Forever Waiting, Forever Hoping - A HanJay AU

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The interrogation room smelled of sweat and rusted metal, but Hannie only tasted his name on his tongue—JL. Every second of silence was a knife twisted in Hannie's gut. He had vowed to keep JL safe, even if it meant staining his soul. Some loves were built in daylight. Theirs? Forged in the dark, where the only vows that mattered were whispered between hollow points and the echo of a heartbeat begging: Stay alive. Stay mine.

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The war room's dim lighting cast long shadows across the tactical displays, the air thick with the scent of stale coffee and the thickening tension. Officer Kang stood rigid at the center of the command console, his knuckles whitening where they gripped the edge. Juwon and Chih En flanked him like silent sentinels, their expressions unreadable in the flickering blue light of the monitors.

"Report." Grandpa's voice cut through the low murmur of conversation, his gnarled fingers tightening around the silver wolf's head of his cane. The single word carried the weight of decades of command.

Officer Kang didn't blink. "The safehouse breach wasn't luck. It was a play." He tapped the console, pulling up a holographic display of the previous safehouse. Red dots swarmed like fire ants. "They hit us at shift change, during the thirty-second window when the east sensors reset. They knew our patrol routes, our blind spots. Knew where we'd run."

Hannie leaned forward, the metal table biting into his forearms. "That's not possible unless—"

"—unless they had inside help," Kyungho finished, voice a graveled snarl. His massive frame blocked the exit, arms crossed like he was physically barring any more betrayal from leaving the room.

Grandpa's smile was a razor's edge. "The leak isn't in this room." His milky eyes locked onto Hannie. "But someone here knows why I'm sure of that."

A beat. Then—

"Because the original mole was already dead."

Silence. Chih En exhaled sharply and pulled up an autopsy report. "The tech, identified as our rat, who installed our panic room controls was found floating in the Han River two days ago."

Juwon zoomed in on security footage—a figure in maintenance coveralls lingering near JL. "This isn't our mole. It's their replacement."

Hannie's blood turned to ice. The timestamp glared back at him: 04:32:17.

"They moved before lockdown," he realized. "Because they weren't reacting—they were directing."

Kyungho's fist slammed down. "They used the dead tech's credentials!"

Grandpa's cane tapped a slow, deadly rhythm. "A spider doesn't just hide in walls. It waits until the fly is perfectly still."

Hannie's vision tunneled, his pulse roaring in his ears. The image of JL—wounded, vulnerable - flashed behind his eyes. "Find them," he growled, the words scraping raw against his throat. This replacement tech is the key to finding out more about the threat in JL's life.  "Now."