Yixing was rattier and sleepier when Minseok arrived at the office than he had been when he’d arrived at Minseok’s house earlier that morning.  It largely looked like this was because of the enormous pile of paperwork sitting on his desk that he evidently didn’t want to do.

“You can’t suspend them all,” he heard Jongdae telling Yixing firmly as he closed the door behind him.  “Most of them were acting under orders.”

“They all clearly heard Minseok challenge them about the warrant,” Yixing objected stubbornly.  “Any one of them could be in league with Sangchu.  The directive is obviously from him.”

“Then strip them all down and search for a tattoo,” Jongdae said patiently.  “Mighty Mouth is a shark, right, Minseok?”

“I dread to think just how big Sangchu’s operation is if men with his tattoos are this far across the country in settled positions,” Minseok said.  “They’ll either be allied syndicates or co-opted.  Any microphones today?”

Jongdae shook his head.

“There’s another problem,” grumbled Yixing, obstinately starting to sign off forms suspending officers.  “Yours is the only house in the area that’s been raided, and the only house in the area for which a warrant was requested over the past few days, and there was a warrant issued in Seoul, too.  They specifically targeted you in connection to Luhan and Weiyi.  That means that either somebody extremely competent has hacked into the SPD, or somebody saw the files before Kyungsoo closed them off.”

Jongdae tugged the pile of papers away from Yixing.  “Oh yeah,” he said, reaching into his pocket with one hand while he held the papers out of Yixing’s reach to stop him from signing more.  “Yixing said he was worried about whether that meant they were watching you in more ways than one, so this is for Luhan.”  He tossed a mobile over to Minseok, who caught it one-handed.  “It’s possible your phone has been tapped or will be tapped.  I haven’t been able to look into that yet.  Just a precaution.”

Minseok nodded.  “I should tell Sehun to get Weiyi a separate phone too,” he murmured, “just in case they look into phone records and decide to tap his phone.”

Yixing bashed his head down on his desk, making them all jump.  “We need somebody on a par with Kyungsoo to help us,” he groaned.  “We need help finding Kyungsoo.  We need to keep a tab on the SPD.  We need to make sure that none of us have breaches in IT security.”

“We need to make sure nobody finds out he has Luhan staying at his house,” Jongdae added, patting Yixing on the back.

“We need a holiday,” Yixing mumbled.

“There, there.”

Minseok tried not to laugh at Jongdae’s mothering, semi-sarcastic tone.  Yixing lifted his head.

“Where did you hide Luhan, by the way?”

“My bed.  Oh, and he told me yesterday that there’d been a raid to plant bugs in the house.  He took them all out.”

Yixing in a deep breath.  “We really need somebody with strong IT capabilities.”

Minseok nodded and sat down at his desk, the phone for Luhan now in his pocket.

“There are other issues,” Jongdae added abruptly.  “Since Minseok apparently doesn’t have Luhan and we’re close friends, there’s a possibility both of us will be raided too, right?”

Minseok and Yixing both glanced across at him.  Minseok looked to Yixing to call that judgement, and the head of police tapped his fingers thoughtfully on his chin.

“Hmm.”  He pointed slowly at Minseok.  “You’ll probably get National Security or the SPD knocking on your door at some point.  If the SPD don’t find anything, that’s when they’ll get National Security involved, if they’re convinced you still have something to do with Luhan and Weiyi, and let’s face it, that conviction isn’t really going to go away unless Luhan’s caught elsewhere, which he won’t be.  As for us….”  He sat up straight and spun around in his chair, as if that would in new thoughts.  “I’ll be raided by thugs, definitely.  If somebody applies for a warrant to search your house, Jongdae, I’ll grant it, but it’s fifty-fifty.  They’ll want a pretence at legitimacy where they can get it so that they can discredit us, but since I’m in charge here, it’s only going to be criminals or the NIS when it comes to me.  I don’t know what Sangchu’s contacts there are like, or what the others in the SPD have in the way of contact there, but I don’t have any strong ones, and from the information Luhan gave us, there are signs of corruption there too.”  He massaged his temples.  “We need somebody to keep an eye on the NIS, really, too.  Not just for us, but to verify what Luhan was saying.”

“You’re asking for a hacker extraordinaire there,” said Minseok.

Yixing shrugged and nodded.  “Kyungsoo probably would have refused due to ethics, but he’s very busy normally and I ask him for more than enough favours, so even if he was around, I wouldn’t really be able to ask him.”

Minseok looked around for something to occupy himself, only for Jongdae to chip in with something he didn’t particularly want to hear.

“Don’t you or Luhan know of anybody?”

Minseok sighed as he booted up his computer.  “I’m not close enough to anybody in that world to start asking favours.  I doubt Luhan would be happy about effectively handing somebody over to you either, whether you gave them inde