House of Cards | Bulletproof book 2 | A BTS Gang AU

35: I See You

Even as I began to regain consciousness, the blackness didn't leave me. I knew my eyes were open because I could feel them blinking, but I was blind. Just before panic set in, I heard a familiar voice.

"Stay calm. It takes a minute for your vision to clear."

I gasped into the emptiness as Kai's voice came to me like a lullaby and instantly I was shaking with the onslaught of emotions filling me.

"You're alive," I choked out between the tears running down my face. My vision was just starting to come back enough that I could see light and blurry shapes. The room itself was dark anyway, so the only thing I could make out was a body on the opposite side of me.

"If you can call it that," Kai said softly. His words echoed off the hard walls and floor around us. "Why did you come? I told you to stay away."

"Well...you didn't tell me so much as you told the guys." I was trying for a joke, but it fell flat. My vision had mostly cleared, though there was still a weird aura around Kai's body when I tried to focus on him. I blinked a few times and tried to wipe my eyes, only to realize that I was chained to the stone wall behind me. When I looked back at Kai, I noticed he was as well. There was about six meters between us, so there was no way to get my hands on him and see if he was okay. When I tried to use my powers, it was like I was in Yoongi's lab all over again. Nothing came out. I tried to keep myself from panicking by focusing on Kai.

"You know what I mean, Natalia."

"I told you not to call me that anymore."

Kai groaned and leaned his head back against the shadowed wall. I was so relieved to see him alive that I didn't care if I was pissing him off.

"You were always so difficult," he mumbled.

"Were? What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing." He looked back at me and smiled softly. "So do you have a plan for how to get out of here?"

"Um," I said, looking up and around the room. My eyes felt like they wanted to cross. The harder I tried to focus, the harder it got. "I hadn't really thought that far. This isn't exactly how I planned on finding you."

"So are the Seven Kings coming for you? Did they put a tracer on you or anything?"

I looked back down at Kai. He smiled weakly at me again. His arms were suspended over his head, raising his shirt enough that I could see he wasn't badly injured. He wasn't injured at all, in fact. His voice sounded haunted, but it was hollow as well. If he had been locked in here and tortured like it seemed on the video Hakyeon sent, why wasn't he in worse shape? Warnings began flashing in the back of my mind. Something wasn't right.

"Yes," I lied. "They put it in when I first started working for them."

"Where?"

"In my hip."

Kai's eyes flashed down to my hips before meeting mine again. "Why are you lying? I'm just trying to get us out of here."

"I'm not lying. Why would you think I am?" My heart rate was ticking higher. Had he really been working with them all this time? Was he just tricking me into giving him the information they were looking for?

"Because there's nothing in your hip."

"How do you know?"

Kai leaned his head back and groaned. "This isn't working," he said more to himself. Then he started rattling the chains around his wrists, moving his hands around roughly. A few seconds later, the chains fell away and he pushed up from the dirt-covered floor. His white, button-down shirt fell away from his chest a little, revealing perfectly unbroken, tanned skin. The shirt and the black dress slacks he wore were barely dirty. He hadn't been tortured lately. Maybe not at all. His video had been a trap. My stomach twisted in knots as the tears threatened to spill over again. I bit my lip to hold them back, settling a deadly glare on Kai's beautiful face in an attempt to hide my true emotions.