Irene storms out of the lab, Ryujin wanted to go after her but Yeri and Seulgi stop her “She needs time to digest all of the information, let her alone.” Said Seulgi.

Ryujin steps back and sigh, she looks around at the people in the lab and her gaze stops at Chorong. “You, tell me everything that you know about T-ARA.”

“I will tell everything that you need to know…but first can I borrow a computer or a laptop…”

“For?” Seulgi ask cautiously, because she still hasn’t trust Chorong completely.

“I need to check on T-ARA’s secret base surveillance camera.”

“T-ARA have a secret base?”

“Yes…that is why you guys couldn’t find or detect where Robin is, the secret base is highly guarded and all of the government high tech security systems are used to keep the base from any threat…”

“How are you going to check on the surveillance footage if the base is heavily guarded?” Joy asked.

“They don’t make me the commander for nothing~” Chorong replied.

***

Irene enters the room where Wendy and Youi rested. Irene sees that Wendy’s pale skin is slowly returning its colour and Wendy cheeks is getting rosy. She takes a chair and sits in between Wendy and Youi’s beds.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” said Irene and the turns to Youi, she caresses Youi’s cheek and she can feel a sense of guilt when she touches Youi.

Flashback

“Youi and Yeri are your daughters. However, Youi is your biological daughter with Wendy.”

“How can that happen? We need a to fertilize an egg, two female egg can’t morph into an embryo!”

“If you read the DNA report I just gave you, Youi is more of your clone than your daughter, a clone that you created using your own DNA combined with Wendy’s DNA.” Ryujin explained.

“Momm...I mean Irene, you carried Youi in your womb for 9 months, I’ve seen how you and Wendy were so thrilled about Youi’s arrival, but Wendy didn’t get the chance to love and watch Youi grow up when both of you were kidnap by T-ARA organisation. Then when she got the chance to see Youi and you again, she had to make a choice to give Youi up. I was there…I hated Youi even though it was me who asked for a younger sibling. I hated that you and Wendy give all your focus to Youi back then, but now I understand why.”

“If…if it’s true, why did she has that serum DNA in her body?” Irene asked.

Yeri and Ryujin looks at each other, if they had a choice, they would rather not to say anything about the future her injecting her own daughter with the serum. But Yeri decided it is better if she just tell Irene everything. Yeri takes a deep breath and told Irene “When you created Youi, you combined her DNA with the perfected R-17 serum, that’s what you named the serum that T-ARA is developing.”

“No…Why…why would the future me injected that serum into her own daughter?!”

“I don’t know, only Wendy knows…you just need to wait until she wakes up to ask her that.”

“How…how did Wendy knows?!”

“I can’t tell you anything, you need to ask Wendy all that. I don’t have the rights to tell you the truth.” Said Yeri.

“But you are my daughter too right? If you’re my daughter, you have the rights to tell me everything!”

“To be honest, I’ve only know Youi for 2 months, all of my life, I hated her existence, because when you told me you were pregnant, all that you and Wendy cared about is Youi, and I felt neglected…I was wrong, I should have tried to protect Youi and not hate her…I know I was too young to understand back then but now I understand everything. I failed you as your daughter, I don’t have the rights to tell you what happened. I’m sorry.”

Yeri left after what she told Irene, Seulgi asked Joy to follow Yeri because she noticed the tears in Yeri’s eyes. Irene was left dumbfounded at what Yeri just told her. She looks at Seulgi confusedly, but Seulgi just shrugs at her. Irene then looks at Ryujin, Ryujin only taps Irene on the shoulder and leave the lab too.

End of flashback

Irene still couldn’t believe the fact that the future her would do something like that to her own child. Irene covers her face to hide her tears as she quietly cries away her guilt. Irene then looked at Wendy, her blonde platinum hair caught her attention. She ruffles the hair and rested her chin on Wendy’s bedside, staring at her fiancée. “You look good with this hair.” She said to Wendy, though she doubts Wendy can hear her.

Irene suddenly gets up and goes to the nearest sink to wash her face and then proceed to go out to the lab where the they tell her the truth. Lia was surprised by her boss presence, she swallows her sandwich and goes to Irene. “Boss! What are you doing here?”

“I need to see the report.” Said Irene.

“What?”

“Youi’s report and Wendy’s report, there must be a reason why the future me injected the serum into Youi…and I want to see the effect that it has to Wendy’s DNA.” Said Irene.

Lia takes the files and give it to Irene, Irene diligently flip through the reports to read it. Lia offers her boss a sandwich and an orange juice because she knows Irene hadn’t had her dinner yet. “Working on an empty stomach will resulted in grumpy mood, so better eat up boss.” Said Lia.

Irene thanks her assistant and she opens up the sandwich and eat up. It was true that she is hungry but she ignores her stomach because her brain is too occupied by what happened. She flipping through the chart and she requests for Wendy and Youi’s blood samples. Lia provides it to her, though she was curious on her boss sudden action. She wanted to ask but she’s afraid that her boss might still be in a bad mood so she decided to just stay silent.

“Umm…boss, I will be in the meeting room if you need me.” said Lia before she excuses herself but Irene stops her “Stay, please.” Irene begs and it was the first time that Lia sees something else in her boss’s eyes. It was not that ‘cold’ stare anymore, it was full of emotion, Lia figured the recent event must have change her boss. She stayed and assist Irene.

***

“How’s your wound?” Seulgi asks Chorong.

“I’m thankful that you didn’t shoot any of mine vital organs.” Chorong joked, but her laughter died when she sees the scorn on Seulgi’s face. Chorong clears and she tries to sit up. “Is there anything that I can help you with?” Chorong asks.

“I want to know what did they do to Wendy back there.”

“…” Chorong didn’t say anything for a few minutes, then she sighs and she asks Seulgi to grabs her coat and Seulgi passes the coat to her. Seulgi fishes for something in her pocket and it was a thumb drive. “Here are all the evidence that you needed and all the footage of the experiment that they’ve done to Wendy. But I will give it to you if you provide me with a laptop now.” Said Chorong.

“Why do you need a laptop?” Seulgi questions, she is still a little cautious around Chorong, because she can’t trust her 100% yet.

“I just need a laptop to access to T-ARA secret base…I just want to see if my friends are still alive…or they’ve been killed. Please.” Chorong beg.

Seulgi who had been in the military back in her days knows the feeling of losing your comrades in a war, so she goes out of the room to get Chorong a laptop. Chorong rested her head on the bed head, she saved one life but loses 6 others. She hopes what she did won’t be a waste. Seulgi returns with the laptop that she asked for and Joy was with her.

“Joy is our experienced spy, so she’ll know if you are trying to do something sneaky…” said Seulgi as she hands Chorong the laptop. Chorong was surprised by how stoic Seulgi is, she expects her to be bubbly. Chorong dismisses her thought of Seulgi and opens up the laptop and bypass T-ARA site to access their security camera systems. Chorong knows that her access would probably be blocked now that she had betrayed the organization. It was a good thing that she is very observant, so she keys in Eunjung’s id and password to access the security cameras. It worked and Chorong can access all of the camera real time footage, she clicks on each one to find her friends. Her happy face turn sour when she finally found them, they were strapped in the experiment room.

Chorong only can watches in horror when she sees the scientists of T-ARA injected the serum into her comrades. Seulgi and Joy goes to Chorong sides when they see the change in Chorong’s face. Joy gasps when she saw what Chorong saw. The scientist injected one of the girl with the serum and the girl’s physical immediately change, her eyes glows, her hair start to change in colour, despite that there are no audios, they can hear the agony screams from the girl. Seulgi immediately shuts down the laptop and put it away. She turns to the shocked Chorong and Joy.

“They are still alive…” said Chorong.

“Those…those were your comrades?”

“Yes…” said Chorong in daze, she slowly turns her head to look at Seulgi “I…I can’t be here, I need to go and save them!” said Chorong and she tries to get out of the bed.

“No you can’t go with your state!” said Seulgi.

“They are going to die if I don’t go save them!!” Pleads Chorong “Even if I don’t survive, at least…Robin is safe now, promise me, not matter what happen, don’t let T-ARA gets their hand on Robin! If they perfected the serum, a new world will happen!”

“What is that serum actually?!” Joy asked in frustration.

“T-ARA main objective is to create a serum that create super soldier with superhuman strength, but the serum will make them lost their humane self…they are going to be very violent and only T-ARA can control them, the serum is partially complete, the only things they need now is to find a way where the serum won’t kill the DNA that they latched to. Initially, they are going to let Dr. Irene to finish it off, because Dr. Irene is currently working on human genetic test, Hahm Eunjung thought Dr. Irene knowledge in human’s genetic is going to help her to finish the serum. Due to the pressure from our top management, Dr. Eunjung decided to run the serum without authorization from Mr. President…and when Robin came to confront her about Dr. Irene, she injected the serum into Robin. But I guess Robin’s blood isn’t suitable too eh, now that I’ve seen how she almost died at the last stage of the serum test…” said Chorong “If the serum didn’t kill her by today, it will give Robin’s superhuman strength and immortality…”

“Immortality?! Is T-ARA trying to play god?!”

“Let me paraphrase Ms Seulgi…they won’t feel any pain, even if you cut off their limps. They’ll be like a zombie…” said Chorong. “And Dr. Eunjung even wanted to try it on her wife…”

“Wife?”

“She had a wife, if you remembered 2 years ago, there was this homicide attempt that happened where a woman was slit on her stomach and her skull were cracked?”

“The one that happened at the Apgujoeng area?” Joy asked.

“Yes…that was her wife. Someone broke in and attacked Park Hyomin, she miraculously survived, however she was considered brain dead, but Dr Eunjung refused to let her wife life support to be taken off, she begged the hospital to let her wife alive. It was then T-ARA came to her and asked her to lead in the research for the superhuman serum…Dr Eunjung agreed if only T-ARA agreed to save her wife. T-ARA keeps her wife in a cryogenic chamber to keep her body preserved. Dr Eunjung believed that if the serum is perfected, she can uses it to activate her wife’s brain and bring her back…”

“That doesn’t make sense, even if she is being keep in the ice…she would probably be dead, no human body can survive the cold…” said Ryujin.

“When did you get in here?” Seulgi asked with her eyes widened when Ryujin suddenly commented.

“A while ago, when she explain about the cryogenic wife.” Said Ryujin and she stares at Chorong “Continue please, this is a very interesting context.”

“Dr Eunjung uses the serum she extracted from the hibernating frogs. You know right those frogs that goes on hibernation by freezing themselves, but once those ice thaw due to warm weather, the frogs come alive again? The process is far too scientific for me to explain, so I can only give you example of those frogs!” said Chorong.

“Those frogs metabolize glycogen in their liver while being frozen…which mean they circulate a more than enough glycogen in their body to reduce the osmotic shrinkage of cells and stop their cell from freezing…which mean…oh wow…it is possible…if Eunjung can do that to her wife, why can’t she perfected the serum herself?! Based on her knowledge in keeping her wife alive while she is frozen, such serum shouldn’t be a problem for her!”

“Yeah, that’s right!” said Joy, backing up Ryujin.

“T-ARA research facility isn’t as advance as those in the BAE laboratory, and by using the BAE’s name, if the experiment goes wrong, T-ARA can always put the blame on BAE laboratory. Beside, Dr Irene had her name as one of the scientist that able to crack human genetic code and manipulate the strain to enhance the immunity system no?”

“Wrong information, she hasn’t successful yet to manipulate the DNA strains, she did successfully in decoding the DNA.” Ryujin corrected Chorong.

“No matter what it is, I need to go and save my friends!”

“How long does the serum take to destroy the DNA Ryujinie?”

“It’s all depends…for my case, 3 days. For Wendy’s case it looks it takes her a week or 2 for the serum to slowly killing her.”

“Then we still got time. We will help you rescue your friends, Park Chorong, but for now, you need to stay here.” Said Seulgi.

***

Wendy slowly opens her eyes and she panicked when her vision is blurry and she only can see the outline shape of the things around her. she rubs her eyes, hoping it will help to clear her vision. She slowly gains back her vision. She turns around to scans the room and it is familiar. She turns to her side and sees Youi lying on the bed next to her. She climbs down her bed and goes to Youi, she thought that T-ARA had her as well and done some experiment on Youi too.

“Youi? Youi wake up!” she begs, but due to losing too much blood, Youi was too weak to wake up. Wendy falls on the ground because her legs are still weak, she looks around the room and caught a glimpse of herself on the mirror. Her hair is almost white and her eyes are grey in colour. She touches her face horrified at her look. She tries to open the door to look for help. Her memories were blurry, all that she remembered was the cruciate pain that she felt when those T-ARA scientist injected her with something and the last thing that she remembered is someone help her escape from T-ARA facility.

Wendy falls on the ground again and she crawls her way out on all fours, her vision starts to get blurry again and she feels like she’s losing her strength again. She struggles to get herself up and she leans to the wall for support. She tries to screams for help but her voice stuck in .

Seulgi who just walk out of the room where Chorong rested saw Wendy. “Wendy!” she runs to her best friend and tries to get her up. “What are you doing?! You should be resting!”

“Where…am…I?” she utters out.

“You’re at your office Wendy, you’re safe…” said Seulgi to assure her friend.

Wendy passed out again after Seulgi explained everything. Seulgi carries Wendy back to the room and she pressed the intercom to call for everyone to come in to check on Wendy.

***

“I can’t figure it out…This is frustrating!!”

Lia was asleep when Irene suddenly shouts out in frustration. She groggily wakes up when Irene violently wakes her up “Wha…what is it?”

“I don’t know why the future me injected the serum to Youi…I…I need to…” Irene stops explaining when she sees the Arrow Squads running toward the room where Wendy is.

“Lia, let’s go check out what’s wrong.”

The two of them follows everyone to the room and Irene is delighted to see that Wendy is finally wake up. Wendy is sitting on her bed, circled by her friends. Wendy saw Irene and she panicked.

“Irene…”

Seulgi thinks that it is better if they leave the lover alone so they can sort things out, beside Wendy has a lot of explaining to do, so she instructs everyone to leave at once.

“Seulgi…where…are you guys going?”

“You need to explain yourself to your fiancée…so we will leave. You guys need to sort things out.”

Wendy is scared of Irene, she does not want Seulgi and the others to leave but Seulgi ignore Wendy’s plead and leave. Ryujin tags Lia alone when she exited the room, leaving only Irene, Wendy and the still unconscious Youi in that room.

“How are you feeling?” Irene asks and she noticed the scare expression in Wendy’s eyes. She also noticed that her eyes is no more brown like how it used to be, they are light grey now. Irene slowly takes a step closer to Wendy but Wendy flinches.

“I’m not gonna hurt you Wendy…I know…Ryujin had told me everything…you are Robin.”

Wendy’s eyes bulge when Irene said that she knows about her identity. “…so…you know…”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“You hate Robin…how can I be sure that you won’t hate me after you know that I am Robin?”

Irene sighs and she glares at Wendy “Even if I hate you but it’s probably going to be a short while! Do you know how worried I am when you went missing for a month?! You can come and talk to me if you think T-ARA is doing some shady business…I am more than glad to share with you all the information that you want. You acted your way and you got kidnapped by T-ARA how pathetic!”

 “I just want to keep you safe! That’s all!” said Wendy.

“Keeping me safe my ! You were almost die!”

“Well I am breathing now am I?!”

“Yes you are, but I’m about to kill you! Why did you put our daughters’ life in danger?!!”

“Oour…our…Our daughters?” Wendy stutters.

“Yeri, Ryujin and Seulgi had told me everything! Why didn’t you tell me that Youi is our daughter? And Yeri too!”

“I was afraid that you will freak out…”

“Tell me everything that you know…I need to know how Youi end up like that. Yeri told me that you have met the future you and you downloaded her memories into your mind. You have to tell me everything Wendy.”

“I…I can’t…”

“Wendy! I checked on our daughter DNA and she has the same virus on that T-ARA are currently developing…and she also had another strain that are stronger and the one that T-ARA made…Yeri told me the future me injected the perfected serum into Youi…I want to know why the future me did that to her own daughter!”

Wendy gets up from the bed and hugs Irene to shut her up. Irene trembles when Wendy hugged her, her body was cold. “Wendy your body is cold! You need to let me check you!”

“Promise me you will keep calm and I will tell you everything. I need to get back to my home, and get back to my secret office.”

“I didn’t want you to know because I didn’t want the future to change…”

“What do you mean Wendy? Even if I know, we can avoid any event that will change the future timeline!”

Wendy sighs and she gets up from the bed, her body feels a lot better now. “Can you drive?” Wendy asked.

“To where?”

“Back to my home…I will tell you the reason why I don’t want to tell about Youi, and also the reason why Youi had a different strain of the serum in her DNA.”

“We can do that tomorrow. I need you to get some rest! You are still weak.”

“We cannot wait! Eunjung will do anything to get what she wants! I need you get me there!” Wendy raises her voice at Irene and Irene flinches, she is scared of Wendy because she never seen Wendy so agitated like this before. Irene thinks it maybe the side effect of the serum. She still needs to run some test on Wendy to see the side effect of the serum. She grabs the car key and takes off her coat for Wendy to wear.

“Wear this, or you will get cold.”

Wendy wears Irene’s jacket and she glances back at Youi, who is sleeping peacefully at bed next to hers. “Let’s go.”

***

The couple remained silent in the car ride. Wendy rested her head on the window and she enjoy the raining view. Irene could not help but to keep glancing over to Wendy, checking on her.

They reached Wendy’s house and Irene parked the car right in front of the door. She gets down from the car and help Wendy to open her doors and help her to get out. She puts Wendy’s arm around her shoulder and her hand rested firmly on Wendy’s waist to support her as they walk into the house.

Wendy instructs Irene to help her to enter her study room. “Can you pull that blue book on the bookshelf?”

Irene did just as what Wendy instruct her and she was surprised when the bookshelf moved and reveal a hidden passageway. The lights auto opens and reveal the tunnel to Wendy’s secret office. “Come on let’s go…” Wendy invited Irene to go in.

Irene was amaze by the secret lair. It was equipped with advanced technology. Wendy sits on her chair and calls for Yves.

“Yves!”

“I see you bring your future wife today Wendy.”

“Yves, run a health check on me.” Wendy demanded and Yves scans Wendy’s body “There are unknown substances in your blood.”

“I know that! I just want to know the fatality rate!”

“Geez Wendy, why did you get so impatient? You don’t have to worry, it seems like Youi’s blood is flowing in your body, and currently her blood is fending off the unknown substance from killing off your DNA.”

“Youi’s blood?” Wendy turns to Irene with a horrid look on her face. “What did you do?”

Irene got scare for a while at the intense glare from Wendy. “I didn’t do anything! Someone from the T-ARA rescued you and brought you to your company, the next thing I know is you are dying, Ryujin tried to save you, then Youi volunteer to do a blood transfusion to save you. Ryujin said that Youi’s blood contained the same serum but a more advanced than the one that T-ARA are developing, and when she tested Youi’s blood, she said Youi blood able to stop the serum from destroying your DNA…I…I need more research on the serum Wendy.”

“Of course…it make sense…You injected Youi with the perfected serum when we created her in the test tube…”

“Perfected serum?”

“R-17X…”

“R what?”

Wendy ignores Irene and she turns on the computer and gets her memories hat, she pushes Irene down on the chair and put on the hat on Irene. “Wendy…what is this?” Irene ask.

Wendy continues to ignore Irene and she asks Yves to turn on the device. Wendy watches the hat charges to its full power. She straps the hat on Irene and she cups Irene’s face “This is going to hurt you a bit, but this is the only way I can tell you everything all at once.”

“Yves! Load Irene’s memories into the device!”

“Are you sure about this Wendy? Are you sure you want Irene to know everything?”

“Yes.”

“Wendy?” Irene calls for her fiancée’s name when Wendy ignore her.

Yves uploaded Irene memories that future Irene had keep in her system to the memory device and once the light turns green, Wendy pushes the start button and load the data into Irene’s brain.

“Wendy?!”

Irene collapses on the floor and her nosebleeds after her brain absorbed the all the data from her future memories. Irene gasps for air, Wendy helps her to get up and ask her to sit down on the chair. “You okay?”

“What the hell was that?!”

“That’s your memory, do you understand now, why I didn’t want you to know…”

Irene wipes away the blood on her nose and tries to calm herself down “I…I can’t believe what I did to Youi…”

“You had no choice, if you don’t do that, the virus in my DNA will killed your DNA, you had to put injected the serum into after you spliced our DNA together in order to stop my DNA from eating your DNA up…if that happen…”

“There will be no Youi…” Irene finishes Wendy’s sentence.

“Yes…”

“The serum was meant to be used on the three kids that we rescued, well our future-self rescued…but...”

“The virus in the serum need a vessel to live in before it can fully matured and engineered itself to attach to the cells without killing the cells. Only then we can harvest the serum from the host body to be used on other people…” Irene finishes Wendy’s sentence again.

“Yes…that’s why I need to hide this from you. I know you will try to change the future, and I know you will try to do whatever you can to stop Youi and Yeri from turning their back on each other, but if you decided to stop the research on the serum, there will be no Youi…”

“But if…if there’s Youi…”

“T-ARA will go after us…they need Youi’s blood.”

“I…I don’t understand, if you know what’s going to happen in the future then why didn’t you stop yourself from being kidnapped? Then we don’t have to use the serum on Youi!”

“I…I don’t know Irene. All of the memories were mixed, I don’t know why I can missed out the part where I was kidnapped, I know that the future me, have the strain of the serum in her DNA but I don’t know where she got it from, but now I know…this explained the super power that Youi got!”

“Youi…has a super power?”

“Irene…I know all of this is too much for you, but I need you to understand…I am doing this for the sake of all of us. I want to prevent whatever happened in future that you just saw from happening.”

“Yeri…Yeri does she knows?” Irene asks when she recalls the memory from the future about Yeri’s real parents.

Wendy sadly shakes her head “She doesn’t know, and she can’t know! We need to keep the secret away from her! She is our responsibility and we have to take a good care of her.”

“I…” Irene starts to cry “All of this is so confusing…I can’t…I need time to digest it all…I’m sorry Wendy… I need time to absorb all of this information…I”

Wendy pulls Irene into her arms and hugs her tightly “Don’t go…please stay…here with me.”

Irene buries her face in the crook of Wendy’s neck and she can feels that Wendy’s body is slowly warming up. All of the imaginary that she saw in her future-self memories scared her. The look in Youi and Yeri’s eyes scared her the most and the moment before she died while trying to stop her daughters from slaughtering each other will forever haunt her. She softly cries in Wendy’s embrace.

***

Youi wakes up in an empty room and there was no sight of Wendy besides her. She panicked and pressed for the emergency button. Joy come rushes in “What happened?”

“Joy-ssi…where is Wendy?”

“Ah…she went out with Irene, you don’t have to worry, go back to sleep, you need your rest.”

“I have enough rest.” Said Youi.

“I need to go and see Park Chorong, is she still here?”

Joy looks at Youi confusedly “Yeah she’s still here.”

“Great.” Youi gets up from her bed and asks Joy for direction. Joy leads Youi to the room where Chorong rested.

To be continue…

Next Chapter Preview

“You look different Wendy.”

“Yeah, I changed my hair colour…we’re anticipating our wedding.” Wendy lied to her father. She and Irene decided to stop by at her parents’ house after they done fitting on to their wedding dress. They tagged Youi and Yeri together because Irene thinks it is a good idea to let them bond with their grandparents while they can.

“Irene~~” Wendy’s mother greets her daughter in law.

“Hey mom~”

“I hope my idiot daughter didn’t give you headache.” Said Wendy’s mom.

“Mom!!” Wendy whined.

“Oh! Who are these two?”

Wendy and Irene look at each other and then they both smile “They are your granddaughters.”

A/N: Hey all! I am so sorry for the delay! I was going to update this soon, but then our company has reopen for business so back to work and work is crazy! Endless paperwork! So there’s a slight delay and everything that I’ve planned for is ruined! I need to get my life together and manage my time well, hahaha because I’ve been slacking for the 2 months lock down period. I will try to update the story once per week! And for my other story (When the flower blooms) readers, the story is coming to an end so it might takes me a longer time to close the chapter! It will be super long! Please let me know if you guys prefer long updates or just a short update is good enough? And there’s a big plot twist on Yeri’s identity! Please wait for the next update!