Kyungsoo’s head had felt like it was about to split open when he woke up.  At first, he’d thought he’d gone blind because all he saw on opening his eyes was blackness, and the blow to his head had been a bad one.

It had taken quite a while before he was able to focus through the pain, and also eventually to work out that the faintest chinks of light were showing some way away to his right.  His stomach was almost as painful as his head, perhaps because he’d missed at least one meal and was incredibly hungry, or perhaps because he’d also taken an injury there.

Gradually, he began to piece together his memories of before he’d been knocked out.  There had been Heo Youngsaeng, and Weiyi and Taemin.  He’d been separated trying to lead the enemy away from Taemin.  Taemin had got to the station with Weiyi.  That was when he’d been cornered outside his apartment.  He could only hope that Taemin had made it safely away.  As for himself, he was probably lucky not to be dead, and undoubtedly a prisoner – though God only knew why – and… yup, his hands were tied.  Sighing, Kyungsoo tried to wiggle his fingers.  He wasn’t totally sure he could feel the entirety of his right pinkie, but that wasn’t a problem nearly as much as getting out of this predicament was.  Luhan had pretty much had people tortured when he captured them and thought they were of worth as bargaining chips to scare people into cutting deals with him; Suho had been just as bad, and if these people were working for Sangchu, he had absolutely no doubt that they would definitely be the worst of the lot.

The one good thing was that he appeared to be in his own clothes still, and somebody had made the fatal error of not strip searching him thoroughly.  Once he’d managed to get to his feet, Kyungsoo discovered to his delight that the small penknife he always kept in his back pocket in case he ever needed to dismantle a computer without taking out an entire toolkit was still there, and it was easily accessible since his hands had been tied behind his back.  Propping himself up against the nearest wall, he opened the knife up and carefully began sawing through the ropes.  Massaging life back into his hands and trying to pretend that his headache wasn’t affecting him at all, he inched his way over to where the miniscule chinks of light were.  It had to be a door.  Squinting, he did his best to locate it fully, and then felt around for a lock and handle.

When he found it, he tested the handle, but as he’d suspected, it was locked.  Jimmying that lock in the dark was much tougher than anything he’d tried before, even though picking a lock was always done more by feel than anything else, and eventually it gave with a tiny click.  Pocketing his invaluable penknife, he pressed his ear to the door and listened for a couple of moments, and then carefully pulled it open.

He physically balked at the light that hit him.  It only came from a single, dim fitting a long way down the concrete passage the door opened out onto, but it was enough to tell him that he probably needed some very strong painkillers.  Dizzy, he made his way out into the passage.

There were a few doors along it that he didn’t dare test in case there were people on the other side, and once he got to the junction at the end of the passage, he slipped around to the right, where the light was less intense.  Where was he?  What time was it?  How easy would it be to get away?  Resting against the wall for a few moments until his head stopped spinning, he continued down his chosen path.

That lasted until he came up against a door that needed a card to be swiped in order to get through.  Glaring at it, Kyungsoo backed off and started to go the other way.

The door down the other turning was one he was actually able to get through.  After listening out for anything on the other side again, he tested the door – locked, but not with anything fancy this time – and then used his penknife to get through again.

From what little light he had, he was able to make out that he was in some kind of office.  Several computers rested on desks separated by partitions, and there were no windows.

Am I underground?  Where was the other door, if there was one?  Kyungsoo took a couple of steps into the room, wondering if he dared turn on the light.  But then something else caught his attention: one of the computers was on but sleeping, an amber light winking at him.

He was deep in enemy territory.  Just how much would he be able to gain from rifling through computer files?

A quick debate with himself later over whether to work in the dark and he searched for the light switch.  For a start, he’d be able to see if there was another door, and also, if somebody happened to come it, it would be a lot less suspicious for somebody to be working at a computer with the room lights on than it would be for somebody to be discovered at a computer in the dark.

There was another door, and it was almost directly opposite the first.  While there were several banks of computers, the one that had been blinking at him was almost directly in the centre of the room, and Kyungsoo swiftly made his way over.  It purred back into life when he pressed the power button, and as it began to gear up to take him through to a lock screen, he overrode some of the system commands in order to bypass the password.  He didn’t know if it would work, since security measures had been taken a year or two previously on most computers to prevent that kind of hacking, but the computer was quite happy to obey his commands, and in under half a minute, he was scanning the home screen.

The date and time in the bottom right