district 9 || stray kids

4

Time skip, four days

"Head count," the doctor says, same monotone voice. "Don't move. Hold your tag out and stand straight."

Changbin pushes the cart and scans their wrist tags silently with a depressed, tensed air. He scans his own tag at the end of the line and passes the cart back to the waiting nurse.

Two hundred and forty one boys return to their rooms. No one has died for a while, thank god, although Chanyeol did come back a week ago a little shaken from punishment.

Multiple nurses push around carts stacked high with black-cover textbooks along the floors of boys. Today they study maths, law and propaganda. As they pass by a door, they knock and let a boy receive two textbooks and a pencil.

Soon, all the textbooks and pencils are distributed. Some nurses change back into their clothes and leave the facility through the bus.

From their windows, the boys marvel at the clothes of different colours and styles; it is the only way they can confirm their past lives were not a dream even though they are memory wiped. Jeongin sniffs and stares nostalgically at a pretty nurse in a blue blouse and a black skirt that reaches just above her knee.

No one looked nice in the facility. They all looked the same, mean and cold under the masks. The grumpy nurse who reported Chanyeol for punishment could've been something to be looked at on the front page of a magazine.

Dowoon smiles at him sadly with his head poking out of his window.

Then a red light flares and an alarm blares. There's a small, sharp whizz of something flying through the air, and Dowoon jerks and collapses, his neck hanging on the windowsill. Blood seeps into the greying brick from the split in his forehead, dyeing it dark crimson, black in the green light.

Jeongin recoils sharply. Looking out of your window meant trying to escape. Dowoon had a habit of testing his boundaries. In the end, it killed him.

Jeongin lets out a loud cry of despair and bites his lip. He claps a hand over my mouth and sinks back against his room wall, hearing two robot janitors whir in through Dowoon's door and drag his body out. The first death in so long.

He swallows the lump in his dry throat and enters Dowoon's room after he knows the robot janitors have left. There, lying on the floor like a simple piece of scrap metal, is Dowoon's wrist tag. A smudge of blood stains the edge of the tag. The 6 is coloured in red.

Jeongin holds it and chokes back a cry. To him, this will be a soldier's dog tag. He drops it into his pocket and returns to his room. He sits on the floor and sobs loudly.

Someone knocks his door gently using the two, six, five combination. He answers a choked "come in".

"Oh gosh, what happened?" Wonpil says, concerned, stepping into the room, clipping his bobby pin onto his cuff. Jimin and Hyunjin follows in and sit beside Jeongin, bringing him into an embrace. Jeongin holds out the small bracelet chain and tag. He sniffs.

Jimin sees the number, lets out a choked cry and sobs into his hands. He hugs his knees to his chest.

...

Time skip, a month

Changbin is set to monitor the boys in the maze. He holds a clear glass tablet, tracking each boy and where they are in the maze. Jinhwan whines when a thorn pricks the side of his finger. Changbin holds the tablet to his side.

"You okay?" he asks.

"No," Jinhwan grumbles. "I've been here for a year with my only memory being what I last wore before coming here and I've had my hands cut into ribbons every week. So no. I'm not okay, but I have to be."

Changbin pulls him into a hug and lets two tears roll down his cheeks. He pulls away and looks him in the eye.

"I'll find a way out of here," he says, choked, "I promise."

"Maybe you can ask Chan for help," another boy suggests. Jinhwan and Changbin turn their heads to see Felix rubbing his palms together because of the cold.

"Why Chan?" Changbin asks, raising an eyebrow.

"I was supposed to get punishment twice this month," Felix admits quietly, ruffling his hair. Two blonde strands come off between his fingers. "He covered for me and took it instead. He's a real friend..."

Changbin grimaces, notes it mentally and tells Jinhwan, 237, the closest to Chan right now, to let him know he'll be visiting him later. Jinhwan nods once, and Changbin focuses on his tablet again for the next five hours.

A nurse collects them.

Everyone has their textbooks taken away for the day. It's time to sleep, half an hour to ten, but the weekend means the doctor isn't here, as are most nurses.

In the dead of night, green light still bathing everything, Changbin creeps out of his room.

...

Two, six, five.

"Come in!"

Changbin picks the lock and steps into Chan's room, blinking the blue light. Woojin, Jinhwan, Chan, Minho, Jimin, Jinyoung, Jongup, Hueningkai, Vernon, Jackson, Suho, Hyunjin, Jisung, Felix, Seungmin, Jeongin, and countless other boys sit in a group on the floor, some on the bed, packed like tinned fish.

"Wow," Changbin mutters. "did not expect this. Are all two hundred something boys here?!"

"Nope," Chan says, pushing Jackson's elbow off his shoulder. "There are about twenty five of us here."

Changbin parts his lips to say something, but Chan cuts him off again, "I know why you're here. You wanna escape, so do all of us. So, Changbin, will you help us?"

Changbin nods without hesitation, his hair flopping into his eyes.

"Then I will help you," Chan says with a noble air, smiling. He stands up and firmly shakes Changbin's hand. The huddle of boys smile and cheer quietly behind them.

"Everyone, dismissed and see you tomorrow," Chan says, turning back. Yeonjun and Jeongin frown, and the others groan, but one by one, the boys slip out of the room and back into their own quietly enough so that even the sensors won't be able to pick them up.

The two boys are left standing in the blue light. They sit together on the bed on opposite ends.

"I've only been here a month," Changbin starts, "but I've noticed that the fences aren't the only barrier. There are drones and an invisible field. Last week when I monitored the maze boys, I knocked against the air, and guess what? The air rippled, and when I pressed my hand against it, it was like glass."

Chan listens with full attention. "Go on," he says.

"A piece of really shattered glass was on the ground. When I was monitoring the boys, outside light shone onto one of the flowers. I thought of something. Are you getting me?

"If we manage to break through the forcefield or the gates, we can escape. It's the forcefield keeping the light out, that's why it's always dark here. Because it's all around us.

"The bus thing is another asset to us. We could steal it. Can anyone drive here?"

Chan cricks his neck and nods. "I can."

"I also know where they keep our clothes."

Chan tenses up. He leans forward. "Did you see a grey hoodie and trousers?"

"Yes."

Chan lets out a cry that says happiness, frustration, hopefulness, and aggression all at once. "Those are my clothes."

"We'll get out. To hell with this place," Chan grumbles, slamming his fist into the mattress.

"I'll write our plans on the study papers and pass them to you all during head count," Changbin says in a hopeful tone of voice. Chan nods vigorously with the widest smile plastered onto his face.

Through the night, both boys stay awake planning the entire facility's worth of boys' escape.