Jackson felt apprehension and he couldn’t for the life of him remember the last time he’d felt that. It was a mix of uneasiness and morbid excitement.

Lying down in bed at night, he began wondering if maybe he had gone too far. Maybe Bora wasn’t built for this. Maybe it was her last straw.

Jackson had mapped out a mental image of the golden girl, yet she was nothing he would have imagined. He hated that she had the ability to keep him up at night, wondering if he had done the right thing. It wasn’t his style to second-guess Division’s ways. Had it been any other recruit he knew he wouldn’t be asking himself these questions.

But Bora was unlike other recruits. She was similar to a snake who had gotten under his skin, curled around his heart, before digging its forked tongue into his veins. It was a bittersweet bite. The kind that stung like a pain in the side but also the kind that rendered you addicted. The kind that you got used to. Craved after even. She was a pain in the side that he ended up getting used to. 

Yet in all his time spent with her, he couldn’t remember a single occurrence of her breaking down the way she had in the straitjacket. Call it pride or vanity, she refused to appear weak to the world. Seeing her at her most vulnerable didn’t sit right with Jackson.

That’s why apprehension stuck with him the whole night and still lingered near him like a phantom when he walked the corridors of the Cliff to meet Bora for their morning training. He wondered if she would show up at all. He didn’t have the time to ponder on the things her absence would imply as he skidded to a halt at the end of the corridor leading to the training room.

She was there. 

She had showed up still. 

Of course she had. 

He felt stupid for even considering she’d give up on their training. 

She would go on a date with the devil himself if it meant reaching the end she wanted. Since the start of their training, she was always the first to show up. She would patiently wait for him every morning in front of the doors to the training room. She was motivated and he could tell she wanted to show it to him. He respected that.

Today was no different. 

She didn’t let a word slip out of . Jackson could almost be tricked into believing that the events of the past evening were made-up scenarios. That the anger, the desperation that had flared through her was a chimera. But he knew better. A spine-chilling iciness had replaced her biting replies and sarky comebacks. 

She was giving him the cold shoulder.

Jackson chuckled under his breath at the realization. 

He let her do her routine warm-up before picking up the training where they’d last left it. He showed her some moves and she was focused on his movements, brows knit together. 

She hummed or nodded when necessary but nothing more escaped her lips. 

He ruffled through a stash of equipment before pulling out two rubber dummies. He slipped one on each hand as she positioned herself in a fighting stance. 

Her kicks held power but they were sloppy. Jackson could practically feel her channeling all of her anger and turning it into the driving force behind her punches.

“Who kicked your puppy?” he teased, breaking the silence after a particular hit that had her rolling her shoulders.

She didn’t reply.

Fine.

As she went for another punch he discarded the dummies to the side and countered her hit with his arm instead. She lost her balance and almost went tumbling down on the mats. She whipped around, a scalding fire reflecting in her eyes.

She charged and he dodged her before pulling her in against him. He wrapped an arm around her neck and locked her against his chest, immobilizing her whole body. 

He crossed her eyes in the wall of mirrors in front of them.

“You’re fighting with your emotions, not with your head,” he said, mouth hovering near her ear. “This is why you can never win.”

He felt her falter under his hold. Something flashed in her eyes and before he could grasp what it was, she elbowed him in the side and almost freed herself.

Almost. 

He grabbed her wrist and pinned her arm in her back. A yelp of pain escaped her. Then, he had her against the mirrors, her left cheek colliding against the hard glass. She struggled against his hold but his body was a solid wall, keeping her pinned in her spot. She dragged her gaze to his reflection to find him staring at her. 

“You let your emotions get the best of you. You’re not in control, never have been. I could help you with that.”

“The way you helped me yesterday?” She spat out, condensation forming on the glass. 

Jackson paused.

There it was. He knew it had been coming. She had been itching to lash out at him. If anything, he was surprised she’d held out for this long. 

His momentary distraction had her elbow almost connecting with his jaw. He ducked last minute before tackling her to the ground. 

Her back hit the soft mat with a loud thump and he pinned her wrists together above her head before she could try any move on him.

“Yes,” he said out of breath, “the way I helped you yesterday.”

He wasn’t mad. More amused.

It made her all the more enraged.

She tried to buck but he sat on her midsection and she was left unable to move her lower body.

“This had nothing to do with my training, you—”

“This had everything to do with your training,” he cut her. “Picture this. What if the next Trial started with you in a similar position. What then?”

She opened then closed it, cheeks red.

“Listen, Princess,” he said, more softly this time. “I’m willing to help, but there’s only so much I can do on my own.”

“Ok,” she replied, her words barely a push of air.

Jackson would’ve thought he was hearing things were it not for the accompanying lilting motion of her lips. He released his hold and she didn’t try to push him away. 

Instead she sat up, her face mere inches away from his, her eyes holding a challenge. 

“Show me.”

***

“Wait.”

Bora’s hand shot up in the air and stopped the lid that was about to shut down on her.

She had no idea why Jackson had a wooden box that oddly resembled a casket and where he had pulled it from. 

He had convinced her to let herself be locked up in a confined space. He’d called it exposure therapy and blabbered on about how it would help her claustrophobia but she could remember none of it.

Her eyes had stayed glued to the box, dread like a whirlpool somewhere deep in her stomach, before slithering up to , constricting her airways. 

Her nails dug in the wood as she gripped the edge. “There must be another way.”

Jackson fell to a crouch, wrapped his hands around hers and uncurled her fingers.

“You can do this. You proved that to us both yesterday.”

“No, I can’t control it,” she said out of breath, “I—”

“Do you trust me?” He asked, genuine curiosity in his tone.

She opened and closed , then she nodded “I do.”

She meant it. 

He froze, almost like he had expected another answer to be coming out of , then he smiled slowly, satisfied. “Good.”

Jackson was right. It was a liability. She couldn’t risk it ruining her whole plans. She couldn’t let her fears hold her back from winning the Trials.

She knew she was doing the right thing. 

“Come on,” he motioned for her to lie back down. “One minute. Stay in there for one single minute.”

What did a minute represent in one’s lifespan? 

She let her hands fall limp at her sides. Stared at the ceiling. She felt more than she heard when Jackson slid the lid over the box.

Then, darkness.

***

The Cliff was haunted. 

Jackson and Mark had come to that conclusion when they were teenagers, meandering through the Cliff at night. It had become a game of who would have the gut to venture the deepest in the belly of the headquarters.

They would speculate on the nature of the force they suspected was traipsing the corridors when the inhabitants of the place were at rest.

It had begun as two boys telling each other spooky stories yet Mark had never been able to shake off the irking feeling that something was occupying the empty corridors of the Cliff. 

Roaming the Cliff at night was both a privilege and a trial of its own. For in the darkness, he could feel it. That something. Or someone.

He felt the presence in every humming vent, scraping of little paws against metal, or echoing sound against the carved rock walls of the Cliff.

It was in every shadow, a darkness that beckoned. 

An icy finger trailing lazily along his spine. 

Mark had tried to make a mental list of who it could be. The spirit of his or Bora’s mother. His long-gone sister who kept a watchful eye over him despite not seeing him for years. The recruits who never made it out of the Cliff alive.

The list of souls shattered by this place was depthless. The options a bottomless pit.

Mark stopped dead in his tracks when he heard it. It was barely a hushed whisper. Then a muffled laughter followed with the scrape of a chair leg against the concrete floor. The sounds came from the classrooms of Cloud 2, right above the Pit where he had been working out. 

He quelled the dread that had started swirling somewhere deep in his stomach. 

No. This was no tormented spirit. This was… recruits.

Out past curfew.

Whoever it was, he’d make sure they’d pay up for it during tomorrow morning’s training. 

He followed the sounds to one of the classrooms. The door was half-open and he pushed it open. He paused on the threshold before rolling his eyes. 

Two recruits were in the middle of a make-out session, a mess of entwined limbs. They were half-, the girl pressed against a wall, her legs wrapped around the guy’s waist. And he was all over her. 

In two strides, Mark crossed the room. He grabbed the guy by the back of his neck and violently pinned him against the wall.

Surprise, then utter terror crossed the face of the recruit when he took in who had caught him.

“Taeyong,” Mark said his name, his words laced with disappointment. 

Earlier in the afternoon, Mark had been reviewing with Solar the files of the recruits. After a few weeks at Division, Taeyong had proven to be a deadly asset for the organization. They had both agreed to promote him to agent status. Mark wanted him out in the field as soon as possible. As a Wiper, preferably.

With one hand, he kept the recruit pinned against the wall, crushing his windpipe.

He would need to teach him a lesson or two about discipline.

Then, he looked at the girl and felt his grip tighten around Taeyong’s neck. 

He closed his eyes slowly before reopening them, like the sight would go away.

“Nairin.” Saying her name anchored him to the present moment.

She looked at him, cheeks flushed and a scowl on her face, wearing nothing but a burgundy bra and shorts. 

He rolled his neck, and looked back at Taeyong. He was shaking his head, eyes bulging out. He seemed to be trying to say something but Mark’s hold around his neck only tightened. 

“Mark. You are strangling him.”

Nairin’s words rang through his ears but he didn’t heed them. All that mattered was his hand around Taeyong’s neck and a weird, unknown feeling rearing its head. 

“Mark!” She barked and dug her nails in his forearm as she put herself between the two men. “Let go of him!”

He did, and seethed at the recruit. “Get out.”

Taeyong doubled over and coughed. He made to grab his shirt strewn about below a table but Mark stepped in his way, eyes furious. “Out.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. After a furtive glance to Nairin he backpedaled to the exit and he was gone. 

A heavy silence hung between them. Mark didn’t look at her. But she had no such qualms about staring him down. And he just knew that if laserbeams could go out of her eyes, he’d be in pieces now.

“I’m not allowed on the field,” she said, her voice low and trembling with fury. “Now I can’t even have a love life?”

Mark snorted. “That’s barely love.”

“Because you know so much about love, don’t you, Mark?”

Mark felt a strain building up in the back of his eyes. Finally, he made himself look in her direction. He regretted it instantly. 

She was half-, leaving close to nothing up to his imagination. Her bra was rimmed with lace and highlighted the generous swell of her s. Her skin looked buttery-soft and he caught himself wondering what it felt like, tasted like. 

Again, that weird feeling tugged at a part of him and he took a deep breath, hoping it would kill it in the bud. 

He swallowed hard, forcing himself to focus on her flushed face. “Get dressed, we’re going home. I’m not having that conversation with you.”

“This is all you know. Ordering me around. Nairin do that, don’t go there, step that way, smile wider, but never ever think for yourself!”

Mark bristled at the accusations spilling out of . “This is not about you, Nairin. This is about Division’s ru—”

“To hell with the rules!”

Her shout echoed deep in the Cliff, disrupting the usual calm that draped over the headquarters at night.

“Nairin.” he said with a warning in his tone.

“Mark.” 

She had gotten close. Too close. 

He clenched his teeth and dug his nails in his palms. 

“You deserve better than this,” he finally said.

Better than what awaited between the walls of the Cliff.

A sliver of something flashed through Nairin’s eyes and she said crisply, “Maybe I don’t want better. Maybe I have just what I need here.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t be with someone who will leave you at the first incentive, or someone who might be dead on a mission the day after tomorrow. The recruits are calculating. That’s why they are here in the first place. We teach them how to be even more deceptive. It’s your influence they’re after.” He jerked his chin in the direction Taeyong had gone through. “If he knows what’s good for him, here, at Division, he won’t so much as look your way anymore. You’re naive if you think he’s remotely interested in you.”

He let his crude words sink in, and held her stare defiantly even as something akin to hurt flashed in her eyes. 

She bared her teeth. “You did that.”

The accusation fell heavy on his shoulders but he was used to them. He was always the problem. He was the cause of it all. 

He shrugged. “Just watch, love.”

“Then who should I be with? Look at my life, look at our lives. You lead an army of mercenaries for a living. Our families are a dysfunctional mess. Neither you nor I could ever be with someone normal. Ever. So tell me who!” She shoved him in the chest, like it would shake some sense into him. “Tell me!”

To that, Mark had no answer. 

Nairin pushed past him, swiped her clothes off a table and left.

***

Although Jackson refused to tell her, Bora knew she was making progress.

A couple of weeks had passed since Jackson had first locked her up in the wooden box and the second Trial was looming inexorably closer. 

Her claustrophobia, although far from cured (if a cure even existed), was getting better. 

Her body was getting stronger, too. 

Jackson’s training left her drained of energy every night, but full of the satisfaction of getting closer to her goal.

Bora could understand the recruits’ awe at Jackson now. 

His entire body was a weapon crafted for destruction. She understood that once they started getting down to the real deal during their sessions. Every strike of his was calculated. He left nothing to fate. And he taught her as much. 

Her thirst to match him drove her. A few times, she tried catching him off guard but not once did she come out successful. Most times, she ended up dazed on the floor before she could comprehend what had happened to her.

He sometimes prodded to know what her plans were for the second Trial at the Blue House. Ever since he’d about her choice of strategy, she refused to let another bit of information slip out of in front of him. 

She couldn’t stand his -eating grins.

One day after practice, he offered to go out.

Bora should’ve felt something fishy was brewing. Jackson never did anything without an ulterior motive. 

She changed into a casual outfit and left the girls’ dorms behind. She was too excited to be getting away from the Cliff to second-guess why on earth would Jackson invite her out.

The first red flag should’ve been the place. Out of all the bars in downtown Busan, Jackson had to pick the tiest one. 

A light drizzle started as they stepped inside the dimly lit place. Bora doubted she would have noticed the bar in the alley it was nested in if Jackson hadn’t gently tugged at her sleeve, pulling her in the way. 

As they made a turn in the alley, the rancid smell of trash made Bora scrunch her nose. The alley was isolated and cut off the sounds coming from the main street. Only their footsteps seemed to echo against the cobblestones.

As she was about to step inside, the door opened violently and a guy staggered out. The lampposts of the alley reflected poorly on his face. He was pale like death and clutching at his stomach. Just as he saw them, he threw up all over the threshold.

Bora shrieked and jumped back. “What the ?”

“He’s drunk.” Jackson shrugged, sidestepped the man and entered the bar.

“No .” Bora grumbled and followed him.

When they entered, all heads swiveled in their direction. As they trudged through the bar, Bora couldn’t keep from throwing glances over her shoulders. She didn’t miss the way some men leered at her and it unsettled her.

Jackson felt her uneasiness. “Easy, Princess. They can smell the fear.”

“I’m not scared,” she bit back, “but that’s not exactly what I envisioned when you spoke of a night out.”

Jackson motioned to the barman and ordered them drinks. When he looked back at Bora, she was glaring. 

“It’s night. And we’re out.”

“As good as you are with a gun, you’re terrible with people.”

He chuckled at that. He gathered their drinks and led her to a vacant pool table. 

Throughout the game, Bo