Super

10. super formality

Despite the restraints, Taeyong remained suspicious.

They didn't have police handcuffs, and so had opted for one of Taemin's fancy gadget thingies that looked more like an eleven-year-old boy's playthings than grown (super) men's stuff. The bonds were thin and weak-looking, like a couple of wires threaded together and tied, binding the girl's wrists together.

"She could still kick out at us," the blue-haired man had said as Baekhyun finished tying the bonds around her wrists. "Would be better for us if we stuffed her into a body bag."

"We don't have a body bag, Taeyong," Baekhyun had said with the infinite, weary patience of a man who specialized in dealing with grown-ups with tantrums. "And it would be too difficult to lug her around."

"There's four of us."

"She's a living, breathing, conscious human."

"We don't know that for sure."

Taeyong had been about to explain that he'd been talking about her being 'human'—it was a genuine doubt, and they were better off treating everyone unidentified as suspicious figures after having found Supers in the basement. Supers in the basement. The phrase sounded so movie-like, so unreal, that Taeyong almost felt like he knew about what was happening.

Now the four of them (five if you counted their prisoner) were upstairs, on the floor below the roof. The place become more and more impressive as they progressed upwards, the floors of the building like layers to a cake. The creamy gold of the lower levels had solidified into a harder gray, not exactly a hotel color.

They hadn't been intercepted, and though they had used the fire escape, Taeyong wasn't completely sure about their safety. The whole ordeal made him skeptical to a point that made him forget he was a literal superhero with his face tucked nearly behind a mask.

He sure didn't feel like one.

At first, he had been more than a little annoyed by the mini tasks that Baekhyun and Taemin had set out of them, pairing them off and sending them on little missions like they were second-grade kids on a treasure hunt at someone's birthday party. Taeyong had joined mainly because he was broke, he accepted that, but he had expected a little more action and thrill during the job.

Even this felt hurried and mundane. The spark of real excitement he had felt when they had discovered the Super bodies was now gone, leaving him restless, bored, and maybe a little disappointed. Baekhyun had dismissed his suspicion of the girl—they didn't even know her name—and Taeyong couldn't help but chafe under the dubious authority.

"This is where we get off."

Taeyong blinked when he heard Baekhyun speak, finally noticing where they were. The floor they were at was the one just below the roof, the walls alternating between cement and glass. The group crossed the large glass doors, stepping out into the open, and Taeyong realized that this wasn't the fire escape. The hotel building wasn't a building, but buildings, two structures connected at the second-highest floor.

"Like twin towers," Mark commented, looking around in awe.

The roof they were on was lower than that of the main building, so they couldn't see anything that was happening over. Taeyong wasn't sure when Lucas had said 'roof', that he'd meant this one or that. This-or-that. He frowned. Now he was just confusing himself.

The air was chilly, the wind whipping through his air and making goosebumps rise on his bare arms. For a moment, he wished he had a full-body suit, but it would be unfair. Everyone else had short sleeves too—he guessed it had something to do with their powers again.