Super

37. infiltration

"Before we start," Shao said, smacking her palm against the podium before her with more fierceness than she'd intended. "I'd like to thank each and every one of you for choosing to include me in this meeting. I cannot express how honored I am—"

"Make her stop," Taeyong said in an almost-monotonous voice. His eyes were covered behind his hand, elbow sloping at a sharp angle against a similar podium, but he still gave the impression of looking at Baekhyun imploringly. "Please, make her stop."

They were in the Blue Room, having gathered not too long after the mini-party in Taemin's bar. Most of them had gotten home and changed, excepting Taeyong and Kai, who had decided to sleep over. Kai had dealt with hangovers before, but he still felt like he had drymouth. He knew he looked fine, but internally, it felt like the delicate membranes of his brain were screaming in agony.

Shao narrowed her eyes at Taeyong, retracting her hand slowly. "You could've just said you were an ungrateful brat."

"I thought that was in the memo."

Kai frowned. "There was a memo?"

"No, Kai, there wasn't," Baekhyun said with a tight smile, chest rising and falling with a slow, deep breath as he stood up at the head of the table, looking pained and somehow politely angry. "He's pulling your leg. Try not to focus on these two and turn your attention back to the drawing board instead."

"Back to the drawing board," Mark said with a chuckle which faded as he noticed the others looking blankly at him. He shrunk into his seat, looking like a drooping flower. "Sorry."

"No need to apologize, Mark," Taemin said. His voice was calm, but his eyes were reassuring. Kai raised an eyebrow looking at his expression. Something had happened between them while he wasn't looking—the dynamic between the two had changed, he noticed, both pleasant and surprising.

Baekhyun cleared his throat, garnering everyone's attention. His mouth was pursed into a thin line, and he looked mildly annoyed, but didn't say anything to indicate it. Kai wondered if that was Baekhyun's superpower—an infinite supply of patience and serenity.

He drew up a pointer to gesture at a spot in the map of the city unfurled across the drawing board—it wasn't actually a drawing board, of course, just a blue-tinged hologram that hovered in the middle of the otherwise dark room like a beacon. The eight were gathered around it in a circle, facing waist-high podiums with smaller replicas of the same image as the main map. Kai was standing directly opposite Baekhyun, and the other's face looked blue-tinted and slightly hazy through the holograph, though Taemin's tech was cutting-edge, and the resolution was sharp as a knife's blade.

"We have locations on each of the kidnappings, and most of them are concentrated around the fringes," Baekhyun said, waving a hand, and tiny dots like pulse sources appeared on the map. "There's still no clear motive for the disappearances yet, though we have reasons to believe most of those abducted are still alive."

"Sybil and I combed the heat signatures in potential dumping grounds within the city," Taemin supplied, filling in the spot Baekhyun's statement had left. "The bodies aren't out in the desert—the outgoing aircrafts were all registered to recognizable owners, and no flights were frequent enough to get rid of all the bodies over the span of three years."

"And this isn't a serial killing spree, so the most likely explanation for the kidnappings is that the Four need the bodies for something else," Baekhyun said, picking up where he had left off. Kai couldn't help but think that the two made a good team—so good that it couldn't have come to them overnight. He wondered how long Baekhyun and Taemin had known each other, and how well. "Unfortunately, we still don't know what. Mark, the facts."