Vice

Chapter 20

"Okay, you've got it?" Seokjin asked, pressing a button on his headset and typing furiously fast with his free hand.

Numbers and letters were dancing across his monitors, there one second and scrolled away the next. Jimin and Jungkook were standing behind Seokjin, watching in silence, Namjoon sitting on the couch. Jungkook had an earpiece of his own, and he listened as the team leader gave commands to the others, before answering Seokjin's question in the affirmative.

"Okay go down the corridor you came through and make a left, then two rights. You'll come to a set of white double doors, tell me when you're there."

Seokjin pulled up a building schematic on one of his monitors, a route already traced in blinking blue light, mumbling incomprehensibly to himself. He was using his mouse with one hand, clicking around the map while still typing with the other hand, strings of code appearing on a different screen than the one he was looking at. Jungkook had never seen anything like it, the hacker was using his computers like extensions of his body.

"We've reached the doors," the unit leader said through the headset, and Seokjin pulled up what looked like a security camera feed of a pair of white double doors. Nobody was in the frame, which seemed to please the hacker, because he clapped twice and said, "Good! Go through them and down the staircase. When you get to the bottom, there will be three doors. Take the left one, it has an emergency exit sign on it, but I disabled the alarm so you can get outside easily."

Through the headset, Jungkook heard the sound of doors being opened, but the picture didn't change. "Is that a different door?" Jimin asked, voicing Jungkook's thoughts. "No, they went through that one. I looped the feed of the empty hallway so it would look deserted, I just wanted to make sure it was working."

Seokjin hadn't even turned when he answered, too absorbed in his computers. "We just went out the fire exit," one of the men said through the headset. "Okay, go right and circle around the building until you reach the service entrance. Your van is already waiting for you, so get in and go. Tell me when you're back on the main road, I'll wait to drop my controls until you're in the clear.

Jungkook heard running footsteps, but there was something nagging at him. "If they check to see if the file is safe, won't they notice it's missing?" he asked, taking a step closer to Seokjin's chair but stopping himself from touching his hacker. "I made a dummy file, and your men switched them when they retrieved the real one. If the bad guys check, they will see a document with the same name and the exact same size, but we're only in trouble if they open it."

"Why? What does it say?" Jimin asked, making Seokjin laugh softly. "It's 26 pages of 'gotcha losers' written over and over again," the hacker replied, closing the building schematic and pulling up another HTML window. Jungkook grinned. He was so happy that their project had worked, and he was getting the file, that he nearly forgot Seokjin was angry with him. Nearly.

He couldn't block it from his mind entirely, nor could he forget the things Taehyung had told him, no matter how much he wanted too. 'He will never, ever love you.' Jungkook shook his head, trying to clear it. Jimin had reported everything that happened at the hospital, including the fact that Seokjin had cried the entire way home. He said that Taehyung admitted the fight was his fault, but instead of getting angry, Seokjin had climbed into the gamers bed and let Taehyung shower him with compliments.

When Jimin and Seokjin had arrived back at the compound, the hacker had locked himself in his guest room for several hours, refusing to speak to Jungkook or anyone else, but when he emerged it was like nothing had happened at all. He didn't say a word about the hospital or Taehyung, nor anything about slapping the criminal before he left. Jungkook knew that he had deserved it, but he hated the thought of Seokjin being upset with him.