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"All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong,
and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride."
- Sophocles, Antigone

The colour drained from his face when the Erratics turned their heads towards their vehicle and he looked at Nari in alarm.

“What do we do?”

She looked back and then to the front again. “We can’t go back into the city because we’ll get trapped. We have to plow through them.” Taehyung turned to the Erratics who were standing there, but none made any attempt to come towards them.

“Why are they not coming for us?” he asked, his eyes wide. Nari narrowed her eyes. “They’re under commands. I think their goal is to keep us in here, not to kill us.”

Taehyung blew the air out of his cheeks before looking out the window to his left. “If we can make it through these ones, we have enough gas to outrun them.”

She bit her lip in thought. “But I’m sure he sent more in all directions to prevent us from going anywhere. We have to remove your chip,” she said, turning to him. Taehyung stared at her. “I don’t know where it is, Nari.”

She closed her eyes, recalling the files she got a glimpse of while she was looking for the location of Baekhyun’s chip. She opened them and she gestured towards his forearm. He looked down.

“It’s in here?”

She reached for his arm and rolled up his sleeve, sliding her fingers over his skin to feel around for it.

“How high is your pain tolerance?” she asked. Taehyung shrugged. “I guess it’s pretty high. Why? Are you going to ask me to cut it out of my own arm?” He looked up and his expression fell when he realized that was exactly what she wanted him to do.

“Here, this knife is clean. I’ll get the bandages ready,” she said, handing him her knife. Taehyung stared at her for a few seconds before he shook his head.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he muttered. He pulled his jacket high above his neck and bit onto the fabric while he felt around on his arm to find the exact location.

Nari looked at him briefly before she turned back to the front. “If we get it out, then we can escape here without worrying about them finding us later on.”

A few moments later, Taehyung reached over for the bandages from her hands and she looked at him in surprise.

“You took it out already?” she asked. He nodded, ready to lift up his arm to show her but she shook her head and turned away. “I can’t stand looking at things like that.”

He raised an eyebrow in amusement as he cleaned out the fresh wound. “Really? And you’re telling me you survived all these years slaughtering Erratics but you can’t stomach an open wound?”

She turned around to shoot him a glare before using the knife to pick up the chip and throw it out the window.

“There, done,” Taehyung said, inspecting his bandaged arm. He cracked his neck before placing his palms on either side of the wheel.

“But if they’re smart enough to form a blockade, won’t they be smart enough to pull the truck back to prevent us from moving?” he asked. Nari thought over his words for a few seconds and then she looked up.

“Then I’ll take out enough blocking our way so you can drive through. I’ll catch up to the truck after that.”

Taehyung turned to her incredulously. “You’re sick, aren’t you? How are you going to take them out? Nonetheless, be able to run as fast as a moving truck?”

She took the hair tie from her wrist and as she tied up her hair into a ponytail, she gave him a small smirk. “I think you’re underestimating my abilities as the first soldier.”

He watched her open the passenger door and reached after her but she had already slammed the door behind her. He watched her stand in front of the truck and he gaped at her.

“Nari! You’re going to get yourself killed!” he shouted. She turned her head to the side. “I’ll hop onto the back of the truck as you drive by. Wait until I give you the signal to drive.”

She glanced back to see his concerned expression before she wrapped her fingers around the ring that fit snug around her right middle finger. Her index finger hovered over the small button, and she took a deep breath.

“Taehyung, I need you to promise me something,” she said. He frowned. “What is it?”

“I need you to promise me that you’ll close your eyes. Keep them closed until I get back into the car with you.”

His eyes widened, more than they were already. “You’re asking me to close my eyes?! What if drive off course?” She shook her head. “It’s a straight path.”

“And why do I need to close them?” he questioned, not understanding a thing she was saying. She let out a sigh.

“Because I don’t want you to see me turn into something I’m not,” she said, her voice barely audible. “Please, just do as I say.”

He bit his lip, not wanting to challenge her any further. He closed his eyes and rested his foot onto the gas pedal.

“Fine, they’re closed.”

A small smile graced her lips as she twirled the ring on her finger before she pressed the button down, feeling a small prick. She stood still as she felt the buzzing sensation course through her veins.

“Keep your ears open,” she instructed before dashing forward.

Taehyung did as told, and he kept his eyes closed. The sounds of bodies colliding with the cement made his curiosity peak but he remained still, waiting for her next command. He ducked, hearing the sounds of a window cracking and he used all the will left in his body to not open his eyes.

After a few minutes, just as he began growing worried about her, he finally heard her voice.

“Taehyung, do you hear me?” he heard her shout. He opened his mouth to shout back a reply.

“Okay, then drive, now!”

He stepped his foot onto the gas pedal, hearing the engine roar. The truck jolted to life and he felt the vehicle move forward. Keeping his hands as steadily as he could on the wheel, he drove forward.

Once the distance between the truck and the Erratics were met, as he had calculated before, he heard the thud and the sudden dip of weight on the truck.

“Are you on?” he called out.

“Yes, you can open your eyes. Just keep driving down this road,” Nari replied from the back.

He opened his eyes and immediately looked into the rearview mirror. His eyes widened when he saw the bodies of the manmade Erratics scattered along the road, ironically forming another roadblock with their dead bodies.

He wanted to see if she was without injuries, but she had kept her back to him and he couldn’t see anything beyond that.

“Did you get hurt at all?” he asked. He saw her shake her head and he let out a small sigh of relief.

“Follow this road until you see the first intersection. There, turn left and continue straight. For now, I’m just going to rest a bit. Wake me up when we’re there.”

He looked up into the mirror. “Are you sure you’ll be okay back there?”

“I’m fine. Don’t stop the truck for anything until we get there.”

Taehyung stopped the truck on the sand, seeing that they had finally arrived by the docks. He looked around, and true to her words, there were tons of motorboats lining the edge of the water.

He made his way to the back of the truck and was going to wake her up when he noticed the prominent veins that had appeared on her skin. He tilted his head, hopping onto the back of the truck to get a closer look. As he got closer to her face, he realized how ghostly pale she was, even more so than when he had first woken up beside her.

He tapped her cheek and she grumbled, weakly swatting his hand away.

“Nari, are you okay?” he asked softly, dabbing the sweat off her face with his sweater.

She opened her eyes to look at him and his mouth fell slack.

“Why are your pupils red?!” he exclaimed, tilting her face to get a better look. With the little strength she had left in her body, she lightly shoved him back and used her arm to cover her eyes. Taehyung narrowed his eyes and removed her arm.

“Was this what you didn’t want me to see?”

She didn’t answer him and he dropped her arm, staring at her face.

“Nari, what is it you’re not telling me? This couldn’t have happened from you simply fighting them. You managed to eradicate the entire horde there. How?” he questioned.

She weakly opened her eyes and finally looked him in the eyes.

“I,” she stared, “I use the power of the serum to grow stronger.”

He raised an eyebrow and sat back, letting her talk.

She gulped. “I carry the serum with me, in my bag and in my ring.” He stared at her. “So, what? You injected yourself just now? And this is the aftermath?”

She nodded.

“Then why do you bother? Look at what it does to you. Why would you allow yourself to suffer like this?” he demanded. She wiped at her eye. “It’s because it’s the only way I can protect those around me.”

“And how are you able to use the serum to your advantage?” he asked.

She twirled the ring around her finger. “You already know. I’m the first soldier of the Selected. I may have received the same enhancing drugs all the other soldiers did but what most people don’t realize is that,” she paused, feeling the lump grow in , “I was the first to be experimented on.”

“What do you mean?”

“Taehyung, how much do you know about how the Cover came to be?” she whispered. He blinked. “All I know is that after almost wiping the human race off the face of the planet, the Forerunner retreated underground and built the Cover to start a new age.”

She let out a dry laugh. “That’s not really what happened, you see.”

“Then what is it, Nari? Why is there so much I don’t know? Why is it that you seem to know everything?” he asked, growing more frustrated by the news.

“Does the name Eufloria ring a bell?” He nodded at her question. “Wasn’t that the drug that killed off most of the planet’s population?”

“It wasn’t meant to do that. It was the work of many years of research and nothing had gone wrong in the trial procedures,” she explained. “It was supposed to help the human population thrive and become physically stronger and healthier.”

“But it didn’t,” he pointed out. She shook her head. “No, it didn’t.”

“What are you trying to get at, Nari?”

She lay her head back against the truck, exhausted.

“Soohyuk was the one who created it.”

a u t h o r ' s n o t e

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