0800. 06/01/2012 Seoul NIS Headquarters. Seoul.

 

“Hey there.” The bus driver says to the driver come to take his position. The other driver smiles politely and boards the bus. “I’ve never seen you before.”

 

“I just got out of training.” The other driver replies then asks, “Any traffic problems?”

 

“Nope, but be careful around the rural areas, they tend to slow down a bit.” The first one replies.

 

“Great, thanks. Have a good day.” The second driver replies with a smile and closes the door. The city bus was full of people and the driver lets the smile slip completely from their face. The driver quickly shuts down the GPS system, completely unplugging it and changing the bus from its route name and number to “Out of Service”. The bus driver turns onto a path of the highway and activates on the cellphone signal jammer. No one would be able to track them now.

 

After solving their very first case as the "brand new unit", news travelled fast about the 5 boys who’d managed to do it in an astounding 3 days. It wasn’t just any case but a cold case that had veteran detectives completely stumped. Word was going around in the bureaucracy that they were genii; others spread rumors about them being crazy. The director congratulated them on solving the case successfully but said little more about it.

 

“Yes, I understand.” Key says talking to Jessica again. She’d made her apologies after hearing that they’d successfully solved the case.

 

“I can’t express in words my gratitude that you brought that son of a-” Jessica says and Key hears a warning tone from Sooyoung on the other end. Key chuckles to himself but maintains his professional tone.

 

“We’re glad that we brought the criminal to justice.” Key says and he means it.

 

“We’ll say in touch!” Jessica says brightly and she hangs up the phone. Key laughs again out loud and Minho looks at him in amusement.

 

“Really Key? Let me guess, you were talking to the infamous Jessica Jung who cursed us out the entire time she was leaving the house?” Minho says, raising an eyebrow with a smirk on his face.

 

“Hey, do your own work. How did the call to Taeyeon’s mother go?” Key asks and Minho’s shoulders slump a little bit.

 

“Terrible. She didn’t take the news very well and she broke down into tears. I didn’t have the heart to do anything more and she hung up.” Minho says and Key nods, understanding. It wasn’t the first time they’d broken the bad news to someone in their entire career, but no matter how many times you do it, it never gets easier. It never gets less painful.

 

“Well. At least we got to make phone calls whereas Jonghyun and Taemin have been slaving their butts away, getting paper cuts and filling out forms.” Key says brightly, changing the topic.

 

“That’s true.” Minho says chuckling but he isn’t sure what’s worse, the work stress or the emotional stress. If Minho had to choose, he would choose the latter.

 

“Don’t be too happy.” Onew says walking into the room sliding over two case files to them. “You’ll be switching roles when we solve this case.” He says as he walks away sipping his coffee.

 

Key and Minho exchange a glance and make their way into the meeting room.

 

“We got a case!” Onew says, holding a cream manila folder in one hand, a coffee in the other. He bursts into conference room #2 where Jonghyun and Taemin finish filing the paperwork. The only terrible thing about solving cases was the huge bucket load of paperwork that followed. Jonghyun and Taemin, bearing the blunt of the work, rub their eyes tiredly.

 

“What is it?” Taemin asks, immediately perking up at the mention of a case.

 

“A serial killer.” Onew says.

 

“Cold case?” Jonghyun asks and Onew shakes his head.

 

“No, this is our first open case and we’re on a strict time limit, let’s go people.” Onew says, ushering them into their main meeting room where Key and Minho were already waiting.

 

“What do we have?” Minho asks, grabbing the case file from Onew and separating the different pieces of evidence.

 

“In the last three months, in the area of Jeollanam-do, police have found hijacked busses with victims inside that have appeared to have been gassed.” Onew says projecting images of the crime scenes onto the wall.

 

“Within the last 24 hours, police in Mokpo have reported that a bus has gone missing on one of its routes and it has been confirmed that passengers on that bus never made it home that night.” Key says.

 

“That raised a red flag in our system since this is the third similar event involving the same kidnapping strategy.” Minho says.

 

“Let’s get a move on; if we take the jet, it’ll take us 30 minutes to fly out there. Pack light as we’ll be there as long as it takes to solve this case. Time is of the essence. We’re departing in an hour, thank you.” Onew says and the men gather up their belongings and head out the door.

 

“Sir, I think it’s best if I stay here, after all, the fastest equipment is here and I can manage the labs.” Taemin says and Onew nods.

 

“That seems like a reasonable plan, we’ll keep you posted.” Onew says patting his shoulder lightly before striding to the elevator where the other three were waiting.

 

Taemin walks back into his tech room and he turns on the monitors. Since he’s completely immersed in the new case, he doesn’t notice the fourth monitor blinking with news on Jinon. A dead body has just been identified as Yang Jinon, he was found executed this morning when all of his possessions seemed to have been stolen from his person. It seems like the suspect in question cut his arms and legs up before they left. There are no witnesses; police are currently investigating into the case.

 

Taemin starts looking up the names of his victims and all possible connections they’d have to each other. He crosschecks their credit cards, dinner reservations and essentially anything that can be traced to other victims.

 

Learning from the last case, he starts looking up historical significance on the dates of the kills.

 

He looks over to his first screen and sees that his computer has highlighted nothing yet regarding the victims. He starts another program to look for anything similar in the NIS database. It's going to be a long night.