“Why are you doing this?”, Seongwoo asked, “You are just another number to them”. Jisung scoffed, “Oh my dear Ong; still as naïve as always. Remember the timer has already begun. Are you sure you want to do this right now?”. Once Jinyoung was done explaining the rules of his twisted game to us, we were taken to Jisung; who was guarding the exit door. There was a table in front of him with vials and syringes of IPU, as well as a wooden chest. All we had to do was get the 3 of them through those doors, before they closed. An hour was all we had. It seemed like enough, before I knew we were going to be poisoned. Seongwoo was the only angel being poisoned, yet I worried more about Taehyun. His mission seemed too easy. Jinyoung had to be hiding something. He had handed Taehyun a set of keys; 10 to be exact. “Each key opens one of your room doors”, he explained, “Do take your time… I would hate for my fun to be ruined prematurely”. Jinyoung escorted us to Jisung, before taking off. We tried to follow him with our eyes and ears to determine just how far away Davina’s room was; but failed. There was no hourglass or countdown display, but Jisung informed us that he was the timekeeper.

I hurriedly opened the vial and choked as the IPU oozed down my throat. I started gasping for air. This was definitely not what I ingested at the bookstore. This was so much worse. I could already feel it start to affect my body, weakening me. “It hurts more when it’s direct”, Jisung winked, “Plus, it seemed like you had been developing a resistance to it, so we increased the strength of the dosage”. I held my hand out for the keys. Jisung held up his index finger and shook it, “Entry to the left district strictly requires 2 people”. Seongwoo grabbed a syringe and pierced himself. His body jerked as it was emptied into him. “Good boy”, Jisung opened up the wooden chest with that same sinister smile that I saw when I first met him.  Inside the chest was a jumbled pile of keys with tags attached to each of them. “What is this?”, Seongwoo asked. “Your keys, off course. Remember you only get 3 with every round of IPU; choose wisely”, he smirked. We didn’t have much time to waste. I reached in and pulled out 3 keys. “Now all you have to do is find these room numbers”, Jisung said, “Quite helpful don’t you think?”. Seongwoo moved forward as if he were going to attack him, but stopped, grabbed my hand and led me into our section of the warehouse.

“How are you feeling?”, he asked as we searched for the room numbers. I was now feeling even more panicked, “Ong, look at these room numbers”. I had selected the keys for room numbers 8, 9, 10, but the first 3 rooms that we passed had been numbered 2, 22 and 23. It didn’t make any sense since we only had 20 rooms on our side of the warehouse. “Bastards randomly numbered the rooms. They are not in order. We are going to have to search for these 3 roo-“, Seongwoo fell to the ground before he could finish. “Ong!”, I yelled, helping him back up. I put his arm over my shoulder, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to hold him up; now that I could feel the IPU seeping through my blood. He managed to stand up on his own again and kept walking, his eyes searching the room numbers. This was a sick game. I hoped Taehyun was having more luck than we were. He had 10 rooms to search through, just 10 rooms; and he had been given the keys to all of them. Even if his task was simpler than ours; the longer he took, the more Jinyoung was going to hurt Davina. He was going to find her! The odds were in his favour. I needed to believe that, because I couldn’t deal with any other reality right now.

“I found it”, Seongwoo screamed. I had lagged behind him, becoming weaker with each step I took. My adrenaline kic