Chapter Text
After breakfast, once Endorsi had stuffed Bam into what she deemed an appropriate 'disguise'— really, it was only an oversized cardigan that she'd stolen from Khun's lighthouse, far too much hair gel, and glasses frames with no lenses— Aurore led the two of them to a cliff overlooking the body of water under the testing grounds. The testing grounds floated over crystalline blue, its massive shinsu barrier an eyesore compared to the ebb and flow of the waves below.
When they'd first arrived on the floor, Bam had managed to pull Khun away from his research into the floor test for a quiet moment. Leaning over a small table, his knees pressing into Bam's, Khun had told him what he found out about this floor's brackish sea and the rare shinheuh that were rumored to live there. Whether any of them were real, Khun wasn't able to tell him, but he smiled like they were sharing a secret and Bam had to hold himself back from closing the distance between them to kiss that smile off his face. He'd promised himself that he wouldn't cross that bridge until Khun was ready, no matter how tempted he was whenever those deep blue eyes were focused solely on him. It was something he regretted now, with Khun somewhere Bam couldn't find and no guarantee of his safety.
Which was why it was all the more important that Bam stay focused now. He looked to Aurore. Three violet lighthouses floated around her head as she typed something on her main one, casting her in a delicate purple.
"My lighthouses can't keep people from seeing you outright," Aurore warned, "but they can mask your shinsu and keep anyone from tracking your pockets. Take your time to look around the barrier. This could be the only chance we get."
"I understand," Bam said, summoning his blue oar under him. He offered Endorsi a hand to climb on behind him, not missing the glance she threw in Aurore's direction.
"We'll be able to talk to each other over my lighthouses," Aurore told them, her lighthouses moving to hover around them. A shimmering purple glow surrounded them. "If you get too far away from me, you'll have to keep them floating yourselves, but I can keep the rest of their functions running from anywhere on this floor. Any questions?"
"None at all," Endorsi replied for both of them, nudging Bam in the center of his back. "Let's go, Bam."
Bam nodded. "Thank you," he told Aurore before taking off into the air.
Once they were far enough, Aurore's voice came from one of the lighthouses. "Can you hear me?"
"Yeah," Endorsi said dismissively. She jabbed at Bam's back again, and when he turned to look, shoved her pocket in his face.
'Do you really think we can trust her?' it read.
Bam frowned. He typed a reply on his own pocket. 'I don't know, but she's been helping us so far.' Quickly, he added, 'And I believe what she said about her brother.'
Endorsi rolled her eyes. 'Just because she's telling the truth doesn't mean she's on our side.'
'I know. But we need all the help we can get.'
Besides, even if Aurore was working against them, she couldn't leave them any worse off than when they started. Either she was giving them false information, which left them in the same place as if they had no information at all, or she was planning to lead them into a trap, which meant that they might be able to see who else was involved. Bam wasn't sure what Khun would have done in this situation, but he was fairly certain that working with Aurore was the right choice.
Endorsi huffed, but dismissed her pocket. "Fine," she said aloud. Her mouth turned downward in a truly impressive scowl, the kind that was usually aimed at Khun rather than Bam.
"Shibisu and I installed a program on the observer he lent us that should be able to scan for any anomalies," Aurore's voice said as they approached the barrier, and one of her lighthouses ejected the observer. "If it doesn't find any, then you can probably test the integrity of it anywhere."
"And I'll be the one running it," Isu's voice joined in from the observer, "so you just have to make sure no one sees it or interrupts."
"Got it," Bam replied. The observer floated away from him, hovering only an arms-length away from the barrier. As he watched, it began to circle the perimeter, only a faint whirring sound emitting from it.
On an impulse, Bam looked downward. With how high up they were, he could see almost the entire body of water. Maybe because of the testing center floating above it, there was no sign of life in the water below. No splashing shinheuh, no islands, and no watercraft. It seemed nothing like the wondrous depths that Khun described to him. If there was anything down there, it had to be well-hidden.
"What about its shinsu?" Endorsi questioned, and Bam snapped back to attention to listen. "Aren't you worried about that setting something off?"
"It should be too minor for that," Aurore replied. "I've tested with my lighthouses before, and they never caused an alarm. Besides, I'm monitoring things from here."
"If she's such a good hacker, why didn't she just make her team pass before they had to take the floor test?" Endorsi muttered.
"I don't think that's how that works," Bam whispered back to her.
"Of course it isn't." She propped a hand on her hip, directing an exasperated look at him. "I was being facetious."
"Oh." Bam blinked, then the meaning of the word clicked. He smiled. "Oh! Like how Khun gets when he hasn't slept in a while!" It was one of the many, many new words Khun had taught him while on the Testing Floor, after Bam had asked him about his flippant comments toward the other test-takers. Thinking about it now made something bittersweet swell in Bam's chest.
Endorsi fake-gagged. "Gross, don't compare me to him."
"You two are similar in a lot of ways," Bam pointed out, and Endorsi's nose wrinkled.
"Rude," Endorsi huffed. "Unlike him, at least I know how to go get a man. Trust him to make it way harder to set you two up."
Bam tilted his head. "You were trying to help Khun and I get together?" It had been over a year since he turned her down for the last time, and though they'd returned to some kind of normal fairly quickly, he didn't think she'd be the type to be willing to set him up with someone else.
Her eyes narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean? I'm great at this sort of stuff."
"What?" His eyes went wide as he realized how his words came across. "Wait, I didn't mean it like that! It's just— I didn't notice you helping, and me and Khun were—"
"You sure you want to continue that thought?"
"I—"
Luckily, before he had to come up with a response, his pocket rang with a call.
"Take the call," Endorsi said, lifting her hand to cover her mouth. Bam had the sense she was laughing at him. "Better than digging a deeper hole with me."
She didn't have to tell him twice. Maybe it was Hockney or Jinsung calling to update him. It had been a little while since he heard from either of them last.
'Khun Ran,' his pocket read. Bam felt the blood drain from his face. There was only one thing he could be calling for in this situation.
In a panic, Bam dismissed the call. Endorsi snorted.
Before Bam even had the chance to try to call back, his pocket was ringing again. This time, he managed to accept it.
"Hey Ran," he said, trying to sound calm and not as if he had been on the verge of a breakdown for an entire month. "How are you and your team?"
From the judgmental raise of Endorsi's eyebrow, Bam got the sense he'd failed his attempt at nonchalance.
"Where's A.A.?" Ran demanded. "Why isn't he answering his pocket?"
Bam looked desperately to Endorsi, who shrugged and gestured at his pocket. Clearly there would be no help from her.
"He's, uh..." Bam couldn't bring himself to lie about this, especially considering who was on the other end of the call. "He went missing during the floor test. We haven't been able to find him."
His pocket went silent. Bam checked to see if the call had dropped, but it was still running.
"Ran?" he tried.
The voice that came from the pocket next was lower and calmer than Ran's, and Bam quickly recognized it as Novick. "We're three floors behind you," Novick said. "It'll be at least another month or two before we reach you, assuming we pass all the tests first try."
Bam sighed. Hockney and Elaine were two floors behind them the last time he checked in, and he hadn't heard from Hwaryun since before they took the 73rd floor test. For the time being, the only people to help would be the parts of his team already there.
"Hopefully we'll find him before then," he said quietly. Given how little information they'd found in the time since Khun was taken, it was getting difficult for Bam to stay optimistic about their chances. "We'll keep looking. Let us know when you reach this floor."
"Got it," Novick replied. "Don't worry too much, Viole. Khun's not the kind of guy to go down easy."
"I know." Bam closed his eyes, allowing himself a steadying breath. Wherever Khun was, Bam didn't doubt that he was fighting tooth and nail to come back to him. What scared him was what could be happening in the meantime. "Be careful, okay?"
"Will do," Novick said. "I'll try to keep Ran out of trouble." He hung up.
Bam only had a moment to try not to panic about how Khun might react to Ran getting involved before Aurore's voice came from one of the lighthouses.
"Sorry to interrupt," she said. "We're done scanning. It looks like the whole barrier is pretty uniform. No weak spots." As she spoke, Isu's observer flew back to them and slipped back into one of the lighthouses.
Bam and Endorsi exchanged a look.
"Should we, uh, hit it and see if it breaks?" Bam asked.
"Once you do, it'll probably raise some alarms," Aurore warned. "Is there anything you want to investigate in the water first?"
Bam took another look at the water below, then surveyed the cliffside. No structures, no caves, nothing where someone could keep a prisoner.
"I don't see anything," he said. "Do you think they were taken somewhere else on the floor?"
"Maybe," Aurore hummed. "Alright, then I guess we're done here for the day. My lighthouses can teleport you back to me after you hit the barrier, but they'll need some time to recharge, so you'll have to be ready to teleport us again as soon as you land."
"I'll be ready," Endorsi said. "Bam, if you'll do the honors?"
When they lost Khun, the barrier had broken under just the force of his fall. Bam would have to hold back quite a bit to match that.
He conjured a bang in front of him, narrowing his eyes. Making sure that it would cover an area wide enough for a human body, he directed a blast of shinsu at the barrier. He winced as it connected, realizing just how much he'd underestimated the force of it. That had been far more than someone landing on it.
But the barrier held, not even a crack in it.
Aurore's voice came over a lighthouse, not giving him time to try another blow. "That definitely set something off," she said. "I'm getting you two out of there."
After working so much with Khun, the swooping sensation of lighthouse teleportation was familiar rather than disorienting. He and Endorsi had barely landed in front of Aurore before a pink glow surrounded them and took them the rest of the way back to their rented house.
Aurore stumbled as they landed in the common room, and Bam reached out to steady her.
"Thanks," she said as she regained her balance, leaning on one of the two lighthouses floating beside her. Where the third one had disappeared to, Bam wasn't sure. "So the barrier didn't break?"
"It didn't," Bam confirmed, his lips pulling downward. "If it didn't break from this, Khun shouldn't have fallen through when he hit it. Someone had to have tampered with it, right?"
Aurore sighed. "It's not exactly new information," she said, "but it all but confirms that someone in charge of the tests is involved in the disappearances."
"Yeah, we knew that," Endorsi snapped. "How is this supposed to help? We can't exactly go interrogating people without making it obvious we're still on this floor."
"We can't," Aurore agreed. She rubbed her arm with a hand, absently dragging her nails over her skin. Her gaze was distant, as if following a dozen different tracks no one else could see. "There's only so much I can find out from the outside, though. The test director has all his information hidden well." She frowned. "All I could find was his name. Lo Po Bia Laurent."
"Lo Po Bia Laurent?" Bam echoed. "I might know someone I can ask about him." If the test director was from the Lo Po Bia family, maybe Elaine knew about him. And several of their allies were only a few floors away. Even if their current team couldn't continue their investigation too visibly, their friends could once they arrived.
Aurore's gaze returned to him, clearer now. "Let me know what you find out, please. I'll keep researching as well, and I'll stay in touch about what I find."
Bam nodded. "Thank you for all your help, Miss Aurore," he told her.
The final smile she directed at him as she prepared her lighthouses to teleport was faint, and then she was gone in a flash of purple.
"What a waste of time," Endorsi huffed, leaning against the back of one of the chairs.
"It was worth a look," Bam replied. He sat down, pulling up Elaine's contact on his pocket. When he called, it connected immediately.
"Viole," Elaine greeted him. "Hockney thought you might be calling soon. Has something happened?"
"Khun's been taken," Bam said. "We haven't had much luck yet, but there's someone who's been helping us on this floor. She thinks the test director is involved. I, uh, was wondering if you might know something about him, because he's from the Lo Po Bia family."
"I might, but I can't promise I do," Elaine replied. "What's this man's name?"
"Lo Po Bia Laurent."
There was a sharp intake of breath from the other end. "I do know that name," Elaine said. "I wasn't aware he'd become a test director."
"What do you know about him?" The words rushed out of him, half-breathless with a swirling mix of anxiety and anticipation.
"I never met him," she told him. "He and his sister were ostracized from the Lo Po Bia family before I was born, but I was told about them as a warning for the sorts of dangerous behaviors that the family couldn't accept. My father was one of the leaders who cast her out."
"What did they do?" Bam asked quietly, unsure whether he was ready to hear the answer. If this man had been involved in something so heinous that the Lo Po Bia family rejected him, Bam didn't even want to imagine what Khun might be going through. Whether imagining or knowing was worse, Bam couldn't say.
"Laurent hardly did anything significant on his own," she said. "He may be a Ranker, but he lacked real ambition or creativity. His sister, on the other hand..." She let out a heavy sigh. "Karine showed no loyalty to any of the family, not even members of her own branch. It took a long time for people to realize that she'd been taking members of the family captive and using them to bolster her own power."
A chill went through Bam as he thought of White and the ways he consumed people to increase his power. Was that what had happened to Khun?
"Did they not notice, or not care?" Endorsi spoke up, and Bam looked up at her, startled by the reminder of her presence. Her expression was unusually flat, her eyes narrowed at Bam's pocket.
"I'm not sure," Elaine admitted. "I suppose if Laurent is a test director now, the family might not have stripped them of all their influence. Perhaps they're keeping him and Karine here like how I was kept on the Name Hunt Floor."
Bam pressed his lips together. Having Khun's captors involved with the Lo Po Bia family seemed like it might complicate things in a way that he didn't know how to handle, but more importantly: "What happened to the people she took captive?"
Elaine was quiet for a moment. "Viole, are you certain—?"
"Tell me." Bam could feel the shinsu around him agitating in time with his growing frustration, but couldn't bring himself to care as he stared down his pocket.
"They died," she finally said. "Even the ones that were still alive when they cast out Karine wasted away eventually."
"No," Bam said reflexively. "That won't happen." Not to Khun. It didn't matter what the Tower threw at him, he always clawed his way back to Bam's side. It didn't matter that no one who went missing came back. It didn't matter that they might be dealing with a woman who drained the life out of her victims. Khun wouldn't leave him.
"Viole." Elaine's voice was low, deliberate. "If Karine is the one behind your friend's disappearance, you must be careful. It took several family heads to subdue her in the past. If you try to face her alone without a plan, you will fail."
Bam's fists clenched. "Fine," he gritted out. He dragged a breath in through his nose. The shinsu around him settled. It wasn't Elaine's fault that they were in this situation, and it wouldn't be fair of Bam to get angry at her for a reasonable warning. "Thank you for your help."
"It's my pleasure, Viole," she replied. "Have patience. Hockney and I will be on your floor soon, and we will provide all the assistance we can. I not only owe you a debt, but I owe one to your light bearer as well."
Bam swallowed against the sudden lump in his throat. "Thank you," he repeated. "I'm sure Khun would appreciate it, too." Not that he would admit it.
Her tone softened. "Stay safe, Viole."
When Elaine hung up, Bam finally looked up at Endorsi again, who was watching him with an inscrutable expression.
"I should talk to Isu about this," he told her. Isu would know what to do.
Endorsi's gaze didn't leave him. "What will you do if the worst happens, Bam?"
"It won't." He wouldn't let it.
"You can't control that," she said. "You're not a god."
Usually, hearing that from his team was a balm for his worries, but now it felt more like a curse, draping over his shoulders with a weight he couldn't shake. No matter how powerful Bam got, he could not protect the people who meant the most to him. If he had been the god FUG wanted him to be, he could have prevented this.
Except if he was that god, he wouldn't have Khun. He wouldn't have Rak and Isu and Endorsi and all the rest of his most precious people.
Which was more important, to keep the people he loved safe, or to keep them by his side?
Selfishly, he knew which he had already chosen.
"I know," he said quietly. He was no god, not when he would rend the world into shreds for the ones most important to him without a second thought. "But I can't lose him."
Though he couldn't bring himself to meet Endorsi's eyes, he heard her heave a sigh. "Alright, then. Let's go talk to Isu." She rose to her feet, holding out a hand. When Bam took it, she tugged him to his feet.
"Endorsi..."
"Save it," she told him. "Once we get Khun back, you can thank me." She grinned, a sharp, vicious thing. "Preferably by convincing him to use some of that stash of points he has to fund a very nice shopping trip."
Despite everything, Bam smiled back at her. "Okay." They would talk to Isu, and Isu would come up with something clever that would make all the weeks of waiting worth it. No matter what, Bam would have Khun back in his arms eventually.
-----
Even after pushing away the longing for his team, Khun could still feel it gnawing a pit in his stomach. Clearly the strange pseudo-isolation was getting to him more than he initially assumed, if he was having this much trouble keeping ahold of himself.
The only solution was to put himself back to work. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and rose to his feet, making his way to crouch beside where he'd stashed his few things under the floor. As he reached for one of his knives, he paused, his gaze falling on the near-empty vial beside it. The last time he'd taken his injection, only a few days ago, the vial had several more doses worth of liquid left. It had been enough for over a month of weekly injections at the lower dose he'd switched to when it became clear that escape wouldn't be an easy matter.
He rocked back on his heels, lips curling downward. The only person other than him who had been in his hut since he arrived was Karine, but if she wanted to deprive him of his hormone treatment, why would she not have simply taken the vial?
No, the depleted state of it had to be from usage. Had Khun been the one to use those doses, even if he couldn't remember?
There was an easy way to check. He laid down on the floor, reaching under his bedframe where he'd been keeping track of the passing days. His fingers ran over the scratches, counting well past the twenty-three days he last marked.
Eight weeks, two days. That was over twice the amount of time he remembered.
The chance that the lost time was all an elaborate trick, that Karine had snuck into his hut, emptied his vial of testosterone, and marked five extra weeks on his bedframe, was slim enough to be an impossibility. If she was trying to chip at his composure, making him feel that he'd lost weeks worth of memories would be a sure way to upset him, but it seemed like too convoluted an approach for someone like Karine, who seemed to rely more on her sheer force of presence. The more likely possibility was that those five weeks had happened, but something had taken the memory of them from him.
If Karine had taken his memory, there had to be something that triggered her decision to take action. Anything big would have probably also caught the attention of others on the island. Gardener was hardly more than a cordial brick wall, but at least he spoke to Khun. That meant there was a chance he would let some kind of information slip.
Khun rose to his feet, quickly getting dressed. Before he left, he knelt beside his stash, attaching his hidden sheath to his arm. He paused only a moment before grabbing the vial and a needle as well, moving to the bed to tuck them between the mattress and the bedframe.
What was left was only enough for a single lowered dose, but Khun knew well enough how his body and mind responded to the complete lack of it, after his lighthouses were destroyed at the Hand of Arlen and his stock of testosterone with them. The only thing that had kept him from biting the heads off of Bam's new team afterward was the knowledge that they were Bam's team. That had helped quell the flaring of his temper, but it did nothing for his restlessness or the despairing fog that clung to him.
The longer he could go without returning to that state, the better. Even one partial dose was worth keeping.
But there was no time to linger on that. He marked one more day on the bedframe before striding to the door.
The air outside was weighty, like the gathering of shinsu before a thunderstorm, but the only sign of life outside was a small group of sandpipers hopping about in the shallow waves. When he stepped out of his hut and onto the beach, they scattered, not even footprints left behind.
On reflex, he glanced toward the pier that Karine frequented. No one there, yet her presence seemed to press into him from every direction. What had happened to to cause such a change in the island's atmosphere? Surely it had to be connected to the five weeks Khun was missing; it would be far too much of a coincidence otherwise.
Once it became clear that Karine was not about to appear on the beach to corner him, Khun turned toward the treeline. He picked his way carefully through the path to Gardener's hut.
Rather than the falsely vibrant flowerbed that Khun had done his best to ruin, Gardener was kneeling beside one of two flowerbeds with a few hints of green poking out of the soil.
Khun cleared his throat, and Gardener's head snapped up. His eyes went wide.
"Khun?" He rose to his feet, brushing his hands off on his pants. "How are you feeling? How are your ribs?"
As Gardener strode toward him, Khun was careful to hold his ground, his brows lifting. The man Khun had been dealing with over the past month had hardly ever greeted him by name, let alone said anything to start a conversation. Khun was tempted to think this altered demeanor was a trap, yet he couldn't imagine that the shell of a man he knew before would be able to pull off such a change unless it was real.
"My ribs are fine," he said, not bothering to question the seeming non-sequitur. Clearly there was context for their relationship that must have been in the five weeks he was missing, but until he had a better idea of who and what he could trust, he would have to keep the gap in his knowledge to himself.
Gardener crossed his arms over his chest. "Seriously? It's only been a few days, and I hit you hard. You couldn't even walk without holding your ribs."
"Members of the Ten Great Families heal injuries like that pretty quickly," he bluffed with a smirk.
Gardener scowled. "Really."
Technically, it wasn't a lie that the Ten Great Families were sturdier and quicker to heal, but a rib injury as serious as Gardener was implying would take much longer than a few days to be completely pain-free. Either someone had healed him, or the fire fish had activated at some point between him getting the injury and him waking up this morning.
It should have been impossible, with the fire fish having burrowed itself deep into his shinsu and Karine blocking him from using said shinsu. But thinking about it now, Khun could recall feeling its flames in the border between sleep and waking, a feeling that he had unconsciously dismissed as his imagination before he even awoke. Could it have been real? If it was, that would mean that Karine couldn't wholly block his shinsu.
He would have time to follow that lead later; right now, he had to see what else he could glean from Gardener. Though the information that the two of them had come to blows a few days ago was unexpected, it still didn't seem significant enough to justify five weeks worth of missing memories. Surely if Karine were bothered by that, she would simply erase the fight itself or whatever led to it. Besides, Gardener seemed to have retained his memories where Khun had not. It had to be something else, then.
"It doesn't matter if you believe me," Khun said easily. "You can see for yourself that I'm fine."
Gardener snorted. "Whatever. If you wanna hide an injury, that's your business. I'm more interested in an explanation for everything else."
That was what Khun was afraid of. Bluffing his way past his missing memories was one matter, but outright lying about them was far more of a risk. Spreading misinformation was only helpful if Khun knew what the truth was that he was trying to conceal.
But he needed more information before he could decide whether to trust Gardener with the truth about his current blind spots.
"You'll have to be more specific," he drawled, dipping into the tone that was always quickest to get his teammates snapping back at him.
Gardener shook his head. "Come on, I know you know what I'm talking about." His gaze on Khun was appraising, heavy with a sort of expectation that unsettled something under Khun's skin. "You led me to a dead woman and then went entirely unresponsive. You can't just pretend it didn't happen."
Khun bit back the questions that sprang immediately to his mind. Asking any of them would make it clear that he'd forgotten what happened, and it wasn't time for that admission yet.
Still, he couldn't keep his eyes from widening slightly. Maybe it was that he was already off-kilter from the current situation, or that he'd spent too many years out from under his family's thumb, around people who he could trust with shows of emotion. As quick as he schooled himself again, he could tell Gardener caught it by the narrowing of his eyes.
"Wait a second." Gardener stalked closer, expression sharp in a way that Khun never would have expected from him. "Don't tell me you really don't know what I'm talking about."
This time, Khun couldn't stop himself from taking a step back as the distance between them shrank. "Of course I do."
Gardener rolled his eyes, and like that, Khun realized that what he'd been reading as a threat in his posture was something else, something distinctly less hostile. "Should have known you'd be difficult about this," he muttered, running a hand over his face.
Really, now that he was beyond those fake smiles, the man was far too expressive. Khun would have to make sure he accounted for that in his escape plans. His current ones were likely vastly out of date, since he was missing five weeks worth of information. He would have to search his hut later to see if he'd written new plans down anywhere.
That was a task for later, though. For now, he had to figure out what he could trust Gardener with. At minimum, it wasn't worth his energy to keep denying what Gardener had already figured out.
"Fine," he said flatly. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Gardener's gaze bounced over his face, then his lips pressed into a harsh line. "What's the last thing you do remember?"
Khun's jaw clenched. Of course Gardener would be pushy about this; with Khun's luck, he kept collecting companions who kept prying. "Last I remember, you were still wearing that creepy smile," he snapped.
"Don't be like that," Gardener sighed. "If this is what having a younger brother is like, I'm glad I've only got sisters."
The impression of a flashing knife in his mind made Khun shudder. "Sisters are worse," he said, then the feeling was gone.
Gardener raised his brows. "Speaking from experience?"
Was he? Khun frowned. Surely he had sisters; every unit of the Khun family had a goal to raise a daughter into a Princess, and if Khun had been allowed to transition, there had to be someone other than him to play that role. Yet no face came to his mind when he tried to think of one.
He swallowed back the cold spike of fear. Even though he knew in his bones that he was a son of the Khun family, the details slipped from his mind as he tried to reach for them. It was as if everything before arriving on the Testing Floor and meeting a terrified boy in a sunlit field had been wrapped in layers of fabric and sent to drown at the bottom of a shinsu sea, out of his grasp.
"Khun? You okay?"
Hearing Gardener's voice wasn't quite grounding, but it was a reminder of where he was now. It didn't matter if he couldn't remember his family, memories that were probably better left buried. What mattered was that he could remember Bam, he could remember his team, and he knew what he needed to do.
He allowed himself one moment to close his eyes, only opening them once that cold fear thawed.
When he opened his eyes again, Gardener was still watching him. Khun smiled.
"Show me where I took you," he said. Maybe if he went there, he might spark a memory.
Gardener didn't seem particularly reassured by his smile, a furrow forming between his brows. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"
"Of course." It didn't particularly matter if it was a good idea or not; for now, it was the only one he had.