Interrogation Room

Ionian Military Base

After walking me down a maze of dark hallways with a gun pressed to the back of my head, Kai unlocks a metal door with his handprint.

“In.” He growls.

I stumble into the room on shaky legs and the lights flicker on, illuminating the two of us in a harsh blue glow. Kai steps in after me and the door slides shut. I hear a click, and I’m certain the door just locked itself. My eyes dart around as I frantically try to analyze my surroundings. In the middle of the room, there’s a cylindrical glass tank with a door on the side. A neat bundle of pipes connect to the tank. The pipes disappear into the walls in multiple places. What was this? Some sort of torture chamber? There’s what seems to be some kind of control panel with a bunch of buttons and dials a few feet away from the front of the tank. It seems to be handprint activated, just like the door. There’s a metal box suspended from the ceiling. I don’t have any idea of what it could be.

I’m still being held at gunpoint. As per Kai’s orders, my clammy hands are on top of my head. I don’t like the look of the tank. I know it can’t be anything good. If I want any chance of getting out of this alive, I need to gain control of the weapon. I need to snatch Kai’s gun, which sounds way easier than it actually is. , I can’t. I can’t. I seriously can’t. What chance do I have against an Ionian soldier?

I swallow my spit and steel myself. I have to try. At this point, when it’s life or death, I have to fight. I have to try something. I can’t let myself go down so easily. As long as I’m alive, I need to be fighting for an escape. I need to return to Earth. I need to see Baekhyun again. I need to see Minyoung again. I need to finish my plan, but at the very least, I need to tell them I’m sorry.

I take a deep breath and try to stop the trembling in my hands that are clasped on top of my head. I’ve never been religious, but in this very moment, I pray to anyone, anything out there to give me courage.

Feeding off my adrenaline, I jerk around and grab the barrel of the gun with all my strength. Kai is momentarily stunned, and I take advantage of this precious second to yank the weapon down and away from my forehead. Kai, who possesses ten times the strength I have in my body in a single one of his hands, doesn’t lose his grip on his weapon.

Abandoning my plan to get the gun, I shove Kai as hard as I possibly can and try to make a break for the door.

“You’re not going anywhere!” He yells.

I take three desperate steps towards the exit before I feel him grab my left arm in a grip of iron. A flash of terror courses through me and I scream, trying to fling him off. Kai yanks on my arm so hard he spins me around to face him. His features are schooled into an expression of neutrality. He looks calm, like he’s done this a million times before.

I struggle wildly in his grasp, but it’s no use. I claw at his arm, but he simply grabs my other arm and forces both of my limbs behind my back. Leisurely, he takes a break to activate the control panel with his hand. The panel and the inside of the tank light up immediately in the same blue glow. No matter how hard I struggle, I can’t free myself. Kai pushes me to the door on the side of the tank, and I’m literally thrown inside before he slams the door shut.

Winded from my fall and exhausted from my brief struggle, my head spins as I push myself up onto my feet. With the last shreds of desperation I have inside me, I run towards the door and slam my entire body against it with everything I have in hopes that it would break.

It doesn’t.

Instead, I feel like it broke me.

Breathing hard on the floor, I try to clear my head as I wait for my body to recover from the impact.

Kai eyes me calmly from behind the control panel with his arms crossed in front of his chest.

“It’s made of grade A reinforced Ionian glass. Nothing you do will work. You come out of there when I say so, if I say so.” Kai explains coolly.

He presses a button and there’s a faint sound of the machinery humming before the tank starts filling up quickly with a watery blue fluid. Panicking, I haul myself up and bang against the glass with my fists.

“What are you going to do to me?!” I scream. I hate how my voice wavers at the end. I hate it so much. I hate how I’ve lost, and I hate how scared I am.

The blue water is already at my chest. It’s over. It’s really over for me.

“Relax, Miss Song. If you fight it, it’ll just be more painful than it needs to be.”

“Fight what?!” I shriek as I desperately try to keep my head above the rising water.

“The truth.” Kai says.

I don’t get to say anything else before the water cuts me off and the tank fills to the top.

Suddenly, I’m immobilized. I can’t move. I can’t scream. Terror explodes in my system, and white hot panic rushes through my bloodstream. Am I drowning?

I thought I was because I can’t breathe. I’m frozen. The blue water bubbles around me. It moves, but I can’t. But I’m still conscious and I don’t feel like I’m going to pass out. I can see Kai adjusting dials on the control panel. Everything moves, but I’m completely frozen, suspended in the blue fluid.

Kai flips a switch, and that’s when I feel it.

Something at the edge of my mind. Something that isn’t me, something I can’t hear or see.

“So, who are you?” Kai asks.

The invisible force I felt suddenly spreads itself over my mind.

Resist, resist, resist. I have to resist. I begin to push back against the foreign invader. 

“There’s no use fighting it, Miss Song. Like I said, you don’t need to make it more painful for yourself than it already is.”

Kai’s voice drowns out as splitting pain takes over my senses. I push against the force trying to invade my mind, but every time I push, it pushes back a hundred times harder. I push and push and push and push, but the pain overwhelms me, and suddenly, like it’s picked out a single thread of my mind, the pain ceases into a dull pulsing.

Blearily, I see the metal box lower from the ceiling and unfold into an intricate holographic display.

One of my memories, the very one that defines me as who I am, the one that makes me Song Hwayeon, begins to play in front of Kai’s eyes.