GUNS & ROSES (a KaiSoo novella)

CHAPTER 2: UNDERCOVER (Kyungsoo)

I kicked a piece of metal can out of my way - it fell on a pile of wet leaves, muffling any sound -as I turned a sharp left to a narrow alley, away from the main street. I went down a flight of stairs and almost slipped on the last step. I put one hand on a wall to steady myself. I looked behind me to make sure no one's following. The sun had set, temperature started going down. I pulled my jacket tightly around me. A couple more steps and I stopped in front of a back door.

I held up a hand and tapped four times. Waited two seconds. Tapped two times. Waited four seconds. Tapped once.

Moments later, a voice came out from a speaker somewhere above me. "Name."

"Do Kyungsoo," I called out.

"Verification number." The voice was electronic but I knew who it was.

I sighed. "Just open the damn door, hyung. I'm freezing."

"So impatient," Luhan said. I heard clicks and turns as he opened the door. I stepped right in.

"Verification numbers were given to each one of us for security measures," Luhan reminded me as he closed the door. We were in the building's basement.

"Why bother? All you need is a surveillance camera to verify. And cameras were installed in all corners of this safe house," I muttered as I walked to the stairs leading to the first floor.

"Even then. You never really know," he said as he followed me upstairs.

The moment I reached the landing, warm air embraced my freezing body. I sighed.

"Come on," Luhan said. We walked through a hallway and went up another flight of stairs. Glass doors slid automatically as we entered another room. Another door waited ahead of us, but in order to pass through we need to do a not so ordinary retinal scan and enter a series of code. So much for security measures.

We came into a large room with white walls and glass furniture. Bright lights glared from the ceiling. I looked around and saw Chanyeol on his usual spot. A good number of screens showing a surveillance of different areas of the safe house, streets of Seoul, different data and various maps, were presented before him. His hands were glued to the keyboard, his eyes darting to each monitor. It made me feel dizzy just by looking at all of it. I settled on one of the couches and switched the TV on. Luhan plopped down next to me, munching on some cookies.

"The others?" I asked Luhan as I flipped through the channels.

"Kris is helping Coach to clear some things up. Suho and Lay went-" Four taps echoed through the room. Both of us looked at the surveillance. Suho and Lay were standing before the door. Two more taps. And another one.

"Couldn't we just use the front door?" I asked.

"You know we couldn't. It might blow our cover and we don't want that. Not now," Luhan said as he stood up and went to open the door for them.

Under normal circumstances, people would avoid this street because it's known to have ghosts. All buildings here were pretty abandoned - our safe house would look like utter rubbish from the outside but inside you'd think you're living in the 25th century. Everything is modern and high-tech. The ghost rumour started since the safe house was stationed here. So basically, they thought we were the ghosts living here. Quite amusing, really. But last month, clothing stores had opened just across the street, directly in front of the main entrance of the safe house. And ever since then, we've been using the back door. Another thing is the back door can only be opened from the inside, which means someone should be left behind whenever we're heading outside. Since I am the youngest, I get left behind often. And the reason why we designed the back door that way is because when someone tries to break in some place, they usually use the back door. Tricky right?