~_____~

Seated in a room similar to yesterday’s, both teams sat down on the opposite ends of the ‘U’ shaped table. A large white screen hung down from the wall at the end of the room and a projector from above came to life the second Donghae hit a button on the wall. The orange chairs offered complete comfort and Donghae darted his eyes over to Tao just to make sure he wasn’t dozing off. Walking over to the laptop in on the podium, he pulled out a file and started.

“The drug trafficking ring we’re tailing conducts their business from Osan to Kwangju, from the countryside to the cities. I won’t go into much detail with the process, since I’m sure you’re as informed as we are,” Donghae turned to run his eyes over the others before changing the slide, “Park Kyungbo, the drug trafficker we arrested in Osan has admitted that their ring leader has never revealed his identity. This is where our dead end is at. Our next mission here is to find their leader. We’re going to do this by searching for his other circus, human trafficking.”

Lay’s arm shot up. “I did some work with drug trafficking before coming here. I’m not sure if I was dealing with the same group, but I’ve heard a lot about human trafficking in Wonju. Since I’m sure that the drug trafficking line would be separated from where they run their human trafficking circle, we should look elsewhere first. Looking for connections in the same area might not be very helpful because they’ll be careful not to mix drug trafficking with human trafficking.”

Donghae nodded, “Good suggestion.”

“Actually, human trafficking happens everywhere. Wouldn’t it be better to start off somewhere nearer until we get a lead?” Suho questioned.

“Then what do you suggest?” Donghae asked.

Suho and Namjoo glanced at each other as if either would have the answer before Chorong spoke up, “Since you said that the drug trafficking line extends from Osan to Kwangju, lets head in the opposite direction. What city…uh…”

“Suwon, Anyang, Incheon,” Kris added by counting with his fingers.

“Should we look where there are more cases of kidnappings?” Lay questioned. “Most victims are young children and women.”

“Incheon,” Victoria spoke up, “I’ve heard of numerous disappearances in Incheon the past four months.” Then she turned to Donghae, “What do you think?”

He nodded in agreement, “Fine, we can start from Incheon.”

“We can split the work.” Victoria began. “Some of us can dig up information of missing people cases while the others can head out to Incheon to survey the area and question people about whether they’ve heard of anything.”

Donghae eyed the group and thought it would be nice if they could all work together in harmony, but first they would have to get closer on friendly terms in order to reach that. Split them up, he decided. Then his eyes shot over to Tao who was almost falling asleep. Without questioning himself he knew Tao must have been dazing off the entire time. For a knockout like him, Donghae would have to work hard with disciplining him and enforcing into his head responsibility.

“Tao,” Donghae  called.

Tao’s head leaned back against his chair and obviously he didn’t reply.

“Tao!” Donghae raised his voice.

Tao didn’t wake until Namjoo must have kicked him with her foot from under the table. He jolted in his seat and glanced around while flapping his eyelids wildly.

“Since you’re new to this, why don’t you and Suho go?” Donghae said.

“Eh?” Tao sounded surprised.

Donghae ignored him and turned to Victoria, “What about you?”

Victoria glanced at the others, “I’ll send out Lay since he’s familiar with the sequence.” She then glanced at the other two. “Which one of you two wants to join?”

“I will.” Kris offered. “Going out to investigate is my forte. Chorong is better with briefings and information inspection.”

Chorong quickly turned to him with a tiny glare. “No. I’ll go.”

“Yah!” Kris pulled down an eyebrow when he turned to her. “What are you trying to do?”

“Don’t think you’re leaving me here with her,” Chorong hissed underneath her breath and shot her eyes toward Namjoo really quickly. Then she leaned forward to look at Victoria, “I’ll go. I’m better at reading people when questioning them upfront. Kris will help look up missing peoples’ cases since he knows computers better than I do.”

He turned back to look at Chorong because what she’d said just didn’t make sense since she used the computer just as much as he did for work.

“There’s already an even amount of us going. It’ll be fine if you two stay,” Victoria added.

Chorong’s mouth dropped open, but Donghae spoke before she could, “It’s just some research, I think three of us here would be fine. Namjoo knows how to run through the system pretty quickly, so it shouldn’t take a lot of time. I’ll stay here to help her too.”

“Alright,” Victoria easily agreed, “then should we meet again tomorrow to gather what we’ve got?”

“Sounds good,” Donghae nodded.

“What?” Tao asked. “We’re leaving now?”

Donghae turned to him without an expression on his face.

“But I didn’t get to eat…” Tao started.

“Lets go,” Suho patted his arm as he stood.

~_____~

Chorong turned to Kris with a smile of victory and quickly left her chair to follow Victoria and Lay out.

“Since there’s five of us here, how do you think we should do this?” Victoria turned to face them when they stepped into the elevator. “Lets speak comfortably with each other, how about that?”

Chorong glanced at each of their faces before nodding in agreement. If they held each other in too much of their position labels it might become like the superior-inferior relationships like at the police station. Since they were supposed to be a team here, it didn’t sound too bad. Chorong liked how easy-going it seemed to be here compared to her usual workplace. Then she decided maybe it wouldn’t turn out so bad cooperating with these people.

“Suho, how would Donghae split up the work?” Victoria wondered.

Chorong turned to look at the pretty-eyed man. His hair was eye-catching and he was even better looking up close. She gulped a little when she decided that it would be weird for her to look away so that she might be able to breathe since everyone else had their eyes glued to him. It would only look natural that she was doing the same.

“Ah…well…we’re each responsible for our own roles,” Suho started off, “there are people under us who go out to scout and bring back photographic information for us. In my case, once a mission is assigned I do the information collecting.”

“You’re saying you all do your own work and put it together.” Victoria restated.

“Well…we kind of do that too.” Chorong quietly added.

“I think it works like that everywhere,” Lay nodded in backup when he turned to look at Victoria who had this flustered expression.

“I thought you might process the information and figure everything together,” Victoria told, “like the investigators and police.”

“This is the military intelligence unit,” Suho emphasized, “of course we run our jobs differently.”

“Alright,” Victoria said, “so then what we’re doing is what you call information collecting, correct?”

Suho nodded.

“We’ll do things your way for now until we get a hang of it,” Victoria instructed, “lets stalk downtown Incheon first. There’s always more to find there than up in the areas where people are loaded. Should we go in two cars?”

“That’s a good idea.” Tao added with other ideas in mind rubbing the palm of his hands together.

“I’ll drive.” Lay offered.

“Then we’ll meet up in Incheon.” Suho finished.

~_____~

“Why!? You’re purposely doing this, aren’t you?” Namjoo chased Donghae down the hallway. “I couldn’ve gone too! Or you could’ve made Suho stay behind with me! Why am I the only one on my team here?”

“Aren’t I here too?”

“You’re not considered part of my team,” Namjoo retorted. “You’re just the leader.”

Donghae paused and Namjoo almost bumped into the back of his shoulder. She almost took a step back when he turned around to face her before crossing his arms.

“Someone needs to show Tao how we do our business, Suho is better for that position than you. If I sent you out the two of you will only fight,” Donghae pointed out, “plus, just going to the computer lab won’t kill you, will it? Show Kris how to look up the cases. I’ll be there in a few.”

Donghae began to walk away and Namjoo shouted after him, “And where are you going?!”

His only reply was his hand waving in the air. For some reason she felt so annoyed. She didn’t want to be doing a collaborative mission with outsiders. What made it worse was that she had to do it with the police who she didn’t like. Not that they’d ever done anything toward her, but she just disliked the way they ran their missions and how they went about them. Namjoo believed in man power, not evidence collecting and waiting for approval from a court judge to make a move. And the cops always relied on a D.A. and always had to send reports to him. Here at the military intelligence unit, they did it all with brainpower. After a mission was passed down, the rest was up to them. That was how she, Donghae, and Suho worked.

“Ugh…this is just pure torture.” Namjoo mumbled underneath her breath before brushing some invisible dust off her shirt.

~_____~

“After logging on just go onto a net browser. Under the Files tab just go under documents and type in the subject of search into the search bar. It’s really self-explanatory,” Namjoo explained without turning to look at him.

Kris thought it was only natural for Namjoo to hand over the computer to him after having started it, but she didn’t move from where she sat. He thought that her offering the computer to him would be a simple form of politeness, and while he waited she just kept searching away on her computer. After two minutes he finally understood that she was blatantly ignoring him. Promising himself that he’d let this go he got up and walked over to the other side of the room before turning on another computer.

~_____~

Donghae walked in a few minutes later and glanced over toward him. “Is everything alright?”

“Yea, I’ve got it.” Kris nodded with a polite smile.       

Withholding a sigh, he glanced over toward Namjoo who was sitting faraway from Kris. She seemed absorbed in her research so Donghae decided not to say anything. The only reason he really favored Suho and Namjoo over anyone else was because when they got to work, they really worked. They would always immerse themselves in their missions and always made it a top priority to successfully complete it, unlike the others who would tire halfway through and ask for a break or complain. Suho and Namjoo worked hard. What Donghae also liked was that the two got along fairly well and thus worked without much argument. Yet, now that was what he worried about the most. Having another team work with them might destroy that peace since the other team worked differently and each had different personalities.

Donghae was well aware that Namjoo didn’t like the way the Police Department ran their business. Namjoo had come from a Police Academy. He’d questioned her once about why she didn’t join a Police Division instead of applying for a military intelligence unit, which was far different from the goals she had tried reaching. Namjoo had given him a few different reasons. It was because they focused too much on titles. Superiors were superiors, officers were officers. If something ever cropped up after a case was declared solved, an officer would be hushed no matter what. And officers were always pushed around by their superiors. Unless she made it to the top with some miracle would she be highly respected and acknowledged in the business.

Namjoo had a strong personality, at least that was what Donghae had seen of her so far. She was arrogant and dismissive of anything that didn’t touch her brain. What might be her downfall was that she often didn’t think before speaking.  

On the other hand, Suho got along with everyone. He had sharp senses and was a smart person. Suho was a fairly outgoing person, a little clumsy here and there, but he was righteous. Did things when he had to and was always serious when it came to work. There hadn’t been a time where Suho had entered the battlefield voluntarily; therefore Donghae had never seen him fight before. It was something about guns. Donghae had heard a story somewhere about an accident Suho had had before. A shooting story involving Suho or something, Donghae couldn’t remember. And so once he’d entered the field, Suho had never held a gun.

“Anything?” Donghae leaned over Namjoo.

“Looks like that SWAT leader was right,” Namjoo told, “there’s been several disappearances in the Incheon area.”

“Why? Were you doubting her?”

“No,” Namjoo replied, “not like I know anything. We were too caught up with the drug trafficking case to pay attention to any other matters.” He watched her scroll down the page with some links to new reports just put up. “I have a feeling the survey team might be able to catch a lead in Incheon.”

She turned to look at him with flickering eyes.

~_____~

Suho scrolled down his window to allow some windy air in. Tao had begged him for 10 minutes ever since they boarded his car for something to eat. To shut him up for good, Suho had stopped by a fast food restaurant to get him a full meal. Thanks to that his car smelled like burgers and fries. And he had gone to the trouble to clean his car the day before yesterday.

“Can we listen to the radio?” Tao questioned after stuffing a fry into his mouth.

Suho didn’t reply so Tao tried to reach for the button with his oily finger. Annoyance screamed inside of Suho’s head and he quickly caught hold of Tao’s hand before he could touch his clean car.

Tao laughed amused, “You’re fast. Normally a person would stop me after my finger’s already touched it.”

“Are you bragging?” Suho glanced at him from the corner of his eye not amused.

Tao pulled his hand out from his and his finger before biting into his burger. Craning his seat back he put his foot up against the windshield.

“Sit up, please,” Suho remained patient. When Tao didn’t do as told he raised his voice, “Now!”

Tao turned to look at him before rolling his eyes. “Jesus…”

Suho listened to him pull the chair back up and placed his foot on the ground again.

“I might not be a black belt or quick tempered like Namjoo, but I certainly have my ways with dealing with troublemakers,” Suho warned.

Tao snorted then asked, “You think I’m scared of her?”

Suho glanced at him from the corner of his eye and changed lanes so harshly that Tao knocked into the window. “You heard of Dante’s Inferno?”

Tao lowered an eyebrow in confusion about what Suho was trying to bring up.

“It’s about a character, Dante, who travels through 7 levels of Hell,” Suho summarized, “not a beautiful journey.”

“And so?” Tao questioned without a care.

“And so, I can assure you that even if you think you’ve stepped out of prison, which can be your worse Hell, you haven’t escaped it yet,” Suho assured, “don’t underestimate us.”

Tao snorted again. “Oooh…sounds scary.”

Suho turned to look at him with a kind of smirk and a smile. 

***So, here's our character collection so far: 

Namjoo is arrogant, annoying, and dislikes the police, but will work hard when at work. 

Chorong is a person whose heart is easily swayed (LOL).

Suho has a fear of guns, easygoing and fun, but will put on another face when on duty. 

Tao is careless, wants his way, greedy, short tempered, irresponsible, not serious. 

Both Donghae and Victoria are focused and concentrated only on work, we can't say much about them for now. Same for Lay and Kris. So many variety so far though. Haha~ Such fresh characters with different personalities. This'll be fun. 

***And oh wow...15 subscribers when I only have 4 chapters up. That's quite a lot for me. Thanks for subscribing and I do hope you will enjoy the story. If you don't voice me your opinions I won't know how to satisfy you, and I'll only do things my way. 

***Ugh..I hate the poster already. It's so ugly and not done well. I think I'll have a new one up soon. ^^ Anyway enjoy and thank you readers!