Yeosang POV: The Bunker Prison

By B.M. Polier

Disclaimer: This is a fan written scene inspired from the Diary Lore and MVs.

The moment I was about to grab Hongjoong’s hand, he vanished. They all vanished – except me. My first thought was relief. They were safe. Then I felt the grip of the Android Guardian giants tighten on my arms, their strength causing pain as they pulled me backwards, away from the broken Cromer. On instinct, I struggled in their grasp, but their inhuman strength was not something I could break free from.

           They dragged me back to the gallery where we met our other selves. They brought me in front of my other self’s prison. I could see him slumped unconscious within the glass walls. I wasn’t sure if he was alive or not. The Android Guardians hesitated at the prison, and I realized they were confused. They thought I was him.

           One of the Guardians let go of my arm and the other turned me roughly to face him. He pulled the mask and fedora off and examined my face with scrutiny. I heard a raspy voice come from behind his white chained mask, “How are there two of you?”

           He didn’t wait for answer before dragging me into a different gallery. The darkness was deep in this room. When we entered, a blue glow filled the room, and as my eyes adjusted, I could see what seemed to be statues standing in the room, draped in black sheets. As we passed by, the cloth fell from one of the statues and a chill ran through me. These weren’t statues, they were people who had been drained of their biological energy. I knew then, this was my fate. I was never going to see my friends ever again – I was going to die here.

           The Android Guardian holding me pulled me towards the back wall and shoved me against it, one of the others held me in place. I was frozen, staring at the drained resistance member that had been uncovered, watching one of the Androids cover them back up. Then I felt an intense pain behind my left ear. The world started spinning, and I could feel something crawling inside my head. An involuntary scream left my lips, and I tried to move my arms to grab the spot. The Androids held me against the wall tightly, and I squirmed in their grasp trying desperately to make the pain and crawling sensation stop. Moments later, the pain stopped, but so did everything else. I suddenly felt numb, and I went limp in their grasp. Why had I been fighting them, I couldn’t remember.

           Their grip lessened, until I was standing on my own. They moved away from me and waited. I could see the other side of the room where the door stood. I had a clear path to it. They weren’t blocking me anymore. I could run, get to the Destiny where Left Eye and the Grimes’ siblings were waiting for me, and we could get away. But my body wouldn’t move. Why did I think leaving was a good idea? In a daze I looked to my right, where the lead Android Guardian was standing and then I felt a gentle push from behind. I didn’t resist, instead I looked forward to where I was being lead. In the middle of the room, a glass prison stood. I had missed it when we had first entered, distracted by the biological energy drained resistance that lined the sides of the room. Pushed inside, I stood, uncomprehending. Was any of this real?

           I heard the door click close and watched as most of the Android Guardians filed out of the room, leaving two standing guard by the door. Minutes later, the soft blue light vanished, and I was left in the darkness. My brain felt like it was swimming through thick molasses, and I realized what was missing inside of me. I couldn’t feel anything. I wasn’t scared, angry, sad… nothing was there. I put my hand behind my left ear where the pain had been so intense before and felt cold metal under my hand. I realized then that they had given me an implant, the same one everyone in Strictland shared, the one that took away emotions. Alone, in the complete darkness, my hand fell to my side. I was suddenly so tired. A smoke filled the glass prison I was in, and I slowly slid to the ground and passed out.

           I woke up in my violin practice room. My dad was hovering by my side. I realized I had my violin in my hand and when the sound came into focus, my dad was yelling at me about the performance I had just given. He demanded I do it again. Quickly I positioned the violin and started to play. When I finished, he demanded it again, and again. My left hand started to feel like it was going to bleed from sliding across the strings, but, still, I couldn’t stop. I could never stop. I had to keep playing until it was perfect, and it was never perfect. How many hours had I been playing? Why wouldn’t he let me stop? I didn’t want to do this anymore. A drop of blood fell onto my pants as the skin on my left hand finally broke. I hesitated in my playing, but I could hear my dad yelling behind me to keep playing.

           A blue bird passed at the corner of my vision, and finally I stopped playing completely. Wasn’t I somewhere else before? How had I gotten to my practice room? Wasn’t I in Strictland? Had I not traveled with my friends on the Black Pirates ship, the Destiny? We had infiltrated the Bunker, found the fedora wearing Black Pirates and realized that they were us. I had found the Cromer, and been caught by the Android Guardians, but not before my friends had escaped. I shot to my feet at the memories, and the practice room vanished, replaced by the unending darkness. I was standing with my hands pressed against cold glass. A dull pain was radiating from behind my left ear and the hazy feeling I had felt at the dump seemed to linger within me. Had they filled the prison with that yellow smoke? Was I hallucinating? How long had I been in this cage like this?

           The drug effects seemed to lessen, and I realized that my emotions were back. I could feel the dread of my situation acutely. Suddenly, the blue glow filtered into the darkness, and I could see the room again. The Grime’s siblings were standing in front of me, Left Eye standing by their side.

           “Yeosang!” Left Eye whispered. I put my hands against the glass and tears escaped from my eyes.

           “You found me.” My relief was palpable.

           “We saw a flash of light and knew something was wrong. Where are the rest of ATEEZ?” One of the Grimes’ siblings asked, while the other, along with Left Eye tried to find a way to get me out of the glass prison.

           “I found the Cromer, but I got caught by the Android Guardians. I used the full moon power to send ATEEZ home, but the Cromer, it was broken. I’m stuck here, but at least they are safe.”

           “We’ll get you out of there,” she said, helping her brother and Left Eye search the room.

           I saw movement behind them and realized that we had been too focused on my prison, the Android Guardian giants were back. I banged helplessly on the glass walls of my prison as I watched the fight ensue. I gasped in horror, beating against the walls until my fists started to bleed as I watched Left Eye’s arm ripped from his body. The loss of his arm allowed him the opportunity to escape, but the Grimes’ siblings weren’t so fortunate. The Androids stood them in front of me, and I was forced to watch helplessly as their biological energy drained from them. Why had they spared me? Why? Why? Why was I still alive? The guilt and pain were tearing me apart. I slid down to the floor my body wracked in complete despair, blood and tears mixing on the floor.

After the Android Guardians were done filling me with despair, they covered the empty bodies of the Grimes’ siblings and left me hopeless in the dark. Maybe…  maybe it would be better if I didn’t have my emotions, if this was my fate, stuck here helpless. Exhausted I fell into a deep sleep.

           I dreamt that I was back on our world, A world, and was flying towards the warehouse where my friends and I used to come to make music and dance. When I got to the door, I realized I couldn’t stop and slammed into the door, bouncing off of it a few times, before falling to the ground unmoving. The door opened and I saw them all huddle around me: Hongjoong, Seonghwa, Yunho, San, Wooyoung, Mingi, and Jungho. They were all dressed like the Black Pirates.

I heard Hongjoong speak, “This is Yeosang’s drone.”

“Who flew this here?”

The dream flickered and vanished; but seeing them gave me comfort. They were safe.

Days began to blur together. I wasn’t sure what was real, a dream, or a hallucination anymore. The yellow smoke tormented me with terrible visions of my past – being trapped in my routine life with my parents, losing my friends, hours and hours spent doing what I was told. I could feel the emotional control device trying to work on my mind, but it never held, I was always able to break free with the help of the blue bird that reminded me of who I am. Was that blue bird me? Was I fighting this? I desperately wanted to not feel anymore, but was something inside me incapable of giving up? At some point, between the yellow smoke and the device behind my ear I felt I was truly going insane and tried to at least break free from the pain of the back and forth of the numbness and the intense emotions. I pulled at the device, but the pain was too great, it had burrowed too deep into my head.

At some point, I realized something else strange. I wasn’t hungry, thirsty, or needing to relieve myself, as if my body had become suspended in time. Was that a side effect of the yellow smoke?

When I wasn’t hallucinating or having nightmares from the device behind my ear, the darkness was all I saw. I kept imagining the biologically drained resistance members outside my prison walking around like zombies, my heart racing from fear until sleep claimed me. Other times, I would relive the moment the Grimes’ siblings and Left Eye had tried to free me. The vivid scene in my mind was like it was happening over and over. How could this never-ending torment be my life now? What did the Android Guardians want from me? Why was I still alive? This cycle repeated endlessly with no hope. The Cromer was gone, my friends couldn’t come for me, and there was no one left on World Z that knew I was here and who could help. Had Left Eye truly survived his terrible injury?

I kept replaying the letter I had written to my dad, how I told him I would never go back to the prison that had been my life, but maybe I should have never left at all. Being shackled to that fate was far better than this deep despair and hopelessness I was now trapped in.

           It had to be during the waning crescent moon that I had a dream, 2 weeks from when the Cromer had smashed.  It felt like, even though the Cromer was gone, I was still sharing dreams with the rest of ATEEZ. We were performing together, singing and dancing. It felt like a reminder that they were Still Here. No matter the distance between us, they could still be the strength I needed to keep going.

           Without that dream, I truly feel like I would have broken apart. Was it true, were we still connected through the Cromer? Would we be connected forever like this? Even if it was just my own dream, it had been the first dream in such a long time that hadn’t tormented me.

           After that night, the cycle of despair and torment continued unabated. I clung to it as the only lifeline I had. I sang the song whenever I was aware of myself in between the hallucinations and the emotion supressing device tormenting me.

           When the waxing crescent moon rose, I had another dream. I sang and danced again with the rest of ATEEZ. It felt as if the rays of sunshine were radiating from my friends, comforting me, trying to spread some sort of hope, reminding me to endure and that they were trying to get back to me. Could I really hold that hope in my heart? It felt as if we had really been together. It wasn’t as if I was having comforting dreams on my own within this dark prison.

           I kept that song in my heart as well, using it as a mantra when the despair became too much. Another lifeline to keep me from drowning. But it was so hard, as each day passed, the moments of torment outweighed the moments I could remember. I hoped as each day passed that the emotional suppression device would finally work. What was it about my mind that made it not work? Is that why they were keeping me alive? To figure out why it wouldn’t work on me?

           I was startled out of one of my tormenting dreams by the sound of a trumpet. I saw the shapes of Android Guardians that had been guarding my prison all this time move out of the room. I could hear sounds of fighting outside the door, getting louder and louder. I stood up, palms against the glass, listening. What I was hearing was real, right? I realized I was pounding on the glass of the prison without thinking. That blue bird of hope that kept me lucid all this time flitted into my vision, reminding me how much I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live.

           Screaming with all the breath I held within me, I yelled, “Somebody get me out of here! Please!”

           The door that had been closed for so long slid open, filling the room with a bright light. Trying to adjust my eyes to the light that I hadn’t seen for a month, I saw the outline of men in fedoras fighting the Android Guardians. As I tried to see more clearly, I heard a warm voice echo across the room.

           “Hey, Yeosang.”

           One of the fedora clad men was near my glass prison. I looked at them in disbelief as he slid down the mask he was wearing. I suddenly burst into tears of relief. It was Seonghwa.

           My tears obstructing my vision, I didn’t see how Seonghwa opened the glass prison, but I fell into his arms weakly. He helped me down to the ground and while I cried into his chest, he gently felt behind my ears. Finding the device behind my left ear he used a device he had on it, and I felt the tendrils slither away from my mind as the device fell off into his hand.

           “Everyone is here. Let’s get back to the Destiny,” Seonghwa spoke gently as he lifted me back to my feet. He crushed the emotion controlling device under his foot as he supported me out of the room. The rest of my friends surrounded us in a protective wall as we escaped back to the Destiny.

           Seonghwa helped me gently into one of the cabins and left me on the bed. As he tried to leave, I grabbed his arm and wouldn’t let go. “This is real, right? I’m not dreaming?”

           Seonghwa stopped trying to leave and grabbed my hand, sitting down beside the bed. “It’s real, Yeosang. We found a Cromer on our world. It took us a month, but we were able to get back to Z World. None of us wanted to leave you here.”

           I nodded my head and tears started welling in my eyes again. “Seonghwa, can you just stay here for a while. I was alone for so long. I’m scared that if you leave…” My voice choked and I couldn’t finish the sentence. Seonghwa just got comfortable and patted my head.

           “I won’t go anywhere. The rest of our friends have things under control. We wrote some new songs; do you want me to sing them to you?”

           I nodded my head and laid my head down on the pillow, not letting go of Seonghwa’s hand. Seonghwa started to sing warmly, and it was the first time in a month that I was able to close my eyes and sleep without fear and despair.

FIN.