Chapter Text
It’s like the world dampens, it shakes and shakes as if an earthquake had hit them in that tiny hideout.
As if Kelvin was about to collapse at that very moment, he almost imagined it, his head hitting the floor while he quivers under the weight of those two gazes that felt so, so very painful.
“Send Kelvin Mars to the Agency’s office to be dealt with? Otherwise there will be repercussions ?” Sanjana stepped forward, but stopped as if a wall had fallen between the three of them. “Kelvin, what exactly did you do?”
With that question, he breaks and steps forward with his hands shaky and jutting out at first, before he curls them tight into his own body.
“I just– I couldn’t see you two get hurt anymore. This isn’t… I know it was impulsive. I know this isn’t right but I can’t—” He chokes a bit before he continues, it is not a proper answer, it is a plea. With his eyes that feel like they’re about to pop out of his brain and with it, his need to burst into tears. “I can’t watch you and us get so, so used like this! This isn’t something that we should have to go through, we’re still human beings. We get to have a choice, we get to live, so why are we living like this ? Why do we have to be under someone else’s control? Why do our lives have to be like this? Why can’t we just choose—“
A hand goes over his mouth roughly, and he can taste salt from sweat over his tongue, with the realization comes with the fact that he is, indeed, crying now. Hyperventilating, almost.
It’s Kiat who placed that hand over his mouth; it’s surprising and yet not. Kiat, who does what’s ordered from the Agency, who fulfills and succeeds each damn time even at the cost of his own wellbeing, Kiat who had always shied away from ever really expressing himself, always controlling himself from really ever opening up— His expression is filled with such emotion now. Exhaustion and weariness paint the other man’s face with the bloodied plaster still over his left cheek and his eyes nearly glaring with such intensity that Kelvin nearly hiccups.
Something had struck a nerve, a chord, inside Kiat with Kelvin’s choked out reply.
It’s with this that Sanjana’s footsteps break that heavy tension.
She’s next to both of them now, taking Kiat’s hand in her own and prying it away from Kelvin’s shut mouth, in that short moment they exchange a look that only they could discern from each other, he cannot tell what it is at all. He’s not entirely sure he wants to either. He ends up wiping his face with his elbow, the fat of it covering his face entirely before he tucks it around himself, to look at Sanjana with wet eyes.
There was an expectation that Kelvin had. Of her yelling at him, even if she only did that during training, that what he did was wrong, that now there’s only one way left for him and it was to give up since there was no other way out of this, after this decision he made–
And... maybe he would do that, if Sanjana was the one to say those things.
Because he trusts Sanjana’s judgement. Just like how he trusted her decision back when they were first recruited into this mess.
Which made what happened even further confusing.
She pulls Kelvin to his room. “Pack your stuff now . Get any necessities, your equipment, anything. We’ll figure this out as we go.” It’s as if they’re going out on an important expedition again, dazed as he stood in the middle of the room.
There is a realization there.
“Sanjana, no, wait. You guys, you’re not coming with me, I can do this by myself–“ Kelvin turns, frantic, as he leans towards her with wet eyes. “You both don’t have to be mixed up in my mess, I can’t do that to you two because it’s just not… not true. I made this choice for you both!”
When he says this, Sanjana stares at him.
Then she pulls him into a hug, and it’s as if this were just some emotional conversation that they had long before.
Sat on a ratty couch in front of a small television that sputtered with each press to the remote. Where he had curled up, attempted to make himself tiny like when he was young, where he told her things that his parents had never heard in their lives.
Because they were too busy trying to control him , those people never thought about what if Kelvin was entirely his own person with his own feelings.
Sanjana takes a shaky breath, then speaks, the softest he has ever heard her before. “I’m not letting you be abandoned like I have been before. We came here together, we’ll do this together. We’ll get through this like before.”
Like before , when they were first recruited into the Agency and when they were faced with only two choices. With life or death, with prison or a surveilled, restricted, controlled freedom.
“This is my choice, Kelvin. You can’t make it by yourself for me, for us.” Her hands rub in a circle around his back as he buried his head into her shoulder with a stifled inhale.
It’s with this that he does what Sanjana ordered. They break from their hug, he only sees the relief in her eyes before she turns to Kiat and strides towards him while Kelvin packs. With the door closing behind her, only partly ajar, like it had been before this entire thing started.
Raspiness coats Kiat’s voice, Kelvin could only hear this while he does his best under the pressure of time and emotions to pack what little truly belongs to him.
“The Agency… They’ll kill us or– They’ll just come after us, they’ll use us until we’re dead. Even if we escape, they’ll just keep on coming, you know that as well as I do, Sanjana,” As if he was trying to convince himself, Kiat’s voice came out frantically.
Kelvin allowed himself to peek through the gap of the door, his own throat locked under the tension.
The other man’s curly blonde hair had lowered itself to cover his dazed eyes, head hung low, as Sanjana’s hand reached out to cover his shoulder, her voice coming out strained.
“Kiat.” She hissed this out, her hand tightening, “You aren’t stupid. You’re not at all, you know as well as I do that the Agency doesn’t care about us. We’re expendable, to the point it’s almost laughable.” Sanjana’s breath came to her shakily, her eyes were locked up at Kiat’s own weary ones with an intense glare that pronounced her wrinkles.
“Even if we turn in Kelvin, do you really think that will help us? Will doing that get us out of this cage that we’ve found ourselves in, that we can only resign ourselves to, like birds? Now,” She sighed, pausing as she looked back to Kelvin’s door.
The man shied away, knowing that she had taken notice of him spying on their conversation. This was a privacy that had to be taken and stolen with the urgency of the situation, at least just for the two of them who were controlled, and now had to deal with something entirely within their control, made out of a situation that was dire and soon exhausting.
Here, the focus is only on the two of them now. Sanjana and Kiat, the complete opposite from one another and yet so similar in ways that could’ve only been made from pasts that had taken place and changed them.
With a controlled breath, Sanjana starts. “ Now , we have an opportunity. Not a good one, a terrible one actually, but we can escape this very moment. So what if this damned government chases us, so long we’re not being controlled?” She had hissed this out, letting her hand fall from Kiat’s shoulder as she curled her fingers into a fist. “We didn’t have a choice here, even if they presented it to us like we did, we were sentenced to death the moment they saw us– the moment they caught us. Maybe you willingly came here unlike us, maybe you wanted to do good, but I’ve seen the way you look at those messages from the Agency,” Silence cast its gaze on them with only a sharp, persistent noise from the message they had received from the agency.
“It isn’t like those other bastards at the office. You stare at the screen for far too long, like you’re wondering if you actually have a choice whenever they offer something. You’re tired of them, you don’t want to be under their thumb anymore, do you?”
It is like a dam had broken at that very moment as Kiat’s head lifted from its hung position. His lips finally, finally curled up again. With eyes that were still tired, stifled, and yet so suddenly manic, and with some new goal that gleamed in them. “…So what?” His eyes had narrowed down at her, his arms crossed over his torso.
Sanjana simply waited. Waited for the telltale signs, for the shaking of Kiat’s left hand and the small twitch of the man’s right eye, signs that were openings to target, to destroy the illusion of time and choice for the other man.
But she waits instead. This is a choice she makes, and a choice she waits for from Kiat, with sharp eyes and a tension that stifles the both of them.
Vulnerability in its entirety shakes Kiat to his core as he parts his mouth, his gritted teeth prying itself apart once more just to ask. It is an opening that reveals the weakness of his own control, a weakness that reveals his want for a possibility.
“Y’really think we could make it out of here?” His eyes flickered between Sanjana’s own two eyes. It’s a desperate thing to say, as his fingers dig into his arms.
Sharp, amber eyes meet cloudy grey ones and soften.
“I know so.” It is spoken out like a secret between the two of them, certain, with fact and evidence. Sanjana’s hand brings itself up and ruffles Kiat’s curly hair, who lets out a disgruntled groan. Peering from behind the mess that Sanjana made, who simply smirks now, Kiat gives a shaky smile. With that all said and done, they separate with a silent understanding as they both rush to their rooms in that hideout that never felt like a place where they could belong.
For all of them, the belongings that truly belong to them are sparse. The RHA, or the Reprisal Hazard Agency, had only given them the sufficient tools to study and capture sightings of the Mist whenever they had the chance to. Even then, they were not always up to par, either due to actual issues with funding or that those who were involved in the government’s side of the RHA simply decided that it wasn’t worth it to supply criminals like them with actual equipment that was the best in their world. A prejudice that set the three of them apart from those at the Agency. The only way they could get those tech suited for such a mission was to head to that office, which had the readings of the Mist and even the equipment needed to control that fog.
Kelvin was the first to emerge, their chubby figure twisting into themselves as if the shame from earlier had never left, and anxiety taking place within the cracks.
But they weren’t there, Kelvin bit their lip, they were in one of the dingy hideouts that had years old tech, secluded and tucked away that collected dust. Maybe they would never get the chance to ever be at that office ever again, being on the run. They liked the feeling of being able to help though, even if it was behind the scenes, even if their acts were hidden away in the shadows of the tight grip that the agency had over them.
The silence and shuffling were eventually broken, as Kelvin shakily sighed with a duffle bag slung over his shoulder. Armor and a body suit that had been given to them by the RHA were wrapped tightly around his large body as he adjusted his visor. The hologram in front of his eyes flickered from time to time, before it eventually shut down as he cursed.
That agency was probably already disconnecting the tech that they had given him.
Suddenly, a thought passed by and it made him pale as a gasp ripped itself apart from his lungs.
“San–Sanjana, Kiat?” He called out and the shakiness of it surprised him, as he brought his right hand over his left arm, rolling up the sleeve and nails digging into a raised bump of skin. It was forgotten in his stunt, forgotten in the emotions that left all of them reeling back from it together. They were not used to that heavy tension between the three of them, and were dragged into it with a spiral.
With that spiral came the slow disconnection, the realization as Kelvin pinched the chip inside of his skin. When they were first recruited, Sanjana and him, they were forced to have chips embedded in them. Barely explained other than a quick, ‘this is so we know you criminals won’t run off,’ and they got used to that raised bump of skin in those three years they were at the agency, one of the many scars that littered their skin. One of the many marks the RHA placed on them, much like a collar.
Sanjana came out first, her own clothing clung to her figure with armor suited and wrapped around her legs and arms, the zipper of her shirt entirely zipped up as she adjusted a familiar cap. He recognized it as the cap of when they first met, and those memories flashed by quickly in his head before he shook them off in favor of the situation at hand. Kelvin practically scrambled over, raising their arm.
“Sanjana, we need to get these out!” They hissed out, worry wrinkled their eyes as they shuddered at the thought of the inevitable pain that would come from digging out those chips embedded in them.
A curse slipped from the woman’s lips as she looked at her own arm, they matched, in a twisted sense of humor.
“We’ll get them out when we get away from this place first. Somewhere on the road, okay?” It was decisive, her sharp eyes glaring down at that scar. “...There’s this place that I scouted out with Kiat a while back for a recon mission, we didn’t report it at the time since it wasn’t used or even important.” Sanjana started, her eyebrows furrowed. Eyes flickered and met, before she nodded at Kelvin, who fidgeted with his bag as glanced over to the sharp noise of another message sent by the agency. “Gather any other supplies while I get the coordinates up. I need to buy time for us.”
With that, she dropped her own bag at their feet, heading over to the still glaring message from the agency on the many screens that flickered. Steady, scarred fingers hovered over the message with the red glare of the light illuminating the room.
Sanjana brushed her hands over that screen, eyes flickering between the message that was given and the one she was about to type out. The coordinates to that base were brought up quickly, the mission itself being from just a few days ago. The amount of time that they had was sparse however. If she wrote a scheduled message about sending in Kelvin and if they escaped within the time limit, it would give them only just enough time to get onto the road, but not enough to get to a safer area to dig out the chips since the RHA would—
“---It would be easier to let me do this, Sanjana.” Kiat’s voice brought the woman out of her concentration, peering over her shoulder to see Kiat behind her. His lips were tilted just a bit up, but his curled, shaking fist betrayed the hidden tension in his body. Sanjana paused over the holographic screen before sighing through her nose.
She pulled off from the glaring screens without hesitation, the red illuminated the both of them. “Go ahead. You’re the expert here, anyways.” And you know them better too , those words were left unsaid.
With that, Sanjana turned her back and went to the room towards Kelvin who had run towards the kitchen. Rushed, almost.
This left Kiat behind in that room lit up by screens and screens of holograms that always came with a small buzz.
He stood there, just before the many screens that littered a portion of the room before Kiat inhaled shakily. He turned his head towards the laptop littered with little stickers he brought just underneath his arm, and took out the USB that was inside his clenched fist. His head shook, as if clearing the tension and fear that had so suddenly risen up before he made his way to those screens. Swiftly, his fingers tapped at those screens as his eyes narrowed. Files and files of the Mist, the vortex of fog that had graced this timeline, popped up all over the screens. Covering the message from the agency, which he placed away to the corner as his clenched fist turned to hold the USB.
There, he plugs the data stick into an available port. The window of the download was coming to ten minutes, the blue of the new window stared down at him and he stared back. So little information about the Mist, and time was what they needed. Time that Kiat wasn’t sure they had.
Eyes flitted to the coordinates brought up to the new base that the three of them would stay at— Or rather, four of them.
That is, if that man would stay with them. Kiat scoffed to himself, closing his eyes tightly, he could feel his eyelashes brush against the top of his cheeks.
Willingly, at least.
He had to plan this out carefully, enough so that Sanjana and Kelvin wouldn’t get suspicious beforehand. Those two, as he watched the time dwindle down from the download window, had to stay ignorant to this matter. Just until they got to their new base.
With that certainty, he brought the screen of the coordinates and the agency’s message up together. Scarred fingers tapped at the given keyboard of the projection.
The new hideout would take at least a little more than two hours, and that’s by an aerocar. If they were to take land vehicles however, that would take around four hours, Kiat inhaled slowly.
This can work. It has to.
It will.
Those ten minutes were small. Spent in a quick daze as Kiat’s fingers typed in quick succession over the screens, sent in a message to the agency asking them to simply put give them some time, he’s not cooperating and we are using force, lies on top of lies. Then the download finished, and as he held that stick of data in his hands he placed his laptop softly on top of a desk, and plugged it in. He came to the very beginning of his chat with that hacker, who had only just begun to get into the depths of the RHA. The slow blink of green to indicate the online activity of the other man from beyond the screen caught his eye.
It is not with a giddy joy, it is not with a sense of accomplishment, it is not anything like the way Kiat acted before with a hacker only just shy of his own skills.
When he sends the file, encrypted to the max that would take over a day, it is sent with dread at his own situation. The fact that Kiat was forced to do this, the fact that he found that he didn’t mind that his own plan to fuck over the Agency and regain some semblance of control over his own life was ruined all because of a sudden impulse, those weren’t the problem. Those did not create that mix of emotions that were likened to the near despair Kiat felt earlier talking to Sanjana.
No, it was the fact that now the game that he had only just started had to be put off. It was a solace for him in a way, to have that sort of upperhand over that black haired man with even deader eyes and to see even a lick of a spark in those very same eyes.
But with that dread, that miniscule emotion, came the realization.
A new one could be inputted, much like code to be overridden with a virus.
It’s somewhat perverse, to find that childish joy in another’s eyes. To know that his choices, and his alone, bring emotions to dead eyes that looked as if they were about to disappear for good if he had looked away first.
The consequences he could barely care about now, as he closed out of the window of the chat console, the following notifications blipping at him before he shut his laptop down. Flips the whole thing and with a quick scour of his bag, that he had plopped down earlier, brings out the tools necessary to pry the whole thing apart. Those dismantled parts were carefully placed at the bottom of his bag, placed with a chip to hide away anything about his location. With a quick noise of the zipper, it is closed and put away.
Kiat leans back now, on the soles of his feet, before he straightens himself.
“...It’s time to go now.” The mutter came out hoarse, the disuse during the time packing, the time sending the messages needed for the three of them to make their escape, and the time spent just staring at those screens that flickered and flickered.
Until they shut down by his hand.
He always wanted to do that.
There was some time, KIat wasn’t sure how long. He had transferred over the coordinates to his watch, the pop up of the hologram displaying them when he tapped at it, before closing once more. Then, Kelvin came walking back into the center room, he had brought a stuffed bag with him when Kiat turned at the sound. He was packing the medical supplies that they hadn’t placed back properly, tightly closing the kit. Non-perishables, perishables, nothing too large and nothing too small could be seen in the bag that Kelvin had slung over his shoulder. Snacks and other miscellaneous items were piled in, rearranged for the most optimized room in the chubby man’s duffle bag.
Kelvin looked startled, as if he hadn’t expected Kiat to be in the center. The glow of the demands from the RHA were gone, and all that was left was the flickering lights above them.
It was silent, aside from Kiat packing the rest of the needed things, when Kelvin finally spoke up.
“..Sanjana told me that you were fine with this,” He began, and Kiat looked up. Both of them were hesitant in this, with Kiat’s cloudy eyes flickering between the items inside his bag and Kelvin’s baby blue eyes firmly placed on the wall just a bit away from Kiat.
It took only a short silence before Kiat spoke up.
“Yeah.” Short and sweet, not really sweet even to Kiat’s ears, as a chuckle left him. “I am.”
A short inhale, quick and rough even to himself. “I’m not the best at this, talking so openly with you, but… I get it.” His own curls hung in front of his eyes as he looked down at his bag. “I can’t blame you for wanting help, I can’t blame you for wanting a choice after what this agency has been putting us through. Hell, if I hadn’t been put through what I’ve been through when I first got here, I probably would’ve done the same. Maybe worse, if I had my way.” The joke landed flat even to his own ears as his fingers curled around his bag, tightly and coming back sweaty when he tried to relax them.
Except the joke had some truth to it. If he had his way, if he had the choice, he would’ve picked his plan from years ago. To destroy this place that mistreated them from the inside out, even if it had to involve a fog that nobody knew anything about, where it acted like a portal.
Maybe that Mist was better than where they’re at, than the deathtrap called the Agency that gave them no choice, no sway over their own lives.
Kelvin had stayed quiet during his own ramble, something Kiat was unused to. He was used to Kelvin speaking, being loud, making noise that certified that the other man was alive. But he didn’t relinquish, he didn’t lift his head just yet before he heard Kelvin’s voice.
“I thought, uhm, I thought that everything would get.. Better.” Soft spoken was his voice, not loud or sharp. “When Sanjana and I first got here, I really thought that this was it. That we were done for, that we’d be subjected to allll types of stuff, but, hm...” A chuckle ran through the room, not Kiat’s own that always rumbled through his chest, but this one was shaky and highpitched.
“When I got used to the agency, I thought we were doing good stuff in just the shadows. I started to want to save those people that– that got, freaking, uh… Kidnapped, who vanished! You know? It was the first time I ever liked doing something that was just me, my own choice. So when.. When I—” Kiat heard the choke first, the stifled cry and his fingers twitched.
This monologue, everything that Kelvin was saying hit something inside of him. A similar state to when he was just starting out, the want to save people, to be seen as good and great.
That same type of childish joy that Kiat once had towards what the RHA gave to him.
“You’re better than me, Kelvin. Personality wise,” he looked up to see said man looking at him, eyes wide and jaw slacked. “Skill wise? Especially in coding? Not so much, man.” It cracked the atmosphere then, Kelvin let out a jagged laugh that launched a huff of his own laughter out of Kiat.
Yeah, it didn’t do anything to help their own situation that they’re all in now, but at least it worked to get rid of the tension, of the helplessness of it all as they got around to packing in a hurry. It took just a bit more time for Sanjana to finally come back, the both of them cracking jokes as their hands shook with the rustle of their bags.
When Sanjana walked in, even the air simply tensed before it loosened. Her hazel eyes, near orange, glanced over them both. Tired, yet they lit up so easily as she found Kiat and Kelvin both in the center.
The sight of those sharp eyes made the corner of Kiat’s lips quirk up, before he took out the coordinates that flashed on the tech around his watch.
He cleared his throat as Sanjana got closer to the both of them, bringing up his wrist and displaying the coordinates.
“We only have at least an hour before the agency starts to get a hold about us lying about this,” he began with a hushed voice. “I sent them a message about how we’re using force against Kelvin, and they already know we’ve used their training rooms so they should have at least a couple recordings of his own missions that contain combat. They know that it’ll take time for us to supposedly subdue him.”
With that said, he centers in onto the coordinates as both Kelvin and Sanjana zeroed in on them with shared silence.
“It’ll take us at least two hours by air, four with vehicles on land. I say we take the ones on land, because when the agency starts to try to track us down, they’ll expect us to take the shortest route since they,” Kiat’s fingers solidify his sarcasm with air quotes, along with a scoff from Sanjana and a soft laugh from Kelvin as he continued, “drive on precision. Even if they don’t know these coordinates, they’ll attempt to search for our locations using our previous missions as templates. But if we install necessary precautions, such as cloaking devices, and in case there are EMPs…”
There, it dwindled into soft murmurs, bodies enclosed into a space where they all felt the comfort of each other. The time they had was short, but meaningful to all three of them in different ways. Their conversation about the plan continued for a bit, and solidified it all in their heads that they were all truly escaping a fate that had tried to entrap them.
The realization of a pair becoming criminals once more, with an even worse reality that if they were caught, it wouldn’t just be a slap on the wrist that awaited them.
Time passed as the conversation ran out. Kiat locked eyes with Sanjana, then Kelvin, and finally back to his watch. Tension had ramped up as they realized how much time they’ve taken, even if it was just for twenty minutes at most.
An inhale, exhale, another inhale and finally, Kiat’s wrist fell to his side and he slung his bag over his shoulder. Straps were tightened and the sound of rustled clothing, of tightly clenched fists, and shaky breathing resounded through the room.
Kiat breathed in, steady and calm as his left hand soothed over his throat with just a simple brush of his fingers.
The smell of the hard couch that they had sat on just earlier that day that had the scent of spilled lomein they never bothered to clean in this particular hideout, the memories of Kelvin’s first beer when he turned twenty-one, of Sanjana’s first full blown out laughter in the room they were in, of his own story that the other two sat with him through as he told it, secretive and bare as it was. The stale air of some rooms still unopened, always kept closed and shut with no windows to provide any real sunlight.
There, in that small, concrete base, he breathed out.
“Time to head out.”
With practice that had been ingrained in them and experience that they had gained after being with each other for those four years they’ve been together, they leave that place and those memories behind.
It was never used again, not in that timeline, and not with these people.