- 03.33 -

“Have you made any progress on Cho Miran?”  The voice on the other end of the line was crackly.

“I got her file, but I need much more time for observation.  I’ve already told you what happened – it’s going to be very difficult to approach her.  She’s hard-headed.  We need more time, anyway.”

A third voice joined.  “He’s right.  She seems precarious, though.  From her phone records, she’s very isolated.  Her job is more or less the only thing in her life.  She lives alone, has no living family, hasn’t remained in contact with friends.  The right person could sway her, but we need to wait for the right time.”

“Could we start with the people close to her?” the voice suggested.

“There isn’t really anybody close to her,” said the third voice.  “Not outside work, and barely inside work, either.”

“I considered the rookies,” replied the male.  “The only other person she spends much time with is Do Kyungsoo.”

There was silence.

“My point exactly.”  He sighed.  “And before I forget, there’s been a massive balls-up with Hyeri.  From what I can make out, she got hit wrong place, wrong time and went off the rails.  It took the entire cell to subdue her.  I snuck in to visit her after Chaerin left and she lost it.  It’s also possible she might have found out that I’m dating somebody else.”

“Why now?” groaned the third voice.  “We were getting so close.”

“We were going to change tack anyway,” the male pointed out.

There was another silence.  Then a chair scraped back.

“I’m tired.  I need an early night.”

“Sleep well, playboy.”

“Stay safe,” cautioned the voice at the other end of the phone.

There was a low chuckle.  “I always do.”  And the call cut off.

Kyungsoo was in no condition the next morning to continue Miran’s training.  He came into work with painkillers and complaining of a headache, and if she hadn’t saved his life, Miran would have felt guilty – if she hadn’t saved his life, and if she wasn’t currently surviving on coffee.  She was actually pretty sure she was competing with Key on the tiredness scale, and even Woohyun was practically asleep at his desk.

Once the police had arrived the previous night, all of them had had to go round to the police station for questioning.  Miran had had to stay the longest: she was the only one who had seen the whole thing other than Hyeri, and the police were unsure how much of Hyeri’s statement to take as true – though Hyeri had barely spoken a word.  Not long after that, a woman called Lee Chaerin had shown up looking displeased and taken Hyeri away.  Recognising Chaerin vaguely from work, Miran had hoped that she’d be able to leave too, but it was another hour and a half before she was allowed to go home.

“You look like sh*t,” Soojung said sympathetically as she slid into the room they always met in.  Miran grunted and sipped at her coffee; Soojung’s reaction was marginally more welcome than Chanyeol staring at her without knowing what to say for the entire bus ride over.  “Chanyeol says you got attacked last night.”

Miran grunted again, and at that moment, Chanyeol came hurrying in.  He had a stack of files under one arm and his laptop under the other.

“Miran,” he whined.  “Just how many dodgy people does your cell have?  Yerim got her own agents killed and now this Hyeri person’s gone absolutely cuckoo.”

“Two too many,” Miran mumbled, tipping her head back and draining to the coffee dregs.  Chanyeol slapped the files down on the table.

“I think we really ought to make sure that the rest of your team isn’t doing anything funny before we progress.  You could have been killed last night.”

Miran wanted to say it was much more likely that Kyungsoo would have been killed than her, but she thought it probably wasn’t the best of ideas.

“Sooo...” said Soojung.  “What exactly happened?”

While Miran explained the details, Chanyeol pulled aside Key’s file and started to go through it, referencing it against the online version and noting down various things he wanted to check.  Once Miran was done, Soojung pulled another file off the stack and set to work on that.  Miran took the next one and opened it up.

It was Hyeri’s.  She almost put it down again, since Hyeri was out of action, when something caught her attention.

“Recruiter, undisclosed,” she murmured, trailing her finger down the page.  “Recruitment reason: vigilante.”

She stopped and stared.

Chanyeol and Soojung both stopped and stared too.

“Vigilante?” Chanyeol repeated blankly.  Miran blinked at the page.

“Yeah.  It says here that Hyeri was rescued from being part of a ion ring by somebody unknown in the agency, and that the reason she was recruited was because she was a vigilante.”

Chanyeol just continued to gawp.

“What the ?” said Soojung.  Miran partially agreed and read further.

“Apparently she was killing men, specifically from our country, for whatever reason.  Which is... not weird, actually, given the misogyny she experienced.”

“From what you were saying earlier, it sounded like there was something wrong with her,” Soojung said uneasily.  “Like, possibly mentally disturbed.  The wrong person could take advantage of her.”

“So she could be working for the rogue?”

Soojung shrugged.  “I don’t know.  But if she believes all men are evil or something and is happy to go on a killing spree, then I don’t think it would be too hard for somebody manipulative to try to bend that to their own cause.  Particularly when she’s such a good shot.  You have to be really intelligent to get employed here, too, so she was probably able to cover up.”

“I t