ZEROBASEONE Returns to Mnet's 'Hide and Seek 2' for Eerie Lab Survival Game

K-POP boy group ZEROBASEONE is stepping back into one of Mnet's most nerve-racking settings. The group will appear as the third featured participant on season two of the horror variety show "Hide and Seek 2," with its episode dropping on the 28th at 6 p.m. KST on Mnet Plus.

This time, the setting is an abandoned research lab filled with unsettling documents and traces of past experiments. ZEROBASEONE, which previously appeared in the water park episode of season one, returns to face a very different atmosphere.

A preview clip released ahead of the episode shows the members walking into the dimly lit lab and reacting to the shift in mood. "The vibe today is really scary," one member said. "Season two has definitely changed," said another, hinting at how much darker the show has become since their last visit.

The episode builds its story around a fictional sleep research center rumored to be creating "a life form that never sleeps." The tagger this time is "Subject 13," described as the only survivor of a special drug experiment. Subject 13 is extremely sensitive to sound, which forces the members to control not just their movements but every breath and footstep as they try to escape the lab.

Actor Lee Jung-hyun, who appears as the show's storyteller in the role of an unidentified researcher, sets the tension early. "Are you very nervous? Your breathing is rough. Subject 13 will like that," she warns. The camera catches Sung Han-bin freezing in place the moment he hears it.

The mission sounds simple but is hard to survive. ZEROBASEONE must avoid Subject 13 and stay alive for the full time limit, knowing that even a small sound can give away their location.

"Hide and Seek 2" is a horror variety format in which K-pop artists play a survival game for 4,444 seconds while trying to escape a mystery tagger.

The ZEROBASEONE episode drops on the 28th at 6 p.m. KST on Mnet Plus. It will also air on Mnet on the 29th at 11 p.m. KST.