Kai insisted on getting off the staircase at the first possible opportunity, and it was sheer fluke that one of the very first rooms they ran into on the ground floor happened to have a computer on and logged in, a still steaming mug of some beverage beside it and a jacket over the back of the chair in front of the computer in the box-like room an indication that the person there had probably gone for a toilet break.

“Wait,” Kyungsoo gasped out, skidding to a halt.  “If the computer is on a network, I can—”

Kai also skidded to a stop, an expression of incredulous delight crossed with one of worry on his face.

“How quick?”

“It’ll depend on what their defences are like, but if it’s on a network, I might have access to everything electronic in the building.”

“Scupper them,” Kai agreed immediately, shooting anxious glances at the door they’d come in by and the door at the other end.  Tiny as the room was, it was more of a passage than anything else.  After a moment’s thought, he picked up the wooden chair that was in front of the computer and smashed it against the door, breaking the legs so that they could be used as makeshift weapons.  Kyungsoo flinched out of the way of a couple of flying splinters and set to work on the computer.

As he had suspected, it was connected to a network.  Kyungsoo didn’t bother going through to discover just how big the network was because he was aware that they were short on time, and just hunted deeper and deeper into it, stumbling first on the security camera feed.  He cut it without a second thought, setting up a quick, weak firewall as a nuisance for anybody who might want to get back into it, and then forged on, setting up blocks here and there that anybody without some knowledge and experience of cybersecurity wouldn’t be able to work their way around, as he searched for something that would enable him to disable all electronic locks.

It came at the price of cutting the lights, and most of the electricity in the building.

“I’m going to put this place onto the emergency electricity and lighting,” he said.

“You’re basically causing an enormous power cut,” Kai told him.

“Yeah.  It’ll either close or open a lot of doors, but cameras will be out until they have a technician who can deal with them, and we could be well away by then.”

“I want to snoop,” objected Kai, peeking around the doors.  “I’ve been working on bringing this place down for nearly eight years.  This is the closest I've ever got: I’m in one of the headquarters right now – there must be something that can be found here that’s not just related to fraud of some kind.  I know they’re involved in all kinds of shady stuff, but the problem is finding proof and the ringleaders and nailing the proof to them.”

Kyungsoo sighed, his fingers hovering above the keyboard.  All he needed to do was press the enter key and power was going to be out.

“If you genuinely want to stay, then I’m going to need a laptop or computer of some kind before the electrics are back on so that I can completely screw up the camera system.”

“Worry about it later,” Kai told him with another look out of the door.  “We have company.  Just pull the plug.”

Kyungsoo did.

After the picnic on the hillside, Shixun had given Weiyi her own mobile phone.  He’d actually let her pick it out, and she’d gone for the same model as his, because it was the only one that didn’t look horribly intimidating.  The cost made her feel guilty, but he had brushed it off as though it were nothing.

It did puzzle her, though, because the only person she needed to be able to contact was her brother, and Shixun had his number in his phone and was almost always with Weiyi, which meant – as far as she was concerned – that she didn’t need her own one.  Then again, he’d been getting visibly and increasingly uncomfortable with Weiyi contacting her brother.  Maybe if he had nothing to do with it, then he’d stop getting so antsy.  Or maybe he was giving her resources so that she’d be able to fend for herself.

That worried Weiyi.  When he wasn’t getting grumpy about work or her brother, Shixun was pleasant and very kind.  His presence wasn’t as comforting as Liyin’s had been, but Weiyi did at least feel safe around him.  After all, her big brother had told her that Shixun was a good man.  That, alongside the fact that she couldn’t speak the language and found the place – in fact, the entire country – she was in loud and scary, with potential enemies on all sides, didn’t make her comfortable with the prospect of having to strike out on her own.  She wasn’t comfortable being on her own in such conditions.  Liyin had promised to stay with her and then been killed, and Weiyi had done her best to fend for herself, but had ultimately found it impossible.  She wasn’t sure she’d be able to manage without Shixun, just as she hadn’t been able to without Liyin.

Before he left her to her own devices, Shixun had typed three numbers into the phone.

“This is mine,” he said, pointing to the first one, “so on the off chance I’m not around, you can always get hold of me.”

Did that mean he was planning on leaving her to fend for herself, then?