The woman who had shot Kevin had her gun aimed at Lee Ji-hyeon, the person closest to her. She seemed to be asking something, but the groans and sobs echoing all around were louder, so I couldn’t make it out.
The inside of the elevator was hazy with shattered concrete and dirt dust. The interior was a wreck, and all the lights seemed to be out, leaving it dark. With my face completely covered in blood, I could barely make out Kanu, who had lost consciousness, straight ahead.
Someone was speaking right next to my head, but I couldn’t hear properly. Whether he knew that or not, Benjamin, who had collapsed beside me and was covered in blood, grabbed my ear. Benjamin had been standing next to Yugeum—when had he gotten over to me? My whole body was in pain, but he was pulling my ear so hard that it was becoming excruciatingly painful, standing out even from everything else. When I groaned in pain, Benjamin pressed close to my ear and whispered.
“You bastard. I hated you from the moment I first saw you. Pretending to be nice, sticking your nose into every damn thing, acting like you’re a good person. People like you act all nice and righteous on the outside, but behind your backs, you do all the same trashy shit. You’re just another one of those fucking bastards.”
What the hell was this guy saying? When I coughed from the dust, Benjamin covered my mouth with his blood-soaked hand. He had only covered my mouth with his hand, yet it was incredibly hard to breathe. Benjamin’s fingers raked roughly against my jaw and cheeks. Was this crazy bastard trying to kill me right now, in this situation?
“I hate bastards like you the most. The most!”
The hatred pouring out right in front of my nose was raw, unfiltered sincerity. …Even if I was going to die to that woman’s gun, I wanted to curse this bastard out at least once before dying. I tried to open my mouth, but his entire palm was covering it, making it nearly impossible.
Benjamin, who looked like he’d been hit head-on by a truck, covered my body with his own, as if he had been waiting to do so. His chest filled my vision. His upper body was crushing me so completely that I could barely see to the side through his armpit. What the hell was going on. Was this guy trying to crush me to death? My vision was swimming, and with a guy weighing over eighty kilograms lying on top of me, I was even more out of it.
Just then, Benjamin seemed to suddenly vomit blood; with wet, gurgling sounds, I felt my hair becoming drenched. Benjamin? Hey? Lee Ji-hyeon was speaking to the other party in a loud, deliberate voice.
“Someone had sabotaged the escape pods. And the escape pods at the research center were operating normally, but there weren’t enough pods for the number of people.”
“No wonder. I thought fewer escape pods were surfacing than expected. Didn’t you think about going to the 3rd Undersea Base?”
With a gun pointed at her, Lee Ji-hyeon hesitated, then spoke.
“…I had a dream. I dreamed that crazy people from a pseudo-religion were pointing guns at people, so I didn’t go.”
Lee Ji-hyeon squeezed her eyes shut after letting those words out. But the woman smiled upon hearing them. Then, keeping her gun trained on Lee Ji-hyeon, she said.
“You, jump into that elevator. Quickly. Before I accidentally shoot you like I just did.”
Accidentally? Did that mean she had accidentally shot Kevin? …As if. She had shot him right in the head, completely intentionally!
When Lee Ji-hyeon hesitated at the order to jump into the elevator car, the woman fired a shot at her feet. Lee Ji-hyeon shrieked and leaped down into the elevator car. After Lee Ji-hyeon descended, the woman looked around at the surroundings, noisy with screams and groans, and said.
“Is there anyone here from the Church of Infinity?”
“Aaaah! M-m-meeee! Me! I’m a Church of Infinity believer! Save meee!”
Carter had been screaming continuously with his leg pinned under the truck. The woman then asked him simply.
“Who are we?”
“Aaaah! Please save me! My legggg!”
“Who are we?”
“Hurry and save meee! I’m a fellow believer! A fellow believer! Do you know how much money and how many jewels I donated! Save me nowww!”
Hadn’t Carter said he had no money? Most likely, Carter had heard what Kanu said and was trying to pretend to be a Church of Infinity believer. Listening to Carter’s wails, the woman quickly shot Carter in the head. Toward the place where the screaming had vanished, the woman said simply.
“If you don’t know, you die. If you haven’t memorized it, you just die. Next. Is there anyone else from the Church of Infinity?”
Sam, pinned under a concrete wall, grunted as he tried to push it off, then pointed with his finger toward Kanu, who had fainted.
“That kid believed in that.”
“What about you?”
At that question, Sam seemed to hesitate greatly, worrying, then asked the woman.
“…Do I die depending on my answer?”
“No.”
“I don’t believe.”
“I like that you’re honest.”
With those words, she shot Sam in the head. Then she pointed her gun at Kim Ga-yeong, the next one in line. Kim Ga-yeong, clutching her side with her left hand, pointed at the gun with her right hand and asked.
“So you’ve accidentally shot three people now?”
“That black guy fainted in the corner over there is supposedly a Church of Infinity believer. Is that right?”
“…What value would my answer even have? Seems like you’re just shooting everyone indiscriminately.”
What a defiant spirit. Even with a gun barrel in front of her, Kim Ga-yeong didn’t answer but instead mocked her. The woman replied to Kim Ga-yeong.
“That’s not it. The first guy I shot was holding an axe when I looked through the window, and he showed the most immediate reaction upon seeing someone with a gun, so I killed him first. This one died because he lied, and that one died because of his cross necklace.”
“What am I going to die for?”
“Depends on your answer.”
“…Kanu had said he was a Church of Infinity believer. He said he donated jewels. It’s true that he usually had a lot of money. But he was dying of a brain tumor, so we don’t know if that story was true or false.”
“Good. That Japanese who just went into the elevator car.”
“She’s Korean. Korean!”
From a distance, I could see Kim Ga-yeong’s side was covered in blood. Perhaps from straining her stomach shouting, Kim Ga-yeong held her side with both hands and groaned.
“You Asians are sensitive about useless things.”
“Can’t you imagine that things useless to you might have value to others?”
The woman snorted at Kim Ga-yeong and said.
“Something like your life? How should I know. I’m a hired hand, so I’ll do as much as I’m paid for, but it’s annoying to nitpick every little detail like this. If the woman carrying a kid at the 2nd Undersea Base hadn’t complained, these fanatics probably would’ve treated you humanely on their own. Everyone’s off turning off the lights, so what can you do if the service is bad? You’ll just have to understand. They tell me to stop the ones coming up to the island without killing them all by myself—does that even make sense?”
“Then just get the hell out of here.”
When Kim Ga-yeong snarled, the woman nodded, then aimed at Kim Ga-yeong’s chest and answered.
“I bear no personal grudge.”
“Emma!”
Kim Ga-yeong shouted loudly and lunged forward. The moment the gun fired at Kim Ga-yeong, James, who had been lying on the floor as if dead, lunged at the woman.
At that moment, Emma, who had been sitting quietly in a corner covered in dust, flew through the hole behind the woman. Then she dashed outside like the wind. Her speed was staggering. Running like lightning, as if treading on air, Emma already had my backpack on her back as she faded from view.
My backpack. We had switched it with Kim Ga-yeong’s bag. When we sent it up above the elevator ceiling, Kim Ga-yeong had switched bags with me before climbing up. It was because she had thought the animals might get swept up if a fight broke out inside the elevator. I didn’t know things would turn out like this back then. Don’t get caught. Don’t come back here.
The woman calmly stepped back several paces to create distance. Then she fired two shots into the chest of James as he charged at her, and shot Kim Ga-yeong in the head as she lay on the floor clutching her stomach.
Even as she heard the footsteps growing distant, the woman didn’t turn her head toward where Emma had run or try to pursue her. She seemed to be expecting someone else up front to charge at her. Instead, after putting a final bullet in James’s head to make sure he was dead, she looked around and let out a light breath, then inhaled.
Then, from left to right, she shot the heads of the people lying about and groaning inside the elevator one by one. When she shot Benjamin, who was lying on top of me, in the head, I held my breath. I was so shocked that my emotions went numb, and I became calm instead.
I hadn’t been able to stay this calm when the car my family was in overturned in middle school. I still dream about that accident, and sometimes I think. If my mother had been rescued before me back then, if I had been a little calmer, maybe our family wouldn’t have fallen apart like that.
I barely managed to move my fingers from beneath Benjamin’s corpse. Fortunately, I seemed to be coming out of the muscle rigidity. The woman was counting numbers again. I prepared to move my arm.
I had only one chance. …Come to think of it, it was absurd. Every opportunity in my life had only ever come once. When had I ever been given a second chance? Life had never been that easy.
“Three, four… seven.”
The woman was counting the number of people who had died crushed or hit by the truck in addition to the number she had shot. She dragged the unconscious Kanu by the ankle and threw him into the elevator car. Along with Lee Ji-hyeon’s scream, there was a thud and the sound of someone falling from the ceiling.
“Eight, nine. And the tenth who ran.”
The woman approached me in the farthest corner. And just as she was about to pull Benjamin off my body, her eyes met mine from underneath.
“Eleven. …Twelve. We meet again.”
The cheerful voice quickly leveled the gun at my head. I aimed the O.B. (organic compound disassembler) I had taken from Kim Ga-yeong’s bag at the woman’s face and pulled it. There was no time or composure to steady my mind, hold my breath, or anything like when firing a gun in a dream. I only thought about whether I had aimed properly and whether I had already pulled the trigger.
I couldn’t even fuss over whether the distance was close enough for the O.B. to activate properly or not. There was only one thought in my head.
It has to touch flesh. It has to touch the skin, I was told. They said it was useless if it touched over clothing. This woman was a professional at killing people with a gun. I had to finish it in one go. From head to toe, there wasn’t a single part of this person’s skin exposed. Except for the face! When she approached to kill me, I had to aim for the face!
Boom!
After the sound, my body went slack against the floor. The gun had been fired at close range, but strangely, nothing hurt. My vision was simply uncomfortable, and I couldn’t move my body at all. Even while collapsing sideways, I caught a fleeting glimpse of the ankle of someone completely pinned under the truck. It was the shoe I had lifted into the air.
Tears welled up wildly in my eyes, and I couldn’t see ahead properly. The last thing I saw was the woman wiping her face with her gloved palm, covered in my blood. Fatigue and darkness surged in.