“What do you mean, Kim Jongin isn’t here?” Miran demanded in frustration.

Looking far too smug for his own good, Kim Junmyeon shrugged and swivelled slowly around in his office chair.  His computer, Miran noticed, was actually capable of getting onto the home screen.  Kim Junmyeon’s office was neat, bland and characterless, which had surprised Miran a lot, given what the man himself was like.  Even the standard magnolia walls seemed even more dull in this one room than in the rest of the building.

“Exactly that,” the man replied.  “He’s not here.”

“Then where is he?”

Junmyeon swivelled to a halt and sat up primly.  “Ah!  Now we’re talking.”  His mischievous grin was replaced by a more professional expression, and his nonchalant tone became brisk and business-like.  “It’s his day off.  He works Sundays.”

Miran let out an irritated groan.

“What’s so urgent, anyway?” Junmyeon asked her, his tone becoming lightly teasing again.  “Surely somebody else can help you out?”

“No, no they can’t,” Miran muttered as she plopped herself down into the chair opposite Junmyeon, then realised where she was sitting and wondering if it was a better idea to get up.

“Of course,” he said, turning back to his computer.  “This has something to do with the rogue.  I forgot.  I’m pretty sure you’ll find it’s not Jongin, though.  He’s about as clean as you can get.”

Miran narrowed her eyes at him, but he didn’t see and didn’t respond.

“Why are you so sure?” she demanded saltily.

Junmyeon gave a sultry laugh, apparently back into full grease mode.  “Oh, darling, I know Jongin very well.  There’s absolutely no way it can be him.”

Given that he hadn’t actually answered her question, Miran figured she probably would never get his reasoning out of him for that one.

“And why should I trust you?” she asked.  He gave another shrug and whizzed around to face her again, a small smile that for once wasn’t leery or suggestive on his lips.

“Good point,” he said.  “Why do you trust the COO?  Or Park Chanyeol?  Or even yourself?”

He knew way too much, and Miran wasn’t sure how.

“Park Chanyeol was recruited around the same time as me, and the timing is apparently criteria for me to be declared safe, so therefore he is,” Miran snapped.  “I trust myself because I know I’m not the mole, and as for the COO, this entire place would have gone to hell if it was him.”

“Wrong!” trilled Junmyeon, his smile spreading back into the familiar sleazy one.  “You, Park Chanyeol and Jung Soojung are exactly the people the rogue wants to recruit as you’re the least suspicious – and you’re working on the case.  You could already be working for the other side – you could already be working for the other side without even knowing it.  As for the COO, can you just imagine how awful it would be if the very leader of our organisation was batting for the other team?  But of course, what a perfect cover.  It couldn’t possibly be the COO.  If it were, why, the entire organisation would have to shut down and start anew.  Nobody would want that, particularly not if you were running it for the other side.”

Miran got to her feet again.  Junmyeon’s smile only broadened.

“I’ll be sure to tell Jongin you dropped by,” he said sweetly as Miran stalked away.  Rationally, she knew she ought to wait until the servers were back online, or until she had more evidence, but Jongin’s fingerprint was the first proper lead she had and the fact that it was his day off was just an absolutely stinking coincidence.

Of course it would be his day off.

Of course.

Fuming, Miran made her way up to Shin Hyesung’s office – the door was open and the COO was sitting at his desk with somebody looking at his computer – and went straight to the Kim section of the files.

Screw Jongin and his day off.  She was going to visit him at home.

Just as she was retrieving Kim Jongin’s file from the stack, Hyesung spoke up.

“How are things going, Miran?”

“Badly,” she sulked.  “It’s impossible to make headway without proper electronics working.”

He nodded, pursing his lips, and then held up something small and black.

“I found this under my desk this morning.  It wasn’t here a week ago, but I supposed it means I need to get into the habit of checking more often.”

Biting her lip, Miran temporarily put Jongin’s file back and went across to see what it was, ignoring the man at the COO’s computer.  Hyesung handed it to her, and she saw that it was some kind of bug.

“Radio transmitter,” Hyesung told her.  “Well, mini-mic and radio.  No idea how many days it’s been there.  I’ve disconnected it.”

Miran blinked at it and turned it over.  She was going to have to ask Woohyun or potentially Jongdae for an analysis of it as bugging devices weren’t her strong point, but she realised that she now had even more work to do than before.

Thankfully, it was something that could be done without computers.  She was going to have to sweep the entire building for bugs, and—

“Sir, do we have any of our own of these?”

It turned out that the transmitting device needed go no further than Chanyeol, who became very excited when he saw it.

“This was in the COO’s office?” he checked for about the third time before handing it over to Soojung.

“Yep.”  Miran munched on a rice cake.  The three of them were sitting in a secluded corner of the cafeteria, not that it was really needed as virtually nobody else was there.

“I’ve only heard of these,” Soojung mumbled.  “They’re supposed to be a prototype of some kind.”  Just as Chanyeol had done a few minutes earlier, she eased her thumbnail into a slit in the plastic and opened the device up.  She wrinkled her nose as she looked inside and then closed it again.

“They’re very new,” Chanyeol agreed.  “And not our technology.  The other side’s.”  He took it back from Soojung.  “I heard rumours that you can use it to amplify radio waves as well as it being a microphone, and if you have the partner version that allows you to hear what’s going on, you can send orders through it for the radio part of the mic to carry out.”

“So that could be how the virus started if Jongin switched the memory sticks so early on,” Soojung said in a bored voice.  “Morning of the virus, the rogue goes, ‘oh, hey, I forgot to set the place off yesterday.  My bad,’ zaps something at their end, and then the virus gets tripped on the memory stick.”

“That assumes either the memory stick or the computer had some kind of radio remote control to be manipulated,” said Miran.

“Not hard to put that on something if you make a fake memory stick,” said Chanyeol before something else struck Miran.

“The virus hit when the entire office was at work,” she pointed out.  “So if you are right, it means that the partner version to this bug is somewhere in the building and somewhere close to the rogue, so that they could monitor what was going on in the COO’s office and also set it off at the right time.  If it’s not, then the bug was operated from outside, so the mole was one of the people not in the building at the time, which means we should be able to narrow down.”

“Bug hunt!” cheered Chanyeol, fist pumping.

“Are you five?” Soojung demanded.

Much to Soojung’s displeasure, Chanyeol decided to turn it into a game.  Out of nowhere, he produced a basket and several very detailed floor plans of the building – Miran thought one set looked suspiciously like official blueprints, though she said nothing – and they set off, marking where they found the bugs on their maps and collecting them in the baskets.  By clocking-out time, none of them had got more than ten – in part because showing up in departments demanding to do a search would cause chaos and that was the last thing they wanted – but when people began to leave the building, Chanyeol pointed out that they might as well stay and continue searching while they weren’t going to bother people so much.  Soojung left around nine in the evening, now with thirty bugs all from the forensic department, but Chanyeol insisted on staying until Miran went home.  Miran was initially worried he was going to strike up conversation, but he didn’t even try until they were both walking to the bus stop.

“Oh,” he said awkwardly a minute or two after they’d realised they were walking down the same street after saying goodbye in front of the workplace.  “Do you live over in the south side too?”

Miran nodded and tucked her head further into her scarf.  It was still bitterly cold.  Only three buses – including hers – were still running at this time, but a solitary black car with dimmed lights was patrolling the streets.  Miran recognised it as the curfew vehicle, even though curfew wasn’t for another half hour or so.  She halted at the bus shelter and Chanyeol chuckled quietly as he took a seat next to her.

“Bus sixteen?” he asked, looking at the only three the timetable displayed.  The other two had finished running earlier in the day.

Miran nodded.

“Heh.  We live on the same bus route.”

It turned out they actually lived close to the same bus stop – then on the same street, and then in the same apartment building.  Chanyeol was absolutely gobsmacked that he hadn’t realised before, but before he could start expressing what an amazing coincidence it was, a loud siren started up and they both froze in the stairwell on the way up to the third floor, where Miran’s flat was (Chanyeol’s was on the seventh).

“Air raid.”  Chanyeol grabbed Miran’s arm immediately and started back in the direction they’d come as doors began to slam and running footsteps echoed above and below.  Miran pulled her arm away, but kept pace with him as they scrambled down the stairs, soon joined by other r