❤︎ Day 13 - 05:59 PM ❤︎

POV: 707 Mode

Seven and Yoosung had spent most of the day cuddling. After the emotionally charged discussion from last night, he wanted nothing more than to just cuddle his cute boyfriend and sleep, but duty called. Seven wasn't considered a top hacker for nothing, and after repairing the equipment he'd broken three days ago during his meltdown, he settled back into work while Yoosung used one of his older laptops to catch up on schoolwork.

He'd only been working for a short amount of time when he realized something odd in the data logs. Running a diagnostic on it, his breath caught in his throat as he realized just what he'd found.

"Yoosung...Yoosung! Come here!" Summoning his boyfriend over from where he was lying on the couch, Seven checked, then double checked his screen to make sure he wasn't hallucinating. "Look at that! Tell me I'm not making this up!" On his screen was a log of all the times that the RFA members had signed on to their phones. The very obvious ones were from the members checking in on the chat over the previous days, but there was one entry that didn't make any sense at all.

Although Zai's joining of their little hidden organization was quite abrupt, Seven hadn't hesitated to enter her in their system completely, which meant that her phone was connected to the logs as well. But the explosion had happened between six and seven PM, while the log showed that Zai had logged in to the app extremely late, past midnight. None of it made sense. Zai was supposed to have been in the apartment when it blew up, why would her phone have been activated when it should've disintegrated in the blast with the rest of the building?

"Oh..my goodness..." Yoosung pressed both his hands over his mouth as he looked at the screen. "Luciel..you don't think that..the hacker got to her first?" Seven felt like his heart was going to give out. It was something none of them had considered. What if the hacker had gotten to Zai's apartment before it blew up? She could be alive, waiting for them to save her. Seven tried not to beat himself up about it, but he still wished he'd checked the logs sooner. Quickly typing in a few commands, he tried to see whether or not the last known location of the phone was also in the data received from the phone's last transmission.

"I..it says that the last place the phone was used..was this lake, out in the middle of nowhere. It's not near any sort of civilization at all. Why would she be out there?" Seven could feel something like dread gnawing at his stomach. Yoosung was gripping his arm so tightly that he might even be cutting off the blood circulation, but Seven was too busy trying to get the exact coordinates of the phone to care. "We could probably go out there and check for ourselves. Should we tell the others?" Glancing at his boyfriend, he noticed the worry and resolve in his eyes.

"We should see what's there first before we tell everyone. I don't want to get their hopes up, especially Zen and Jaehee's." Seven could understand that. If they brought up the possibility to the rest of the RFA, it might give them a few moments where they could believe that Zai was still alive, but if they came up empty handed, the pain would be even worse the second time around. Seven didn't want that. Standing from his chair, and accidentally yanking Yoosung up as well, he downloaded the directions to the lake onto his phone before making his way to the garage. Pulling his keys off the wall, he turned around to face his boyfriend.

"It's a few hours drive from here, so you don't have to come if you don't want to." Seven didn't want to drag Yoosung along with him on a wild goose chase. Plus there was always the chance of the two of them finding a gruesome scene upon arrival. If he could spare the other from witnessing that, he would. It was not meant to be, however, as Yoosung shook his head and ducked back into the house for a moment only to return with a case of Seven's beloved soda and an entire box of chips.

"I'm coming with you! You don't have to do this alone, remember?" As if he could forget!

"If you're sure then. Let's go!" It had been a while since he'd last prayed, but as he hopped into the driver's seat with Yoosung by his side, he begged that they wouldn't find what they knew they might find.

❤︎ Day 13 - 10:36 PM ❤︎

POV: V Mode

V was exhausted. Jumin had dragged him to the doctor's office early in the morning, and he had been stuck talking about the procedure, the risks, costs (which Jumin assured him he would take care of personally), and the time it would take for V to regain usage of his eyes. The discussion had taken up most of the day, and by the time they left, it was already well into the afternoon. V loved Jumin, he really did, but the man could be incredibly overzealous when it came to things he cared about. Although he rarely showed any emotions on the outside, V knew that there was a constant storm in his mind that drove him to the extreme at times. Hopefully, they could work on that together in the future.

It was getting to the point where V hadn't even considered leaving for two days. It suddenly struck him that night after Jumin had confronted him over his feelings that he realized it. He wanted to stay. He wanted to be close to his childhood friend, now lover, and perhaps even one day, husband. V had already severed all his ties to Rika. His ex-fiancee had fallen so deeply into her own mind that not even he could help her. But with Jumin, he could feel safe and loved and appreciated. Although lost in his thoughts, he did notice when Jumin rushed into the room, voice frantic as he spoke to someone on the phone.

"What? Yes, I understand. We'll be there soon. Thank you." V turned to ask Jumin what was going on when he was hit in the face with a thick coat. "Please get dressed quickly, Jihyun, we have to be at Luciel's home within the hour." Bewildered, V pulled the garment off of himself and started to thread his arms through the sleeves.

"Jumin? What's happening?" He couldn't see the other man, but he could feel it when he got closer and pulled V up by his hands.

"There has been a rather...interesting update, to say the least. Luciel told me that he will explain everything once we're there, but he was quite insistent that we arrive sooner rather than later. Driver Kim is already outside, we have to leave now." It was difficult to put on a coat while you were being dragged along with only one arm free, but somehow V managed it. Then they were in Jumin's limousine and on their way to Seven's house. V was curious but also wary of the situation. If it was enough to have Jumin responding with this much urgency, it must be important.

❤︎ Day 13 - 11:03 PM ❤︎

POV: Jumin Mode

They'd arrived at Seven's house at three past eleven, and Jumin was out of the car with V in tow before Driver Kim had even parked properly. They hadn't been at the front step for more than a second before the door was thrown open by Yoosung.

"Hey! You're just in time!" Jumin grimaced.

"We are three minutes late-" Both he and V were pulled inside before he could finish his statement, and then the door was locked behind them. Both Zen and Jaehee were already there surprisingly, considering that Zen lived farther away from Seven's house than he did. Upon noticing their arrival, they both turned to look. Jaehee was lacking her glasses surprisingly, and Jumin could see the sharpness in her gaze. Trying not to flinch, he sat down on the empty side of Seven's couch and tried to ignore the honey butter chip crumbs sticking to his suit as he maneuvered V to sit next to him.

"So what have you brought us here for, Luciel?" The redhead was, unsurprisingly, sitting in front of his computer screens. Upon hearing Jumin's voice, he spun around, a gleam in his eyes.

"Okay! Now that we're all here! You know that I keep logs on when the members of the RFA log into the app for security reasons, right?" A round of nods from everyone. "Well, I was just checking them earlier when I noticed something really strange!" He turned back towards the screens and typed in a few commands that brought up a list of names and timestamps.

"The explosion at Rika's apartment occurred around this time, and you would assume that if Zai was in the apartment, her phone would be gone with her right?" The occupants of the room tensed as they considered Seven's words. "Funny thing is, when you scroll down to the later entries, there's this really interesting notification. It says that Zai's phone had accessed the RFA app at a time that was well past when the bomb went off." Everyone froze as the information sank in, and they realized just what Seven was implying.

Zai might still be alive.

"You mean there's a chance that-?" Zen almost rocketed out of his seat, his hands curled into fists at his sides while Jaehee held onto his arm, stunned. Jumin could see the other man beginning to tremble and tightened his own grip on V's hand. Seven pulled up a map on his monitors and zoomed into a photo of a lake taken by satellite.

"Yoosung and I drove out to this lake earlier today to check. We didn't want to give you guys any false hope." Jumin held his breath. They couldn't possibly be insinuating... "When we got there, we found tire tracks and a couple footprints, but nothing to suggest that there'd been a struggle of any kind. When we combed the lake, we found her phone." There was a collective round of gasps as Seven picked up a rather pathetic looking device from next to his keyboard and held it up. The phone was obviously water damaged, but Jumin knew that they wouldn't be looking at it if it wasn't important.

"So, the phone itself is completely trashed. Poor thing! It'll never work again. But-!" Seven grinned as he opened a folder on his computer to reveal a string of letters and numbers that...meant absolutely nothing to anyone else in the room since he was the only one who could understand it. "I managed to rescue the memory with my amazing technological skills! Turns out, the last time the phone was used, it was with a manual passcode entry, meaning it wasn't hacked or manipulated. Going off of everything else we know about the situation and the location, I can say with a large amount of certainty that Zai is most likely alive and not a hostage!"

The room burst into noise as Zen, Jaehee, Seven, and Yoosung started talking at the same time. Zen and Jaehee had obviously wanted to know why their girlfriend had staged her own death. Seven was making an attempt to further explain his discovery to the others, and Yoosung was trying to help his boyfriend explain, but was only succeeding in adding to the already existing cacophony. Feeling a light tapping against his side, Jumin put an arm around V's shoulders and leaned forward so he could hear him better.

"Jumin, if what Luciel is saying is correct then..." He nodded. There was one more variable to take into account here. Straightening up, but leaving his arm draped across his lover's back, Jumin coughed sharply to get everyone else's attention. Once the chaotic conversation had ended, he decided to say his piece.

"Luciel, I shall applaud you and Yoosung for your work. However, there is still the matter of what happened to the hacker. You've established that it is unlikely that she was kidnapped, yet we have no idea if she is still running from her pursuers or not, and that is only following the scenarios where she is still managing to evade them on her own." His words caused a heavy silence in the room as they processed his words. Even if Zai had gotten away, there was no guarantee she was safe now. Plus, with the loss of her phone, she had no way to securely contact the RFA and inform them of her whereabouts.

It wasn't his intention to make everyone so gloomy, but even Jumin felt a pang of remorse as he watched the strength leave Zen's legs, causing him to fall back against the cushions. Jaehee looked like her heart was breaking all over again. Yet, if there was one person who he expected to make an intervention, it certainly wasn't Yoosung.

"C-come on everyone! We can't give up now!" He'd jumped out of his seat and tried to fix his eyes on all of them at once with varying levels of success. "I mean- we have a sign that Zai is alive! If she's still doing her best to run away from the bad people who want to take her away, then isn't it our duty as her friends and-" He paused briefly to look at Zen and Jaehee. "More-than-friends, to help her? How will we do that if we're all just sitting here!? There must be something we can do to bring her back!" Almost immediately spurred on by Yoosung's words, Seven turned to access his keyboard once more.

"My cutie is right! The time for self-pity has passed. We haven't survived as a group for this long just by lounging about and doing nothing. I'll start uploading some of Zai's photos to any facial-recognition capable cameras within a certain distance of that lake. Maybe she hasn't gone too far for us to reach!" Seven started typing in a blur, and Zen and Jaehee looked at each other with resolve before standing up together.

"If there's anything we can do to help-!" Jaehee spoke first for once, her voice carrying a lot of emotions that Jumin felt unfamiliar towards.

"Actually, I wouldn't risk putting the word out on the street that Zai is missing since we don't know if she's still being followed, but if you two could keep putting out a strong face for everyone? I know it's hard when things are so uncertain, but a sense of normalcy doesn't hurt in these times." Seven was being uncharacteristically serious at the moment, but considering the circumstances, it was understandable. Spinning around to face V and Jumin, he let that mischievous smirk creep back onto his face. "As for the both of you! V, you can't see anything right now, so there's not a lot you can do, sorry. But Jumin! If you could use a little of that corporate power of yours to check out the local real-estate for places that might seem like good hiding spots?" Jumin nodded and pulled out his phone.

"I'll make a note to have a small team assembled tomorrow." He had to hand it to him, even if Seven was much too rambunctious for his taste most of the time, he did have some good ideas once in a while. "Anything else?"

"Not right now. Just sit tight and leave everything to me! I won't fail her a second time." Behind his glasses, Seven's eyes were focused on the screen before him, a new kind of resolve evident in the way he spoke and moved. As for Yoosung...

"This is great! We're finally making some progress! But I'm sure everyone is really tired right now so you should all go home before it gets really late." Jumin had to admit, the boy's positive attitude was infectious.

"The operation to save Zai has begun! Meeting adjourned!"