Super

60. middle school energy

Baekhyun still had no idea who the shadow on the stairwell belonged to, but Shao apparently did.

Her eyes were wide with shock, and she must have been especially startled, because some of the pressure in the air around him seemed to waver. Whatever had been repressing his powers seemed to have taken a blow. Baekhyun clenched and unclenched his fists, feeling a weak crackle of static electricity along his skin, but it was nothing compared to the kind of energy he needed right now.

The shadow stretched and elongated as the person stepped down the staircase, and Baekhyun saw the tip of a booted foot emerge from behind the column, followed by a slender fishnet-clad leg.

He didn't have much time to register what exactly happened after, but the next thing he heard was Shao's panicked hiss, saying, "Jisoo, no—"

And then there was a scream. Not the run-of-the-mill scream of someone being given a nasty surprised or a bad hit over the ol' noggin, but an ear-piercing, eardrum-splitting scream that mirrored the shrieks of souls being tormented, as if the earth had split up and broken the one barrier between the ones living on earth and hell's worst torture chamber. Imagine a spoon being dragged against a metal surface, or nails on a chalkboard, except about a million times worse.

All thoughts of anger and betrayal flew from his head as Baekhyun collapsed to his knees, clutching desperately at his ears to block out the sound that seemed to invade every sense he possessed. He didn't just hear the scream, he smelled the metallic tang of blood, he felt a serrated surface being dragged over his skin the wrong way. The infernal sound made its way inside his every pore, twisting inside his heart like a second soul, turning his brain into a puddle of goo. Baekhyun keeled over, feeling like his ears were literally going to start bleeding at any moment.

The scream cut off abruptly, but he stayed on the floor for another few moments, unable to get his bearings. The world seemed to be vibrating at a higher frequency, and his eyeballs felt like he was in an old cartoon and had just been nailed over the head with a baseball bat.

He rolled over, groaning. His brain hadn't come back to its senses well enough for him to be able to form a coherent sentence, and even if it had he wouldn't have been able to come up with anything to say.

Dust rained down around him in spots, pooling on the floor like someone had poked a sack of sand with a needle. Distantly, he realized that cracks must have opened up in the foundations from the sheer force of the scream, probably because of a higher amplitude from resonating with their natural frequency. Even to his deprived, shaken brain, that was bad news.

Baekhyun had only just started to sit up when another figure crashed into him, sending the both of them flying across the floor in a tangled heap. His back hit the wall with a sickening thud, and he heard a familiar groan from the person lying against him. One glance confirmed the scar.

Normal Baekhyun would have never done what came next, but this was wild, cornered-animal Baekhyun. Electricity burst from him, escaping their confines as long as Shao was distracted, and arced through the air in visible, hissing sparks. He heard something spark and fuse, and Shao was blown through the air yet again, crashing into another wall.

The building rumbled, and all of them glanced up with wide eyes. The structure was weakening with every hit, and Baekhyun had just hit it with more force than it could bear. He looked away decidedly, shrugging it off; there were more important matters at hand. Across the room, Shao started to sit up with a groan.

"Oh, for the love of—" she started, but didn't get to complete her sentence before Jisoo was pushing past her and dashing up the stairs. Baekhyun snarled, pushing himself to his feet, and started in the direction of the stairwell, ignoring the way Shao's eyes widened. "Baekhyun, no!"