Mark didn't remember the last time he had felt so dejected.

Okay, maybe he did. It was probably that time he had thought Taeyong was dead—had that really been just a month ago? It felt like a lifetime ago and a few seconds earlier at the same time. Time is funny, Mark mused, remembering both his misadventures and Stephen Hawking.

Even now, it felt like Taeyong was gone. Not dead, but it still felt like some kind of private connection between them had been severed. He didn't feel as depressed as before, though, because he still held on to a very humane hope that the blue-haired male would get back, change his mind and join him again. Mark knew he shouldn't hold out hope for something that seemed so far away, but he did. Maybe that was expected, like an inbuilt feature no kind of programming could remove.

He walked down the street, feeling lonely, and not just because of the lack of people. Yes, the roadside was uncharacteristically empty, but that didn't correspond to the feeling in his chest. He felt like something vital had been scooped out from within him, and knowing that he was the only one to blame for it made it even worse.

Not the only one to blame for Taeyong leaving, of course, but the only one to blame for him staying that way. If only he hadn't brought up Jaemin, or if he had been a better and more understanding teammate—Mark wished Kai had been there with him. Even if his awkward convincing didn't help, Kai could always just...persuade Taeyong into coming along.

Mark wasn't staying for Taemin, and he hated that he hadn't made that clear. Looking up to someone so much, almost worshipping him and believing everything that had come out of his mouth, only to be brought down to reality in such a harsh way was too much for him to bear. But Mark hadn't joined the team for the same reasons as the others. He had joined to be able to help people in a way he had never been able to do before, and nothing anyone else said or did affected that.

He was staying for Capitol City, not Taemin.

It still felt like the worst kind of betrayal. Baekhyun had tried his best to soothe him, to repeat in kind tones that Taemin had been misled and blinded by his past, but to Mark, that felt like no excuse. He would never betray a whole team of people he didn't know to save the only person he had ever truly cared for his entire life.

Mark grimaced, realizing how it sounded. You'd do it too, said a voice in his head. If it was Taeyong or Baekhyun or Jaemin.

They would never do something like Irene, he argued back.

Wouldn't they? Fight for an ideal they care about with all the might they have?

He thought about the fierce protectiveness in Taeyong's eyes at the merest mention of Jaemin, and felt like he had suddenly run out of words like a well run dry.

He had been so distracted by his own thoughts that he didn't notice the man walking towards him from the opposite end of the sidewalk. The man didn't notice either, and the two bumped together, a hard collision that jolted Mark to life. He apologized profusely and distractedly, and turned to walk down the road again.

And stopped.

There was a sharp pain in the side of his neck, small and concentrated like a bee sting. He winced, reaching up to cup his neck, and took another step, only for his muscles to wobble dangerously. Or a syringe bite.

The last thing he heard were the brisk footsteps behind him before his knees buckled, and his vision went dark.

|

Taeyong's vision was dark.

He felt nothing for a few moments, only the blissful detachment of the emotionless, the apathetic. His mind was murky but full, the sensory stimuli of the outside world having no place in his new awareness. He felt light, as if the atoms in his body had halved—well, technically that wasn't what had happened, but he was halved.

Then, suddenly, something broke from the murk, floating up to the high nothingness of his thoughts like a little cloud of thought. Sight? Smell? No, it was a sound. A voice, which grew closer and closer to his consciousness, as if the thing that was creating it was getting closer to his physical presence—

"Taeyong?"

Taeyong #1 opened his eyes. Jaemin stood in front of him, looking confused. He had a pair of headphones slung around his neck, a hand resting on one side, and a furrowed brow to match. Taeyong felt suddenly thankful that his clones weren't in the same room, and reconnected himself.

"Who was that?" Jaemin asked. Taeyong stared at him for an uncomprehending moment before realizing he had been talking about Mark. Oh, of course, Mark. He grimaced, remembering the little visit that had apparently taken place only minutes ago—his conscious mind barely remembered it, since Taeyong had successfully divided up his consciousness enough times to render himself in an almost blissful emptiness that was the lack of empathy.

Most people didn't understand how his cloning worked—but then, only a few people knew about it, and those were the members of his team. Well, not his team anymore. Taeyong cloud split the different parts of his personality with practices ease—the angry, the protective, the happy, the uncaring. He didn't try it often, because it exhausted him and sometimes gave him splitting headaches when he came back, but he had been getting better at it over the past few months. All because of Baekhyun and Taemin and their little practice sessions, though he would never admit that out loud.

"Hello? Earth to Taeyong." Jaemin snapped his fingers in front of his face, and Taeyong blinked. The younger boy retracted his hand, looking sufficiently satisfied with himself. "I asked you who was that? Was it Mark?"

Taeyong considered lying, but then thought better of it. "Yeah, it was Mark," he said, trying to mask the emotion in his thoughts with forced nonchalance. "I left something at the...office building."

Jaemin's eyes narrowed, but he didn't challenge the answer. "I don't get why you left the job," he spoke in pout, slipping the headphones over and off his head. "You had all those cool coworkers—Mark and Shao and everyone."

"You didn't even meet anyone except those two," Taeyong said with attempted dryness, but his voice caught in the middle of the sentence, probably at the mention of his least favorite ex-trapeze artist. "And besides, they weren't good people."

"Mark and Shao?"

"Just Shao," he said lowly, feeling a welling of emotion within him by just saying the name.

Jaemin frowned. "I don't get how she could do something so bad," he said. "I mean, in an office environment? Sheesh."

"She did something bad, Jaemin," Taeyong said, more somberly. Jaemin straightened, looking surprised. It was rare for the older to use his full name, at least in a casual conversation with that particular tone.

"What, she jammed your printer?" Jaemin joked.

Taeyong rolled his eyes. "Never mind, it doesn't matter," he muttered. Only it did. It mattered, so much—too much. "Jaemin," he started, then hesitated. The pink-haired boy raised his eyebrows inquisitively, and Taeyong bit his lip. "If you had to choose between protecting one person you care about, and a whole bunch of people you don't even know, what would you choose?"

"Ah, the Trolley Problem." Jaemin's head bobbed up and down seriously. "Hyung, you should know better than to ask for advice from me. But how many 'a whole bunch of people' are we talking here?"

"Well, let's say..." He hummed nervously. "A city-full, for instance?"

"Honestly, I don't know," the boy deadpanned, making Taeyong's chest deflate both with disappointment and irrational relief. "But wouldn't the one person you care about want you to save a whole city?"

Taeyong stared at him, his lips parting in surprise, but no words came out. Jaemin gazed back steadily, his eyes oddly knowing, as if he'd divined some secret of the universe that he didn't know about.

"Hyung," Jaemin said with infinite patience, "I don't know what Shao did, but I know that sometimes people do bad things because they think they're good. Not everyone is all good and all bad, you know, and if you're going by the whole philosophical debate those old guys have going on then the concept of morality shouldn't even exist—but my point is, don't hold her accountable for something she may have done to protect someone." He shrugged. "If you're ready to sacrifice a whole city for one person, maybe she'd be ready to sacrifice you for something too, right?"

Taeyong looked back, unable to speak.

"And maybe she didn't sacrifice you," Jaemin continued. "I could be reading this wrong, but you liked her and she did something to hurt you, right? I don't know her too well but I don't want you to let the whole person go because of something that could mean nothing. Maybe she's just...waiting for you to save her. Or maybe she'll save you." He turned his palms up. "But you gotta go and take action for either of those things to happen."

"Oh, Jaemin," Taeyong sighed.

"I know you're a superhero," Jaemin said, making his eyes widen. "I'm not dumb. I've had my suspicions for a while and was almost ready to let it go, but man, you really just lobbed the ball at me with the whole city-full of people question." He smiled mischievously. "Just save the city, hyung. The one person you care about is telling you to do that."

Taeyong goggled at him, too shocked to register anything else, and probably would have kept goggling if his phone hadn't rung. He jumped a little, being in an already fragile state of mind, then closed his eyes and exhaled slowly before reaching into his pocket to pull out his phone. "Hello?" he spoke, without checking the caller I.D.

"Taeyong, is Mark with you?" Baekhyun spoke through the phone. He sounded relieved, but still worried, like he had a suspicion that hadn't been confirmed yet.

"No, he left about—" His eyes flicked up to the clock. "Half an hour ago. Why?"

"He was supposed to be here by now, and his geolocation isn't working," Baekhyun answered worriedly, and Taeyong's blood ran cold. "It could be nothing, but Taeyong, given the circumstances—I think Mark has been taken."