Hunt

file six: hyn

I stepped inside the warehouse as quietly as a cat.

Seulgi and Jennie waited outdoors with bated breath, watching me for any updates. I glanced around the interior, gun drawn and cocked. The frequency of my knife usage had gone down a lot after I'd learned the hard way that it was better to have a weapon that covered a longer range in situations like this.

It wasn't dark like I'd expected. The place had been emptied out—probably recently, judging from the cigarette butt near the entrance, but there was a single lightbulb in a lampshade-like hold hanging from the middle. Rusted-iron catwalks ran around the room, tall shelves separating sections of the floor like barriers, and there was the smell of decay in the air. Not the regular kind of decay, with old food or chemicals, but the stench of putrid flesh. The smell of death.

"Someone's been in here recently," I murmured, turning towards the girls. There were a lot of things weighing down my mind, but the smell had worked to make me more focused on the matter at hand. "This is a torture chamber, probably. Smells like dead people in here."

Seulgi's narrowed eyes met mine. "Are you sure you want to go in alone?" she asked.

Jennie's brow furrowed. "Wait—she's going in alone?" she echoed, then turned to me with a frown. "You're not going in there by yourself. No way. Not after all those years I spent keeping your ass alive."

"You thought I was dead for two years," I reminded her flatly. "There are too many places to check out; if we don't split up there's a much bigger chance of them smelling something wrong and splitting out of here. Let me go in—I'll be back out in ten minutes, tops."

"I can't let you do that," she said, her lips thinning.

"Look, I know what I'm doing, all right?" I snapped, facing her. I knew I was being harsher than necessary, but I couldn't help the way I behaved. All the pent-up worry and anger and frustration had to go out somewhere, and I had been left aching to get some action so I had someone else to take it out on, someone who probably deserved it. "Maybe even better than you. I've been doing this for years and I lived every single time." I set my jaw. "And it was just the two of us."

Seulgi shrugged, slipping in her balisong. "She's right."

"I know she is," Jennie murmured. "But there are people counting on me to get you out of here unharmed."

"Who? Your dysfunctional duo?" I quipped, barely holding back a snarl. "If I die, all the fucking better for them. One less mindfuck to deal with."

"Them," Jennie agreed. "And your siblings." I stiffened, and she sighed frustratedly. "Vernon told me to stick with you. No matter how much you think they hate you, Hwang, they don't. Don't fuck this up for them—or for any of us."

I pulled back, holding my breath in surprise, but Jennie simply shook her head. "If you're not back in ten minutes—and if you don't respond to a call, we're coming right in there to get you," she said. She turned on her heel and marched away, and after a brief look of amusement, Seulgi followed.

Mind still brimming with confusion, I entered the warehouse again, inching along the walls to get to a safer vantage point. Vernon had told Jennie to stick with me. Taeyong had still been nice enough to try offering me a few words every now and then, but all I'd gotten from Vernon was a stony silence. It was a little hard to believe.

A little too hard to believe, I thought as I glanced around for a side door or a stable-enough-looking catwalk so I could go higher and view the floor from a suitable height. She had probably been lying, maybe to make her point come across as stronger, but the thought still made my skin feel like it was alive with nerve ends.