Director Choi ended his call with a prolonged, lung-emptying sigh, his cell phone clattering to the table as he tossed it aside. Sarai looked up at the sound, her fingers stilling on the keyboard.

“An update on the Hong Kong situation?” she asked, her voice hushed.

At his end of the conference room table, Jongdae kept his eyes glued to his own laptop, scrolling occasionally, trying to appear absorbed in his work. Timestamped CCTV footage of the Kyungsoo debacle scrolled past, neglected, as he strained to hear their quiet conversation.

“It’s been handled,” the director murmured, and Sarai bowed her head in relief. “The deaths were written off as drug overdoses, and the source will be delivered shortly.”

“Without a proper quarantine team?!” Sarai’s head snapped up, her voice rising. “What about protective equipment? Are they flying coach?”

Jongdae pretended to look up in surprise, sensing an opportunity. “Is there another vivus case?” he asked innocently, and the director’s lips thinned in annoyance at being overheard.

“It’s already been taken care of.”

“By who?” Jongdae pressed, not about to let him off of the hook that easily. “Didn’t you all lose your teams yesterday going after Kyungsoo and the arsonist?”

The director leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms as he decided what morsels of information to dole out. “We have a few assets in place in southern China—”

“Guardians. Members of your intel network,” Jongdae clarified. Choi pursed his lips, but nodded before continuing.

“There had been large number of suspicious deaths in the Hong Kong area, but we didn’t recognize it as a vivus outbreak until very recently. Fortunately, one of our assets, a former analyst, recognized the signs of infection and alerted the other guardians in the area. As we are shorthanded,” Choi growled, “ we couldn’t send a team to assist, but a local organization was able to track and locate the patient zero. One of their men is transporting the patient here as we speak.”

“Seems risky,” Jongdae said, echoing Sarai’s earlier concerns.

“We should redirect them to the Daegu facility,” the medic suggested. “It’s closer, and we could ask a militia team to act as backup in case anything goes wrong.”

“The patient needs to come here,” Choi stressed the last word through his teeth, glowering daggers at Sarai. “The Daegu facility is not equipped,” he enunciated again, “to accommodate his special needs.”

“Ah, of course.” Sarai’s eyes widened as the director’s unspoken message registered. Jongdae raised his eyebrows questioningly. “Preexisting conditions makes treatment more complicated,” she lied smoothly, “so the patient needs to come here, where our researchers can study his case directly.”

Jondae looked between the two flaming-pants conspirators. “I see.”

Choi harrumphed, looking away, and Jongdae let the point drop. Pushing too hard might arouse suspicion, and his knowledge of their secret medical dungeon and Nazi-era experiments was a card he wasn’t ready to play just yet. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t squeeze a little more information out of them.

“So, when does the new patient get here?” Jongdae bared his teeth in a grin. “I’m curious to see your procedures.” He couldn’t resist needling them a tiny bit more, so he added, “I meant to be there for Minseok’s arrival, but I must have misread the intake schedule.” Sarai tensed in her seat. Gauntlet thrown.

Choi’s eye’s tightened around the edges, the only sign of his unease. “The patient and his should be arriving at 21:00 tomorrow night. To someone without a medical background, our intake process would probably seem much like a basic physical.” He leaned forward, folding his hands on the table. “ You’re welcome to observe, but you’ll probably be occupied with tasks more suited to your skill set.” Challenge accepted.

A throaty yawn echoed into the loaded silence, and a set of long-, delicate hands stretched above the table. Baekhyun dragged himself into a sitting position, squinting, the chair’s leather seam imprinted on his cheek, his hair smushed flat on one side of his head. Jongdae’s mouth dropped open, all mind-games with the director forgotten as the kid peeled his eyes open. Baekhyun had practically fled at the end of the early morning meeting, squirming past several militiamen in his haste to escape the boredom, glitter smearing their uniforms as a dismaying souvenir of his passage. Only a handful of people had come and gone from the room throughout the rest of the day, and Jongdae would’ve bet a kidney that Baekhyun hadn’t been one of them. Yet he’d apparently been sleeping here for hours, completely unnoticed.

“Why aren’t you in your room?” Sarai demanded, rising out of her seat. She tapped her watch, pointedly. “You’re off-schedule!” Jongdae cocked his head as he noted her reaction. Apparently, Baekhyun “off-schedule” was cause for concern, but appearing in unexpected places was just a matter of course.

Baekhyun shook his head pityingly as he finger-combed his flattened hair back into shape. “Ahjumma.” The word dripped with adolescent disdain, and Sarai bristled at his tone. “I make my own schedule.”

Director Choi hissed sharply. “Do as she says. Go to your room.”

Baekhyun’s face scrunched into a pout. “Fine. Harabeoji.” He knocked over his chair as he stood, giving it another peevish kick for good measure as he stalked out. All in all, one of the finest performances of teenage immaturity Jongdae had ever witnessed. Sarai and the director shook their heads at each other in commiseration, and neither of them questioned how he’d gotten there in the first place.