Luhan clutched the phone, struggling to swallow the rage bubbling up from his stomach.

“Don’t act like you understand my situation, Kris,” he snapped. “Because you don’t. You don’t at all.”

“What do you mean I don’t understand? I know you were the closest with Xiumin, but we all want him back. He was my friend too, just as much as he was yours.” Kris’ voice trembled, low and angry, and Luhan could almost see his trademark Angry Bird eyebrows pulling together in dark twin slashes across his forehead. “But Luhan, that doesn’t mean we can break all principles to get him back.”

Luhan glowered at the wall across from his desk as if it were Kris.

“It’s different for me and you know it. Now that I’m the eldest, I’m expected to be the leader, to have all the answers, to tell everyone else exactly what to do. I wasn’t groomed to take on this role like Xiumin was, and I’m anxious about not being able to protect you and Yixing, too. The least you could do is trust me a little more.”

“This isn’t a matter of trust, Lu!” Kris cried, making the phone line buzz with the volume of his voice. “This is a matter of basic ethics. You can’t just beat up some poor civilian because you suspect him of being involved with Jade Dragon. You’ve got no evidence!”

“No evidence?” Luhan repeated incredulously. “What do you mean no evidence? You were the one who found the surveillance footage of the bastard taking the briefcase from Suho headquarters.”

Impatient, Kris sighed. “Yes, but his backstory of being a failed stand-up comedian with a penchant for crappy jokes does seem to check out. I haven’t been able to find anything even remotely tying him to intelligence networks, let alone Jade Dragon.”

“Yes, well you haven’t been able to find much of anything, lately,” Luhan shot back, knowing fully well how much his words would hurt. “What use is it having a hacker if he can’t hack anything?”

There was a pause.

“That’s not fair.” Kris’ voice shook a little; whether it was with anger or hurt, Luhan wasn’t sure. “That’s not fair at all, Lu. You knew I wouldn’t be able to dedicate all my time to this mission when you asked me to stay with MSS five months ago. You think I like sitting here in this nuclear bunker while you and Yixing run around a foreign country by yourselves?”

Luhan sighed. Kris was right. He had known Kris wouldn’t be able to offer nearly as much help if he stayed in China, and still, he’d begged the hacker to remain at MSS while Yixing and he fled to South Korea. But there truly had been no other option.

When Xiumin first disappeared on that operation gone horribly wrong in North Korea, the three of them had vowed to do anything necessary to get him back. With all of them being orphans recruited by MSS, China’s secret service, as children, Luhan, Kris, and Yixing had essentially been raised by Xiumin, had come to love and admire him like a true blood brother. Their loyalty to him was unshakable.

Unfortunately, the Chinese government hadn’t shared the same sentiment toward Xiumin. Over and over again, they had rejected Luhan’s requests for a return mission to North Korea to take down Senrima and retrieve Xiumin.

It is a shame, one of the rejection letters had read, that a member of your team has been temporarily lost in the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea. Unfortunately, the Ministry has decided that at this time, the state cannot afford to waste any more resources on retrieving lost agents. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Luhan’s blood still boiled at the thought of that letter. Xiumin had been nothing but loyal for the fifteen years he had worked under MSS. For God’s sake, he had even been part of an operation to prevent the president’s assassination, yet still, the government saw him as nothing but collateral damage, as one agent amongst dozens of others lost in dangerous missions every year. It was a betrayal from the country Luhan had once loved more than himself.

That was when the three of them had decided to take things into their own hands. Senrima, coincidentally, had chosen that time to start calling from Xiumin’s cell phone, ordering them to facilitate an illegal arms transaction for them if they wanted Xiumin to stay alive. Desperate and seeing no other solution, they had agreed. Knowing fully well MSS would catch on and have them tried for treason if they tried to play both sides, Luhan had proposed leaving China for South Korea, which was far closer to the border, and thus Xiumin.

Yet leaving had been no simple feat; the four of them together had comprised MSS’ crown jewel, the team that had only ever failed one mission in fifteen years of work. There was no way they would have been allowed to leave peacefully, not even Yixing, who was clearly the least competent of them all. Too much had been invested in grooming them since childhood. So Luhan had planned for them to mysteriously disappear on their next mission, receive plastic surgery and new identities, and relocate to South Korea.

But at the same time, going rogue was no easy task, especially for Kris. It would have been nearly impossible for him to function as a hacker without the expensive, state-of-the-art technology provided by MSS, which the three of them wouldn’t have been able to obtain on their own. Thus, Kris had agreed to stay back at MSS while Luhan and Yixing faked their disappearances. Using the Chinese government’s resources, he funneled them information on Senrima, Jade Dragon, and Xiumin.

The only bump in the road had come when Kris was restationed at a nuclear testing operation in the South China Sea instead of MSS headquarters in Beijing. Having faked extreme distress at losing his entire team, Kris had refused to join another team of agents in the weeks following Luhan and Yixing’s disappearances. As a result, MSS had chosen to remove him from the field entirely, instead sending him to an underwater bunker to crunch nuclear weapon trial data.

Resources in the bunker were limited, as were personal space and privacy. Kris didn’t have the freedom or the technology to help as much as he wanted with finding Xiumin, and even his calls with Luhan were risky.

Logically, Luhan knew it wasn’t Kris’ fault they were making so little progress. But the frustration of not being able to protect his own brothers and the pressure of Senrima’s imminent deadline were getting to him, and he found himself violating the first rule of intelligence work: think with the brain, not the heart. He was getting too emotionally invested to work this mission with the precision and cunning mastery he usually possessed.

Please Subscribe to read the full chapter