Hearts Awakened, Live Alive

Mingi: Beginning of the End

Mingi took a deep breath; the cold, rainy air burning his nostrils all the way in. With a stuttering breath back out, he checked to make sure his gun was loaded and ready for action. Another breath to steady his shaking hands and he pushed himself off the wall he had been leaning against. A quick glance left told him that Yunho was close behind him and to the right, Jongho and Yeosang. So far so good.

The plan that they had hashed out days prior was a sensitive one. There were a lot of moving parts, various tasks every member had to keep track of or else everything they had worked for would fall apart. They needed to take the building and Seonghwa said the easiest way to secure their victory would be to push through to the building's control room. Thanks to Yeosang's hacking prowess, the team had access to the building's floor plans. Mingi had spent all last night memorizing as much as he could of the floors he would be traveling through. He wasn't sure how accurately he'd actually remember it all, but he had Yunho with him; he'd certainly know exactly where he was going at all times. Yunho had always been better at quick memorization than he had.

The control room was on the third basement floor starting from the top and was where most of their communications were broadcasted. If they managed to get to that room, Yeosang could hack in and send word to the entire enemy organization that ATEEZ had taken over. Seonghwa seemed fairly confident that if they were to succeed, all lower-leveled agents would surrender completely and any remaining higher-leveled agents who weren't apprehended in the fight today would go into hiding. All of this sounded promising, the only issue would be whether or not they could successfully pull it off. The team had never attempted something like this before; for the first time ever, every single member of the team would be on sight. He hoped they could pull it off; otherwise, the repercussions could be deadly.

The plan sounded simple enough on paper. Two groups of two and a larger group of four would all enter the building from different doors. Mingi had been against the idea of splitting up but they didn't have much of a choice with so few numbers.

Hongjoong and Seonghwa, obvious candidates for one of the two-manned teams, would be entering via the front doors. Their jobs would be to secure the lobby and make sure that no one could get in or out of the building once the plan was a go. Agony wasn't the sole occupant of the towering office building—other companies rented out other floors within the complex completely oblivious to or blissfully ignorant of the shady dealings happening under their feet. Regardless, most of the people above ground were completely innocent. So Hongjoong and Seonghwa's goal was to getting everyone unaffiliated with the megacorporation out of the building. Once they accomplished that, they'd join the rest of the team underground.

San and Wooyoung—another obvious duo, San wasn't going to leave Wooyoung's side during something as dangerous as this—would slip in through a fire exit door as Seonghwa and Hongjoong evacuated the building. Once inside, they would use an access stairwell to go to the very last floor of the basement complex. Their goal would be to first sweep the bottom floor of any openly hostile enemies. If at all possible, they'll try to recruit anyone that would be willing to fight with them as well as free any prisoners from the holding cells. From there, they would work their way up to the control room, clearing out each floor as they go. Hopefully, they could snag a few people to help them take on however many agents there were who would fight against them.

So that left Mingi, Yunho, Jongho, and Yeosang, the group that would be acting as basically the organization's vanguard. Their job would be to head directly to the third basement level and engage with whatever agents crawling around there. First, however, they were to wait for the other two groups to move in. Seonghwa and Hongjoong would be moving in first, pulling the fire alarms and making sure innocent bystanders evacuated. When the stream of people started to die down, Wooyoung and San would move in as Hongjoong and Seonghwa locked all exits and barricaded the glass entryway. Once complete, the two of them would begin to sweep floors as well, starting with the first and working their way down. That's when Hongjoong would give Mingi's group the signal to move in. Seonghwa had said that the control floor would have the most agents ready to fight and defend their organization. Their group's orders were to shoot on sight any agents they ran into, to move slowly and take no unnecessary risks; basically to distract all high-level agents long enough for the entire team to converge together once more. From there, the eight of them would make their way slowly through to the center room, picking off whatever agents they found along the way.