“Code names? Like in Inside Man? Dibs on Steve-o!” Baek Kyoung squealed, excited with the prospects of being able to get an alias.

“No, you can’t be Steve-o. Seriously this kid.” Danny shook his head, ignoring Teddy’s apparent amusement as he chuckled at the choice of name the young male wanted. “But, yea, code names. Just to cover our asses. That way we can keep our anonymity, especially if we have hostages involved.”

“I guess that officially sets up rule number two then.” Jinhwan chimed in. “Never reveal our real names.”

The chaos inside the bank was nothing in comparison to the “organized” efforts attempted on the outside. “Where the is my direct line?” Agent Seon-Woong Lee, team leader of the SWAT team that was dispatched, roared, his hands slamming onto the small table where the blueprint for HKG Bank had been spread open, various access points circled in red. The SWAT van was parked a block away from the bank, and served as the command center for the organized police efforts. “And where the hell is the surveillance footage? I want to see inside that bank now, or do I have to do everything myself?”

“I’m doing it now.” Agent Jung-Shik Kim answered back, swiveling around in his chair to face his computer screen, his fingers tapping away loudly on the all-black Dell keyboard. No one seemed bothered by Seon-Woong’s crude attitude, as their fearless leader was one of the main reasons why their SWAT team had been so successful in the past with hostage situations. Although they had no real proof that there was in fact a robbery in progress at HKG bank, the fact that the silent alarm had been triggered and there were reports of gun shots being heard coming from inside the bank, the police had to act in accordance.

“The line’s secure.” Agent Jin Choi informed his team leader as he handed him the phone receiver. “It’s ringing, sir.”

“Kim, tell me something good.” Agent Lee asked, waiting for some positive news from his resident computer expert, while the phone continued to ring in his ear. “And please tell me you blocked all outgoing signals.”

“Trying, sir. But they’ve got a pretty fantastic firewall up here blocking access into the surveillance cameras. It’s going to take me some time.” Agent Kim answered back, his eyes never leaving the computer screen.

“These guys definitely don’t seem like small-timers.” Agent Choi added, as he returned back to his previous task of finding a way into the bank to ambush the hostages-takers if need be.

---

“Talk to me, Spike. You’re my eyes and ears, what’s going on?” Teddy asked over the ringing of the phone, looking over at Jinhwan as he furiously typed away on his keyboard.

“SWAT just got on scene.” He quickly responded, before shouting out in a random outburst. “That’s right er, no one can hack my firewall.” Jinhwan pumped one fist into the air in victory when he managed to evade Agent Kim’s second attempt to infiltrate Jinhwan’s block, before slumping back into his chair quickly regaining his composure when he realized he wasn’t exactly alone. His eyes darted toward Alex, checking to see her reaction towards his outburst and was slightly relieved when found out that she wasn’t even looking at him and continued to press her blood-soaked sweatshirt down on the guard’s wound.  “Incoming call is a direct line coming from the SWAT van parked about a block away. From the looks of it, they haven’t made any big movements. They are just trying to establish the first contact with us.”

Teddy turned to Danny, who was waiting for Teddy to give him the final go-ahead to pick up the phone behind the teller window. “HKG Bank. Thank you for your continued service. How may I help you?”

Agent Lee furrowed his eyebrows, momentarily confused but quickly regaining his senses when Danny erupted into a bout of boisterous laughter on the other end of the line. “This is the police-”

“Well no , the little girl in here could have told me that. Tell me something I might want to hear before I hang up. You’ve got thirty seconds, Mr. Police Officer.” Danny smiled cheekily, although it couldn’t be seen behind his ski mask, as Teddy chuckled and shook his head at him. They were right to pick Danny to play the role of the negotiator on their end, as he would do a great job at keeping the cops on their toes.

Agent Lee clenched his jaw, realizing that today’s negotiations weren’t going to be a walk in the park, not like they ever were. Bringing his pen up to his lips, Seong-Woong pulled the cap off with his teeth, spinning the pen around and quickly jotted down on the blueprint in front of him. Jokester. “Well, what do you want to hear?”

Danny chuckled in response. “Trying to buy time are you, Mr. Police Officer? Hate to break it to you but your 30 seconds are up.” Before Agent Lee could get another word in, Danny hung up the phone, pleased with himself. He may not be great with math and computers like Jinhwan or technical things like Baek Kyoung, but he was smart in his own right. He once read a psychology book from cover to cover just for the hell of it without once falling asleep from extreme boredom. Well, not really for the hell of it, as it proved useful when negotiating with bank tellers and hostages, but it was a damn impressive feat for the man.

“.” Agent Lee groaned when he put the phone back into the receiver. “We’re dealing with more than one hostage-taker.”

“From the audio I just ripped from the call, I know there are two guys, possibly three.” Agent Kim added, giving up on trying to hack into the bank surveillance for the time being and instead trying to match the voice of the man Agent Lee spoke with that of samples on their national database.

Agent Lee turned over to look at Jin as he hunched over the blueprint, mapping out possible routes with a pencil. “At least tell me you have a plan B.”

---

Baek Kyoung stared at the steel vault door that once taunted him, armed with a new sense of confidence. Jinhwan’s ingenious algorithm managed to narrow down the number of possibilities to 150, accounting for the fact that the combination changed every few hours, so the codes he had tried earlier couldn’t technically be cancelled out. And hopefully, with a little bit of luck, the male was certain he could be able to find the right code. Closing his eyes and pressing his palms together, Baek Kyoung said a silent prayer before he randomly picked a combination on the paper Jinhwan had written for him and plugged it in.  1-2-7-4. The backlight on the small keypad glowed green, and Baek Kyoung could have sworn he was seeing things. He did a double take, reading the words “code accepted” on the small screen before jumping around the small vault antechamber flailing his arms around in victory. He did it.  But it wasn’t entirely down hill from there. He still had to bypass the triple sensor.

This part of the process, Baek Kyoung never understood. For as long as he had been practicing for this very day, he could never see the reasoning behind the strict instructions that even If the cops were to find out about their presence within the bank, they shouldn’t be prone to the knowledge of what they were really after. Therefore, even though SWAT was probably outside right now, Baek Kyoung had to still sneak around and bypass the sensors without triggering the alarm for the vault. It seemed like a whole lot more work to the young male, but who was he to break the rules?

Running over to the black gym bag that laid on the floor, he pulled out a manila envelope tearing it open and reaching in to pull out the snugly fit foot-long metal key. With swift movements, he pushed the key in, squealing with excitement when the heard the small click. Before moving over to the combination wheel, Baek Kyoung turned off the lights to the antechamber, immersing himself in utter darkness, using the small flashlight hooked onto his belt buckle to guide him back to the vault door. Gripping onto the four-pronged handle, he turned the wheel, smiling to himself when the bolts that secured the door retracted and the vault door swung open.

Blocking off access to the interior of the vault was a metal grate that seemed rather flimsy and purposeless when compared to all the other barriers the vault had. Feeling around for the lock that attached the grate to the ground, Baek Kyoung effortlessly picked the lock with expertise, as the past three months of practice finally went to good use. Pushing the grate only a few feet off the ground, he used his gym bag to keep it propped open, and laid on the ground, sliding through the narrow opening. Now it was him against the clock, as the young male was already projecting heat into the vault and he had no idea how much longer the effect of the hairspray would have on the infrared sensor. Each minute Baek Kyoung was in that small room, the temperature within the vault would slowly rise and knowing that he was essentially at the mercy of a can of hairspray wasn’t the least bit reassuring.

Standing up straight directly in the center of the vault doorway, just as practiced, Baek Kyoung took three steps to the right and turned a full 180 degrees. Pulling a roll of black duck tape from his cargo pant pocket, he tore off three large strips, reaching out directly in front of him and sticking them over the light sensor. Still cautious, the male wasn’t about to turn on all the lights and instead went to work on disarming the motion and thermo sensors. Spinning around again, he took three steps to the left and ten steps forward, just like he practiced in their mock vault. Reaching his hands up toward the ceiling his fingers felt for the small white box that housed the vault’s main inbound and outbound wires for its security system.

---

Still reeling from his high of probably pissing off whomever it was he was talking to, Danny was in a rather chipper mood as he sauntered around the main lobby floor. Teddy’s mood, unlike his colleague, was plagued with concern. He wanted to go downstairs to check on Baek Kyoung’s progress with the vault but at the same time was worried about the guard. The last thing he wanted to deal with was a dead body.

Teddy was betrayed by his own body language, as Hyunshik quickly picked up on the man’s distress. “Look.” He softly spoke up, ignoring the reproachful glares he received from the other hostages. “I know you didn’t mean for Mike, here, to get shot, it was an honest accident. And I understand why you feel like you have to do this. I mean, times are tough, but you don’t have to do this-”

The man all the hostages assumed had been the ringleader, turned to face Hyunshik, and for a moment the youth pastor actually thought he had gotten through to the male. Teddy opened his mouth up to speak back but thought against it when the bank phone rang again.

---

Nodding his head in approval of Agent Jin’s plan of ambush, Agent Lee decided to have one more go with the hostage-taker. Letting out a deep breath, before his eyes scanned the notes he had jotted down after their first conversation, he picked up the phone and dialed. “This is Mr. Police Man.”

“What do you want?” Danny bit back, deciding that this time around he wasn’t going to be in as playful of a mood as he was earlier unless the police officer changed his approach.

“That should be my question, no?” Agent Lee retorted, noting the sudden change in demeanor of the male on the other end.

Showing his discontent with the police trying to contact him again so early in their exchange, Danny growled. “Well?”

“We want you to let go of the hostages, and you want a plane, right?”

Danny smiled. This cop has seriously watched too many movies, but he still decided to indulge him a little. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You always want the hostages. I don’t really need a plane but if you’re going to go through all that trouble, let’s make it worthwhile. I want a jet.”

Agent Kim smiled at Danny’s sudden playfulness, his fascination with this particular group of bank robbers only growing. One quick-lipped talker, and an amazing hacker? What don’t they have? 

“Anything else, while I’m taking requests?” Agent Lee sarcastically asked, knowing he wasn't exactly going by the book with that comment but Danny’s lack of respect for his position pissed him off.

“Oh sure.” Danny smiled, leaning back against the teller’s desk. “Make sure the airhostesses are hot. I’m talking about 36-24-36 and fully compliant. I doubt you know what I’m talking about, so ask your computer geek over there. From the looks of all the he watches on his computer, he knows exactly what I’m talking about.” With a small chuckle, Danny slammed the phone down, shrugging his shoulders over at Jinhwan who looked on completely awestricken.

“What did they want, Tyke?” Teddy asked, as if he didn’t hear the one-sided conversation.

“What else? The hostages.” Danny replied nonchalantly, moving from around the teller’s window to the lobby of the bank.

Staring at the group of nine hostages huddled together, Teddy spoke out. “Let them go.”

“What?” Danny stormed up toward him. “Did you just say let them go, Tom?”

“Yes, Tom.” Teddy answered softly, his eyes looking over each face trying to think of whom to let go. “You, you and you two, get up. Let’s go.”

“Whoa! Hold on.” Danny grabbed Teddy’s arm, turning the male to face him. “We have to talk about this. We never agreed to go along with their terms.”

Teddy yanked his arm away, his eyes, the only part of their faces exposed, staring darkly into Danny’s. “I’m not saying to let all of them go, just a few. At least this way it will buy us time.”

“Tom’s right.” Jinhwan intervened, walking up to the two men. “Right now all SWAT can go on is the same blueprint of the bank that we have. They’re not stupid to go in blind, but they will if they have to. If we at least give up a few of them, it could by us some time. While they’re busy interrogating, Jerry just might finish his part of the job. And that’s what’s important here.”

Seeing rhyme and reason in Jinhwan’s words, Danny backed down. “Fine, but the guard stays.”

“What?” A high-pitched shrill came from the direction of Alex, as the young woman’s eyes widened with outrage. “He’s bleeding!”

“Precisely.” Danny sneered, walking towards the young woman who immediately froze when he pointed the barrel of his M16 assault rifle at her face. “We can’t have the cops knowing we actually shot someone, now could we?”

“But that doesn’t mean they won’t squeal either, now does it?” Teddy countered, clearly annoyed that his colleague could make such a stupid statement in regards to who they could let go.

Aiming the barrel of his M16 at each of the nine hostages, Danny growled out. “Not if they know what’s good for them and their precious families.”

“Fine.” Teddy conceded, while in the back of his mind he prayed that the standoff situation wouldn’t last too long. He knew that if he went against Danny they would have more problems then just breaking into the vault, as Danny posed to be a loose cannon at times.  Seeing how the bank employees were of no help to them, Teddy pulled up two of the three tellers to their feet, leaving the one teller that had initially tried to press the silent alarm behind. Mindful of his eardrums, Danny walked over to Haeri and her little girl, helping the mother up to her feet. Walking the lucky chosen ones over to the door, Teddy stuffed his hand in his pocket taking out the set of keys to unlock the handcuffs that held the door open.

“Spike. Let their guy know we are letting hostages go.” Teddy directed, waiting for Jinhwan to relay the message, which he did by hacking into Agent Kim’s computer. “Now don’t do anything stupid.” Teddy warned the group of four as they huddled around the front door.

---

“They’re letting hostages go.” Agent Kim announced, spinning around in his swivel chair to face his team leader.

“How do you know?” Agent Choi asked, before their team leader could even begin to form a sentence.

Taking his black baseball cap off his head, Agent Kim looked down sheepishly while he ran a hand through his hair. “Their computer guy is good. I mean really good.” Jung-Shik scooted his chair to the side to reveal a blank screen, the words “we are releasing some of the hostages” written in large block letters.

The door to the SWAT van flung open, revealing an overweight cop hunched over trying to catch his breath. “There – seems – to – be – some-”

“Take all day, that’s fine.” Agent Lee spit out, obviously annoyed with the cop. “We’re not in the middle of a hostage situation or anything like that.”

Pausing to take a deep breath, the cop spoke again. “We got some type of movement at the front door.”

“You ran all the way over here just to tell me there’s some type of movement?” Seon-Woong asked incredulously, taking a dig at how out of breath the cop was after only running one block to where the van was parked.

The team leader and his two right hand men, jumped out of the van and cautiously jogged over to where the cops had created a barricade to block off the public and media from gaining access to the intersection. Just like the cop had said, the three men noticed the flashes of color as people walked around in front of the door. “Don’t shoot!” One of the tellers screamed out as the front door flung open and she ran into the open street.

“Stop, get on the ground and put your hands up.” A police officer shouted into the bullhorn, as the other teller, Haeri and her little daughter ran out of the building, the front door closing immediately after the last one exited.

“I want them all questioned.” Agent Lee ordered, staring at the still out-of-breath cop with a look of disgust, before walking away toward the van.

---

Baek Kyoung could care less about what was happening upstairs with the hostages and the negotiations he knew were bound to happen with the police as he had bigger fish to fry. Still immersed in darkness, the male reached up for the box and pushed the panel back, letting his fingers glide along the two sets of wires bunched into the small area. Just like the vault door with its plates that created a magnetic field, the interior of the vault also had its own electrical impulse that traveled to each of the three sensors and back through the very wires his fingers were touching. The set up was identical to that of the vault door itself. If the circuit was broken, the alarm would go off. 

Reaching into his back pocket, Baek Kyoung pulled out the diagonal pliers, gently clasping the jaws of the tool over the wires and peeling off the plastic covering. He could feel a trickle of sweat drip down the center of his back, while he tried to control his breathing and his hands. Any small slip of his hand could result in the wire getting cut, and that would be the end of the road for the four men. Once the copper wires were exposed underneath the plastic covering, Baek Kyoung fished in his front pocket for the small piece of copper wire he had prepared ahead of time. Clipping the small piece of wire onto both inbound and outgoing wires, he was able to create a bridge between both relays rerouting the electrical pulse, so that anything happening downstream to the bridge would fail to trigger a response.

Dropping his hands down to his side, the young male took a step back. Did I do it?  Walking over to the light sensor, he held his breath as he pulled off the tape and shouted out in victory when nothing happened. He did do it.

---

Danny quickly pulled the front door shut, while Teddy clasped the cuffs back on, swiftly moving away from the door just in case a cop decided to be gutsy and try to take a shot at them. Jinhwan turned away from the front door to glance at the remaining five hostages, each one with a look of dread at not having been picked as one of the lucky ones to get released.

“Don’t worry. You will all be released, sooner or later.” Jinhwan spoke out, not exactly knowing why he felt the need to say that but when his eyes fell onto the figure of Alex he knew exactly why.

“What the is Jerry still doing down there?” Danny questioned, making a mental note to try and find out just why Jinhwan had been acting weird all morning.

Just like clockwork, Baek Kyoung ran up the stairs, unable to hide his excitement about his accomplishment. “Teddy, Teddy. I did it! I got us in!”

“See you don’t need us anymore. Let us go, Teddy.” Hyunshik spoke gently, while the four men cringed when they realized Baek Kyoung had just broken rule number two.

Word count: 3677

I had tons of fun writing this chapter :)

It’s a little long – take that as an apology for taking so long to update

Sorry, I took such a long break from updating – I succumbed to a half- Daesung that stomped around my head demanding he get to be lead in a fic. I managed to negotiate the terms to a ty two-shot (see what I did there…negotiate…haha…ok…it was lame I know…just laugh…even if you have to force it...) How could I refuse him? Did I mention he was half-?? Lol – take a peak if you’re interested  >> Behind the Lens

Fun Fact(s):

Why did I pick 1274 as the 4-number code? Because I got it from their group name, 1TYM. hehe

1 >> no explanation needed here  = 1

T >> 20^th letter in the alphabet – 2+0 = 2

Y >> 25^th letter in the alphabet – 2+5 = 7

M >> 13^th letter in the alphabet  - 1+3 = 4

Key for the SWAT Team (members of Epik High)

I used their birth names as opposed to their commonly known stage names

Agent Seon-Woong Lee >> Tablo of Epik High

Agent Jin Choi >> Mithra Jin of Epik High

Agent Jung-Shik Kim >> DJ Tukutz of Epik High