I sulked in Jungkook's room until the smell of warm food and my own hungry belly pulled me out. Thankfully, everyone else was too busy eating or preparing for their day to bother picking on me more for what had happened earlier.
Sighing, I sat down in the empty chair beside Taehyung. Without a word, he slid a plate over and started piling food on top of it.
"Thank you," I said meekly as I took the serving spoon from his hands. When our skin touched, I immediately felt my face flush. He grinned down at me with his lower lip between his teeth, but kept his mouth shut, which I was grateful for. I wasn't sure if I was a virgin or not before last night, but I didn't think so. One thing I was certain about, though, was that Taehyung definitely wasn't. The way he handled me and my body was too good for it to have been his first time. And the more I caught myself thinking about the way he'd touched me, the hotter my face got. Thankfully, Yoongi rescued me from my salacious thoughts.
"You want to come work with me today?"
I stopped everything and looked up at him with my mouth hanging open. I glanced around that the faces left at the table. No one seemed like they were going to argue. Yoongi put his tablet down and propped his arm on the table while he watched me with sleepy eyes and waited for my answer.
It's not that I didn't like Yoongi. I just didn't know anything about him. He was always so quiet and we'd barely had any interaction with each other so far. He'd always been busy in his own little world when everything was going on. I snapped my mouth shut and smiled.
"Sure. Sounds like a good idea." If nothing else, maybe it would give me the chance to learn more about him. Or to help him figure out something about me.
"Good," he said, grabbing his dishes. "When you're finished making moon eyes at lover boy over there, meet me down in the lab."
My smile turned into a scowl as I glared a hole in the back of his head. Taehyung chuckled beside me and shook his head.
"Don't worry about Yoongi-hyung. He's always grouchy in the morning. He's a great guy when you really get to know him."
"So you say," I grumbled, watching the older man stalk out of the room.
"Taehyung's right, but you probably don't want to keep him waiting, either," Jin added, pointing at my plate with his chopsticks. I sighed and focused on shoveling as much food into my mouth as humanly possible. I didn't need to give anyone a reason to hate me since I was still the new girl.
Once finished, I nodded at the guys and grabbed my dishes, washing them quickly before heading off the way I'd seen Yoongi go. I hadn't had much time to explore the house since coming there and definitely didn't know my way around too well. All I had to go on was that he'd said to meet him "down" in the lab, so I took that to mean he was in the basement. I poked around until I found the stairs again and then bounded down them. I vaguely remembered where the pool and gym were and figured Yoongi's lab had to be somewhere else. Knowing what little I did about him, I didn't figure he would want to be anywhere close to where noise was going on, so I turned in the opposite direction and started looking behind random doors.
The basement was deceptively large. Their house was like an iceberg. Only a little bit was on the surface, but it seemed like most of the day-to-day stuff was underneath. I opened a door to my right and gasped. Inside was just a plain white room with a single chair bolted to the floor. Ropes, chains, and shackles hung from the ceiling and rested on the floor by the legs. The smell that hit me was the worst part, though. My nostrils were assaulted with the scent of disinfectant and something metallic that I couldn't quite identify.
"No, no, no. This isn't it," Jimin said, pulling me out of the room and closing the door softly. I looked up into his soft smile and let him lead me farther down the hall. "That's not the room you want to be in." He tipped his head and pursed his lips. "Unless you've got some kinks. In which case, I might like to help you with those."
"What is that room for," I asked, ignoring his comment about kinks.
He looked down at me, his eyes alight with mischief. "I'm sure that's not a question I need to answer."
"You torture people here?"
"Surely that can't be that surprising to you."
I looked ahead and thought. Honestly, it wasn't. I just hadn't expected to come face-to-face with their literal torture chamber. At the end of the hall, we took a right and stopped in front of a door that had a mat on the floor that read "I don't fucking care" on it in bold, black letters.
"This is the room you want." Jimin's hand was on the small of my back as he turned the knob.
"Are you sure about that," I asked sarcastically. He just grinned wider without looking at me and opened the door, pushing me inside.
"We're here, hyung. Where are you?"
Machines and boxes were piled around everywhere as soon as you walked in. There was just a tiny walkway in between it all leading around to the right. A small crash came from that direction, so Jimin hurried towards it with me in tow behind him. I wasn't sure how anything could get done in that mess, but I kept my thoughts to myself. I followed Jimin through another set of doors into a small room that was much cleaner.
The walls and floor were black and the only light in the room came from a series of computer screens hanging from the wall to our left. I didn't see Yoongi right away until Jimin walked forward and kicked a shoe beside a desk chair. Yoongi cursed and the computer screens went staticky for a second. He was all the way under the desk and control panel. Jimin crouched down with his arms on his knees and tipped his head to the side to see what Yoongi was doing.
"You good, hyung?"
"Peachy fucking keen."
"What are you doing?"
"One of my circuits keeps overloading. I've upgraded the damn thing six times and something keeps frying it."
"Here. Let me help."
Jimin turned his head to look at me with an amused grin on his face. Yoongi scoffed from his hole.
"What can you do? You don't even remember your name."
For reasons I couldn't explain, their doubt made me bristle and my blood boil. I pushed around Jimin and grabbed Yoongi's ankles. The older boy yelled a colorful mix of obscenities at me, but he couldn't really do anything from his position. Jimin stood and stepped back, never losing his amused smile, as I pulled Yoongi out from under the panel.
"What the fuck? What do you think you're do--" Yoongi's tirade was cut off as I snatched his tools out of his hand and dove under the panel before he could stop me. I flipped over on my back and stuck his flashlight between my teeth so I could get a good look at what I was dealing with.
"The fuck is this," Yoongi asked Jimin, motioning towards me. The younger didn't respond with anything more than a chuckle and a shrug of his shoulders. Yoongi crossed his arms over his chest and glared down at me. I just snorted and moved some cords around to see if I could find the problem. I really hoped all my bravado wouldn't be for nothing. I didn't want to look like an idiot in front of the guys. I needed them to respect me.
"Ah." I sighed in relief. "Here's your problem." Yoongi shifted on his feet and crouched down to see what I was talking about. He dipped his head to the side and looked at the bundle of wires I pointed to with the light. "You've got too many components going to this one unit right here. It's pulling too much power for the harness junction. You got something bigger to replace it with?"
Yoongi didn't say anything, he just stood and walked out of the room. I thought for a minute that I'd royally pissed him off, but then I heard rummaging in the other room before he shuffled back in and handed me what I needed. Within a couple minutes, I had the new equipment wired up. I rolled to my side and wiggled out from under the panel. Jimin reached out a hand to pull me up. Yoongi walked over to the side and flipped a switch that turned on the rest of the computer screens. Everything hummed to life. No glitches. I sighed again. Yoongi plopped down in his chair and got to work. I looked at Jimin but he just shrugged again.
Yoongi turned around and looked at me. "You gonna sit, or not?"
Jimin chuckled softly. "That's about as close as you're going to get to approval, so take it and run."
I slid into the chair beside Yoongi as Jimin made his way to the door. "Play nice, you two," he said in a sing-song voice before the outer door slammed shut behind him.
Yoongi was quiet for a few minutes as he messed around with the stuff on his screens. He kept shooting me glances out of the corner of his eye, though. After a few minutes, he sat back in his chair and sighed. "I guess you did a good job."
"Um...thanks?"
"I'm better with software than I am hardware."
I laughed a little. "I'm the opposite. I used to hot wire cars when I needed a warm place to sleep. I'm not sure how, but I know electronics."
Yoongi swiveled his chair around so he could look at me. He rubbed his chin with his index finger and thumb for a moment before jumping up and shuffling over to something behind me. "Come here. I've got something I've been working on for a while that I can't seem to figure out. Want to take a look?"
I hopped up and walked over to him, careful to school my features so he wouldn't see how excited I was. I wanted desperately for him to approve of me. He pulled out a stool for me and pointed me to something that looked like a giant metal box.
"It's a holoscanner. I've had it for a while, but it's not worked right the whole time. The projection is grainy and impossible to make out."
I took the small drill he handed me and got to work taking out the screws that held the outer panel onto the box.
"Before you get started, though, let me get a blood sample."
I stopped what I was doing and cocked an eyebrow at Yoongi. He gave me a big, gummy smile and raised his hands in defense. "You wanted to know who you are. I can run a few programs while you're working on that."
"Oh, okay," I said, extending my hand for him to prick. He collected a sample into a tiny vial and then handed me a cotton ball to hold on my finger until the bleeding stopped. I checked after a minute and went back to work on the machine.
"So you don't have any clue where you came from or who you were," Yoongi asked after a long silence.
"No. Nothing. I kind of figure that's why I was naked when I woke up. Wherever I came from, whoever knew me, they didn't want me to be able to trace anything back to them."
"Nothing about that sounds good. You know that, right, Morgan?"
I nodded. "Yeah. I know. I've had a lot of time to think about it. If I was just some regular person, why would someone go through all the trouble to make sure I couldn't come back?"
"But if they were so worried about you coming back, why bother to leave you alive at all? Honestly, it sounds like an operative kind of thing."
"But why would they leave me so unprepared to perform a job," I wondered aloud as I worked my arms into the labyrinth of wires and circuit boards inside the projector.
"You don't look unprepared to me."
I looked back at him as he stared intently at what I was doing, then turned and went straight to the processor and graphics board to see if they were the problem. After running a few diagnostics, they tested fine, so I worked back into the mess and pulled out the power supply. It tested bad.
"Looks like it's your power supply."
Yoongi shook his head. "I already thought of that. I replaced it two weeks ago. It's still doing the same thing."
"Well, I don't know what to tell you," I said, showing Yoongi the readout. "It's testing bad."
I thought about what he'd said about me not being unprepared as he went to get another power supply. At the same time, I wondered what could be draining the charge on a new power supply. If there was a redundancy system, that could do it, but I didn't see any indication of latent charge in the system after removing the primary. I would hate to be wrong about that because as soon as I got back in there, I'd be in for a powerful shock, but then I got distracted by a flashing light on one of Yoongi's screens. He saw it too as he walked back in, handing me the new component without looking in my direction. I started to reinstall the equipment as he looked at the screen.
"Holy fucking shit," he breathed as he slid into his chair.
I turned to look at him instead of paying attention to what I was doing. When the first licks of electricity jumped into my fingers, the only thought I managed to get out was to curse myself for not checking for a redundant system. The electricity reached my heart before I could even scream out in pain. I felt it stutter and stop in my chest just before everything around me went black.
My kids are out of school today and tomorrow, so maybe I'll be able to bank some chapters. Would y'all rather me post them all at once or space them out, if I'm able to get a lot written?
As always, thank you SO MUCH for reading! It makes me so happy to see new reads and votes. Y'all just don't even know...