1. Project IZ*ONE

Chapter 13 - The Labs

Two days ago...

"YURI! NO!" Those were the last words Yuri heard before being taken away by Jurina. The next few hours were a blur, but she at least registered they were moving her some place. She couldn't be too sure how far they'd traveled though because she'd lost consciousness at some point while being dragged through the dark.

When she woke up the first time, she was at the back of a van, tied and gagged, for obvious reasons. Jurina was gone, and she had two Korean guards with her. The hell? What are they doing with her?" She asked herself. Yuri struggled against her bonds, but the guards noticed. They looked at each other and laughed.

"What's so special about this girl anyway?" One asked his colleague. He looked at her with such contempt and hate, as if she were less than a human. Yuri shook around some more, managing to land a kick in the man's groin, causing him to grunt in pain.

"Why you little bitch!" He motioned towards her, but was held back by the second guard.

"Are you an idiot? You heard what the Japanese chick said, 'This girl is important'." Oh, I guess I'm special now. Yuri thinks while rolling her eyes.

"Aish, she never specified what shape she had to be in when she arrived." He moves closer and shoves Yuri towards the van windows, tinted black to hide from onlookers. "Not scared? It's no fun if you don't scream." The guard says menacingly. Just as he's about to take off the cloth covering her mouth, his partner grabs his arm and pulls him back. Yuri sighs disapprovingly. That idiot almost fell for it.

"I guess you are an idiot. Don't you also remember what her power is? We are under no circumstances, supposed to ungag her ourselves." The guard simply shrugs him off and settles back into his seat. While this happens, the other man takes out a set of syringes from a pack next to him and approaches Yuri.

"This won't hurt a bit..." He says, sarcasm evident in his tone. He plunges the needle into Yuri's neck, a sharp pain emanating from it, and she becomes woozy. Her eyelids begin to turn heavy, and as much as she tries to fight off the drowsiness induced by whatever drug that was, it gets the best of her, causing her to pass out once again.

When Yuri awakens, she finds herself in a cubic room with a concrete wall behind her, a glass barrier in front of her and metal bars on her left and right. She isn't bound and gagged anymore and was laying on an old rickety bed that didn't feel comfortable at all, so she got up and stretched. Where the hell am I? She thought.

Suddenly, she hears footsteps echoing towards her. Yuri makes sure to quiet down and wait to see what she's dealing with. Eventually, a Korean woman in a lab coat appears on the other side of the cell flanked by two Japanese soldiers. The woman looked familiar to Yuri, and she realizes it was the woman they'd met in the other base.

"You and your friends caused us a lot of trouble at the last base." The woman chides. "We're lucky we managed to compensate for our losses with you at least." She adds in a demeaning tone.

"Yah, you let me go this instant!" Yuri says, trying to muster up as much bravado and courage as possible. The woman just chuckles, clearly unaffected. She points to her ear and Yuri notices a fancy looking ear piece on both of them.

"I can't hear anything you say right now, but I'm sure you can hear me. Since your group destroyed what we were working on in the original base, we're going to have to recreate things, and you'll be very helpful with that." She punches in a code into what Yuri presumes is the lock, and the cell begins to open. Yuri takes this chance to shout more orders, but they all seemed unaffected. The two guards walk in and tie and bound her up again before escorting away. The sleek silver hall seems to go on forever, passing by many other cells, some empty, some containing more prisoners. More mutants. She presumes. They all looked very drained and tired, laying on their beds not really knowing what to do. She hoped that her stay here wouldn't be as long.