Once they’d both got over their initial shock at the unexpected reunion, Kai and Kyungsoo both ended up sitting next to each other against the wall of the darkened space they were in.  Kai took charge of the conversation almost immediately.

“What languages do you speak?” he asked.  “Anything other than Korean and Chinese, preferably not English?  And answer in the language you speak.”

“Conversational Japanese,” Kyungsoo replied after a little hesitation.  He could understand the language without too much problem, but he had severe difficulties speaking it.  “Why?”

Kai was apparently fluent in Japanese.  “I think they’ve connected me to my alias in Korea from my time there and that’s probably why you’re in here with me.  We’re obviously going to talk and it’s a good way for them to get information.”

“Whoa.”  Kyungsoo closed his eyes.  “Too fast.”

“Basically,” Kai said, keeping his voice down, “from what I can make out, we’re somewhere in the basement of HQ, or another really big branch of Sangchu’s triad or mafia or whatever.  There are half a dozen or so people down here in cells.”

“Do you know where we are?” Kyungsoo asked hopefully.

“Somewhere in China.  Beyond that, no.  I’ve tried finding out, but after the second time I tried to escape they began putting tranquilisers in my drink.  If I want a clear head, I can’t drink anything and my energy is sapped.  I haven’t made it up to ground level since then.  They started chaining us up a couple of days ago.”

Kyungsoo couldn’t even pretend to be surprised that Kai had not been content to stay put.  But there was one thing that he didn’t understand.  “What are you doing here in the first place?”

“Mission gone wrong.”  Kai hummed to himself.  “We were so close.  I spent years slipping agents into the ranks of Sangchu’s… well, mafia, really.  It was dangerous for me to do too much of it myself in case he recognised me, but the organisation’s so big we had severe difficulty getting up to the top chains of command to find out what he was doing and to come up with a way to chop the snake’s head off.  Finally cracked it at the beginning of last year when one of our female agents basically managed to get into the boss’s circle of women and made friends with his favourite.  Liyin spent a long time working on her and eventually managed to convince her to defect and bring over any information she felt might be useful.  This girl was able to get some information out of the big guy himself, but once Liyin taught her how to pick locks she had access to Sangchu’s entire palace, basically, because that was where he kept her.  Sangchu began to get suspicious, so we decided it was best to bail with what we had and leave our agent in the highest position as a sleeper, but one of the others was caught just before we managed to pull that off and he must have been tortured for information or something.  Liyin and Weiyi were the only ones who made it to the harbour and Sangchu’s men were waiting for us there.  There was a fight.  I don’t know exactly what happened because I was knocked out by an explosion about halfway through, but Liyin and Weiyi weren’t caught and I was the only one in my group who was taken in alive.  Enough of them got away for Sangchu to think it worth keeping me and trying to get information out of me, even if I’m a total thorn in his side.  He wants to know what we’re planning and if there are any more moles.”  Kai chuckled.

For the second time that day, Kyungsoo felt like a brick had split on his head.

“Small world,” he managed.  “I think I’ve met the Weiyi you mentioned.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No, I’m not.”

Kai laughed again, this time incredulous.  “How come?”

“She got as far as Korea.  It’s a complete mess, I’m telling you.  I got a call on Saturday from Lay asking me to lock down all the file cases from eight years ago on Semi and Xiumin because Seoul PD is a total rotten apple and Luhan had escaped from prison because Weiyi was his sister and he’d heard something was up and wanted to protect her or something, and he’d shown up at Xiumin’s house looking for shelter and there was a national hunt on for him.”

“I was banking on Weiyi and Luhan being related,” Kai said glibly, apparently only registering that much of what Kyungsoo had said.  “Based on what Semi told me from what Xiumin had told her about Luhan and his family, and how freakishly similar they looked when Liyin snuck me a photo of Weiyi, I was pretty certain they would be.  I think one of the things that brought her over to our side was the fact that she found out she had a family out there, however disreputable Luhan might actually be.”

“Did you tell her what he’d done?”

“No.  Didn’t think it was the time or place.  Liyin’s much better at that kind of stuff than I am, anyway, and she knew Weiyi.  I never met her.  Also, if you found Weiyi, do you know what happened to Liyin?”

“No.”

Kai sighed.  “And where’s Weiyi now?”

“I have no idea.  We were trying to shift her out of Seoul, but Taemin and I got separated and I got captured.  I think the reason they didn’t initially kill me is because Weiyi’s information is on a computer platform or associated memory bank and they obviously know I’m some kind of computer security technician and they want to know how far I’ve got into it or something.  Taemin ran into trouble at the station roughly the same time I was caught.  I don’t know what happened beyond that.”

“Sh*t happens,” Kai said graciously.  “We should probably stop talking, though.”

“Why?  We’re not using a language—”

“If they are trying to get information out of us, then we want to prolong that process so we’re both kept alive.”  Kai patted his hand in the darkness.  “By the way, do you know what date it is?  I’ve lost track.”

Kyungsoo thought about it for a moment.  “Well, when I hacked one of the computers at what must have been some kind of Korean base of operations, it was Sunday,” he mused, “but I’ve no idea how long I was out for.”

“Sunday the what?”

Kyungsoo gave the date as best he remembered.  “I think I got tranquilised after.  My neck feels like a mosquito the size of a horse bit it.”

Kai laughed quietly again, and Kyungsoo relaxed.  Being a prisoner wasn’t going to be fun, but at least he was with somebody he knew and got on with, and knowing Kai, the man was probably already beginning to plot some way the two of them could break out together.

On Tuesday morning, Minseok bumped into Yixing at the coffee shop around the corner from the police station before either of them had clocke