I woke with a start, and a wave of relief washed over me. The nightmare was over. As I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, I found that my hands felt grimy. Letting them fall to my lap, I opened my eyes, only to find that a dark, rusty brown substance was caked into every crevice of my palms. It wasn’t a dream. This was dried blood- Namjoon’s dried blood caked onto my hands from crawling across our sticky floor to see if he was alive. Quickly I looked up, taking in my surroundings. Then I remembered, I was on a plane that had taken off from somewhere in China, on our way to the United States. “Well good morning, sunshine,” an unfortunately familiar voice called out from the seat across from me. My eyes narrowing, I shot her a glare. How insensitive could one person be to be snarky at a time like this? And who wears sunglasses on an airplane, anyway? I guess this woman was one of those people who felt obligated to wear aviators just because she is in the Air Force. She had changed her jacket since I had been sleeping. It was identical to the one she had been wearing earlier, but with the distinct difference of not being half-soaked in innocent blood.

“How much longer?” I managed to croak as I shifted my weight on my half-asleep bum, thankful that the slightly plush seats were at least roomy enough for me to move around, even if just a little.

She sighed as she leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, supporting her head with her hands. It was an unusually childish way to sit for someone who had earlier exuded such an aura of authority and control. “About two more hours, if I had to guess,” she spoke listlessly, her voice tired and dry. With another deep breath, she turned her head to look out of the little portal window, “Look, kid, we got off to a bad start,” she started, pausing before she looked back at me. “Colonel Ellen Hawke, United States Air Force, Special Operations Command,” her words were still contrite, though I could at least feel she was trying to be friendly. She held out a hand for me to shake.

I looked at the offered hand for a moment. She had long, slender fingers, but they were dirty like mine, and visibly calloused. After a moment’s hesitation, I finally relented, reaching out to take the offered hand. “Zoey Yoo, formerly Seoyeon,” I replied, slightly miffed at my lack of long fancy job title to give. ‘Golden Boy Brood Mare’ didn’t seem quite appropriate, “And you can call me Zoey, so you can drop the ‘kid’ thing.”

She gave my hand one firm shake before sitting back in her seat, letting out one hollow laugh, “Sorry, kid, tough habit to break.” A small little smile broke across her lightly freckled face as she regarded me. “Well, we have some time to kill. I know you have some questions. Go ahead.”

I raised my eyebrows just a touch at the invitation. I looked around to find our only fellow passenger, the older man, passed out on his seat on the other side of the isle. With a little mental shrug I looked back to the imposing woman. “Alright then, who was that guy back in China?”

For the first time, I saw her look genuinely taken aback, her dark eyebrows contrasted against her pale skin as they knitted together. “Of all the things to ask, you start with that?” she asked, and I was worried that I had offended her in some way. She shook her head gently before speaking again, “He’s an old friend. Older than me, even if he doesn't look it. I met him in Korea about ten years ago. That’s all you’re getting, so next question.”

I actually found a sick sense of amusement from flustering this otherwise perfectly composed lady. Ellen, I supposed her name was. “Alright, then, why me? Why did you come for me?” I resisted the urge to continue prying about her ‘old friend’ and got to the point. I had an infinite pool of questions about what was happening, so I figured I’d get to the point.

“Right,” she seemed much more satisfied with this question as she stared me down. Those aviator glasses were getting on my nerves. Mostly just because being unable to see her eyes made her expressions much more difficult to read. Maybe that was the point. “Somehow you have become a cog in the Korean propaganda machine. Removing you will be a psychological setback,” she explained calmly and smoothly, as if she had explained this thousands of times already and as if it were the most obvious answer imaginable.

“Okay then why not take Jungkook, too? You of course know who that is, right?” I pressed, still not following her logic. I seemed like a small fish in a large pond if they were going for psychological warfare.

She waved a hand at me dismissively, “We want to degrade them, not start an all-out conflict again. That didn’t go so well for us last time.” With a heavy sigh, she mumbled, “At least not yet.”

“You don’t want to start a conflict?” I heard my voice start to rise out of agitation, “Did you not just torch a research center and bomb official government buildings just hours ago?”

“Woah, woah,” she countered quickly, leaning forward, clearly focused on pacifying me, “Let me explain properly, kid. We can justify taking you with us because you’ve been naturalized as an American citizen. We’ll talk our way out of taking away Kim Namjoon because he was critically wounded. We could destroy the research equipment because the UN had declared the genomics program a war crime. That includes the headquarters,” I noticed that her voice was emphatic as if she was legitimately trying to justify her actions to me. It made me wonder why someone like her cared about my opinion at all. Regardless, it all made sense. “We gave Pyongyang a timeline, they claimed they had discontinued the program, but you and I both know they had no intention of stopping it.”

I was able to follow along, curious that she knew Namjoon’s name. And there was something else she said that piqued my interest. “Naturalized?” I questioned, unsure exactly what she meant by that.

Nodding sagely, I heard her take a deep breath, “Yes. It’s been a difficult road, but we got a congressional mandate for you to be officially declared a citizen of the United States. You were officially adopted by citizens, you lived and worked in the country for all but the first five years of your life. It was still a surprisingly difficult sell to the Senate.” When all I could do was gawk back at her, she continued, adding as an afterthought, “It helps that your mother is a lawyer.”

“Okay,” I finally spoke, elongating the word as my mind worked to catch up. “Alright then,” I needed to ask a different question before my mind lost them trying to process all of this new information. “How did you know where to find us?”

“We have a pretty good grasp on their transportation systems,” she sounded rather proud of this fact as she smiled slightly at me, “Not to mention we were able to track several communications transmissions. It’s my job to know things.”

I shook my head; that was a decent answer and all, but not really what I was looking for. “I mean in the sector. Those trees were so dense, there’s no way you had vision from the air, and I know Namjoon didn’t lead you to us. How did you find us?”

“Ah,” her voice faded, and she looked away and out the window again. She sighed quietly through her nose, as if this question was finally somet