, all having heard the broadcast, all trembling with a fury so raw it felt like heat radiating off the pavement.

One by one, windows opened, doors slammed, voices rose and the Outlaws inside the ministry felt it in their bones, the shift, the awakening.

Hongjoong didn’t waste another breath. “Move, now.”

They sprinted, down the stairs and across the corridor where alarms wailed like sick mechanical animals.

Seonghwa moved ahead without a single misstep, cutting corners with inhuman precision, leading them down the exact path with the least guards, he didn’t even slow down to check.

By the time they burst through the first floor and out the front doors, the others were already there.

Minjae and the rest of The Outlaws.

And behind them, the city, the entire city. Workers still in their uniforms, mothers holding their children, old men with shaking hands and teenagers standing shoulder to shoulder.

All glaring at the ministry, all glaring at the symbol of the country that had crushed them.

The crowd was so thick Hongjoong couldn’t see where it ended. Their anger vibrated through the street like sound before thunder. Something primal, something ancient, something that terrified him and thrilled him all at once.

“These people…” San whispered, voice barely audible. “They’re-”

“Awake,” Yeosang finished, staring with wide, disbelieving eyes.

Wooyoung let out a breath that shook. “This… is a fucking army.”

They stepped into the open together, the eight of them and the people turned.

For a moment, Hongjoong felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.

Faces twisted and bodies pressed forward. The entire night seemed to inhale at once, the air thick as smoke. It didn’t feel like victory yet, it felt like the edge of a knife.

Mingi whispered, “They look like they’re about to tear the entire city apart…”

Hongjoong swallowed hard.

Seonghwa stood completely still beside him, expressionless, but Hongjoong noticed how the man’s gaze flicked across the crowd with calculated precision.

Measuring escape routes, threats, weak points and opportunities. A soldier to the bone, a ghost in a city waking up for the first time, a torch thrown into dry grass.

And when the first person stepped closer, a middle-aged man with shaking hands and fury wet in his eyes, Hongjoong braced himself.

Because this wasn’t just rebellion anymore, it was ignition and they were standing in the center of the wildfire.

Hongjoong took one step toward his people, but a hand clamped around his arm.

Seonghwa.

Before Hongjoong could ask, the man pulled him through the chaos with surgical precision, weaving through bodies like they were pieces on a board only he understood. Hongjoong barely kept up, stumbling twice, but Seonghwa didn’t even look back at him.

He dragged him straight to the SUV.

Then, without a word, Seonghwa climbed onto the hood with the grace of someone scaling a cliff and jerked his chin, ordering Hongjoong to follow.

Hongjoong blinked. “What are you doing?”

“Up,” Seonghwa said, tone flat. “Now.”

Hongjoong climbed.

The city roared around them. People shouting, soldiers pushing, smoke rising and Seonghwa, calm as dawn, reached into his pocket.

He clipped something to Hongjoong’s collar. A tiny black device, almost invisible.

“Speak,” Seonghwa said. “Your revolution is finally here.”

Hongjoong stared. “What?”

And the word didn’t just leave his mouth, it thundered from the ministry speakers, from the street corners and from the roofs.

From the old, rusting public announcement system the government had abandoned years ago.

Seonghwa had hijacked the entire city’s sound network and he’d given Hongjoong a mic. He’d given him a platform.

Hongjoong’s breath caught, the sound of it echoing across every street.

He looked at Seonghwa, The Ghostmaker. The man who had been a weapon, a prisoner, a myth. Now standing beside him, eyes sharp, expression unreadable, giving him the power to ignite everything.

“Lead them,” Seonghwa murmured, low enough only Hongjoong could hear. “They’re listening.”

And when Hongjoong looked out, thousands of faces stared back, waiting and burning, ready to fight.

He inhaled, a sharp, shaky thing. Then he spoke and the city trembled.

“Look at yourselves.”

His voice boomed across the square, echoing off concrete, rattling the rusting metal of government vans. People froze and listened.

“You walked home every night believing you were powerless, you believed their rules were normal, you believed the bruises on your bodies were just part of life, you believed silence was survival.” He shook his head. “You were wrong.”

He heard gasps and murmurs. Someone even started crying.

“You weren’t living,” Hongjoong said, his voice tightening. “You were enduring.”

A low ripple moved through the crowd like the first wave of a storm.

“These men,” he gestured to the Outlaws beside him, down the street, scattered among the bodies of soldiers they’d fought, distinctively dressed in black. “And every person who dared to dream… we were called criminals.”

His jaw clenched.

“But the only criminals in this country are the ones who sit in warm buildings and call your suffering ‘order.’ They starved you, they beat you, they took your children, they burned your homes, they told you it was for your own good.”

His voice fractured on the last words, but the speakers carried it strong.

“And you believed them because they had the guns.” He spread his arms. “We’re done believing.”

Shouts and cheers, anger boiling upward. Hongjoong continued, voice sharper now.

“Tonight, we showed you the truth. We broke into their ministry, we stole their files and we blasted their words across every screen.”

He pointed upward to the huge screens flickering with Park Jaesung’s voice making someone throw a stone at a propaganda poster.

“They tortured your neighbors,” Hongjoong said. “They made prisons and called them hospitals, they broke people down and called it therapy, they made monsters and then hid them from the world.”

His eyes slid to Seonghwa who didn’t move, but something in the crowd shifted when they saw the man standing beside him, the same man they saw in the files on television. Fear, awe, confusion and recognition.

“But even their strongest weapon,” Hongjoong said quietly, “chose freedom.”

For the first time, Seonghwa looked up just for a second and the city saw him.

“They told you you were alone,” Hongjoong continued. “But look around!” He pointed at the crowd. “You are thousands.” The earth itself seemed to vibrate with their voices. “You are stronger than their walls, stronger than their soldiers and stronger than their fear.”

A woman in the crowd screamed, “What do we do?!”

Hongjoong didn’t hesitate. “You rise.” A ripple tore through the crowd like lightning splitting a tree. “You take back your homes, you protect each other, you fight for your children, you stand together because they can’t silence all of us.”

His fists clenched at his sides, trembling, not with fear but rage so old it felt ancestral.

“They want obedience?” His voice cracked into a shout. “Give them hell.”

The crowd roared so loudly the buildings shook. Hongjoong leaned forward, breath sharp and burning.

“This is your country. Your life and your freedom.” Then, quieter, letting the hush settle like dust. “Tonight… you are no longer afraid.”

The square erupted.

Screams, cheers and weeps. Fists raised, people shoving forward like a wave.

The spark had caught, the fire had begun.

Hongjoong exhaled shakily and without looking he felt Seonghwa’s presence beside him, steady, grounded and terrifyingly calm.

Hongjoong didn’t know why the sight of him there made his heart jump. He didn’t have time to think about it.

The revolution had just started and the night was far from over.

The reaction was instant and explosive, like the entire city had been holding its breath for years and finally exhaled fire.

People surged forward, shouting, ripping propaganda posters off walls, tossing them into already growing flames. Workers threw their work badges to the ground and stomped them until the plastic cracked. A mother lifted her child onto her shoulders and screamed something raw, primal, victorious.

And then, the soldiers moved.

A ripple of panic hit the crowd as armed units flooded in from the far end of the square, boots pounding forward through the crowd, rifles lifted, ready to crush the people back down into silence.

The streets erupted into chaos, civilians screaming, soldiers yelling orders and the smell of smoke thickening as fires spread along the edges of the square.

Hongjoong braced himself.

This was the moment, the line between revolution and massacre, but then, from the left flank, something shifted.

A handful of soldiers stopped, literally froze mid-stride, but the soldiers weren’t confused, they were waiting.

And then Hongjoong saw what they were all looking at. They weren't looking at the crowd or at the Outlaws.

They looked at Park Seonghwa.

One soldier stepped forward first, young, maybe twenty, trembling but determined. He lowered his rifle and shouted over the frenzy. “Stand down!”

The soldiers beside him hesitated only a second before following.

Their sudden halt caused a ripple through the rest of the units, stopping them mid-movement, confusion breaking their formation.

Hongjoong’s eyes widened. “What the- why are they-”

“I told you,” Seonghwa muttered beside him, eyes cold and sharp as steel. “My men would come.”

Before Hongjoong could answer, Wooyoung nearly shouted. “Your what?!”

The young soldier who had stepped forward saluted Seonghwa and his voice carried clearly. “Sir! You trained us. We haven’t forgotten what you taught us, protect civilians first, government second.”

Mingi’s jaw dropped and Yunho looked like he’d been slapped.

Yeosang whispered, “Holy shit.”

More soldiers approached, cautious and confused, seeing their own comrades refusing to attack.

“We’re here because you called,” the young soldier said, breath shaking. “You told us the truth over the phone, said tonight the people would rise.”

Another soldier, older and scarred, stepped up with a grim nod.

“Some of us joined the army hoping we’d protect the country, not hurt it. When we heard the broadcasts, we made our choice.”

Behind them, the soldiers who hadn’t been trained by Seonghwa wavered. Some lowered their guns and ome looked around helplessly, not knowing who to follow, but they didn’t fire. Not with their own comrades breaking rank in front of them.

The entire line of armed units faltered, split open by a single flaw, loyalty not to the regime, but to the man who had made them soldiers in the first place.

Hongjoong stared at Seonghwa like he’d never seen him before. “You… you did this?” he breathed.

Seonghwa didn’t look proud or satisfied. He simply answered, “I gave them a choice. The government never does.”

Wooyoung threw his hands dramatically in the air. “So let me get this straight, our Ghostmaker has been casually collecting a secret fanclub of trained soldiers this whole time and didn’t tell anyone?”

The young soldier heard that and flushed bright red. “No! We’re not, sir, we’re not his fanclub-”

“Seems like a fanclub thing to me,” Wooyoung muttered.

Even San snorted, but Hongjoong couldn’t laugh, he couldn’t speak. His heart hammered against his ribs with something close to awe, because Seonghwa wasn’t just a weapon, he wasn’t just a survivor, he was someone the regime built as a perfect tool, now tearing open the regime with his bare hands.

And now Hongjoong understood something terrifying. “The revolution isn’t ours anymore,” he whispered.

Seonghwa glanced at him, unreadable. “No,” he said. “It belongs to everyone who’s been waiting.”

And all around them, soldiers were lowering their rifles, civilians were stepping closer, the city was waking up.

The nightmare was ending and the fire was beginning.

Hongjoong braced a hand on the roof of the SUV to stay upright, absolutely breaking at how insane all of this was.

“This-” he wheezed, nearly doubling forward, “this man can’t be real!” His voice cracked with exhausted hysterics. “He got the fucking soldiers to join us, the most chaotic group of idiots in the districts!”

Wooyoung cheered at that, San slapped Jongho’s shoulder, Yunho muttered “I mean, fair,” and Mingi threw his arms upward like this was some religious revelation.

Hongjoong kept laughing, body shaking, hand over his mouth as if he could hold it back, but he couldn’t. He was laughing like someone who’d been staring at death for so long that hope felt like a punchline.

But Yeosang didn’t laugh, he was too busy watching something else.

He had been standing close enough, always quiet, always observant, to see the moment Seonghwa turned toward the sound, at Hongjoong laughing.

And Yeosang saw it clear as day.

Seonghwa’s face, usually carved from stone and discipline, flickered, just for a heartbeat.

A small exhale through his nose and the corner of his mouth betraying him. A smile, the tiniest, ghost like curve, gone almost as soon as it came.

If Yeosang hadn’t been watching, he would’ve missed it completely, but he saw the exact moment the former Ghostmaker let something soft slip through the cracks.

Hongjoong kept laughing, back arched, hands shaking with adrenaline and Seonghwa just looked at him. Like the sound hit him somewhere he didn’t know he still had.

Yeosang leaned slightly toward Wooyoung without looking away and whispered. “Oh, he’s gone.”

Wooyoung blinked. “Who? Hongjoong?”

“No,” Yeosang said, voice low and certain. “Seonghwa.”

And as Hongjoong kept laughing, breathless and alive under the burning glow of a city rising, Seonghwa’s eyes stayed on him.

The smallest smile still ghosting his lips, the kind that wasn’t meant for anyone to see, but Yeosang did and he filed it away like a secret weapon.

Because the Ghostmaker, the unbreakable one, the man who escaped eight facilities and walked through fire, had just smiled at the sound of Hongjoong laughing.

Chapter Text

For a moment, just a moment, he forgot the fire. Forgot the smoke curling around broken windows, forgot the screaming, the thunder of boots and the clatter of metal against concrete, forgot the way the night itself seemed to pulse with violence and possibility, all because Hongjoong laughed and it was so sudden, so bright, so real that it knocked something loose in Seonghwa’s chest.

A crack in old armor, a shift, a recognition.

Hongjoong’s head tipped back slightly, teeth flashing under the glow of burning signs and flickering street lamps, the sound spilling out of him like relief and defiance and triumph all braided together. Seonghwa felt his breath stutter, silently and imperceptibly, as if the sound hit somewhere he hadn’t protected properly.

He shouldn’t like it, he shouldn’t want to hear it again but there it was, undeniable, he did.

He liked seeing Hongjoong smile, he liked seeing the weight on the man’s shoulders break, even if just for a heartbeat.

He liked that he had caused it, even unintentionally, by pulling soldiers to their side, by proving the impossible could be done.

It was stupid, it was dangerous and it was already happening.

He told himself it was nothing, just the aftermath of battle, adrenaline playing tricks on worn out nerves, a glitch in the discipline he’d been trained into since childhood.

But when Hongjoong’s eyes flicked to him, wide with something like wonder, Seonghwa felt that crack widen.

His fingers tightened imperceptibly around the rifle sling and he looked away first.

He told himself it didn’t matter, that it couldn’t matter.

He wasn’t meant for softness like that, he wasn’t built to hold anything gentle and Hongjoong had a revolution to lead, not a broken weapon to steady.

So Seonghwa inhaled smoke and firelight and swallowed the strange warmth trying to live behind his ribs. He forced his heartbeat back into the cold, controlled rhythm he knew. He made his expression blank again, the faint smile already gone, as if it had never existed.

But something in him knew the truth, that it wasn’t gone, he just didn’t know what to do with it yet and above them, the riot kept growing, louder, closer and angrier, ready to tear the city open with its bare hands.

The fires spread like veins, orange, red and hungry.

Glass cracked under the heat, smoke rolled across the streets in thick, dirty clouds and the people were alive.

They tore banners down with their bare hands, smashed shining windows that had once reflected their poverty back at them. They overturned government trucks, hauled desks and chairs outside and lit them like offerings to a new world.

Seonghwa watched all of it, the chaos, the raw fury and the breaking of decades of silence, but his eyes kept flicking to Hongjoong.

The leader stood tall on top of the SUV, chest rising fast and jaw clenched tight. His expression wasn’t victory and it wasn’t pride, it was pain.

A grimace, faint but unmistakable, at the sight of citizens setting fire to anything they could reach and not because they were wrong, but because he understood what desperation made people do.

Seonghwa knew that expression, he knew the kind of man who made it.

Hongjoong wasn’t celebrating the destruction, he was grieving the world that made it necessary and then he saw it, the way Hongjoong inhaled the heavy air, shoulders squaring and lips parting.

He was going to speak again, of course he was, of course Hongjoong would try to anchor a riot with nothing but his voice.

Before the words could even leave Hongjoong’s mouth, Seonghwa was already moving. His boots cutting across broken stone, smoke curling behind him and his fingers reaching for a junction box beneath a shattered security terminal.

He didn’t say a word.

He just crouched, pulled the casing off, stripped three wires with a blade so fast the sparks barely had time to sting and connected his device.

The street cameras blinked.

Then the feed leapt outward, onto city screens, building walls and the giant monitors the government used for propaganda.

And further still, past the capital, into every province, every town and every house with an old television still clinging to a signal.

He patched the street audio next to let them hear him, because the capital wasn’t the only place drowning.

People across the country had seen the files already, watched them flicker across their living rooms with names, dates and cold signatures stamped by the Minister himself.

But documents alone weren’t enough, they needed a heart to follow, a voice and Hongjoong had one that could set a dead country on fire.

Seonghwa lifted the switch, locking the broadcast open.

For the first time, he looked up at Hongjoong not as a leader or a strategist, not even as a rebel, but as the spark of something he couldn’t yet name.

“Go on,” he murmured under his breath, almost to himself. “Let them hear you.”

Hongjoong didn’t even realize Seonghwa had moved until he didn't see him anymore, all he saw were the flames, the shattered windows and the people screaming, crying, chanting and fists raised high as the night shook beneath them.

He saw buildings the government had starved the population to build, turning to ash in minutes.

He stepped forward on top of the SUV, boots sliding on the metal roof.

Smoke burned the back of his throat and his heart hammered twice, painfully hard.

Then he screamed into the chaos.

“Enough!”

A hush spread, quick and sharp, like a blade cutting through cloth.

He didn’t know the whole country was hearing him, he didn’t know every broken television in every broken home was flickering to life, he didn’t know the cameras were pointed right at him, feeding his voice into kitchens, bars, living rooms, hospitals and factories.

He just spoke and his voice carried like fire.

“Burn it,” he said, breath shaking, rage and grief tangled in every word. “Burn every building they built on your backs, break every door that was meant to keep you small, tear down every piece of gold they stole from you, every luxury they hoarded while your children starved.”

Shouts rose at that, raw, wounded and furious, but Hongjoong raised both hands, palms open, demanding quiet.

“But listen to me, listen.” He exhaled hard, chest heaving. “Once it’s done, once their symbols fall, you stop.”

The crowd rippled, confused. Soldiers faltered and citizens froze with chairs still in their hands.

“You stop,” Hongjoong repeated, voice lower now, rough and tired. “Because this isn’t just about rage. Rage won’t rebuild your homes, rage won’t give your children rights, rage won’t protect you tomorrow.”

He looked out over the crowds of people who had forgotten what it meant to hope.

“The Domination won’t fall unless you break it,” he said. “But your lives won’t come back if you burn everything with it.”

A woman in the front lowered the rock in her hand, a man dropped a stolen monitor he was about to throw.

“We need a government, a real one. One chosen by all of you, one that serves you and one that listens.” His throat closed briefly, the weight of everything they’d lived pressing hard into his lungs. “So burn what belongs to them and not what belongs to you.”

Silence fell again and he kept going, not seeing the street cameras blinking red, not seeing the broadcast symbol, not seeing his own face on every wall mounted screen in the city.

“Tomorrow, you rise,” Hongjoong said. “You stand your ground and you make sure they never own you again.” A fire roared behind him, sparks rising like stars. “You’ve suffered enough,” he said, softer now. “This ends here. Tonight, we break and tomorrow, we build.”

The crowd erupted.

Not just in the square and not just in the capital, but across the entire fucking country.

The screens hanging from buildings flickered from Hongjoongs face to static first, then blue, then the sharp, too bright image of the President’s face filling every monitor in sight and this time Hongjoong looked.

The crowd hushed again, almost instinctively, rage simmering under the stillness.

The man looked shaken, old and cornered, like someone was holding a knife just outside the camera frame.

“Due to… recent events,” the President said, jaw tight, “I will step down from my position, effective immediately.”

A murmur swept the street like wind through dry grass.

“This nation,” he continued, face souring, “will hold emergency elections tomorrow morning and our soldiers will guide you through the process.” He looked like the words burned his mouth on the way out, like he would rather swallow glass. “And the transitional council,” he added begrudgingly, “has approved two candidates.”

The screen cut to two portraits. Two men, side by side.

Hongjoong looked for a reaction in the crowd and instead found it standing right next to him.

Seonghwa, who had somehow walked to his side without him noticing.

His expression had shifted, something cracked. His eyes widened a fraction, a breath hitched just barely.

Shock and recognition.

Hongjoong didn’t even realize he was climbing down from the SUV until his boots hit the pavement. He crossed the short distance toward Seonghwa with his chest tight and heart pounding like he was approaching something dangerous or sacred.

“Who is he?” Hongjoong asked, quiet enough that only Seonghwa could hear. “Why do you know him?”

For a moment, Seonghwa didn’t answer. The fires reflected in his eyes, turning them molten and unreadable. The riot roared around them, but the space between their bodies went still.

His voice came low, almost reluctant.

“…I knew him as a child, Mr. Lee” Seonghwa said.

Hongjoong’s brows lifted.

Seonghwa continued, gaze locked on the face on the screen, his chest rising once, slowly, as if recalling something he’d buried deep.

“He was the only one,” he murmured, “who ever defended me.”

Hongjoong blinked. “What do you mean?”

Seonghwa’s jaw clenched, the muscle ticking, an old pain pulling the line of his mouth tight.

“I remember him,” he said. “Back when I was still allowed outside my house for brief hours, back when I still thought childhood was something I’d get to keep.”

Hongjoong stayed silent, he knew better than to interrupt when Seonghwa spoke about the past.

“He went to my father once,” Seonghwa continued, voice strained at the edges. “I heard them yelling and he told him to stop training me, to let me be a child, to let me sleep and let me play.” His hands twitched at his sides, as if the memory still lived in his bones. “He stood in my father’s face and said that no child should be trained to be a soldier instead of playing.”

The fires crackled around them.

“He was the only one who ever tried,” Seonghwa finished, voice barely above the roar of the crowd. “The only one who ever saw me as something more than a weapon.”

Hongjoong swallowed hard. “Then,” he said softly, “maybe we finally have someone worth voting for.”

Seonghwa didn’t answer, but his shoulders dropped just slightly, as if a piece of the weight he carried had shifted.

Then the night settled thicker and deeper over the city, but nobody went home.

The fires still burned, not the purposeful rage of hours ago, but a slow, grieving burn like the last breaths of something ancient dying.

Shadows shook against the walls and smoke curled upward in long, exhausted ribbons.

People sat on the concrete in loose circles, clothes dusty, knees pulled to their chests, staring at nothing with the hollowed eyes of a country waking from a nightmare.

The riot had cracked something open.

Now came the part where everyone saw the wound for what it really was.

Hongjoong stood with his six men and Seonghwa nearby, close enough that he could feel the energy of the Outlaws clustered around him like a heartbeat, while his other men were scattered around.

And people approached him slowly at first, then more boldly.

A woman with soot on her face asked Hongjoong, voice trembling, “Who will you vote for?”

Hongjoong answered with a gentle firmness, “For the man who wants us alive, Mr, Lee.”

Another asked how they’d gotten into the Ministry, awe and disbelief tangled in her voice. He explained nothing specific, just enough to let hope form without giving away strategy.

Then came an old man.

He shuffled forward with a metal pot held in his thick, work worn hands, the steam rising into the cold night. He stopped in front of the Outlaws, breath unsteady, as if he’d walked miles even though he’d only crossed the street.

“You freed us,” he said and his voice cracked around the words. “We didn’t know how long you went without eating. Take this, please.”

He pushed the pot toward them before any of them could speak.

Hongjoong blinked. “Sir, you don’t have to-”

“I do,” the man said, firm. “You fought for us. Let us feed you.”

The smell hit them first. Warm rice, bits of meat and vegetables, real food, not ration sludge or the gray nutritional bricks the Ministry handed out.

Wooyoung didn’t even pretend to be normal about it. He grabbed a bowl, filled it and sat right there on the concrete in the middle of the street, cross-legged, scarfing it down like a starved animal.

Which, Hongjoong realized, they all were. They just hadn’t noticed until now.

The others followed, San first, then Yunho, then Mingi and Yeosang, then Jongho.

Hongjoong took a bowl last, mostly because his chest was too tight to breathe properly, let alone eat.

Then another old man came, limping and shaky, carrying a tray of bread. Then a woman with gray streaked hair brought soup, apologizing that it wasn’t warm enough anymore. Then a young couple came with roasted corn wrapped in cloth, apologizing that it wasn’t much. Then two teenagers dragged a crate of fruit between them.

And then, it snowballed.

Within minutes, people poured out of buildings with containers, plates, thermoses and whatever they had.

Like feeding the Outlaws was the only thing they could do, the only way they could say thank you in a language bigger than words.

The food piled higher than the whole crew of rebels could ever eat.

Wooyoung looked up mid-shoveling, cheeks full and eyebrows high. “You all should eat too,” he said, voice muffled. He gestured wildly with his bowl. “Share! Don’t just stand there watching us like we’re zoo animals, Jesus.”

People laughed, actually laughed. Softly at first, then freely, like a muscle they hadn’t used in years finally woke up.

A group of women emerged from a nearby building with enormous pots, real homemade food. Spices, broth, vegetables and meats, flavors Hongjoong hadn’t smelled since before the world went gray.

“Everyone eat!” one of them called, lifting a ladle like she was commanding an army.

“Come on, sit, sit, sit!”

Men brought tables and chairs out of shops, lining them up for elders to rest and someone rolled out blankets for the children.

The corner shop owner dragged out boxes of biscuits and sweets, setting them on a crate for the kids to grab freely, as many as they wanted.

Children squealed, hands full of sugar and parents smiled, tired but the most alive Hongjoong had ever seen them.

Hongjoong stared and felt something sharp twist in his chest, something hot and overwhelming.

It wasn’t just a riot anymore, it was a community being reborn.

Behind him, Wooyoung shoved another spoonful into his mouth and muttered, softer this time. “I forgot people could be this… good, I forgot this was possible.”

San nodded, voice thick. “They’re taking care of each other.”

Mingi wiped his mouth, eyes wide and wet. “This… I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“It feels like the world is waking up.” Jongho exhaled, long and shaky.

Yunho watched the scene with something like awe.  “Revolution looks like this,” he said quietly. “Not just the fire, but what comes after.”

Yeosang looked from the families to the fires to the food and back again, and he whispered, almost in disbelief. “They’re alive, all of them. For the first time in forever.”

Hongjoong swallowed hard because of the truth and behind him, Seonghwa stood perfectly still, watching the city he once destroyed begin to heal in ways even he hadn’t anticipated.

But he didn’t look like a ghost among the living, just a man watching a miracle he had helped ignite.

At first, people only looked at Seonghwa from a distance, not with panic or disgust, but with the stunned curiosity reserved for someone they had only ever known as a myth, a whisper used to scare children into obedience.

The Ghostmaker.

The torturer from the files, the man whose face had just appeared on every screen in the country. Yet when the citizens finally recognized him, truly recognized him, something strange happened.

They didn’t step back, they stepped closer slowly and carefully, but closer.

Hongjoong noticed the shift first.

Then Wooyoung elbowed San, mouthing “holy shit.”

Yeosang stiffened beside Jongho, Mingi and Yunho went silent.

The entire line of Outlaws watched, breath held, as the people approached Seonghwa and he stood perfectly still, spine straight, hands loose at his sides and expression unreadable, but Hongjoong could tell he was bracing for fear, bracing for blame and to be treated like the monster he had always been told he was.

Instead, an elderly woman walked right up to him. Small, with silver hair pinned back and her shawl wrapped tightly around thin shoulders. She had flour on her hands, as if she’d been cooking when the world caught fire tonight.

She reached up, her hand barely reaching Seonghwa’s jaw and she touched his face, as if he was something fragile, like he was a grandson, like he was human.

Her thumb brushed a faint scar under his cheekbone, the one left by training knives when he was too young to understand pain.

“You have endured so much, haven’t you, darling?”

Seonghwa froze.

His eyes widened a fraction, barely noticeable to anyone who didn’t know him, but the Outlaws saw it. They all saw how he didn’t flinch, how he didn’t pull away.

He just stood there, eyes locked on the woman’s soft, wrinkled face as if the concept of being touched gently simply did not compute and Hongjoong felt something twist inside him.

The woman smiled, smoothing her thumb over his cheekbone once more.

“You’re not what they said you were,” she whispered. “You saved our children tonight. That’s what matters.”

Then she stepped back and gave him a small bow. Seonghwa blinked slowly, stunned. Before he could react, small footsteps pattered toward him.

A child, maybe six or maybe seven, approached with a steaming piece of bread cupped in his hands. He held it up to Seonghwa as if presenting an offering to a god.

“This is for you,” the little boy said softly. “My mom says… you must be hungry.”

Seonghwa stared at the bread like it was a weapon he didn’t know how to disarm or a kindness he wasn’t built to withstand.

His hands didn’t move, not even an inch.

Hongjoong stepped forward, thinking maybe the boy was scared, maybe he needed encouragement, but then he saw the truth, it wasn’t the child who froze.

It was Seonghwa.

The man was utterly still, like someone had pressed pause on him, like his body remembered torture before tenderness, like the offer of food was more jarring than any knife ever could be.

The Outlaws watched with brutal intensity, no one breathed or spoke.

Wooyoung’s eyes were wide and San’s hand twitched toward Seonghwa’s shoulder.

Mingi whispered, “Is he… okay?”

Jongho shook his head slowly and Yunho swallowed hard.

Yeosang’s brows knit together, gaze softening as he murmured, “He’s never… been given anything.”

The child tilted the bread forward again, tiny voice trying its best. “It’s warm! I picked the warmest one.”

Seonghwa’s throat moved.

Then slowly, so slowly it seemed like the air itself resisted the motion, he lifted a hand and took the bread from the child’s palms, but didn't didn’t eat it, he just held it. As if trying to understand what holding something good felt like.

The boy smiled up at him, proud and then he ran back to his family, shouting. “Mom! He took it!”

Seonghwa watched him go, his expression still blank but his fingers trembling almost imperceptibly around the bread and Hongjoong felt the tremor from meters away, the others did too, because Seonghwa looked lost, utterly and profoundly unprepared for gentleness.

Hongjoong stepped closer, not touching him or crowding him, just close enough that Seonghwa could feel someone beside him.

“Hey,” he said quietly, eyes steady on the trembling hand. “You’re safe.”

Seonghwa didn’t look at him, but the words landed, somewhere deep, because his shoulders loosened by a fraction, the first visible sign that the night’s weight wasn’t crushing him entirely.

Hongjoong stayed close, a steady presence, but someone else approached. Someone who had never approached Seonghwa without tension crackling between them.

Wooyoung.

He stopped a step in front of Seonghwa, hands stuffed into the pockets of his battered black pants, hair wind-tousled from climbing buildings and running through smoke. His eyes, sharp and expressive, always saying too much, looked unusually uncertain.

“Hey,” he started, voice softer than Seonghwa had probably ever heard from him and exhaled shakily, glancing around at the lingering fires, the people eating, the makeshift tables and the Outlaws finally resting. Then he looked back at Seonghwa with something almost raw. “I, uh… really didn’t like you,” he said bluntly.

San, several meters away, made a faint choking noise, but Wooyoung ignored him.

“I mean seriously. You were rude, snappy, smug as hell and anytime you talked it felt like you were five seconds from calling us all idiots.”

Seonghwa didn’t blink and he didn’t deny it, didn’t defend himself. He just waited.

Wooyoung cleared his throat.

“But tonight…” His voice faltered, steadying again with visible effort. “Tonight you saved a lot of people. Kids, families, us and… that means a lot.”

Seonghwa’s expression didn’t change but something in him stilled, like he was listening in a way he didn’t allow himself to listen often.

Wooyoung shifted his weight from one foot to the other, eyes dropping to Seonghwa’s hands, still holding that piece of warm bread like it was a live thing.

“I know what you did before,” Wooyoung continued, quieter. “And I know it doesn’t just go away, I know saying ‘thank you’ doesn’t fix anything.” His throat bobbed. “But I’m saying it anyway.”

Seonghwa blinked once, slow and almost mechanical, as if the words confused him more than challenged him.

Wooyoung took a nervous step closer. “Thank you,” he said. “For saving us, for helping Joong and for… not being the person they forced you to be.”

Seonghwa’s voice came low and rough, scarce from use. “You don’t owe me gratitude.”

“Maybe not, but I owe you honesty.” He hesitated and then added. “And I’m sorry for how I talked to you at the base, for assuming you didn’t care, for not… seeing you.”

Seonghwa looked down at him, really looked and Wooyoung froze under the intensity of it. For a moment they stood like that, a soldier and a rebel, smoke drifting around them, the quiet buzz of a rebuilding crowd humming in the background.

Then Seonghwa lowered the bread and his fingers brushed Wooyoung’s shoulder just barely, a ghost of contact but for Seonghwa, it might as well have been a confession.

“You saw exactly what I wanted you to see,” he murmured.

Wooyoung’s breath caught. “That’s not true anymore,” he whispered.

Something softened at the edge of Seonghwa’s eyes and Hongjoong who was watching from just out of sight, felt something warm coil in his chest.

This was human.

As dawn edged closer, the fires died down, leaving behind ash, melted plastic and the sound of weary breaths. Families curled together on sidewalks, soldiers, those following Seonghwa, stood guard beside citizens.

The Outlaws sat in a loose circle, sharing the last of the food gifted to them and Seonghwa stood slightly apart, but not alone.

For the first time in years, the night ended with hope instead of dread.

Elections would happen in the morning, the president was gone, the country was bruised but breathing and Seonghwa remained.

The sun rose slowly and carefully, as if afraid to disturb what the night had transformed.

A soft gold bled over the rooftops, turning the smoke into something almost gentle. For a moment, the entire capital held its breath. People blinked against the light like they hadn’t seen dawn in years, maybe they hadn’t, not like this.

As the fires had burned themselves out, ash drifted like gray snow.

Chairs, papers, broken signs and cracked pavement, all of it lay still under the newborn morning. No cars moved and no engines revved.

The whole city sat on the streets as if welded to the concrete by exhaustion and shock and something like rebirth.

Some curled against each other, some stared at their trembling hands, some leaned against walls with red-rimmed eyes, whispers of “we’re free” and “what now?” floating like prayer.

And then, a crackle.

Sharp and abrupt, slicing through the quiet like a bone snapping, soldiers’ walkies.

They all lifted their heads at once, the simultaneous flinch of a population still half convinced punishment was coming. Short bursts of static followed, then orders spoken in clipped, urgent voices. 

“All citizens should report to designated voting centers. Help them move to local schools for emergency elections. Maintain calm, repeat: maintain calm. All units distribute pamphlets immediately.”

Across the capital, military trucks rolled in, not tanks or armored vehicles, just old green transports rattling over the asphalt, but instead of weapons they carried boxes.

Stack after stack of glossy pamphlets, printed hastily but clearly, two faces, two names and two columns of political ideals.

The soldiers hopped down, not with guns raised, but holding papers, walking through the crowds of citizens who watched them with suspicion sharp enough to cut.

They handed out pamphlets, placing them gently in hands that had spent the night clenched in fear and fury.

One soldier knelt to hand a copy to an elderly man sitting on the curb, another passed them to a mother holding her child and a third left a stack beside a group of teens who had thrown rocks only hours before.

There were no shouts or threats, not even commands. Just the shuffle of boots and the whisper of paper, the stunned silence of a population seeing government personnel behave like servants instead of oppressors for the first time in their lives.

The capital, once gray and suffocating, felt suspended between devastation and possibility.

And as the sun climbed higher, washing the city in clean morning light, it was impossible to ignore one truth woven into the air like a second dawn, this wasn’t the end, this was the moment before the first real breath.

The moment a country realized it had to rise together.

Soldiers walked the streets like ghosts in the new morning light, not shouting orders, not dragging people away, simply guiding.

A strange, unfamiliar choreography.

“Please retrieve your identification cards,” they repeated. “Proceed to your designated school.”

Please, not now or move or hands where I can see them, but please.

Citizens rose from sidewalks and doorsteps, blinking, stiff and clutching each other as if afraid the nightmare might return if they let go. Families walked in groups, holding IDs the way someone holds fragile glass, stepping around debris, fires turned to ash, overturned trash bins, the broken remains of government propaganda.

Hongjoong walked with his men through the slow moving river of bodies, Seonghwa beside them, silent and unreadable, but strangely present.

A run down school appeared at the end of the street. Graffiti stained walls, windows cracked and a playground with one rusted swing still moving from the wind left by last night’s chaos.

A young mother stopped at the gate. She grimaced, pain and disbelief tightening her mouth as she looked at the peeling paint, the broken steps, the collapsed railing by the entrance.

“This is where my son studies,” she murmured. “God… they made children learn in this?”

Before she could say more, a soldier, rough looking and tired, but gentle, approached and handed her a pamphlet.

She hesitated, then took it and Hongjoong’s eyes flicked down to the page in her hands.

Two faces and two columns of promises.

His gaze skimmed the upper side, economic projections, taxation shifts, “growth incentives” that said nothing and meant even less.

Then down. Mr. Lee Janghwan.

The only person Seonghwa had ever admitted defended him and beneath his picture it had his campaign.

“Immediate restoration of all public schools. Medical access for every district. Reversal of forced labor policies. Abolition of containment facilities. Absolute transparency of government spending. Protection of children’s rights.”

Fix the schools, fix the hospitals and free the people.

Real things, human things.

Hongjoong’s throat tightened.

This was the first time the country had seen a promise that wasn’t a threat dressed as a law.

Next to him, Seonghwa was stone still and unreadable, but something inside him bristled, softened, complicated.

As the crowd flowed toward the school entrance, a small boy tugged at his mother’s sleeve, pointing at the pamphlet. “Mom… he looks kind.”

The mother nodded, voice breaking. “I hope he is, baby.”

Hongjoong felt the air shift just a fraction, but enough that his chest tightened. That dangerous, powerful thing had started to bloom and the Outlaws stood right in the middle of it, between an old world dying behind them and a new one about to be born.

Inside, the school smelled like dust and old wood and years of neglect.

Paint peeled in strips along the hallways and fluorescent lights flickered with a tired buzz. Someone had propped open classroom doors with bricks because the hinges had rusted straight through.

And still, people lined up, quietly and determined.

Holding their IDs like talismans.

Hongjoong entered the classroom designated for his district, his six Outlaws and Seonghwa waiting by the doorway, giving him space.

A woman behind a desk checked his ID with trembling hands, then slid a single folded slip of paper toward him.

The ballot.

“Next.”

Hongjoong walked to the booth, nothing more than a cardboard divider on a cracked desk and sat.

For a moment, he didn’t move.

The paper was so light, so absurdly light for something that could rewrite the country. His thumb brushed over the names, over Mr. Lee’s printed promise to rebuild what had been broken. His own breath felt too loud in his ears and he lifted his eyes.

Through the gap in the divider, he could see the hallway, see Seonghwa standing with his back straight, hands behind him, posture sharp but calm.

Watching the corridor, silent and alert. Protective in a way he’d never admit. A man who once broke rebellions, now the one who made this new one possible.

Hongjoong lowered his gaze to the ballot again and his throat tightened because the truth hit him like a quiet earthquake, that none of this would have happened without Seonghwa.

The files, the proof, the stream, the soldiers who switched sides, the fearlessness that had sparked something in the people, the shot that saved a young Outlaw.

The knife, the fire and the impossible precision.

Seonghwa had been the ghost that haunted the regime and the weapon that shattered it.

Hongjoong marked his vote. A clean, straight line through the circle beside Lee Janghwan. Then he folded the paper and walked back out into the hallway, pushing the ballot into the box with a steady hand.

When he stepped toward the Outlaws again, his eyes found Seonghwa’s, just for a second.

Seonghwa’s expression didn’t change, still controlled, still proper and still unreadable, but Hongjoong understood something then, that this man didn’t just make a revolution happen, he’d chosen to stand on this side of it and that, that meant everything.

They walked back together.

Out of the school and into the street that had been theirs all night, the same cracked asphalt, the same burned out marks where fires had once roared, the same buildings looming overhead like tired sentinels. The city hadn’t healed yet, but it had woken up.

People were already gathering again, but not running this time, not shouting, only waiting.

Someone had dragged a large monitor from a storefront and wired it to a generator. Another leaned against a wall, its screen spider cracked but still working. A few smaller TVs sat on crates, on car hoods, on overturned tables. Screens everywhere, glowing softly in the gray light of early morning.

Citizens stood shoulder to shoulder. Some held hands, some held children against their chests and others sat directly on the concrete, backs against one another, exhaustion etched deep into their faces.

The Outlaws stopped at the edge of it all.

Hongjoong felt it again, that strange, overwhelming weight. Not command this time, responsibility, yes, but also something gentler. These people weren’t looking to him to lead them anymore.

They were waiting with him.

San crouched near the curb, elbows on his knees. Jongho leaned against a streetlight, arms crossed, eyes sharp but calm. Yunho stood tall, scanning instinctively even though there was nothing left to fight. Yeosang lingered close to Hongjoong’s side, quiet as always, watching faces more than screens.

Wooyoung sat down right on the pavement, stretching his legs out and letting out a long breath. “If I pass out, wake me when history happens.”

Mingi snorted softly, then sobered. “You think they’ll actually show it live?”

“They have to,” Jongho said. “Too many eyes and too many cameras.”

Hongjoong didn’t answer, he only stood there, hands loose at his sides, gaze lifted to the largest screen across the street and Seonghwa stood beside him. Close enough that Hongjoong could feel his presence without looking, close enough that the space between them felt intentional.

The crowd quieted as the broadcast flickered, static.

Then the emblem of the national channel appeared, less polished than usual, like someone had rushed it. A low murmur passed through the people.

Minutes stretched and someone coughed, a baby cried and was hushed, a man whispered a prayer under his breath and Hongjoong swallowed.

For the first time since the riot began, since the first paper fell from the sky, he felt something dangerously close to fear. It wasn't failure, it was hope, because hope, once offered, could shatter worse than anything else.

Beside him, Seonghwa didn’t move. His eyes were on the screen, unblinking and waiting just like everyone else.

The screen didn’t change all at once.

It flickered first, static crawling up the glass like nerves finally giving out, then steadied, the emblem shrinking to the corner as text rolled in beneath it. Numbers and percentages. Districts filling one by one, slow and merciless in their clarity.

No one breathed.

Hongjoong felt the moment before it landed, the way a wave pulls back just before it breaks.

Then the final line appeared.

Lee Janghwan, elected president. 

For half a second, the city didn’t understand what it was seeing, but then, the street exploded.

Cheers tore through the air, raw and unfiltered, the kind that ripped straight out of throats that had been clenched for years. People screamed, people laughed, people sobbed openly, collapsing into one another like they’d been holding themselves upright on borrowed strength and it had finally run out.

Someone dropped to their knees and pressed their forehead to the pavement. A woman screamed his name over and over like a prayer. A man laughed so hard he cried, hands clutching his hair like he couldn’t believe it hadn’t been taken from him at the last second.

Fireworks, real ones, somehow saved for this, cracked open the sky, sharp and bright against the washed out morning. Red, white and gold bursting above gray buildings that had never deserved color before.

Hongjoong felt it hit him all at once, his knees went weak.

He laughed, a sound that surprised him with how broken and alive it was at the same time, and someone slammed into him from the side, arms tight around his shoulders. San and Yunho, then Wooyoung, yelling something incoherent and half sobbing into his neck.

“We did it,” Wooyoung choked. “Holy shit, we actually-”

Jongho didn’t say anything, he just closed his eyes and let out a breath that sounded like it had been trapped in his chest for decades. Yeosang was crying silently, tears slipping down his face without a sound, gaze fixed on the screen like it might vanish if he blinked.

Mingi wiped his face with his sleeve, laughing and crying at the same time. “We won, we actually won.”

Hongjoong turned, Seonghwa hadn’t moved.

He stood still amid the chaos, the noise washing around him without touching him, eyes locked on the screen. For a moment, Hongjoong wondered if he felt it at all, then he saw it.

Seonghwa’s hand, clenched so tightly at his side his knuckles had gone white, his jaw trembled once, just once and then his shoulders sank, the barest fraction, like he’d been carrying something impossibly heavy and had finally, finally been allowed to set it down.

Hongjoong stepped closer without thinking.

“He won,” he said softly, voice nearly lost under the cheering. “The man you told me about.”

Seonghwa nodded. “Yes.”

The word came out rougher than expected.

“He looks like he will keep his promises,” Hongjoong said.

Seonghwa didn’t answer right away, his gaze dropped from the screen to the street, to the people laughing, to the soldiers lowering their weapons, to the children climbing onto their parents’ backs to see better.

“I didn’t think…” He stopped, swallowed. “I didn’t think I’d live to see this.”

Something in Hongjoong’s chest cracked open at that.

The cheering surged again as the broadcast continued, Mr. Lee’s face appearing on screen, tired and stunned and unmistakably human. He bowed deeply, hands shaking, eyes wet as he spoke words that didn’t need to be heard to be understood.

They will rebuild, listen and change.

The crowd roared back in answer and the sound wasn’t rage. It was relief, it was grief being let out, it was a country, blinking in the sunlight, realizing the nightmare had finally ended.

Seonghwa watched the city breathe.

From where he stood, the streets below were a living thing, crowded, loud and uncontained. People still cried, still laughed too hard, still clung to one another like the ground might tilt again at any second. Screens kept flashing the same name, the same result, as if repeating it enough times would finally make it real.

It was real.

He stood with the Outlaws when it happened, shoulder to shoulder with them as the sound broke open the sky, but he didn’t hear it. The cheers faded into something distant, like noise through water. His head felt empty, not in a numb way, but quiet. No screams crawling up the back of his skull, no remembered voices begging, cursing and sobbing, no ghosts pressing their weight into his ribs.

Silence.

The realization struck him harder than any blow ever had.

He stepped back without thinking, then turned and walked.

No one noticed at first. They were too alive, too consumed by the moment they had bled for. He passed through the crowd like a shadow slipping free of its owner, moving without urgency, without destination, just forward.

He walked until the noise thinned, until the buildings grew taller, until the streetlights flickered instead of burn in the early morning.

He climbed a fire escape that groaned under his weight and kept climbing, hands sure and body automatic, until there was nowhere left to go but up.

The rooftop was bare concrete and wind, Seonghwa stepped to the edge and closed his eyes.

The breeze touched his face gently, almost curious, lifting his hair, cooling the sweat and smoke from his skin. For a moment, he let himself pretend the world had always been this simple, sky above, ground below, nothing in between demanding blood.

It’s done, he thought.

The work, the war, the debt.

He didn’t need forgiveness, he had never expected it. The dead didn’t ask him for absolution anymore, they were gone and so were their voices. He could finally stand inside his own head without flinching.

He thought of the Outlaws.

Of Wooyoung’s sharp mouth, of Jongho’s quiet steadiness, of Yeosang watching everything, always, of San’s fire, Yunho’s strength, Mingi’s restless brilliance.

And Hongjoong.

The way his smile had looked when the results appeared, disbelieving, feral and radiant. Like a man who had dragged hope out of the dirt with his bare hands and couldn’t quite believe it was still breathing.

Something in Seonghwa’s chest tightened and he opened his eyes.

The edge was still there, the drop unchanged and the option unspoken but present.

The country would wake up tomorrow different. Not healed, not yet, but awake. The papers were out, the lies had cracked and the people had chosen. He had done what he set out to do, even if no one would ever thank him for it.

The wind pressed harder against his chest, as if urging him forward and for one suspended moment, the thought came, not dramatic or desperate, bit utterly simple, as if saying he could stop now.

A sound behind him cut through the quiet, a voice. Low, careful and unarmed.

“Seonghwa.”

He didn’t turn, he didn’t flinch either, but something in his shoulders shifted, barely there, like a weapon lowering by instinct.

Hongjoong stood a few steps back, far enough not to crowd him, close enough that his presence was undeniable. The riot noise from below washed around him, but his voice stayed steady, grounded, real.

“You’re really good at disappearing,” Hongjoong said softly. “You know that?”

Seonghwa exhaled, slow and controlled.

“You shouldn’t be up here,” he replied, his voice sounded distant to his own ears. “It’s dangerous.”

Hongjoong huffed out something close to a laugh. “You just helped topple a government, forgive me if a roof doesn’t scare me.” Silence stretched between them, fragile and thin. Then Hongjoong spoke again, quieter this time. “You didn’t even say goodbye.”

Seonghwa opened his eyes.

The city was still there, the edge still inches away. Nothing had changed, except that he wasn’t alone on it anymore.

“I didn’t think…” He paused, searching for words that had never been useful to him. “I didn’t think it was necessary.”

Hongjoong stepped closer, still careful, still respecting the line Seonghwa hadn’t crossed. “It was,” he said. “To me.”

Seonghwa finally turned his head, just enough to look at him from the corner of his eye. Hongjoong looked wrecked, eyes red rimmed and adrenaline still buzzing under his skin, but alive in a way Seonghwa hadn’t known a person could be.

“You stayed before,” Hongjoong continued. “You didn’t have to. You could’ve vanished after the files or after the shooting, after any of it.”

“Now it's done,” Seonghwa said honestly.

Hongjoong nodded. “I know.” Another beat, then, gently, with no pressure or command, Hongjoong said, “But you’re still here.”

The wind lifted again, tugging at Seonghwa’s coat, brushing his cheek. He didn’t step back, he didn’t step forward, he just stood and the silence inside him didn’t feel like an ending, it felt like space.

Seonghwa stared out over the city, voice barely above the wind. “I don’t know what comes next.”

Hongjoong moved to stand beside him, still not touching or blocking the view, just there.

“Neither do I,” he said. “But… you don’t have to decide it alone, not today.”

Below them, the city breathed and above them, the sky lightened by degrees so small they were almost imaginary.

Seonghwa stayed at the edge and Hongjoong stayed with him.

Hongjoong didn’t raise his voice, he didn’t step closer, he just spoke again and this time, it shook.

“I thought you were gone.” The words came out wrong, frayed at the edges, like they’d been waiting too long to be used. Hongjoong swallowed hard, hands curling at his sides as if he didn’t trust them not to reach out. “I turned around and you weren’t there and I-” He cut himself off, a breath catching sharp in his chest. “I know you don’t like… attachments, I know you don’t owe us anything, but when I couldn’t see you, I thought-” His voice cracked and Seonghwa stiffened. Hongjoong laughed quietly, broken and humorless. “God, listen to me. I sound pathetic.”

“You don’t,” Seonghwa said automatically.

Hongjoong looked at him then, really looked, eyes glassy in the dim light. “I do because I didn’t think I’d care this much.”

That did it, not the edge or the wind, not even the silence, that.

Seonghwa’s foot shifted back before he realized he’d moved at all. The scrape of his boot against concrete sounded unbearably loud. His body reacted before his mind could follow, muscle memory pulling him away from the brink like it had done a thousand times before danger.

Hongjoong noticed and his breath hitched.

“You…” His voice dropped. “You stepped back.”

Seonghwa stared at the ground between them, pulse loud in his ears. “Your voice,” he said quietly. “It sounded like you were afraid.”

Hongjoong’s chest rose and fell too fast. “I am afraid.”

Seonghwa nodded once, he understood fear, he’d lived in it. Weaponized it and taught others how to survive it, but this was different.

“You said,” Hongjoong continued, words spilling now, no longer controlled, “that you didn’t think it was necessary to say goodbye and I keep telling myself that makes sense. That you’re not someone who stays, that you were just… passing through our lives like you do through buildings and systems and war.” He laughed again, breathless. “But I kept thinking about the chair you sat in at the base and the way you tapped things before touching them and how you looked at me like you already knew how this would end and still stayed.”

Seonghwa’s hands curled into fists at his sides.

“I didn’t think anyone would notice,” he said. “If I left.”

Hongjoong shook his head, eyes burning. “You’re wrong, you scared the shit out of me,” Hongjoong said softly. “You’re smarter than all of us, you see ten steps ahead and you never explain yourself. Half the time I don’t know if you’re going to disappear or tear the world apart, but the seconds you weren’t there… I realized something.”

Seonghwa finally looked up.

Hongjoong met his gaze, vulnerable and unguarded in a way no battlefield had ever demanded of him. “I don’t want to win this world without you in it.”

The words landed gently and Seonghwa’s chest ached, something dull and spreading, something terrifyingly warm.

“I don’t know how to stay,” he admitted. “I’ve only ever known how to leave.”

Hongjoong took a step closer this time, slow and careful, giving Seonghwa every chance to pull away. “Then don’t promise anything,” he said. “Just… don’t go today.”

The city breathed below them, morning hovered at the edge of the sky, pale and unsure. Seonghwa let out a shaky breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“I thought no one would miss me,” he said, voice low. “I thought this was safer.”

Hongjoong reached out, not to grab or pull, just enough for his fingers to brush Seonghwa’s sleeve.

“I would,” he said. 

“The war is over,” Seonghwa said. The words were calm, too calm, like he’d already packed them away and folded himself with them. “The country will stabilize, elections are done, the Ministry is exposed. You have your people, your momentum, your new leader.” His gaze drifted back to the city, to the lights slowly coming back on, one by one. “You don’t need me anymore.”

Hongjoong inhaled sharply. “No,” he said.

Seonghwa frowned, almost imperceptibly, as if the answer hadn’t been one of the options he’d prepared for. “You needed me to break doors,” Seonghwa continued. “To map systems, to aim faster than anyone else. That part is finished.”

Hongjoong stepped fully into his space now. “We still need you.”

Seonghwa let out a quiet breath through his nose. “You’re wrong.”

“I’m not.” Hongjoong’s voice shook, just a little, but he didn’t back down. “You think the war ends when the guns go quiet? That’s not how this works.”

Seonghwa turned to face him again. “Revolutions burn themselves out. I know this.”

“And what about after?” Hongjoong shot back. “When the people realize freedom isn’t neat? If they get scared again? If the same system tries to crawl back in under new names?” Seonghwa didn’t answer and Hongjoong swallowed. “We need people who see the cracks, who notice patterns before they form, who know what the regime does in the dark.”

Seonghwa’s jaw tightened. “I’m not a symbol,” he said quietly. “And I’m not a hero.”

“I never asked you to be,” Hongjoong replied. “I’m just asking you to be here.”

“You don’t understand what I am,” Seonghwa said. “What I’ve done.”

Hongjoong’s voice softened. “I understand that you chose to stop, you chose to help us,” he continued. “You chose to protect civilians, you chose to give us everything and then walk away so we wouldn’t owe you.” Hongjoong stepped closer again, close enough now that Seonghwa could feel the warmth of him. “That’s not nothing and it doesn’t stop mattering just because the war is over.”

Seonghwa’s hands trembled, barely.

“I don’t know how to exist without a mission,” he admitted, the words low, raw. “If I stay, I’ll only know how to watch for threats that aren’t there.”

Hongjoong’s lips curved into something small and sad. “Then stay anyway,” he said. “We’ll figure it out badly together.”

Seonghwa looked at him, really looked, as if seeing not a leader or a strategist or a firebrand, but a man who had survived and was still choosing people.

“You’d let me stay,” Seonghwa asked, “even if I don’t know who I am without war?”

Hongjoong nodded. “Especially then.”

The city breathed.

“…You’re reckless,” he said.

Hongjoong smiled, tired and sincere. “You noticed.”

“What will my mission be now? I don’t know how to exist without being needed.”

“Maybe,” Hongjoong said, the words catching before he could soften them, “maybe we don’t need you anymore.” Seonghwa’s shoulders stiffened and his gaze dropped, already preparing to step back, already folding himself away. “But we want you.”

The words came out rough and bare, like Hongjoong hadn’t meant to say them aloud and had anyway.

“I want you,” he corrected, quieter now, truer. “Not for what you can do or for what you survived, just you.”

Seonghwa didn’t answer and for one terrifying second, Hongjoong thought he’d pushed too far. That this was where Seonghwa would retreat, polite, distant and gone.

Instead, Seonghwa exhaled, sharp and uneven, and stepped forward close enough that Hongjoong could feel him trembling.

“This isn’t fair,” Seonghwa murmured. “You can’t say that now.”

“I know,” Hongjoong said, breath hitching. “I know, I just-”

He didn’t finish the sentence.

Seonghwa’s hand came up suddenly, gripping the front of Hongjoong’s jacket like it was the only solid thing left in the world. The motion was frantic and unpolished, nothing like the controlled man he’d been all night.

Then he kissed him.

It wasn’t gentle, it wasn’t practiced.

It was hurried and imperfect, mouths colliding like they’d both realized at the same time how close they’d come to losing this forever. Hongjoong froze for half a heartbeat, from shock and disbelief, and then he was kissing back just as desperately, hands fisting into Seonghwa’s coat, grounding him, anchoring him.

There was no elegance to it, just breath and heat and the overwhelming relief of we’re alive and you’re here.

Seonghwa pulled back first, forehead resting against Hongjoong’s, their breaths tangled.

His voice shook. “I don’t know how to do this.”

Hongjoong smiled, small, wrecked and impossibly fond. “Good, neither do I.”

They stayed like that for a moment longer, touching but not demanding, the city spread beneath them and the war finally, truly behind them.

Hongjoong didn’t let go and Seonghwa swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing once. He didn’t pull away, but he didn’t lean closer either, like he was afraid that one wrong movement would shatter whatever fragile truce his body had made with the moment.

“I don’t know what love is,” he said finally.

The words weren’t dramatic. They were flat and stated the way one might say I don’t know how to swim or I was never taught this language.

His gaze slid past Hongjoong, out toward the city, the smoke thinning now, the fires dying down into embers. “If I ever knew, it was beaten out of me early and even if I did…” His jaw tightened. “There’s no place for love in war.”

Hongjoong took a small step closer, careful, like approaching a wounded animal that hadn’t realized yet it was safe.

“The war is over,” he said.

Seonghwa scoffed quietly. “Wars don’t just end.”

“This one did,” Hongjoong replied, voice steady despite the way his hands trembled. “We’re standing in what comes after. You helped make that happen.”

Seonghwa shook his head once. “Love isn’t practical. It gets people killed, it makes you hesitate.”

Hongjoong smiled fondly, understanding. “Love isn’t something you learn from instructions,” he said gently. “It’s not strategy. It’s not discipline, it’s not something you earn by surviving.”

He reached out, slow enough that Seonghwa could stop him if he wanted to. When he didn’t, Hongjoong’s fingers brushed against Seonghwa’s wrist, light as a question.

“You don’t have to know what it is,” Hongjoong continued. “You don’t have to name it, you don’t even have to be good at it.” His thumb pressed there, grounding. “You just have to let it happen.”

Seonghwa’s breath hitched, sharp and unguarded, like something had slipped through cracks he didn’t know were still there.

“I was made for war,” he whispered. “I don’t know who I am without it.”

 “Then stay and figure it out.”

Seonghwa didn’t look like he was calculating exits or weighing consequences. He looked lost and strangely, relieved.

“I don’t promise anything,” he said.

Hongjoong nodded. “I’m not asking for promises.”

They stood there, close enough to feel each other breathe, the city alive below them, the ghosts quiet for once and for Seonghwa, who had been trained to survive, to endure, to destroy, that quiet was terrifying and beautiful.

Seonghwa leaned in again.

It was instinct, raw and unfiltered, like something in him had finally chosen without permission. His hand came up, hesitant only for a second before it settled at the back of Hongjoong’s neck, fingers warm, grounding.

The kiss was different from the first.

Less frantic and deeper. It carried the weight of everything they hadn’t said, the nights in Facility 8, the blood on concrete, the ghosts that had finally gone quiet. Hongjoong responded immediately, like he’d been waiting for it, his hands finding Seonghwa’s coat, pulling him closer, as if the world might try to steal this moment too.

For a heartbeat, there was nothing else.

No war, no regime, no past, just them.

“I told you they would kiss!”

The voice cracked through the moment like a firecracker and they broke apart instantly.

Hongjoong inhaled sharply, half laughing and half mortified, turning his head toward the sound. Seonghwa froze in place, eyes wide in a way that almost no one had ever seen before.

Wooyoung stood a few steps away, arms crossed, grin so wide it should’ve been illegal. Yunho was beside him, trying and failing to look serious. San had both hands over his mouth, already laughing. Jongho just shook his head like he’d lost a bet but was proud anyway. Yeosang blinked once, then nodded, as if confirming a long-standing theory.

“I literally said it, I bet on it,” Wooyoung continued, delighted. “Weeks ago I said, ‘They’re either going to kill each other or kiss,’ and look at that-”

“Wooyoung,” Hongjoong groaned, face burning.

Seonghwa, still stunned, slowly lowered his hand from Hongjoong’s neck. “You… place bets on people?”

“All the time,” Wooyoung said cheerfully. “It’s how I cope with trauma.”

For a second, everyone waited for Seonghwa to retreat, to shut down or to put the walls back up. Instead, he exhaled and something dangerously close to a smile tugged at his mouth.

“…You are loud,” he said flatly.

Wooyoung beamed. “Thank you.”

Hongjoong looked at Seonghwa again, softer now and Seonghwa met his gaze without flinching.

The war was over and somehow, unbelievably, they were still standing.

Wooyoung clapped his hands together like he’d just witnessed a magic trick. “Okay but can we talk about the timing? Rooftop, sunrise, nation saved and trauma bonding. Ten out of ten, would watch again.”

San wiped at his eyes, still laughing. “We almost died and this is how I find out the tension was mutual?”

“It was obvious,” Jongho said calmly, adjusting his sleeves. “Statistically inevitable.”

Yunho snorted. “You don’t get to say ‘statistically’ about feelings, Jongho.”

“I absolutely do.”

Yeosang tilted his head, eyes soft as he looked between them. “It’s nice,” he said simply. “They look… lighter.”

Hongjoong buried his face in his hands. “Please stop narrating my life.”

Seonghwa stood there, quiet, listening to them bicker and laugh and overlap each other’s words like they always did, messy, alive and warm. He didn’t realize it at first. It slipped out of him without warning.

A soft sound, barely there.

A laugh.

The group went dead silent.

Wooyoung’s head snapped around so fast it was a miracle he didn’t get whiplash. “Did he just-”

San gasped dramatically. “Oh my god.”

Yunho stared. “Was that a laugh?”

Jongho’s eyebrows rose, just a fraction. “Noted.”

Seonghwa blinked, as if surprised by himself. His hand came up, brushing briefly over his mouth, like he was checking that the sound had really come from him. When he looked up again, there was color in his face, faint, but real.

“You guys are ridiculous,” he murmured, but this time there was no edge to it, just dry amusement.

Wooyoung pressed a hand to his chest. “I will treasure this moment forever, I bullied the Ghostmaker into laughing.”

“You will never say that again,” Seonghwa replied.

Hongjoong looked at him, at the man who had just stood at the edge of a roof ready to disappear, now standing here among them, breathing, laughing and staying.

Seonghwa watched the city stretched out before them, still scarred, still smoking in places, still gray in the way concrete remembered sorrow, but it was breathing. Lights flickered back on in uneven patterns, sirens had quieted, voices carried upward, not screams this time, but conversation, laughter and argument. Life, stubborn and loud.

All eight of them were there.

Hongjoong stood closest to him, near enough that Seonghwa could feel his warmth. Wooyoung was on the ledge, legs dangling dangerously, running his mouth about something nobody was really listening to. San, Mingi and Yunho sat shoulder to shoulder on the ground, exhausted but smiling. Jongho stood with Yeosang, calm and steady as ever, eyes thoughtful as he watched the streets below. They were a mess, bruised, dirty, hollowed out by what they’d survived and somehow, they were whole.

Seonghwa had spent his life learning how to stand alone.

He had been taught silence before language, pain before comfort, obedience before choice. He had learned how to break people, how to leave them empty and breathing. He had learned how to survive rooms meant to erase him. He had learned how to disappear inside himself so completely that even the ghosts sometimes forgot where to find him.

He had never learned this.

How to stand beside others without calculating exits, how to breathe without counting, how to feel without bracing for punishment.

Freedom, he realized, wasn’t loud like revolution. It didn’t always arrive with fire and blood and speeches broadcast across a nation. Sometimes it arrived quietly, in the space between eight people watching the same broken skyline and deciding to stay.

Love was worse, love was terrifying.

It had no rules, no drills, no clean lines to follow. It didn’t come with instructions or orders or guarantees. It sat in his chest like something unfinished, something fragile and alive, and it scared him more than any interrogation room ever had.

Yet, when Hongjoong laughed, still breathless, still a little disbelieving, Seonghwa felt it anchor him. When Wooyoung’s voice cut through the air, sharp, warm and alive, the ghosts stayed silent. When the others stood close without asking anything of him, without demanding explanations or penance, something inside him loosened.

He didn’t feel like a weapon set down between battles, he felt like a man who had survived.

The future loomed ahead, uncertain and unstable. There would be trials, consequences and rebuilding. There would be nights when the memories returned and mornings that felt too heavy to carry. Freedom didn’t erase scars, love didn’t cure wounds, but they were here. Anxious, hopeful and alive.

Seonghwa closed his eyes and let the wind touch his face again, not as an ending, but as a beginning.

Below them, the city kept breathing and Seonghwa opened his eyes.

The ghosts did not return.

Instead, there were voices beside him, steady and warm, a hand brushing his sleeve without demand or claim, not control or obligation, just presence and choice.

He stood among others, looking toward what came next, not as a weapon or a shadow, but as himself and for now, hat was enough.