“Now, I wonder what the great Mark Lee wants with people like us.” 

Mark closed his eyes as he focused on not breaking free of the restraints that were around his body and brought his attention back to the task at hand.

I have to protect NCT and Chenle.

I need to protect NCT and Chenle.

And if that means that I have to cut ties with NCT then so be it.

“No, seriously Mark. Why did you come here? We would have let them go regardless,” Taeseon continued, signalling to s to loosen the restraints and take away the buckets of ice cold water. “I’m sure you know of our plan by now.”

“I…I want to propose something to you,” He stated as he felt the ropes fall with the air biting into his ice cold feet. Beside him, he heard Chenle shriek when the younger’s feet came into contact with the floor. “We want to join your little group of freeing slaves.” He watched in amusement as Taeseon’s eyebrows rose in surprise. 

“You do realise that we’re doing all of this right behind B.A.P’s backs, right?” Taeseon asked him, arms crossed as he leaned against the wall opposite him. Gritting his teeth and sticking to his role, Mark nodded.

“NCT disagrees with the system as well,” He replied, feeling Taeseon’s judgemental stare burn into his soul as the other contemplated his answer. 

“But what if TRCNG don’t agree with NCT?” Well…we have negotiators for a reason.

“Come on, your main goal is to abolish slavery while buying Renjun so that he won’t have B.A.P at his heels anymore, right?” He asked, growing desperate since he needed TRCNG to accept his offer - NCT’s offer. “You know what I did back Canada.” I ended the slave trade over there!

“You mean how you sold slaves?” Taeseon asked back, amusement twinkling in his eyes at Mark’s rising frustration. 

“That was necessary. The fastest way to get rid of a problem is to attack it from the source,” He argued, remembering all of the speculations that NCT had at first when he was sent to them by SUJU because of his past of being slave trader. “You can’t deny it, I would be useful.”

“Yeah sure, we might gain from it,” Taeseon started before ehe looked at Mark dead in the eye. “But what would you gain from it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t play dumb with us now, Mark Lee,” Taeseon threatened, eyes narrowing into a glare as the other members of TRCNG began to usher Chenle out of the room and closing the door behind them. “We know that you would use anyone as long as they’re useful to you.”

“What? No I don’t-“

“Isn’t that why you’re so close to Lee Jeno?” Oh don’t you dare- “I’m pretty sure it’s why you’re close to that Donghyuck kid too. We did some background checks on him and his family seems to be quite wealthy-“

“I do not use people!” He shouted, tired of hearing the same stories an