After her run, Soo Jung sat in her dorm room, alone. All she could think about was the stranger that had turned up in front of her that morning.

“Your skills are wasted in a place like this.”

She shook her head. “No. Those skills are not good things. They taught me to be a killer but that’s not who I am.”

“You were meant for bigger things.”

“No. I wasn’t meant to be that person. I left that part of my life behind. The things I did back then… I know no matter what I do now that I will never be forgiven for them… but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t try. I need to live the rest of my life as a good person.”

She sat, curled up in the corner of her room, the curtains drawn over the windows making the room dark despite the fact that it was now already the middle of the morning. Her phone had beeped with a message earlier, but she couldn’t check it. She figured it was from Jungkook or one of the others asking her to hang out, but she couldn’t bear the thought of being around anyone. She was too shaken from the nightmare then the appearance of someone from the Institute. She knew that she couldn’t be around anyone right now without them noticing that something was up, and she didn’t know how to explain what was wrong.

She scoffed. “It’s not like I can just say ‘oh yeah I’m acting strange because the people that raised me to murder people have decided that they want me to start killing people again’ they’d call the police or have me committed.” She mumbled as she buried her face in her hands. “Maybe I should tell Yoongi about what happened?” she wondered, her eyes falling on her phone. “No.” she shook her head, immediately pushing that thought away. “I can’t. If I tell him he's going to tell me that it’s not safe here anymore and he’ll make us leave. I don’t want to go. For the first time I’m actually happy. I have friends, people that actually care about me… and I have Jungkook…” the thought of leaving Jungkook made her stomach lurch.

Suddenly, there was a loud knock at her door. She flattened herself against the wall, her eyes checking the windows for any signs of intruders. She was on the second floor, but that was an easy obstacle to overcome. Her eyes swung back to the door as the person outside knocked again. “Soo Jung? Are you in there?” she slowly let out a breath at the sound of Jungkook's familiar voice. He knocked again, once again calling her name. Her fingers itched to reach out and open the door. To pull Jungkook inside and let him hold her against his tall frame. Although it sounded stupid, she felt like she would feel safe in his embrace.

She almost chuckled as she remembered how they first met, him needing her protection. But there was something warm and comfortable about the black-haired boy that made her want to be held in his strong arms and for him to never let her go. She heard his footsteps as he made his way away from her room. Her phone began to vibrate from its place on her bed. She craned her neck to see the screen, Jungkook's face flashing up on the screen.

She moved closer to the bed, her heart screaming at her to answer it. To hear Jungkook's voice. To tell him to come back. To ask him to hold her and tell her everything was going to be ok. Her phone was in her hand before she noticed it, her finger hovering over the screen, ready to answer the call, when she remembered something that made her drop her phone.

“They won't stop by just sending me and you know that.”

She fell onto her backside, crawling backwards away from her bed as her phone became silent. “What if by staying I put Jungkook and the others in danger? What if they use them against me? Yoongi can protect himself… but what about Jimin? Taehyung? Jin? Hoseok? Namjoon? Jungkook? They wouldn’t be able to protect themselves if anything happened.” Her hands reached up and fisted in her hair. She tugged at the strands, hoping the physical pain would distract her from the emotional turmoil that was raging inside of her.

“What should I do?” she asked no one, her voice broken.

“Report.”

“Subject 2876 denied our request to re-join the Institution.”

“What is your next course of action?”

“It is already in motion. I have made a plan which has an almost one hundred percent chance of success.”

“Very good. Make sure that subject 2876 is not harmed. We need her brought to us alive.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Ok hyung, I’ll see you soon.” Jungkook said before saying his goodbyes and ending the call. He let out a sigh. He was a little disappointed that the call had been from Namjoon and not from Soo Jung. He had been trying to contact her all day but he couldn’t get a hold of her. He pulled up her number and called once again, hoping that this would be the time she answered. He ended the call when it was forwarded to voice mail, frustration and worry building up inside him. “Everything’s fine. She probably just went back home for the day and forgot her phone or something.” He said to himself as he played with his phone.

He pushed himself off his bed and went to pull on some clean clothes. “There's no point getting worked up about it. I’m sure she’ll call me back when she sees all the missed calls.” He quickly checked his appearance in the mirror before heading out to meet Namjoon.

She hated this memory.

She didn’t know how she could still remember it. She shouldn’t be able to remember anything from when she was so young. Yoongi said that it might be because of the drugs they had given her to enhance her natural abilities that she somehow retained the memory.

She could remember every detail with vivid clarity. She could remember the smell of those goddamn cigarettes. The tear on her mother’s jeans at her knee. The stains on her blouse from her vomit from that morning. She could still remember the smell of her mother’s sweat as she dumped her onto the table in-between her and Malcolm. “Your offer still valid?” she asked, her voice wispy. Malcolm nodded. “Yes, our offer is still valid.” Her mother nodded. “Then we’re agreed? You get her and I get my money?” she asked, her dry lips and wringing her hands nervously. Malcolm nodded and the thin doctor that would later haunt her every memory stepped forward and dropped a large duffel bag onto the table next to Soo Jung’s tiny frame.

She reached out for the bag with her chubby fingers, but her mother whipped the bag away from her and clutched it to her chest. She ped it just enough to see inside, her eyes widening at the amount of notes that had been stuffed into the bag. “Mama?” Soo Jung called out, her little arms reaching out for her mother’s embrace.

Her mother jumped to her feet and stepped away from the table, the duffel bag still clutched between her bony fingers. Soo Jung’s bottom lip began to tremble. “Mama!” she called loudly. Her mother took one last look at her before throwing open the door behind her and disappearing. The thin doctor scooped her up and she started screaming at the top of her lungs.

“MAMA! MAMA!” she screamed as huge tears ran down her cheeks. The thin doctor stuck a needle into her arm and everything slowly became black.

Soo Jung bolted upright from her place on the floor. “What the hell?” she muttered as she rubbed her sore back. She couldn’t remember falling asleep. “It must be because I woke up so early.” She muttered to herself as she stood up and stretched, her muscles protesting from being lying on the floor for so long. She sat down on her bed and picked up her phone. She had lots of missed messages and calls from Jungkook wondering if she was ok and asking her to call him when she got his messages. She felt guilty for ignoring him for so long, but she still couldn’t decide what was the best thing to do. Her head told her to tell Yoongi what had happened and to pack up and disappear so that there was no risk of any harm coming to Jungkook or to any of the others. But her heart told her to be selfish, to stay with Jungkook for as long as she could.

She sighed and opened a text from Namjoon, expecting it to be him asking her to join them for dinner or something but she had not been prepared for what came up on her screen. There were three photos in his message. All of them were of Jungkook. On his knees, his hands tied behind his back and blood trickling down from his eyebrow. Underneath the pictures was an address and only one sentence…

Come alone… or he dies.

Author's Note

This update comes to you from Dubai airport! I'm halfway to Korea! Hopefully you're all enjoying the story. I should still be sticking to my normal update schedule, but I won't promise just in case I can't update on time.

L xxx