Jaehyo stood frozen. He had not been expecting this. He didn't know what he had been expecting, but it wasn't this. The heavy metal door creaked loudly before slamming shut behind him. He brought a shaking hand up to his neck, coming into contact with something wet. Only when he bent his head to look at the blood dripping off of his fingers did the throbbing pain register. He would have liked to scream, but it proved impossible. Suddenly, his body went numb and the cold stone floor burned the skin on his cheek. He saw no more, but, for a few more seconds, he could hear the sharp click of feet being placed one after the other. Despite the state he was in, something in his mind still yearned to reach out, stop whoever was walking away. Soon, though, even that was lost. 

-

The automated doors swished open and six boys filed in. Taeil was first, putting away the card he had just used to gain access to the food hall, and Zico trailed behind, scanning each face in the premises.

"Where's Jaehyo?" He asked for the third time since they reentered the Institution.

P.O, who had been purposefully walking slowly as to not completely isolate their leader, answered the same things as the previous times, "I don't know." Then he added. "But he came into the building with us, so it doesn't really matter, does it?"

Zico shrugged, following his block to their place, a table at the front of the room. It was right next to Block A's, which stood empty at the moment. Behind them, there was a raised platform with another table specifically set for the Institution's officials, but it was hardly ever occupied. 

"Where's Jaehyo?" Taeil asked, noticing the empty seat across from him. 

"In the building." Zico replied, stoic faced. 

"Isn't he going to eat with us?" The elder asked, his glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose. 

"He isn't going to be eating, period." He said, his voice low. 

Taeil shrugged, putting up his hands as if signifying that he meant no harm, and turned to welcome the food a server was placing down in front of him. Kyung looked up and analyzed their leader for a moment.

"Should we lock him out of the block?" He asked. Zico looked up questioningly. "Jaehyo." Kyung clarified. "For wandering off."

"You're going to punish him for not being with us by not letting him be with us?" U-Kwon smirked. Kyung shrugged. 

"Let's not." Zico said simply, and the discussion ended at that.

They ate their food in silence and didn't dawdle afterwards, immediately exiting the hall. Their footsteps resonated through the empty stone corridors, only amplified by the leader's silence. 

"Didn't Jaehyo say he saw something?" B-Bomb asked, his voice cutting through the tense atmosphere. "You know, when we left. He wanted to go somewhere."

"He said he saw a girl." Zico rolled his eyes.

"A girl he didn't know." B-Bomb reminded him.

"As if there was a girl in the Institution that he didn't know," U-Kwon scoffed.

"It was probably just an excuse to get out of the raid." Kyung suggested, eyes fixed on Zico. 

The leader didn't say anything for a minute. "I'll give him until the lights go out."

P.O checked his watch. The lights went out at 23 hours, lock in was at 24 hours. It was currently 20 hours.

-

Lights out was in 15 minutes and Zico had not stopped fidgeting since 22 hours. Kyung has noticed the steady rhythm in which his leg bounced up and down, up and down, up and down. It was a good thing he was sitting behind everybody else or they would have lashed out at him for the annoyance. In all honesty, Kyung was also starting to worry about Jaehyo. It wasn't good for anyone to be out after lights out, and he didn't even want to imagine what would happen if he was locked out.

Zico stood up when the television screen flashed blue. Five minutes until lights out, it read. The boys groaned, putting down their controllers and turning off their game console. 

"I'm going to go look around." Zico said.

They glanced at him, but kept going about their business.

"Good luck." U-Kwon sang, stretching.

"Be back before lock in." P.O reminded him, his eyes glued to a magazine he had fished out from under his pillow. 

Kyung crinkled his nose, debating with himself. As the door slid open, he called out. "I'll go with you." 

When Zico stopped, waiting for him, he sighed, regretting being such a good friend. They'd gone up against a dozen or so of those things that day, and all he really wanted to do was rest. 

"So." He said after a few minutes of silent walking. "Where do you think he could be?"

"I remember where he saw the girl." Zico replied. Kyung pulled a face.

"There wasn't any news of new recruits, though." He frowned. "It was probably just a mistake." 

"The only thing Jaehyo has proved good at is distinguishing one thing from another, whether its one people or monsters." The other replied, turning the corner past the hallways in which the door to the launch pad was located. "She must have gone this way." Of course, there was nowhere else to go.

"It's a dead end." Kyung stated the obvious, staring down the long corridor. "If she exists, she works in the engine rooms."

"People aren't allowed to move freely from the engine rooms." Zico said harshly, his blood boiling at the thought of what lay below. The engine rooms were manned by criminals so despicable, even their wards had to live below, keeping constant watch.

They had betrayed their people, their families, their species.

Kyung noticed the way Zico's jaw had tensed, his clenched fists, and sighed. Their leader had never been able to escape his past. 

Civilians lived in guarded facilities, most of them underground, in which children attended school and adults worked to maintain provisions necessary for their survival. Special blocks, represented by numbers instead of letters, were in charge of their security and communicated with the Institution when letter blocks were needed. For people to be so ungrateful, so