"I can barely believe this," Ten said.

Jae shrugged. With some difficulty, he opened another shelf from the bookshelves and slid out a mound of heavy-looking notebooks. Dust flew from the tops of the notebooks as he set them down with a thump on the floor, making Baekhyun—who had been sitting cross-legged on the floor—sneeze heartily.

"If it helps, I didn't believe it at first, either," Jae said, as Baekhyun pulled a dusty old notebook from the pile and opened it with caution. "It's a crazy theory, I know, and I've been the butt of many a joke online from people who have read my magazines." He gestured to the open laptop he had taken from his backpack. "I've gotten used to it, though. At least now I can go to sleep knowing I helped the City's superheroes."

"Why don't you just publish the photos?" Ten asked. The four had been sitting in the basement of the innocent-looking diner for a few hours now, looking through the loads and loads of material Jae and his partner—the waiter they had met upstairs in the diner—had collected over the years. "There's so much proof here you could actually start a proper investigation. That way you could even get some attention for your magazine."

"I didn't create the magazine for attention, I did it to spread awareness about these guys," Jae said defensively. "And then, I can't release that information. It came straight from the central police department. I'm not a journalist: I can't gather data through illegal means and get away with a simple 'I can't reveal my source'."

"All right, all right, no need to get worked up," Ten muttered. He, like the other two of his team, were supposed to be looking through the documents and evidence for anything useful in their hunt for the Foursaken, since the material was too heavy to be carried around and they didn't want any more accidents befalling them on the way back to the building. What Ten was actually doing was looking through the sketches Jae had made of the people.

"We ourselves keep a lot of secrets from the police, so we can't exactly rebuke you for stealing files—especially when you're making good use of them," Baekhyun said with a smile that would put anyone at ease. He's good at this sort of thing, Ten thought, observing his leader for a couple more seconds before turning back to the drawings. "Why don't you try to convince your uncle to look into this, though?"

"First of all, he'd never believe me," Jae said, and Ten felt a pang of sympathy. "Second of all, as absurd as it sounds, I can't trust the police. If it had been any other simpleminded criminal I had been investigating, it wouldn't have been a difficult choice to make, but Irene...she's powerful. She's apparently also a beautiful zombie. I can't afford letting the police department in on this, knowing that there could be a source in there. A spy."

"I'd say that was a far-fetched idea, but I've known you long enough to tell that you probably know what you're doing," Baekhyun said.

"You've known me for a grand total of four hours."

"Exactly. That's more than enough."

At that, Jae smiled. This was the first time he had smiled—properly, that is, none of the knowing or teasing half-smiles that he had handed out like flyers—and Ten felt pleased, though he knew it wasn't him who had made him smile.

"If I may ask, how did you come up with the term 'Foursaken'?" Ten asked. "It's interesting, and pretty innovative, too."

"Well, for the three years I've tracked them, there's been only four people involved. Not one person more," he said, and tapped a cut-out poster that he had probably Photoshopped himself he had stuck on the board. "Irene, the goth girl, the ice angel, and this fox dude."

"I told you there was a foxlike guy at the bar," Lucas said under his breath.

"And you don't have names for any of them?" Baekhyun asked. He was looking through the loose papers with a frown, not looking up once. Ten wondered if the lightning he had summoned earlier came from inside him. "Locations? History?"

"The goth girl used to work as a barmaid in a club that has shut down since," Jae answered. "I tried contacting the other workers for more, but the only one I got to was a guy who seemed to have absolutely no memory of her."

"Possible memory-wiping powers," Ten said, only half joking.

Baekhyun nodded seriously, not having noticed the lightness in his tone. "Are they all supposed to be...dead?"

"Irene, yes, and the other girl was supposed to have died in a plan that crashed over sea, so no bodies again," Jae said. "The fox guy has no records in the police databases, and I can't access those online, but I have a feeling that even if you try to look for him there will be no matches. As for the ice angel..." He paused for dramatic effect. "He seems to not exist in the records?"

Lucas looked up with a frown. "What?"

"No birth records, no death records, no facial matches, absolutely no history." Jae touched the fingertips of one hand together and them spread them out to indicate an explosion. "He is, quite literally, a nobody."

Ten raised an eyebrow. "Interesting."

"But you didn't let me finish my narrative," Jae said, raising a finger. "So, as far as I know, these guys are pariahs. Outcasts of one form or another. Which is where the forsaken part of the word comes from." He arched his eyebrows. "Unfortunately, I didn't name them."

"Who did, then?" Ten asked. "Your partner?"

"No," Jae said softly. "They named themselves."

Baekhyun turned to him with interest.

"When there was another disappearance a few months ago, we found the word graffitied on a wall," he explained. "You probably don't remember the freak gas explosion from back then, because there were no deaths, but I was there." His lios thinned. "I saw what I saw, and even if there's no concrete proof of whether the graffiti was their doing or some everyday vandal's, but it was there, and it was pretty fitting. So, yes, they're the Foursaken now."

"I don't think it was their doing, honestly," Ten said. "They seem to be a pretty closed-off group, good at covering up their tracks." He turned his palms upwards. "They wouldn't want to announce who they were to the world, unless they were getting to the final part of their plan. And there is a final plan, I know. They wouldn't be abducting those people for no reason."

"Yes." Jae nodded. "That is, in fact, what brings me to the most important part of the case." He picked up a marker. "Up until the last few months, the disappearances were few, spread apart so as not to attract any unwanted attention. The most went up to about seven or eight disappearances a year. But recently, the numbers have gone up. Way up."

Lucas raised an eyebrow. "How much of a difference are we looking at?"

"Last month, the number went up to thirteen. Thirteen, in one month." Jae sounded even more worried. "That means they've reached the final leg of their plan, assuming there is one. This was directly after the gas explosion incident, too, because from that same place, five people were reported missing. They don't need to hide anymore, which means that they're preparing for something big."

Ten bit his lip. "That's probably why Taemin recruited us so late. He must have noticed the spikes." His eyes narrowed. "Not to act like I don't care ahout the potential end od the world, but can I ask you something?"

"Fire away."

"How did you guess we were superheroes?"

"You showed up literal hours after a totally random lightning storm." Jae grinned. "In the Mayfly, too. That was the bar where the first picture of Irene surfaced. And also, your highlighter-orange hair was kind of a dead giveaway."

He gestured to Baekhyun, who seemed embarrassed. "Maybe I'll dye it to a more natural color once we're done with this thing."

"Okay, that seems to be all the material we have to go through," Lucas said, voice muted. "Time to head out."

"Yeah, you guys have had a long day." Jae exhaled, putting his hands on his hips. "But you'll still have to help me clean this mess up before you go."

A sudden shaft of light shone on their faces, and Ten squinted at the door to the basement, which had just opened. It was the waiter standing at the entrance, which wasn't out of the blue, but as Ten looked more closely, he realized something was wrong. The man's face was pale, and he was standing extremely still.

Two figures emerged from behind him, both feminine. One of them held a gun to the waiter's head.

"We'll take it from here," said an airy voice, light, sweet, and poisonous as honeysuckle. Bae Irene cocked her head to the side and smiled at them as if they were all old friends meeting after years. "Hello, boys. Having fun?"