The Unbreakable | An ATEEZ Sci-Fi AU | Part 1 Of The Peculiar Saga

Behind the Nightmares

"Will you stop glaring at me?"

Seonghwa was sitting at the other edge of the bed where Eunhee had woken up a few hours ago. Though she was still reeling from the bombshell revelation of Seonghwa and Mingi's actual reason of coming into their lives, she wasn't angry like before. But she was still glaring at him while sitting closer to the bed's head post at the opposite end.

"Will my glaring cause you to spontaneously combust?" she remarked with gritted teeth.

He rolled his eyes briefly before chuckling, "Unless there's something about your peculiarity you're hiding, I don't think so."

"Then ignore it and tell me what you were supposed to."

Suppressing his amused smile, Seonghwa adjusted himself on the bed then asked, "Do you remember when or how you developed your powers?"

"Not really," Eunhee shook her head, "I mean... I don't remember when I developed them, but mom and dad always said that I was born with them."

Seonghwa's eyes widened for a brief second, before his expression composed once more to its regular placid self, "Well, you're lucky. Because unlike you, I was born human. So were San and Mingi."

"Wait," Eunhee raised a brow, "You're telling me that Peculiars aren't born with powers? How's that even possible?"

"I don't know about all the Peculiars in the world. But Mingi, San and I came out of a facility called Compound X," Seonghwa took a brief pause when he spoke the name 'Compound X', then closed his eyes and shook his head lightly, as if shaking away something dirty from himself. A gesture that didn't go unnoticed by Eunhee.

"I was raised in Compound X, along with San, Mingi and thousands of other children. Most of them were the same age as us. Some older, some a few years younger. It seemed like an orphanage of sorts, with better facilities maybe. But nothing unordinary at first. And then I turned 6. All the children that had turned either 5, 6 or 7 that same year were put into a single group and taken into a lab. They said they were giving us vaccinations. But instead, they injected us with a serum. I don't remember what it was called but I remember its colour- a slick black ichor like substance that burnt our veins the very moment it was injected into us."

Eunhee studied Seonghwa's face and her glare now softened. Narrating his story, Seonghwa's lips curved downwards, quivering ever so slightly as he recalled his past to her. She could already feel where this story was going. And her vivid imagination wasn't easing the pain that twisted up in her guts. In her head, she could see it all happening. A young boy, barely six years, strapped down on a table with a large surgical light blinding him as he writhed in pain from the serum's injection.

"I do, however, remember the pain that followed. It was like my veins were on fire," Seonghwa raised his palm as he stared at it, clenching then unclenching his fingers into a fist as if he could feel the pain once more, "And every fibre of muscle was being torn apart, then being put together, only to be ripped apart once more. I could hear so many kids of my age screaming in pain while I writhed in agony myself. It was so unbearable that I thought my heart might give out," he chuckled dryly, "Hell, I wished my heart would give out. At least the pain would stop."

"But then the pain stopped, and they took us to another facility from there. But our numbers were less, almost half of the kids that were injected with the serum didn't survive. And though it took me a moment to find him, I did find Mingi eventually. He's gone through the same pain that I had. Heck, all those kids had. But we thought that now that we were at this new facility, things would go back to normal," Seonghwa's eyes grew dark, "Little did we know that the horror was only beginning."