Chapter Text
Yunho looked at the invitation one last time, wishing he could tell the chatter in his hidden in-ear to shut up without giving the game away before he even sets foot inside. Club Lucifer did not advertise itself. There was no name on the door, no lights on the entrance, no bouncer outside or even a doorbell to ring. The only indication that the reinforced metal door was anything other than an emergency exit or a back door to one of the grand restaurants that line the main street was the suspiciously clean pavement, and the lack of graffiti on the walls that stretched away into the darkness.
"'And it's a terrible place for a party anyway, look how drab this whole street is!" Wooyoung was complaining. He'd decided he had personal beef with Lucifer, and was taking every opportunity to make it known. "There's nothing else fun nearby, I could have more fun at home– oof– hey!" A scuffle seemed to break out around the mic, and after a few moments of rustling directly into his ear and what sounded like someone being pushed out of a chair onto the floor of a parked van, San spoke up. "Sorry about that hyung, we're ready when you are."
Yunho didn't know if he was truly ready, but he didn't get the time to have second thoughts. The grate in the door slides open quietly: well-made metal oiled into silence so as not to disturb the club's expensive clientele. The chatter in his ears quietened at last, and Yunho held up the invitation. The guard on the other end didn't speak, so neither did Yunho. He's not standing close to the door, and the text on the invitation is small, but the guard seemed to find what he was looking for regardless.
This was part of the problem: something about the invitations makes them recognizable as real or fake to the guards inside. On their first attempt at getting into Club Lucifer, Wooyoung and San pretended to be rich, drunk, and the kind of entitled customers that were every server's worst nightmare. In short: they had been the perfect target audience for everything Club Lucifer purported to be. Their fake invitation had been spotted in seconds, and they never made it inside. Worse still, they had been warned in no uncertain terms that they would never be welcome on the premises. This is why they are sitting out the evening as back-up in the security van parked two streets down and filling Yunho's in-ear with nonsense.
If this had been any other job that might have been the end of it: the target was now aware that someone was planning something, and they didn't need that kind of attention complicating their heist. But this wasn't just any job, and not just any target: Club Lucifer had too many ties to too many unsavoury businesses throughout the country, and one of those businesses has handed them the mythological Sopro gem. Yunho didn't believe the stories about the gem, neither about its powers nor about the way it cursed its owners, but with the Sopro came power and influence over those who did believe. And that couldn't be allowed to remain in Club Lucifer's hands.
Getting a real invitation had seemed next to impossible, but going in guns blazing wasn't exactly an option either. Lucifer's private security cost them more than one pretty penny, but it kept the place closed up tighter than the textbook of your least favorite school subject.
The real breakthroughs had come just days apart, by several strokes of luck. Yunho knew exactly how much that annoyed their leader: having to wait around and rely on lady luck to decide to grant them an opportunity wasn't something Hongjoong could plan for. He'd been complaining about it nonstop (more chatter filling Yunho's earbud) but had accepted the chances they were offered. They weren't about to look a gift horse this expensive in the mouth.
First there had been Yeosang getting scouted as a bartender– and strangely enough 'scouted' was the right word for it. He had been working the bar at a different club where several Lucifer members would pre-game before going to Lucifer. The pre-gaming unfortunately meant they were never drunk or high enough to be useful, but they had still managed to drop some useful clues. More useful was that they had apparently been gossipping about their pretty bartender at Lucifer, and one evening at the beginning of his shift Yeosang was invited to leave his job and take up the shift at Lucifer at an astronomical payrise.
(According to Yeosang the conversation was entirely cordial, an invitation instead of a threat. He'd been asked if he had ever heard of Club Lucifer, and had lied through his teeth and doe eyes that he'd never heard of such a place in town, and was it new? The man had believed him, though his expression was hard to read under his face mask. He had turned out to be Yeosang's new manager, though he had yet to show Yeosang his full face. When Yeosang had faked concern and asked after his manager's health the man had made some excuse about dust allergies. That was how Yeosang got in.)
Next had been the ad in the newspaper, of all places. Seonghwa had found that one, and had been rubbing it in their faces ever since, saying they weren't allowed to laugh at him for reading printed newspapers ever again. Club Lucifer wasn't named, but it didn't need to be. It was a call for singers and musicians to audition for a private club, with Lucifer's address given as the location. Any artists arriving there would probably assume they were arriving at a stage door, but they knew better.
The debate on who to send had been long, and Yeosang had pouted the whole time at being unable to try for this role. The pay for his new job was good, but the customers were terrible, he had reported– no doubt they wouldn't be any nicer to a performer, but at least he wouldn't need to smile through their ridiculous orders for non-existent cocktails and terrible flirting.
Through Yeosang they had at least some understanding of how Club Lucifer functioned, but the club severely curtailed where their people could and could not go. They would need more people inside to pull off their plan.
They ended up settling for sending Jongho and Seonghwa separately, despite Jongho's objections that sending more people would be better. They'd not only have better odds at the audition, but would also have more people inside– their youngest was nothing if not confident in everyone's skills. He lost that argument because Seonghwa argued that they couldn't have everyone lose their anonymity, and Hongjoong didn't want to risk more people than necessary on a gamble this early in the preparations. San and Wooyoung were out anyway, so Jongho and Seonghwa were going.
(They had two very different experiences at the audition, but both were hired. They were allowed inside through the fortified steel door, queuing with the few other musicians and artists who had arrived. There weren't many others who had responded to the unassuming ad, and everyone seemed equally confused about the opulent atmosphere of the place. When it was his turn, Jongho was led to a private room with a small stage and asked to sing several songs. The only visible person seemed to be the same man who was also Yeosang's manager: he was tall, his voice kind, and he was impossible to identify under his mask. There were others too, but they were seated in shadows, as far from the little stage as they could get. Jongho speculated that they might be rich patrons who wanted a say in what happened around Lucifer. He was told he would be contacted by phone later that day if he was hired. The phone call did indeed come several hours later, and he was told to arrive at the club before opening hours the next day.
Seonghwa had been early for his audition, to no one's surprise. He was perhaps the first there and didn't have to wait at all. After singing one song he also danced for the mysterious judges, and was told on the spot that he was hired. He was incredibly smug about it when he returned back to base to report it, but Yunho noticed Hongjoong's frown. Their captain said nothing, but Yunho couldn't help but agree: it seemed too easy, no matter how cool and pretty their hyung was. After hearing Jongho's report that feeling of dread intensified, but nothing had come of it. Not yet, at least.)
With three people on the inside, success seemed in their grasp: they needed only to locate the vault where their target might be kept, and arrange a suitable distraction to get inside. It proved impossible. When Yeosang accidentally-on-purpose got lost in the back corridors and found what could only be the elevator down to the vault, he was escorted back and given his first and final warning to never, ever go there again. He refused to elaborate on that particular conversation, but he'd still been pale when he returned home hours later.
"It can't be one of us, hyung," he'd said, shaking his head. "Security watches us like hawks eyeing an injured mouse, we can't go anywhere." Seonghwa and Jongho nodded behind him.
"We need to be a guest, not an employee," Seonghwa added, rubbing soothing circles over Yeosang's shoulder. "They can do anything– even if they get kicked out, they're too important and too rich to actually harm . We can help you once you're in, but we can't lead the action."
Hongjoong flopped down on their worn couch: "Ugh! Don't tell me all this was for nothing! If you guys are at risk in there we should pull out, regroup–"
"We know a lot more now than we did before, hyung," Jongho objected. Seonghwa added: "And we'll be close enough to help when the action starts. After that it won't matter that our covers are blown."
"I still say we should just shoot the place up," Mingi interjected from the side, where he was cleaning one of the rifles in question. "Nobody's going to miss a club full of rich assholes. They might even call us heroes for it."
"Being heroes was never our goal, Mingi-yah," Seonghwa reminded him gently.
"Would be nice though, wouldn't it? All our hard work being recognised," Wooyoung interjected. He was lounging on the arm of San's chair, who was nodding along. Both of them had been bored out of their minds since having to sit out the preparations. They couldn't even go out to gather intel, because Hongjoong was paranoid that Lucifer might be trying to spy on them.
"Well we're not rich or asshole enough to get invited the normal way, so we still need to get one of those stupid invites from somewhere ," Yunho sighed. In the silence that followed he could hear what they were all thinking: they had no idea how they were going to do this.
The invitation had come via Yeosang in the end: a drunk patron, a stolen wallet from which the lady's invitation was quickly pocketed (and from which he was given a large tip for 'returning' the wallet she had 'lost') finally secured them entry into the deeper parts of the club that Yeosang, Jongho and Seonghwa had not been able to access.
Yunho and Hongjoong had scanned and scrutinised and tested the little paper invite to hell and back, but it seemed utterly unremarkable. No blacklight marks, no mysterious signs, textures or visual clues that might tell a guard at least three feet away and peeking out from a steel door that this invite was real, or that Wooyoung and San's invite had been fake. Yet somehow the guard had known. It was infuriating: they were holding the answer to a riddle, but they didn't know how to ask the question to make the answer make sense.
They didn't have long to plan, either. Through another stroke of fortune (though Hongjoong insisted it was misfortune) Jongho, Yeosang, and Seonghwa all had shifts scheduled three days later. Jongho and Seonghwa were hardly ever called in at the same time, and now that Yeosang had taken the risk of stealing from one of their clients his time at Lucifer might run out at any time. It might be their best chance to get in.
There was little discussion needed on who would go in. Wooyoung and San were out for obvious reasons. Mingi would have refused on the basis that he didn't have the patience or the subtlety required. Everyone knew this, so Mingi wasn't asked. This left Hongjoong and Yunho, who had a silent conversation of shrugs and tilted heads about it. (Hongjoong's raised eyebrows said The choice is up to you, but I'm sure you can do it . Yunho's head tilt answered You don't want to be the one to go? Hongjoong shrugged a You know me, I'd rather be with Mingi and cause some chaos for you . So Yunho nodded, and his role was decided as well.)
Wooyoung and San were stationed nearby, in a van branded with logos of a non-existent electrician's company, which had been stuffed to the brim with computers and monitors and weapons. They would be Yunho's main contacts, and would coordinate with the others if anything went wrong. Mingi and Hongjoong were further out, and would be arriving armed and ready to distract once Yunho had had some time to scope out the inside of the club.
Seonghwa, Jongho, and Yeosang were already inside. Their channels were muted for Yunho so he wouldn't have to deal with Jongho's vocal warm ups or Yeosang taking drink orders, but hopefully San or Wooyoung was keeping an ear on them. In front of Yunho the steel door was open, the heavy weight of it silent on its hinges. Through the open door the guard bowed to him, and from beyond a soft red glow loomed: a warm colour, a warning colour.
It was time to go in at last.