Hybrid Discovery [SKZ fanfiction]| Lee Felix and Bang Chan

...Become a researcher, it's fun!... They said....

'Lee Know, can you take plate five and bring it over to station three?'
The Russian Blue cat hybrid sighs and with his plastered smile he answers his colleague he'll bring it over on his way out.
'Thanks, Know. You're a real lifesaver,' his colleague smiles weakly at him as he hands the guy the asked plate with tiny tubes.
He hates it. He hates every little thing he has to do. Where are the cool machines? The fieldwork? The explosions, eureka moments or colored fluids? Being a researcher is damn boring!
Also, he's been here for over two weeks and hasn't learned much about the whereabouts of his friends.

'You did your work a little too good,' he sighs when he gets back home and swings his backpack filled with paperwork at Hyunjin and Changbin who are lounging on the couch. Hyunjin opens his backpack and takes out the data he got this day. The Slow Worm picks up Felix's laptop and begins filing away the data in boring looking documents.
The most colored parts in a researchers' job are the stupid graphs they make out of their data. Hyunjin is the brainpart who understands how to process it. Minho can only grumble at it.
'How was I supposed to know the man had allergies?!' Changbin defends himself.
Hyunjin had made up some concoction with the medicine they had at home and Changbin had it sneaked in with one of the protein shakes he had given the researcher who was in charge of the hiring process.
It was supposed to give him the runs and maybe a small fever, but the man apparently has been toilet- and bedridden for the past two weeks. They felt pretty guilty over it at first, but the first part of their plan worked, because Minho got an invitation for a sollicitation not even two days later. Hyunjin had managed to forge documents out of those of doctor Zeeps. How? They didn't know, but apparently Ficx research department didn't do a double check and hired him as the need was high.
'Know, how many disks did you check today?' Hyunjin asks with a small smirk.
Minho rolls his eyes, slouching down on the couch. 'Of all the names I could get, you came up with Know... Lee Know? And twelve. Someone should've warned me how deadly boring it is to do research. I can't see another tube for the rest of my life.'
Changbin chuckles and nudges him against his shoulder to cheer him up, but Minho only slouches further down till he's practically laying on his lower back instead of sitting on his butt.
'I'm sorry, alright? I had to hurry and Lee is the most common last name. And I misspelled Kwon... But now it sounds like your own name. Minho, Lee Know.'
'You know, we know, Lee Know!' The hamster hybrid walks in from the hallway and laughs at Minho who glares at him and ponders over what the best object in reach would be to stuff the face of the rodent with.
'Nu-uh! I was joking! Stop those murder eyes!' Han yells, hiding behind Seungmin who brings in bags of groceries.
'Bad day at work?' he asks Minho, who keeps grumbling with crossed arms.
Felix scoots in behind Seungmin and directly walks over to his room. Minho sees the red, swollen eyes of their human and looks at Seungmin without saying anything. Seungmin sighs and places the bags on the kitchen table.
'He saw Chan's favorite snack back in stock.'
The human had become some kind of a shell from his normal bubbly and happy personality since they lost Chan and Mimu. They all were angry and sad with their friends still missing, but Felix took it at heart the most. Any day without news or progress makes the human become sad and feeling hopeless.
They know he doesn't sleep well at night and his appetite has shrunk down where he prefers to skip meals instead of stuffing his cheeks full. Pancakes make him bawl his eyes out and now seeing the favorite snack of his black cat hybrid is too much.
They know time is running out and with each day passing there's less luck of getting their friends back.
'That's weird,' they hear Hyunjin mumble from behind the laptop.
Jeongin is looking over his shoulder, trying to figure out all the numbers, pointing at a certain peak in the graph Hyunjin made.
'Min?' Hyunjin asks Minho who lazily tilts his head towards him. 'Could you try to ask around about the samples from test subject one tomorrow? It's from this batch.' He shows him the data linked to the extraordinary numbers and Minho lifts his thumb in the air.
Probably his fault. He has the slightest clue what he's doing in the laboratorium to be honest. Hyunjin is the one who studies the stuff, he simply does as he gets explained. Blabla something about genes, blabla about regeneration and cell-cyclusses and more blablabla about medical terms which sound cooler than they really entail. All he has to do is pipetting stuff from one place to the other, bring the tiny tubes over to a machine his colleague operates, labeling everything and wait for the results. Being a cashier is eventfuller in his opinion.
The peak in the data is probably because he fucked up something. He wonders how none of his "colleagues" made a remark on his clumsy work. They either don't care or really can't permit themselves to lose another worker. Especially now the manager in charge of the hiring process and his department is sick thanks to none other than his newly hired employee and his friends.
'Who can check up on Felix? He has work in an hour and I hope he'll at least eat something before going,' Seungmin asks around.
The others stay silent and Minho groans out loud. 'I'll go, but I won't make dinner. Now I'm working, I have that as my excuse and I will use it!'
'Hyunjin and I work as well,' Changbin scoffs at him.
'Sure, but I have a real human job, you pitiful hybrid,' he teases the dog hybrid who crosses his arms.
'Enjoy it while you can, Lee Know.'

'Did you know they call those glass things erlenmeyers and apparently you're not supposed to use a flat one for boiling stuff?'
Minho slips through the bedroom door into Felix's chamber and walks over to the bed where the human is curled up.
'That's basic middle school science knowledge, Min,' the human chuckles. He's hugging a pillow and although he tries to smile at him, his eyes don't follow.
'Seungmin will make dinner. Will you try to eat some of it before you have to leave?'
Minho sits down beside the human. Felix is fiddling with something in his hands and when Minho takes a better look he sees it is the old, worn collar of Mimu. The silver pendant making rinkling sounds against the ring it dangles from.
'Hey, we will find them. I know you're stressed, but that won't help them.'
Felix sighs and places the collar on his nightstand and goes back to squeezing the pillow to his chest.
'I know,' he mumbles into the fabric. 'I'm just so afraid we'll be too late. They will be traumatized with whatever they went through and even if we get them out, what can we do for them?'
Felix thinks back to the first interactions he had with Chan after he found him. The man was filled with fear and anger he couldn't project on anything. He was a mess both physical and mentally and it took months before he could let go a little. Even before they met Mimu he still had his moments of sheer panic and fear where even Felix couldn't help him. And the nightmares. It wasn't for nothing the hybrid slept with Felix when he came back from his night shifts. The man couldn't stand the nights and would only feel somewhat safe around him, often waking up in sweat, heavily breathing and spouting out things about needles or scalpels. Felix always talked to him to calm him down. After the first two months Chan let him touch whenever he woke up like that and only in the last month before his kidnapping he let the human hug him whenever his nightmares plagued him. They came such a long way and even if they managed to get Chan back, Felix fears they'll have to start all over again. Not even sure if the poor hybrid will accept them to help him heal again. And that is one of his biggest fears. Not getting him back in his life. Losing his friends.
And now it's not only him, but Mimu as well. Chan has lived with researchers for most of his life as he told Felix. But Mimu? She had homes. Though not the best ones and even a brief moment out on the streets, she at least never had to deal with the horrors Chan apparently went through in his past. That was all his knowledge entailed.
'Did you visit her house before you got back?' Minho asks him and Felix nods.
'Seungmin wanted to see if the mold in the bathroom and bedroom was finally gone.'
With the key and will from their neighbor's home they felt the need to try and clean up in case Mimu would be back.
Felix still fears the grandson will show up and take the keys away from him, but with the will in their possession he knows the legal battle can't be won by him. Felix called up to the old retirement home the lady lived in and asked if he could get the contact information of the people who wrote the will to confirm this wasn't a fake document. The retirement workers were happy to hear there were others who "knew" the granny and gave him the details without doubting him. He found out that the will was real and that there was no law forbidden hybrids to have their own properties. Confirming that the old granny did indeed knew her "housecat" was in fact a hybrid.
Thus Felix began to clean up the worn out apartment to distract his mind whenever he could.
'I want to see her surprised face when she gets back,' Minho chuckles. 'I don't think she would recognize the place.'
Felix blushes and shakes his head. 'No, she won't. I've only cleaned up and removed everything that was beyond repair. It's not that much.'
Minho nudges against him to look up. 'Even our house has never been that clean. Don't overwork yourself, okay? She'll love it.'
'You don't think it's weird I do this all for a hybrid we barely know?'
Minho rolls his eyes. 'Dude, we all know you are smitten with her. Can't blame yah.'
Now the human presses his head into the pillow and Minho snickers seeing his ears flare up.
'Don't say that! It's not appropriate.'
'Pfff, sure thing. There are enough humans who dabble in human-hybrid relationships. No need to hide it.'
Felix shakes his whole body in denial and when he lifts his head up from the pillow his eyes are watery again and Minho pries the pillow away to take his human in a tight hug.
'Silly human,' he soothes him.

'Oh, you didn't know?'
This is it! Minho's heart is thumping in his chest when his coworker speaks to him. This is the bit of information he needed. Chan is here!
Minho had carefully approached his coworker about the data Hyunjin worked out for him and asked about the graphs, preparing to ask about the one with the peaks to see if they would be angry with him if he made a mistake. His coworker had laughed and pointed out the name of the batch.
'These are from the projects under doctor Kim. Normally their data would not be that remarkable, but with the return of project Christopher it's bound to give unbalanced results.'
That was what spiked Minho's interest.
Christopher. Bang Chan's old name. The black cat hybrid told him once about his old name. His international name from when he was a kid.
'Ah, the one that got captured last month, right?' Minho tries to play it off and luckily for him his coworker takes the bait.
'Correct. They captured the troublemaker I think, four or five weeks ago? Had been holed up in someone's home I believe. You should've seen how happy doctor Kim was, having him back. That project was his prime jewel and a lot of pain in the ass for our workload.'
Minho laughed weakly with the man, his stomach twisting with the way they spoke about his friend. A project. A research jewel. Sickening.
'So I can assume these also are normal?' He shows the man the graph with the peaks in the hope to get more information about Chan.
'Those? Nah, those are from project one, one of the test subjects from doctor Kwong. Ah, perhaps you haven't heard of her before.' The man shuffles through some documents and clicks programs open on his computer. 'Sorry, sometimes they forget to update the newcomers with what we're working on.' He glances towards Minho who tries to give the most innocent and dumb smile back.
Is he lucky today? Is this coworker literally presenting him with information he desperately has been searching for these last two weeks? Minho does a tiny prayer in his head to thank whoever paired him up with this loose lipped colleague.
The man opens his mouth to explain the shown data on screen, but at that moment his cell phone rings. Of course... "Lucky" Minho...
The coworker excuses himself and logs out on the computer before walking away, leaving Minho alone in the room.
Damnit. Should he try to log in again? He did see the ridiculous simple password the man had used. On the other hand, he now knows important information. Chan is right here in this facility. He doesn't know where, but knowing he's here is the best-worst news he heard in these long weeks.
Minho glances over his shoulder. No sign of his coworker returning for quite some time. If the man has information about that project one, he surely must have information about Chan. He takes the gamble and softly types in what he saw his coworker type in.
First try, failed. Shit. Second try, also a fail. Minho prays their security system doesn't have something like an auto lock after too many failed attempts. Ah, he forgot the uppercase... Third try is a charm. His fingers glide over the mouse and with swift use he tries to find where his coworker keeps the data from the projects. He replicates what he saw the man do and within seconds he opens up some information about that project one. He tries to figure out what any of the medical text says with a quick scan.
'Damn scientists words,' he mumbles, trying to search for something he can understand. He opens up another folder and tries to find something with the project name his colleague mentioned.
'C'mon, c'mon,' he whispers. There! He double clicks the page open and sighs with frustration as there are - again - so many medical terms and words he never heard of. Should he print it? In this moment he damns society for not allowing hybrids to have their own phones. His human could make a simple photo of the screen with his smartphone, but he can't even make a call if really needed.
' — and then he came in to complain. so—.'
His coworker can be heard in the hallway and Minho's brain works on full capacity. No time for hating society. He tries to hit the shortcut keys to print the document and presses enter to send it to the copy machine. With quick efficiency he closes all pages and logs out before his colleague comes back.
'Sorry Lee Know. I have to help team four right now. Something about a broken machine. Do you think you can finish up batch seven and eight alone?'
Minho simply nods and walks back to his work station.

'Who can take these documents to doctor Kwang?' Another colleague from their team shows up, waving papers in the air. 'Seems like she forgot to take her papers from the printer.'
Minho stops breathing for a second. He hasn't had the time to leave his station to pick up the documents he printed out. Someone else must've found them first and now his colleague is waving them around. Minho glances over to the colleague who he talked with earlier and fears the man will notice it's what they've been talking about before they got interrupted with the call.
'I'll go!' he quickly replies whilst standing up.
'You sure, Lee? You just said you haven't been updated about all the projects yet,' his coworker frowns.
Shit, shit, shit. Minho laughs whilst rubbing his neck and hopes it will make him look dopey or something. 'I know, I thought it would be quicker to talk to one of the doctors directly to ask them about their work.'
The man with the papers in his hands laughs and hands him the documents.
'You hear that, Yeosa? The man is willing to lick the feet of the lioness directly.'
Minho blinks twice at the man's joke and turns around to the other who smirks back.
'There's a reason we upper floor people prefer to stay here. Doctor Kwang is known for being ruthless when it comes to knowledge. But please, entertain us and go there to deliver these documents.' He winks at him and turns around, back to his screen.
'Lift to floor minus one. You can use my keycard,' the colleague who gave him the papers says, handing him a lanyard with a plastic pass on it. 'Don't think you have one yet?'
Minho shakes his head and takes it, hearing his coworker mumble something about troubling their precious new workers. He promises his coworkers to be back quickly, but they both laugh at him and tell him he'll probably have to work overtime if he goes downstairs, not being able to "quickly" go down to deliver something without getting distracted.
When he's out of sight he sprints towards the copy machine and uses the pass on the lanyard to copy all the documents again. If this doctor Kwang won't accept the files she obviously didn't print herself, he has two to take home.

The lower floors can only be reached with the pass provided by the company and Minho considers "forgetting" to give back the lanyard to his colleague when he comes back.
There was not much to see when he stepped out of the elevator, except for someone sitting on a desk asking to state his business downstairs and when he mentioned he came to deliver papers for doctor Kwang they simply reached out for the papers and promised him to deliver them themselves. So far the "distractions" his colleagues talked about. Both of them were surprised seeing him back so early and mentioned something about the possibility the doctors were out testing or something again. Whatever that meant, didn't bother Minho. He could finish his work without doing overtime and almost bolted out as soon as his work hours were over.

'Let me see, let me see, let me see,' Han chirps around them.
Changbin is still at work and Felix is in the bathroom getting ready for his night shift. Seungmin and Jeongin are taking a nap as Jeongin still gets headaches since he got attacked and refuses to sleep alone because of it.
Leaving Hyunjin, Han and Minho alone in the living room. Hyunjin is glancing over the documents Minho gave him.
'You said you had information about Chan,' he frowns and Minho glares at him.
'I do! I printed the files containing information about his project.'
'No, you did not,' Hyunjin says, showing him the files.
Minho curses under his breath. It's because he had to rush. He must've printed the wrong ones. Why?! They were so close to getting more information about his friend and he ruined it by being impatiënt. Now he has to try his luck tomorrow again and every day they wait is another day of Chan being stuck. He whines and balls his fist in frustration.
Han pats his leg to calm him down. 'Don't be angry, hyung. You tried your best. Maybe Hyunjin can get something out of reading this?' He tries to smile at him, but Minho knows he's disappointed at the lack of visible evidence as well. They want their friends back.
It's when Hyunjin gasps they both look up to see the face of the Slow Worm hybrid whitening, holding his hand over his mouth, staring with big eyes at the document.
'I-it's...Mimu.'