Moonstrike 27

Her first reaction was pure animal fear.

Then the placement registered. They were in the kill box. She'd found a living, breathing person in this hell, and she couldn't leave them.

It could be a trap. If it was, it was going to work on her. Ji Min took a few quick steps into the room and hastily checked to be sure that no one was hiding behind the work table. It was clear. So she took a shaky inhalation and walked towards the first living person she'd found in this place.

The person in the cage had one hand curled around a little flashlight and wide eyes pointed at her. They were dressed in mismatched camouflage and a black domino mask. She could see their chest rise and fall rapidly along with panicked breathing. The chamber was full of some kind of smoke.

She took a step closer, unable to speak yet. It didn't seem real. He watched her approach. His whole body was shaking.

Ji Min was pretty sure that he was a child. He had fairly broad shoulders, but he was barely taller than her. Min Joon was a good head above her and he was only 17.

Most damningly, he still wasn't speaking either. Ji Min swallowed. "You're the investigator?" She tried.

He startled with a visible jump. He blinked rapidly. She could see his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. "Y- yes. Moonstrike."

The tension fled from her shoulders and then was replaced by the cold weight of horror.

That was the same voice she'd heard in the voicemail. It wasn't conclusive, but it was fairly convincing evidence that this was the person she'd come here to meet. And he was a child, and he was locked in one of the death boxes.

He started to talk again. Ji Min shushed him on reflex, one hand to her mouth. She was shaking.

This was not a good place for poor infosec. Anything here could be recorded. Audio or video. She didn't trust it.

She had to get him out of that kill box and then out of this horrible place in general. His eyes followed her as she paced the length of the room, looking for controls.

"The panel on the outside of the glass."

She gave him a Look. But he was probably right. Ji Min came back to it and hovered uncertainly.

She didn't know what to do with this.

'This would be a good time to have Alex. I don't think I can undermine whatever program is running here. I'm not smart enough for this.'

Well. If she was a dumb brute, then maybe she should lean into it. She eyed the glass speculatively. Could she break it? Was it actually glass? If she broke it, would something terrible happen to the person inside?

"I can get it open if you can show me the screen." He sounded so hopeful. He sounded like he just wanted to be helpful.

Ji Min closed her eyes. She hated this. She hated this a lot. But it was the best option she had, so she nodded and looked at her options. Of course it was directly facing away from the cell- so she'd need to reflect or record it. She put a hand on her camera and went still.

She could take photos and show him the screen. That wasn't ideal. It would be unwieldy without real time feedback. But more importantly?

She had a lot of photos of gory bodies in cells just like this one. It was only too easy to flip to the wrong photo, or for him to notice the image previews at the bottom of the screen. She wasn't going to show this kid the jaws of the trap. Not while he was in there, not while he needed to be able to think.

A mirror. Did she have a mirror? Of course not. But if she shoved up the sleeve of her tactical jacket, she had the prototype moon shield, and it was reflective. The prisoner watched without comment as she rucked up her sleeve and unlatched the crescent.

"That works. Angle it up more- angle, not lift. A little to the left. Okay, diagnostics first. Can you hit that upper left button for me?"

He must have picked up on her caution. His tone was quiet and serious as he ran her through an increasingly complicated set of checks.

"We're gonna have to take the shell off of that- no, wait… oh, yeah." He subsided when she showed him her all purpose tool and the little flathead it had attached. With his blessing, she put the ad hoc mirror down until she'd taken off the panel around the screen on his prison cell.

He had her cut one wire and move something, then close the panel back up. She did that with relief. She didn't want anyone to be able to tell someone had been in here.

The smoke swirling around him was thinning out. She wondered how long ago he'd gotten stuck in here. She wondered what the gas was for. She wondered what was the next step in the experiment that clearly included crushing lab rats to death.

She did her best to keep the white hot fear out of her body language. It might have worked. The kid didn't seem nearly as rattled as she felt.

Then she had an intrusive thought. Ji Min batted it away. But as she followed instructions, all that she could do was try not to think about the fact that this chamber was clearly airtight. All of them had been. Don't think about it, she told herself, don't run the odds it's just for hygiene vs that the gas in there is a really bad thing for people to be breathing in.

The system must have been very strongly coded to prevent the chamber from opening after it started running whatever program it had going on. But eventually, she won. The screen flashed an acceptance at her and she took a step back. The glass neatly and silently slid upwards into place. The gas billowed out into the lab, scentless but somehow cloying in her throat.

She gestured for him to move out, fast.

The kid obliged. Thank fucking god. She closed her eyes for a moment and thought about the security cameras. She was going to be sick. She was going to be fucking sick.

There was nothing she wanted more than to leave this place. But they had to delete the footage.

“We’re on camera,” she said, as quietly as possible. “Any idea if the data would be stored inside the cameras or in the viewing room?”

She had the impression that he was blinking up at her. “Security room,” he murmured.

Ji Min nodded jerkily. “Thanks. That’s the last room. Come on.”

He followed her without any complaint. His footsteps down the hall were nearly silent. She hurried him down past the experiment rooms and into the office. Ji Min immediately started looking for the hard disk. If the security footage was stored on a server or cloud then she was just fucked, totally fucked, but she was betting that most people wouldn’t put evidence like this on the internet.

There was a computer hooked up to the screens, so she took an educated guess and the whole damn hard drive with her. It was too big for any pockets so she had to shove it down her waistband. The other mask cocked his head as he watched her, frowning. But he didn’t speak. He put his hands in his pockets. He looked terribly young.

"Let's go. Can you climb?" At his nod, Ji Min led him back to the grate where she'd entered the facility. She helped him up and then jumped into place, holding her weight awkwardly in a brace against one side of the vent while she rescued the grate at the exit.

There was a fumble and curse from ahead.

Ji Min went totally still, sick with nerves. But after a few seconds of quiet movements from above she felt a little steadier. No one had heard. No one was around to hear.

That wasn't any reason to take an excess second in leaving. She did her best not to be annoying about hanging on the other mask's heels.

But every second was torture. She felt like she didn't breathe until they finally made it out onto the roof.

"Huh." He stood with his hands on his hips and looked around. "Nice view."

Ji Min chose not to wonder how he'd gotten into that building. Instead she tugged his arm pointedly in the direction of the next building. She took it at a jog and an easy jump, landing with a protective roll. Then she looked back at him to see if he could do it. If not, she'd go back and figure something out.

He loped after her and landed just as easily. He was grinning.

Something in her relaxed, just a bit. He was competent. She'd already known he was smart and he had to be a sneaky little fucker- but he had some physical capabilities. That was reassuring.

He followed her over one more building and then halfway down their fire escape before hopping into the parking garage. He only seemed to grow a little trepidation when he realized she was leading them to a car.

"We aren't changing out of masks anywhere near here," she said, instead of a straight order. She couldn't make him do anything. But she would strongly fucking advise it. "If you wanna talk, we need to do it somewhere else. And your tip was right."

"It was? Oh, good. Obviously something went wrong in there." He chattered along easily.

Ji Min gave him a sidelong look as she unlocked the rental car. He slipped into the passenger seat without any protest. At least he looked in the backseat before getting in.

'His self preservation skills are lacking.'

Troubled, Ji Min made a mental note of it. She was going to have to do something, and not just because she owed him for tipping her off to the creepiest crime scene she'd ever even heard of. She carefully stowed the hard drive in a bag.

And that was really fucking something, wasn't it? He'd been right. He was providing better information than the government was. Ji Min swallowed and tried to focus on the road.

This was a mess. It was a mess.

She took them on back routes, avoiding cameras and being circuitous enough that she was confident they weren't being followed.

When she finally parked, the kid was nearly dozing off.

Ji Min looked over at him. She sighed.

'It might be a result of whatever that gas was,' she thought grimly. She worked her tac vest off, took her hair down and brushed it out, and then hesitated a moment before taking off the mask. She stole one glance at the sleeping kid and put the mask in the glovebox. He didn't stir.

That made her feel stressed all over again, if she was going to be honest and in touch with her feelings. Was he just tired, or was it the drugs?

She didn't know what the fuck she could do about that. But she felt very certain that he should be under observation.

Well. Ji Min cleared her throat. When he didn't stir she upped the ante by tapping at the console.

He blinked to awareness and rubbed at his eyes.

"Let's go," she said quietly. She pretended not to notice how wide his eyes went in shock when he saw her face.

"Should I…? He put a hand up to his domino mask.

Ji Min sighed. "It would make us less conspicuous," she said. "And we're in this shit together, I think. But it's your call."  She deliberately didn’t look at him while he thought it over. He paused. He took off his mask.

He looked familiar. She didn't try to place him. She was pretty sure she was going to hate it when the pieces dropped into place. She didn't have time for that breakdown right now.

‘Fuck. He's just a kid. Should I even ask him for tech help?’

She let out a shaky exhale. “We should look at this footage and confirm what we’ve got,” Ji Min said. “Did you find anything while you were in there?”

He pushed curly brown hair off of his face with the base of his palm. “I didn’t get much chance to look around,” he admitted. His face was turned down to his knees. “I walked into that trap a few minutes after coming down the stairs.”

“How did you even get in?” Ji Min asked. “Wasn’t there a security guard in the lobby upstairs? The plan said that there should be one.”

His lips twitched. “I’m hard to see,” he said. There was a weight to the phrase, like it was some kind of joke.

She frowned at him, dubious. “Big if true,” Ji Min decided, not pressing. He didn’t have to tell her about how he worked. He shouldn’t, in fact. He didn’t know her. She ran her hands through her hair again and tugged at the ends. She swallowed. “Alright. So you’ve got no information indicating what these experiments might be aimed at?”

He shook his head. He seemed to get smaller somehow.

Well, if he had no theory, then it was safe to share hers. “I think it was something about regeneration and healing.” Ji Min felt her eyes unfocus. “I think they distribute a drug, and then cause damage.”

The teenager glanced up at her, brown eyes watering. “And then see if people get better faster than average?” he asked.

She stared at him. She thought about a metal plate coming down hard and smashing the top of his skull, and then continuing down to crush his ribs when he collapsed. She thought he looked about Min Joon’s age.

She broke her stare with effort. “I think that people mostly die on impact.”

Experimentation. Extrahuman experimentation. What the fuck was wrong with people?

Christ. Fucking Christ. She was trying really hard not to think about Min Joon asking if their parents had sold him off to a lab for parts.

“On impact,” he repeated quietly.

Ji Min nodded and didn’t offer clarification.

“It makes some sense.” He gathered his knees up to his chest. She gave a sharp glance to his heels on the car seat but he didn’t seem to notice. “People would pay a lot of money for superhealing.”

“Or for soldiers who have it,” Ji Min added grimly. She wasn't thinking about whatever her parents had done to them. Nope.