CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Execute

Sunny stared at her, astonished. 

"Sounds crazy but I swear it's true." Taeyeon had told her that military bioresearchers had concocted a magic panacea that healed all injuries.

"Where can we get it?" Sunny asked. They would never have casualties again. Maybe she'd be stuck with this prosthetic leg, but her other foot would work. She just had to retrofit her prosthetics to one of those sports pogo sticks. Walking, running, jumping, fighting. Again.

The emotions lighting up Sunny's face was heart wrenching. Taeyeon regretted not prefacing her explanation with the horrors of when the serums went wrong. 

"Wait... It's not so easy. Not everyone's compatible with the magic juice." 

"What do you mean compatible?"

"Those who aren't end up dead, or worse. It's too dangerous. Even if we could sneak out some for you guys, I wouldn't let you have it."

"Why not? Just because you're good with it doesn't mean you can get all high and mighty. This would be freaking worth anything to us! Our chances of surviving this war would be-"

"Sunny, no, I'm serious." Taeyeon had to explain fast. "It's not worth it. They tested it out on us. Most didn't survive."

"What was the survival rate?"

"What?" Stall. ing stall. Three of ten doesn't sound bad enough. 

"How many soldiers out of how many survived?"

"Three out of fifty."

The hope lighting up Sunny's eyes dimmed. Taeyeon could see her getting resigned, and while she felt bad about it, she wasn't sorry about lying. She had to keep the serums out of their hands.

But Sunny was still thinking. "Tell me about the people who were compatible. Was there a common factor?"

Yes, we were all females with low testosterone levels. If Sunny knew that, she was going to jump all over it and insist on getting it for all the women in the gang. Taeyeon said, "No, there wasn't. It was random. Just let it go. I shouldn't have brought it up."

"What if it was just for me? Come on. Even if it was just a week, you've experienced what it's like to have no legs. Worst thing ever, right? You have to depend on someone for everything, you can't fight, you just sit on a stupid chair apart from everyone else."

"Sorry, I'm really, really sorry." Taeyeon wasn't going to risk it. If anything went wrong.... anything at all... it would be her fault, and she wasn't going to allow that. If Sunny had to stay paralyzed, then Taeyeon would just have to let it be. Things were better that way.

"Damn... you know, for a minute there, I felt all this hope."

"Sorry."

"Stop." 

Taeyeon stared at Sunny for a while. Sunny worked up a short smile, once again resigned to the fate she had been forced into for three years.

Taeyeon went to the clinic. She wanted to be around Jessica. Yuri had recovered from the shock of seeing Taeyeon stand up earlier that morning, and smiled in wonderment as Taeyeon strode in on her own two feet.

Jessica was yawning while giving an injection to a boy with bandaged forearms.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Taeyeon asked. Her empty stomach growled loudly.

Jessica smirked. "Help yourself to some food from the fridge back there."

Taeyeon grinned sheepishly and padded over to the fridge. There was a stack of kimbap. She took one and unwrapped the aluminum foil. She pulled apart one piece of the sliced rice roll and popped it into . She chewed twice and swallowed, then stuffed the rest of the roll directly into . She demolished another kimbap, before forcing herself to turn away from the refridgerator and go back to Jessica.

"I bet you're still hungry."

"Damn right. I could eat the whole tray."

"You could go outside and try to scavenge for more food."

"Nah." She wanted to be here, close to Jessica. "So. Do you need a hand?"

"Get the people here some water."

"Okay."

When she was done, she helped Jessica with cleaning up the patients, holding them down, and other logistics. It was horribly boring, stuck in the clinic's crappy atmosphere and doing helping-people things. She admired Jessica more for it, but decided that in her next life, she wouldn't want to be a doctor.

Come late afternoon, Taeyeon skipped outside to find food. Maybe Jessica could have something for dinner other than kimchi fried rice or kimbap. 

She walked around, enjoying her new legs. Clusters of buildings were occupied by pockets of residents. She didn't find any edible food in the empty homes. She felt people watching her through peepholes and windows, but no one talked to her. This was a nice place, being able to walk in the open like this. 

While she was finding food, she came upon a small kitchen knife, for cutting fruits, and started collecting other potential weapons. She didn't have guns anymore. If she came across a few North Koreans, she'd be able to take their weapons, but for now, she'd have to make do.

She found more knives, narrow blades with serrated edges. She put them into a commercial paper bag and continued on her way. She pulled out electric cables and long nails from walls and tossed them into the bag. She found a toolkit, with screwdrivers, tape, more nails, screws, and a hammer. She carried the whole box.

She returned the clinic with her spoils. Daesung was there, for his daily chat with her. Apparently, he had visited her when she was out of it the past couple of days getting restored back to usual Chimera levels.

His normally slit eyes popped out of his head at the sight of her. "Whoa!"

Taeyeon couldn't help the grin splitting her face. "Wassup."

"I can't believe this! You're standing up!"

"Yeah."

"You're walking!"

"Chill, dude."

"Chili bananas... You're for real. I knew it!"

Taeyeon shrugged. Nodded. It didn't matter if they knew she was on the bounty now. She was well enough to handle herself around them.

"Come on, hyung has got to see this," Daesung said.

"He doesn't have to see ."

"But this is awesome. And he's not going to see . He's going to see you."

Taeyeon rolled her eyes. "Don't make a big deal out of nothing."

"It is AWESOME," Daesung said, as if saying it hard enough could convince her to go see Jiyong and possibly get introduced to the rest of YG. "I thought you were cool enough with your bounty, because that means you're a bat awesome fighter, because why else would the Northerners single you out, right? But now, look at you! You can self-heal in a week! You were HALF-DEAD last time I saw you. This is nuts."

"Calm the down," Taeyeon said. Daesung's exuberance and zero-sarcarsm was making it hard to less at not smiling.

Daesung laughed. "You have got to join us. You're going to, right?"

She had been afraid of this. "Uh... No."

"Why not?"

"Just because." She wasn't going to work with them. She had her own objectives. She didn't need a bunch of amateur soldiers holding her back.

"Taeyeon, the fight is here. If you're not going back to the army, this is the place to return to the war."

"It's not the only way."

"Come on, what else are you gonna do?"

"I could do my own thing. Carry out my own vendetta."

"We've amassed a warehouse full of weapons from the North Koreans," Daesung said. "And we'd be around. Together, we'll accomplish so much more than if you go off by yourself."

Taeyeon thought about it. She did owe them, after all. "Maybe I'll stay for one job, as a thank you."

"OK. It's your choice, of course," Daesung sighed. Then he broke into a wide smile. "Fine, I know. If we do this one job well, you'll stay, right?"

"Don't count on it."

Daesung pumped his fist. "We'll do well. You better believe it."

"So what's your next job?"

"We're gonna be smuggling twenty people out of Seoul next week. We take them by car, then by boat, and by car again. Right now, we're just waiting for the youngins to set up logistics for us."

Taeyeon wanted to know how they did it, and what kind of civilians had stayed back in the city during the war, and why they were bailing out now. It wouldn't be a bad job to help out on.

Taeyeon finally received a reply from Sooyoung. It was through Jessica's contact, who Jessica hadn't allowed Taeyeon to meet, just in case her presence compromised the meeting if anyone else was observing the meeting. Taeyeon thought that the rendezvous would already be pretty damn suspicious to an MP, but Jessica would have none of it.

Sooyoung's reply was a single word, 'EXECUTE', which had three meanings. In radio code, it meant to execute an order. The other two interpretations were to literally execute, or kill, and to do whatever she thought best, since no explicit order was relayed. So Sooyoung was suggesting that Taeyeon go ahead and finish off Kang Hodong, but that it was up to her.

This could only mean that Sooyoung and Yoona agreed with her suspicions that Kang Hodong was the spy, but that they either hadn't been able to convince anyone else of the matter, or that it was inconvenient to inform Seongnam of the internal threat. So they needed Taeyeon to get rid of him ASAP.

Nonetheless, she was ready to lipo the gigantic bald fatass from the military. As soon as she understood Sooyoung's message, she took a knife, a coil of electrical cable, and a hammer from the paper bag of faux weapons she'd collected a few days earlier. Then she traveled straight to Seongnam on foot.

It was a three hour trek. Taeyeon came up with her plan in that time. Getting to Hodong wouldn't be straightforward. Everyone knew how the Fireflies looked like, or at least that's how it seemed when she was inside. So she'd need a disguise, and the best way to get to Hodong was at the barracks. Taeyeon didn't want to be seen. She didn't want to kill any of her fellow soldiers.

She went to the back of base, where there was the least activity. Seongnam Base was surrounded by a tall fence topped with barbed wire. It was further bordered by an expansive field of plain grass before the forest came up again. This deterred trespassers and sneak attacks.

She waited at the lip of the forest. She dug a trench under the bushes with her hands and waited. She didn't have a view scope, much less a pair of night vision goggles, but she waited until hours after sunset so that it was just moonlight and artificial light illuminating the base. This place used to be home. She knew the change of the guard and how the lookouts thought, so she also therefore knew how to move across the plain field without getting detected.

When the time was right, she crawled across the grass field to the tall fence. A normal man might have tried to get through it with boltcutters, and would have been sorely disappointed by the high voltage electricity running through it. She jumped over the fence when the coast was clear. She landed right and ran to the building where she wanted to go.

It was a building that made tight. Taeyeon wiped her palms on her pants. The electric cables and the knife were wrapped in newspaper. She grabbed the package between her teeth, tasting the bitter print, and shimmied up a pipe lining the side of the building to the rooftop, hammer in half a hand.

Taeyeon picked the lock to the rooftop stairwell. Her heart was hammering in her chest at the memories of being locked in solitary. Deprived of sleep, food, sound, contact. And then being forced to take those pills. Those injections. And that. 

Taeyeon didn't know if this plan was rational. Possibly, finding him wasn't strictly necessary to get to Hodong. But, it didn't matter. She wanted him to pay the up.

A/N: Thanks for the feedback last chapter:)) It was great to know what's up~ Let me know what was good or horrible or nvm about this one!