It was the third time in as many days that Kyungsoo and Jongin had had to hastily relocate themselves to a different room in the vast building that they were in, and it was becoming difficult because of the amount of stuff that Jongin had managed to accumulate.  Alongside regularly nicking food from the kitchens around and sometimes filching clothes, he’d taken several risky ventures that had resulted in the gain of a lot of trafficked gold, much more counterfeit money, and drugs.

“We are not smoking that when we become too hungry from surviving off pot noodles,” Kyungsoo had objected when Jongin cheerfully pitched up with some plants.

“Hard to smoke without a light,” was all Jongin had said, though Kyungsoo did notice that beyond collecting them for evidence, he did have quite a strong aversion to them, and to the other harder drugs that he brought in samples of.

They were now camping out in the attic above the forty-seventh floor, since Jongin knew it had already been searched several times for fugitives and intruders and probably wouldn’t be searched again anytime soon, and Kyungsoo was just happy that it meant he could set up a computer station without the worry of whether or not he was going to have to relocate everything quickly in a day or so.

Jongin’s constant forays and Kyungsoo’s surveillance cameras had meant that they were also able to identify what many of the floors and rooms were used for.  The first floor that they’d come out on initially seemed to be dedicated to security.  The five floors above that were some kind of hotel, through which Sangchu presumably used legal money to finance some of his more nefarious deeds.  Floors seven to fifteen were rented out as offices, again to bring in more legal money, and floor sixteen was an events venue.  The floor above that had games – computers, table tennis and such – and then floors eighteen to twenty were basically used as storage, although a lot of people moved among them.

Floors twenty-one to twenty-five were a brothel.  Jongin and Kyungsoo had found that out totally by accident when they’d attempted to set up their things in an empty room on floor twenty-two a couple of days previously and been interrupted by an approaching .  They’d escaped up a floor into a casino which was a couple of storeys, and from there up into the floors that basically appeared to be used for illegal business, thugs to stay overnight, and various other things.  One night had been spent in a grungy room on the forty-first floor before Jongin’s exploring had resulted in the discovery of the deserted room alongside all the plants growing in the roof.  There also weren’t any security cameras Kyungsoo had to tamper with up there, so he had been happy to relinquish control of them back to Mighty Mouth’s men rather than trying to keep all the counter-hacking attempts out.

“So,” Jongin drawled, tipping a pile of peeled dragon fruit into Kyungsoo’s lap as he pored over one of his stolen computers.  “Anything from Korea?”

Kyungsoo shook his head.  He’d been at it for a few days now, but something felt faintly familiar about the counter-hacking style of the person who was defending the firewalls of Busan police.

“No.  Can’t get through and I also think that Busan PD’s been infiltrated.  I know Lay’s unscrupulous, but when it comes to technology, he usually tries to keep within the law because he doesn’t understand it very much.  This guy is not keeping within the law.”

“What about phones?  Home computers?”

“Bricked up.”  Kyungsoo nibbled at the fruit in his lap.  “I mean, it could be for good reasons rather than nefarious— ooh, hang on.  This is new.”

He rubbed an eye tiredly and then placed a circular piece of dragon fruit on the eyelid in an attempt to refresh his eyes.

Intrigued, Jongin came to peer over his shoulder.  For the first time in several hours, Kyungsoo had removed his hands from the keyboard and was just watching the code flicker up on the screen in front of him.

Kyungsoo tilted his head back to look at the taller man and explained.  “He’s stopped.”

“And that’s good, right?”

“But it’s interesting because I’m nestling in the Mighty Mouth firewalls right now and I haven’t had time to put up barriers completely, and he’s gone for the firewalls instead.”

“What does that mean?” Jongin asked.  Kyungsoo shrugged with a yawn.

“I’m going to sleep on it.  Haven’t had a wink in three days.  Just wake me up if things go wrong.”

With Weiyi’s newly discovered interest in language learning, the next couple of days flew past.  Shixun didn’t take her with him again as he went to work, but Weiyi used it as an opportunity to see if she could handle being in a restau