Dark Matter | JJK

45. Choosing Sides

She was here.

He had been looking for her from the moment he stepped foot out of his door that night, wishing he could reach out to her fragments that clouded his conscious and make her appear before him, real and whole and his. It was like that sometimes. She was imprinted on his very soul, she and her parts – the slope of her nose peeking above the spine of a hardcover leading to the defined arches of her eyebrows; the silkiness of her hair between the crevices of his fingers, the way her lips would curl slowly, knowingly, while he stole glances at her across a crowded room. Maybe it was his bewitched heart controlling the reigns, but she was unearthly, too beautiful, too much for him – and it led him to question, in the times when he was alone, if she was real.

But now, she was here. In front of him. Real.

"Petra?" he called, reaching for her, hand stretching imploringly in her direction. She was here, but why was she standing there, with the enemies?

"Petra –"

Someone restrained him with a tight grip on his arm and he protested. He ran his gaze around, watching the plethora of eyes that were trained on her every moment. They were looking at her weird. Why were they looking at her like she was stranger when she was here, unscathed, unharmed, still his? But just as a relieved sigh left him at the sight of her, he realised she was not looking at him.

Why wasn't she looking at him?

"Well, well, well," Gwonhan said, lips quirking upwards with mirth. "Look who finally decided to make an appearance. Do you see all these guns your people are pointing at me? Any later and you might've been left to deal with my dead body."

Petra's face remained expressionless as the surface of a stone. Motioning to the crates of J.0 that the guards were still carrying on her either side, she said, "I've kept my end of the deal. Now you keep yours."

"What deal?" Jungkook found his own voice, stepping forward. "What's going on here? Petra –"

He was cut off when Gwonhan flicked his wrist and the helicopter doors were thrown open from inside, and a guard pushed out a man and woman down the landing skid. The man wore grimy plaid trousers and a cream coloured tunic, eyes squinted in fear as he held by the shoulder a woman who looked nearly as old as him, quivering in a beryl blue dress tattered at the hem, gripping onto to the man as they surveyed the foreign surroundings.

A gasp tore past the lips of the girl a few feet away from him, her stony expression contorting into grief as she reached for the couple. "Eomma, appa –"

"Oh, no," Gwonhan remarked, shaking his head as he strategically positioned himself between Petra and her parents. Petra stopped in her tracks. "You know that's not how it works."

Petra scowled, fists clenched tightly by her sides. Jungkook wanted to reach for her and hold her, run away with her to any place but this one, but something about her stance kept him rooted to the spot. He watched from afar as a hundred emotions flickered in her eyes before they settled back on their steely, resolute blankness. She turned away from her whimpering parents, nodding at the helicopter.

"Take the crates in," she told the guards.

"What are you doing?" Jungkook demanded, stepping in front of one of the guards only to be shoved aside as they continued to advance. "Where the hell are you taking my antidotes?!"

Unperturbed, the line of guards disappeared from in front of him, leaving him face to face with Petra, and he realised that she was finally looking at him. God, she was finally looking at him and Jungkook could have sunk to his knees right then and there, screwed his eyes shut till the world around him disappeared into nothingness and only the two of them were left, only him and her. But before he think any further, Petra walked backward until she stood to the right of Gwonhan but a step in front of him, facing Jungkook and the troop of armed soldiers locked in position behind him.