“.”

Yongguk knows time is ticking away. He knows he needs to take some sort of action quickly. But, he honestly doesn’t know what to do, which rarely ever happens.

“Youngjae.”

No response.

“Youngjae… Youngjae, are you there?”

Still, no response.

“Goddammit!”

He needs to find his squad. the objective, the missions, everything. All Yongguk cares about is saving all the members of his squad. But he can’t do anything when he’s trapped in a damn metal box, the room literally having no exits. This can’t happen again. It’s happened before; the squad was separated and hell went down from there. Yongguk can’t like history repeat itself. Yongguk begins banging his fist against the walls, trying to find a way out, but his attempts are futile. He begins searching every part of the room, looking for something, maybe a hidden panel, a button, a secret exit, anything. Again, his attempts are futile. After minutes and minutes, which feel like mere seconds to Yongguk, he begins to feel defeated as he falls to his knees. He begins to feel like the worst, goddamned leader. He begins to feel like a “nobody.” He begins to feel useless. Tears of frustration threaten to fall from his eyes. Yongguk knows he has to do something, anything. He thinks about what could be happening to his squad as he’s wasting time stuck in this room. Time is ticking. He decides he has to make some decision quickly before anything happens to his squad, if nothing has happened to them yet. Althought he hates Zico's ing mindgames, he knows he's going to have to play along and be dragged around.

“Zico,” he calls out.

“Oh, you’re still there? You couldn’t find a way out?” Zico’s voice replies sarcastically through some hidden speaker in the room.

“I don't know what the hell you're planning but if you around with my squad, I'll kill you. Let them go now,” Yongguk says, with a sense of authority.

“As much as I’d love to release your pathetic squad, that would take away all the fun!” Zico replies before letting out his signature cackle.

Suddenly, on one of the walls, a large piece of metal slides down into the ground, revealing a secret passage.

“It’s no fun to kill without there being a struggle! Go! Try and save your pathetic, piece-of- squad. I'll give you an hour to get everyone out before I blow up this whole place!” Zico says before laughing.

Yongguk doesn’t even reply and starts sprinting down the obscure passage. He doesn't think about the time but rather he keeps running and running, encountering forks and multiple pathways. He doesn’t even think before randomly choosing which way to go, hoping it will lead him to someone.

“Captain Bang! Captain Bang! Help me! Please! Someone! Help m-,” Youngjae’s voice echoes through the walls, pleading and screaming for help.

Yongguk cringes upon hearing Youngjae’s cries.

“You’re getting colder! Very coooold! You’re going the wrong way!” says Zico.

“I swear to God, Zico, that I will you up so bad if you hurt him!”

“You’re so funny, Yongguk,” Zico says before laughing. “Like I said, my men are taking great care of him and the rest of your men.”

“! ! Ungggh!” Daehyun’s voice erupts over the speakers, sounding as if he’s in a fight that he’s losing, causing Yongguk to run faster.

“This can’t happen again,” Yongguk thinks. Yongguk still hasn’t forgiven himself for what happened to Himchan on the last mission. Yongguk prays that history doesn’t repeat itself.

“Sounds like you better hurry ‘Captain Bang!’ Your men don’t seem to be fairing so well! Time's ticking away!” Zico mocks.

“ you! Let them go! Where are they?!”

“If I told you, that wouldn’t be much fun,” Zico says teasingly. “Here, I guess I’ll be the good guy and help you out.”

A dot begin to appear on the map on Yongguk’s headgear. Not far from him he sees a yellow dot. Although no actual blueprint is shown on his map, Yongguk is able to determine which turns to take to navigate himself closer to one of his men. After taking what seems like hundreds of turns, he finally reaches a door.

“Good job! You actually found someone!” Zico exclaims before laughing, as if there’s a surprise waiting for Yongguk.

Yongguk ignores Zico’s remark before kicking down the metal door. A rush of cold air rushes past Yongguk’s body. Yongguk loses sight for a moment as the small, icy fog runs by him.

“Holy ! It’s cold!” Yongguk exclaims.

Yongguk thinks that it has to be at least in the negatives. He slowly walks into the room, slipping slightly from the frozen, icy floor. He looks around the room and doesn’t find anyone although the yellow dot is near him. Inside the small room, there's multiple shelves with million of vials full of unidentified liquids. Yongguk suspects these much be chemicals of some sort for experimentations. It doesn't slip by his mind that these chemicals may have something to do with the secret weapon but he ignore the mission and zooms in on the map to get a better look at where the person is located. He walks through the thin fog and finds a large tank in the center of the room that’s covered in frost right in front of him. On his map, the yellow dot is in front of him as well. Yongguk, thought at first confused, begins to panic as he begins to run his hands across the tank to rub the frost off of the tank. He hopes his assumption is wrong but his though was true. His hands begin to numb although he’s wearing gloves. The sight in front of Yongguk makes his stomach turn, literally making him sick to his stomach. His face hardens.

The tank is full of icy cold water. Inside, Zelo’s upperbody and knees keeping him upright as he is leaning against the glass of the tank with his knees buckled resting against another part of the cylindic tank. Arms behind his back, wrist tied together. Ankles bounded by rope. Face pale, paler than usual, with a tint of blue on his cheeks.

Yongguk’s body is frozen, and not from the extremely low temperature.

Zico laughs.

-------------------------------------------------

Daehyun gradually opens his eyes, head spinning and body aching. He slowly tries to stand up from the metal wall he is leaned against, struggling but eventually gets up onto his feet in the pitch black room. He tries to communicate with any of the other members through his headgear and quickly realizes his headgear is actually missing, along with his gun and other weapons. Without his headgear, he can’t see due to the lack of his night vision. He slowly tries to make his way out of the room (if there actually is an exit) by keeping a close distance to any wall nearby. Eventually he realizes there isn’t an exit as he circles the walls multiple times, remembering the number of steps he took along each wall (one hundred, eighty, one hundred, and eighty), calculating the angle of each corner (ninety degrees each putting him in a rectangular room), and even remember specific nicks in the walls (there’s a dent in the wall thirty-four steps from where he began walking). “How am I going to get out of here?” he thinks, before a dim light appears in the center of the room. He begins to hear footsteps, causing him to place himself in a fighting stance, legs braced, and arms up and out.

Jongup’s body is thrown into the dim light.

As much as Daehyun wants to, he knows better. He knows running up to Jongup will only result in some unfortunate event.

“Well, are you gonna go and get him?”

Daehyun doesn’t respond to the mysterious man infront .

U-Kwon walks into the light, smirk on his face, eyes looking straight at Daehyun. He bends over and grabs Jongup roughly by his hair, pulling him up, gives him a few slaps in the face until Jongup begins to awaken and groans.

“Finally, it’s about time you woke up. Seriously, the sedative wasn’t even that strong….”

After giving Jongup a few seconds for his conscious to come back, U-Kwon pulls him into a headlock, dagger at his neck.

“I gave you the chance to get him but you didn’t take it,” U-Kwon says sarcastically to Daehyun.

Daehyun takes a step forward.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” U-Kwon says, inching the knife closer to Jongup’s neck, Jongup now completely awake, sweat dripping down the sides of his face due to anxiety.

Daehyun stares straight into U-Kwon’s eyes, as if he’s threatening him. They keep their eyes lock for a good minute before U-Kwon speaks.

“You’re not a man of many words are you?” U-Kwon jokes.

Daehyun doesn’t flinch from his spot.

“Dude, relax. You’re making this so miserable. I’m trying to have some fun here!” U-Kwon says. “You know what would be fun? Hearing your scream after I kill Jongup, just like you did when your wife was killed in front of your own eyes.”

Daehyun eye twitches. “Wife?” Jongup thinks. He doesn’t understand what U-Kwon is talking about.

“Ahhh, so that got a reaction out of you? Now I know what pushes your buttons. Anyways, you’re lucky I’m not allowed to kill Jongup, well, not yet at least,” U-Kwon says with a smirk. “If it was my decision, I’d kill him right now, but sadly it’s not my decision. It’s yours.”

Daehyun stands there, eyes still locked with U-Kwon, though he’s slightly confused with U-Kwon’s comment.

“I never got to properly introduce myself to you, Daehyun, Jung Daehyun. My name is U-Kwon, remember it. Anyways, there are two other people I’d like you to meet. Jaehyo, come on out.”

Daehyun begins to hear footsteps coming from one of the corners in the room. A few seconds later, a boy wearing a similar outfit to U-Kwon appears, though he’s a bit taller and thinner with short black hair. In Jaehyo’s arms is someone wearing the squad’s uniform, a sack over their head. Daehyun assumes him to be Youngjae due to the male’s physique. Jaehyo puts the male into a headlock as well and cuts of the front of the sack with his knife before pulling it back, to which the male is revealed to be Youngjae, faced bruised.

“Hey Daehyun,” Youngjae says brightly, almost as if he’s unaware of the situation he’s in.

“Shut up,” Jaehyo says before giving him a hit to the head with his fist, causing Youngjae to release a small, “Ow!”

“So you see here, Daehyun, that we have two of your colleagues,” U-Kwon says. “I’m sure you’d like to leave here with the both of them unharmed, but sadly one of them has to die. It’s your decision. This place is about to self-destruct in about forty-five minutes so you can either leave with one of them or all of you can die. Of course, even after I hand one of them over to you, you still have to find your way out before this place explodes. Time's running out so I suggest you pick soon. Who do you want to save and who do you want to kill?” U-Kwon asks with an amused look on his face.

"What the hell?! Why would you make him make a decision like that?!" Jongup exclaims, finding U-Kwon's words ridiculous.

"Because it's fun," U-Kwon replies. "Anyways, hurry up and pick. I still gotta get out of here before this place blows up, you know?"

Daehyun reasons out that this is all just a stupid game that is all for show and that all three of them are probably going to die here together. Even so, he sees the look of fear on Jongup’s face. On the other hand, Youngjae looks so nonchalant about the whole matter.

“Still no words?” U-Kwon asks. “I could kill them both if you can’t make a decision quickly.”

“Daehyun, think of what comes first…,” Youngjae says, eyes locked with Daehyun before he continues, “Sure, you’ll get to save one of us, maybe, but then what comes after that? Escaping is the next thing you’ll have to do. Can you come up with a way to escape safely because I’m sure they’ll probably still come after you and whoever you pick to save. Right now, you need to make sure you have a plan. Except, time is ticking so you better think quickly, but make sure you still take your time... Think!”

“Shut up! You’re not making any sense! Telling him to hurry up and make a decision and then telling him to take his time. We’re the one supposed to be playing mind games here, not you!” Jaehyo barks before raising his fist.

And as Youngjae is getting hit on the head once again by Jaehyo, it hits Daehyun. Youngjae is a lot smarter than he comes off due to his playful and bright façade.

“Message received,” Daehyun says, causing a large grin to form on Youngjae’s face.