The alleyway was clammy, humidity hanging in the air and clinging to Junmyeon’s body like a second skin. His breathing was haggard and shallow, his chest rising and falling at a rather ragged pace as he swiftly wiped the knife handle clean of fingerprints and carefully removed the blood stained raincoat and face mask from his person.

The body would be taken care of by another subordinate, he knew. It was times like these that Junmyeon was glad Sehun didn’t mind a little blood on his hands. Literally, of course.

Junmyeon just simply couldn’t hold back. Episodes filled with murderous rage left him trapped in a dark hazy corner of his mind, unaware of his surroundings and actions until he opened his eyes and found a corpse in front of him. At least his psychopathic subconscious was intelligent enough to hide its tracks.

He didn’t have anything particular against whatever poor soul had the misfortune of becoming his victim tonight. They were mere strangers, no familiarity between the pair. If only he hadn’t passed seemingly innocent defense lawyer Kim Junmyeon on the street- no, if only he hadn’t passed Suho- then he might have made it back to his mundane home and continued on ignorantly in his boring life. Then he might have been able to avoid his inevitable doom by Junmyeon’s hand.

Junmyeon liked to call his ever growing list of victims a stress reliever. Baekhyun, the bastard, called it “ing terrifying”. As if he had any right to say that after cackling in glee when his latest invention took out an entire apartment complex in the next town over. The authorities were still trying to figure out what went wrong. Not that they would find anything of worth. Anyone in EXO-K stupid enough to leave incriminating evidence behind would find themselves with a bullet through their head and their name crossed off the ridiculous “team roster” Jongin insisted on making, never mind the fact that there were only six of them.

Besides, it wasn’t as though anyone in the imbecilic law enforcement department had enough brains to see a connection between all these murders. The entire department’s IQ combined was probably lower than Junmyeon’s dresser.

The authorities weren’t a threat.

Or so Junmyeon thought, until he met Zhang Yixing.

“Okay guys, I got a good one.” Jongdae’s eyes glinted in sadistic excitement as he gathered everyone’s attention.

“No!” came Minseok’s holler from the break room, where he was brewing a fresh pot of coffee.

“If they started up a fashion line for canines,” Jongdae started anyway, purposely ignoring the elder’s protests, “they could call it-”

“Don’t you ing dare-”

“So Fetch.” Jongdae grinned wickedly at the beautiful sound of his older coworker releasing a string of colorful swears. Said inappropriate language was soon followed by the usual “! It’s hot!”, indicating the spilling of previously mentioned freshly brewed coffee.

Lu Han took that as his usual cue and shot out of his seat over to the break room armed with a first aid kit and manly healing kisses in his possession, tucking a crisp 5000 won bill into Jongdae’s back pocket as thanks.

Yifan judged their team’s resident hacker and his crime fighting partner of several years from his spot leaning against their intern Zitao’s cubicle, shaking his head at Lu Han’s pathetic crush and Jongdae- well Jongdae had always been a little in the office so Yifan honestly wasn’t even fazed anymore.

“Lu Han you don’t need to- I’m fine honestly it was just a little hot- Oh for goodness sakes, put down the gauze!” Minseok came through the doorway with two mugs of coffee in hand, and a rather persistent Lu Han wrapped around his waist.

“But you’re hurt!” Lu Han whined in protest, legs dragging out behind him as he clutched onto their team’s medical examiner and head of the forensic lab. “Don’t you want me to kiss it better?”

“I’ll be fine,” Minseok emphasized, handing one of the mugs over to Yifan before placing the other on a nearby table to use both hands to pry Lu Han off of his person. “So long as Jongdae doesn’t think of anymore disgusting puns to ruin my day with. Don’t you have a crime scene to investigate or something?”

“The others will call me if they need me,” Lu Han pouted, disappointed at the lack of attention Minseok was paying him. “Besides, Yifan wanted to discuss something with us.”

Minseok turned to their unofficial leader. “You did? I thought you were just waiting for my report on the last case.”

Yifan shook his head and pulled out a manila folder from his bag. “That can wait. I brought back something you all might want to see.”

“Why do you kill people?” Sehun asked Junmyeon as they washed the dishes from dinner in the kitchen sink.

“Why?” Junmyeon paused mid-scrub, brows furrowed. “Well Hun, there’s plenty of reasons people kill. Some kill for revenge, others kill for love…”

“But what about you?” Sehun pressed, “Do you kill for any of those reasons?”

“I suppose not,” Junmyeon mused as he placed the now clean and final dish onto the drying rack. “Perhaps that’s why fate brought us all together.”

Sehun cocked his head in confusion. “What do you mean?”

Junmyeon removed his rubber gloves and cracked his knuckles. “You know, us six. You, me, Baekhyun, Chanyeol, Jongin, even Kyungsoo. We all felt it. That feeling that life had lost its lackluster, that there was something missing.”

“Missing,” Sehun echoed hollowly, deep in thought but eyes still trained on Junmyeon, still waiting for the final answer.

“I kill to relieve stress from work, sure,” Junmyeon sauntered into the family room, where Chanyeol and Kai were competing in Mario Kart on the flat screen TV. “But all six of us are here because we knew, that somehow life was no longer interesting, that something had to be done.”

Junmyeon cupped Sehun’s chin and leaned in close, eyes wild with excitement.

“We kill because it’s fun.”

Yixing startled awake at the sound of Yifan slamming a fist down on a table in a room at the back, rubbing at his eyes and squinting at the clock on the wall. 2:30 PM.

“Now, now, Duizhang, calm down-”came Jongdae’s voice.

“Calm down?! The police headquarters have been breathing down my back asking for answers for these murders and you’re telling me to calm down?!” came Yifan’s reply.

Yixing sighed and stood up from his plush office chair. As self-designated receptionist of M, he took his position at the front of their small office building very importantly, only leaving the area for the occasional bathroom break or emergency. However, based on the sound of Yifan’s angry breathing in the back, something was going on. Something that most likely required his participation.

He shuffled through the doorway to the back, looking back over his shoulder to make sure no one was needed in the front before making his way in the conference room in the back where the other five were, Yifan at the end of the table with a pile of folders. “’Sup?”

Yifan froze mid-tantrum, “Yixing? Didn’t I call you to come here ten minutes ago?”

“Oh.” Yixing swung by and grabbed a seat next to Minseok, ignoring Luhan’s look of jealousy from across the conference table. “Sorry, I was napping.”

Yifan huffed, but didn’t say anything. What Yixing didn’t have in regular employee behavior, he made up with his skills.“Just get one of the others to fill you in later, I need to wrap this up and go to police headquarters to get permission for Lu Han and Jongdae to have access to the crime scene and other information. Anyway, as I was saying, the victims don’t seem to share any connection, but they all seem to have been attacked and disposed of in similar manners: slashed to death by knife before being relocated to somewhere far from the true scenes of the crimes, which have all yet to be found. Without a connection, these murders could simply be random street crimes at best. But my gut is telling me that-”

“We have a serial killer on our hands,” Luhan finished.

Yifan nodded. “There isn’t a distinctive mark, but the sudden increase in these killings is far too suspicious to be the work of a gang or different culprits, not to mention the consistent weaponry and disposal method. The only question is how the criminal is picking his victims.”

“Can you hand me the pictures?” Yixing whispered to Minseok, who reached down the table and passed him several files. “Thanks.”

He examined the bodies of the victims, three so far, confirming Yifan’s explanation. There were cuts and stab wounds scattered all across the bodies, no particular pattern of attack, but rather blind violence with a knife. In many cases, signs of a crime of passion.

“Hmmm…” Yixing scratched the back of his head. That didn’t seem right at all. There were multiple wounds on every body, but in every photo, the carotid artery was slashed as well, ensuring a quick death. However, whether the other cuts came before or after the final blow was a job for Minseok. But a crime of passion was almost never this calculated. It seemed almost as though-

“I’m bored!” Baekhyun whined in a huff as he tossed his phone onto the nearby coffee table and sat up from his lying position on the couch. “I’mmmmmm borrrreeeddd!”

“He’s bored, someone give him an award,” Kyungsoo rolled his eyes from across the room where he was sitting, the sound of his fingers clicking against the keyboard of his laptop heard every now and then. “Why don’t you go out and blow up some apartment complex like you were doing last month?”

Baekhyun let out a dramatic sigh as he hopped to his feet and stomped over to the kitchen. “Because Junmyeon said to lay low for a week or two. There’s been law enforcement crawling all over the place recently.”

“Yeah, because of him,” Kyungsoo pointed out. “Ever since he picked up that old defense case, he’s been going out and hacking people down every time he gets frustrated at his defendant.”

“I know,” Baekhyun grabbed a pack of Oreo’s and made his way back to the room, plopping down next to Kyungsoo, ignoring how his friend clicked away from whatever it was he was working on. With the things their team did, it was sometimes better to just not ask. “And yet he’s still out there playing around. It’s not fair!”

“What’s not fair?”Jongin walked into the room, a towel hung low on his hips while he used the other to dry his hair.

Baekhyun crinkled his nose in displeasure. “Shoo shoo. Not everyone wants to see your rippling abs 24/7, take them away.”

“Don’t mind him, he’s just pissy because he can’t blow people up in the meantime,” Kyungsoo glanced up at the part-time stripper toweling his hair dry like he was putting on a private show, “And because he doesn’t have any abs himself.”

“I love myself just the way I am!” came Baekhyun’s shrill reply. “Where’s Chanyeol?”

“At the gun range,” Jongin tossed the second towel over his shoulder, “Sehun’s out disposing another one of the bodies.”

“Typical,” Baekhyun shook his head, “Poor maknae’s going to be cleaning up after Junmyeon for a while if that jury doesn’t come to a verdict.”

“You know how Jun gets when he’s in one of those moods,” Kyungsoo sighed and shut his laptop. “Just be glad it’s not as bad as that one murder suspect he had agreed to help in court a few years back. Bastard almost made it on the Interpol top ten most wanted back when we were going around Europe.”

“Man, those were the days,” Baekhyun grinned, “Back then I was stirring trouble up in the Middle East. You should’ve seen the look on the militia’s faces when they found out that the people were bombing them back.”

“I never took you for the good guy type, Baek,” a new voice interjected as the sound of the front door shutting came from the ha