C.A.L.M (Criminals Accused of Later Murders)
Title: C.A.L.M. (Criminals Accused of Later Murders)
Author: hunhamburger
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: HunHan
Length: Chaptered (2988w part 1/?)
Summary: C.A.L.M. is a specialized unit created to contain future criminals. How does this work? Time Travel.
Dear Professor,
I thought you might find interest in this.
-Kim Min jun
FIRST DEGREE MURDER.
Case 324a. Pupil 3345
January 1st, 2013.
Lu Han
Victim: Oh Seo Hyeon. December 14, 1973-December 31, 2012.
Murdered at approximately 1800 hours the evening of December 31, 2012.
Cause of death reported to be knife wounds on the upper thigh, and throat.
CULPRIT Lu Han. BORN April 20, 1990 in Beijing, Haidian. NATIONALITY Chinese.
Further information disclosed.
Professor,
The culprit of Case 324a has been found dead.
Enclosed is the documentation.
-Kim Min Jun
FIRST DEGREE MURDER
Case 426i Pupil 9383
March 13th, 2013
Oh Se Hun
Victim: Lu Han. April 20, 1990-March 13, 2013.
Murdered at approximately 0300 hours the morning of March 13th, 2013.
Cause of death: ingested pesticide.
CULPRIT Oh Se Hun. BORN April 12, 1994 in Seoul, Korea. NATIONALITY Korean.
Further Information disclosed.
Dear Professor,
Are we following through with the experiment?
-Kim Min Jun
Professor,
Are you sure about this?
-Kim Min Jun
ALL OF THE NECESSARY PROCEDURES HAVE BEEN TAKEN CARE OF. We are ready whenever you are.
-Kim Min Jun
The tiles on the ceiling reminded Se Hun of sudoku. Row after row of tiny blank squares just waiting to be filled in. It was a challenging game of wit that took up an exceeding amount of time, and Se Hun had plenty of time for that. It would be easy to simply fill each tile with a number, give them each a place, a system. Though, if he leaned back any farther he may just fall out of his chair. Ultimately, he decided that it would be a waste of time, though he had much of it.
Besides,
Oh Se Hun never particularly enjoyed games.
The lights flickered off, and Se Hun closed his eyes. He knew what the lights meant--he would have company soon. The smell of clean air wafted over the room as a door somewhere to the left clicked open. Moments later the sound of lights flicking back on harmonized with the sound of the door being bolted shut.
“Hello Professor.” Se Hun greeted. His eyes still sewn shut, his head tilted back.
“That’s what I like about you, Se Hun.” A chair shreiked across the floor as the Professor sat himself across from Se Hun. “I’ve had you held captive in this facility for what, three years now? And you still greet me politely every single time.”
“It’s been four years, Sir.”
“And you even have a firm grasp on time. Remarkable!”
Se Hun didn’t have to open his eyes to see the pleased smile dancing across the Professors face. He knew the man was proud. He’d known for a long time that he was the prize subject. The Sober they called him, they said he was one of few murderers who were still of right mind,.
“Why are your eyes closed Se Hun?”
“Because I don’t want to open them.”
“And why is that?”
“If I can see you, then I can’t pretend this isn’t real.”
The chair screamed once again against the floor as the man stood up and the lights blinked off.
“That is enough for today.” The professor’s voice echoed as he crossed the room. Se Hun shivered slightly in his seat. The bolted door was unlocked slowly before being shut tight once again. Light flooded the room, and Se Hun’s eyes opened to the game of Sudoku spread across the ceiling.
He was fed, at least he assumed he must have been, he was never awake at the time. Considering he was still living, they had to feed him. There were times when he wondered if he was even alive to begin with. Nothing gave him the assurance of life, nothing proved him dead. He must have been stuck somewhere in the middle. Neither living nor dead. It was a strange concept, but he hadn’t another way to describe the last four years. He couldn’t remember eating, sleeping, dreaming.
The breathing tests, as he liked to call them, were sometimes merely for him to find out what would happen if he were to die.
Sometimes he held his breath for a little too long. His body would liquify and hit the floor in a dull thud, his heart would slow, sirens would sound somewhere behind the white walls. He wouldn’t remember anything until he reawoke back where he had started. People in lab coats would have already disassembled back behind the walls, He’d be placed back in his chair, his eyes would be once again cast on the empty space around him. There would be no proof of anything happening at all--other than the empty feeling pouring through his chest.
The room was surprisingly cold one day, the air tasted oddly clearer, crisper. Similar to that of the air brought in when a guest would arrive, yet different. Se Hun kept himself still, mostly from fear. The cool air had come suddenly, dramatically. He knew there had been a shift in time, yet he felt as if it had come all in a moment. Scrunching his eyes closed tighter, he awaited whatever else was to come with this new change.
“Se Hun.”
It was the Professor's voice, but something was off. The lights hadn’t gone off and on, the door hadn’t opened and closed. Se Hun’s eyebrows furrowed.
“You can hear me right?”
Yes,
he tried to say, but his voice felt crammed back within the bile of his throat. In a panic, his eyes burst open. His surroundings were different. Sea-foam green wallpaper enclosed him, beige carpets lined the floor. His was in his typical chair, but his legs had been bound and his arms tied behind his back. The ceiling was bare, no little boxes, no sudoku puzzle. Sitting in front of him was the Professor. He looked older than when Se Hun had last actually looked at him. Dark brown locks had faded to a streaking grey, a stern solid face had drooped into wrinkles with age, once charisma filled eyes were now dull and unreadable.
“Nice to see you.” The aging man said with a slow and gentle smile that made Se Hun’s eyes narrow. The Professor chuckled and raised his hands in a defensive motion.
“Now, now. I know what you’re thinking. I’ll get to all of your questions, not to worry.” The older man slid back with his rolling chair to a cabinet aligning with the wall on the right. A handful of files were pulled out and the chair wheeled back in front of Se Hun.
“I regret to inform you that this is one of the last times we will meet... under these circumstances.”
Se Hun leaned forwards with interest--though the restraints held him mostly in place. The Professor chuckled and licked his finger before flipping through the files in his hand. “Do you remember what you did Se Hun?”
It dawned on Se Hun that he had never once wondered why on earth he had been imprisoned in the first place. It took him a moment to swallow down the fact that he hardly remembered a life before this place. He shakily revolved his eyes around the room once before directing them at the ceiling, wishing he had the patterned titles to look at as a distraction. There was a large unexplainable weight burrowing within his gut. He felt nervous for some reason.
The doctor stopped flipping and pulled out a single sheet of paper. The image printed on the front of it made Se Hun suddenly feel the need to throw up.
In a rush he saw himself looking in through a crack in the door, a young Chinese man on the other side lifting a wineglass to his lips. He licked his lips once, twice, out of nervousness and stared on. When the crimson liquid met with his lips before being swallowed out of sight, Se Hun held his breath. The man retched and toppled over--glass scattering like tiny diamonds, wine spraying like blood. A small thump was the only sound left when his body lifelessly hit the ground.
Until, someone screamed.
He could just barely feel arms roughly shaking his shoulders, the small voices in his ears asking him if he was all right, the feeling of a sharp needle puncturing his arm before everything stopped.
The tiles on the ceiling reminded Se Hun of sudoku. Row after row of tiny blank squares just waiting to be filled in. It was a challenging game of wit that took up an exceeding amount of time, and Se Hun had plenty of time for that. It would be easy to simply fill each tile with a number, give them each a place, a system. Though, if he leaned back any farther he may just fall out of his chair. Ultimately, he decided that it would be a waste of time, though he had much of it.
He breathed in and out slowly, revelling in the feeling of his lungs filling up before emptying again and again. He began to count his breaths, mostly out of concern for if he was actually breathing.
1
2
3
4
During his 345 exhale the lights flickered out.
“Se Hun. Today is our last day together.” The Professor said slowly, choosing his words carefully. “You may not remember, but I mentioned this a few weeks ago.” He paused and watched Se Hun fidget slightly in his chair. “I tried to explain the situation to you then as well, but that didn’t turn out quite as I had hoped. Regardless, I feel as though I should attempt to explain it to you once more.” He pulled out a stack of papers and shuffled through them.
“You are in a prison, Se Hun.” He waited for a reaction; Se Hun simply stared at him blankly.
“I assumed as much.” Came the response. “I’m tied to a chair--not exactly the ideal situation for someone who would be considered a guest.”
The Professor cleared his throat and continued, disregarding Se Hun’s comment. “You are part of a new experiment. You and 5,000 other criminals will be attending a specialized unit called C.A.L.M. where you will be unable to harm others of the outer world.”
“Sounds like your average prison to me.”
“Actually,” The Professor’s lips twitched into a prideful grin, “It’s quite different. Quite different indeed. You see, we are not simply placing you there.” Se Hun raised a brow.
“It is the year 2015, Oh Se Hun. You are twenty two years old. However, you will be 18 years old when you enter C.A.L.M.”
“What the hell are you on.”
The older man gave Se Hun an irritated look, promptly shutting the younger up.
“Science has come a great deal since you’ve been outside these walls Se Hun. Cars run smoother and more efficiently, any surface can be connected wirelessly to an Ipad, hell, they’ve invented bikes that suspend 4 inches above the ground. Imagine that!” His smile became that of a giddy school girl. Se Hun snickered.
The Professor cleared his throat.
“As I was saying, science has greatly advanced. One of such advances, though unknown to the general public, is time travel.” He waited a few hesitant moments, looking for some sign of disbelief to cross Se Hun’s eyes. He saw nothing.
“This is the part where you tell me you’re somehow going to go back in time and kill me right?”
“Not exactly.” The professor drew from his chair and crossed the room to the open space behind Se Hun. He plucked a file out of a small box set neatly next to the door and circled back around to his seat. After pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose and clearing his throat, he slipped a single paper from the folder. “This is for you.” The paper was set upon Se Hun’s lap, he was forced to pull uncomfortably forward in his restraints to read it.
Oh Se Hun,
You have been formally accepted into the newly forced specialized unit C.A.L.M. (Criminals Accused of Later Murders). Within this establishment, you will be required to reside within a highly guarded dorm with two other residents, which have been hand picked from a selection of others attending this unit.
For your stay we will require three things: obedience, courtesy, and respect. A list of additional rules has been attached to the back. Failure to abide by these rules will result in severe punishment accordingly.
Along with your stay within the dormitories, you will be attending required courses to enlighten you on essential aspects of a morally sound lifestyle.
We hope your stay is pleasant and leads you into a new, morally correct lifestyle.
C.A.L.M. Staff
The back of the page was unread, mainly because Se Hun was unable to flip the page over. A thick silence fell over the room that was broken when Se Hun breathed in and out heavily, processing the level of madness condensed within the mind of the Professor sitting across him. His eyes fluttered closed and he held his breath momentarily. Intrigued eyes peered at him with interest, as notes of some kind were jotted down in the booklet the Professor quickly produced from the back cabinet.
Se Hun’s mouth slowly drooped open, his eyes remaining closed. “I guess it doesn’t matter whether I think you’re crazy or not if this theory of yours is in fact real.”
“Precisely.”
“Get to it then.”
“Sign your name here please.” A tall woman in a royal blue uniform thrusted a clipboard into Se Hun’s arms, the pen attached by a thin string flinging recklessly with it. The flustered man quickly scrawled his full name across the line provided before it was roughly pulled back out of his grasp.
“Next.”
With a single single strap of the plain black backpack they had given him to store his belongings dangling over his shoulder, he was hearded with a cluster of other scrambling people like cattle over to the next station. Here, the women were dressed fully in grey rather than blue and sat behind rows of tables splayed with needles, syringes, and scalpels.
His manliness was thoroughly tainted when the needle piercing into his skin caused him to yelp childishly. The others surrounding him rolled their eyes and continued with their own blood tests nonchalantly.
The next station had him uncomfortably strip to his boxers and stand upon a scale for a full body examination. His face had gone red from the judgemental gazes of the other much taller, muscular, well defined men next in line. Never before had he felt so inferiorly skinny.
After the physical exams had been completed, he was ushered over to what appeared to be the last test. These women wore a much friendlier shade of pink that reminded Se Hun of the ugly curtains his mom had bought at a department sale two years ago and refused to take down. One woman smiled and handed him a sheet of paper with several blanks that Se Hun presumed he was required to fill in.
Name: ________________
Oh Sehun
Date: ______________
December 12, 2012
Birthdate: _________________ Age:_____
April 12th, 1994
18
Nationality:___________
Korean
Native Tongue:____________
Korean
Living Family Members:
Mother: Oh Seo Hyeon.
Father: Deceased.
They seemed rather basic questions for such an extensive examination, but Se Hun had no complaints. He handed the questions back to the pink lady and she smiled in return and pointed to the left where rows of women in uniforms of dark green held small signs with what appeared to be lists of names. Navigating the maze of signs proved a harder task than Se Hun had originally thought. He had to pause and briefly read over every sign before passing to the next. It wasn’t until his third lap around the rows that he realized he had past by the sign with his own name in the first section. Unsure of where he was supposed to go, he awkwardly situated himself beside the women holding the sign and waited.
Minutes passed, and confused individuals continued to roam around them searching for their own names on their own signs, until the first person to positioned himself stiffly beside Se Hun. His longer dark hair fell slightly into his eyes and he blinked feverishly as if to clear it away, his rather plump lips pursing. Se Hun tapped him once on the shoulder. The other flinched and reflexively swatted at his hand, apologizing soon after.
“It’s no trouble. I’m quite on edge my self.” Se Hun said with a small smile. “I’m Se Hun. I suppose we must be roommates.”
“I guess so.” The other replied hesitantly, still seeming ruffled by his surroundings. “I’m Jong In. Nice to meet you too.”
Another person suddenly approached them. His backpack was pulled on over both shoulders, his face much too pretty for a place like this, yet the lightly toned muscles carefully outlined by his tight grey t-shirt gave another impression. Looking over at Jong In, to himself, then back to the newcomer caused Se Hun to wonder whether the three of them had been purposely been placed together. The three of them looked younger than the vast majority of other men (and few women) around them, and, though they had some muscle, weaker by for in comparison.
The other somehow weaseled in between both Se Hun and Jong In with a large grin, that Se Hun swore he saw holding some sort of malicious glare. There was a certain wind surrounding him, foreboding misfortune. Se Hun felt an uneasy feeling brewing within him.
“Hey.” The third roommate said while swooping his hair to the side with a twitch of his neck. “I’m Lu Han. Guess we’re roommates from now on, yes?”