Teasing out Kyungsoo’s trail of breadcrumbs was a test of Jongdae’s patience. The NIS quarantine analysts had based their search around Kyungsoo’s incendiary partner-in-crime, expecting the arsonist to return to his old habits. Jongdae had skimmed through their files for insights, but their so-called psychological profile was contradictory nonsense. The profile had been cobbled together from Interpol reports during the Virus manhunt, militia briefings from failed attempts to neutralize Phoenix, and police transcripts of Kyungsoo’s interviews with Yeol. Each painted a wildly different picture, yet they’d somehow been stitched together into an textbook portrait of a remorseless sociopath with an obsession with fire. Jongdae scrapped the profile in frustration and started his search from scratch.

Polite convenience store bun heists, thefts from roadside clothing vendors, stolen cars, freshly washed and fueled, parked near cross-country bus stops— taken separately, they were barely crimes at all. Even the descriptions of the culprits varied, sometimes a very tall woman, other times a school-age child in uniform. Without knowing about Kyungsoo’s sticky- adolescence, there was no way to link the incidents to the fugitive pair. But Jongdae had been policing Kyungsoo for nearly two decades. He zoomed in on a grainy CCTV image from a convenience store in the middle of nowhere, picking out Kyungsoo’s features from the gray blob fleeing the scene.

“Not his best angle,” Baekhyun noted, plopping heavily in to the seat next to him. Jongdae hastily snapped his laptop shut.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in first class?” He rose out of his seat, anxiously searching the aisles of the massive plane. Where Baekhyun appeared, Sarai was sure to follow. If she found out Kyungsoo’s hideout, Jongdae would lose what little leverage he had over the situation.

“The witch is taking her beauty sleep,” Baekhyun said, pulling a lollipop out of his pocket. “She’ll be out for another two hours and forty-three minutes.”

Jongdae relaxed into his seat, eying the skinny young man beside him. “That’s a very specific number.”

“It was a very specific dosage.” Baekhyun slurped noisily on his candy, mischief sparkling in his eyes. “Wanna see a magic trick?” He rubbed his hands together slowly in a circular motion. “Watch closely,” he said, the lollipop stick wobbling in the corner of his mouth. “Prepare to have your dreams come true!”

Jongdae suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. “Are you planning to make yourself disappear?”

Baekhyun threw him a unreadable look, his long fingers weaving together in an intricate pattern. Glittering specks of light danced across Jongdae’s vision, and he blinked, then gasped. Sarai’s phone dangled from Baekhyun’s fingertips, just like... Holy jeez, this kid is magic.

“And for my final act,” Baekhyun wiggled the phone enticingly, as he slid from his seat to stand in the aisle. “I’ll disappear.”

“Wait!” Jongdae lunged across the empty space and seized Baekhyun’s wrist, peeling the phone from his hand. As a rule, he didn’t trust slippery, secretive people, but his instincts were screaming that there was something important on that phone. He tapped the dark screen, sighing when a prompt for a retina scan blinked up at him. Of course. Only pure-minded altruists gave away things for free, and Baekhyun’s motives were as pure as swamp water.

Baekhyun sidled back into the seat, leaning on Jongdae’s armrest. “I have a proposal,” he said in a strawberry-scented whisper.

“Let’s hear it.”

“We ditch the babysitter when we land, and then I’ll unlock the phone.”

Jongdae barked a laugh. “Sarai will rip the beating heart from my chest when she finds us.” He shook his head and tossed the phone back to Baekhyun. “No deal.”

Jongdae settled back in his seat, waiting as Baekhyun pouted down at the phone in his lap. If Baekhyun just wanted to escape his chaperone for a wild night in Seoul, he didn’t need Jongdae’s help. He appeared and disappeared all the time, and Sarai and the director simply shrugged it off with a level of weary indifference that could only be born from long practice. He’d come to Jongdae this time because he was planning something risky.

Baekhyun tugged at his bottom lip, then held the phone close to his face. He held out the phone wordlessly as the lock screen flashed green in acceptance and scrolled away to reveal a map. Jongdae leaned over the tiny screen, squinting as he recognized Korea’s eastern coastline. A red bio-hazard symbol was pinned over a small cluster of villages, but before he could read the town names, Baekhyun pulled the phone away, re-locking it with a swipe of his finger.

“We land in three hours.” Baekhyun stood, leaving the locked, useless phone behind. “When you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

He tipped a salute with his lollipop as he backed away, and Jongdae’s heart sank.

Maybe Sarai didn’t know what she had. Maybe those villages were the site of a random vivus outbreak, completely unrelated to Kyungsoo at all. Maybe that biohazard symbol was just Baekhyun’s ploy to get something he wanted, a lucky shot in the dark, and there was no threat at all. Maybe the militia was already on its way to reduce those villages to dust in their single-minded quest to eliminate Phoenix. Jongdae couldn’t risk Kyungsoo’s life on maybes, and Baekhyun knew it.

He found Baekhyun stretched out on a full-length seatbed, pretending to sleep, surrounded by lollipop wrappers. Sarai was lying still as death in the next seat, a half-empty glass of orange juice on her tray table. Jongdae dropped the phone on top of Baekhyun’s smug face, deriving dark satisfaction from his yelp of surprise.

“Stick by me when we go through customs,” Jongdae told him. “Once we’re clear of the airport, you and I will have words.”