🎶ZTAO - Black White

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Tao feels sweat trickle down his neck and back as he continues throwing combos of kicks and punches, the standing sandbag swinging and creaking with every blow it's taking. However, the loud music blasting all over the training room almost drowns these sounds, as Tao prefers to fill the place with music while working out as it helps take his mind off of things. It's been a while since he had this much peace and free time, and being at his own home without worrying about getting killed at any moment definitely feels nice.

Just as Tao swings a 360 kick against the sandbag, he hears a notification sound interrupt the music playing from his phone. He stops and takes a few deep breaths as he steadies his inanimate sparring partner back into place, before proceeding to grab his towel from a nearby chair. Casually patting the towel all over his bare torso, he walks towards his phone placed beside the bluetooth speaker on one corner of the room. However, his carefree vibe immediately disappears as soon as he sees the message, his brows starting to knit together once again.

Skywalker
Hideout @10.
(received 8:53am)

The cold and brief format of the message doesn't even bother him anymore as it's typical for their unit leader, Skywalker. No, he's not a jedi, but another intelligence agent assigned as their unit leader. Skywalker is just his codename (they all have one for mission purposes) but his real name is Kris Wu. They just save each other's numbers using their codenames for confidentiality purposes.

Anyway, Tao is more bothered by the obvious fact that the text is about another mission. It hasn't even been two weeks since they accomplished their last mission, and the large bruise on his chest caused by a gunshot hasn't even fully healed yet. He would have died if he hadn't been wearing a bulletproof vest, but it definitely still hurt like a bitch. But to be fair, things like that could be expected from his line of work as an intelligence agent--you know, brushing shoulders with death every now and then-- but sometimes it seems the National Intelligence Service expect their agents to be immortals or like the Avengers who never need rest.

Agents are human too, you know. They also need to live their lives in peace every now and then.

Having really no choice but to comply, Tao turns off the music and heads out of the room. This mission better be worth the interruption of his supposed peaceful vacation.

***

Upon reaching the familiar building, Tao looks at the "SM Cafe" sign in amusement along with the unusual monochromatic theme of the cafe's exterior, still finding it oddly hilarious how bland and disorganized it looks. It definitely doesn't comply with the cute or aesthetic feel most cafes offer, and as a result, customers rarely come here. As a business, that's definitely a bad thing, but as a facade to a secret underground base of intelligence agents, it means that it's definitely doing what it's supposed to. After all, who would think that a high-tech NIS facility would be hiding underneath a lousy, old-fashioned looking cafe?

Tao walks towards the descending entrance and pushes the door open, completely ignoring the "CLOSED" sign hung on it. Seeing that the cafe is empty, he heads straight towards the storage room and to the very back where a shelf full of boxes is placed against the wall. Already having done this many times before, he easily grabs one edge of the shelf to press a sneakily placed lever, allowing the entire shelf to swing forward to reveal a metal door behind it. He steps into the 3-foot wide clearance just as the shelf automatically closes behind him. He slightly crouches down at eye level with the security lock for the retina scanner, then taps his thumb onto the fingerprint scanner at the same time. The metal door immediately slides open after the lock beeps and confirms his identity.

______________________

GAMBIT
*Identity confirmed
*Access granted
______________________

Tao's vision is instantly filled by grey walls and the stairs descending into their base. A humming silence fills the entire place, making it apparent that nobody else is here, except for the faint voices he could hear coming from the briefing room just around the corner of the hallway. Tao heads to the said room, and once the automatic doors slide open, as expected, he immediately sees Kris' standing on one end of the briefing table, arms crossed on his chest and an unamused look on his face.

"You're late."

"Hyung, you know I live all the way in Hannam. I can't just fly over the traffic, you know?"

"Tao, manners." Suho's voice says from the control booth at one corner of the room, awfully sounding a lot like a mother scolding her child. Kris, on the other hand, is the grumpy short-tempered father. Sometimes Tao wonders if this is one of the requirements in order to be appointed as unit leaders, or maybe it's just a side effect.

Tao just huffs at Suho as he takes a seat on the table, while the older guy just chuckles and shakes his head as he takes a seat as well. For some reason he sees Tao acting similarly like Kris, except Tao is more like the bratty child version.

"Where are the others?"

"I wanted to discuss this with you and Suho first," Kris answers, and the atmosphere immediately turns more serious as their focus shifts onto the matter at hand. "This mission seems to be quite tricky so we need to properly strategize before relaying it to the rest of the team. So I'll be needing your insights and suggestions on this as the team's strategist."

Tao nods in understanding and motions for him to continue.

"The headquarters gave me this mission earlier this morning," Kris answers as he taps the huge screen mounted on the wall to activate it. The image of a modern looking red and white company building appears on the screen together with some recently captured satellite images and a picture of a middle aged man on one corner.

"I'm sure you've heard of RedSnow Inc.," He asks with a spiteful undertone. The two shrugs and nods. RedSnow is the most well known logistics company in all of Korea, and it isn't hard to remember them since their delivery vans and container trucks are practically everywhere.

"They're a multi-billion logistics company that provides land, air, and sea transportation of goods and is owned by the CEO, Kang Dong Yoon." He taps the man's face on the screen. "They've been rated as the number one logistics service in Korea, with assets amounting to $62.9B as of 2019. Their headquarters is located at Gunpo in Gyeonggi-do Province, but they also have several storage locations and smaller branches in different ports."

"Seems overkill on the security for a logistics company," Tao points out, talking about the high concrete walls enclosing the massive building. The entry and exit points are all heavily guarded and has two checkpoints before reaching the building itself. "So what type of illegal goods do they transport?"

"Drugs," Kris states as-a-matter-of-factly. Suho's eyebrows raise at this. 

"Just drugs?" They've already done a mission similar to this, wherein they traced the major supplier of not just drugs but even weapons, counterfeit money, technology and malware into the black market. It didn't even take them two weeks to finish that mission.

"Yes, just drugs. But don't underestimate these evasive motherfuckers." Kris says darkly. "The NIS has been investigating them for two years already. Apparently, we already tried planting a spy within their company two years ago, but we haven't heard from him since. Unfortunately, he's nowhere to be found and is now presumably dead."

"So they eliminate whoever poses a threat to their secrets," Suho taps his fingers on the table. "How are they still getting away with this? And with the NIS hot on their tails at that?"

"Exactly. For some reason, they're extremely good at hiding their dirty secrets and erasing all traces that may lead back to them. Two NIS units already handled this mission before us, but they failed. They were only able to obtain a few essential information, but no solid evidence that can overthrow RedSnow."

"Two?" Tao asks in disbelief. Special units formed by NIS are not to be underestimated with as they are composed of top tier intelligence agents with amazing skill sets. These units have high mission succession rates that there even became a mantra that says "if the special units handle it, consider it done." Hence, if RedSnow was able to shake two special units off of them, that means they definitely aren't one to mess with.

"Yes, two." Kris confirms. "Fortunately for us, although Unit SJ and Unit NCT failed to incapacitate RedSnow, they managed to get some key info that can help us do so."

The screen changes into a satellite map of the upper half of South Korea, with a big X marked on RedSnow's headquarters in Gyeonggi, and about ten other smaller x scattered all over the map.

"Their biggest storage locations are located nearby seaports and airports, namely Gimpo Airport, Incheon Port and Airport, Gunsan Port, and Pyeongtaek Port. The others are significantly smaller and two of these weren't even on the map before they were found by the previous units. We don't know how many more storage locations they have that we don't know about yet."

"Were any of the units ambushed during one of their scouting?" Tao asks. Kris regretfully nods.

"Six agents from Unit NCT obtained gunshot wounds during a crossfire. They had to forfeit the mission for the sake of their members' recovery, hence, the mission got handed over to us."

Tao's eyes glazes over as his mind automatically starts to form strategies based on the information he's getting. "That means they're hiding their products in those small warehouses, and protected by their so called defense units. And after what happened, it's certain that they strengthened their defenses as they already know someone is after them. Since we don't know any of their protocols, procedures, or the inner workings of the illegal side of their company, it's a bad idea to attempt an intrusive mission without knowing how exactly they will respond."

Kris nods. "So what do you suggest we do?"

"We gather information covertly. Before we can get concrete evidence, we first have to know where and how to find them. We could start by identifying individuals connected to RedSnow that may know something."

The map on the screen is then replaced by what looks like an organizational chart, except that most pictures are left blank, obviously individuals whose identities are still unknown. Kris points at the image of the CEO positioned at the top of the screen.

"Other than the fact that he's closely guarded at all times, this fucker is a very public figure so unfortunately, we can't touch him. However, he has this person to do the dirty work for him." Kris' finger moves lower onto a blank space that only says 'Head Strategist'.

"This guy is the second in command and the one that organizes everything, both the legal and illegal side of the business. One key information we obtained is that he also seems to be in charge of what they call the 'defense system.' Unfortunately, we have no further information regarding that, but once we get the chance to identify this head strategist, we have to capture him no matter what." Kris jabs his finger onto the blank picture for emphasis, then moves towards the set of people below whose identities have been identified.

"For the meantime we could start with these people. Fortunately for us, the previous unit managed to trace some of RedSnow's suspicious clients and confirmed the identities of their representatives."

Tao nods in agreement. "Some of us could go and spy on these people to gather more information on RedSnow's illegal logistics. We will also need to dig deeper on their history and organization to find any sort of legal loopholes. Workplace violence, forced labor, illegal permits, tax evation; anything that we can use against them."

"Following as you said, we will need to form sub-units to tackle this mission efficiently." Kris nods, trusting the suggestion of their strategist. Tao may be one of the youngest, but being extremely analytical is his strength and he never disappoints. "Suho..."

At the mention of his name, Suho instantly knows what he's supposed to do so he whips out his phone, but he still looks at Kris expectantly as he waits for confirmation. Kris plants his hands onto the table, his eyes burning as he marks the beginning of their new mission.

"Time to assemble Unit EXO."

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[A/N]:
What a long ass prologue lol

If you wanna see Kris' POV on how he got the mission, check out [Unit: EXO] Skywalker - Prologue ✨

You can find the book in thina-shi 's profile, or under my Series [Unit:EXO] reading list ❤️