“Alright, I am in,” Jinki breathed a sigh of relief as the computer finally flashed the words ‘Access Granted’ before he was diverted to the systems where all the financial information of the firm was stored.

“See, that wasn’t too tough, hyung,” Jonghyun’s smug voice jubilantly crowed through the earpiece, “I told you to trust me.”

“Jeez Jonghyun, you are so capable. It only took us three hours to break into the network.” Jinki rolled his eyes, voice thick with sarcasm.  He then moved on, not giving Jonghyun the time to retort, holding up a compact black thumdrive before his collar, “Ok, now, you swear that the firewall won’t be flagged when I plug in this thumbdrive?”

“Hyung. HQ made that. Not me.”

“You are the IT guy. If I don’t hold you responsible, who else can I hold? Taemin?”

“How about HQ?”

“Jonghyun, you don’t ever hold bosses responsible for screw-ups.”

“Hyung, but what about the time when Choi nearly told you the pin to the systems but you blew the moment because you just had to ing c—“

“Jonghyun, a word more and I will seriously dump you back to the IT department.”

“, hyung, you are too uptight. It’s not as if I haven’t seen everything.”

“Shut up.”

“You should really tell Choi not to fling your clothes on to the bedside tables though. Because that just means I have to sit through a whole night of Taemin .”

“What?” Jinki yelped incredulously, “He does what?”

“No. Not really,” came Jonghyun’s flippant reply, “I don’t know. He spends a lot of time in the bathroom nowadays though.”

Jinki breathed in and out deeply, calming his rapidly beating heart. Whether was it a result of anger, embarrassment or plain shock, Jinki wasn’t too sure. He started again, slowly, “Jonghyun, tell Taemin I want to speak to him now,”

“Taemin!” Jinki could hear Jonghyun’s muffled shouts for said boy.

“Wait, no,” Jinki interrupted midway in the second of Jonghyun’s series of calls for Taemin. He shook his head, “Nevermind, no. We will talk about this when I get back to the safehouse. For now, we have to concentrate on the mission at hand.”

“Hyung, Taemin is in the bathroom now.”

“Alright,” Jinki closed his eyes and counted to five before opening them up again. He forced a calm expression onto his face, “The thumbdrive. I can plug it in now?”

“Hyung, was I ever this ing erted when I was young?”

“The thumbdrive.” Jinki uttered through gritted teeth, “Safe to plug in?”

“Chill, man. Go ahead and plug it in. it should be cool.”

Jinki flipped open the cap and bent down, searching for the port. His hands fumbled blindly across the raised grooves of the computer, gliding over the metal squares and rectangles in his quest to insert the thumbdrive. Finally chancing upon what felt like a series of ports for USB drives, Jinki drags out the computer slightly and peered behind. Yes, they looked like the correct ones. Jinki stuck the thumbdrive in.

A window popped up on the monitor and a loading bar immediately appeared. Starting transfer, it stated. Jinki climbed back up into the seat and asked, “It’s done?”

“Yup, now we wait.”

“It says ETA 12 minutes and 42 seconds.”

“Ok, we will have to wait for 12 minutes then.”

“There’s nothing else I need to do?”

“Nope, it’s an intelligent software that understands implicitly what to search for and copy over, with all the functions encoded through a series of GSX codes and IS2 framework. It’s state-of-the-art and is the proprietary software of our nation, with distribution severely limited and heavily regulated. Should the technology falls into outsiders’ hands due to negligence or other factors, guilty personnel would have to face punishment up to a level of ML2.” Jonghyun spoke as if he was reciting from a handbook. He paused and commented “Hyung, ML2 is the one that includes up to life-time imprisonment, right?”

“Yea. I think so.”

“This is kinda ing scary.”

“We won’t lose it.”

“Hyung, please don’t drop it down the gutter or anything like that.”

“Jonghyun, I said we won’t lose it.”

“I am not taking any responsibility if you lose it.”

“I am saying we won’t lose it.”

“Hyung, don’t speak too fast. Remember the last time you lost that ing access card that took Taemin a week to replicate and we had to ing scramble all over the place—“

“I have the authority to implement punishment up to ML5.”

A short silence elapsed and it was finally broken when Jonghyun asked hesitantly, “And that’s the one that goes up to 500,000 USD fine and 10 years of imprisonment?”

“You have been reading the handbook,” Jinki’s voice sounded mildly impressed, “Well done, Jonghyun.”

“Wow, hyung. I didn’t know you are that powerful. You are awesome, Jinki-hyung. Like seriously, I don’t think I tell you that enough. You are really amazing, and have I ever told you how much I ing look up to you and wish I had the charisma and charm you have—“

“Jonghyun, shut up.”

“Ok.”

“It says 9 minutes and 33 seconds now.”

“It’s fast, isn’t it?”

“Yea.”

“This new tech is so cool—it’s called the BumbleBee by the way.” Jonghyun started, somewhat in an obsequious tone, “Apparently they used the JKS systems to program the whole module and had it so that it can remotely search and identify relevant nodes through a series of ‘cross and operate’ functions, which streamlines everything and has it working like a SSB1.2.”

“That was really helpful, Jonghyun. It did not sound like Greek to me at all.”

“Hyung…” Jonghyun was clearly petulant, “You are acting like a now.”

“Why Jonghyun, why don’t you just say more? Do you know you can be suspended for up to 2 years for insubordination? And that’s without pay.”

“Hyung, sarcasm doesn’t look good on you.”

“Yea, hyung, your face is too squishy for that!” an enthusiastic voice chimed into the conversation.

“Taemin?”

“Hey, Jinki-hyung. You were calling for me?” came the chipper voice over the earpiece.

Jinki could vaguely hear the distanced voice of Jonghyun complaining to Taemin, telling him not to climb into his laps and snatch the headphones away from him and to not ing touch him till he washed his hands.

(“ Taemin, you are heavy. Get the off me.” A short pause, “, the wires are getting tangled. Stop pulling at the headphones dammnit. And don’t you dare touch me your hands. I bet you didn’t wash them after doing your business.”)

Jinki closed his eyes and waited for the commotion on the other side to die down. He wondered if praying for a different support team would be of any use, but then figured it probably wouldn’t work for him because he wasn’t that religious anyway. Besides, he wouldn’t want to wish this crap onto any other poor soul because that would be just bad karma.

“, hyung!” Taemin’s voice suddenly screeched, “Someone’s approaching! From the back, he has already opened the door! He is coming your way! Jinki-hyung—“

Taemin’s voice was cut off as Jinki hurriedly pressed the button to stop communications, replacing it with a harmless tune of ‘Raindrops keep falling on my head’. Mouse moving subtly, he closed the FS-RI system he had hacked into and opened up the natural perils spreadsheet he was supposed to be working on for this week. Jinki schooled his expression into one of bored disinterest and lethargy.

And it was not a moment too fast, because the next second, a leather briefcase was heavily slammed onto his table. Jinki gave a credible little jump and turned around, a shocked expression ready. A man with obviously Asian features but blonde hair glared back at him.

“What the are you doing in my seat?” the man snapped.

Jinki inscrutably nudged the computer back into its place using his foot as he stared at the man with mouth agape.

-

(“Oh , it’s a fight, Taemin.”

Taemin bounced in his seat, “Do you want to get the chips or should I get them?”)

And let's welcome Key into the story!

EDIT: I think AFF automatically marks the story as 'mature' if I type the f-word too many times in a single chapter, because that's what it does for chapter 3 and 4, and it's really annoying having to manually untick them.