The conference room was not as big as SungYeol though it would be; it was rather cramped to be precise. Then again there were seats for ten people and there were only eight of them, so it should be fine. A long glass table with chairs on both sides was in the middle of the room, a large interactive screen was hoisted at the end of it. The blinds, unlike other glass rooms, were closed and it seemed that they are closed at all times, which was rather unusual.

“Let’s start.” The director spoke taking a seat at the very last chair on the left side while others scattered around the seats with no evident pattern and SungYeol took a seat next to DongWoo, as he seemed to be the friendliest one as for now. “Let us start with the new information, before we combine it with what we already know.” Director So said and looked at SungYeol, who was at the moment looking around the room, noticing that this was the only room without CCTV installed, which made things even weirder. “Field leader Lee,” Director addressed the new field team leader but the later had no reaction until DongWoo elbowed him “Please, report to us the case.” Director continued and SungYeol looked at him dumb-struck for a second before he stood up, straightened his jacket and gathered his report went to where the screen was located.

It was like being at school again. He had to tell something he knew, something he researched himself and he was about to be judged about it (maybe not by everyone, but he was sure that Kim MyungSoo will judge him). ‘You can do this.’ SungYeol took a deep breath and took his USB from the pocket of his jacket and plugged it in at the side of the screen. He had to keep his hands from shaking while he clicked trough to the material, but he somehow managed and turned back to his new colleagues.

“On January 14^th this year, a massive amount of complaints about emptied bank accounts or strange reduction of money was sent to several banks in the area. As the banks had no idea on what circumstances such scale of theft could have happened they contacted the local police.” SungYeol started, trying not to let his eyes to meet Kim MyungSoo’s at any point clearly being afraid of others’ rather cold gaze. “The case was seen as a system malfunction and was handed down to me for a fast closure. I decided upon looking in to the accounts that had been drained and noticed something strange.” He clicked on the screen, opening a list of numbers. “The place where the money was sent to was either an inexistent account or server hosts, providing homepage services. As that lead nowhere I checked on the log-in logs for the accounts. There were several IP addresses that had accessed the accounts. Most of them were repetitive for one account as a person would access his or hers account either at home or at work, while there were unique ones, appearing only before the money los was detected.” He clicked again, highlighting five of the rows of numbers. “These five – usually either in pair combinations or alone – appeared in all account logs, thus why I decide to track them. They all lead either to a rural location in Thailand or China, which obviously indicated that those were fake.” He changed the slide on the screen again and glanced around the room quickly. DongWoo gave him quick thumbs up, but the rest seemed to be frozen.

“It took a while to go through their network of ghost IPs, but in the end they all led to a single location thus a single source for all the theft.” He clicked again a profile of a young girl appeared on the screen – the girl who had killed herself in front of SungYeol. “On March 17^th we set posts around the location of IP addresses and soon enough a report came in that,” he pointed at the screen “IU, or other know as Lee JiEun, already a wanted person in China and Japan had been seen leaving and entering the building several times. According to the scale of the crime and IU being connected with this, a conclusion was made to connect this with organization that had already been tracked in China – Children of Hades.” There was a short intake of breath somewhere in the room but when SungYeol looked at them they all were perfectly still, only Director seemed to become even more stoic than before. “They got the name because they were and are using codes gained from the sensational hacker Hades, who was captured 3 years ago. It is believed that Children of Hades along with other smaller organizations of similar way of working are controlled by a bigger, far more influential organization. Unfortunately during the operation most of the digital evidence was lost with no way of recovering them.” there was an audible scoff in the room and by the smirk on Kim MyungSoo’s face it was obvious that it was him. “Yet, the data IU did not manage to erase from the main memory server of the location, points out a person called Gain, who was apparently giving orders to IU. The rest is unclear or destroyed.” SungYeol finished, closing the materials on the screen.

“Okay. Team leader Kim, can we combine this information with what we know?” the director spoke after taking a breath and turned to look at the narrow-eyed team leader who nodded and stood up immediately, taking the place SungYeol was at, obviously indicating for the later to take a seat.

“Children of Hades, as the cyber department of police force has named them, indeed have gained their codes from the infamous Hades, who, as we all know, broke in to every single secret service server 3 years ago, causing a massive chaos. Even though his codes were not made for gaining personal information, we can believe that Children of Hades had someone to alter the codes. There is a rumor that Hades created more codes than we know, but his laptop is locked and no one can access it.” Team leader spoke while opening a file on the screen. “Up to the point. Our new colleague indicated correctly that Children of Hades along with other smaller organizations are a part of something much bigger and that something bigger is Otrera.” The screen changed to two columns of pictures, each containing six. They were mostly women apart from one blond and one red-haired male. “Otrera appeared 3 years ago, short after Hades was arrested, claiming the name of top digital terrorists in Japan. Already back then they were led by this woman.” He pointed to a woman with shortly cut, black hair. “ Jo MiHyo or more known as Miryo – already worked in Japanese mafia before the digital terrorism boom, but changed her specialty rather quickly.  Her organization mostly consists of females, who lead smaller groups in order to get a common gain for Otrera. IU was one of the examples. According to out information there are two males close to Miryo, which places them high in this female organization.” He pointed at the red haired male. “Jung Leo. No age, no education, no family known. It’s as if he has never existed and actually… doesn’t exist now, but only for the short moment someone sees him. He’s known to be the main assassin and Miryo’s right hand. His assassination style is rather unusual, as unlike most he prefer direct contact with his victims at the last moment of their lives - strangulation – not with a rope but with his hands. We have no information about his computer skills though. The other…” he now pointed at the blond male, “former NSS agent, Kim JaeJoong, now going by the name Hero. He was kidnapped during an operation 2 years ago and since then has joined Otrera.” Even SungYeol could feel the tension in the air after the last male was mentioned. Betrayal here was not welcomed, that was clear.

“At the given moment Otrera is snoozing, sort to say. Smaller organizations are committing rather small crimes, like Children of Hades did, while the aces are sleeping.”  Kim SungGyu continued. “We believe that the fact that they are basing their current actions as well as their action in past on Hades’ codes because they are aiming to cause a big blow just like Hades did – by attacking nation-wide important institution.”

“Our main goal is to locate Otrera’s headquarters by tracking down the smaller branches and capture Miryo and her followers before they can harm any institution.” Kim MyungSoo joined in, standing up from his seat while SungGyu sat down. “As for now Otrera had attempted attack on Japanese government and nuclear resource center. Japanese officials declined any success of Otrera but we are lead to believe that Otrera gained plans and source codes of the cooling system of the nuclear plant that has the same structure as the newest nuclear station in Korea.” He changed the slide to a scheme of cooling system and an example of the code. “If a virus finds its way in the cooling system and shuts it down, a nuclear catastrophe is irreversible. We don’t know how they have modified Hades’ codes and what they can do now, but we know that the modifications are severe.” The screen changed again showing a shot of a rather petite woman with heavy make-up rushing in to a nightclub. “This is the previously mention Son Gain. She does not appear in the list of Otrera’s official accomplices or members, but she must have connection with Miryo as lately the nightclub she owns has changed and grown from an underground bar to several floor institutions for VIP clients along with an online gambling site on their hands. As for now the investigation shows data stealing from the online users as well from the VIP clients both electronically and on spot. Our current task is to find Han Gain’s connection with Otrera and find a link that would lead us to Miryo. The only information that we have about Miryo and her right-hand man is that they are currently in Japan. We have n information about where Kim JaeJoong is.” He finished walking back to his place, director appearing from the back of the room and standing in front of the team.

“All our focus goes on Son Gain and her nightclub ‘Bloom’. Any side occupations are forbidden. Even if someone hacks your little sisters SNS you have to hold it back and concentrate only on this. Secret funds, over-sea bank accounts, emails, strange package arriving or leaving the site – you have to watch it all. Every single blog article, every single tweet or other type of SNS entry about the place needs to be taken in to account. The meeting’s over. Return to work.” He finished and left the room, everyone around the table standing up and giving a small bow.

“Follow me, I’ll show you how to work with the office computer.” DongWoo said with a bright smile taking SungYeol’s hand. “I’ll show you around right after.”

“I think Director So was quite clear when he said that all distracting tasks should be cancelled.” MyungSoo butted in when all three of them near collided at the door. “Him not knowing how to use a program or not knowing where the evidence lab will be a big nuisance later, so let him take care of that now.” Team Leader Kim spoke, making all three of them to step away from the door. “Do that quickly and then start working.” He added before leaving the conference room, Nam WooHyun, Lee Howon and Lee SungJong following him. Kim MyungSoo spared one of is cold gazes to SungYeol before returning to the main room as well

“I think you’re MyungSoo’s type, that’s why he acts like that.” DongWoo spoke while dragging SungYeol, as it seems, for a tour around the department (even though the original plan was different). “His type?” SungYeol asked not really understanding what it meant. “Never mind.” DongWoo waved the question off and continued to blabber about very room they passed, telling details about handling digital and regular evidence. He added list of most common pet-peeves of each team member and director. SungJong hated being called cute, girly and all that; Howon preferred to be called Hoya and basically thought of himself as the best shooter in the universe and top notch in everything; it was better not to ignore WooHyun by any means or else it could end badly; SungGyu was a bit of a control freak who obeyed only director on daily basis and MyungSoo only on the field; MyungSoo – a neat freak who hated talks about past and Director So, who disliked any relation to Hades still being attached to him.

“Is he somehow related to Hades?” SungYeol asked when they are already returning to the main operation room. “You do know that director was the one who got Hades, right?” DongWoo asked and SungYeol had to think for a moment. He read the articles about Hades being captured but he didn’t remember anything about NSS. He did remember ‘So JiSub’ appearing in the articles, but he couldn’t figure out the relation so, he just nodded, playing along. “Well, Hades other known was Choi Daniel was directors’ best friend.” DongWoo said in half whisper and SungYeol stopped for a second before following DongWoo down the hallway. “He doesn’t like talking about that. Spare to say he is quite angry about Hades’ codes being used and altered like this.” SungYeol nodded and looked at the floor almost running in to the glass of the operation room. Only the sound of fingers dancing over keyboard could be heard and both of them quietly made their way to SungYeol’s desk where DongWoo gave a quiet and quick introduction to programs used in NSS and where SungYeol should look to start on their new mission.

In around a minute SungYeol was already alone at his desk looking at the screen before taking out his a bit tacky deep brown notebook and a pen. He opened a new page and wrote down:

NSS CSD Director So JiSub <-> Hades (Choi Daniel) -> Otrera (Children of Hades, Miryo, Son Gain, Jung Leo, Kim JaeJoong).

He looked at the row of names before turning the page and noting down one more: Kim MyungSoo.

Nothing here was as it seemed at the first moment and t was just the first day. SungYeol’s mind already started to re-think and re-consider things as his gut feeling never lied and now it told him two things – something wasn’t clear with Director and his relation with Hades and… something was wrong with Kim MyungSoo for sure.

~ Ω ~

“We’re almost there.” A red haired male spoke quietly after he had walked over to a rather petite, dark-haired woman. They both were currently on a boat that headed to the Busan harbor, departed from Japan few hours ago. “Good.” She said with a smile, looking at the land they slowly moved closer to. “Make sure he is still where we want him to be. I don’t want any surprises.” She spoke turning to the red-hair who bowed once and left back to the inside of the ship. “Finally home. It has been a while.” The woman said with a smile and took her phone from the pocket of her deep-blue coat. She looked at the screen for dialing a number.

“Yes?” a male voice picked up after one ring. “We’re almost here.” She said with a soft smile, still looking at the distance. “And he is still where he was 3 years ago, 2 years ago, a year ago and two months ago, when you called to check last time.” The voice replied making her to chuckle. “I am getting that checked myself. What I want I want from you is not information about him but our old friend… So.Ji.Sub.” she said, emphasizing each syllable. Her smile grew wider which each word that came from the other end of the line and he took her first step on soil with bright, triumphal smile. Everyone was where she wanted them to be.

The red hair stood next to her again, near appearing from nowhere, but she was already used to that. “Pay a visit to my dearest Gain. She if she has anything that needs to be taken care of.” The red hair nodded and departed, disappearing the same way he appeared. “Let us begin.” She whispered with a smile before putting her sunglasses on and walking to a black sedan, parked a bit further away. It was the time to clam her throne as the queen she was.

∞