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The first time Xie Yun meets Zhou Fei, he is trapped between laser tripwires in an air vent above her home, tasked with breaking into the legendary 48 Strongholds to steal a copy of a floorplan from Gantang-gong's office.

It's beyond foolishness. If anyone else had asked him, he would have laughed them out the door before slipping out of sight, but Wang Lin is the thief who taught him everything he knows. Wang Lin had given him the passcode to the vault, a code that he and Zhou Yitang used together in their youth, and had walked him through the layout of the 48 Strongholds.

But, apparently, times have changed. The security measures have certainly changed, with the compound closely monitored from the boiler room all the way up to the skylight. Even with the passcode, it's a wonder that he's retrieved the floorplan and made it this far. That salve to his pride is pretty useless, though, in the face of the woman in 48 Strongholds insignia who is pointing a dagger at him.

"Who the hell are you?" she hisses. "How did you get in here?" She peers behind him, dagger still held at the ready, and clocks the laser tripwires blocking the way behind him. "Oh, my mother's going to kill you."

"I'm just a friendly visitor, here to test your security and retrieve a message," Xie Yun says, with the most winning smile he can muster.

It's not his best work - he's been here since dawn, trying to outwit the most aggressive security system he has ever seen.

"So," he tries, "is this part of your regular patrol? It's a little out of the way, isn't it? The agents of the 48 Strongholds are truly as diligent as the rumors claim." He gestures cautiously towards the dust covering their clothes. "Even these illustriously maintained air vents aren't clean enough to see this much traffic. Perhaps this little black cat would be so kind as to show this guest the exit?"

"You're insane," she says wonderingly. "My mother really is going to kill you. How the hell did you get past the perimeter? These vents don't connect to anywhere."

"Ah, that's what you think. If I tell you those secrets, though, your mother really will kill me. Tell me, little cat, do you know the way out?"

He really hopes that she isn't planning to use that dagger on him. Getting in a fight in an air vent is so awkward - definitely not the impression he wants to make on this delightfully prickly teenager, nor yet the entrance he wants to make if he must actually speak to Gantang-gong and beg mercy for all the breaking and entering.

"Of course I know the way through my own home," she snaps.

After a telling silence, Xie Yun raises his eyebrows at her, which just makes her scowl harder. "Perhaps this fierce guardian will do me the honor of accompanying me as I try to find a safe exit?" he asks.

The young woman - she really can't be more than nineteen - sheathes her dagger and backs up enough for him to access the path that turns off to the left. He's surprised that she has yet to call in reinforcements.

"Don't even think about trying anything," she warns him. "I'm faster with a knife than you are."

"Ah, I believe it, little cat," he says. "Of that, I have no doubt."

They have scarcely made it five minutes when Xie Yun hears a gasp and a metallic creak behind him, and whips around to see a grate opening beneath the young woman. She loses her balance and starts to fall through the gap.

"Grab on!" Xie Yun says urgently, and she reaches for his outstretched hand as he flings himself forward to catch hold before she falls.

He succeeds in breaking her fall, and in the moment between when he halts her momentum and when he himself starts to lurch through the open grate, Xie Yun anchors a cord so the side of the vent. Slowly, both of them gasping with effort, he uses his hold to lower them safely to the ground.

"High ceilings," he murmurs sardonically when he has managed to catch his breath.

"Yeah," she pants, "it's the atrium. We've got, like, a minute tops before they realize that we're here."

That's bad. Really bad. He's worked with worse so far today in the 48 Strongholds, but not with one of their agents already next to him, so this is definitely bad. He really hopes that he can speak with Gantang-gong before they decide to just shoot him.

"Why on Earth did you take us above a room with thirty foot ceilings?" he asks in exasperation while mapping out the cameras and motion sensors. Task finished, he turns to face her. "I need to get out of here. Are you going to stop me?"

It takes the young woman a lot longer to reply than Xie Yun would like, but eventually, she narrows her eyes and shakes her head.

"You could have just let me fall, and gotten away," she says. "You didn't have to catch me. That would have been a really bad fall. I'll help you get out."

Xie Yun's eyes widen before he can stop himself, so he gives in to his grin. "You're the best, little cat. After you, then."

She nods once and darts over to an unmarked door, opening it to reveal a utility staircase. "Why do you keep calling me that?" she asks as he follows her down the stairs.

"Because you're so agile, of course! You appeared out of nowhere in an air vent, all in black with sharp claws to boot. And you're tiny. So, a little cat."

"You are insane," she says again, feelingly, before gesturing at him to stop, and then motioning them back up a floor and out of the staircase. "Guards coming," she whispers. "We need a different way down."

"This way," Xie Yun says.

They duck around a motion sensor, into a utility closet that was noted on the map Wang Lin gave him, and into another vent. This one connects to a small corridor that serves as little more than a janitorial chute. A laser grid walls off the hallway. It's a shockingly high tech one given how remote this hallway is, but the hall does lead to an exit, which must be why the laser grid was installed.

"I've never seen this activated," his little cat mutters. "Do you know how to get through it?"

"Yeah," he says. "Here - watch what I do, and I can talk you through it."

The rushing joy of dancing his way through a moving laser grid never fades. In his line of work, it's rare to do this for an audience, and Xie Yun savors the chance to show off. He weaves back and forth a few times, until she is ready try it, at which point he quietly calls out each move in the sequence. She's a fast learner. Despite the dire situation, Xie Yun is having fun.

Unfortunately, the next corner they peek around has a guard stationed there. Xie Yun is certain that this route is a dead end if they can't make that turn. The young woman's pursed frown confirms it.

"I'll distract them," she tells him. "There's an alarmed door on the other side of the hallway, and I can get to it from here. When the guard leaves, you go."

"Are you sure?" he asks, hesitating even though he can't afford to. "You'll be okay?"

"It's fine," she says. "I get in trouble for these kinds of stunts all the time. You saved me in the air vent, now we'll be even."

"I'll owe you one. Well - half," Xie Yun says.

"Just get out of here," she says, and then she's gone, leaving Xie Yun biting his lip on a smile as he counts the seconds until the alarm blares.

~

Li Sheng has never met Wu Chuchu, but the pictures his aunt pulled up of the two kids in school uniforms made his heart ache for their predicament. Based on what everyone was saying in the 48 Strongholds, Wu Chuchu has no idea what is on the flashdrive that her parents were killed over, and it's only luck that she and her brother have gone this long without being found.

Or, rather, they had remained undiscovered for several months following their parents' deaths, until a team of 48 Strongholds agents led by Chenfei found them. One status report later, and it was back to radio silence.

These things happen sometimes. Not every mission will go according to plan, a lesson drilled into him by his mother - a good agent is one who stays alive to see the mission through.

The fact that headquarters hasn't heard from Chenfei's team in over a week is worrying, but it's possible that they've been forced to go to ground, and a full search effort will just draw more attention their way. That's the call his aunt has made for now. Still, Chief Li has asked Li Sheng, Li Yan, and Zhou Fei to keep an eye out for Chenfei or the Wu siblings while they are out and about.

The three of them have the benefit of being less visible than a usual team of agents, and Li Sheng is determined to make use of that advantage. There are no set rules for what trainees do on their inaugral tour of the world. 48 Strongholds tradition simply dictates that they must carry out the principles of the agency, in valiant service to the common folk, and give an account of their deeds when they return in a year. His uncle has explained that it is a test of dedication as much as it is a test of their skills - trainees who return to the base are officially sworn into the spy agency, pledged to undermine intelligence operations that risk civilian casualties.

For the grandson for the agency's founder, though, the main appeal of this trial period is the opportunity to win some recognition. Li Sheng can practically hear his cousin scoffing at the idea. Zhou Fei is always going on about how glory isn't important, but that's easy for her to say, with her falcon-quick combat skills. If Li Sheng is going to make a name for himself, he needs to do something visible. Preferably a lot of things. And first on the list is rescuing Wu Chuchu.

Chenfei's report had placed the group in a suburb of Chicago, so that is where Li Sheng starts. He spends a few days rotating between coffee shops to avoid attention while he works through the 48 Strongholds records on the case. There is nothing new in here, though. He turns his attention to other options.

The municipal office in this town is so outdated that he has to physically wire himself into their system to copy their files. Late that evening, slumped over his computer set-up in the hotel room, he finds two shots of the agency car passing through the town.

It isn't much, but it's the lead that he needs. Two days later, Li Sheng is sitting in the driver's seat of a borrowed car, parked across the street from a nondescript industrial building in Pullman. The building is owned by Huo Industries. It's surprising to see this many guards here, but that's all the more reason to believe that this is where they are keeping Chenfei and the Wu siblings. The building is too well-guarded for him to infiltrate alone. He pulls out his phone and dials up his cousin.

"Li Sheng? What is it?" Zhou Fei answers, a little out of breath.

"I found out where they took Chenfei's team and General Wu's kids," he tells her.

Someone screams on the other end of the line.

"A'Fei, where are you?"

"Don't worry about it, it's just a bar fight," she says.

"What - why are you in a bar fight? Don't you have anything better to do?" he asks, bewildered.

"I said not to worry about it," Zhou Fei replies, followed by a thwacking sound. "Where's Chenfei? I'll come meet you."

"There's a guarded compound just south of Chicago. I'll text you the details."

"Okay. Talk soon." Another crunching sound, followed by the beep of Zhou Fei hanging up the call.

Li Sheng shakes his head and pulls the car into drive.

~

The second time Xie Yun meets Zhou Fei, he is biding his time in a dusty storeroom in a warehouse owned by Huo Industries. He has heard murmurings for months about a flashdrive, something connected to Disha Security Company. All these years later, he is still a ghost that haunts Disha's trail, one more whisper in the winds that brush their battlefields. This trip into Huo Industries is less a job than it is a personal mission. Revenge on Disha's leadership for the deaths of his parents is something that he doesn't allow himself to dream of too often, since the hunger and hopeless fury wear him gaunt every time, but when a rumor like this one surfaces he will indulge himself.

The young woman from the 48 Strongholds was not one of the people he was expecting to see here. There are a few players like him who trail in and out of Disha's periphery, but the 48 Strongholds have not been involved with Disha in almost a full generation. Hidden behind a stack of boxes, he traces the profile of the person who has just ducked into the storeroom, and he inhales with surprise when he places the face.

"Little cat?" he murmurs.

"Who's there?" she demands, whirling around with that same dagger in hand.

"I mean no harm!" he says, stepping carefully out from behind the boxes with his hands raised. "It's me, the thief from the air vents. Xie Yun, at your service," he adds.

"What are you doing here?" she asks, sheathing the dagger.

Xie Yun kind of feels like he should be the one asking her that, but that's neither here nor there.

"Gossip and sightseeing," he says. For some reason, the exasperated hostility on her face makes him smile. "What about you?"

"Family business," she says. "Some of my friends are trapped here."

"I see," Xie Yun says slowly. "Well, you helped me out last time, so why don't I help you out this time?"

~

Thanks to Li Sheng's careful surveillance, Zhou Fei has a pretty good map of the guard rotations around the perimeter. Getting into the building isn't difficult, but once inside, the place is a maze of guardrooms and long hallways without cover. It's almost a relief to run into the thief who had broken into the 48 Strongholds a few years ago. He had at least seemed competent, the insanity aside.

"Xie Yun, huh?" she says, mulling it over. "Do you know the way around this compound, too, then?"

"Sure," he says easily. "The guard rotation is really basic, but they make up for it with sheer numbers. No taste," he adds, shaking his head at her. "All their prisoners are in the eastern wing. There's too many guards by the exits for me to fight my way through, so it's been a boring few days."

"I was able to get in without a problem," Zhou Fei says dubiously, to which Xie Yun chuckles.

"Yeah, me too, and here we are, mn? What do you say, little cat - should we head out together so that you can get backup for your friends?"

"My name's Zhou Fei. And I'm not leaving here without my people. Show me where to find them, and we can take it from there."

Xie Yun wisely does not gainsay her, instead pulling a pen out of his jacket to sketch out a map on some old receipts from the ground. Having watched him at work in the 48 Strongholds, Zhou Fei shouldn't be surprised that he's been able to map the place from cellar to ceiling, but she still twitches with suspicion.

"Why are you really here?" she asks, once they have finished reviewing the map. "You didn't answer me before. How come you know the layout so well, but you can't get out?"

"Little cat, are you calling me a liar?" he says, blinking at her with wide eyes. "I said I was here for gossip and sightseeting! So of course I had to go through the compound to see the sights. Gossip told me there would be a lot worth seeing, so, here I am," he grins, spreading his palms in front of him.

"So you're a thief," Zhou Fei summarizes. "What did you steal from the 48 Strongholds?"

"Ah, Zhou Fei, a gentleman never steals and tells," he says. "Shall we be on our way, then, little cat? I can explain myself to you until I'm blue in the face, but the guard rotation waits for no man - or woman."

"Fine," she says. "Let's go, then."

Navigating the endless corridors is much easier with Xie Yun guiding them. Having a lookout, someone to consult with, helps more than Zhou Fei would expect. She likes to work alone. That was the whole point of the traditional sojourn, after all. She had assumed that partnering up with her cousin was a one-off thing borne of their lifetime of working together, but this is actually kind of nice.

It helps that Xie Yun is incredibly deft with every lock. Zhou Fei isn't shabby with a lockpick - she was raised in the 48 Strongholds and trained by the best in the business, after all - but Xie Yun puts her work to shame. The trip from the storeroom to the cell where the others are being held flies by as fluidly as a dance.

"A'Fei, how come you're here?" Chenfei whispers when she and Xie Yun knock out the two guards and reach the door of the cell. "Who's this?"

"Chenfei, are you okay? I'm here to rescue you. Li Sheng found you, he's been trying to track you down ever since the three of us left headquarters last month. This is Xie Yun, he's helping me. He knows the map and the guard rotation."

"It's an honor to meet you, then, Xie Yun. My agents and I thank you for assistance. If you have a way out, though, we should go now. General Wu's children are here with us."

She looks to Xie Yun for directions, and finds him hovering halfway to the door. Zhou Fei instinctively steadies her stance in case he is planning something.

"Do you know how to get the door open?" she asks him. His gaze flashes up to her, and he blinks a few times before his smile resets itself.

"Of course, Zhou Fei," he says, bounding over to the cell.

Examining the mechanism, Xie Yun pulls a few pieces of wire out of nowhere, and somehow unscrews the base of the locking mechanism before shorting it out. The door swings open. Xie Yun is instantly three meters back, even before Chenfei and the others have stepped forward. It's weird how skittish he is. But, Zhou Fei supposes, if he can't even fight his way past a few guards, then it might make sense. It does make him all the more mad for having tried to infiltrate the 48 Strongholds.

"For you," Zhou Fei says, handing Chenfei one of the extra earbuds that Li Sheng had given her. "Let's go."

She switches her own earbud off of mute. There wasn't much to say earlier, with Li Sheng busy fetching the getaway vehicle, and Zhou Fei didn't need him nagging her when she ran into Xie Yun. Now that Chenfei's team is with them, though, they should coordinate on the pick-up. Chenfei would scold her for muting her earbud in the first place.

It's harder to sneak through unseen with the bigger group, and they have to move so slowly that Zhou Fei wants to scream in frustration. The drops that Xie Yun and Zhou Fei had each used to enter the building aren't accessible from inside. After interminable corridors that the group has to cross one person at a time, they finally reach a stretch by the doors that cannot be navigated unseen. There is a whispered discussion over the comms. Li Sheng prepares to meet them outside the entrance, and the group splits up into small hidey-holes while two senior agents from Chenfei's team don the stolen uniforms to con away some of the guards.

It's the kind of grifting assignment that Zhou Fei hates, and for the first time today she is properly relieved to be with the team of senior agents. It's bad enough that she and Wu Chuchu are in the same hiding spot. The gap behind this open closet door, obscured by a cart, is the spot closest to the exit and will be the most secure once the fighting breaks out - it makes sense for Wu Chuchu to wait here with just the one guard, and Zhou Fei is small enough to fit in here with her. Being the client's only line of defense is terribly nerve-wracking.

Snatches of conversation. Zhou Fei recognizes Bai-ge's voice, announcing something. Stern raised voices, including Bai-ge's, before a small contingent of guards stomps by in their boots. Wu Chuchu has her hands pressed over her mouth to avoid making any sound. The guards pass by.

Out in the lobby, the debate among the remaining guards is continuing. Zhou Fei tracks the time on her watch. One minute. Two minutes. Fights rarely last longer than three minutes, as she has been taught many times, so she isn't surprised when Chenfei signals his agents to move at the two minutes and thirty seconds mark.

Her orders are to stay here with Wu Chuchu until the path to the door is clear. She holds tight to her dagger, poised to spring up if needed, and listens to the disembodied sounds of the fight.

"Zhou Fei, aren't you scared?" Wu Chuchu whispers.

She chances a brief glance behind her. "What's there to be scared of?" she says. "If anyone tries to hurt you, I'll kill them. I won't let anything happen to either of us."

The other girl nods cautiously. "Will you teach me how to fight? I want to learn to be brave like you." she asks.

"Sure. When we get back to the 48 Strongholds, there are tons of people who can teach you anything. You're already brave, though," Zhou Fei adds, frowning. "You kept yourself and your brother safe for so long, without any training. That's impressive."

Before Wu Chuchu can respond, a low whistle signals their break for the exit. Zhou Fei stands up, pulling Wu Chuchu with her, and peers around the door with her dagger drawn. All clear.

"Let's go," she says. "Stay close to me, and shout if anything happens to you." Wu Chuchu nods, and then they're off.

Sprint for the end of the corridor, pause. Check around the corner for the status of the fight. All enemies in the lobby engaged, no snipers. Go.

Zhou Fei keeps Wu Chuchu behind her for the first half of their dash along the wall, pausing to knock out one of the occupied guards from behind. Once half the combatants are behind them, she switches to ushering the other girl directly next to her. She sees Xie Yun also making his way across the lobby, ducking around paired fights to step in and guard Wu Chuchu's other side.

One of the guards breaks away from a 48 Strongholds agent and dives for a gun strewn on the ground, angling his trajectory towards Wu Chuchu. Zhou Fei instinctively dashes forward. They reach the gun at the same time, but Zhou Fei has the advantage of being upright, and she kicks the gun away. The guard dodges her knife. He draws one of his own, and slices her arm. She uses the opportunity to knock him out with her hilt to his skull.

The tussle has pulled her away from Wu Chuchu, but when she looks up, Xie Yun has guided her around the downed guard's line of fire. It's good thinking, just in case. She rolls to her feet and catches up with the other two.

The three of them are the first to reach the doors.

"Chenfei, should I open them?" Zhou Fei shouts. "Will it trigger the alarm?"

"A'Fei, just go! Take the Wu kids and leave with Li Sheng - my team will secure the building. You guys have to get them to safety first."

"Chenfei -"

"Go!" he repeats.

By now, Xie Yun has retrieved the younger brother from behind the agents guarding him and shepherded him over to the doors. Zhou Fei takes a decisive breath.

"Stick together," she says to her group.

Li Sheng confirms his position over the comms, and Zhou Fei shoves open the door. "Go, go!" she yells over the blare of the alarm. "The blue sedan by the curb!"

Gunfire rings out behind them, echoed by a gun firing from the roof, and Zhou Fei rushes to close the door. She draws her pistol to provide some meagre covering fire as then run the gauntlet past the guards firing from the roof. Wu Chuchu is pulling her little brother along, but the kid is starting to stumble, and Xie Yun grabs him off the ground to carry him to the car. A few more steps, and then they're in, Li Sheng sitting back down from where he had leaned out the window with his own gun.

The tires screech as they pull out of the driveway. Zhou Fei takes stock of their group. Everyone looks unhurt, only frazzled.

"Zhou Fei, you're bleeding!" Wu Chuchu exclaims. "Here, hold your arm out - I can bandage it for you," she says, starting to take off her cardigan.

"There's a first aid kit in the median," Li Sheng says.

No cars have chased them from the Huo building, but Li Sheng is taking them on a fast route full of turns just in case anyone does try to tail them. Zhou Fei knows from working together in the past that they will be on the road for a while longer before Li Sheng feels the risk is low enough to go to a safe house.

"Here, Zhou Fei, hold this in place," Wu Chuchu says.

"You can just call me A'Fei, there's no need to be so formal," Zhou Fei tells her.

The poor girl's had a rough time of it, but you wouldn't know it by how steadily she wraps the gauze around the knife wound.

"Then you should call me Chuchu," she replies. "And you know this is Penglei, my brother."

"Nice to meet you, Penglei," Zhou Fei says to the boy sitting in Chuchu's lap, and gets a grin in response.

"Didi, where are your manners?" Chuchu chides.

"Yeah, speaking of manners, when were you going to tell me that you ran into company?" Li Sheng chimes in sardonically, having apparently deemed them safe enough for him to drop his guard a little. "Why did Chenfei seem to think that I was expecting an extra passenger, huh?"

"Aiya, Li Sheng, it was hard to talk with guards everywhere," Zhou Fei gripes. "We're here now, right? This is Xie Yun, he helped us. Xie Yun, this is my cousin, Li Sheng."

"Oh, so now we're friends? He can come with us to the safe house just like that, even though we've never met?" Li Sheng says.

"Well I've met him before!"

"Then why didn't you say something about it?"

"Guys!" Chuchu says firmly. "You've helped me and my brother so much, and I appreciate what everyone did. I trust all of you. We're all here now because we worked together, right? So let's get to somewhere safe, and we can see what to do next."

Even Li Sheng has nothing to say to that. From the far side of the backseat, Xie Yun meets Zhou Fei's eyes and grins wryly. Zhou Fei returns his smile, an unexpected warmth flowing through her, and Xie Yun's expression softens in response.

It takes most of an hour for them to reach the safe house, an apartment in a nondescript brownstone that has a clear view of the neighboring intersection. They swap cars twice on the way there. It's a relief to be inside, away from traffic cameras and moving sightlines, but reaching safety forces them to confront the problem of what to do next.

Chenfei had reported that most of his team made it out safe and then closed his comm. Their group's instructions are to lay low and look after Chuchu and Penglei until Li Jinrong can secure a safe route back to the 48 Strongholds. As evening settles in, it becomes clear that it may take some time for that to happen. Huo Industries has put up FBI and police alerts for the two siblings.

"It can't just be Huo Industries," Li Sheng remarks as they crowd together around his laptop. "They don't have that kind of pull with government agencies, it's not their kind of work. Someone else is in on this."

"Disha."

Everyone turns to stare at Xie Yun, the mystery among them.

"What do you mean? How do you know that?" Zhou Fei asks before Li Sheng can say anything too rude.

"It's a long story," Xie Yun says. "I can tell you over dinner, we should eat. It'll be a while before we can leave."

"Fine," Li Sheng says. "But you're staying here with us until we know what's going on."

"They might know our faces now, ge, and you know the two of us suck at playing house," Zhou Fei notes. "We're going to need some help."

"Yeah, you're right. You want to ask her?" Li Sheng sighs.

"Sure," she replies, and pulls her phone out to text Li Yan.

~

Xie Yun has been on high alert ever since they freed the big group of 48 Strongholds operatives, most of them fighters who could take him down in a second. By now, after an hourlong car ride with strangers and 20 minutes in a secured building, his instincts are screaming at him to get out. Infiltrating their headquarters for a job was one thing, a dumb idea even then, but this here is a level of entanglement that he always avoids at all costs. And yet, here he is. He sighs through his teeth as Zhou Fei texts more of their people.

"Who's joining us?" he asks, as cheerfully as he can.

"My cousin, his sister," Zhou Fei replies, looking down at her phone. She smiles at something in the text chain, taps out a response, and pockets her phone to look over at Chuchu. "She's a grifter. The three of us ran around together all the time growing up, so it'll be good to have her with us. Besides, Li Yan's a much better cook than either of us are, and she's good with kids."

"I appreciate you guys helping us," Chuchu smiles.

Chuchu seems genuinely harmless, exactly who she says she is - a kid caught in the crossfire of Disha's schemes. Xie Yun can relate. It's good of the 48 Strongholds agents to help her. He wishes there had been someone looking out for him back then, especially in the early days. For now, he can stick around and share what he knows, as long as Zhou Fei remains the strongest fighter here. Back at Huo Industries, she had unhesitatingly charged a guard and taken a knife to the arm to protect Chuchu. Xie Yun can trust her this far, for now.

They order takeout for dinner. Xie Yun offers to pick it up, since he's the lightest on his feet, but Li Sheng scowlingly orders him to stay put. Zhou Fei rolls her eyes but lets it stand, so Xie Yun decides it isn't worth getting offended over. If it were his crew, he would never have let an interloper in like this, so he can't fault them for their caution. Good judgement will serve them all better in the end.

At least Zhou Fei seems to like him better than she did the first time they met.

He's reluctant to get into the whole story of Disha's operations twice, and Zhou Fei eventually convinces Li Sheng that it will be fine to wait until Li Yan gets there. While they eat, Chuchu walks them through what happened with Huo Industries.

General Wu, she explains, is an outdated title for her father. Both of her parents have spent the past decade working on foreign aid initiatives through the State Department. They didn't talk much about specifics from work, but Chuchu knows that they had been working on a project in Ukraine recently, the two of them discussing work long into the night.

"I don't know what my parents were talking about, but there was definitely something going on," Chuchu says. "I'd overhear them debating if they should tell someone, or if it was too risky to say anything, and that they needed more proof."

"Then these men in black showed up at our door one night, late, probably 10pm. They said that they were from the State Department, and that our parents had been killed in a drunk driving accident. A DUI by my father. They told us to go with them for our safety."

She shakes her head slowly, eyes flinty and shining-wet like river rock.

"My parents don't drink. They never have. I made up a name and asked if that's who had sent them, and the men said yes, so I knew they were lying. We only had a few minutes to pack some clothes. Penglei distracted them while I went into my parents' study to get this." Chuchu reaches into her bra, causing Li Sheng to knock his chair against the table in his rush to look away, and pulls out a blue flashdrive.

"I think this is what they were after."

"Have you tried opening it?" Xie Yun asks.

"No," Chuchu replies, "I haven't had a chance. I only went to get it because I saw it on the table one night when my parents were arguing, so I thought it might be important. But we've been on the move ever since, and I didn't want to risk it on a public computer in the library."

"That's smart," Li Sheng says. He's still a little flushed, but manages to look Chuchu in the eye. "Are you willing to try opening it now? Whatever's on that flashdrive might help us figure out what Huo Industries wanted with your parents."

After a long pause, Chuchu nods, one hand absently stroking the back of her brother's head. "Yes, let's do it," she says. "We have to find out who's behind this, or none of us will be safe."

They plug in the flashdrive. Xie Yun can't help leaning in just like everyone else, breathless and stomach-turningly eager for something that will bring him closer to undoing Disha Security Company. His breath hitches when the file explorer loads up a list of folders from the flashdrive.

Most of the folders are password-protected, and the ones that aren't are still encrypted, spitting out notepad files of nonsense text when Li Sheng opens them. They text Li Yan with the update, and she replies offering to bring a friend who's a hacker.

Xie Yun has heard of Ying Hecong. He's young, and new to the scene, but has already made a name for himself as a hacker who combines mastery of classic techniques with a knack for half-baked finishing moves that somehow always succeed. It isn't much to go on for trust, but at least Ying Hecong isn't a fighter. Li Yan texts them an ETA of tomorrow morning for both of them. Once Chuchu redresses Zhou Fei's wound, there isn't much else to be done before calling it a night.

"How do we know he's not going to double cross us?" Li Sheng says, gesturing at Xie Yun.

"Hey!" Xie Yun protests.

"A'Sheng, play nice," Zhou Fei scolds. "If you're that worried, he can stay with me. I'll keep an eye on him."

"What - " Xie Yun sputters, for entirely different reasons this time. "Agent Zhou, what are you implying, ah? The only services I sell are for item retrieval. I definitely only sell my skills, not my body!"

"Oh my god, can you not?" Li Sheng exclaims. "A'Fei, are you out of your mind?" he says, turning back to his cousin. "That doesn't even make sense, there are only two bedrooms. You'll stay with Chuchu and her brother in the bigger room. I'm just saying that we have to think things through, we can't go rushing around and figuring it out later. The stakes are too high."

"A'Sheng, I know that," Zhou Fei says, settling into seriousness. "I trust him. Xie Yun saved me when he didn't have to. I don't think we could have gotten to Chuchu and Chenfei without his help, but even before all that, he broke my fall from the top of the atrium back home, instead of getting away. So, I trust him."

Xie Yun feels like he is dreaming. He has no idea what his face is doing, but maybe that's a good thing. Sincerity is not something that he has been accused of in a long time. He wouldn't know how to pretend to it in the face of this woman who sees straight to the core of him, sees in him a strength that he had long since mourned as gone.

On the other side of the living room, Li Sheng meets Zhou Fei's gaze, and after a few moments his frown clears away.

"Okay, A'Fei. If you mean it, then I trust your judgement." He turns to Xie Yun and adds, "It's nothing personal. I just don't know you."

"Ah, no offense taken," Xie Yun says, pulling out a smile and a friendly nod. "You're looking out for your crew, I respect that. If this one didn't know you so well," he adds, gesturing at Zhou Fei, "then I wouldn't have stuck around either."

"Do the two of you need to be so dramatic?" Zhou Fei complains. "Whatever, I'm going to bed. Do your bro thing, I'm going to get Chuchu settled in."

"Hang on, what are you getting on your high horse for?" Li Sheng protests. "Aren't you the one who was just saying that you'd abandon Chuchu out here to share a room with your new friend?"

"What, ge, you're saying you want me to sleep with him after all?" she smirks.

"I - !" Li Sheng bites out, huffing in vexation.

They all deflate when Chuchu giggles. It's the first time Xie Yun has heard her laugh, which isn't surprising given the circumstances in which they've met. Xie Yun smiles, and rolls his eyes at their ridiculous group. Maybe telling them the story about Disha in the morning won't be so bad after all.

~

The night passes easily. Xie Yun is accustomed to sleeping lightly in precarious situations, but despite Li Sheng's bluster, it really does seem like he has taken his cousin at her word. When Xie Yun wakes in the early dawn, his temporary roommate is sound asleep and snoring. It's a good idea. Xie Yun decides to also take the opportunity to catch up on rest, and lets himself fall properly unconscious.

The next time he wakes is to someone lightly swatting the side of his head. Instinct has him shoving the other person back before he has even opened his eyes. He's quick, but the intruder has the advantage of being awake and on their feet. It only takes a few seconds for Xie Yun to find himself pinned down, staring up at Zhou Fei's surprised scowl. She isn't even out of breath.

Behind him, the door creaks. "Seriously? Why are you like this?" Li Sheng exclaims. "I come in here to make sure everything's okay after the commotion, and this is what I have to see? Xie Yun," he continues, "just what do you think you're doing with my cousin?"

This seems terribly unfair. "What have I done?" Xie Yun demands, still out of breath from the adreneline and impromptu wrestling. "Do I look like I'm in control of this situation?"

"Hey, you started it," Zhou Fei says, and Xie Yun lets out a mortifying noise of protest as he tries to get out of her grip.

"You're the one who woke me up by hitting me! Can you blame me for being startled?"

Another pair of footsteps approaches. "A'Fei," Chuchu says, a laugh hiding in her voice, "your cousin's here. She wants to introduce her friend to you."

Zhou Fei purses her lips at him for a moment before shrugging and hopping off the bed.

"Sure, I'm coming," she says, and the others follow her out of the bedroom.

Xie Yun takes a minute to breathe his way out of the most inappropriate hard-on he's had in his entire life. His heart is still racing from the shock of the whole morning, and from his newfound knowledge that Zhou Fei can pin him with absolutely no effort. She has very long eyelashes. It's a day of discoveries! Once he has calmed down, he gets out of bed and braces himself to meet Li Yan and Ying Hecong.

~

The story of how Disha Security Company burned his family's estate never gets any easier. There is so much more context that he has gathered over the years, but the crux of it remains the same for Xie Yun.

When he was six years old, his family and home were destroyed.

The old abbot who tended the gardens rescued Xie Yun from the fire. They were the only ones to survive, and the family's assets were seized in the aftermath. His shifu kept them out of sight for a while, shuffling them between abandoned apartments and discreet motels. A few years later, when shifu's eyesight started to go, he left him in the care of Wang Lin.

It hadn't started with the fire, though. The actual story, which he recites quietly over bagels and boxed coffee, concerns his father, who was an entertainment mogul. One of the media groups he managed was a newspaper that specialized in foreign affairs. Too many of their stories were getting close to Disha's crimes, transactions and cover-ups that would have been real blows to even Disha's disreputable name.

Shifu had gently explained to him that his father refused to turn over the paper trails when Disha demanded them. The subsequent smear campaign had ended the careers of the journalists who likewise refused to reveal their sources. A web of lies, Shifu had said, shaking his head sadly. But the evidence had all burned in the fire, and Xie Yun had been left with a burned name and a scant handful of memories in lieu of his family.

In all this time, Disha has not changed. The case with General Wu's family is a textbook example of what they do with sensitive information. Xie Yun explains that if they turn over the flashdrive now and make it clear that the kids don't know anything, they will probably be okay. The 48 Strongholds can easily keep them safe at that point.

"So what are the other options?" Chuchu asks when he is finished. "I'm not running. My parents put their lives on the line for whatever is on that drive. I'm going to see this through for them."

"It'll be a fool's errand," Xie Yun tells her, not unkindly. She should know what she's getting into. "Disha Security Company is the biggest military contractor in the world. A private army. Most wars are fought by them, and they have a full espionage operation with military tech, with deep access to everything in the government. The 48 Strongholds," he says, with a nod toward the cousins, "are the only outfit that's ever faced them head-on and come out intact."

"That's why you're here, isn't it?" Zhou Fei says suddenly. "That's why you were at our headquarters before, and why you were at Huo Industries. You said gossip and sightseeing. You knew Disha was going to be there."

She really does see straight through him. "You give me too much credit, little cat," he sighs. "I didn't break into your headquarters to defeat Disha." Li Sheng makes an outraged noise, but he ignores it to meet Zhou Fei's intent eyes. "A mentor asked me for a favor. I follow the rumors of Disha's operations, because it's hard not to hope, but I've never acted on it like that. A solo mission against them would be suicide. Just because your mother can do it doesn't mean us common folk can."

"This wouldn't be a solo mission, though," Li Yan says, speaking up for the first time during this meeting. "It would be all of us, together. A'Fei-jie says that you're really good at what you do. So are we."

Li Sheng is also nodding. "My sister's right," he says, and Li Yan beams. "We have a good team here, since the girls are vouching for you two, and if Chuchu wants to do this then that means we'll have Disha's attention. We can use that. And that flashdrive probably has something we can use against them, too."

Ying Hecong has stayed quiet, but by now he is radiating enough tension to drink up all the oxygen in the room. "You didn't tell me we were going to be facing Disha," he says to Li Yan, looking ready to bolt.

"I didn't know it was Disha," she says gently. "But we can do it together, A'Cong. Do you know them, too?"

"Yeah," he murmurs. "One of the teachers at my boarding school. They stole a bunch of records, and killed the principal. It was ages ago, but I always steer clear of them."

"But it's different, now," Li Yan tells him, laying a hand on his arm. "You won't be alone, either. And if you and Xie-dage both know a lot about them, then we're even better off, and you can really help us."

Zhou Fei had told them that her cousin was a grifter, and Xie Yun makes a note to never underestimate Li Yan, even if she does seem sincere for now.

"A'Cong, are you in?"

"Okay," Ying Hecong says, blowing out a determined breath. "Yeah, Li Yan, I'm in."

"And you?" Zhou Fei asks Xie Yun.

What a question. Yes, of course he will jump at the chance to confront Disha and make them pay. No, of course he won't have anything to do with it, because the odds are still laughable and it goes against every survival instinct telling him to flee while he still can. But despite all the history and fear weighing on him, the answer comes easily to his lips.

"I'm in, A'Fei," he says. "You decide, and I'll follow you."

"Great," Li Sheng says, clearing his throat. "If we're going to do this as a team, we'll need a bigger space. And we need to get Penglei safe to our headquarters before we make our move."

He looks around the table for agreement, and nods at each of them in turn.

"Hitter." Zhou Fei crosses her arms and nods back.

"Hacker." Ying Hecong's eyebrows knit, but he dips his chin jerkily.

"Grifter." Li Yan's smile could bring about the spring.

"Thief." Xie Yun nods placidly and sends Zhou Fei a half smile.

"And mastermind," Li Sheng finishes, nodding at Penglei, who widens his eyes and sits up straight, making Chuchu grin.

"Okay, team. Let's plan to meet up in two weeks and get started."

~

Li Yan sighs happily into her champagne. She hasn't been to a single gala in the two weeks that they have spent laying the groundwork for their crew, and in her book, that is two weeks too long.

There is nothing quite like a good party. Fancy people, fancy gems, and fancy food - here comes a stuffed date sampler right now. This is where she is in her element, and she is determined to do whatever it takes to make sure that what happened to Chuchu and her brother doesn't happen to anyone else.

Her own father had died at the hands of a Disha agent, but it was so long ago that they rarely talk about it back home. From conversations overheard between her mom and her aunt, her aunt blames herself for the raid gone wrong, but her mom insists that it was just part of the life they lead. Regardless, her aunt has always doted on her and Li Sheng. Li Yan knows that she is lucky to have grown up secure enough to never worry about revenge.

None of that matters now. Tonight, she is here with her crew, and they are ready to set their plan in motion. Shen Tianshu himself is supposed to be in attendance tonight, to celebrate the first slate of Cabinet appointees receiving Congressional approval, and Li Yan is posing as a broker of cultural artifacts who will discretely sow discord between the head of Disha Security Company and his associate, Assistant Secretary of State Yu Wenzhi.

"Is everyone in place?" Li Sheng asks over the comms.

"I have eyes on Shen Tianshu," Li Yan murmurs, joining the chorus of confirmations.

"Alright. Let's go," Li Sheng says. "Li Yan, start on the other side of the room, maybe with Hu Tianyin. You need to get Shen Tianshu's attention to you so that he moves away from the staff door."

"On it," Li Yan says.

The conversation with Hu Tianyin doesn't last very long. It's clear from the start that the woman simply doesn't like her, and being perceived as distasteful to Shen Tianshu's spouse will make it much harder to get an in with Disha. Fortunately, Yu Wenzhi joins the conversation of his own accord, and soon enough Li Yan is exchanging pleasantries with the statesman.

It's a little inconvenient that Hu Tianyin practically ran away from Yu Wenzhi, but Li Yan can work with this. It takes no effort to angle them to catch Shen Tianshu's attention. Almost there. She dials up the warmth a little more so that Yu Wenzhi will mirror it. A touch to his elbow. Slouching a little, so that he will also relax his stance. She draws an avaricious laugh out of him, and Shen Tianshu sets off across the room, reaching them just as Yu Wenzhi's gaze starts to stray a little too pointedly to her mouth.

Perfect timing to let the mark feel like a hero.

"Assistant Secretary Yu, how are you this evening?" Shen Tianshu says, looking a little judgmental. Turning to Li Yan, he continues, "I don't believe I've had the pleasure of making your acquaintance. I am Shen Tianshu, with Disha Security Company."

"Oh, wow," Li Yan says, projecting surprise and a hint of awe. "Disha Security Company - that's incredible." She lets her smile go self-deprecating for a moment before schooling her expression into that of a businesswoman who is on the clock. "I'm Amy Liu. I work for Balthazar Antiques and Items, based out of New York. It's such a priviledge to meet you, Mr. Shen."

All of her attention has been visibly turned to Shen Tianshu, eager to the point of unintentionally snubbing Yu Wenzhi, or so they both seem to think. A small smile, amused and satisfied, fades in around Shen Tianshu's eyes. It takes no time at all for Yu Wenzhi to overreach in trying to regain Li Yan's attention, at which point Shen Tianshu dismisses him from the conversation.

The rest of the team confirms over the comms that Zhou Fei and Xie Yun have made it through the unwatched staff door by now, which frees up Li Yan's attention from tracking the sightlines of her conversation partners. Her role in the actual heist is complete. Now, it is time to begin the con in earnest.

"Do you travel much for your work, Mr. Shen?" Li Yan asks, demonstrating that she's relaxing with Yu Wenzhi gone.

"Certainly, Ms. Liu," he replies with a raised eyebrow. "Surely that isn't so unusual in this field?" he remarks, gesturing around the room of diplomats and foreign officials.

"Of course, of course," she says, beaming. "I was just thinking how nice it must be for you and your wife to have some time at home since the inauguration, with the change in contracts. It was such a pleasure to speak with Hu Tianyin earlier, and she was kind enough to tell me about all of your family's work with Assistant Secretary Yu in the past."

"Change in contracts? Whatever are you talking about?" Shen Tianshu asks. He looks unruffled, a little bemused, but there is an attentive alarm in his gaze that spells victory for Li Yan.

"The contracts for the Syrian project," Li Yan says, smiling exactly the same as before to show that this is not news. "I work with a lot of artifacts from the region, and so we got to talking about who the best points of contact are on the ground. My company has worked so much with Disha, though never anyone as prominent as you, so Ms. Hu passed along the contact card for the company taking over the operations. Oh - sorry, the card was from Assistant Secretary Yu," Li Yan says when she pulls the business card out of her clutch and pretends to read the note she had scrawled on it.

"That must be a new card design. I don't recognize it," Shen Tianshu says. He is barely holding on to his composure.

"Oh, would you like this copy?" Li Yan offers eagerly. "Here, let me just tke a picture of it so I have the information, and you can keep the card."

She does just that, and Shen Tianshu measuredly accepts the business card when she holds it out for him.

"Thank you, Ms. Liu."

Time to draw his attention away from this topic, so that he won't connect her with the disruption.

"No problem at all, Mr. Shen. I think it's a lovely design, but rebranding can always be so jarring. The Disha logo, though, that's never changed, has it?"

Just like she'd hoped, Shen Tianshu calms at the reassertion of Disha's stability, and follows the turn of the conversation towards art and image. If it will prime him to think about Disha's appearance in the coming weeks, then so much the better.

~
The security van is a little claustrophobic, Ying Hecong thinks, especially with the lights on low to avoid drawing attention. He's glad that Li Sheng and Chuchu have stayed in the van with him for this part. Deep breaths. He has hacked into the first layer of the security system, overriding the alarm on the second door that Zhou Fei and Xie Yun use after the staff door to enter the office, and so far everything is going as planned.

His palms are a little clammy. Ying Hecong wipes them on his jeans during a lull while his code runs. Over the comms, Li Yan is talking to Shen Tianshu, which means that the man himself is right next to her, well within the distance required for violence. She seems to have the situation well in hand.

Li Sheng has been shooting him worried looks all evening, and made an idle comment a while back about how his sister is the wiliest and most resourceful person he knows. But that won't do her much good if they're caught by the security system. Ying Hecong takes another meditative breath and dives back into the system specs.

Muffled thuds sound over the comms, then a cut-off shout. A click, a curse, and another thud.

"Guards down," Zhou Fei says into the subsequent silence.

"No alarms tripped, nothing over their radio," Ying Hecong says.

"Nicely done," Xie Yun chimes in.

At first, Ying Hecong assumes that it's directed at Zhou Fei, but he realizes a second later that it must have been for him, or for the team in general - the contrast between the first remark and Xie Yun's syrupy lilt when he turns to address Zhou Fei is striking, to say the least.

"You know that we can still hear you, right?" Li Sheng complains.

"Shut up, A'Sheng, we're trying to focus," Zhou Fei says.

"Ah, but how can I focus with this stunning warrior beside me?" Xie Yun says, completely ignoring their auditory audience. "Then again, perhaps that is all the more reason for me to succeed, and impress this valiant - "

The rest of his sentence is drowned out by Li Sheng fervently telling them that he is going to blow up this building and everyone in it if they don't stop. Chuchu laughs, clutching her side, when Xie Yun begs to know whether his valiant savior will rescue him from this doomed building.

"Just open the safe!" Zhou Fei hisses at him.

"Shh, I'm trying to hear the tumblers," Xie Yun says, chuckling at the indignant noise Zhou Fei makes in response.

Ying Hecong is grateful for the distraction from his worry for Li Yan. Not that he would admit to it, of course. In any event, he is now worried about how Li Yan is possibly keeping a straight face while listening to this charade. Her conversation with Shen Tianshu is continuing apace, which is a good sign.

"Done," Xie Yun says a few seconds later. "There's a couple of folders in here - it looks like a lease, some subcontracts, and a folder of pictures. And here are the witness documents we came for. Li Sheng, do we want all of them?"

"Yes, copy them all and get out of there. We're on a tight timetable if we're closing up properly," Li Sheng says.

"Got it," Xie Yun says. "We're scanning them in now."

A stream of incoming scanned files show up in Ying Hecong's master system, from both Xie Yun and Zhou Fei's devices.

"The resolution on these is fine," he tells them. "Just hurry."

"One of the guard patrols is coming your way," Chuchu says, peering over at the tapped security camera feed on Ying Hecong's multiscreen set-up.

"You have 40 seconds before they get to your hallway," Li Sheng says, stunningly calm. "Either finish and clear the northern corner before then, or hunker down so they don't see you."

"Almost done," Xie Yun says as another set of files ping in. "10 seconds to reset the safe, 5 for the lock. A'Fei, can you check the room and open the door?"

Ying Hecong clings to how clipped and collected they all sound. His phone buzzes, and he jumps. It's a text from Li Yan, who he just now realizes had gone silent in her conversation with Shen Tianshu.

Li Yan
Don't worry, A'Cong
They'll be fine, we've been doing this forever
A'Fei could take these guards in her sleep

He takes a few more deep breaths, attention flitting between his screen of system alerts, the progress of the guards on the security feed, and the incoming files.

Ying Hecong
Okay
Just take care of yourself

Li Yan
I always do ^.^

"Safe's been reset," Xie Yun whispers.

Ying Hecong tenses again at the realization that the guards are close enough to hear them otherwise.

"Room's clear, we're locking up," Zhou Fei adds, quieter than he knew she could be.

He is barely breathing, but he gets ready to reset the security feed from the loop he currently has it set on. The wait is interminable. Long accustomed to high-dexterity projects, though, his fingers do not tremble on the keys.

"Clear," Xie Yun says at last.

Two keystrokes, and the security feed comes off loop just in time to accurately reflect the guards entering the hallway by the office. It is a beautifully clean operation, one that Ying Hecong normally wouldn't bat an eye at, but everything is hitting him differently in the heart of Disha's base. He has to roll his shoulders several times to recenter himself.

Zhou Fei and Xie Yun soon reach the room of the second, staged robbery. They hadn't been able to find a route in and out of the office that would encounter no guards, so they have plotted the next best thing to hide their presence - a decoy theft of precious art in one of the more ceremonial offices, plus planting a bug that will hopefully be found later on in their con. No trouble if it's found earlier, though - extra cause for paranoia among Disha suits their purposes.

Once the theft team is in, they take the opportunity to set up one of Ying Hecong's devices to tap into Disha's local network. He verifies the connection, and then settles back into his chair. His active role is complete, barring catastrophes, and all that remains is for the theft team to tie up the loose ends. Li Yan has been engaged in several unrelated conversations around the room to lend credence to her cover story. The rest of the team will wait for the gala to wind down, and will only depart once Li Yan is clear of the building, for them to reconvene at base. It wouldn't do for them to see a dignified businesswoman climb into the trunk of a van.

Keeping one eye on the security feed, Ying Hecong allows himself to relax and reread Li Yan's texts.

~

Working with Xie Yun is as infuriating as it is fun. His antics are foolish to the point of parody, but he constantly makes Zhou Fei smile. In anyone else, the slightest sign that they didn't take the job seriously would be enough for Zhou Fei to call it quits, but Xie Yun has an air of assured competence that tricks her into letting his foolishness slide. At least they are making good time.

The security system here is impressive, but Zhou Fei trained herself on trying to best the apparatus of the 48 Strongholds, and Disha's system has nothing on the one back home. With Xie Yun at her side, she barely needs to pay attention. He is even faster at mapping blind spots than she is.

They are in a hallway near the back exit when they get caught. Despite how she has scolded Xie Yun, it has nothing to do with him. It's just bad luck. A guard realized that they dropped their lighter. They double back off-route to look for it, and the two of them get trapped in an open corridor.

Boots clomp closer, rounding the bend any second, and Zhou Fei sees Xie Yun tense in fear. She will do anything to keep that look off his face. Before her thoughts can catch up, Zhou Fei spins them around and presses Xie Yun against the wall, caging and shielding him with her body, and pulls him down into a rough kiss.

"Hey!" the guard shouts, the timing close enough that Xie Yun barely has time for a sound of surprise. "What are you guys doing? You can't be back here."

"Sorry," Zhou Fei slurs, pulling back and making a show of stumbling and wiping her kiss-damp mouth. She pants a little, mostly faked, and is glad of the completely genuine blush that will help sell the drunken makeout act. "We just wanted to get away from the crowd. You don't mind, right? There's no one back here, we won't be much longer."

"No, you guys need to leave," the guard says sternly. "Go back the way you came. No, not that door - here, this hallway," he says, and gets them to the other side of the staff door by the restrooms before leaving in a huff.

It takes a second for their performative giggles to die off, and Xie Yun's blush appears to be as persistent as hers.

"If you start again I'm going to leave you here," Li Sheng says over the comms.

In response, Xie Yun bites his lip, and Zhou Fei's gaze zeroes in on the motion. His mouth had felt wonderfully giving under her own when she kissed him. She wonders what his lip would feel like if she bit it for him. If he would make a sound. Maybe she should try it.

"Are you guys okay?" Chuchu says, and that makes Zhou Fei snap out of it.

"Yeah, we're fine," she says. Xie Yun is uncharacteristically quiet, but he blinks and smiles at her when she meets his eyes. "We're out of position, but we can probably use the staff exit from here," she continues, and clears her throat before checking the room for cameras. "What do our options look like on the security feed?"

It only takes a few minutes for them to exit the building undetected. She's never been particularly good at reading a keycode from the fingerprints on a used keypad, but luckily she has Xie Yun with her, and he takes care of it on his first try.

Li Sheng rolls his eyes at her when they climb into the van. Nothing new there - Zhou Fei refuses to feel embarrassed about anything in front of her cousin who once tried to use a kite as a parachute. When Chuchu steps over and fixes Zhou Fei's collar, though, she does cough in surprise. Xie Yun grins, unrepetant, though still a little pink around the cheeks. Ying Hecong has slouched halfway down his seat in relief at the sight of them. They settle in to wait for Li Yan.

~

Yang Jin has been tailing Zhou Fei for weeks since the bar fight. He had that situation under control, beating up some local mob affiliates for intimidating the elderly owner of a small restaurant, and Zhou Fei's interference when they tried to take a patron hostage was entirely uncalled for. It was made worse by the fact that she almost beat him up along with them. Such nonsense can't be allowed to stand. He wants to be the best in the game, so it's up to him to prove his mettle against her in a fair fight.

It took ages to piece together just who Zhou Fei is, going from the names she had mentioned during the phone call - the phone call! - that she took in the middle of the fight. But it doesn't matter if she is the heir apparent of the 48 Strongholds. That just makes it even more important for Yang Jin to best her.

Now, it appears that she has formed her own crew, which makes it difficult for Yang Jin to approach her. He ran their faces through his friend's photo recognition system last week. A few of them are apparently new to the game, so Yang Jin has been waiting for them to split up. Tonight appears to be his chance.

It takes all evening for the youngest girl, Li Yan, to step out of the main ballroom. Yang Jin immediately ditches his serving tray and ducks through the kitchen door closest to the restrooms, stopping by the coat check room for a spare coat to put over the server's uniform. He pretends to rearrange a flower display in a camera-blind hallway while he waits. He doesn't know anything about flowers.

A few minutes later, Li Yan comes back. She pauses when she sees him, and then smiles. Perfect.

"Good evening," he says. "Are you Li Yan? Your cousin asked me to escort you home, she said there was danger."

This is the tricky bit, where she might not fall for his ploy. He'll have to find some way to bring her with him if that happens, but that shouldn't be too hard. After all, he doesn't want to hurt her, he just wants an introduction to her cousin.

"Why, thank you!" Li Yan says after a brief pause. "That's so kind. What's your name?"

"I'm Yang Jin," he says, clearing his throat.

He thinks about it for a second, then holds his hand out to shake. She clasps her hands around it in greeting. Her palms are tiny. She has a very distracting smile.

"It's so nice to meet you, Yang Jin. Are we going this way?" she asks him, indicating the hallway back to the main ballroom.

"Uh, no, it's too crowded that way," he says, trying to look serious. "I work with your cousin, and Zhou Fei said it might not be safe here. I can take you through the back, it'll be faster."

"You have a key? Oh, how wonderful!" Li Yan exclaims, looking delighted. "Do you think we could go through the courtyard on our way out? They didn't open it tonight, but they have such a lovely fountain. It's a nice place to go for some peace and quiet, no one monitors it."

Well, that's not the original plan, but as long as it's unmonitored, going through the courtyard should be fine. Yang Jin figures it will be easier if he goes along with her wishes.

"Of course, Ms. Li," he says.

"You can call me A'Yan," she replies, and Yang Jin blushes.

They stop by the concierge to get Li Yan's coat, and then make for the courtyard. It's a good thing that Li Yan knows the way, since Yang Jin has gotten a bit turned around. She explains that she is fascinated by architecture, and attended a few events here when she was younger. That's why she knows the corridors so well. She points out features to him as they go, and doesn't seem to mind that a lot of it is going over his head.

When they get to the courtyard, Li Yan spends a while admiring the fountain and the different views and colonnades. Her enthusiasm is infectious, and Yang Jin finds himself smiling every time she turns towards him. She occasionally lays a hand on his arm. Even if he fails in getting through to Zhou Fei, this isn't a bad way to spend an evening. Once they've seen just about everything in the courtyard, Yang Jin checks the time on his phone and is shocked at how late it has gotten.

"Let's go, shall we?" Li Yan says just then. "Sorry, I didn't mean to get so carried away. But there's no harm in waiting a little while, right? I'm sure we're not in any danger together."

"Mn, yeah, no harm," Yang Jin stutters, faced with her soft smile closer than he expected. "Do you want to go?"

"Yes, we should head out," Li Yan says, hitching her shoulders excitedly. "I think the fastest way out is through this staircase and the back alley."

Yang Jin follows her to a staircase that he hadn't even noticed, which does in fact take them to a small side street. He tenses at movement in the corner of his vision, but there's no one there when he turns around, and Li Yan is already skipping over to the main thoroughfare.

"Oh my gosh, can I pet your dog?" she asks a passing couple with a big husky. "Yang Jin, look how cute! Don't you just see him and want to keep him? Oh, it's a her? Hi, girl!" she gushes.

"You're not afraid of dogs?" Yang Jin asks.

"No, how could you be afraid of something so sweet? I'm sure her bark is worse than her bite anyway," Li Yan says, scratching the husky behind the ears. "But you said that my cousin sent you, and that there might be trouble," she continues, standing up and waving goodbye to the dog's owners. "Are we meeting up with A'Fei? Is it safer to wait until tomorrow?"

Well, that's a thought. Yang Jin wasn't quite sure how to transition from saying that Zhou Fei had sent him to demanding that Li Yan bring him to Zhou Fei. Maybe the evening will buy him some time. In fact, that might be enough time for Zhou Fei to come find him instead, on neutral ground or at his temporary apartment. That would make it easier to set his terms.

"Yes, tomorrow is better," he says to Li Yan. "I have a safehouse nearby where we can stay the night, and you can reach out to Zhou Fei tomorrow. I'll go with you to make sure nothing happens."

"That sounds like a good plan," she says. "We can go to your safehouse for tonight, and I'll call A'Fei tomorrow to meet up."

"Mn," Yang Jin says, nodding eagerly.

Li Yan steps out to call a cab before he can suggest his friend's car, and he decides to go along with it.

"I'm so glad we're settled in now," Li Yan remarks once they climb into the car. "It was getting hard to think with all the noise out there, everyone chattering. Now we can just relax until the morning."

"Yeah, it's good to be heading home," Yang Jin say, surprised. She had seemed to be enjoying herself earlier, especially at the gala, but maybe it's been a tiring evening. "Is there anything you want when we get to the safehouse? I can get it for you," he offers. "If there's anything you want to eat, or clothes or something."

"Yang Jin, you can't just offer to buy me clothes, none of the shops are open!" Li Yan teases, giggling. "I'll just sleep in what I have, no one else will be there, right? You can get us some food, though. They never feed you well enough at these events."

Yang Jin thinks he agrees, or says something, but his mind is still processing when Li Yan started talking about her clothes. Or, rather, her upcoming lack thereof. He resolves to get some pajamas even if he has to break into a store to steal them.

"Do you think the fried chicken place is open?" she muses. "I haven't been there in ages."

"Sure," he says, still feeling like he hasn't gotten his bearings since leaving the ballroom. "Anything you want on the menu, I'll get it for us."

~

Xie Yun is exhausted, the kind of tired that comes from finishing a race and finding out afterwards that you still need to walk home. The heist planned for the evening had gone perfectly, an exhilarating opener for their new crew. He still feels branded by Zhou Fei's kiss.

They had been so, so close to getting home scot-free when Li Yan was grabbed by a stranger.

Chuchu spends Li Yan's entire dog-related monologue physically holding onto Li Sheng's arm so that he doesn't run out after her. Ying Hecong is still beside himself after not being able to find a way into the courtyard where Li Yan had dallied, thus missing their window to get her out with no one the wiser. Xie Yun blames himself for that, too - if he can't find a way into a place, then no one can. He stays close to Zhou Fei, as if she can anchor him safely. Zhou Fei herself has been doing a lot of exasperated sighing. But, the girls both insist that they should trust Li Yan's judgement of the situation. Xie Yun certainly agrees that Li Yan is a dangerous woman who is well-capable of taking care of herself.

The hysterical debate over what to do next doesn't quiet until Li Yan makes a pointed comment about not being able to focus with this much chatter over the comms. They mute their lines after that, which puts an end to the direct recriminations. That helps them calm down enough to take stock, decode what Li Yan is telling them, and finally agree to head back to the base for the evening.

They leave the comms line open and set up a rotation to monitor it throughout the night. At least Li Yan seems to be having a delightful time.

"Sit down," Zhou Fei tells him as soon as they get inside. "You look awful. I'm so mad that guard got past me and hit you. Let me see your arm."

"A'Fei, I'm fine, I'm just tired," he says, but she is having none of it. Xie Yun gives in and sits down at the kitchen table. "Hey, it's just my arm, stop trying to take off my shirt!" he protests.

Pouting indignantly, he bats her hand away and rolls up his sleeve. It's a small bruise, it barely even hurts, but he still appreciates how gentle Zhou Fei's hands are when she tilts his elbow to the light.

"Okay, you're not bleeding," she murmurs. "Stay there, I'll get you some ice."

"Are you going to kiss it better?" he asks, fluttering his eyelashes and watching Li Sheng's reaction out of the corner of his eye. Li Sheng has been ignoring them, clearly worrying about his sister, but this last bit finally makes him roll his eyes.

"Be careful what you wish for, Xie-meimei!" Zhou Fei calls from the hallway.

It's true that he might not survive another kiss. Xie Yun regrets telling her that nickname, too - he has a feeling that he is never going to be addressed any other way now. He catches himself smiling goofily, and tries to reign it in when Li Sheng shoots him an aggrieved look.

Their full debrief will have to wait until Li Yan gets back in the morning. It takes a bit of nudging from Li Sheng to get Ying Hecong through a semblance of a bedtime routine while Zhou Fei finishes dabbing at Xie Yun's elbow, but soon enough the remaining crew retires to their rooms to sleep. Chuchu had insisted on taking the first shift monitoring the comms line. Xie Yun collapses gratefully into his bed, and sleeps more deeply than he has in years.

~

Zhou Fei wakes him up 30 minutes late for his shift, the last of the evening, and Xie Yun bustles her off to rest, barely resisting the urge to tuck her in before settling down at the kitchen table with his earbud. The soft light of predawn has always been his favorite time of day. Night hides him, but is full of its own dangers. Daytime is public, and twilight is busy - but the hour before sunrise, even though it is often an opportune time for work, feels like a segment of day stolen away from the world.

The comms line remains silent, as it has all evening. The last report was from when Li Yan announced that she was going to bed, towards the end of Chuchu's first shift. For all that he is pretty sure the other guys are overreacting, Xie Yun can't fully shake his own apprehension at one of their crew being taken. It could well have been him if Zhou Fei hadn't been staunchly at his side the whole evening. He sips a mug of warm water and maps mental routes in and out of their safehouse.

It is both meditative and useless - he has already spent hours mapping every possible entry point of their new apartment. But, since Li Yan has deliberately not given them any clues on her current location, there is little else he can do while he waits.

Li Sheng is the first one up, and he immediately asks if there is news from his sister. Confirming that there is nothing, the two of them spend an hour piecing together ways to locate Li Yan if the line stays quiet.

It's rare to find someone who thinks as quickly as Xie Yun. He flushes a little at the implied trust as Li Sheng listens seriously to Xie Yun's ideas, and comes up with connections and possibilities that Xie Yun hadn't considered. By the time the others are awake they have a decent scouting plan to find Li Yan.

Zhou Fei's hair settles around her in a rumpled mess when she slouches into one of the kitchen chairs, her head pillowed in her arms as she yawns. It is a helplessly endearing sight. Xie Yun stands up, stretches, and walks over to the counter to set up the French press with enough coffee for the group.

They are finishing an array of toast and cereal when the comms line crackles to life.

"Yang Jin, can we go out for breakfast?" Li Yan says. "There's a bakery I want to go to while I'm in town. We can group up with my cousin after we eat."

Li Yan's situation may nominally be perilous, but no one is really surprised when Yang Jin agrees. The directions she provides clearly lead to their headquarters. Breakfast cleanup is abandoned in favor of getting dressed, outfitted, and into position for an ambush in the back of the cafe downstairs.

"I told you it would pay off to operate above a coffeeshop," Li Sheng comments.

No one had ever suggested otherwise, but apparently no one feels obliged to snark about it now either, though Zhou Fei exchanges an eye roll with Xie Yun. She and Li Sheng are set up to wait in a storeroom by the kitchen, while Ying Hecong will monitor their approach and disable any communications devices that Yang Jin may be using. Chuchu and Xie Yun are stationed at a shielded table that has a good view of the street.

It doesn't take long for Li Yan and Yang Jin to walk in, and it takes even less time for Li Yan to talk her way into a tour of the kitchen, claiming to know the owners from when she had previously visited the city.

By the time Xie Yun and Chuchu head to the back, Yang Jin has been pinned to the wall with twin blades held to his neck and wrist. Li Sheng is snarling threats at him, but other than a confused glance at Zhou Fei, Yang Jin only has eyes for Li Yan.

"What - what is this?" he asks her, eyes wide.

"Did you really think you could fool the 48 Strongholds that easily, you bumpkin?" Li Yan asks him, taking a delicate bite of her pastry. "I just wanted to get to know you better before introducing you to the team. Li Sheng," she adds, "stop yelling at him."

"He kidnapped you!"

"I kidnapped myself, ge," she says.

Xie Yun thinks that's a fair point. Li Yan's smile is no less sweet than it was in the cafe, but it's more honest and a hell of a lot more dangerous.

"Li Yan...you're a thief, too?" Yang Jin finally manages to say.

"Didn't I tell you to call me A'Yan?" she tsks, and Yang Jin goes back to his blushing gape.

Her smile is conspiratorial - a chameleon smile suited for a grifter, and Xie Yun takes a moment to be thankful that he hadn't met her in the field. Ying Hecong makes it downstairs and takes a fistful of her sleeve.

"Ge, can we keep him?" Li Yan says, turning towards Li Sheng.

"Why?" he sputters.

Ying Hecong echoes his sound of alarm, and Li Yan squeezes his hand before crossing her arms.

"He's a good tracker, if he was able to find us just from running into A'Fei. He carries himself like a fighter, which will be useful for this job against a paramilitary group. He's sweet, he's loyal, and he already knew our names and faces by the time he approached me yesterday, so we can't just set him loose."

"Are you sure that's safe?" Ying Hecong mutters.

"I'm sure, A'Cong," Li Yan says to him. "That's basically how we met, right? You'll like him, he's funny."

"Can't we go one week without bringing home more strangers?" Li Sheng complains. He takes his knife away from Yang Jin's throat to brandish it in front of his face. "If you lay a hand on my sister again, this knife is going through your stomach," he tells him, before stalking away to the staircase.

"We're going to have so much fun together," Li Yan smiles, drawing Ying Hecong over to Yang Jin and nudging her cousin aside to throw her arms around their shoulders.

Xie Yun is just glad that they splurged on a large apartment for their base. Once they all make it upstairs, Li Yan sets to frying some eggs for a second round of breakfast while they pull up the debrief materials. It's crowded, but peaceful. Xie Yun can't remember the last time he felt this relaxed in a group of people. He had forgotten how much fun a good con can be, the game of cat and mouse with a real team at your back.

~

They give it a few days for the dust to settle after the gala, and Li Sheng spends a lot of that time working with Ying Hecong to decode the flashdrive. He tells himself that he isn't hiding from his sister and cousin's new boyfriends, which is mostly true, even if Chuchu teases him about it more and more as the days go on. Zhou Fei and Li Yan both insist that there is nothing untoward happening, and that they are all just friends. He's not sure who they're trying to fool with that. At least Ying Hecong is shy enough to keep Li Yan's flirting to a stream of gentle affection.

Friday evening finds him and Zhou Fei drinking beers on the roof. Li Sheng is sipping on his second beer, and is feeling mellow enough to relax into the lull.

"You like Chuchu, right?" he asks. He then blinks a few times. That wasn't the question he meant to ask.

"Yeah, I like her. She's great," Zhou Fei replies before he can take it back.

A hidden tension slips out of Li Sheng's shoulders.

"She took me shopping the other day, it was actually pretty fun," Zhou Fei continues. "I can't imagine being thrown into all of this from a normal life, but she's handling it really well, and I admire that. I think she's been good for you, ge."

Okay, that is not what he asked. Li Sheng takes a gulp of his beer for cover, chokes on it, and sputters miserably through trying to not inhale carbonated liquid. Zhou Fei smacks his back way too hard, which doesn't help.

"I didn't mean it that way," Li Sheng says when he can finally breathe. His voice is still hoarse.

"Well, I think she's been good for you either way," Zhou Fei shrugs. "It's been nice to meet new people. It's different from hanging out with the other trainees back home. More friendly. I'm glad you brought this crew together."

Li Sheng sighs and forgives her for now. "I'm glad we're still working together," he admits.

Zhou Fei knocks their shoulders together, and he reaches over to tap his beer against hers. The wind smells clear up here as they enjoy the silence and skyline. They both whirl around when there is a faint click behind them a while later, but it's just Xie Yun holding a jacket. Li Sheng chuckles at the fact that he actually used the door instead of scaling the wall like a spider.

"No worries, I was going to head back down anyway," Li Sheng says, standing up and waving away Xie Yun's apology. "There are a few more beers in the cooler, help yourself. A'Fei, I'll see you later."

The smile Zhou Fei gives him is warm and settled in a way that Li Sheng hasn't seen since they were kids. She lifts her bottle in a toast, and then waves Xie Yun over and pats the spot next to her.

~

The beer had been keeping her warm just fine, the night more balmy than brisk, but Zhou Fei is hardly going to turn down Xie Yun's solicitous offer to hold her drink while she puts on the coat he came up to deliver.

"Do you want one?" she asks him, and smiles reassuringly when he shakes his head. "What are they up to downstairs?"

"A movie," Xie Yun tells her. "There was talk of putting on a dance game with the controllers afterwards. I thought I would join you guys up here. But," he adds quickly, "I'm sure Agent Zhou would also be undefeated on this arena if you wanted to join them for the game."

"I like it fine right here," Zhou Fei says, suddenly uninterested in hiding her besotted smile. "Do you always sit like you're only happy if you fall off the bench? Come on, scoot over."

Xie Yun blushes and demurely drops his gaze as he shifts closer. That's better. Zhou Fei settles her arm around the back of the bench, not quite touching him but not quite not, and he smiles. The low city buildings roll out in front of them, bluish lights marking out a bridge on the other side of downtown.

"What's your favorite view?" Xie Yun asks quietly. "If you could be sitting anywhere right now?"

Zhou Fei hums, sliding down to lean more comfortably against the bench and anchor her arm around Xie Yun's back. He folds himself into the space beside her like a pop-up card.

"Probably the river back home," she says eventually. "I used to go out on the roof with my dad, and he showed me a spot that's out of sight of the guards. There's cameras, of course, but it's quiet. The river wasn't that big, but it ran fast out by that corner. You could hear the water if you listened closely."

She blinks wistfully, surprised by her homesickness, and even more surprised that Xie Yun had picked up on it. "How about you?" she asks, turning to meet his warm eyes. "Where would you be?"

"Ah, you know me," Xie Yun sighs, waving a hand at the rooftop and hazy city light. "The four corners of the world are my home, and every day a new sight to see. Just drop me anywhere, and I'm happy."

"I don't believe you," Zhou Fei says before her heart can break for him. "You haven't gone anywhere since we met again in Huo Industries." She takes a deep breath and touches two fingers to his chin, turning his face back towards her. "Xie Yun, if I could go anywhere right now, I would stay here. I think that you would, too."

The only response is the sharp inhale that Xie Yun sips in, his mouth parted on unsaid words and eyes burning with feeling. She can feel his pulse racing under her fingertips. Xie Yun's eyes close when she leans in, his entire body held perfectly still, and the soft press of their lips is silent in the night air.

When Zhou Fei pulls back, he is looking at her with unchanged intensity. So she does it again.

This time, Xie Yun shifts to kiss her back. It is unfathomably nicer than the awkward, exploratory makeout sessions she had engaged in with some of the other trainees back home. Xie Yun's mouth is whisper-smooth, asserting nothing but his presence yet somehow still encompassing Zhou Fei's entire awareness. He finally makes a noise when she sucks on the tip of his tongue. Zhou Fei gives into the temptation to bite his lip. That gets her a more urgent sound, Xie Yun pressing closer to her. One of his dextrous hands reaches up to tangle in her hair. Even when she has her eyes closed, he is so beautiful.

"What are we doing, Xie-meimei?" Zhou Fei asks, one hand warm on his chest, once her lips feel swollen and greedy. "What do you want us to be?"

"A'Fei, don't ask me that," Xie Yun pleads. "Just keep kissing me."

As if Zhou Fei could possibly refuse. She draws him back in, moving so that he can climb into her lap, Xie Yun somehow bending so that their mouths fit together like they have never been apart. There is plenty of time for them to figure it out. Nothing is going to happen to Xie Yun on her watch. If he bolts, she will find him, his hand in hers.

~

No one is particularly lively the next morning after the dance party, Li Sheng himself included, and the quiet caffeine-sipping is a nice way to spend the first half of the day. Li Yan is the only one brave enough to tease Zhou Fei about the line of hickeys on Xie Yun's throat.

After lunch, they settle into their living room - Li Sheng calls it the meeting room, Yang Jin calls it the war room, but everyone else insists that it's just a living room - to plan the next phase of their con.

"So, we have good news and bad news," Li Sheng says. "Which do you want first?"

"The good news!" Li Yan says.

"Alright," he says, giving her a smile. "The good news is that Ying Hecong, Chuchu, and I were able to decode the flashdrive."

Ying Hecong takes his cue to pull up the documents on the screen. There are records of financial transactions and large sum gifts from Disha Security Company to several government officials, including Assistant Secretary Yu Wenzhi, plus email records that reference specific cover-ups. The issue is that if they publish these documents directly, they won't be credible. It's safe to assume that most of these tracks have already been erased everywhere else.

It's actually worse than that, Li Sheng explains, since the proper bad news is that Shen Tianshu and Yu Wenzhi were able to resolve their argument about the Syrian contracts.

Li Yan had done her job beautifully, and Shen Tianshu had furiously called Yu Wenzhi up the next day, brandishing their business card. But the two have not been decades-long co-conspirators for nothing. The yelling subsided into sweet-talking when it became clear how much was at stake for both of them. By now, the contracts have been reestablished, all of Ying Hecong's planted documents swept aside by new agreements.

A fretful silence settles over the room once Li Sheng finishes the presentation.

"What do we do now, ge?" Li Yan finally asks.

"There are a few options," Li Sheng says. "We have to change the con a little, but I think the suspicion we sowed will still work for us."

"We have both sets of documents in hand now, plus Hu Tianyin's implied involvement," Xie Yun notes. "That's a lot of ammunition if we can use it."

Zhou Fei nods, squeezing Xie Yun's arm as she leans forward. "You said that the problem with releasing the documents is credibility, right? Disha will have already cleared the rest of the paper trails? Well, what if we recreate them?"

"Yes, that's right!" Li Yan says. "We were thinking about how to cut off Disha's contracts, but we already primed them to think about government image. We can fake an investigation."

Xie Yun frowns as he skims the documents on the screen. "A federal investigation is fine, but we need something else to keep the pressure on them while we play it out. They've been investigated before, by people who actually cared, and they just shut it down if they're paying attention."

"A distraction," Ying Hecong says. "Like what Li Yan started with the competitor agency."

Li Sheng smiles as a plan comes together. It's a good thing that Li Yan grabbed their second hitter, and that Yang Jin is inclined to follow her lead.

"I'll play the federal investigator," he says. "Yang Jin will represent the new security contractor, with a new piece of military tech that Disha doesn't have, plus some forged contracts for new projects. Li Yan will introduce them. We'll prime them both by intercepting any favors between them for a week, and then move in."

To his surprise, Yang Jin is the one to propose a toast to their new plan. They drink to their luck and success with the glasses of water scattered around the meeting room.

~

The whole group takes a childish glee in spoiling every minor interaction between Yu Wenzhi and Disha's leadership throughout the following week.

Li Yan spends a happy afternoon sitting in Ying Hecong's room, her chin propped on his shoulder while he forges a letter of indictment citing Hu Tianyin for illegally smuggling rare plants - something that Yu Wenzhi had previously arranged for customs and USDA agents to overlook. Yang Jin roll his eyes when Xie Yun returns from his plant theft errand with several paintings that were also in the shipment.

It's good to see their new friends getting more comfortable around each other, and it's especially nice to see how Ying Hecong relaxes when Yang Jin is with them. She makes a note to have Li Sheng keep Yang Jin in the truck with them whenever he isn't needed on the ground.

The ease with which they execute these small ploys nourishes their confidence. It's different from working alone.

Ying Hecong says as much one evening, catching Chuchu's eye and smiling, and Li Yan has to forcibly remind herself that she can't move too fast without scaring him away. Yang Jin, though - that's a different story. Li Yan giggles when he responds to Ying Hecong's statement with a friendly nudge that topples him out of his chair. She's good at waiting for the right moment. Creating the right moment is even better, though, and she has some ideas for romantic dinners.

Those will have to wait until this job is finished, though. By the start of the next week, everyone in the apartment is wound tight with anticipation for the next phase of their con.

Yang Jin is terribly stiff in his seat across from her in their booth in the hotel bar the night they begin. Over the comms, Ying Hecong is giving them the countdown for Shen Tianshu's approach, and Li Yan reaches over to squeeze Yang Jin's hand in an attempt to get him to relax. They're supposed to look friendly. The contact only makes him more stiff. She sighs. At least they can play it off as a military thing.

"Mr. Shen!" Li Yan exclaims, standing up from her seat and waving when the mark enters. "What brings you here tonight? It's wonderful to see you. I was so glad to hear that we would still be working with Disha in the region after all."

"Ms. Liu," Shen Tianshu replies, nodding his head.

He doesn't look rushed, or displeased to see her. Very good.

"Oh, let me introduce you," she says. "Mr. Shen, this is Mark Huang. He represents a security firm that specializes in drone-directed operations and tech. They're the ones that Assistant Secretary Yu contracted for the new stabilization project."

She clears her throat awkwardly, and looks around the room as if to make sure that no one is watching them, before leaning in and lowering her voice. "I thought it might be useful for you to get to know each other, since your firms will be working together. I was just, ah, telling Mark about how Assistant Secretary Yu can be a little unreliable." A sympathetic grimace in Shen Tianshu's direction.

"How interesting," Shen Tianshu says, raising his eyebrows. "And does your friend here have a card?"

"You don't mind, do you?" Li Yan says to Yang Jin. "Mr. Shen is the head of all of Disha, he knows everything that happens in the State Department."

"Sure," Yang Jin says, reaching into his jacket for another copy of the cards Li Yan had handed Shen Tianshu the first time. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Shen. I look forward to working together."

"I'm sure we will be in touch," Shen Tianshu says.

Apparently considering the conversation finished, he motions to his security entourage and continues on his way out of the hotel.

"I think that went well," Li Yan says. "We've got half an hour left before we clear out, right?"

"You might want to leave sooner than that," Li Sheng responds over the comms. "Shen Tianshu is calling up his board of directors, and he's having his assistant pull everything they can find on the fake company."

"I've put up a whole list of proprietary technology that the firm works with," Ying Hecong adds. "The page is theoretically behind a government security clearance login, but it shouldn't take them long to find it. They're going to be pissed when they find out that you guys have government tech that hasn't been shared with Disha."

"Okay, they're sending a team of agents back your way," Li Sheng says. "Get out of there, we don't want to have an open confrontation right now."

Li Yan pretends to pick up a call on her cell phone, purses her lips for a minute, and nods understandingly. She hangs up, and smiles apologetically at Yang Jin. No problem, he indicates with a gesture in view of the security cameras and doorman, he will accompany her. They wait decorously for the check, gather their coats, and duck away from the security cameras as soon as they get outside.

"Good timing," Xie Yun comments. "You still have time to clear a few blocks before we meet you with the van. Their team is too far away to catch up before then."

"Why wait?" Yang Jin grouses. "It'll save time if you pick us up here."

"Harder for them to track us," Ying Hecong replies, sounding a little distracted. "Meet us two blocks south, it's a natural blind intersection. It'll be less suspicious if they decide to look up your route later."

Yang Jin startles when Li Yan takes his hand and twines their fingers together. "It's a nice night for a walk," she tells him, grinning bright and just a tiny bit feral. She is terribly fond of making him blush.

~

A few days later, Ying Hecong gets up early, and finds Yang Jin already sitting at the kitchen counter.

"Do you think it's safe for me to go out for a bit?" Ying Hecong asks, fiddling with an empty mug from the cabinet. "I couldn't fall back asleep, and I want to clear my head before the job today."

"Sure, I'll go with you," Yang Jin says. "You know Li Yan never gets up before nine if she can help it."

"What, you're lonely until she gets up?" he asks, incredulous, and Yang Jin scowls in response.

"Of course not," he huffs. "Didn't we just say we're going to hang out? You should get dressed, you're holding us up. We can buy everyone breakfast on our way back."

Ying Hecong grins at his bluster, and sets the mug down to stretch.

"Meet you at the door in five?" Yang Jin says, returning his smile, and he nods happily in response.

~

Getting up early was the right move, Ying Hecong thinks to himself in the van that afternoon. The team has been on high alert from the moment they finished lunch, everything running on a strict timetable that has brought them to Disha's doorstep right as Shen Tianshu's most important meeting of the day is wrapping up. Xie Yun has already stopped by earlier for some light adjustments to the meeting room services. Swabbing the water glasses with a variety of nausea-inducing substances and bitter tonics always helps a meeting go poorly.

Li Sheng makes his entrance, with Zhou Fei for back-up, just as the unhappy-looking meeting guests get ready to leave.

"Agent Shi and Agent Feng, here for a 3:00pm appointment," he announces to the front desk, flashing his badge.

The security officers blanch at the sight of the badge, and scramble to check their records when Li Sheng raises his eyebrows impatiently. Ying Hecong keeps on eye on the security feed from the lobby while entering their fake appointment into the system.

"We don't have anything on the calendar for..." the guard trails off when the calendar refreshes, showing a meeting with an FBI agent scheduled with most of Disha's board. "Ah, Agent - "

"Agent Shi," Li Sheng fills in, frowning and pulling out a notebook.

"Ah, yes, Agent Shi, I will let our people know that you've arrived. What is this appointment regarding?"

"My boss moves mountains to force through a courtesy appointment before the investigation goes public, and Disha doesn't even bother to show up?" Li Sheng scoffs. "Absolutely ridiculous. The nerve of you people."

"No, no, we apologize, Agent Shi," the other guard chimes in, frantic. "Our team will be there, we are merely...preparing. It was a glitch with the front desk system."

"Preparing?" Li Sheng says ominously. "So we're waiting here while Disha is busy shredding files upstairs? Come on," he says to Zhou Fei, "let's go in."

The first guard is placing an emergency call to Shen Tianshu's assistant, while the other guard waves his arms trying to placate Li Sheng and stop their forward progress towards the elevator. Ying Hecong uses the time to trip all of Disha's investigation alerts and ping the FBI tip line. The rotating security feed on the far screen shows people starting to rush in and out of offices throughout the building. The stage is set. A cacophony of calls are flying over the company phone lines by the time Shen Tianshu steps out of the lobby elevator.

"What on Earth is all this?" he demands, glaring at the two agents manning the desk, as well as the others milling nervously around the lobby. "Agent Shi," he says silkily, turning towards Li Sheng and Zhou Fei, "I apologize for the confusion. I am Shen Tianshu, CEO of Disha Security Company. Allow me to show you upstairs."

The man did not get where to he is without a keen eye for politics. His fury at needing to play host for a surprise FBI visit is barely contained, but he is doing a passable job of keeping it invisible to the untrained eye. How unfortunate for him that he is being watched by a team of thieves, plus the world's most talented grifter.

"Ask him where the restrooms are, and for refreshments," Li Yan says, seated next to him in the van and tracking their progress closely on the security feed. "Anything that makes him play at secretary. Oh, and ask him how long he has until his next meeting. He won't know, and he hates that."

Over the next hour, Shen Tianshu's leash on his temper gets shorter and shorter, and he snaps at Zhou Fei several times - though he holds his fire when it comes to Li Sheng, who they have visibly positioned as the one in charge.

Disha is unlikely to find Li Sheng's tracks from the Huo Industries piece, whereas Zhou Fei was inside their building for over an hour. They have been trying to keep Zhou Fei and Xie Yun off any visible roles in this con, but the whole team overruled Li Sheng's plan to go in alone, Chuchu the loudest of the objectors. They are all glad for it now - there is whispered discussion over one of the phone lines of whether or not they should take out the offending FBI agents on their way back to headquarters, but it is deemed too risky with two targets who will be able to back each other up.

By now, they have thoroughly succeeded in setting Disha's attention on the investigation. Ying Hecong's fingers start to cramp from rewriting all of their emails to Yu Wenzhi's office. Controlling the situation is everything. They have set a fire, deliberately, and if it burns wrong then this job will go to ashes. Li Yan and Yang Jin are reassuring presences on his either side. Xie Yun is in the driver's seat, Chuchu sitting with them in the back, and they respond with terse advice each time Ying Hecong announces a new update. He hopes that Li Sheng and Zhou Fei won't need the rescue that the others are clearly poised to enact. He hopes that they don't leave him here alone if it comes to that. Li Yan settles an arm around his waist, and his shoulders ease down.

There is another tense moment when two guards awkwardly bar Li Sheng and Zhou Fei at the door.

"Come on, A'Fei," Xie Yun whispers in the front seat, his hands white-knuckled on the door handle.

"What's the problem?" Li Sheng barks, and after an uncertain glance, the guards step aside.

No one moves until the two of them reach the van, which serves as the perfect cover for a poorly-disguised FBI van. Li Sheng opens the door to the driver's seat, and Xie Yun nimbly climbs into the back, settling himself behind the passenger seat to reach over and grab Zhou Fei's hand. Everyone relaxes a fraction when the locks on the car doors click shut.

"I'm glad you're okay, A'Sheng," Chuchu says, always the most straightforward among them.

"Good work, everyone," Li Sheng responds, sending Chuchu a soft smile. He rolls his shoulders and straightens to start the engine. "The FBI headquarters are up next. Smile for the cameras."

It's true that Disha will undoubtedly be watching their every move, and Ying Hecong turns his attention back to the stream of communications that he is controlling. The drive to the FBI building is uneventful.

Twenty calls to Yu Wenzhi's office, redirected to a busy signal. One more redirected to Li Yan, who informs them that the Assistant Secretary is not available to take their calls. Forty-six emails returned to sender. Even more emails doctored with the wrong, incriminating attachments. The security code for the front gate, so that Disha will see their van pull smoothly into the FBI lot.

It's easy enough to leave the FBI premises after some circling to kill time. Ying Hecong is glad to keep Yang Jin and Li Yan safe within arm's reach. They navigate through the complex to find a blind spot to change out the license plates, and their van emerges with a new set of colored headlights and accessory stick-ons to obfuscate the make and model.

After circling around the city for an hour, including a detour into the suburbs, there is no sign of being tailed in person or over the chatter on the Disha lines, and they decide it is safe enough to return to the apartment. Xie Yun and Li Yan take charge of making dinner for the group. It is going to be a busy evening, and Ying Hecong moves his desk set-up to the living room so that everyone can stay apprised of the situation.

Things have calmed down enough for him to take a break for food, letting Chuchu take point on running their responses to Disha's emails and calls. Ying Hecong expects that they have another hour or two before Disha cottons onto the interference with their communications, at which point he will have his work cut out for him establishing a hard lock on their platforms, but the good news is that they only have to manage the crisis for the rest of the evening. He has been incorporating their stolen evidence files throughout the messages sent today. More pieces have already been embedded in scattered news stories dated between now and several years back, establishing the paper trail for the authorities. They just need to contain Disha's response for the rest of the night.

Once dinner is cleared away, Yang Jin sits down next to him and presents him with a cup of underbrewed, oversweetened coffee, which Li Yan discretely replaces with a much nicer homemade mocha. There are worse ways to spend a night.

~
The night is too loud in Xie Yun's room. A car honks outside, tires scraping against asphalt, and Xie Yun has to brace himself against memories of car chases and close calls.

His window is locked and barred. The closure is easy to operate from the inside, though, and he could be out and gone in two seconds. There is a coil of rope anchored behind the curtain rod. A bag of essentials is packed under his bed, easily reachable from where he is trying to sleep.

It's too quiet. The murmur of voices from the living room is barely audible. The beep of the microwave makes him think of a smoke alarm. A floorboard creeks in the hallway, and Xie Yun grips the sheet to brace himself against the instinct to run.

An hour passes this way, Xie Yun's breathing steady and inaudible, holding himself immobile so that the looming threat of Disha's revenge will not chase him out through the window. He does not stand still in the face of danger. He runs, leaves, is gone before danger can lay eyes on him. But he promised to stay. This time, he promised a girl that he would stay, against his best judgement and everything that keeps him alive. In the end, he is surprised that he makes it an hour before climbing out of his ruse of a bed and drifting to Zhou Fei's room.

He stands in front of her door for a long time, socked feet centered and still. When he knocks, Zhou Fei's footsteps thud over immediately, and she meets his eyes as soon as she opens the door.

"Couldn't sleep," he says, after a long moment in which he feels his fears and hopes pass between them unspoken.

"Wanna come in?" Zhou Fei asks.

Xie Yun nods. She leaves the door open a crack, a gesture which makes Xie Yun smile as he nudges it the rest of the way closed. When he's with Zhou Fei, in her space, he feels safer knowing that the two of them are cloistered away in here. She can be his escape route. Once the door closes, the tightly balanced stillness that has held onto him all evening cracks away. His bangs fall into his eyes when he pulls out his neat ponytail, flinging his hand through his hair as he paces.

"You stayed," Zhou Fei says, and he spins to face her.

In the face of her affectionate sincerity, Xie Yun can only nod, too forged through with feeling to reply.

"What can I do to help?" she asks.

"I don't know," he sighs. "I don't want to be alone." He meets her gaze and smiles self-deprecatingly. "Do you think Li Sheng will mind if I stay here for the night?"

"Who cares what Li Sheng thinks? I want you here, if you want to be here, so that's all that matters."

The silence stretches again while Xie Yun bites his lip. It is easier to think now that he is here with Zhou Fei. It's also impossible to think of anything except her, but perhaps he doesn't need to right now, and that realization is what decides him.

"I'll take the side by the wall?" he asks, tilting his head towards her bed.

"Sure," Zhou Fei replies. "I can keep watch, if it'll make you feel better."

"No, A'Fei, you need your rest. Tomorrow's a big day for everyone." Under her gaze, Xie Yun finally finds the sense of self needed to unbend into his usual teasing. "If you stay up all night, how will you keep me warm? You can protect me and sleep on the side by the door."

The dizzying presumption of what he just said makes Xie Yun swallow, but Zhou Fei doesn't hesitate as she turns the covers down more neatly and fluffs a throw pillow to put next to the wall. Her eyes catch on his mouth when he bites his lip again, and it gives him the confidence to take off his socks and scoot under the blankets.

"Are you comfortable?" Zhou Fei asks once they are settled.

The warmth of the covers and the darkness broken only by a soft nightlight infuse Xie Yun with a sleepy contentment. Surely he must be drugged to feel this safe. This kind of perfection isn't possible in the real world, but it is too lovely for him to question it, and he makes a hazy noise of agreement. He lets his comfortable drowsiness pull his eyes shut as Zhou Fei presses their lips together.

They kiss gently for a while, Xie Yun's breaths slowing towards sleep as his exhausted tension catches up with him, and he has to fumble his way back to consciousness when Zhou Fei grabs his hand beneath the covers.

"Don't run without telling me, okay?" she whispers. "I'll go with you, if you have to leave. But don't go alone."

"I won't," he replies, one more promise that he has never made before. "I won't leave you without saying goodbye. So don't you do it, either."

"I'm staying with you," Zhou Fei says fiercely. "You'll get us away from danger, and I'll keep us safe whenever we need to stay. We're a good team."

"We're a little more than a team," he smiles, and sighs happily into Zhou Fei's answering kiss.

The peaceful night lulls Xie Yun back towards true rest. Each kiss that Zhou Fei brushes against his mouth is softer than the previous one, and she strokes a hand over his hair before turning over to face the door. Xie Yun falls asleep with his face pressed against the nape of her neck, his tall frame anchored around her solid warmth.

~

The stakes have never been higher, and Li Sheng has never felt so young. They are all good at what they do. If it weren't for that, this crew would never have made it this far in a job against Disha and the State Department, and he holds firm to that knowledge as they ride out the last part of the con.

Everyone has been gathered in the living room since dawn, and it really does feel like a war room today. Li Yan is fussing over Ying Hecong and the bags under his eyes in between working the phone lines. Yang Jin has apparently been trained in how to brew coffee sometime between last night and this morning. It's a huge boon with how under-rested they all are. There has been no pause in activity since they leaked the forged investigation files to the media late last night, with the witness files and transaction records embedded in the investigation materials. Their call to the FBI tip line is also paying dividends.

So far, the FBI has not refuted the news outlets' claims about an ongoing investigation, and the team is working hard to ensure that silence is taken as confirmation. The planted search results are pulling a lot of weight.

"Most news outlets just use the same article and call it their own," Li Yan explains. "If you can get one well-sourced article up, and get it some traffic, everyone else will just cite the same sources without checking the information. It's a problem for misinformation, but it's really useful."

Chuchu nods. "I did a journalism internship, and that's exactly how it is in most places. There just aren't enough resources for reporters to spend time doing their own research, especially if they won't be able to break a new story with it."

"That's not good, though, right?" Yang Jin says. "Do corporations use newspapers that way? There must be something we can do about it."

"It's definitely bad, but I don't think we can really complain," Li Yan replies, smiling sardonically. "Corporations usually don't rely on the news cycle that much - but misinformation just creates problems in general. Maybe we can look into fixing up a news outlet next time."

"Mn. That would be fun," Yang Jin says, before turning his attention back to Ying Hecong and whisking his water bottle away to be refilled.

The going story seems stable enough for Ying Hecong to ease their blockade on Disha's communications. Li Sheng takes the lead on curating the stream of information that they are feeding to the FBI tip line from varied sources, batching the contents of Chuchu's flashdrive and the folders in the safe for maxiumum strategic effect. Each batch is themed, with the items selected to appear like they come from one person with a consistent level of access, but the evidence is mutually reinforcing across the tip emails.

By lunchtime, several agencies have announced press conferences to assert their commitment to transparency. The team no longer needs to intercept the calls placed by news outlets or state agencies, since the points of contact that they have linked up are now all on the same page about Disha.

At last, the FBI releases a statement saying that they cannot comment on an ongoing investigation. Ying Hecong sits back and pumps his fist in victory, leaning over to high five Li Yan and Yang Jin. Xie Yun is beaming, his fingers tangled with Zhou Fei's under the table as if he thinks the glass countertop is going to hide them. Li Sheng breathes out a deep sigh of relief and meets Chuchu's smile.

~
One time, when Chuchu was small, her parents took the family on a camping trip. Her dad built the fire and guided her hand to light a match to the kindling. His steady stream of air amplified her little huffs of breath as they encouraged the twigs to catch fire, several matches sacrificed to the cause before the little flickers of flame caught hold of a branch. After that, it consumed everything they fed it. Chuchu remembers running behind Penglei, terrified that his careless handfuls of sticks thrown into the firepit would somehow guide the flames to the trees, engulfing the world.

Right now, with the FBI director proclaiming an open investigation in Disha's crimes and cover-ups, she feels like she is that fire.

Another victim is being interviewed on a different channel, saying tearfully that he never thought this day would come - that the true story of his son's death would be told, and his name cleared. All of Disha's accounts have been frozen, and travel notices are being issued for their top executives. Footage plays of Hu Tianyin being arrested at the airport for attempting to flee with a fake passport.

Yu Wenzhi is suspended from office, also under a flight ban. The recently inaugurated Secretary of State, who has never had close dealings with Yu Wenzhi, has released a statement condemning the unsightly conduct. In private, instructions have been issued to sever all ties with his office.

None of it will bring her parents back. Even so, Chuchu thinks that they would be proud. It took a world-class team to bring down Disha. Her parents' efforts were honorable, critical, and did not take place in vain. She sends a message to Penglei in their old family groupchat, telling him simply that they won. Minutes later, a picture shows up in response, a selfie of Chenfei and Penglei cheering. The most vicious edges of her satisfaction burn away at the sight of their smiles.

Across the room, Li Sheng steps out of his sister's embrace and rounds the table to stand next to her.

"How are you doing?" he asks her, quietly solicitous even now.

"I can't believe we did it," Chuchu replies. Meeting his eyes, she reaches for his hand. "Thank you."

"It wasn't just for you," Li Sheng says. "We did it because it was the right thing to do. You made it possible."

Chuchu can't contain her affection for him. "I know. I'm not thanking you for doing the con," she tells him. "I'm thanking you for believing in us. Thank you for trying so hard even when you didn't know me."

"It was the right thing to do," he repeats intently.

He blinks at her a few times, drops his gaze to their linked hands, and squeezes hesitantly. When Chuchu squeezes back, Li Sheng lifts her hand to brush a courtly kiss over her knuckles. Her smile goes giddy. Li Sheng blushes. Just so that there isn't any doubt, Chuchu returns the gesture with a kiss to his hand, and giggles when his eyes go wide. There will be enough time for this later. She sweeps her thumb over his knuckles before letting go and facing the rest of the celebrating group.

"We did it," she says, and sees her wonder reflected back in everyone's faces. "You know," she says slowly, "we're a really good team. Everyone says that Disha is the best out there, but we did it. We could do this again."

"Our own crew," Zhou Fei says, nodding in agreement. "We made good money off the collapse of Disha's contracts and stocks, enough to pay us out for years. A'Sheng," she continues, "what do you think? Are we up for it?"

"Let's do it, ge," Li Yan exclaims.

The boys are nodding along, Xie Yun smiling more sweetly than Chuchu has ever seen, as Yang Jin punches Ying Hecong's arm in excitement.

"Our own crew," Li Sheng echoes, drowning out Ying Hecong's complaints. "I like it. In that case, what should we steal next?"