Getting out of The Ruins proves to be harder than Seungwan thought. When they finally evade every threat, she realizes she’s ten minutes late to the meeting, and they aren’t close yet. She drags the princess through the muddy terrain, and their shoes dig into it like a spoon in a chocolate pudding.

“Ugh,” Joohyun whines, her shoulder, and her head pounding like hammers. “Where are you taking me?”

She fails to sound casual when her voice wavers.

Joohyun doesn’t know where they are, but they can make out the profiles of the piled-up houses in the distance. She guesses it’s Forvalley, but she’s not sure.

Seungwan stops walking in front of her, and Joohyun collides with her. Seungwan stabilizes her with one hand.

“You see that?” A precarious structure stands in the middle of the mud, surrounded by giant plants. “There’s a ladder behind it. It will take you somewhere safe.”

Seungwan pushes her towards the building and rushes towards the opposite side.

“Wait!”

The girl doesn’t hear her. All she sees it’s her blurry, blonde hair disappearing in the distance. There are a lot of people around her, going to their jobs or to the nearest store to buy food. She’s never realized how her pets felt when she had to go to events, but now she feels it--she’s being abandoned.

The building looks far, and her legs are buried below her knees in the mud. It’s hard to walk, and it’s harder when the sun starts to itch through the hoodie. She’s not sure how the weather can change that quickly. The building resembles a kiosk and it is submerged in the mud too, so she rounds it to get to the ladder. The ladder is attached to one of the giant plants, and it’s in bad shape. Some steps are broken or missing, and she doesn’t think that she will make it, to wherever it takes her. She doesn’t have to think long, though, because a bag that smells like potatoes is put in her head, blinding her and asphyxiating her. She tries to scream for help, but her words quickly die down in when a hand chokes her.

###

She makes it into the meeting twenty-three minutes late. They’re already discussing the matter and they all fall silent when she closes the door a little too strong.

“Fancy seeing you here.” The Commander delivers the phrase in such a way that Seungwan feels threatened. He’s not going to kill her, sure, but she still feels like he knows more than he lets out. If he went to Jongdae’s, he may know she transformed into him.

She giggles, rolling up her sleeves. Her face is still swollen, so she makes up a lie.

“I fell from Ginger Gully.”

He looks at her, hitting the whiteboard with the crutch of one of his trainees, as he likes to call them.

“I have eyes.” He fixes his gaze at the board again, ignoring her. “We have this, this, and this portal monitored. The last scouting group we sent was killed. They sent us their heads.”

Seungwan focuses on the board. The different portals are in yellow, while the target places are in red. Pictures of people she doesn’t recognize hang with colorful bulletins attached to the top.

“They are more powerful, but the surprise factor is lost, and that’s a--”

“What’s this?” She interjects, and a sound of disagreement comes out of The Commander's mouth.

“What does it look like, Wendy?” The Commander says as it’s obvious to everyone but her.

“It looks like we lost, but that’s impossible--” She grips the chair behind her, and her lower lip trembles. “But I saw the news. The Monolith emblem was on it. I--I saw it, Jongin.”

The Commander gives her a reprobatory look for calling him like that, but he answers anyway.

“What you saw was all fake. They staged it.”

“So, we don’t have The Queen?” She plays along since she can’t tell him she knew something was wrong.

“No, we don’t. They attacked the palace dressed like us,” he explains. “Making everyone believe it was all us.”

“What? Who has her, then?”

“That, we don’t know for certain.”

###

The princess wakes up, but this time she fell asleep due to fatigue and not because of an injury. It’s midday and she knows it because the heat is terrible and the hoodie is too hot against her skin. She doesn’t know how they recognized her, but maybe Seungwan gave her up. At that point, anything is possible. The potato bag difficulties her breathing and hurts, but when she tries to get it off her, she realizes she’s chained to a chair again.

The squeaking of rats passing close to her gives her goosebumps, and that’s how she knows she’s not at the palace. She’s somewhere else, and the place smells like ammonia. The smell is so strong that she gags.

She also hears a hiss, and it’s not human. It freaks her out. She turns her hands into fists behind her.

The bag is lifted from her head. She has a hard time adjusting to the light that enters through the skylight at the center of the place. She’s into a big, never-ending room, similar to a wine cellar, but industrial. She sees various machines she doesn’t recognize stacked in the corners. She tries to remember every company that uses ammonia, but she can’t think of any.

A cry coming from her right attracts her attention, but her neck hurts a lot. She tries again, this time slower, succeeding with great difficulty.

“...Mom?”

She doesn’t get an answer, but she doesn’t need it anyway. The Queen looks devastated. She’s still in the dress she wore to The Festival, but her shoes are nowhere to be seen.

“Mom, please answer me.”

The Queen raises her head, and Joohyun feels a stake crossing her heart.

“Joohyun?”

Joohyun moves against her restraints, trying to escape. She ends up falling upon her injured shoulder, and she screams in pain.

“Yes, yes,” It sounds like a plea. “I’m here, mom.”

A man, or so she thinks, stands behind her. The man hides below a mask with a beak so long that could harm someone. It’s completely black and the eyes are covered by goggles. The mask reminds her of the ones from The Plague.

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