It was a long day at the police station.  Quite apart from the bugs and the worry of who had placed them – Minseok was right that the security cameras had been tampered with – Yixing discovered mid-morning that he couldn’t get hold of Kyungsoo.

“Taemin said Kyungsoo had gone code red,” Yixing said uneasily, “but not where he was.  Nobody’s heard from him since.  Ryeowook’s been remanded in custody and Taemin’s in police – well, Sangchu’s – custody in hospital.  Kyungsoo’s just… vanished.”

Nobody dared say as much, but the only conclusion all three of them could draw was that Kyungsoo might well be dead.

Then there was the problem of what to do about the Seoul police department, which was obviously corrupt.  Siwon was currently working in the Ministry of Defence, but it was useless passing on something like that – particularly when it implicated so many people – without solid proof.  The only proof they had to go on involved Luhan, and while most of it looked to be true, it was rooted in hearsay.

After that, there was the issue of whether they were looking internally or externally for some kind of mole who had planted those bugs.

“So,” said Jongdae, tapping his pen against his desk shortly before the break for lunch, “essentially, either we need to up our security significantly, or we need to round up and question every single person in the police station, without the wrong person finding out.”

“We need another Jongin,” Yixing admitted glumly.

“Can’t we get him back?”  Jongdae turned to Minseok.  “He seemed pretty close to Se— I mean, he seemed pretty close to Shim Minjeong.”

It felt totally bizarre to hear Semi’s official post-witness protection relocation name.  Minseok had gone by his given name because so few people knew it and it had been considered safe enough.  At home, he either called Semi by her true name (when the children weren’t around) or, much more commonly, by a pet name.

“I can ask,” he said slowly, “but I don’t think she’s actually heard from him since my case was closed.”

“Wasn’t he sent after Sangchu, though?” Jongdae suddenly remembered.  “What happened there?”

“We can only assume something went horribly wrong.”  Yixing sighed.  “He was a phenomenal young man, but that doesn’t mean he was going to be successful at absolutely everything he did.”

“Or maybe it wasn’t going anywhere and he just got relocated,” Minseok pointed out.  “He was technically working for the Americans, after all.”

Yixing shrugged.  “That too.”

The one consolation that they had was that Weiyi appeared to be in safe, capable hands with Sehun.  In between the worry about how closely they were being watched, which cases that Luhan had alerted them to that they could feasibly alert the right people about without casting suspicion of any kind, especially if they were urgent, and whether or not anybody had cottoned on to where Luhan was, they still had to do their regular work in the station and around the town.  All three of them were almost glad when they got called out to deal with a girl who was threatening to jump off a bridge due to pressure from her parents over poor grades, just because it was a break from the heavy atmosphere in the office.

Minseok was usually left to do the negotiating for that kind of thing as he was by far the best at it, so Yixing had fun holding up the traffic while Jongdae got in touch with the girl’s big sister to explain the situation.  The girl requested for Minseok and her sister to remain when the parents finally got themselves involved nearly an hour later, by which point the five of them were in a secluded corner of a café with comfort food to help the girl cheer up.  The conversation that followed was absolutely exhausting, but Minseok returned home feeling rewarded.  Minseok’s favourite part about his job was when it was possible to see a positive aspect on somebody else’s life, and seeing the girl actually smiling as he left was almost as heart-warming as when Semi had told him that he was choosing the name for their second child.

The second car was not in the garage when he parked there, which meant that Semi had gone to drop Jaehwan off for a taekwondo lesson and had probably also taken Jaera swimming, since it was all in the same complex.  Switching deftly between the car and the house keys as he approached the door, Minseok wondered if it would be a better use of his time to have a long, relaxing bath, or to see what there was in the house to cook.

Tucking the keys back into his pocket as the door swung open, Minseok fumbled for the light switch.

There was a faint click, but the lights didn’t come on.  He frowned.  Had the bulb gone, or had there been a power cut?  The garage was on a different circuit to the main house, and the lights in the house next door were on, so it was possible – though probably caused by something fusing.  Minseok fished out his phone and held it up so that he could see where he was going.  At the next light switch along, he paused to test it just in case, but there was absolutely no response.  With a sigh, he turned into the hallway and headed towards the kitchen, beyond which was the larder where the house’s trip switch was.

It only struck him as he squinted at the fuse box that Luhan ought to have been around, and Luhan definitely knew how to reset a trip switch.  How long had the lights been out?  Why had they gone out?  But that wasn’t an answer he got until he’d reset the switch and turned to leave the room, eyes watering with the sudden brightness.

“Oh, thank God,” said a familiar voice from above his head.  “I thought one of them had come back or something.”

Minseok looked up.  There was a single, thick beam a few feet above him, and lying flat on top of it was Luhan.  He was clutching a torch in one hand and a tangle of wires in the other.

“Them?” Minseok repeated.

Luhan nodded.  “Some guys in uniform came barging in about three hours ago and roughed the place up.  I hid up the chimney until they left and then came back out to find the place looking like a hurricane had been through and bugs everywhere.”  He held up the tangle of wires.  “I think I got them all.  They were mostly microphones rather than cameras, but I thought it was safer to fuse everything so nothing would be working before I started dismantling them, just in case.  I was about to reset the trip switch when you came back in.”

“Two questions,” said Minseok, shielding his eyes from the l