Super

41. a good superhero

"Careful, now," Irene said as Jisoo wheeled the hospital bed with the body into place. The latter didn't glance up from her work, and fixed the tubes going from the man's body to the machines and drip. "We don't want to cause any unnecessary damage, do we?"

"He can't feel the pain, I don't think he minds," Jisoo muttered under her breath. Irene's eyes flashed to her dangerously, but she didn't say anything, only smoothing down the front of her skirt. "Jeonghan, check his vitals."

"Stable," Jeonghan answered. He was standing in one corner of the room, blending in with the stark whiteness of the room with his pallid face and hair, mouth bloodred like a gaping wound. His eyes were as distant and cold as the peak of a snowy mountain, but they held a numb mournfulness at that moment, like someone who had forgotten emotion at the funeral of a loved one.

"Keep checking whenever I call you, okay?" Jisoo called, not even looking up to see Jeonghan incline his head slightly in acknowledgement of her words. She rolled up the sleeve of the man, exposing thick veins like cords running along his forearm, hidden beneath tattoos like vines twining his entire body. "I really don't see why we have to do all of this every time we inject one. It's not like we've already tried with others."

"Better to be safe than sorry," Irene said in a soft, lilting voice, her lips quirking into a slight smile. "You never know when a disc might be corrupt. It's always safer to do a routine check before transferring your files."

"I've no idea what you're talking about," Jisoo muttered. Her hair was pulled up into a braid, dark hair with strands of purple and hot pink woven through. It contrasted sharply with her standard pale green scrubs, a shock of color against the pallor. "Hey. Ice Man, or Ice Angel or whatever they're calling you. Stand by in case this one reacts to the testing, so you can freeze him or whatever it is you've done with the others."

Jeonghan raised a pale eyebrow. "It's called cryogenic freezing."

"Yeah, that." On a small table next to her was a metal tray. Jisoo reached in for a syringe, and lifted it, giving the liquid an experimental spurt. Beads of green appeared at the tip. "Okay, I'm ready to go. Is he held down?"

Irene flicked the handcuffs holding the unconscious man tethered to the hospital bed. "It seems so."

Jisoo swiped the inside of the man's elbow with antiseptic, then pressed the hypodermic needle into his skin, watching it sink imperceptibly deep into his flesh, and injected the greenish fluid into it. Jeonghan watched her movements with wary eyes, following her hands as they removed the needle and pressed a cotton swab down against the puncture wound.

The man's chest rose, and the atmosphere in the room turned icy. It had been cold before, but not in the same way. All three of them turned rigid, like predators after they had caught sight of their prey, and waited.

For a few seconds, nothing happened. Jeonghan felt as if the muscles underneath his skin had turned to crystal, freezing him in place, like he had done to so many people before him. The body refused to move, chest flat as if it had lost all breath, and it didn't rise again. Slowly, they began to relax. They had done this many times before, and each had been a different experience on its own, not a single one repressed by the results of the other.

"Record failure?" Jisoo asked in a muted voice, lips barely moving as she gazed down at the unmoving man with hooded eyes.

The man's eyes flew open.

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Shao closed her eyes, taking a deep breath as if to ready herself before a race, and Baekhyun watched in thinly veiled amusement. The gun fit well into her thin, callused hands, but it didn't look like it belonged. It had already been over six minutes since he had handed her the weapon, and was still waiting.