Haeun folded the page into a star and put it in her jewelry box like a love letter. It felt more like a bomb, and she had to turn her back on it to fall asleep. She dreamt about being buried alive and woke up screaming.

The next few days were a haze. She spent it thinking - what would she do? What could she do? How would she do it alone? She felt so hopeless, and more isolated than ever, but something inside her wouldn't let her give up her newfound determination. She just wished she had somewhere to start.

She thought about the past a lot, too. About being encouraged to never question what her betters told her. About her training in the academy that emphasized placing her trust in authority. About kids she'd known who had gotten caught reading banned books, and how they'd come to school days later, completely different people.

She thought about her boyfriend, how he'd died. Why he'd died. Her badge feelt white-hot on her chest, like a brand. Traitor, traitor, it burned into her. Putting it on every morning had become the thing she hate most in the world.

She thought Seungri must have told the others, because they looked at her oddly sometimes - sad, resigned eyes, half-hearted smiles, slumped shoulders. They'd given up on her already. She'd made her choice, and they were ready for the day she never came back.

So it was more than a little ironic that it was Youngbae - peaceful, kind Youngbae of all people - who gave her the first hint of an idea.

One morning, several days after the school explosion, she watched him help a member of the computer crimes department track down a violator, his eyes scanning the screen as his fingers pecked at this key or that. It was gibberish to Haeun, but Youngbae pointed things out, pulled up file after file, decrypted things she didn't even understand after he was done with them.

"You're good at that," she remarked when he was done. He looked at her with a wary little smile and nodded. "Where did you learn to do that?"

He shrugged. "I've always had a knack for technology," he replied, waving his left hand, encased in a black fingerless glove as it usually was, at her. "Which fits, since I am part technology."

Off her confused frown, he rolled up his sleeve and took off his glove, revealing where the prosthetic limb's joints were. Haeun gasped, and he laughed, wiggling his fingers.

"Happened a long time ago," he reassured her. "I don't even miss it." Pulling the glove back on, he turned back to his computer, and that was when the idea began to form.

Haeun grinned. "You'll have to teach me sometime," she suggested. "About computers."

When he looked over at her, she did her best to appear innocent and unsuspicious. It didn't appear to work, because instead of grinning, agreeing, or joking around, he pressed his lips together and hummed noncommitally. Haeun didn't slump, that would have been too obvious. Instead, she thumped his shoulder - his prosthetic shoulder, she now knew - and grinned again.

"I get it. You don't wanna share your secret powers with me."

He didn't laugh. If anything, he tensed even further, and Haeun frowned.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, sorry Haeun-ah." He smiled finally, but it was a poor imitation of the real thing. "It's been a long day."

"Mmhmm." She watched him a moment longer, kindly not mentioning that their shifts had only started an hour ago, before the Breaking News chimes caught her attention.

"This just in," the perky-yet-seriously-so newscaster chirped, "the explosion at Central Primary School has been officially ruled an accident. Experts say the blast occured when a leaking gas line was probably ignited by a spark, most likely caused by some form of electronic being switched on. In other news...."

Youngbae flinched, and Haeun looked over to see him outright glaring at the television. The fingers of his prosthetic hand tapped a stacatto rhythm on his desk, and after a moment, he met her eyes.

"I think," he said in a voice like a crackle of lightning, "that it wouldn't be a bad idea, teaching you a few tricks."

Haeun looked from the screen to him and back again, uncomprehending. "Okay," she agreed. "Just say when."

He didn't answer, just smiled and went back to his reports.

That afternoon, Seungri and Jiyong ambushed her, shouldering her into the dead zone closet with serious expressions.

"You have an idea," Jiyong stated without preamble.

She shrugged. "I don't know what-"

"Stop saying that," Seungri snarled.

The sudden urge to tell them everything washed over her so quickly, so thoroughly, that she was nearly knocked over. She blinked at Seungri, whose fingers were twitching, little eddies of dust swirling minutely around his feet, and she knew suddenly that somehow, whatever that flood of...that...was, it was Seungri's doing.

"What did you just do?" she asked, keeping her voice calm despite the rising fury she felt. It simmered, then fizzled and cooled, but she reignited it easily with the thought that it hadn't dissipated by her own will. Haeun reached out, grabbing Seungri's shirt front in one fist. "What. Did. You. Do."

"Seungri-ya," Jiyong said warningly.

But Seungri looked right at her, grinned, and this time, she felt it - a strange push of foreign emotion. Glee filled her, and even though she was utterly horrified, she couldn't help but giggle.

"How...how..." Another giggle, and she gave Seungri a little shake. "Stop that! Whatever you're doing, stop it!"

His smile turned bitter, and over his shoulder Haeun could see Jiyong, wide-eyed and wary, watching her carefully.

Haeun started to shake. "Can...can you all do this?"

"No," Seungri replied, ignoring Jiyong's frustrated glare. "They aren't like me."

"Jesus," Jiyong snapped, "just tell her. You've started it, why don't you just follow through?"

"Sorry, hyung," Seungri said without sounding even a little sorry. "She needs to know before she tries anything." He looked at Jiyong with an imploring tilt of his head. "She shouldn't go into this not knowing."

They stared at each other for a minute, almost as though they were...

"Oh, god," Haeun moaned, "can you-?"

"No," Seungri interrupted with his usual smartass grin. "I can't read minds."

Haeun rolled her eyes almost in sync with Jiyong.

"But I can read feelings," he elaborated. "Read and manipulate."

All the times Haeun was suddenly overcome with happiness or drained of her anger without warning came rushing back to her, and she bristled indignantly. Had he been controlling her from the start? Had everything been fake?

Another thought bubbled up then. Memories of her interrogation. Of the courage and determination that had filled her every time she'd faltered. Of the pain and fear that had never seemed to last. And more memories, of all the times Seungri could have made her complacent, unquestioning. Made her give up this newfound cause without a care. He could have done it at any time, couldn't he?

But he hadn't.

"How..?"

"It's a long story," Jiyong cut in, "and not one we should tell without the others."

Haeun went to protest, but he held up one hand, shaking his head. "No, Haeun-ah. Not here." He looked around as though someone might've been hiding in the mop bucket, then nodded to Seungri. "You take her, after shift change."

Seungri nodded back, and Haeun felt the soft brush of gratitude. He must've bene projecting somehow, she realized. How did it work, she wondered. Did he lose what he projected? Did he have to feel what he drained away?

Again, that day she'd been interrogated came back to her. The pain that never overwhelmed her. The fear that kept ebbing just as it was about to overflow. Had he gone through it all with her? Had he endured that for her sake?

'You looked like someone who knew how to make good coffee.'

A rush of affection for your partner filled her, and he turned to give her a half-smile.

"Hold on to that, New Girl," he said as Jiyong slipped out the door. "You and I are going for a ride."

The "ride" turned out to be a trip to the Central City Correction Facility - Rehabilitation Branch.

Seungri looked at Haeun gravely as they pulled up to the security checkpoint. "You sure you want to do this, Haeun-ah?" She blinked at the use of her actual name, and Seungri pressed on. "Are you absolutely positive that you want to be a part of this? Because once you are, you can't back out."

"I'm sure," she replied, gathering all of her determination and clumsily envisioning shoving it at him.

He wriggled a little in his seat and shot her a glare. "Okay, okay. You got it. One ruined life coming right up."

The CCCF had long been the jewel of the Peacekeepers' treasury - state-of-the-art security system, rehabilitation programs, and comprehensive training for all employees on prison violence prevention. The academy had spent a day on its history and development, from its beginnings as a prison for death row inmates to a no-kill recovery center. Haeun had even taken a trip to the visitation room the hear a presentation given by an inmate who had been near the end of his program, and she'd been suitably impressed.

Entering the main prison now was like stepping through the looking glass. Haeun thought she should've been used to that sort of thing, all the utopian promises of her school days being revealed as only smoke and mirrors. Every lie stung, though, like salt in an open wound. It was better that way, in her opinion. It kept her angry, kept her strong.

The cleanliness of the visitation room was the only thing that carried over into the new truth. It was a clinical sort of clean - bleach and antispetic with a hint of metal and nitrile. Everything was bulletproof plex and whilte walls, not the soothing blues and greens of the visitation room. She'd imagined, during that long-ago visit, that this place would be noisy with shouting and violent behavior, but everything seemed eerily quiet save for the occasional sound of footsteps or the closing of a door.

What really upset Haeun, though, what made her blood boil, was what she saw past the plex cell doors.

In each cell was a bed, exactly like the one she'd been strapped to during her "questioning". And in each bed, there was a person - some young, some old. And each of those people was hooked up to IV fluids, to monitors, to electrodes. They weren't silent, she realized as she passed a cell where an elderly woman was being shocked repeatedly. The cells were soundproof.

"Reprogramming," Seungri said with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "The finest achievement of the Peacekeepers. All our inmates are given a new purpose throgh intensive re-education so that they can become happy, productive members of society again."

He looked at Haeun, and even though there was nothing in his tone to indicate that he didn't think this was a superb idea, she could feel his disgust, his fear, and his guilt.

This, she thought, was what they had tried to do to her. They had wanted to train her, to teach her to stop thinking. Well, she reminded herself, it had certainly backfired.

But if Seungri hadn't been there to bolster her...would it have worked? They must have believed it had, or she wouldn't have been let go. But...could it have worked?

Was it working on these people?

She shuddered, repulsed anew.

"Come on, New Girl," her partner directed, gesturing down the hall. It's a little further yet."

She followed him past room after room, cell after cell, every one of them occupied. Then they reached a thich steel door guarded by two wardens.

"Afternoon, gentlemen," Seungri chirped, nodding ot them amiably. He'd unholstered his gun, taser, and nightstick at the entrance, as had Haeun, so she was surprised when one of the wardens gestured to a bin full of little dividers and a clipboard. Seungri didn't hesitate, though, simply unclipped his datapad and dropped it into the bin, logging the date, time, serial number, and his name. Haeun followed suit, confused, but reluctant to ask questions outside the safety of the dead-zone closet. She didn't have time to do so, anyway; as soon as she'd handed over her own datapad, they're waved through the door, which moved as though it weighed a ton as it opened.

Haeun was immediately assaulted by the sounds of hysterical laughter and a crackle of electricity that had her flinching, even all those months later. This wing was different, she noted with interest. There was no soundproofing, and there were people in lab coats milling about everywhere. The wing itself was really just a circular room - a gigantic circular room, though. Glancing around, she estimated there must have been at least one hundred six-by-six cells per floor, and there were easily thirty floors, topped by a steel dome.

She knew what that dome looked like from the outside - all marble and bronze with delicate, curling designs. It was one of the city's landmarks. She had a postcard with that dome on it pinned to her wall at home.

The inmate in the cell to the right of the door cackled again while somewhere else, someone screamed.

"Back again?"

Haeun jumped a little when an old man in a lab coat approached them, his wispy white hair floating about his face.

"Until he cracks," Seungri replied easily.

The scientist snorted, gesturing Seungri forward, and raised an eyebrow at Haeun.

"Observing," she heard herself say as they started to walk around the room. "For training purposes."

"Good luck with that," the scientist said insincerely.

She had no idea what that meant, but it sounded ominous. She scooted a bit closer to Seungri, and she might've asked him to explain what was going on, but her attention was caught by a familiar face.

The boy, the youngest boy, that she'd helped arrest on her first assignment, was crouched in the corner of a nearby cell, curls falling about his face as he rocked back and forth, staring at nothing. Haeun stopped, shocked, as the meager furnishings of his cell - sheet, pillow, monitoring equipment and wires - floated through the air slowly, orbiting the bed that was standing on end in the middle of the floor.

"He hasn't been especially cooperative," the scientist remarked at her shoulder. "Not since the older girl had to be put down."

No, Haeun thought, anger and self-loathing bubbling up violently. No, I don't imagine he is. Haeun watched as a clipboard tumbled past, fascinated despite herself, and looked over at Seungri.

This kid, at least, and probably that girl they'd 'put down', were like Seungri. And the others back at the squadroom, she reminded herself. They were all part of this, and they'd somehow escaped this fate so far. Haeun tentatively tried to reach out, somehow, to her partner. The sadness and guilt she encountered were almost overwhelming, and she did her best to project safety and comfort. She spotted his lips twitching just a fraction, and she let herself relax.

"This way," Seungri said, not a trace of what Haeun knew he was feeling in his tone.

She followed him and the old scientist to the elevator, taking a brief ride with them p to the top floor - thirty-six. The view when she stepped out onto the walkway was a little dizzying. Somehow things seemed to echo more - she heard sobbing, and shouting, and the soulless noise of thousands of monitors and machines. It all merged together into great swells and ebbs, cacophonous and overwhelming.

"The sounds of progress," Seungri remarked as he led the way to a particular cell.

Haeun managed to smile in spite of herself, but her paranoia ramped up a bit when she noticed the scientist observing her closely and nodding a bit to himself.

"Okay, New Girl," Seungri said lightly, coming to a stop. "Time for a little Peacekeepers history lesson." He gestured towards the cell, and Haeun peered in, then gasped, staring.

Jiyong stared back.