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"Black market?" Dejun asked, looking up at the youngest agent expectantly. It had been at least a good thirty minutes after Yangyang had set his plan in action to get Xu Minghao to spill the information he was hiding from them, and he was surprisingly successful. With the combination of Yukhei's rather intimidating appearance and the information Ten had provided him about his former gang, he was just able to squeeze enough out of Minghao to get a lead.

It was rather hard at first, Xu Minghao didn't take Yangyang very seriously. The boy's voice had a slight squeak to it and his body was more slender and petite compared to Yukhei, who looked like an antagonizing giant from some sort of mythos. Not to mention that the youngest agent radiated a childish demeanor unlike the rest of his squadron. So Ten understood that there wasn't much to fear when first encountering him.

Though, the agent was much smarter than he looked. To make up for what he lacked in physical strength he focused more on his intelligence. Brains over brawn was the way Yangyang worked despite how he presented himself most of the time. He used his silver tongue, condescending confidence, and immense information he had gained from Ten to sway Xu Minghao into doing what he desired.

Ten was there when it happened, standing right beside Yukhei, Kun, and Hendery as he watched Yangyang work his magic. It only made him wonder why the younger agent didn't use his hidden talents to his advantage more often.

"That's what he said," Yangyang nodded, playing with Minghao's war fan. He seemed rather fond of the weapon and didn't intend to give it up so easily to anyone else. "All of his information comes from two of his trusted subordinates who are constantly coming and going with the black market. If we can go there and find them, they'll be able to tell us the whereabouts of Agent Yifan and Agent Yixing."

"What about Kyulkyung?" Hendery questioned, eager to exact his revenge on the woman who tried to murder him. "Do we have any information on her?"

"Minghao doesn't know where she is either, Hendery," Kun quickly answered him, sharing quiet glances with Sicheng who sat by the boy. "She's been in cahoots with him since the beginning but one day she simply disappeared and hasn't been in contact with him since. No one knows where Kyulkyung is but we're going to find her, I promise. Just be patient for a little while longer."

Despite the seriousness of the conversation that the squadron was having, Ten wasn't paying much attention. In fact, he had stopped listening to them long ago, his eyes fixated on staring out into the void as he sat on the couch next to Hendery. The boy didn't seem to notice his unusual silence, too preoccupied with more important business than to bother with Ten.

He hasn't exactly been himself once they left the containment chamber that Xu Minghao was being held in. The billionaire had called out the former gang member in the middle of his interrogation, antagonizing Ten no matter how many times the boy had tried to remove himself from the situation. He just kept coming for him, catching a glimpse of him as the weakest link in the squadron chain. It made sense, he couldn't get through to Yangyang, Hendery, and others because they were already confident in each other and themselves. Ten was simply a stranger who had stepped into their bubble uninvited.

"You should be grateful to me," Minghao sneered, the sound of chains jingling behind him as he leaned towards Ten. "I did you a favor killing Jaehyun, I saved your life that night. And this is how you repay me? By siding with the people you barely know?"

"He barely knows you," Kun pointed out, crossing his arms as he stepped in between the two just in case the billionaire wanted to try something. "We've already established a sense of trust with each other that you just wish you could buy with all that money of yours." Yangyang nodded in agreement, pointing the sharp end of the war fan towards him. His hand trembled slightly due to the weight of the iron fan and his inexperience with it but it made him look slightly menacing nonetheless.

Xu Minghao scoffed, an annoyed smile playing on his lips as he kept his gaze on Ten. "This group of merry misfits not going to save you from him, you know that right?"

"What are you talking about?" Ten asked, approaching Minghao with overconfident strides. Kun and Hendery tried to pull him back towards them as, despite the billionaire having his arms and hands restrained, he could be capable of many things they didn't know yet. They were just being cautious, and he understood why they were so quick to try and pull him out of the way.

However, the boy simply shrugged the squadron members off his shoulder, an arrogant smirk donning his face as he leaned down to the same height as Minghao. He wasn't one for taking much preoccupation, before and after he had run away from his old gang. Ten could stare death in the face without any sense of danger, that's how confident in his abilities he was. Though, the way he was trying to stand up to Xu Minghao would probably look a little weird to any bypassers.

The boy was undoubtedly shorter than the billionaire, so if he was standing up at his full height, Ten would look like a child trying to stand up to their parents. Thankfully, Xu Minghao was bound to the chair he was sitting in, making the former gangster's actions seem more condescending and threatening.

"Save me? I haven't needed saving for nearly a year on my own. Whether Jaehyun had caught me that night or not I would have found a way to escape on my own," Ten clarified, teetering the chair Xu Minghao was sitting on with his foot. Though Ten had no idea his words were getting through to the billionaire, his voice wavering a little bit as he spoke.

He was so close to being captured and sent right back to Korea in chains if Sicheng hadn't been there to even intervene. Was the boy even speaking the truth anymore or was he spouting whatever nonsense that would put him on a higher pedestal than Xu Minghao? "So tell me, why would I need saving now?"

"With Jaehyun dead, that information is going to spread." He spoke, his eyes boring straight into Ten's. The spark of mischief and eagerness was evident in his voice and that's when he knew that Xu Minghao had caught the slight quiver in his tone.

"It's going to spread fast like wildfire until it finally reaches Taeyong to set off the bomb," The billionaire warned," He'll think you're the one who killed Jaehyun, not me! And then you won't be safe anywhere. Not in Beijing, not in Shanghai, not in Tokyo, not in Seoul, nowhere. He's going to find you, and he's going to kill you if it's the last thing he'll do."

"Unfortunately for him, we won't let him," the sniper interrupted, pushing the chair out of Ten's grasp and letting it fall to the floor. Minghao groaned at the impact, clenching his teeth tightly to conceal any gasp of pain that threatened to spill out his mouth. The billionaire would rather die than give the squadron the pleasure of seeing him aching and hurt.

Hendery sneered at the billionaire's expression, crossing his arms as he absentmindedly kicked the leg of the chair Xu Minghao was bound to. "The only people that are allowed to kill Ten are the Kingpin and Squadron Weishen. So he's either going to scram or wait in line like everyone else." He was thankful for Hendery's interruption between him and the billionaire, but he would never let him know it. Ten could see it now, the smug smile on his face if he went up to the boy and even bothered to say thank you.

Though that wasn't the worst of Ten's worries at the moment. He was far too preoccupied with other thoughts to worry about whether or not Hendery would have some smart comment to make after Ten expressed his gratitude to him. It was about an hour so after a small unit from the squadron had left to negotiate and interrogate with the billionaire and he was still trying to wrap his head around what had happened. The words that Xu Minghao spoke had unexpectedly stuck to him and he couldn't exactly shake the words from his brain.

It didn't make sense to him, why was this bothering him so much? Ten was never one to let others words get to him, he thought his ego was far too large for that to happen. Yet here he is, struggling to grasp the words that Xu Minghao had thrown out his mouth.

Taeyong was smart plus the fact that some of the people in his close circle specialized in intelligence. Surely if he caught word of Jaehyun's death he wasn't going to assume that Ten was the one that caused it. Sure most of Ten's methods usually involved ending the opposing force's lifeline, but he had never actually murdered someone. He always had someone else to do the job for him, the boy wasn't one for getting his own hands dirty and causing a scene unless he needed to.

But if the party where Jaehyun died left no traces of Xu Minghao's involvement and only pointed fingers at Ten, it was nearly game over for him.

The gang was still chasing after him and they would be searching for any reason to stop holding back on him. The only reason they were usually trying to take him back alive is because he had never injured a member of the gang badly, maybe they'd leave with a bruise or a scratch at most. Plus the fact that Johnny was continuously trying to shield Ten from the muzzles of their pistols despite him being the traitor to the gang as well.

That group of people was like a family to each other and as long as you didn't do anything to give them a reason to turn on you, they would always respect your wishes to the best of their ability. Johnny was quite literally the only reason Ten was far more injured than he should have been.

But if the gang believed it was Ten who murdered Jaehyun, Johnny would be completely overlooked without a second thought. Once you harm one of the gang members it's over, they're going on a witch hunt and are determined that you don't make it out alive.

"Earth to Ten, are you there?" Yangyang's voice echoed, pulling him straight out of the daze he found himself in.

"What?" He responded, blinking his eyes a few times to make sure he was back in reality. Kun, Yukhei, and Hendery were all looking at him expectantly, their eyes wide with curiosity and eagerness to hear what he had to say. "I'm sorry, what are we talking about?"

"How long have you been out of the conversation..." Dejun mumbled, though still a little too loud and being overheard by both Ten and Sicheng. The boy shot the squadron member a quick glare and the older agent simply rolled his eyes, a small hint of playfulness in his eyes that went away the moment he blinked. Ten couldn't help but wonder why Sicheng was so adamant on never showing any emotion when he was with the squadron, aren't they supposed to be his allies and friends?

"He asked about the black market," Kun filled him in, also catching word of what Dejun had said. Luckily it wasn't anything too crazy and only offended Ten, so Kun took no action to try and criticize him. "Xu Minghao said somewhere in Shanghai there's a black market and he usually uses it to trade information with the people he's associated with. Yangyang wanted to know if you might have any connections with the places since you are directly connected to Xu Minghao."

Ten thought about it for a second, trying to figure out if he knew anything in the suspect. He didn't remember much of the technical things that the gang did when it came to trading goods and information, but he did know that they were in fact involved with black markets across the continent. Thanks to the many backgrounds that many members of NEO had, they were practically everywhere, crawling through the walls of different countries like rats.

"I wasn't directly involved in black market dealings," Ten explained, leaning back into the chair he sat in. "Usually I stayed within the country and did things there instead, but I did know of a few people who would travel out of the country to handle those things. There's this guy I know named Mark who traveled around a lot to handle stuff like that and he always returned back with some crazy story to tell. One specifically was about this woman he met named... Yuqi?"

"Yuqi?" Yukhei repeated, surprised by the name that came out of Ten's mouth. "Like... Song Yuqi?"

When Ten nodded his head in response, Yangyang immediately let out a loud and annoyed groan. "Oh my God, if you say that she was some crazy fling you had while on a mission I swear I'm going to go staple my ears shut!" He complained, Dejun nodding his head in agreement.

"With Yuqi? That's gross I would never do that with her, she was like a sister to me," Yukhei argued, repulsed at the mere thought of even attempting to do anything with the woman. "Before I joined Branch V, we were close friends. But one day when we were younger she started to distance herself from me randomly and before I knew it she had completely disappeared from my life. Around the time I had noticed, though, I had already been signed with Branch V, so keeping in contact with her would have been hard anyway."

"Well be lucky you didn't keep in contact with her then," Ten told him, earning a rather confused and displeased frown from the taller boy. "That girl is in the black market business now. If you bring her something valuable and irreplaceable she'll trade you for a variety of things like weaponry and vehicles, lethal injections, and information. I should know, Mark literally had to trade a large sum of money just to receive the information he needed for a mission that the gang leader wanted to conduct."

"Then that means she's who we are looking for next," Kun declared, ignoring the distressed expression Yukhei has on his face. "There's a high possibility that she is in cohorts with Xu Minghao right now and is one of the informants that would give him the information we are currently looking for."

"And what if she doesn't have what we're looking for?" Sicheng suddenly spoke, surprising everyone with his opposing argument. "We can't place our bets entirely on one person. Just like there's a high possibility of her having something we need, there's also a high possibility that she doesn't. And even if she does, Ten makes it sound like she wouldn't just give away anything she knows for free. She'll want an equivalent exchange for something, something of ours for something of hers."

"If she doesn't have what we need, we'll split up and search the whole place for someone who does," Kun answered him. "If Xu Minghao frequents that place then there's bound to be someone who knows the information he's been taking and redistributing. And if she does have the information we need and won't hand it over to us, that's what we have Hendery, Ten, and Yukhei for." He shrugged.

Ten didn't see a problem with Kun's plans, having no reason to object to what the squadron leader had planned, but he could tell Yukhei did. The taller boy did just tell them that Yuqi had been a friend from his childhood and the thought that she had gone off and become something so different from what he had perceived her as was probably hard to grapple with. Not to mention the fact that if she withdrew the information that they needed from her that the squadron would look towards Yukhei to threaten her into handing it over.

"Hey, Bigfoot," Ten called over to the boy, catching his attention quickly due to the strange name he had called him. "You okay with all of this? This is your friend we're about to go after, are you sure you're up for the task?"

Yukhei's eyes wavered for a moment, as if he was really thinking of sitting this mission out because of his childhood friend's involvement. Though after a few moments of silence he shook off any longer nerves and smiled at him, giving the former gangster a thumbs up in response. "Yeah, don't worry about me. This is nothing I can't handle."

"Then it's settled," Kun nodded, putting his hands together as the conversation came to a conclusion. "Yangyang, I want you to do a little bit of digging on Shanghai. Go find any locations that might potential hold the black market with Yuqi in it. Once he finds it, we'll set off to that city right away."

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