***Warning: potentially a double/triple update?  Make sure you've read chapters 23 and 24!  Also, there is violence towards the end of the chapter, just as a heads up.*** The story so far: Cho Miran has been assigned to unearth a mole in the secret service agency.  She is assigned to Do Kyungsoo's team despite various cell leaders fighting over her for her skills, in part because Kyungsoo's team is short on people after it turned out that Yoo Yerim, the previous woman who held her position, had gone rogue and been killed under suspicious circumstances.  Two agents in enemy territory are put under her charge: Scout, who is with the rebel leaders in Zephroon, and Klutz, a saboteur apparently lacking in skill whose exact whereabouts are unknown.  Notorious spymaster-turned-double-agent Oh Sehun comes to turn himself in, asking for immunity for his little brother (should they find him), but is killed soon after he warns Miran that they have another rogue in their midst.  A number of people come under suspicion, ranging from those who had fingerprints on Yoo Yerim's safe (especially since somebody broke in to read Sehun's confession) to those who were for some reason in the building on the night of the murder, to those who might have the capabilities to tamper with electronics, since there was a power outtage that left a significant proportion of the employees of the agency without an alibi as their passes couldn't scan through the electronic turnstiles.  The memorystick Oh Sehun gives Miran is swapped for one that has a virus that wipes out the entire computer system of the agency, leading to more suspicions, and after discovering her own teammate's involvement in various ual liaisons with the wrong people and another teammate turns out to be mentally unstable, Miran also unearths a plot to oust the COO that could well be connected... 25

  

“Does Kim Junmyeon’s squad just enjoy being a bunch of b*stards?” Chanyeol muttered as he leant over Miran’s shoulder to look at the frames from the pre-altered CCTV clips that Miran had initially wanted to ask Kim Minseok about.  The man had given them up without a fuss, saying she’d understand why he’d done what he’d done when she saw them.  Miran had to admit he was right, but she didn’t know what he was playing at.  Two of the damaged videos showed Junmyeon with a different woman each time.  The other one showed Kim Jongin, but it was impossible to tell who the girl was from the camera angle and it looked like they weren’t doing anything more than eating each other’s faces.

“Well,” said Soojung from the corner, where she was sitting with Kim Minseok’s file, “I guess one thing we can now add to this thing is that Kim Minseok is loyal.  And that he’s intelligent to know when the game is up and give in, though that does seem to come a little quickly.  Are those two traits even compatible?”

“Is it just a requirement of that cell to enjoy pissing people off?” Chanyeol wondered.

Miran wrinkled her nose.  “Yixing’s normal.”

“He works in the autopsy department.  You can’t be normal if you do that.”

“Does that mean we add Yixing to our suspect list?” Soojung asked, and it sounded like she was only half-joking, “since he’s the only one in the cell who isn’t blatantly up to something?”

“I don’t know if we can say Minseok is up to something,” countered Chanyeol.  “It’s perfectly possible he was just following orders.  All we’ve got on him is that he deliberately sabotaged CCTV clips he’s now given us the originals of because they had two of his cell members in compromising situations and he knocked Miran out probably because she was too close to a meeting somebody didn’t want her overhearing, and then deleted all video evidence of it.”

“I guess he could also be a decoy,” Soojung reasoned.  “The question’s whether it’s for Junmyeon or somebody else.”

Chanyeol appeared to have gone off on a different train of thought, though.  “I suppose Yixing’s down in forensics.  It wouldn’t be too hard to switch samples around if nobody’s looking.  Or for whoever’s doing the forensics to fake results to frame people.”

“Minseok was too surprised for that to have been the case,” Miran said dismissively.  “And I don’t think it’s Jongdae.”

Soojung immediately started pulling Jongdae’s file out.  “Why do you say that?”

“Because if he’s genuinely been tampering with evidence to throw me off the scent, I’m either going to scream or shoot myself.”

There was a silence of a solid ten seconds before Chanyeol let out a massive snort of laughter.  Soojung raised her eyebrows.

“I really don’t think that would hold up as a good defence in court, Miran.”

Still smirking, Chanyeol attempted to steer the conversation back to the task at hand.  “Is there anybody we can objectively clear?” he asked.

Miran blew air out through her lips in a frustrated raspberry.

“Working on the assumption that the rogue has at least one helper, no,” said Soojung.  “Except us.”

“And what are we looking for for definite?” Chanyeol asked.  “I mean, if Woohyun can be seduced into deleting videos and Minseok will do it depending on the reputation of the person at stake, I think it’s a fair possibility that a fair amount of the tech part is being parcelled off to somebody else, whether or not it’s with their knowledge.”

“No, the tech part has to be somebody who knows they’re doing it,” Miran disagreed.  “The coding for that virus was an absolute monster.”

“It could just have been a pre-supplied virus from the other side.”

Both women grimaced at Chanyeol’s point.

“Well,” said Miran, “going on gut instinct, I’d say that whoever shot Yerim is the Rogue-in-Chief.  After all, she was defecting, wasn’t she?  If you’re in charge of an operation, wouldn’t you want to do the j