Chen rang just as Yeonhee was reaching for her phone.

“There is some seriously vicious spyware on your computer rampaging through your hard drive and trying to activate the webcam and microphones,” he said.  “Unfortunately I can’t tell whether or not the security software I put onto your computer is working because I’ve lost all connection with it.”

Yeonhee informed him that the computer was dead.

“Well, I guess that solves some of our problems.”  He sounded a bit distracted.  “I should be able to recover data from the hard drive, but I’ll get a new laptop shipped to you because you’ll need it for your work anyway.”

By the time that had registered with Yeonhee and she had opened to complain, Chen had moved on.

“I really can’t stay long,” he said in a rush.  “I’m currently coordinating everybody on security duty—”

“Do you want to ring back when you’re free?” Yeonhee interrupted, a little concerned.

“Yeah, I’ll do that.  I just wanted to tell you to turn off all your devices connected to your email, because it looks like that was how it got into your computer.  Did you open a phishing email or something?”

The only thing Yeonhee could think of was the Antiroyo one, and she said so.

“,” was his response.  “They must have banked on you unsubscribing and hidden something in the link.  I’ll get back to you.”

“I need to turn my phone off, though.”

Sounding even more distracted than he had done before, Chen assured her he’d get hold of Sehun’s number from somebody and that he’d ring back around ten in the evening, when he was off duty.  Sehun was happy enough to surrender his phone for the greater good, but he was very concerned when Yeonhee mentioned what Chen had said about the microphones.

“Chen said they were trying to activate the microphones, not that they actually did,” Yeonhee tried to explain patiently, but Sehun was more cautious than her.

“He’s working at the moment and hasn’t had the chance to properly check,” he pointed out.

“Well, then they have five minutes of you and relationship problems,” said Yeonhee.  “It’s not like they got onto my phone where all my correspondence with Yixing is.”

“Yes, but I mentioned the prince at the end,” Sehun said, “and they might connect Jia to him if they didn’t get that—”

“There are hundreds of Jias, Sehun, it’s a very common name.”  Yeonhee bit her lip.  “Do you really think they might have overheard?”

Sehun shrugged.  “You’ll probably find out pretty quickly.  Chances are if they did it’ll be with the press by tomorrow morning.”

Yeonhee blanched.

“Why are they trying to hack your computer, though?” Sehun mumbled to himself.  “Do they already know?  Are they looking for proof?”

Chen sounded exhausted when he rang later.  Sehun stayed with Yeonhee as she took the call, and so she put it on loudspeaker as he told them what he knew.  From Chen’s analysis, it looked like the actual target of the virus had been Yeonhee’s phone rather than her laptop, because it had been tailored to an android operating system rather than a computer one.

“I can confirm two things,” he said.  “First of all, it’s spyware.  It was intended to sit on your phone and gather data.  It did that to a certain extent on your computer anyway.  Second of all, there was somebody at the other end actively controlling and manipulating it.  It changes very quickly and very experimentally as soon as it comes into contact with the cyber security I put on your laptop.  The system I set up has varying levels of firewalls, so when one is breached more get thrown up around the breach to contain the intrusion and eliminate it.  Basically what happened was the person on the other end realised there was unusually heavy-duty cyber security and decided to take matters into their own hands rather than letting the spyware run, because the spyware would have been annihilated without that intervention.  After a couple of minutes, this person tried to get hold of the webcam and microphone, either to get information or to try to work out what was going on with Yeonhee’s computer and who was protecting it, and then there was a fight between this person and the anti-malware as control over the webcam and the microphone went back and forth and the laptop overheated and died.”

Yeonhee let out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding.

“As far as I’m aware, the only connection to the prince on your laptop is via Easyl, but even then there’s nothing that ties it specifically to him, so I don’t think we’re in any danger on that front,” Chen said.  “If it had been your phone, well.”

“We might possibly have a problem,” said Sehun, leaning forward from where he was sitting on the desk beside Juan to talk to the phone.  “Yeonhee and I was chatting right by her laptop just before it went kaput and I mentioned the prince in the conversation.  Specifically, I asked Yeonhee if she could ask him to get Jia’s number for me.”

“Ah.”  Chen was silent for a moment.  “Well, my anti-malware programming did launch a probe back into the other person’s computer, so I can see what I can mine from that, assuming they aren’t yet aware of it.  If there are audio files, we need to worry.  If not, they won’t be able to prove anything.  All they can prove even if that part was recorded is that Yeonhee is on close speaking terms with his highness, which wouldn’t be great PR for Yeonhee.  There’s also the possibility that my programme was in control when you said that and so they didn’t hear on the other end anyway.”

“Why do you think they’re targeting Yeonhee like this?” Sehun asked curiously.

Chen yawned.  “Could be any number of reasons.  We can talk about them some other time – I want to look through this before I go to bed.”

They exchanged pleasantries and hung up, Sehun looking thoughtfully at his phone before he tucked it into his pocket and slipped down off the desk.

“I want to meet this guy in person,” he said when he caught the curious look Yeonhee was giving him.  “He sounds pretty intelligent.”

Ruffling Yeonhee’s hair, he wished her a good night and let himself out of the room.

It was raining on Monday morning, but there was nothing in the news about Yeonhee having any kind of connection to the prince, which made the weather seem less gloomy.  Her morning was taken up with the distraction of Mihae trying to figure out how to act around Sehun and then almost having a breakdown after lunch because Sehun was still being his usual self around her.  Yeonhee wondered if this had come from her cautiously telling Mihae that Sehun was disconcerted at Mihae’s sudden withdrawal of contact and Mihae had immediately had a paranoid ohmyGodheknows moment.  Chanyeol came to the rescue, telling Mihae that they needed to sign up for the marathon by the end of the afternoon if they were actually going to participate in it, and managed to distract her from her meltdown.  Yeonhee took a moment to find Sehun and tell him that Mihae had got over the silliness of trying to cut off contact with him completely and then headed out