Super

42. shards

Taeyong raced up the stairs of the building, Baekhyun and Shao hot on his heels. The earpiece he was wearing crackled with heavy breathing, the suit feeling like it was suffocating his very skin. He grabbed the railing to give himself more torque as he swung himself up to the floor he was climbing onto, and was greeted with the sight of a dark lobby with a single elevator on the opposite side.

The building seemed like it had been abandoned in the middle of construction, and the result was a structure that seemed to be halfway between luxurious and uncomfortable. Chopped wires hung from round holes in the wall, and there was a noticeable lack of furniture and electric appliances. The place was dark, and the trio had to rely on flashlights to make their way around the place. Taeyong felt like he was soon going to swing the light onto a zombie.

"Mirage, second floor," Taeyong spoke into the mic, pressing two fingers against the earpiece out of reflex. He swung the flashlight again, and it landed on the metallic surface of the elevator doors, the glare of the light reflecting back into his eyes. He dropped the light, and blinked against the sudden tears and starbursts imprinted behind his eyelids. "Checking."

"There's a corridor here," Baekhyun called, and Taeyong turned to see him shine the flashlight out of a gaping opening to the right of the room. Shao and Taeyong walked up to him, and Baekhyun cautiously stepped out into the hallway, looking left and right. "It seems to be empty."

"Keyword being 'seems'," Taeyong muttered, and pushed past him into the corridor. He pressed his shoulder to the opposite wall and crept along it, dimming his flashlight and making his way down the corridor. The other two followed, slowly and quietly, staying close to him.

He came upon a turn, which led out to the balcony-like corridor on the other side. The view wasn't much, though, since there was a connecting building just next to this one. Taeyong looked down the side, but the only thing he saw was cement and broken bottles, nothing that moved.

"If there was an attack, shouldn't it be...I don't know, louder?" Shao stage-whispered, making Taeyong turn to glare. "I expected all kinds of destruction, and this place is beginning to feel haunted."

"They probably saw us coming," Baekhyun replied, keeping his voice low, glancing around the place as he spoke and the three crept along. "It's not exactly an attack, but reports of activity. Taemin's satellites just picked up an energy flare. We're assuming that has something to do with an attack."

"Well, that's not a very observant assumption," Shao mumbled as they reached another line of doors on the inside. The place was probably meant to be an office building, judging by the architecture, but they hadn't had much time to research on it before coming back.

"Wait," Taeyong said quietly. His eyes were shifting constantly, moving with a quiet vigilance that remained undisturbed despite his companions' constant conversation. He turned to Baekhyun. "Fifth door. There's no dust on the floor in front of the door."

Baekhyun nodded, face turning grim, and the three moved to position themselves in front of the room. The door was firmly shut, but the lines in the dust was a telltale sign that someone had been there in the past few hours. Out of the corner of his eye, Taeyong saw Shao raise her gun, looking white-faced and apprehensive, but his gaze was broken when Baekhyun raised his foot to kick in the door.

It gave way easily, and they rushed in. Baekhyun whirled, looking around, then abruptly, the tension went out from his shoulders. He paused, shaking his head. "There's no one here," he said. "But the dust—"

"It's undisturbed inside," Taeyong noted with a frown. "It's like whoever opened the door never came inside."

"Maybe..." Baekhyun's eyes widened, and he dashed towards the door, throwing it open. "He's in the hallway!"

He didn't waste another second before running after him, and Taeyong shared an alarmed look with Shao before following suit. The corridors seemed to stretch out endlessly, the twists and turns labyrinthine and impossible to remember, but Taeyong ignored his sight and followed Baekhyun by listening to his footsteps, Shao following close behind. At last, they came upon the balconies again, Baekhyun on one side, but the man they had been chasing had somehow already crossed the chasm to the other building.

"Bolt!" Taeyong said sharply, and saw Baekhyun take a deep breath. His eyes turned an opaque gray, luminous and intense, energy crackling in the air around him like burning logs. He raised his arms, turning his face upwards, the air turning sharper with the warning of an oncoming storm.

And abruptly calmed.

Baekhyun stumbled, and Taeyong rushed to catch him. His eyes had gone back to brown, and the vitality seemed to have slipped out of him. Behind them, he heard Shao inhale sharply.

"What—" Taeyong's eyes were wide, confusion warring with the need to chase after the escapee in his mind. "What happened?"

"My powers," Baekhyun whispered, turning up to look at him with wide eyes. For the first time since Taeyong had met him, he looked afraid. Filled with disbelief, as if something he's believed in his entire life had just been proven to be a lie. "They're not working."

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Ten had to work to get up to the roof, and despite his intensive training, he was panting by the time he stepped out into the open.

He gave himself a few seconds to catch his breath, then straightened, one hand still on the railing. The wind was sharp and cool, which he was thankful for, as it cooled the sweat that had gathered at his temples and brow. The night sky was dark, and a lone bird circled the air far above him, a black phantom in the silent stillness.

"Umbra, positioned on the roof," he spoke into the mic. The code name had been one he had chosen for himself when he had been a boy, and now that he actually had a chance to use it, he had jumped at the opportunity. They all had decided on codes before—all except Shao and Mark, which was only because Shao was already known to the Four and Mark was sitting out as backup.

Ten kept the pads of his index and middle finger pressed against the earpiece as he stepped into the moonlight, looking around. The place had not been fully constructed, and there was tarpaulin thrown over most of the place. He looked around methodically, checking every cover, but ultimately came up with nothing.

"The roof's empty," he said into the mic, only hesitating for a moment to wonder what the formal language was, but ultimately settling for the usual words. After all, there was no rule against it.

There was no reply.

He sighed, feeling the hot breath hit his face under the mask. There was a glint in the far end of the roof which caught his eye, and he walked over towards it to inspect it. Ten knew he wasn't as brave as the rest of the team—in fact, he would probably have been ready to drop everything and go, but something had kept him. A strange urge, like protectiveness, though he didn't even know what he was supposed to protect.

Broken glass littered the side of the roof. So that was what had been glinting. Must have caught the moonlight. Some worker must have dropped a frame. He only spared the shards a single glance before looking beyond it at the skyline of the City, which lay out before him like a still scene from a movie.

Capital City wasn't the place where he had been born, but Ten still considered it his city. The winding streets were as familiar to him as the back of his hand—he had sat for hours in his studio, trying to capture the essence of the city on canvas, the way the sunrise hit it and turned it into a metropolis out of a fantasy. He had never succeeded. Some things, he knew, you could never replicate in all their glory.

He looked down. The building wasn't very tall, but then it wouldn't take a great fall to kill someone. Suddenly a bit queasy, he stepped back and away from the edge, where the railings still hadn't been built. Something crunched under his feet. The glass.

Ten glanced down at it, and saw that he could see fragments of his reflection in the shards. There was something above him—at first, he assumed it to be a trick of the light, but the shadow grew. And grew.

Ten paled, not daring to look up, and lifted the mic to his lips. His lips began to shape a word, but he never got to say it—because that very moment, the bird which had been circling the sky above, the bird which had not been a bird at all, dropped in on him.