Deer Luhan,

…I guess the moral to take away from this is not to use any form of electrically-powered timer?

Leigh

After several tense moments of jiggling the wire around in the lock barrel, I was rewarded with a happy little click and I pocketed the tools, slumping down the door with relief, eyes closed.  It rattled as somebody shook the handle, and then I heard a muffled voice say, “it’s locked; he won’t be in here.”

“What, in a locked storage room?  Not a chance.  Window, maybe?  Or perhaps he didn’t come down this corridor.”

The abrupt draining of adrenaline when I heard that was so intense I thought I might faint.  I was safe, at least for the moment.  That said, I should probably make sure there wasn’t another entrance to this storage roo—

Wait.  Is this place big enough for me to stay for any length of time without blacking out or something?  I opened my eyes.

Red, yellow and orange blazed in front of me with the terror-inspiring awe of the Balrog, and I nearly screamed.  Just in time, I clapped a hand over my mouth to prevent any sound from coming out.  My heart took a few more seconds to calm down, but that gave me time to register two things.

The first was that this blob of fiery colours wasn’t nearly as big, nor as petrifying, as the Balrog, and I wasn’t on a slender stone bridge over an abyss and it didn’t have a whip.

The second was that it was human in shape, motionless, and its head was propped up on a box or shelf of some kind.

The heck is some guy doing passed out in a storage closet?  I shifted the night-vision goggles off and dug out Luhan’s phone to take a good look at the person.  Was he or she drunk or something?

It was a guy.  That much became clear as the light from the phone hit his torso, and I saw that he was wearing a bulletproof vest similar to mine and that his left shoulder looked distorted.  His chest was rising and falling shallowly, and crusted blood covered the left side of his face.

The sight of pink hair, though, was like Christmas come early.  I stared for several seconds, absolutely stunned by my good luck, and then blinked, hastily rubbing my eyes.

Nope, that’s definitely pink hair.

I glanced at my phone.  According to the app, Luhan was still supposed to be about ten metres away.  I closed the app and turned the phone off.  I no longer needed it.

I’ve actually found Luhan.  Miracles happen.

A chuckle of disbelief escaped me, and I hastily clamped a hand back over my mouth.  The last thing I wanted to do was attract any attention, particularly when Luhan obviously wasn’t in the best state.  And I somehow had to get him out.

Frowning, I reached out and tapped him on the cheek.  I wasn’t sure if he was unconscious or just asleep, and I wouldn’t have put it past him to be either.  The storage room wasn’t that big, and he’d been in there for several hours.  If he was cramped, bored and hiding, I wouldn’t have blamed him for drifting off.  And if he was injured, concussed and in pain, it wasn’t exactly unlikely he’d passed out, either.  But that would make life much more difficult.

He didn’t respond to my initial prods, so I took out a small LED torch and shone it over him, looking for anything else that might be wrong.  One of his legs was splayed at an odd angle, but that was it.  Nothing bleeding, as far as I could see.  Which reminded me: he had a head injury.

His eyes scrunched up as the LED beam passed over his face, and he turned his head away with a small groan.

“Luhan,” I whispered.  He went still and then tilted his head over to look at me.

I grinned, not that he could really see it with the torch blinding him.  His eyes looked kind of glazed and glossy, and a thin shean of sweat covered his forehead.  After a moment or so, he reached up with his free hand and brushed the torch to the side, blinking furiously.  I had to admit it was kind of cute.

“What… who—”

I took my hat off.  “I got worried when you didn’t answer my calls,” I told him.  “You should have let me know when you were planning to get your aunt out.  I totally freaked out when I couldn’t get hold of you.  Turns out it was actually a good thing.”

“Sorry.”  He managed a sheepish smile and tried to sit up.  “I didn’t think— ow, .”  He collapsed back against the boxes, hand pressed against his left shoulder.  After a moment or two, his grimace faded and he returned his gaze to me.

“What are you doing here?” he asked me in a low voice.

“I just told you, doofus.  I was worried—”

“No, why are you dressed up in combo gear and sitting in this storage closet with me?”

“Wow, thanks for saving my life, Leigh,” I said sarcastically.  “I don’t know what I would have done if some other little sh*t had found me passed out in a storage cupboard.”

“I was asleep.”

“Because that makes it so much better.”

“Okay, I might have fainted from the pain,” he huffed.

“Luhan,” I said, almost raising my voice to a normal level.  “I know you don’t like being perceived of as anything other than manly, but now isn’t the time to go acting all macho.  I’m sh*tscared of the mafia and their Dobermen; the Baoding police department think I’m a child spy prodigy sent over from Britain to help your family; and we need to get out of here as soon as possible.  How bad are your injuries?”

He wrinkled his nose as he considered.  “I think I hit my head.”  He tapped the spot and winced.  I pulled his hand away.

“Looks shallow.  It’s stopped bleeding.”

“That’s a plus,” he mumbled.  “And I twisted my ankle quite badly while I was trying to run.”

It was my turn to grimace.  Small wonder Luhan hadn’t made it out under his own steam.  This was going to take quite some time.

“Oh, and I’m pretty sure my shoulder’s dislocated,” he added, pointing to it.  “Picking and unpicking that lock to get in here was pretty d*mn hard.  Hurts like a b*tch.  I can’t feel my fingers.”

“We’ll sort that first,” I decided, wondering how he’d managed to do that to himself.  Or, come to that, pick a lock singlehandedly.  Like, literally with a single hand.  I was going to have to corner Chen when we got back to make him teach me.

“Though I have to warn you,” I added as I plonked the torch on the ground and gripped hold of his arm with both hands, “I’ve never actually popped a joint back into place before.  I learnt this from TV.”

“That’s all right,” he joked weakly.  “I’ve never had a joint popped back into place before eith— holy sh*t, give me some warning!”

I managed a wry smile as I let go of his arm.  His shoulder definitely looked swollen, but its position was normal again.  And at least he was still capable of finding something lame to laugh about in the totally crappy situation we were currently in.

“Ugh, right,” he groaned, attempting to sit up again and crumpling when he tried to put pressure on his left arm.  “D*mn, it doesn’t magically heal when it’s back in its socket.  Help me up?”

I wrapped an arm around his waist and hauled him to his feet.  He staggered and nearly sent us both sprawling.

“Correction,” he mumbled.  “I think my ankle’s sprained, not twisted.”

I failed completely at not rolling my eyes and bent to pick the torch up.  When I straightened, he was leaning against the shelves and sorting through all the stuff he had in his pockets.  I noticed a broken headset like the one I was wearing.  Luhan quickly cast it away.

He had the same set of small implements to pick locks that Chen had given me, and I wondered if they were also a gift.

“Luhan,” I said, “did Chen teach all of you how to pick locks?”

Luhan nodded absently as he tucked the picks into a pocket and glanced at my phone, which was now the only remaining thing he was holding.  It buzzed weakly and the light died.  “Out of battery.  Typical.  Yeah, Chen taught himself during pre-debut days so he could sneak off to pull pranks on Baekhyun and Chanyeol.  He’d probably make quite a good burglar if he turned to a life of crime.”

He hesitated, half-holding my phone out to me, and then shoved it into his pocket and zipped it up.  I heard him mumbling to himself and somewhere in the mix, the words “Commissioner General Feng” came out.

“Oh!”  I hastily switched on my headset.  “I nearly forgot.”

There was a crackle of static as the headset connected.

“Miss Lee?”  It was Yi’s voice rather than Feng’s, which provided me with a far greater modicum of comfort.

“I’ve found Luhan,” I told him.  “We’re four floors up in one of the central buildings and he’s injured.  Busted shoulder and ankle and slight head injury.  We’ll need to leave by a gate; he can’t possibly climb any walls in his current condition.”

“Okay,” said Yi, sounding wonderfully calm and in control of the situation.  “Head for the main gates and I’ll see what we can drum up in the way of diversions.  We can probably get you a two-minute window if you’re able to get out there in half an hour.  Keep the headset on so we can communicate if either of us run into problems.”

“Will do,” I promised, tilting the mic away from my mouth and turning to Luhan.  “Right, ready to head out?”

It might have been the torchlight, but it looked like he blanched.

“Not really, no.”

“We have half an hour to get to the main gate.”  I paused.  “And I have no idea where it is from here.”

“I do,” said Luhan.  “There’s a window at the end of this passage that overlooks a courtyard going into the second big factory construction belt building, and if we go through that, it’s out in the open between buildings all the way to the gate.”

I blinked at him.  “How do you remember that?”

“It was the way we came in.”  Lopsided shrug.  Luhan winced and hissed through his teeth.  “And I have a decent sense of orientation.  City boy born and bred.”

Well, I was a Londoner born, bred and buttered, but my orientation skills were practically destroyed every time I strayed off the beaten path.  I’d lost count of the number of times I’d saved myself through my photographic memory, because my sense of direction was that terrible.

“How do we get down to that courtyard, then?” I asked him, turning my attention to the locked door and digging out Chen’s lockpicks.

“Jump?” Luhan suggested.  I twisted around to look back at him, expecting to see a grin on his face, but he looked entirely serious, even with his nerves.

“ no,” I told him, returning to the lock.  “You’ll probably kill yourself.”

“But the stairs were guarded,” he muttered.

“I have a gun.”

“Really?”

I winced.  That was the tone of voice I’d only ever heard from my baby cousin when my mum turned up with chocolates.  Said terror had been a chocoholic since the age of eight months.

“Only because I told Feng I was the top shot in my spy class.”

“Can I have the gun?”

The lock clicked open.  “No.”

“Party pooper,” Luhan grumbled.  I opened the door and peeked out.  The corridor looked deserted, but I shone the torch up and down it just to make sure.  Still nobody.  I turned the light on