KING

一 24

It was deathly still.

She didn't know how much time had passed since Hendery had disappeared into the shadows of the street with one last furtive glance in her direction, how many minutes it had been since Dejun and Yangyang climbed back over the wall, leaving no trace they were ever there.

A soft sigh left her lips when she glanced up at the sky, still a pitch black with no sign of lightening up.

Briefly, she wondered if Doyoung would search for her. There was no expected time for her to be back, but maybe he was waiting for her to walk through the lobby doors.

She doubted it, and regardless of whether he was, she could care less. Her mind was trained on the same cycle of thoughts, a vicious return and fading of the same voice repeating the statements.

"Kill Lee Donghyuck, quick and easy."

"I'm not like Ten."

"There are snakes everywhere."

She tipped her head back, letting it fall harshly again the wall, wincing at the sharp pain the action sent.

"Kill Lee Donghyuck."

Burning fury rose up in her like a tidal wave, fists clenching and relaxing at regular intervals.

She couldn't allow that.

An icy chill crept up the back of her neck as the weight of her realisation settled in.

She couldn't let it happen - she owed the entirety of this brief taste of freedom, a glimpse of what lay beyond dull gray cement, all to him.

After everything that happened, everything he had done for her over the years, she couldn't let him just die.

A lump formed in her throat at the prospect of losing him to a blade, a gun, any weapon, of having to watch him fall in Death's open arms with the flawless elegance he always moved with.

She had to warn him, she had to save him, just like he'd saved her from the brink of insanity brought upon from loneliness in that cold cell.

She couldn't let her friend die, because then she would never be able to live with herself.

But how could she warn him? She had no way of even getting to Limitless, and even if she did, what were the chances that she'd know how to break into the Palace- if he was even there? Being suspended meant he'd have returned home, and all she knew of his life was that he had two younger sisters.

Who could she ask to help find him before the assassins did?

Her eyebrows shot up when she recalled the break out, when Yuta and Ten had snuck into the second level. They would have had some sort of knowledge about Limitless in general.

Ten.

She paused in her attempt to stand up on shaky legs that had fallen asleep from being still for so long.

What was she meant to feel? Anger, sadness, despair that her friend had been associated with assassins, even might have been one, as alluded to by Hendery? Did she have the right to feel that way?

No, she thought, with a soft shake of her head. She didn't.

It was just the constant frustration, the dark wisp that hovered over her head, an incorrigible voice that reminded her of how little she knew about the world that was once meant to be hers. How she walked it's paths without knowing where they lead, how she placed blind trust in people with secrets they couldn't tell.