Seohyun had her eyes shut tightly as she listened in concentration while Yuri narrated her findings and encounters to the group. She was trying to process and making sense of the situation. Finally, she announced, “there could only be two possibilities…”

“What are they?” Hyoyeon asked impatiently, she has had enough of doing guess-work.

“The first is that she had released you on purpose to track you back to your hideout and find out your origins,” Seohyun reasoned.

“Our surveillance equipment would have gotten their images if they did that but the last I checked, only Yuri and our men came up in those cuts.”

“It could be possible that they had stopped tailing Yuri halfway,” Yoona suggested but had immediately rebutted her own argument.

“But that would not have made sense, our radius of surveillance is so wide… it can’t be possible they dropped her off so early…” Sooyoung reasoned.

Since she herself was not entirely convinced by the first suggestion, Seohyun then offered another suggestion before the others came up with other conjectures, “the second is that she truly means to free you and not want to pursue the matter.”

The second suggestion sounded so innocent yet plausible that the rest of the members were most definitely disappointed by it.

Hyoyeon held up a finger and spoke, “there could be a third possibility.”

“What?!” The rest of the members looked at her expectantly, excited by the idea of having a better hypothesis.

“That she is the one who helped us find out Black Mamba’s darkest secrets and helping us get into Black Mamba.”

The others sighed and proceeded to scatter from the meeting.

“Not everyone is born to be a thinker…” Yoona commented before she took a seat before one of the monitors.

Hyoyeon protested loudly at the disappointing reactions from her comrades. She had expected a more supportive and even more enthusiastic response from her friends yet she was met with scorn and sarcasm.

“Hyoyeon, the pink-haired girl who has released Yuri is simply not the person who has been feeding us information from the inside,” Seohyun said piteously to Hyoyeon and when the wiser girl realized that the dimmer one has not caught on, she further explained. “The girl would not have asked Yuri where she was from since she knew G7 would be infiltrating sooner or later.”

Hyoyeon showed signs of protesting at that idea but was beaten to it by Taeyeon who had added in. “The girl would not have bothered to throw Yuri into a prison cell knowing that she would be coming.”

“Okay, fine, so who is she.”

Unbeknownst to Hyoyeon, Seohyun had already retrieved information about the said pink-haired warrior from databases, mostly footages from underground closed circuit televisions near Horned Tail which was recently rumoured to have been completely destroyed by Black Mamba.

“This.” Images upon images of a blurred pink-haired humanoid were displayed on their various panels.

Yuri squinted her eyes as she began to sketch the person in her mind but was once again beaten by Seohyun’s technology. A three-dimensional full-sized holographic figure stood rotating in the middle of their meeting room. This feat elicited squeals of awes from the onlookers.

“I had no idea we could still do that! I thought that technology was completely lost!”

“Well, it seems like your years of restorative research has not been in vain.” The leader spoke appreciatively.

“Yes… if only I could have more men to help me with these, I could have accomplished it faster.” Upon seeing the crestfallen faces of her comrades, Seohyun immediately felt guilty. “I mean… if only that great civil war had not happen and if only people would stop fighting each other… we could have a chance at recovering this world and giving people a better place to live in.” Seohyun could feel her emotions welling up and tried fighting back her tears as she continued speaking, “but ever since the great civil war broke out, people who were insecure could only turn to people who had greater fighting capabilities to protect them and in turn more fights broke out and… and it became a never-ending cycle and so many people suffered.”

The technologist realized that her tears were falling in huge droplets too late. The barrage of emotions that she swore to keep hidden deep within her had been released. She felt vulnerable and all at once. Just as she thought that her comrades would save her grace by letting her weep silently, she received a warm embrace, one that was warmer and comfortable than any morning sun. It was from Taeyeon.

“That is why we cannot stop fighting. We fight for what we believe in. We fight for what we have lost. Above all, we fight for what we have to protect.”

Seohyun sobbed harder into the leader’s chest and felt the warmth multiplied by several times as her comrades joined in their embrace.

“We will make this a better world. You are not alone. You have us, and the insider from Black Mamba and perhaps this pink-haired girl.”

“Provided if the insider and the pink-haired one can even be trusted.” Hyoyeon remarked snidely and that had elicited giggles and complaints alike from the others.

“Okay, so back to the question. Who is she?”

“I think she is Hyomin.”

“How did you know her name?!”

“Because of this.”

Seohyun pointed to a row of words displayed on all of the monitors in the room.

Protect Hyomin at all costs.

**

The technologist’s hands had been flying over the numerous keyboards incessantly for the past twenty-four hours and yet she felt more awake with each passing moment. The secrets that she has uncovered was simply too great for her to stop now.

The world was in this shape now owed to a selfish cause. It was a scandal and one that was not discovered in time and over time it was buried to such depths that it could almost not have been retrieved.

Project S101, a project that had spun entirely out of control after its short-lived success.

A hundred years ago, a group of South Korean scientist believed that they could create the world’s strongest military troops if they could instill in their soldiers tireless patriotism, feelings for the country that was so strong that they were infallible. In order to do so, the maniacal group of scientists initially came up with serums that would be injected into their soldiers and for a brief moment, they achieved successes in their creations but they soon understood that such falsely instilled emotions could not last and had to be renewed.

It then became too tiresome, costly and unsustainable for the military to use serums on such a large scale. They then came up with a better method, mimicking the use of gassing chambers used during the Holocaust, the scientists decided to use large facilities and modified the serums into its gas form. It proved a success but not for too long. The scientists soon found another problem. The more times the soldiers were exposed to the substance called S101, serum or gas alike, their emotions would become more intense and it became addictive to them. The gas did not only create the feelings of patriotism but also other negative emotions such as strong resentment and hatred.

The scientists soon found out the side effects of the continued usage of S101, became fearful and tried to put a stop to the experiment. However, they had discovered it too late and what they faced was the rebellion of the majority of the soldiers. An internal uprising within the military occurred and during the uprising, the plant that produced that S101 had exploded, releasing the gases into the air.  

That was when the world fell apart.

The final problem was that the group of scientists had not disclosed the self-propagating property of S101 and even when they had wanted to do so, it had been too late. The world in its entirety had become a contamination bed of S101. People who were most susceptible to S101 were consumed by hatred of such massive proportions that most had mutilated themselves. These people had actually contributed little to the destruction of the world. Whilst, those who had shown little signs of being affected by the gas but was still nonetheless affected caused the most damage, they were also known as the bloodlusts. These bloodlusts had the gases built up within their own system and allowed hatred to culminate within themselves. The rest, which makes up the almost a third of this generation was able to tolerate higher levels of S101, even if they did not, they found certain methods which were somewhat effective in purging the gas from their system.

This document was apparently recovered before the sanity of the one and the last of the participating scientist of the project had been robbed.

As much as Seohyun was shocked by the revelation of such secrets, she was more curious as to how and why such a secret would have been kept in Black Mamba’s database. The technologist wondered if it could have been stolen information since Black Mamba was known to antagonize and raid other sects and this could have been one of the information that had befell them during one of the raids. However, Seohyun’s gut feelings told her that this piece of information was not stolen from others but rather had belonged to Black Mamba and had been sitting in their database all these time.

Project S201.

It was then when Seohyun stumbled, the rest of the file was corrupted and it was irretrievable.  

What is project S201?

**

A/N: 

OMGAH Sunbyung happened yesterday! AHHHH! I cannot maintain my calm. 

/takes in lungfuls of air/

Okay, I am fine now, well not really xD but i shall begin seriously. 

And a brief emotional G7 moment over there /comforts Seobaby/ I am so sorry if that part was not expanded though, it does feels rushed because this fiction was meant to be a one-shot ToT so sorry guys. 

More importantly, we finally have a bit of background as to why the world had become so much in ruins and I think some of you might know who has been communicating with the G7 already xD

I should probably stop reminding you guys but this is the 2nd last chapter of this fic! Yay hey! 

Thank you for all the upvotes, subscribes and comments thus far! You guys are my motivation :)

AND lastly! I hope we will continue loving Sunbyung! /coughs/ and all the other members as well :P