At exactly ten forty-five, I told Soyeon I was stepping out for my lunch break. It would still be a couple hours before the drunks from the nearby bars started betting each other to go get tattoos, anyway, so it's not like I'd be missed. She waved me off with one well-manicured hand before yelling out the door after me to bring her back something to drink. I shook my head and grinned, pulling my coat up around my face to keep the icy wind away.

I turned down the now-familiar back alley behind the shop and headed toward the docks. It had become a common meeting place over the past few weeks and as I walked, my mind switched to autopilot - only alerting me to things that needed immediate attention so my conscious mind could shut off for a few blissful moments.

The smell of briny water was the first indication that I was close, followed shortly by the sound of gentle waves breaking against the pilings and bulkhead. Once I wound my way through abandoned shipping containers and spools of wire bigger than me, I found him standing at the edge of the water.

His gray hair looked silver in the moonlight where it was pulled into a short ponytail at the crown of his head. The sides were still shaved, showing off the sinewy muscles of his neck and upper shoulders. How he wasn't freezing without a coat on, I didn't know.

"You're going to catch your death of cold out here without a coat on, Kai."

He turned and flashed that devastating smile at me, pulling his hands from his pockets so he could wrap me up in a hug. I leaned into it more than I'd planned to, needing the connection with another human more than I thought I would. He rubbed his hand up and down my back and tucked my head under his chin. He was a good hugger for someone so dangerous.

When I finally pulled away, his smile was still just as warm as before. "You know that's not true."

I shrugged and offered him a weak smile of my own. "Sounded like a good thing to say at the time."

His laugh was low-pitched and quiet, but his face lit up with the effort. The duality of that man was something to behold. A killer one minute and a teddy bear the next.

"Well, then I appreciate the thought." He looked down at me, taking in my hunched frame and probably noticing the dark circles under my eyes that even heavy concealer couldn't hide. He puffed out a breath that caught on the wind and hit me like a mint-tinged breeze. "You aren't sleeping."

I tipped my shoulder up and turned to look over the water. In the crisp night air, there was no smog to speak of to cloud the view of the city lights and advertisements. Their reflections so much more beautiful than what they really were. But such was the same with some people.

"Can't really be helped, I guess," he added when I didn't say anything else. "With people in our line of work, you worry about the ones that don't have trouble sleeping."

"So which type are you?"

When I turned to look back at him over my shoulder, his gaze was far away. Almost lost. When he finally spoke, his voice had dropped. "I haven't slept a full night since I was a child."

"Kinda scary with a bunch of sleep-deprived people running around the city with guns, isn't it?"

I hadn't meant it to be terribly funny, but Kai's laugh was as sudden as it was comforting. "Yeah, probably so." He walked up beside me and leaned against the railing next to the slow-moving, brackish river clogged with hundreds of years of human apathy.

"So what news do you have for me?"

His sigh was loaded. "We haven't really learned much more from Hwasa."

I cast him a glance from the corner of my eye. "She's not talking?"

He looked down at his fingers and my stomach dropped. "We don't have her anymore."

"What," I screamed, turning on him and nearly bumping my chest against his. "What did you do, just hand her back over to AT3?"

I watched his eyes turn stony even in the low light. "We didn't have a choice, Natalia!"

I hissed in a breath. "Don't call me that here. It's Selene now."

He snorted and looked away. "Whatever you want to call yourself, it doesn't matter. We couldn't keep them. They belong to AT3 and Suho would risk his government contracts if he didn't back down. We have an organization to run and with no one else willing to back us up, we were left without any options."

"We're fucking people Kai, not property." I blinked rapidly as the words he chose to use slowly clicked in my brain. Wait, wait, wait...'they'?"

Kai shook his head slightly and rolled his tongue along the inside of his cheek before speaking. "AT3's agents took Wonho's body, too."

My jaw dropped to the ground and tears stung my eyes. "They're going to repackage him, Kai! Just like they did with me. Just like they did with Hwasa. He wanted to die! Why couldn't they just let him die," I wailed.

I was nearly hysterical as all my old wounds broke apart and started oozing to the surface of my fractured mind. Kai reached out and took me by the shoulders, trying to ground me even as wave after wave of anxiety washed out of my body in the form of tiny little percussion beats of wind. Ripples rose and crested across the river, their breaking sounding like a thousand fish reaching up and patting their fins against the otherwise smooth surface.

"I know that, Nata - Selene," Kai said, his voice low but urgent. "We all know what they're doing, but we don't have a choice. To them, you're property. Expensive, extremely advanced property. If anyone even knew I was out here talking to you like this, they'd have me strung up by morning. We're doing what we can, but we're out here alone."

His words finally struck me. My eyes were wild as I tried to make sense of everything he was saying. "Wait. Why are you doing it alone? Isn't Bangtan helping?"

The stone of his gaze cracked and his grip on my shoulders softened. "No. Jin cut off all contact with us as soon as you left."

"Why would he do that?"

"He's trying to protect his family."

I scoffed. "He's panicking."

Kai looked at me with an agreement he refused to voice out loud. Bangtan and EXO went way back, but judging by his expression, this was one decision, maybe of many, that EXO didn't agree with. But Kai wasn't going to say that.

"He's doing what he thinks is right."

"That's bullshit and you know it."

"Selene, even he knows it, but no one can get through to him right now. No one since..."

"Since he forced me to leave."

Kai reached forward, tipping my face up to his with his thumb and forefinger. "We're doing what we can. You've just got to give us time and keep your head down. We don't want anything to happen to you any more than they do."

As I stared up at his beautifully carved face and soft lips, I relaxed a little. The beats of wind stilled and my heartbeat settled a little. Kai allowed his hand to trail down to the side of my neck as he ran his thumb absently across the line of my jaw. Then, with a smile that lit up the night like a beacon despite the sadness it held, he stepped away from me.

"We'll do everything we can to save you."

"I know that, Kai," I whispered. "Thank you." My brow wrinkled as I tried to figure him out. He stepped back again like he needed the physical distance before swinging himself over the railing with the grace of a cat and dropping down into a boat I hadn't even seen until then.

"When I have news, I'll find you," he called up to me softly with a wink. Then he flipped a switch and the boat took off into the inky darkness, the only sound it made being the slight bass hum of the submerged motor.

On the way back to the shop, I stopped at an all-night street stand for noodles and a bottle of mango nigori for Soyeon. I barely said a word to her as I handed her the alcohol, but she didn't seem to notice, her face twisting up in glee at the sight of her favorite drink. I took my noodles back to my booth and ate while I turned everything from my meeting with Kai over in my mind.

How long would it take them to get Hwasa and Wonho new bodies? Would they look like they had before, or would they change them like they did me? Would that change their abilities as it had with me, or did AT3 learn their lessons after giving me a little too much "juice"? No one could answer my questions, so I started to think if there was a way I could answer them myself. Hiding out wasn't doing me much good, but without allies, I didn't have much of a choice.

Soyeon was the leader of G-idle, which on their own was a pretty capable group of contract killers and gun runners, but if Bangtan and EXO couldn't withstand the full force of everything AT3 had to throw at them, asking Soyeon for help would just be sending them to their bloody deaths.

No, I couldn't do that. I couldn't have any more blood on my hands. So this was going to come down to my own actions and abilities. If I had meant so much to the company that made me that they were willing to burn two high-profile gangs down in the process, it had to mean I was pretty strong on my own. I just had to find a way to use what they'd given me without it burning me up like it had so many before me. The risk of losing myself to that darkness they'd borne was one too big to take. So if I was going to do this, I had to find a way to keep me me without one of my men there to pull me back in. Which was something I had yet to learn how to do.