Area One

20

Minseok arrived two days after Junmyeon, Yifan one day later. They were as surprised to meet them as Junmyeon had been. With all the leaders back together, the group was visibly stabilized and Luhan, just as he himself, was beyond relieved to have Minseok back. Minseok had lived in an animal shelter and helped taking care of the animals in return. That wasn't much of a surprise, seeing as he was one of the biggest animal friends in their group.

Yifan's story had been a bit surprising. He had woken up near an orphanage that had been short on staff and decided to stay and help in exchange for food and a room for himself. Junmyeon would never have imagined Yifan as a friend of children, but as the tall guy told them about the children he had met, everyone was able to see that happy glow in his eyes.

Most of the others, though, had spent the whole time similar to Junmyeon: in a hospital. And as Tao had told Junmyeon in the beginning, some of them were still not completely healed. Junmyeon tried to keep his injured ankle a secret, but he knew that at least Yixing and Luhan had noticed it. Yixing had tried to heal his friends several times, but to no avail. He was beyond frustrated about not being able to help them, and did his best to treat them with whatever medicine he could get from Jongin.

Jongin was their saviour. He got them food (Junmyeon didn't dare to ask from where) and medicine. He kept training to get all of them back inside safely and Junmyeon admired his dedication. More than once, he was reprimanded by Luhan for exhausting himself too much with the extensive use of his power.

On the day after Yifan's arrival, Junmyeon called Minseok and Luhan to him.

"We need to have a plan once Sehun gets here, I don't think anyone wants to stay any longer."

"Reasonable." Minseok arched his back, a cracking sound made him wince. "It's not exactly comfortable here."

"We need to go back to the tree first." Luhan was sitting on the ground with crossed legs, pushing little stones around. "Power or not, Yixing's father can't protect it on his own, and as soon as the Red Force gives up on searching for us, they will start concentrating on the tree again."

"That's why they know we will want to go back," Minseok reminded him. "They had two months to build up a bunch of nice little traps for us."

But Junmyeon agreed with Luhan. "We have to hope they were too concentrated on finding us to worry about anything else. Remember that it's our job to protect the tree."

"I don't want to question that," Minseok's eyes darted from Junmyeon to Luhan and back. "But I think we all underestimated them. We are unbelievably lucky to have survived all of this. If the Red Force decides to attack the tree, we can delay them by putting up a fight, but we're helpless against their assembled forces."

"I'm not saying we should fight them." Junmyeon ruffled his hair nervously while presenting them with the thoughts that had been occupying his mind. "I guess you've all heard of Chronos?"

"Everyone is talking about them." Minseok frowned. "But I don't think they're even aware of what is happening. The Red Force abuses their power and... let's not think about what they want to achieve with their human experiments."

Luhan laughed dryly. "They're probably planning to overthrow Chronos. With their own little army of brainwashed people with powers..."

"But Chronos isn't a government, it's just an organisation. What would they get from that?" Junmyeon couldn't follow Luhan's train of thoughts.

"The world leading science organisation," Luhan corrected him. "The technology they develop, the knowledge they have... their primary goal is to reduce the impacts of climate change, as far as I know, but imagine the amount of research they are doing for that. They have influence on every single government in this world, and these governments trust them. Chronos has a lot more power than one single country."