The atmosphere in Laboratory W-11 was grim. The gleaming white countertops, spotless papers, and sparkling glass juxtaposed with the red blood-stained chaos in the glass research unit.

Kwon JiYong sighed in frustration as he saw yet another corpse being torn to pieces on the other side of the glass. With a scowl, he violently scribbled out a name on the pad of paper in his hands. His eyebrows furrowed angrily over an otherwise handsome face. He glared in fury at the variant in the adjacent room. This werewolf had killed all five of the previous human test subjects within the first week of testing. Granted, two were serial killers, another had murdered her entire family, and the other two were terrorists, responsible for the destruction of two cities, so to them, it wasn’t much of a waste of life.

    “DaeSung!” JiYong yelled across the room. “Find the next human subject.” Across the laboratory, a stocky man strode over to a lab table and pulled out a packet full of profiles. He flipped through the pages until the sixth face emerged. This one was divergent from the others. She was young, and her face lacked any trace of anger or malice. In fact, it displayed no emotion whatsoever, a blank slate. DaeSung looked at the name below the photo.

    Jordan Chang.

    He remembered her. She was a skilled hacker who worked with an underground organization that she never divulged, despite the uncivilized techniques of interrogation they had used on her. Two years ago, she’d released all of YG’s private experimentation data to the public, particularly their experiments on variants and animals, accusing them of inhumane treatment and cruel experiments. It wasn’t her first run, either. Prior to her attack on YG, she had disclosed sensitive research from two other leading companies as well. The presidents of the three companies: YG, SM, and JYP, together had pulled strings when she was finally captured; they ensured her a life in prison instead of ten years.

    Federal prison would be a lovely rest and respite compared to her new future. DaeSung sighed. To send her here was a massive waste of talent. In his opinion, to liken her to serial killers and terrorists was a crime in and of itself.

    “Jordan Chang is next, Team Leader. I’ll contact the prison.” JiYong nodded in response, and he left the room. A minute or two after he disappeared, a new duo entered the laboratory.

    “YoungBae, please alert the cleanup team that they have another room to clean.” JiYong clenched his fists as he spat out his words. The shorter of the two left immediately. The remaining man ruffled his electric blue hair and strutted over to the team leader.

    “Chen’s a tough nut to crack.” TOP sighed. The two stared at the blood-stained werewolf. He was panting, his bare chest was heaving from exertion, dripping with sweat and blood. “Chen” was what they had decided to call the werewolf, several months ago. “And we thought he would be the easiest to work with.” TOP chuckled. “The 'mellow' Beta."

    “Well that idea went to hell.” JiYong muttered. “What about the others in the pack?”

    “No progress either.” TOP noted. “No successes for phase one for any of the others. The alpha, Kris, is giving his team trouble, he's killed every single human within a few minutes of the trial. At this rate, we've probably cleared out half a prison of high risk inmates.”

“Well, at least the government will be happy. We’re helping the prison overcrowding issue.” JiYong noted sardonically. He patted his TOP’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s go get Chen into his holding cell so they can clean him and his room up. Then we can go home until Subject 6 gets here.” TOP nodded at the suggestion, and they proceeded towards a partially hidden door to their left.

    Across the country, Jordan Chang shifted in her cell. Two years with just herself and her thoughts had changed her. She was now the victim of her own puns and dry humor. She was surprised she hadn’t gone insane yet. The rare conversations with the guard outside her door kept her from going crazy. Those minute-long exchanges through the door kept her up to date with the outside world: what celebrities were in, what variant-human relations were like, the new occupants in the prison, any and all news was welcome. The smallest stories were enough to keep her sane.

    The two years in her cell had robbed her of the health and vigor that she once possessed. Now, she was pale and sickly-looking, with permanent bags under her eyes. Her black hair was limp, brittle, and hung lifelessly on both sides of her face. The one thing she had managed to somewhat retain was her fitness. Before prison, she had hated exercise. Now, it was one of the few ways she could fight off impending insanity. Every morning, she completed her routine of 50 pushups, 50 situps, 2 minutes of plank, and ended with high knees around her cell until she collapsed on her concrete bed. Who knows, maybe she'd get to 100 reps one day.

    For a couple of hours, she reviewed coding. She ran over the languages in her mind, reviewed how to create back doors and traps. She created an imaginary laptop in her mind and typed on its hypothetical keys. Sometimes she got so wrapped up in the exercise that she swore she could hear the clacking of the keyboard and the whirring of the computer. On bad days, she genuinely believed she was going crazy.

    The rest of the time she spent thinking about her friends back at home. The Bulletproof Boy Scouts. NamJoon and Yoongi were probably overworking themselves, as usual. SeokJin was probably busying himself with forcing food down everyone’s throats, especially Jimin.

    The screech of her cell door shattered the nostalgic visions. Her ears perked at the sound. That door hadn’t opened in a long time. Two years, in fact. The last time it had been opened was when she had walked through it to her new depressing eternity. Back then, there had only been two guards to her. Now, a veritable army of guards stood in the doorframe, unfathomable expressions on their faces.

    “Jordan Chang, come with us.” A deep voice rumbled from the front most man. Jordan wiped her face clear of emotion, as was her habit, but internally questioned the surplus contingent of guards. She walked out to the hallway, and waited patiently for them to fasten the cuffs around her wrists and ankles. She squinted at the sun that filtered in through the single skylight. The dust particles cast rainbow prisms in every direction. Jordan swore it was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen. The guards surrounded her and forced her forwards. The small pocket of sunshine disappeared behind her along with her personal hell.

    Down the stairs. Jordan noticed some prisoners in the community yard. A few of them glanced over at the commotion. That scene soon disappeared as well, however, as she was led further down the levels of the prison. She glanced suspiciously at the men and women surrounding her. Her confusion heightened as they passed every place she thought she might have been headed: the parole office, the working area, the therapy room. Her confusion was replaced with pure fear when they arrived at the drop off area.

    She didn’t dare ask where she was going. She knew that they would never tell her. She boarded the waiting black bus and watched out the window as it drove off, leaving the guards and her past two years behind.

    The bus drove on. For hours.

    The soft hum of the engine threatened to lull her to sleep, but she didn’t give in. Who knows what could potentially happen to her if she was unconscious. She distracted herself with the view from the barred bus windows. The only outside she had ever seen over the past two years was the small field of vision available from her tiny cell window. She took full advantage of the opportunity and savored the fresh green of the trees that flew by and the pale morning sunshine that filtered onto her eyelids. She missed it. She had never appreciated how beautiful the scenery and sunlight were.

Jordan noticed as the hours passed that the trees had begun to thin, replaced with houses and human life. After a few minutes, the bus began to weave through crowded city streets lined with towering skyscrapers. The city had changed from when Jordan had last seen it. The buildings were glossier, taller, and more intimidating. The sight didn’t reassure her. This place seemed like another prison to her, hidden behind a facade of glass instead of concrete.

After what felt like an eternity of strained silence, the bus entered an underground parking lot. She couldn't imagine what she was doing in the city. Did the people who jailed her want to meet her? Did she have a mysterious benefactor? Had her sentence been shortened? Each possibility seemed more improbable than the last.

The bus driver stopped the engine and beckoned for her to follow. Outside the bus, dozens of security guards formed a pathway from the bus to the doors.

"Don't bother trying to run." He told her with a smirk. She wanted to smack it off of his face. She wasn’t stupid. Only idiots thought they had a chance by running. Jordan frowned at the poorly disguised gun under the driver’s shirt. She didn’t approve of unnecessary violence; her jail sentence was evidence of that. She swiveled her head around to peek at the walls.

YG Research.

She bit back a laugh.

Of course it was them. What did they want now? She was certain they couldn't possibly do anything more to her. Just the thought of them made the angry red scars all over her body itch. But she remained silent and followed the driver through smooth granite hallways and glass doors.

She remembered the YG server well, but she especially remembered the truly awful experiments they conducted: trying to sever wolf genes from werewolves, testing to see the effectiveness of removing the horse half from a centaur and artificially grafting a human lower body, hypnotizing fairies to complete mundane and demeaning tasks to test their work efficiency, and endless others, each more cruel than the last.

She especially remembered the rusty metal knives that they set on her skin to get information about BTS. To this day, those scars remained.

She had never hated a single organization so much in her twenty-one years of existence.

They stopped walking when they reached the entrance to a Plexiglass laboratory. She glanced at the words etched into the door. Laboratory W-11. Principal investigator: Kwon JiYong. The driver pushed open the door.

The smell of rubber and antiseptic assaulted Jordan's nose. Quickly, She took in all of the information she could. She noted the data tables pinned over the walls. All had something pertaining to werewolves in the titles. Five pictures were tacked to a cork board on her right. 4 men and 1 woman. They were unlabeled, save for some red “X”s in the bottom right corner. The sixth picture was hers. She didn't know why, but she had a suspicion of her purpose, and it wasn’t for anything good.

Next, she saw the research room and a brief look at its occupant. Someone male and muscled, standing defiantly in the center. He was most likely the aforementioned werewolf. But she didn’t look for long as five men in lab coats sauntered towards her, catching her attention.One turned at the creak of the door. His hair was a shocking shade of orange.

"Ah." His arms opened welcomingly. If Jordan hadn't known his employer, she would have said that the smile was actually comforting. "You're finally here. Guard, take those cuffs off of her, those won't be necessary." He said to the driver. Jordan heard the clink of keys and then felt the pinch of her cuffs disappear, first around her wrists, then her ankles. "Please, have a seat." The man pulled out a lab stool. Jordan ignored the offer, and chose to stand. Carrot Head, as she had dubbed him, simply shrugged. Another man with absurdly long bangs quickly pulled out a video camera and set it up to face her.

"State your name." Bangs said. The others, including the carrot head, gathered behind him.

Jordan tilted her head with a mocking smile.

"Esteban Julio Ricardo Montoya De la Rosa Ramirez" She shot at them. Her voice cracked from lack of use, but the name easily tumbled from her tongue. The man behind the camera snorted, but the others were not amused.

"State your name." Said Carrot Head forcefully. The smile was gone. So Mr. Nice Guy was just a mask after all. Jordan grinned at his frustration.

"Sharkeisha." She replied, her voice stronger now. Her smirk only grew. Carrot Head scowled. "You know, that'll give you wrinkles." She helpfully pointed out to him. "Premature aging. You wouldn't want that. Not on that pretty face of yours." He ignored her.

"Subject name: Jordan Chang." Carrot Head recited to the camera, his thinly veiled anger almost bursting forth. "The date: July 24, 2025. Experiment 11: 'Chen'. We will give the subject all needed information, as are her rights." He glared at her. "You are now a part of a vital government experiment. You will be placed through three stages of experimentation with a feral werewolf named Chen. Your job is to establish civil relations with the werewolf and keep yourself alive. All of your actions and words during the three stages will be recorded for observation purposes. Do you have any questions or concerns?"

"Questions and concerns? How considerate of you, I do have a few, actually.” Jordan tilted her head to think. What did they mean by 'establishing civil relations' with the werewolf? What did that entail? Was she supposed to train him or talk to him? Would she be getting any training for his training? She said none of that, however. Instead, she leaned back and looked at her interrogators.

“Why is your hair orange? Why is his hair blue? Why isn’t he wearing a shirt under that labcoat?" Jordan gestured first to the team leader, then to TOP, and finally to YoungBae at the rear of the group. "And you. Can you see?" She pointed to Daesung and his bangs, “I mean, can you do anything? How can you conduct experiments with that curtain in front of your eyes?” She paused. “That's all for now, but I'm sure that I will have more. Please hold.”

His team would have to kill him in order to make him admit it, but JiYong no longer found her annoying. Now, he genuinely found her amusing.

"So you agree to all experimentation techniques that you may be subjected to, and are knowing of potential consequences." He finished the introduction process, stubbornly suppressing a grin.

"Can't possibly be worse than being sliced open with rusty knives." Jordan’s tone switched from sass to steel as she fixed the researchers with a piercing stare. The amused atmosphere of the room evaporated in an instant. JiYong hurried on with the protocol to end the pregnant silence.

"We're done with her. Get her changed and initiate Trial 6 of Experiment 11." JiYong ordered his subordinates.

Jordan was led into a bathroom next to the glass room by Aquamarine, the blue-haired researcher. He handed her the standard uniform comprised of underwear, a sports bra, hair ties, black sweats, and a standard black tank top.

She put the getup on and pulled her hair into a ponytail. She liked it, actually. It reminded her of the clothes she used to wear. After all, anything was better than the orange prison jumpsuit.

The door leading to the laboratory was closed. When she yanked on the handle, it didn't open. Jordan sighed. Of course.

"Hello." She called out plaintively. "No longer au naturale, here." It still didn’t open. Instead, a door behind her unlocked with a click. "Good to know you're listening." She muttered as she turned the handle. “You better not have cameras in here, you erts.”

She was in a different room now. There were no researchers, but her new circumstances were much more terrifying.

A white room. A bed on each side. Crouched in the corner of the room was a snarling, completely feral werewolf.

At first glance he didn't seem as vicious as Jordan expected. He was barely taller than her, smaller than what she was expecting. But what surprised Jordan was the small upwards curve of his lips, an ever present smile, even when he snarled. But now that she was the target of his aggression, that smile was only sinister in nature.

Jordan trembled and backed away as far as she could. A bone chilling snarl ripped through his throat. His eyes glowed a cobalt blue.

A Beta.

Jordan pushed back her fear and summoned up every bit of fighting expertise that Jimin and Jungkook had taught her, along with any of the bravery she had left.

Just in time. As she put her arms up to guard her face, the werewolf sprung.

The research team gasped in surprise at the early attack. Chen normally waited a day or two to test out the waters.

But his premature strike was not the only surprise. Four jaws nearly fell to the floor as the girl threw a punch to the werewolf’s gut and then sent her elbow straight to his jaw. Both hits connected.

The werewolf shook it off easily, but receded a step or two. Chen's head tilted, eyes narrowed and eyebrows raised.

"He's curious." TOP noted. "That's different."

"She's different." Daesung chuckled, as Jordan's colorful vocabulary drifted over the broadcast system.

"Yeah, !" She shouted. "Don't mess with me! You ain't going to kill me that quickly."

Chen's snarl disappeared, to be replaced with something resembling a smirk. Jordan was unsure whether to be reassured or terrified. It almost seemed like he was... amused.

But nonetheless, Chen retreated back to his side of the room. Jordan crawled onto the hard metal bed, back against the wall. She sat up straight, facing the wolf, and began her watch.

Behind the glass, Research Team 11 was ecstatic.

"This was different!" YoungBae exclaimed. "Do you think it was because she's a girl?" His team leader shook his head.

"No, subject three was also female. And she died too." JiYong was unsure of many things, but one thing he was sure about was that somehow, Chen was an excellent judge of character. Though Chen had killed all five previous subjects, he had seemed particularly angry at Subject #3. JiYong surmised that somehow, Chen knew what she had done. That woman had killed her family, something unimaginable for a werewolf pack, and for that reason he had no qualms about killing her.

Subject 6, on the other hand, was producing radically different results. Chen was curious, as opposed to his usual tense frustration. Something had changed. Finally, after a long period of gruesome failure, Research Team 11 was interested again.

    The researchers waited eagerly for further developments.

    They waited in vain.

It was Day 4. Jordan only moved for two purposes: to eat when food was delivered through a slot in the wall, and to got to the bathroom when she could not physically hold it any longer. Even when the lights were dimmed in the evenings, she kept her watch. It’d been 96 hours since Jordan had last slept. 96 hours of glaring at him. 96 hours of ignoring the excited faces behind the glass.

    Sadistic bastards. She hated them.

    But even the fear, anger, and adrenaline combined were not enough to combat the tiring of her mind, and the slow fall of her eyelids.

    Against her will, her limbs loosened and head slumped. Within moments, she was overtaken by sleep.

    Instantly, Chen moved from his side of the room. The researchers clambered with excitement.

    “Let’s see what he does.” YoungBae whispered, tablet in hand. The air crackled with foreign anticipation. The days without sleep may have been worth it.

    Chen crouched next to her slumped figure. His nostrils flared as he sniffed at her hair. He took careful steps, legs tensed and shoulders raised. He circled her another time, sniffed at her hands and feet, growled and retreated back to his side of the space. He settled down on his bed and closed his eyes.

The entire exchange lasted less than a minute before the tense calm settled once again.

YoungBae looked down at his notes. Each note was next to the time of occurrence.

Werewolf launched early attack at Subject 6. No possible explanation available.

4 days with little activity. Subject 6 fears Chen, does not sleep, watches him constantly. Judging from repeated glances at her but relaxed movements, Chen does not feel threatened and is curious.

Subject 6 fell asleep. Chen exhibited usual werewolf behaviors. Identified her scent by sniffing at her hair. Circled her two times. Then returned to his half of room.

Both sleeping.

The notes were extremely sparse. YoungBae was not completely satisfied, but for once, he was optimistic. He gazed at the two sleeping figures behind the glass.

    Both were oblivious to each other in their dreams. Both were in better places.

Chen was reunited with his packmates. Twelve werewolves sprinted together through a foreign whitespace. There was a distorted shadowy figure waiting at the end for him, calling his name, but metal gates appeared out of nowhere. He surged forward and smashed through them, scattering black debris in every direction. He led the pack towards the end, towards the voice calling for him, his panting becoming desperate as he realized that he was getting no closer to his destination.

Jordan watched a scene. It took a moment for her to comprehend that she was at the BTS hideout. NamJoon, Seokjin, and Yoongi were seated on their couch, Taehyung sprawled across their legs. Hoseok, Jungkook, and Jimin formed a puppy pile on the floor. Jordan wandered amongst them; they didn’t see her. She poked Namjoon’s dimples, prodded Jin’s plump bottom lip, and ruffled Yoongi’s hair. She crouched down and examined the pile on the floor, grinning at their dorky smiles.

Jordan shifted in her sleep, her lips stretched into a small smile. It was her first happy dream since she was in prison. Subconsciously, she savored it.

How cruel life was, to provide all they loved in dreams, but to present them with nothing in reality.

***

Beta'd by the lovely HunHan623. Thank you my love, you save my grammatically incorrect on all occasions.