"Sunghoon." A voice rings in his head while the words seemingly vibrate around his skull.

Every muscle in his body aches in the moment, seeming to twist, pull, and reassemble down to their very atoms.

"Sunghoon." The voice continues, nearly sounding like a mindless chant as he feels the distinct tingle of numbness at his fingertips.

The unrecognizable voice continues to ring around his mind, getting louder and louder by the second. He feels weightless. Like he's sinking into the depths of the unknown waters outside his district.

As if suddenly emerging from an endless abyss of darkness, light floods and blinds his vision. The bright fluorescent lights and pristine white ceiling welcomes him back into consciousness.

"Oh good, you're awake." Jaeyun— or at least three different Jaeyun's that eventually turn into one— smiles, standing over him shortly after his vision begins to clear out.

"What... happened? How long have I been out?" Sunghoon groans, squinting to avoid the overbearing glow of the lights above their heads.

"Heeseung and Jongseong brought you right back here after you passed out. The doctors tried waking you up but you wouldn't budge. I was the only one who could." His soft smile never falters, and Sunghoon can't tell if it's because he's genuinely happy he's back, or if it's just his assigned personality showing.

"I haven't used my healing in a long time, I wasn't even sure if it would work. I'm not sure what happened, though. Are you alright?"

"I'm... I'm fine. I don't really know what happened either." Sunghoon explains in a daze, flashes of black beginning to dart across his vision.

"Do you remember what you were doing before you passed out?" Jaeyun continues, sitting back down in his chair.

"I was... Sunoo was showing me something about the corruption and then I was out." Sunghoon recalls in fragments.

First the creeping mass of a seemingly black void consuming every part of the mentor before him, and then the glaring red eyes that seemed to be burned into the backs of his eyelids. What did they mean?

"There's no... display on corruption in the museum." Jaeyun deadpans, narrowing his eyes.

"It was probably a new display. You haven't been there in a few years, right?" Sunghoon offers, noticing the concern and confusion on his face.

Jaeyun opens his mouth to speak again but pauses when Riki all but flies through the previously closed doors, "He's alright?"

The three of them exchange glances with wide eyes before Sunghoon thinks to respond, "Yeah, I'm alright."

The boy huffs a sigh of relief, letting the doors swing with the disturbance and deciding to make himself comfortable on Jaeyun's lap.

"Great, we were worried about you! I was in a meeting when we got the news, so I couldn't come right away." Riki rambles a bit but eventually the older slaps his arm in an attempt to get him to shut up.

The three sit in silence for a while, and Sunghoon almost believes that they've fallen asleep until another body comes flying— though a little more gracefully— through the door.

Sunoo scans the scene in front of him wildly before visibly calming down, "Oh, thank goodness you're awake."

Sunghoon simply nods a bit dumbfounded as Sunoo sits on the floor beside the other two.

"How long have I been out?" He finally asks once he realizes no one else's plans to speak.

"Five hours, give or take. The doctors didn't know what was wrong with you so they chalked it up to stress." Jaeyun shrugs, nodding down at the clipboard attached to his bed.

"I wouldn't be surprised." Sunghoon surmises, the creeping darkness finally beginning to be cast away from his vision.

"Do you think he can go soon?" Riki asks next, and both mentors turn to look at him.

"Maybe. The doctor still needs to see him for their final remarks." Jaeyun chuckles nervously, eyes glued to the door.

Riki whispers something indistinguishable to him and he nods in return, the boy exiting the room just as fast as he came in.

"He's going to get the doctor. We want to make sure you have a good rest before your grading tonight. Don't want you to be tired."

Sunghoon nods, relaxing in his bed and trying to find something to keep him busy when he notices the blood under his nails. He seems to have been washed clean apart from that.

A twinge of pain strikes him as suddenly as it disappears. His hands and breath shake as he recalls the images of a bleeding body and pooling crimson.

"Where's Heeseung?"

The name alone sends a jolt through his mind, clearing up a bit of the brain fog he was experiencing as he moved to sit up farther in his bed.

Sunoo quickly gets up in an attempt to keep him in place, "He had to make a report to the Gamemakers. Not sure where he is now, but he was the one who brought you down here."

Even though every fiber of his being seemed to ache to go and find the boy, Sunghoon simply swallows hard and nods in response.

They remain still in silence until a doctor comes in and shoos the other boys out.

"Hello, Sunghoon. How are you feeling?" The man brings his chair over to him and settles down at his bedside.

"I feel fine. Could be better. Do you know why I passed out?" Sunghoon asks, avoiding eye contact.

"No, actually. I was hoping you would be able to clue me in as to why." He admits, looking over one of the papers on his clipboard.

"Do you have any family history of passing out, or... over-tolerance?"

Sunghoon shakes his head in confusion, "No, aside from working out until exhaustion I've never passed out before."

The doctor hums, "I see... Well, Sunghoon. I'm going to tell you something and I want to know what you think." 

Sunghoon opens his mouth to reply when the lights inside the room flicker before turning off completely. The darkness cut through shortly after by dimmed emergency lighting.

"Go ahead." He eventually agrees, staring out the windows into the now nearly indistinguishable hallways.

"We ran some tests and there were traces of cyanide in your bloodstream." The doctor says almost nonchalantly, acting as if nothing strange was happening around them.

"As in, enough cyanide to kill multiple grown men."

Sunghoon looks at him puzzled. What?

"Do you have any idea how this could have happened, and how you're still alive?" The doctor asks, eyes now fixed directly on him.

Processing the words that had just been spoken, Sunghoon is in the middle of constructing an answer when the doors swing open for a third time, and the sharp whizz of an object flies past his face before impaling itself into the doctor beside him.

In shock, Sunghoon stumbles back from the now falling body, a dagger stuck straight between his eyes. A cry of shock almost escapes his lips when a hand flies over his mouth.

"He knew too much." An all too familiar voice murmurs, "Now get up, we need to move."

Sunghoon turns to look at Heeseung, loose black hair falling in front of eyes that seem to shine a shade ofcrimson in the glow of the emergency lights.

Of course his body moves before his brain, and even though he can barely feel his feet the two of them rush out into the hallway with a sharp left turn.

"What are you doing? You're going to get us killed!" Sunghoon eventually remarks as they once again lose themseves within the dimly lit maze of white doors and hallways.

"You just— you just killed a man." He continues in exasperation, shock, and quite frankly disbelief.

"Nothing I haven't done before." Heeseung replies bluntly, hand locked around his arm as he ducks back behind the wall.

Sunghoon just stares at him blankly, following his every movement as if his life depended on it (it probably did).

After the mentor peeks his head around the corner twice and turns around, he tries a few of the doorknobs down the hall before one of them finally swings open.

Sunghoon immediately ducks in and Heeseung follows closely after, shutting the door quietly in their wake.

When Sunghoon looks up he's surprised to be met with the sight of rows and rows of shelves adorned with glass bowls, filled with heaps and heaps of small paper slips.

The sight immediately brings him back.

"You promise right?"

Sunghoon shakes his head solemnly, the words and image of his sister quickly fading in and out of his mind.

Heeseung finally lets go of him and goes towards some of the shelves, which all seem to be labeled by district and year. A mass graveyard that the Capitol couldn't even be bothered to clean.

Sunghoon noticed how the bowls closest to the door were far more dusty than the ones farther away. As if the trophies of these kids reaped for death were a sick display that wasn't even worthy of public viewing.

Although entranced with the size of the room and even seeing stairs going downwards— likely into another storage room for the same objects— Sunghoon finds himself gravitating behind Heeseung on his journey through the sea of bowls.

Yes, Sunghoon was disgusted by his absolute lack of care and disregard for the man's life he just took, but maybe he would be no different within a few weeks time. Also, he was justly terrified and he knew Heeseung would not hesitate to kill for him.

"He knew too much."

Watching the older pull out a slightly dusty bowl from the bottom shelf, he observes Heeseung as he fishes out a few different pieces of paper and reads their contents.

"You know something what has always interested me, Sunghoon?" The boy says absentmindedly, tossing pieces of paper back in with a bit of frustration.

"... What?" He asks in return, watching more of the papers being disturbed through the glass.

"So many people pull tesserae. You get more ballots with your name as you get older. You get more ballots if you misbehave, yet somehow the number of slips in the bowl always seem the same." Heeseung remarks, tilting his head at each bowl around him which seems to have an equal amount of papers in them.

"I always wondered, do they condense these ballots? If so,
if someone had... let's say, a hundredth of a chance of being pulled. Do they only get one ballot for each hundred slips?" He seems to mumble this to himself as he continues to tear through the papers, dropping every third one on the floor in a pile.

"But you know, I think this makes a lot more sense." Heeseung muses, gesturing for him to come kneel down beside him and take a look.

Sunghoon hesitantly steps over to him and goes to pick up the slips of paper.

Lee Heeseung. The first one reads.

Lee Heeseung. The second persists.

Lee Heeseung. The third, the fourth.

"It has never been about luck, or odds. It's been about control." He says darkly, tossing the papers back into the bowl and placing it neatly back on the shelf.

"They wanted to get rid of me, Sunghoon. For reasons I'm sure you are beginning to understand." They both stand up and look at each other eye-to-eye.

"Anyone who doesn't stand solely with the Capitol is a threat to national security. And you will have to pick your side soon." He continues, turning away to walk back through the next aisle.

"It's not hard to get on the Capitol's watch list, Sunghoon, but once they actively try to kill you it's usually game over." He stops by a few bowls, fishing names out before moving to the next.

"Every single slip has our names on it. Why? How do they know? What do they want?" Heeseung asks seemingly to no one, Sunghoon all but forgotten as he watches the mentor weave through the shelves.

"But most importantly, what are we going to do about it?" He stops at the last full shelf, tilting his head.

"If I pulled ten slips out of your bowl right now, would they all have your name on it? Your cousins' name on it? Think about it, Sunghoon. What could the Capitol want with you? Could your sister be next?"

With hardly a noise in his wake, he appears from behind Sunghoon, resting a hand on his shoulder.

"You can't die. You won't die, I'll make sure of it. But I need you to know who your real enemies are. What side you're on, and if you'd still follow me anywhere."

Still follow me anywhere.

Sunghoon pushes the words aside and turns to look at Heeseung, faces merely centimeters apart. He can feel the hot sensation on his neck as he considers.

"I'll follow you." He says breathlessly, completely unaware of what he was getting himself into.

All he knew was that his mind and body ached to follow the boy wherever he went. To shadow him as if this mortal plane was utterly incomplete without him.

"Good. I'm glad I can always count on you." Heeseung smiles, backing away from him.

"There's more you have yet to learn about me, but I fear our distraction is going to run out soon." He muses, the lights in the room flickering on and off momentarily.

"You should be getting back to bed. You have a big day ahead of you tomorrow." Heeseung grabs his hand in the maroon hue, "and I'm sure you'll eventually have enough time to learn everything about me again."

—

A/N →