Jonghyun’s stomach was in knots at the simple sound of those two words. Panic set in his chest. “That isn’t mine to hand over. That’s government property. “

“But you were the head designer and coder for the project were you not?”

“Yes, but it was my job. I was ordered to do so. It does not make that project mine to give away. There are so many firewalls I would have to jump through and regulations I would be breaking.” His voice was high and quick, being as the panic was slowing overtaking him. His heart was pounding fast against his chest and his palms were becoming sweaty.

“I do not care what you have to do to get it to me, but you will have it on one single laptop, all your notes shredded and burned if you want to ever see your family again.  You have 36 hours Jonghyun Kim. I  advise you to get to work jumping through those what you called ‘holes’. You’ll get a call halfway through. When I call you answer or bad things happen. Understood?”

“Completely.”

The phone call was ended with a soft click in his ear and his emotions crashed into him fully. His phone fell to his lap as his hands moved around his middle. He held himself tightly as quick little hiccups interrupted his breathing. 36 hours to hack into the national government undetected, copy the program and delete every note, code, or work in progress dealing within the project's parameters. Jinki always had called him brilliant, but he wasn’t so sure that his husband would be right on this account.

                         -----

The evening was changing into darkness with the lack of light coming from the half covered window on the right side of the room. Gwiboon was awake in his arms, but she was content playing with the pocket of his flannel shirt. Jinki smiled softly down at her as he ran a hand over her head full of hair. Her hat was folded on his thigh, and as his palm moved over her tiny head she gurgled and her hand came to hit his chest happily. He left his hand on the back of her head as he glanced around the room. The leader was leaning against the big chair in the corner looking out of the half of the window that wasn’t covered. Phone on one thigh and his gun on the other. Kyuchul was sitting against the falling apart piano just in front of him, watching him as his boss instructed  him, but JInki could tell he was becoming tired.

He wondered what time it was. He could guess it had been a few hours since Jonghyun had been called and given his 36 hour time limit on his mission. Jinki didn’t know what project waternew was, but for someone to go through all this to get their hands on it he figured it was something dangerous. He knew his husband was brilliant and a part of him had complete trust that he would be able to do whatever he was required to do in the time given to him, but there was no guarantee that even if he finished that both him and their daughter would be returned unharmed. Gwiboon was too young to recognize any of them given the opportunity to later on, but he could.  The leader of all this seemed to be a very intelligent man. Keeping him alive would be very ignorant for him in the long run. Jinki pushed down that fear and focus on Gwiboon. The thought that he might not have another day with her after the 36 hours were up made him want to cherish every second with her, even if the situation they were in wasn’t the greatest.  

Getting her was difficult, to the point it took them three years just to find someone willing to be their surrogate. There were many almosts during that time. Someone almost agreeing until they saw that the baby would be for a gay couple. Almost a positive test, but finding out the baby wasn’t theirs. Almost carrying a baby to term only for the surrogate to have a miscarriage and needing to end their contract because they couldn’t handle doing it over again. Almost. Over and over again until they met Sooyoung, who gave them their little baby girl Gwiboon. It was hard for him to sit there and smile at his little girl knowing deep down there was a small chance he would ever see her walk. She had just begun to start crawling and Jinki wanted to laugh at how frustrated he was when she crawled across the room when he turned around. Now all he wanted was to see her crawl everywhere giggling as she escaped him.

She looked up at him with such big eyes. It reminded him of the way she first looked at Jonghyun when he held her. He tried to force thoughts of Jonghyun out of his head because those thoughts only led to ones of what would happen if he didn’t return home to him. So he rubbed his baby girl’s cheek and smiled when she moved to capture it between her lips. “No no sweetie my finger isn’t very clean.” He reached over into the diaper bag to wipe his hand off with a wipe. Her tiny whimpers quietened down as he slipped his knuckle into . She curled her fingers around his hand to keep it where it was. Tiny gurgle noises rumbled around his finger and he smiled, amused, “There you go baby.”

Her feet were pressed flat against his tummy, knees bent, and every so often she pushed off him a little. Besides the soft little noises around his finger she was completely silent. With her on his finger there was no arm around her bottom and legs. She could push off to hard and roll down his legs, but she never pushed hard enough. She was just playing with herself, and she always did love wiggling her when she was happy and content.

                        ----

With the back of his hand Jonghyun rubbed his nose. His hands only stopped shaking when they touched the computer keys. His eyes were blurry from the tears, and he was almost completely sure his fingers were moving on their own accord now. The last time he took any of his 36 hours to check what time it was it was just past 7, which meant on a regular day he would be getting home to seeing Jinki in the kitchen with Gwiboon in her little bouncy seat in the doorway. There would be food cooking on the stove and Jinki would smile so big when he heard their front door open. He would tell him about his day at the hospital, how excited Gwiboon was when she saw him coming to get her at daycare, but never before tugging him close and pressing a kiss to his lips.  

Jonghyun shook his head as he mumbled to himself, “No no can’t think about that. Gotta focus.”  

It was a futile thing to say. No matter what he did the only thing on his mind consistently was Jinki and their little girl. He was scared they were hurt or that he would do something wrong and cause them harm. Jinki didn’t know anything about the project for he made sure that he never brought work home with him. Why in the world did they take them? Why not him instead?

                    -----

Jinki’s attention was taken from Gwiboon when there was a series of knocks coming from the door to the right. The leader got up from his chair and pushed it open slightly. Jinki could only see a little of the person standing behind the door from his vantage point and how little the door was open, but he made out what looked like high heeled boots. The voices were soft and almost too quiet to hear, but he caught the person behind the door saying, “Food has arrived.”

The door was opened a little more, but only enough for the leader to take a huge brown plastic bag from the person before the door was shut and locked. The man’s eyes fell on Jinki as he started to walk away from the door. “I figured you’d be hungry.”

Jinki squinted at him, “I’m not eating that. I don’t know what you put in it.”

The man laughed, “You’re smarter than I gave you credit for. Here, if I eat some would that make you more comfortable?”

Slowly Jinki nodded his head. The man opened the white styrofoam box and with a plastic fork grabbed a piece of meat and scooped some rice on top of it before shoving it into his mouth. Jinki waited until he had swallowed it and a few minutes had passed before he agreed to take the box of food from him. He didn’t eat any until he was sure the time limit for the different poisons effects to happen before he began to eat. Gwiboon stayed sound asleep in his arms as he used one hand and the side of his leg to make sure the box didn’t move away from him as he ate. He couldn’t figure out what the leader’s motives were or what his plans were. Not long before he believed he would be killed after project waternew was delivered to him, but why feed someone you plan to kill later? It just didn’t make any sense at all.

                     -----

Jonghyun’s eyes drifted to the picture frames on the bookshelf to his left. The time on the clock told him he still had 34 hours left, and until the program worked through the first two levels of firewalls there was nothing he could do but wait and worry. He pushed up from the table and walked over to pick up the middle picture frame with shaking hands. A small smile curved on his face when he saw the image. It was their first family portrait the day they met Gwiboon for the first time. He placed the photo back to pick up another. It took him a moment to place the image to a memory, but when he did his heart ached. It was of their engagement. Jinki looked so happy, pressing a big sloppy kiss onto his temple as he took the photo showing off his new ring. Four years married believing they had so many more ahead of them and all of it may be ruined because he decided to get involved in stupid secret government business.

The photo was set back onto the bookshelf and the last in the row was picked up next. It was their lab photo from intro to chemistry their freshman year. A little laugh flew past his lips as he remembered everyone going toward Jinki when the professor told them they could choose their lab partner for the year. They knew what he got on the first two tests and wanted him to help them pass the course, but Jonghyun could see the memory vividly as if it happened only yesterday. Jinki had smiled and bowed his head to the people who approached him as he grabbed his things and wiggled past them to find Jonghyun on the other side of the room to ask him to be his partner. Jonghyun knew it was Jinki who was the reason he passed that damn class.

He returned the photo and quickly walked into the adjoined kitchen to grab a water bottle. He knew drinking water only meant eventually taking time from his deadline to use the restroom, but his head was starting to hurt from staring at his screen for so long. He twisted the cap open as he walked back into the room to sit back in front of the laptop. The bottle was set to the left of the computer after he had finished taking a swig from it. The percentage bar was only filled 34 percent, and he sighed as he watched his formula working in the background trying to hack into his job’s two main firewalls.

His wedding ring was twisted nervously around his finger and when he noticed he was doing it he could only stop and look at the gold band. Around the metal was a little heart and ‘to the moon’ engraved into it’s surface. He had snorted so hard when he had seen it in the little box Jinki had held out for him when he went down on one knee. Leave it to Jinki to reference their first real date years later when he proposed. All Jonghyun had was love for his family, and a little bit of hope that Jinki’s faith in him would get them through all this.

                    -----

When Gwiboon starting wiggling in her sleep and her little nose scrunched up as soft whimpers began to sound from her Jinki knew she was either hungry or needed to be changed. He touched her diaper to figure out which if not both she needed and figured the first thing to try was changing her diaper. She didn’t fully scream when she woke up, not when she was still being held by her Daddy. She still was upset as he laid her down on the changing mat and cleaned her up. She rubbed her eyes with her tiny fist as JInki finished pulling the little adhesive tabs onto the main part of the diaper and buttoned up her onesie again. After wiggling on her pants and making sure her hat was still on her head all the way he picked her up and settled her against his shoulder. The blanket was thrown over her as she nuzzled into him. He made soft little shushing sounds as he patted her to make her fall back asleep hopefully. It seemed to be working as the grip of hers on his shirt lessened in strength. Once he was sure she was asleep again he ventured to ask the leader across the room from him, “What’s Project Waternew?”

The man slowly lifted his drooping eyes and moved them over to him. His voice was hazy and deep as he asked, “You really have no idea what your husband worked on the last 3 years of his employment?”

“When he accepted the job he told me it came with a very high degree of secrecy. I was okay with that.” He gently patted Gwiboon’s as she slept, but his eyes were on the other man.

“Well Project Waternew was commissioned by some high up guy in the government to allow quicker access to certain databases that took days sometimes weeks to get clearance to look at. Your husband was brought in on the project because of his work with catching hackers with special coding and hacking them. Kind of like catching a mouse with cheese so to speak. Well he turned out to be far more valuable and headed the project, under a supervisor of course. The program now with a touch of a keyboard enter key can hack into any database, company, federal organization, and grants access to even the most top secret files the government has on computer hard drives”

Jinki blinked at him, “How do you know about this? If it’s so secret.”

The smile that formed on the other man’s lips was unsettling. “Because I used to be his boss.”