The Trials of Neo City [WINWIN • YUTA]

🖤 24. Frost 🖤

A/N: If you guys haven't realized, this story depicts death, corpses, violence, and emotional and psychological torture (and it's aftermath). Please read the tags, guys. I don't think I'm gonna warn you guys again.

"I'll stand lookout. You should get some rest, Sicheng." Mark offered, smiling. It was much later now and the two had spent the morning talking tiredly to distract from the fact that that Careers might come back and search the building.

Sicheng made a discontented face but nodded reluctantly. He took his backpack and placed it underneath his head as a makeshift pillow to avoid getting splinters in his cheeks from the floorboards. At first he couldn't rest, but after a while he gave in to the sun's warmth through the window's shabby barricades.

Mark traced patterns into the floorboards boredly, trying to stay awake. To be honest, it wasn't too hard of a task considering he'd slept well the past night. More than anything, though, Mark was hungry. He hadn't eaten since the Games started over a day ago and his stomach was screaming at him.

There was a bloodcurdling scream off in the distance, but Mark decided to ignore it. It was best to assume they were far away and that there was nothing he could do about it.

But then the person screamed again, a high-pitched noise full of pain. He was screaming out of agony, not fear. Mark knew the difference after hearing the same sound yesterday at the bloodbath after the first tribute was killed.

He peeked out of the barricaded window and frowned when he couldn't see anything. He looked around and thought for a second, before making sure Sicheng was asleep and crawling towards the tree cautiously.

He climbed down and snuck out and into the road. In the city square where the Cornucopia sat were the Careers surrounding a bloody tribute.

He stepped closer to the scene as the yells continued, followed by groans and heavy breathing. One foot in the street as he hid behind the wall of the alley and peeked forwards curiously.

There, a boy was tied to the fountain in the center of the square. His blonde hair was stained with blood, most likely from a head wound. He sat on his bottom, legs kneeling and hands at his sides, crumpled and mangled.

Mark gasped as Ten screamed in frustration and stormed back over to the blonde boy, slapping him and scoffing.

"I asked where your boyfriend is!" Ten stomped on the boy's fingers with his iron boots. The boy cried out and shook his head, which earned him another stomp.

"Liar! You know where he is! I wanna know how that buffoon got a ten in training! Nobody ranks that high unless they're a threat!" Ten screeched, stomping his foot like a child throwing a tantrum.

The tribute with the blonde hair shook his head, intense eyes looking up in fear.

"You're really not gonna tell me? I'll just find him myself." Ten sneered, grabbing the tribute's long blonde hair and jerking his head up. "I don't play nice when people don't listen to me, you know."

"Chittaphon, just do it." Yuta's voice was exasperated. They'd been at this whole "interrogation" thing all morning. It was getting old, the guy clearly wasn't going to tell them anything useful. They'd just find Hendery themselves.

Ten sighed and dropped the tribute's hair, scoffing. He bent down and grabbed an axe from their arsenal of weapons and tossed it Johnny's way.

"Bastard." Ten spat towards the tribute before whistling at Johnny. "You're up. You can have this one, he isn't worth my time."

Yuta looked on with a stony face, suddenly embracing the younger boys. He shielded Chenle, Yangyang, and Shotaro's faces in his jacket, the younger boys not wanting to see what was coming.

Lucas looked on, lip quivering. He didn't want to look, didn't want to see what would happen next. He shut his eyes tightly and grimaced.

"Finish the job, John." Ten's voice was taunting as Johnny raised his axe above the tribute's head. The tribute shook his head, pleading. He had nowhere to go, stuck at the mercy of the Careers.

There was a cry of fear that was cut off by a gross, sickening, wet sound. Mark's eyes widened impossibly wide in horror as he looked on and say the decapitated tribute, who's head was severed from his body. His once intense, pretty eyes were still and dull, unblinking and unmoving.

"Mark! I thought you were gonna be lookout! Get away from there! Mark!" Sicheng hissed as the cannon boomed, now awake. He'd grabbed Mark's arm and pulled him into the alleyway, away from the road.

Mark shook uncontrollably after seeing the dead boy's head roll from his body. He cried and Sicheng had to cup a gloved hand over the younger boy's mouth and drag him away towards their building, towards the vines that led them inside.

Sicheng hushed Mark harshly, climbing onto the vines and the light the shattered window, dragging a trembling Mark behind him.

"You're okay, you're okay! Breathe, Mark!" Sicheng urged once they'd gotten inside. He removed his hand from Mark's mouth after the boy had stopped screaming.

"He's dead! They cut his head off, he's dead! I saw- oh gosh, oh my-" Mark panicked, clawing at Sicheng and sobbing. "No! Please, I don't wanna be here! I don't want this, I don't want them to find us!"

"Mark, calm down. If you're quiet, they won't find us, okay? Just try to breathe." Sicheng reassured, hugging Mark close as if it were his brother. "You shouldn't have seen that. I wish you never saw that. Mark, I..."

Mark hiccuped, curling in on himself and staring at the winding, rotting old tree next to them. "I wanna go home! Sicheng, I can't... I can't do this! Please, Sicheng..." His sobs were hysterical and painful.

The older boy only cringed to himself and held Mark close, shutting his own eyes and running a hand down Mark's back.

"I know, Mark. I know..."

• • 🖤 • •

Mark woke up shaking and screaming later that night, grabbing onto Sicheng desperately. Sicheng placed a hand over Mark's mouth so that they couldn't get caught by his yelling and so that the Career pack wouldn't wake up.

A nightmare as vivid as the moment he'd seen it, Xiaojun's head rolling from his shoulders and onto the pavement. Dead and dull eyes staring up at Mark, silently cursing him for watching and doing nothing.

Sicheng held onto Mark tightly, holding onto his head once again and shushing him as the little boy shook and trembled beneath him.

Mark couldn't play this fucking game anymore.

He wanted out.