The gray Cadillac pulls up to a huge property where one of the warehouses for Yoon Cargo Companies is located. One of the guards by the iron gates lets them through, and they drive up the path leading to the depot where lego structures of boxes piled on top of each other greet them, shelves upon shelves with stacked packages of all sizes stretch through the vastness of the storage place. Lined up at the front of the building are tens of cargo vans and delivery motorbikes with the purple logo of Yoon Cargo Companies designed on them. The three men hop off their vehicle, with Howie tagging behind his pale coworker and the company director. The staff acknowledges them, some of them talking to Isaiah about company logistics, some just bowing respectfully, while most if not all are looking at the bar employees with various looks the mixture of wariness and curiosity. Howie wonders if they know who they are, or what they are. Upon observing long enough, the sharp-eyed man realizes it is something else entirely. The YCC staff are the ones concerned with what Howie thinks of them.

"Am I crazy or do clinics just look different now?" Howie inquires. Santi lets out a quiet chuckle while Isaiah Chwe laughingly shakes his head.

"It's below us," the director says. They make it to the elevator at the far back of the warehouse, they board it, and the newbie notices the button that has a B with the downwards arrow on it indicating the basement floor. A clinic in the basement of a delivery company's warehouse? Just what is going on exactly?

Howie feels the gravity shift from under his feet as the elevator descends, a low ping soon follows as they reach the basement floor. The double doors automatically open itself for them. The newbie's eyes take in the sterilized interior of the floor's entirety, and for a moment he is convinced that they are at a hospital. Bright fluorescent lights illuminate the whiteness of everything, from the tiled floors to the smooth walls up to the ceilings, even the doors to each room are sterile white. They walk down the corridors as Howie treads behind Santi and Isaiah who are ahead of him, their backs a reminder to him of what he is doing in that place. 

"Go to that room by the left, that's the OR," the director points to the room with the huge glass window. The newbie peeks inside and sees a metal slab in the middle of the room, plus some other equipment he doesn't know the names of, a machine for monitoring the vital signs, and a table with several assortments of pointy and sharp stabbers and grabbers.

"You're really gonna operate on me?" the sharp-eyed man seems unsure.

"He's an underground doctor, if that's what you're asking," Santi answers for the director. That's when the newbie notices that Isaiah Chwe had gone. He looks around the entire hallway to find Director Chwe, but he's no longer there. Santi immediately catches on to his coworker's behavior and answers his wordless question for him. "He'll be back. He's gotta get a few things first before he operates on you."

"Wait," Howie's ears are slower than his brain, as he hadn't been able to make sense of what his coworker had just said to him. "He's an underground doctor? Is he part of the mafia?"

Santi stares him down, and the newbie sees the pale man wracking through his brain, deciding on something that Howie has no clue on. "I wonder if this means you're in," Santi asks himself but he is still looking at the newbie that the other thought he is asking him. A few seconds later, the pale singer's demeanor expresses he's come to a ratification with himself and tells his coworker, "The president of the company also runs an arms dealership."

Isaiah emerges from the file room down the hall, coming out of the door with a folder and surgical equipment such as a mask, a pair of gloves and protective goggles with him. "Excuse me," the director politely interrupts. Howie's attention falls to the folder Isaiah is holding. "Let's go," the hazel-eyed man continues, gesturing towards the door to the operating room. All three enter, and all except Isaiah explore the room with their eyes. The newbie approaches the metal slab of the operating table, and he feels the coldness of the material with his hand. "Shall we begin?" Isaiah asks Howie. The newbie nods and proceeds to sit on top of the silvery work surface. "Since your shirt has holes in them anyway, it's probably best to just get rid of it, yes?" Isaiah asks again. Howie nods again, catching Santi in his peripheral vision taking out a green cloth from the closet by the wall next to him. It's one of the blankets used to cover a patient undergoing surgery. His coworker hands it to him before exiting the operating room, and he begins undoing the buttons of his shirt, eventually peeling it off himself. The holes and stains had ruined his work uniform beyond repair. He wonders if he can find a replacement for it soon. None of his new clothes can pass as a bartender shirt, as he had bought things of many colors and designs, avoiding the gray monotones because they are a stark reminder of what he is going through, someone who had a black and white past completely obscured from his memories.

The operation commenced after Isaiah had intramuscularly injected half of the 9 mL of Z into Howie's upper right arm. The doctor has his face covered with surgical masks and goggles, while Howie lays shirtless on the operating table. The doctor had promised no anesthetic administration, and being told he has the ability to heal himself does not offer Howie any form of comfort in the least bit. "You'd think it'll be easy to accept, that I'd feel invincible just by knowing, but I just feel so insulted with the fact that I had no idea this is happening to me at all," the patient confides.

Isaiah places the green blanket over Howie's torso before cutting a square into the cloth around the section in the patient's chest where the bullets are supposed to be. "I'll hold the muscles open with retractors so they don't heal back up and close up the incisions," the doctor explains, completely ignoring what Howie has said. Isaiah slits a line through the parts that the bullet holes in the newbie's shirt had marked.

"Are you really in the arms dealing business?" the newbie inquires, blinded by the light up ahead of him while feeling the coldness of Isaiah's metal scalpels against his skin as they slice open his body, an insistent pinching pain following right away, gradually becoming more and more unbearable as the wound grows wider and the blade inserts deeper within the layers of his muscles. Eventually they reach the bones, and then soon after, the heart.

"If I tell you, I'm gonna have to shoot you after," the doctor answers. "But then again, you won't die anyway," he adds, which makes him laugh despite his mask muffling the sound.

"Are you guys in a gang war against Tiger Kwon's group?"

"Gang war?" Isaiah laughs again.

"You want to take down their business?" Howie feels something wriggling in his chest, the pain resembling being hit by truck squarely in the sternum at full speed. He doesn't flinch. His eyes begin to tear up, and the water starts rolling down the sides of his eyes, but he makes no attempt to move. Instead, he tries to mindfully even out the pace of his breathing. The doctor slowly lifts his forceps that look as though they had been dipped in black goo, a small piece of round metal pinched in between the tips, before discarding it by the table beside them. "Is Santi in on it too?" the patient questions further.

Looming over the sharp-eyed man, the doctor takes note of the black veins that are becoming increasingly visible by the second. They travel like vines climbing up on trellises. A few more minutes into the surgery and they are intricate spider webs covering the entirety of the patient's body. The obsidian shade of the irises and sclera and the insides of the mouth are also fully apparent. "My father runs the business," Isaiah divulges. He keeps his focus on the task at hand, but he pays attention to his patient's inquisitiveness as well. 

"You're telling me just like that?" Howie raises. "No initiation or nothing?"

"You have nowhere else to go," Isaiah tells him matter-of-factly, closely observing the way Howie is still coherent and sentient, taking a mental note to jot down his observations to add to the case files. The newbie swallows hard, the contraction in his esophagus making the surrounding area budge slightly. "Please refrain from moving, Howie."

"What am I gonna be then?" the sharp-eyed patient stares at the ceiling blankly.

Isaiah glances at the soullessness evident in Howie's glassy gaze. He wonders how much pain he is enduring right then and there. "A bar employee," he replies.

The second bullet is extracted, and once again, the doctor places it by the paper towels on the table. He makes it a point not to get the black liquid on himself as he disposes them in a Ziplock bag together with his surgical mask and gloves. With the operation now complete, he begins removing the retractors that were keeping the wounds open, and slowly the muscles and skin start closing up, and just like that, they are back to normal again. Finally, Isaiah administers the other half of Z to the patient to ensure the rest of the vine-like veins and the blackness of the patient's eyes and mouth return to their previous state as well.

"You're safe there, Howie," the director says after he cleans up his workstation. Santi comes into the room a little later with a clean shirt in his hand, which is a spare courier uniform the same shade of purple as the company's color and gives it to Howie.

"Here. I asked one of the staff for this," the pale man offers, which the newbie gladly collects.

"Oh, great," Isaiah comments before turning to Howie and asks, "Will that do?"

"Can I keep them?" Howie asks absently.

"What, the shirt? Sure. I don't think my staff would mind," the director responds.

"No, the bullets."

Santi and Isaiah exchange looks. "Sure?" the hazel-eyed man hesitates. "But make sure to clean them up thoroughly. Your blood is made up primar