Moon Taeil makes his way into a small cave of sorts. He can see production equipment set up. What are they doing this time? What is his role? Is this for another behind the scenes fan content video?

Taeil stops before a rectangular table with a bunch of cards and papers on it. He stops before it and gestures toward it, thinking as though he is being filmed for content already.

"What am I...?" he begins to say.

Just then, He flinches in place as a loud groaning noise comes behind him. He whips around, his eyes flying open wide.

"Donghyuckie?!" Taeil manages to blurt out before his eyes land on a series of metal bars before him.

Taeil's heart starts to pound inside of his chest. He whirls to the sides, "What is this? What's going on?"

Then a fresh wave of panic settles in. He rushes to the bars. They extend from the rocky floor up to the ceiling.

"Hey! Let me out of here?!" Taeil pounds on the bars.

Suddenly a white mist shoots out of the sides and begins to cloak the cave in a thick cloud.

Taeil jams his hand into his pocket to whip out his phone. He quickly attempts to tap the screen to dial Haechan's number, but...

A sweet aroma fills the air and Taeil feels a drowsiness coming over him. His fingers fumble to the contacts and his vision becomes blurry as he struggles to read the names on the screen of his phone. His vision gets worse and worse and his thumb suddenly feels numb. He doesn't even get the chance to scroll down to Haechan's name, the contacts screen glowing at "a" names (or how they are alphabetically listed in Hangul).

Frustrated and helpless, he lets out one final scream for help. Then he feels his legs wobble underneath him.

Within seconds, Taeil hits the cold hard floor and falls unconscious. His cell phone hits the ground too, not breaking or cracking but coming to a still halt with the screen flashing brightly, still showing the "a" contacts.

The mist swirls around, clouding everything.

A single dark figure (wearing all black from head to foot) walks out of hiding and stops, standing over Taeil's lifeless body.

"Try to crack my mystery, my lovely Neo Culture Technology citizens."

The mysterious figure bends down and covers Taeil's mouth with his gloved hand. Then he scoops him up with his other hand and drags him away from the bars as the mist finally begins to dissolve and the sweet smell fades away...

Haechan whirls around to see a second bus pulling up in the dirt-covered road. It has been roughly thirty minutes since they'd arrived and Taeil had left them to go explore some cave of sorts.

"This is most certainly the scene for another variety show for our Czennies," Johnny remarks, putting his hands on his hips and looking around him. "I can sense it. I mean, smell and feel really. Deep down inside."

"Johnny, shut up," Taeyong scolds, looking at the dirt with disgust. "We can't be expected to film here - we're going to get dirty and nasty. Ew."

The second bus parks behind the first one, now abandoned by the 127 troupe and the bus driver, who'd walked off and left them.

Haechan's eyes watch as the bus halts with a creaky groan and then the doors fly open. Familiar faces from Dream and WayV, two other NCT-based subunits, descend the stairs, voices full of questions.

"What are you guys doing here?" Mark inquires.

"I told you, Marky, this is the set of a variety show. I'm guessing Taeil-hyung is MC, that's why he left us here," Johnny replies.

"Well, at least that's one less--" WinWin's voice grumbles out as he steps off the bus.

"WINWIN!!" Yuta, Mark and Jungwoo squeal and charge at the man.

WinWin gasps as they smash into him, arms wrapping tightly and warmly and suffocatingly around him. "Guys! Guys!"

Haechan folds his arms. "Let WinWin breathe, geez."

After a few minutes, Yuta, Mark and Jungwoo let WinWin go and step back, grinning largely from ear to ear over the man's welcoming presence like he is God or someone super famous and important.

Haechan suddenly shrieks in a high-pitched voice and zooms over to throw his arms around WinWin now. "MY WinWin!"

WinWin frowns and tosses his eyes in annoyance.

"Alright, you four let the poor man not get suffocated by his fanclub for once," Chenle says, rolling his eyes. "You guys always act like he's Jesus himself. He's just Dong frickin' Sichen."

WinWin's eyes roll to Chenle and, with Haechan still attached to him, he smiles and whispers: "Jealous much, Chenle-ge?"

Chenle sticks his tongue out at him.

"Hey! What's that?!" Doyoung's voice suddenly exclaims.

Haechan sees Doyoung's arm out, a finger extended in the direction away from the buses toward a random, rocky structure. In the middle of nowhere. Odd. Out of place. And only more and more like the set of a filming for a fan content.

"Let's go there and get out of this dirt!" Xiaojun remarks, earning a strong nod of his head from Taeyong.

"We should break into our subunits," Kun suggests, gesturing to WayV members and then 127 and finally those in Dream.

"Mark and Haechan-ah can just pick 127 or Dream?" Jaemin questions, returning a greeting hand shake of sorts with YangYang.

"I think to make things more equal, they should join Dream," Kun says. "Then there's seven, seven and six. I mean, when Taeil is back."

There's grumbles of agreement from all the members of NCT groups there.

"Too bad Shotaro and Sungchan couldn't be here for this," Renjun remarks, rubbing his arm. "But I guess they're busy filming a separate thing with the two of them - always attached, they are."

And so on that note, 127's members: Jungwoo, Doyoung, Taeyong, Johnny, Yua and Jaehyun cluster together. Dream's members of: Jaemin, Haechan, Mark, Chenle, Jisung, Renjun and Jeno team up. And finally WayV groups with YangYang, Xiaojun, Kun, WinWin, Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul (Ten) and Hendery.

Then they all make their way toward the bizarre rock structure.

"Are they coming?" a second all-black dressed figure questions, peering through a tinted one-way peephole. From it, he can see the buses and the cluster of NCT members standing around chatting, mingling...totally unprepared for the mystery that they'd have to solve. "They're wasting too much time."

Taeil grunts from behind him, muffled by a cloth-like gag.

"Yes, time is certainly something that Moon Taeil doesn't have too much of." It is the original all-black figure that had dragged the unconscious Taeil off. He smirks and bends over the NCT 127 member's shoulder, teasing, "So...who are you hoping will succeed and rescue you, huh?"

Taeil screams into the gag and kicks at the ground. He's been tied down to a wooden chair somewhere.

"Sorry, I didn't quite understand that," the figure sneers.

"Ah! They're coming! The fun can begin!" the second figure says.

"Take good care of them. I'll take good care of the...Master Moon."

Taeil kicks at the ground once again and lets out another grunt. This one is more distressed.

Haechan is leading the Dream Team, while Kun leads WayV and Johnny leads 127. As they get closer, they can see that the rock structure is a lot bigger and that there appears to be a cave-like entrance of some kind.

"I'm not going in there!" Doyoung states. "Not even for Taeilie."

"What's that?!" YangYang exclaims and walks up to the entrance. He drops down and picks up a shiny object. He turns around, his face enveloped in horror and he shows off what is in his hand.

"That's Taeilie's phone!" Haechan practically screams out and dashes to YangYang.

"Whoa! Guys, Taeil doesn't just leave his phone on the ground like that..." Mark remarks.

Haechan snatches the phone from YangYang and peers into the cave. He can see the torches on the back wall that illuminate the small dome-shaped area. It looks just big enough to cram twenty-three members of NCT into it.

"Taeilie..." Haechan whimpers, clutching his hyung's phone to his chest.

YangYang swallows hard. "This sure looks like Taeil-hyung was kidnapped."

"We don't have enough proof of that yet," Johnny states and gestures at Haechan. "For all we know, he's in on this and he wants us to believe it as the MC."

"IS THIS ENOUGH PROOF?!" Kun roars, picking up a piece of paper on a rectangular table at the back of the dome-shaped cave.

Haechan's heart plummets more at the sight of a scattered cluster of letters that form a stereotypical ransom note. Taeilie...my Taeilie...

"Fine, smartass," Johnny grumbles.

"What does the note say?" Taeyong questions, looking around him with cautious terror.

Kun scans the note and then reads it aloud to them:

"Greetings Neo Culture Technology bastards! By now you've entered the point of no return--"

WinWin gasps and jumps as the bars slam down from the ceiling to the floor right behind him. Like no more than an inch from where he stands.

"Oh...f this! No!" YangYang remarks. "I'm not going to be drugged by some creep."

"Yeah, I'm out!" Taeyong says, throwing his arms up. "I didn't sign up for heart attack content. They swore that the haunted house was the last one!"

Doyoung whimpers, his hands grasped together and his eyes wide and full of fright. "I-I-I don't want to do this either."

Kun looks at them. "We NEED to calm down and do this. For Taeil. He'd do it for us."

"Pfft," Jungwoo snorts.

Kun ignores him and continues in his speech, "Whatever happens, whatever this is, we need to work together and solve this and save Taeil."

Haechan nods his head. "I'll save Taeilie!" He thrusts his arm out into the air over his head with a massive smile on his face. "Sun and Moon forever!"

"Is that the whole note?" Mark inquires.

Kun shakes his head. He resumes reading the note:

"Shocked you guys, didn't I? I shocked your precious Moon Taeil too. He never saw it coming. In this season of NCT Universe, you are all going to work together to solve my mystery. It's simple, just find clues, crack riddles, unearth the truth.

Then, and only then, will you be able to find and rescue "Master Moon."

So, boys, where is Moon Taeil?

Good luck."

The torches flicker eerily.

"Poor Taeilie," Haechan whines, his eyes teary and his enthusiasm and energetic smile wiped away.

There's silence and then...

"Well, I guess we'd better get split up and get started," YangYang shouts out, pounding a fist into the palm of his hand. "Let's find Taeil-hyung!"

"Let's roll," Jaemin exclaims, thrusting his index finger into the air.