WARNING: This chapter has some kinda gross descriptions in it... so if you're squeamish just skip that part (you should still be able to keep up with what's going on. If you're confused just tell me :))

It’s lunchtime. The Anime Club and I are eating lunch in the library.

Eating as in halfheartedly picking at our food and throwing glances at each other when we think we aren’t watching.

I had been torn up with remorse over the way I treated Jungkook. Marge’s words kept me up all night. I was beating myself up for ruining my relationship with Jungkook.

But that’s not true. This wasn’t completely my fault. Jungkook didn’t tell me the truth. He covered up a huge fact about himself. For someone who “genuinely likes me”, as Marge said, he has a surprising lack of trust for me.

Why shouldn’t I be mad at him?

That doesn’t excuse anything that he’s done. I can’t just forgive him for his actions because he “wants to protect me”.

“I have to tell you guys something,” Lina suddenly says. We look up at her. She fidgets uncomfortably, her gaze darting from me to Annabelle to Marcus to Preet.

“What?” Preet asks quietly.

“My parents... well...,” Lina winces. “I’m pretty wealthy. But my parents and I don’t have the best relationship. That’s why I live alone.”

Annabelle smiles reassuringly. “That’s okay.”

“That’s... not all.”

Suddenly, my phone buzzes.

“It’s Chanyeol,” I say. “Should I wait?”

Lina shakes her head. “No, that’s okay. Pick up.”

“We’ll continue this conversation,” I promise, and pick up the phone.

“I just finished Phase 1,” Chanyeol tells me breathlessly. My jaw drops.

“Seriously? It’s been half a day! How did you get Dr. Min to fall for you that fast?”

“You’re too young to hear this.”

“Wait a minute.” I furrow my eyebrows. “What do you mean, you just finished Phase 1? Oh my god, Chanyeol, did you two really do it now? It’s noon, for crying out loud! Jeez!”

“All I can say is that salmon and red wine are aphrodisiacs.”

“Eww! Stop!”

“Anyway, Phase 2 is a go.”

“We'll do it tonight. 5 PM, okay? I have to go back to class now, so bye.”

“Aww, I forgot wittle Ami Hwang is still in high schwool.”

“ my , Chanyeol.” I hang up.

“You’re doing it today?” Annabelle asks nervously. I nod.

“Our moment of truth,” I say determinedly, looking over at Marcus. “We’ll find out what happened to Kyle.”

He grins.

I don’t attend Training. Instead, I head to Floor 21. Marge gives me a disapproving look as I walk in.

“Marge, I’m sorry,” I tell her contritely. “But I have to. Please.”

She doesn’t say anything; instead, she simply gives me a single nod.

At exactly 6 PM, Chanyeol texts me.

Dr. Min’s going to Floor 38 now. Start it.

Got it, I message him back.

After peeking a glance at Marge, I pull up the security camera footage from the elevator and the secret camera that is hidden on Dr. Min’s body. Chanyeol must have stuck the tiny adhesive camera somewhere near her collarbone, maybe deeper. I’m getting a partial view of the scene in front of her from her perspective.

I look at the video feed from the elevator. Dr. Min is a portly woman, with dyed blonde hair and botoxed cheeks. A self-important air surrounds her as she stands alone in the elevator. I grimace. The things you do to get information, Chanyeol.

The elevator reaches Floor 38, and Dr. Min gets off. I completely switch to her body camera, and turn on my recording software. This is the moment of truth.

    An hour ago, Chanyeol embarked on the elevator. I hijacked the elevator controls and stopped the elevator in between Floors 2 and 3, so that he would have time to inconspicuously wire several electrical circuits on the roof of the elevator car. This should theoretically interfere with the electromagnetic field of the metal detectors and prevent discovery of the camera that’s on Dr. Min.

    Several large, threatening guards emerge from a door on Floor 38. “ID,” one of them commands gruffly. Dr. Min breezily flashes them her employee badge. Then, she places her index finger on an electronic pad that another guard gives her, and says her name out loud as well.

    “Identity confirmed,” a tinny voice says from the pad.

    “We’re skipping the metal detector,” one of the agents tells her. “There have been a few problems with it recently. Instead, we’re going to do a full body search. Take off your clothes, please.”

    My stomach drops. No! If she takes off her clothes, they’ll definitely see the camera!

“No!” Dr. Min shrieks. “There’s no way!”

“Ma’am, this is protocol-,”

“I absolutely cannot!” Dr. Min screeches. “I... was intimate with another man today. My body will reveal the tales of what he did to me-,”

I gag. Oh my god. Emma Carter all over again.

The guards exchange glances.

“You know who I am!” Dr. Min says crossly. “If you don’t let me in, none of those scientists will be able to function. You want to do that? You want to delay the Project?”

“We will let you in, ma’am.” One of the guards presses a red button on the electronic pad, and the wall opposite the metal detector slides open.

“Thank you,” Dr. Min sniffs, and marches into the room.

Suddenly, I feel Marge come up behind me. She drags her seat over and sits down.

“Marge?” I whisper. She merely stares straight ahead at the screen.

“Look,” she says. I turn back to my computer monitor.

A enormous laboratory- probably the size of two football fields- stands in front of Dr. Min. A strange whirring sound fills the air as workers bustle from one place to another, urgently conversing with each other and consulting various papers and blueprints. Rows of sleek computers sit next to long white lab tables, with different chemicals at every station. There is lab equipment so high-tech and advanced that I haven’t even seen it in my Chemistry textbooks. Mrs. Wringer would probably have a fit if she saw this place, I smirk.

Dr. Min moves to the back of the laboratory, until she reaches a steel enforced door. She places her palm on a scanner next to the door, and it smoothly slides open.

My jaw drops.

“Holy ,” I whisper. “What is this?”

Dozens of mutilated bodies sit at clear plastic tables around the room. They have been sliced open with scalpels. Their guts have been completely extracted. They look like the diagrams of human bodies drawn on posters in biology classrooms, hollow bodies with illustrations of organs and blood vessels inside. Except they have no organs. No blood. And they are real.  

Surgeons in blue uniforms, caps, and face masks hover around each table. Some are working on cutting open new bodies. Others are observing the mangled bodies and typing up notes. As I look closely, there are several shelves around the room, on which there are large containers with strange pink and purple blobs suspended in yellow liquid. A pang of realization hits me. Those are kidneys and livers and gallbladders stored in formaldehyde.

“You’re already done harvesting the skin on that one?” Dr. Min remarks, striding over to a table. The image displayed on the screen causes me to involuntarily retch over my desk. A corpse is lying down on the surface. Not only are its internal body parts missing, but the top layer of its skin is as well. It is like someone has completely peeled it away. Bluish-purple nerve endings, raised hair follicles, and bumpy sweat glands make up the surface of the corpse.

I finally lose it. I empty the contents of my stomach into the trash can under my desk. Marge merely apprehends me with unreadable eyes.

“Make sure you got every last inch of skin,” Dr. Min tells the surgeons. “It sells for $10 per square inch, and this body has at least 16 feet of skin. That’s $1,920 right there.”

“Yes, ma’am,” one of the surgeons says, removing her mask. “The donor’s other organs are perfectly healthy. We should be able to sell them for the market price, maybe even higher.”

“Good. We can’t work on Project Cotton if we don’t have enough funding, right, Nimi?” Dr. Min the surgeon’s hair.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And make sure you put someone on that new arrival,” Dr. Min adds. “Braxton, was it? I looked at his file. He should be perfectly healthy, too.”

I gasp. Braxton. Daniel Braxton.

They kidnapped Daniel Braxton to sell his organs on the black market.

Dr. Min turns. “I’m going to go check on- whoops!” The video wildly shakes, and suddenly, the camera shows a shot of the floor.

“Who put that cart over there?” I hear Dr. Min complain. Her voice is getting farther and farther away.

“Sorry, ma’am.”

“The camera fell off,” Marge says. I merely stare at my computer in shock, unable to say anything.

And then finally I whimper, “Oh my god,” and start sobbing.

“I told you that there were some things you were better off not knowing,” Marge whispers, drawing me into a hug.

“The 4 Flames is illegally harvesting organs to sell on the black market?” I utter in a hoarse voice. “That’s why we were erasing those people? Because Yohan was killing them to get their bodies and we had to cover up their tracks? How has anyone not noticed this?”

“Think back, Ami,” Marge says gently, patting my hair. “Everyone we’ve erased has been healthy, young. Most are from low-income households, single-parent houses, maybe immigrants, too. They've been labeled as runaways, or bad parents, or no one has even noticed that they've disappeared.”

I inhale sharply. “Marge, we erased entire families. We erased children.”

She looks away.

“No,” I wail, crying even harder. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve never-,”

“You had no choice, Ami,” Marge tells me firmly. “Come on, let’s go to your room.”

And then it hits me: BTS was running these missions, too. They were aiding this twisted, atrocious practice.

My mind flashes back to the time I hacked the 4 Flames website for the first time. I had seen a picture of a dismembered corpse; that was what had revealed what I was dealing with.

The answers were hidden in plain sight, I realize. Everything was on the damn website. You should’ve made the connection, you idiot. You complete idiot.

“I think I’m going to be sick again,” I murmur, and vomit into the trashcan once more.

Marge stays next to me the rest of the night.

Sometime around 3 in the morning, I awake in a fit, my mind reeling from a nightmare about disfigured corpses rising up to drag me down to an operating table. Marge is snoozing on the side of my bed. I gently poke her cheek.

“Marge?”

“Hmm?”

“Whose side are you really on?”

“Hm?”

“You aren’t really helping me... but you aren’t reporting me either. You’re covering my tracks, but you’re telling me not to search anymore. What do you want me to do?”

Marge sleepily raises her head. “I want you to be safe,” she sighs. “I don’t want you to learn the things that this gang does. But I know that you’re going to search for the truth either way. So I’ll explain anything that you find that you don’t understand. I’ll be here for you.”

I hug her so tightly that she yelps in protest.

Namjoon offers to drive me to school the following morning. Apparently, he and BTS stayed over too, in order to complete a mission. My stomach clenches when I hear those words. What kind of mission? Were they capturing another innocent civilian to use for funding? For Project Cotton?

When I see that Jungkook will be coming with us as well, I can’t even bear to look at him.

“Ami,” he says, trying to grab my arm. I push him away.

Unfortunately, Hoseok takes the front seat before I can, so I’m stuck in the back with Jungkook. He keeps looking over at me. I don’t even spare him a glance.

After a silent, uncomfortable ride, the four of us arrive at school. I am about to get out of the car when Jungkook grabs my arm. “Ami, stop,” he says in a low voice. I yank my arm back.

"Don't touch me," I hiss. "You make me sick."

I slam the car door in his face and stride away. The only thing I feel when I look at Jungkook is horror. The corpses on Floor 38. His ruthless killing of targets. His terrible words. Fear and disgust and terror. The 4 Flames.

Jungkook is the 4 Flames.

I can never forget that.

    Marcus cries after he watches the video.

    The rest of us are too shocked to even move to console him. I thought that Annabelle would start sobbing, too, but she merely rests her head on Preet’s shoulder and stares listlessly in front of her.

    “So that’s what they did to Kyle,” Lina utters dully.

    I swallow. “Baekhyun said that... he can trace where Kyle’s body parts were sold to. Where they are all now.”

    “I want to be there when he does that,” Marcus says in a thick voice. “Please.”

    “Wait,” Preet says. He has not made a single sound this entire time until now. We turn to look at him. “I have a question. Judging from the video, it looks like this... organ harvesting program only serves to get money for Project Cotton. Did you guys see how the main part of Floor 38 was taken up by those laboratories and computers?”

    “What’s your point?” Marcus asks tersely.

    Preet slowly sits up. “And Kyle wasn’t erased. We’re still able to access his social media profiles and articles about him.”

    I furrow my eyebrows. “Wait... yeah, you’re right. They erase everyone they remove organs from. And why would Yohan hire him as an intern if they just wanted his organs?”

“This makes no sense,” Lina says. “Jaemi Kim and the other interns who worked with Kyle are all still alive- wait, no, except Camille Rosenquist! Camille was erased, remember?”

“She wasn't fully erased. We were able to pull up her LinkedIn profile.”

“What are you guys saying?” Annabelle whispers.

Preet turns to her. “I don’t think Kyle had his organs sold on the black market. Something else happened.”

“It’s not Kyle we need Baekhyun to track,” I breathe. “It’s Camille Rosenquist.”

A/N: Ewwww the descriptions of the bodies and stuff made me so squeamish. So yeah apparently organ trafficking is a common practice amongst gangs? I didn't know that... 

But yeah you guys get what I mean being in the 4 Flames is not the best LOL