The complete quiet in the round room reached the border of ridiculous. None of them looked at each other. Daesung stood leaned to the door of his room, looking thoughtfully towards the ceiling. The others sat on the floor, one in the center of the room and one a little away. They, too, seemed lost in thought. G-Dragon hadn’t asked their names yet.

 They’d turned up moments after Daesung, and then they’d been talking happily. Joking about mistaking and breaking something wrong. A few seconds after they’d entered, a very loud sirene-like sound had almost scared the life out of G-Dragon. The other three had immediately gathered in the middle of the room, and G-Dragon had hesitantly joined them, expecting for his so-called “launch” to take place. But nothing had happened. The siren had gone quiet, no one entered, and the others had stopped talking, just standing still. They had hardly looked at him, but spent the following thirty minutes staring at the barred door from which G-Dragon had first entered.

  He dared to look at the one closest. He was muscular, sturdy-looking. His hair and eyes were black and he looked young - around G-Dragon’s own age, he thought. He was dressed all in black, tight-fitted clothing. It looked like a specialized suit of sorts…

 Daesung’s hoarse voice finally broke the silence. ,,Introduce yourself, ” he said, looking at G-Dragon. The red-haired looked up and found all the others to be staring at him, awaiting. ,,Uh,” he stuttered. ,,I’m Ji Yo-… Uh, G-Dragon.” He bowed slightly.

  The one sitting in the center of the room stood up. He smiled at G-Dragon and reached a hand out. ,,I’m Seungri,” he said. His voice was deeper than Daesung’s, but had a lively sound to it. G-Dragon took his hand to shake it, but froze as he looked at the other’s face. His voice might have been lively sounding, but his eyes were far from so. They were an unnatural lilac color and dark circles made them stand out even more in the young man’s face. Clearing his throat, trying to cover up the immediate shock, G-Dragon took Seungri’s hand. It was cold.

  ,,Taeyang,” the muscular guy on the floor said shortly. He nodded towards G-Dragon who returned the gesture. All three of them had completely regular names, and G-Dragon wondered if he was the only one having been asked to leave his behind. He was about to ask when suddenly the siren sounded once more, and all four of them froze. Taeyang got up and looked at Daesung who nodded before walking past him, towards Seungri and G-Dragon. He stopped to look at G-Dragon for a moment, and a small smile appeared on his lips. ,,Welcome to the world,” he said.

 Taeyang and Seungri both chuckled knowingly before following Daesung through the barred door, that now stood open. G-Dragon’s heart started racing as he joined them.

- ∞ -

   He tried not to panic, to think. Where was he? Where were the others?

They’d been separated so abruptly. One moment he’d followed closely behind Seungri, walking down the corridors again, and the next, the lights went out, and as they returned, he was alone.

,,Seungri?”

Nothing.

 G-Dragon started walking until he reached a point forcing him to chose a new direction. He had no idea, picked blindly. He was running. He called out. First for Seungri, then Daesung. Taeyang. He kept blindly turning corners.

Was this his launch?! What was a launch?!

The excited heartbeat from before continued in the steadily growing panic, G-Dragon began to feel. He called out again, but there was no answer. He had no idea where he was, how big the building was, or more importantly, where the exit was. He tried to remember something useful, anything.

  What was one supposed to do when lost? , nothing! Panic or start crying or something.

He looked around. The only thing on the walls were the white digits he’d noticed from before. And as he ran down the corridors, he noticed… could it be?

 They were directions. He passed W6^* and turned left, counting the meters until he reached 6, adding on another 14 as he passed T14^**. He kept on running until he reached a wall. No, not a wall… Frantically he threw himself against the door, and on his third try, it broke open.

   He entered a brightly lit, white room. The others were sitting in a couple of chairs, talking silently. They all looked up when he entered: ,,What the…?”

Seungri laughed at G-Dragon’s face, that twisted in anger: ,,What the hell was that!”

  Taeyang laughed as well, but Daesung didn’t join in. He didn’t keep his eyes on G-Dragon for long before he turned his attention to a door to his left. Next to it was a long window. They couldn’t see the people clearly, but there was definitely someone walking back and forth on the other side. As the handle to the door moved, Taeyang and Seungri immediately looked towards it again. Their smiles were gone, replaced by … fear?

   The door opened and then everything happened at double-speed. In came five men, wearing bullet-proof jackets and masks covering their faces. They knocked over Daesung and the others by simply running into them, and G-Dragon barely had time to be horrified, before he also was knocked over by a fourth. The pain from hitting the cold floor made him yell out. G-Dragon felt a short-lived pain in the neck, as the man above him stuck a syringe in and injected something. In the second before he fainted, he heard the man yell: ,,Number 5 is launching!”

*: In Korean, the word for "left" begins with a "w".

**: In Korean, the word meaning "straight", begins with a "T"