Work Text:
There are three ways to prove that you stand with the Alliance.
If taken by the Alliance. You act like you belong to them . Not the Alliance in itself–but them . You copy the mannerisms, you learn the habits, you curate your behaviour. You pass as a linked . In other words, you renounce your humanity.
You bond with a linked–in the romantic sense of the word. Whatever romance means to them, you don’t know, but they say it’s quite similar to what humans call romance. What will be recorded as love. If bonded, eventually you may evolve into a linked .
You kill one of your own. Or many. It serves the Alliance’s purpose, anyway. Purge those humans.
In the world that Jongseong lives in, the last option is the easiest because acting like a linked still doesn’t come easy to him–even if by default, he has to act like one at the dome . He will eventually, once they turn him, once they deem him loyal enough.
Purge those humans, purge your kind, you are still not contaminated, you can do this much.
A linked is everything a human can wish to be in this world. Else they will become either a revenant when they fall prey to the outer world fog, or they will evolve into those monsters and blend in due to their human carcass.
Links are wired, ultramarine cables replacing the most important blood vessels, a steel heart pumping a cold palette through the regular veins, a chip at the base of the neck. Chrome replacing the most fragile bones, lens beneath the irises to detect the oddities. Agile. Ageless. Perfection preserved with metal. Their emotions reshaped in ways Jongseong doesn’t quite understand.
He’s still human, his heart is still an open place beating regular liquid crimson. Mundane. Disgusting crimson.
This is the test that will turn him into either a linked, a revenant or make his body a shell for the outer world beings to take. Renouncing humanity is his best bet. It’s a better choice than turning into a senseless beast.
He’s been practicing anyway.
It’s not like the second option is available to him. Bonding with a linked . As if.
Jongseong stares to the side, flight 1130 is under the control of a linked –the Alliance managed to infiltrate Choi Yeonjun as captain. After all, they all look human, it’s only their insides that function in different colors–the humans won’t know anyway.
Not a single soul will know that a traitor exists within them.
These humans only have two endings. And Jongseong has to strip himself bare from sentimentalism. If he keeps them alive, they’ll pollute the world further than it has been already. They’ll be the reason the apocalypse continues to spread.
Surrender or perish .
The humans on this flight believe that another destination will grant them liberties. The most mortal part of Jongseong’s heart wants to tell them that the sector they are trying to flee towards only has revenants. And that even if they were to escape the wave, the fog will get them. And if not the fog, the outer world will use them once the fog kills them.
And the apocalypse will keep spreading and spreading, all murky, a flood.
They never know. They are stupid no matter the shape they take. We are all stupid , Jongseong thinks, the world has ended, and we are all stupid.
So he’ll take the sane ones, and if none are. He’ll take the sins, the proof that he can be worthy of being a linked and that his connection to human feelings has ceased. It’s a tricky thing, because his heart still beats in odd ways even as he clings to his seat.
“Three minutes.”
The whisper against the shell of his ear is cold. His own will turn like that one day. That will be his reward, the prize for betraying mortality and trying to preserve what can be rescued from human history until one day maybe the plague is gone.
That’s his reward. Ultramarine in his being, steel instead of a heart, all his memories in a device. Cyan all throughout.
And Jongseong would only second guess this if Sunghoon was still a human either way.
For a second in his life, Jongseong thinks that Sunghoon was more intelligent than him. More logic driven. Able to get rid of emotions. Able to not look back, not at Jongseong, certainly not at any of them. But specially, not at Jongseong.
Jongseong at times thinks it was very targeted.
Escaping the apocalypse is one thing. Escaping humanity is another. Sunghoon escaping Jongseong feels personal.
That Jungwon, Jaeyun, Heeseung followed was natural. That he took his younger brother Riki also made sense. That Sunoo had to be convinced to renounce humanity by Riki also made sense amongst it all.
So this only left Jongseong with no choice but to prove himself worthy–the Alliance can’t protect a revenant in the making, neither a vessel for the outer forces.
Prove yourself worthy, Park , Sunghoon had given him the most glacial glare, if we lose you, don’t blame me . If I lose you, don’t blame me .
In his anger and defeat, Jongseong had hoped it meant something.
But that’s Park Sunghoon, linked . They don’t feel anything anymore, or so Jongseong believes. And Jongseong… Jongseong feels far too many things to even start naming them.
Wouldn’t it have been better if we all died? Isn’t this death anyway? Isn’t immortality an inescapable demise when there’s no humans left?
But Jongseong knows this world can’t be resetted. The Alliance’s purpose is the best outcome.
Being with Sunghoon is the best outcome.
Jongseong leans in closer, his platinum bangs brushing the side of Sunghoon’s cheek. Sunghoon doesn’t flinch. Jongseong vaguely wonders if he feels nothing or if he’s acting. Sometimes he can’t tell, “What if I am not able to?”
“Think of them as revenants.” Sunghoon responds barely above a whisper, logical, too practical. Gelid.
“They won’t jump at me though.”
“They will overpower us if they get off the flight and the fog gets them–you are immune thanks to the Alliance, but their lungs will inhale that.”
“They are not revenants yet though.”
“They will, and we don’t know if there’s anyone infected here who still hasn’t–”
“Sunghoon,” Jongseong interrupts, “would you kill Jungwon if he was still a human? or Jaeyun or Heeseung-hyung?”
“One minute.”
“Would you kill me?”
Sunghoon turns to the side, his pupils widened, there’s something written in them that Jongseong can’t decipher–it’s foreign code to him. If it was any human, he would think Sunghoon is offended that he even asked.
“I didn’t kill you when I should have.”
Jongseong gulps. He could have been murdered by Sunghoon–that end doesn’t sound too bad. Seeing Sunghoon as the last thing he would have ever seen if he had not accepted to be taken by the Alliance doesn’t sound too bad.
A bullet into his heart, a sword piercing through his chest. The fog strangling him before his body becomes useless to him and useful to those entities, and Sunghoon killing him and incinerating before it does… it doesn’t sound too bad.
All doesn’t sound too bad if Sunghoon does it.
“If I fail, you will kill me today.”
“Thirty seconds…”
Sunghoon’s eyes soften, his hand grasps at the edge of his seat.
“Make sure to destroy me if I become a revenant. Make sure to burn me to ashes, I don’t want to be food for the aliens either.”
“Are you planning to fail?”
Jongseong grins, twenty seconds , he’s not planning to fail. But he thinks if Sunghoon was still human, if he was still the boy that he was before he survived the apocalypse with him–he thinks that Sunghoon would be infuriated. That he would look like he wants to murder him for being a pest.
And Jongseong wouldn’t know what to do. If he would hate him for that like he always has, if he would push him out of his way, ask for distance and want him gone or if he would–
“Kiss me.”
Jongseong lets out. In his head, the leftover seconds elongate.
“If you are to kill me and all the people in this plane today. Kiss me before you kill me.”
There’s a flicker of humanity when Jongseong says it, he sees it in the way Sunghoon’s breath hitches, in the way his lips part. If it wasn’t just blue through the remaining veins, he wonders if Sunghoon’s cheeks and ears would have coloured themselves any rose hues.
“Ten, nine..”
“Won’t you?”
Sunghoon closes his eyes, eight, seven, six, falling from his lips and it sounds more like a prayer towards the end of times all over again, Or towards a point in the universe he didn’t want to reach.
And Jongseong is greedy, even in moments like this. He was the last to surrender. He knows what he has to do, but he still wants to feel one last thing as a human–he blames it on his heart.
He blames it on his heart longing for Sunghoon too bad.
But instead, what falls from his lips is coated with faux venom, “You always got me on my fucking nerves.”
He presses his lips to Sunghoon’s just as he mouths five. He doesn’t have enough time for romanticism, but he wants to feel something pure enough before his existence as this Park Jongseong is erased whether by death or by his own choices.
He is taking this memory before his last ones as a human leave him.
The taste of Sunghoon’s lips, linked , with the shape of Park Sunghoon–annoying, stupid, a pest just like him. Who he has been dying to kiss since his mid-teens. Who walked away to save himself– no , who walked away to create a path to salvation for all of them. For Jongseong himself.
The seconds vanish, three, two, one.
Sunghoon doesn’t say anything. Nothing more than whispering at his watch, ‘give me ten more’ .
The numbers start the countdown again, “If you don’t do this, I’ll really have to kill you.”
Jongseong nods, aware of his fate anyway.
Perhaps when Sunghoon pulls him by the back of his head, fingers digging in Jongseong’s hair and kisses him back, perhaps he is accepting that no matter what–this is the end to Park Jongseong as himself. So he is fulfilling his last wish, a kiss before death.
And Jongseong drinks him in, cyan melts against his lips, his crimson heart melts it. Sunghoon, linked , no longer truly a human, but also not fully a machine.
Half lidded eyes, parted lips, Sunghoon is perfect–perfect in the way he murders Jongseong like this, what he’s done is still a kill. Jongseong still hates him for it, but his real human heart feels the rush of adrenaline.
“Can you shoot to kill?” Sunghoon asks against his lips.
Three, two.
“For you, I would.”
One .
Sunghoon chuckles, it sounds far too real, not fabricated, not mechanical, Jongseong almost believes it, Jongseong almost wonders if the last minutes means he can dream. The timer marks zero, ”For you, I did.”
They stand up in unison, guns in each hand, back to back, a synchronicity, like they are part of the same kind. Not a human made machine and a mortal. One still the warm sun, the other the ethereal moon–cold, pretty. Unattainable unless he becomes part of the eclipse. There’s no time to process Sunghoon’s words, to engrave them in his heart.
Flight 1130, you are under the Alliance’s command. Surrender your hearts or meet your demise .
When Jongseong hears people screaming, fighting back, accusing him of betrayals. Of stabbing humanity in the back like he had brought Doomsday with his own hands. He gives away his heart, maybe he’ll get the idea of the Alliance’s romance. He pulls the trigger, the plane’s walls are bathed in carnelian.