Several people were already gathered in front of the escape pods. Nikita, who had been running; Yu Geumi; Carlos, who had gone missing; and the Russians were all there together.
I walked, wringing water from the hem of my worn shirt. I was thinking how nice it would be to find a corner hidden from people, take off my wet clothes, wring them out, shake them, and put them back on, when a black-haired man sitting beside the escape pod dock turned around.
The moment I saw his face, I lost my words. I had thought Vladimir with his light blond hair and firm jaw was handsome, but this was a different class of handsome altogether. A few strands of wet hair covered half of his smooth forehead, yet even with more than half his forehead hidden by black hair, he was so breathtakingly good-looking that my soul nearly left my body at first sight.
If I had a face like that, I could sit in the middle of downtown and make a living just by showing it off. Passersby on the street would nod to themselves and pay money just for a look at that face. Just as looking at something cute like a puppy or a kitten moves your heart, I realized for the first time that looking at someone this handsome turns your mind into a blank sheet of paper. While my soul was absent for a few seconds, I simply watched the man stand up from where he'd been sitting.
As he approached and his face became clearer, the shape of his head and his jaw were truly astonishing. It was a precious golden ratio, like a valuable sample that ought to be preserved for the next generation. The man looked me over from head to toe and spoke.
"I'm Shin Haeryang. Are you hurt anywhere?"
A fairly deep, low voice resonated. Damn... even his lips and teeth were perfect. This is insane. How can God be so unfair? Then again, if God were fair, He wouldn't have buried a guy like this three kilometers beneath the sea. I stared blankly at the man from the rumors and answered.
"No, I'm fine. I'm Park Muhyeon. ...Why aren't you escaping?"
"You must be the new dentist. All the intact escape pods have been ejected, so we were debating what to do now."
...It was the third most chilling thing I had ever heard in my life. I felt a shiver. Looking around, there were quite a few people. Shin Haeryang, Seo Jihyeok, Baek Ayeong, Yu Geumi, five members of the Russian team, Carlos, and even a child. Did this mean there were no escape pods left for all these people? Forty-two ejected escape pods were surging upward toward the surface like missiles. I stared blankly at the monitor and asked.
"What about the ones that aren't intact?"
"There are thirteen broken escape pods, but rather than escape in those, I think it would be better to move to another residential hall."
Buried in his massive frame of over two meters, it had been impossible to see if there was a child there or not, but when Viktor set the child he had been carrying on his back down onto the dry floor, the expressions of everyone except me were a sight to behold.
"Does anyone know who brought this child?"
Shin Haeryang's eyes were cold as he asked the question. No one answered. Looking at the atmosphere, it was clear there was no under-the-table agreement—of which I, a new recruit to the undersea base, would naturally be unaware—allowing minors to live here. I carefully rummaged through the bag holding the cat and pulled out a plastic pill bottle. Yu Geumi approached, read the English on the bottle, and frowned.
"These are sleeping pills."
"Sleeping pills?"
"It looks like you came out of Baekho Hall last. Which room did you bring the child from?"
"They were sleeping in Room 80."
Sofiya, who had been using a room near 70, said with a scoff.
"That room is empty."
It was frigid. Not because I was wearing clothes soaked in cold seawater—it really felt as though a Siberian wind had swept through. Minors were not allowed in the undersea base. If I pulled out the two unauthorized pets I had in this atmosphere, I couldn't imagine how much more chaotic things would become.
I quietly shifted the two bags I had been wearing in front to my back. Please don't make a sound, snake or cat. If you'd stayed hidden in the quarters all this time, you must have the experience to stay quiet. Show me what you've got. Shin Haeryang projected a 3D schematic of the undersea base from his pad into the air and pointed with his hand.
"My team members and I will move to the nearest Hyeonmu Hall and search for escape pods there."
Seventy-five escape pods at Hyeonmu Hall appeared on the screen. Then Vladimir slid the schematic aside and pointed at another residential hall.
"I saw it flooding earlier, so Hyeonmu Hall is probably submerged too. Wouldn't it be better to go to Jujak Hall instead?"
Baek Ayeong, the engineer from Team A, shook her head.
"Going to Jujak Hall is dangerous."
"Why?"
"My team came in from doing exterior wall repairs outside, and right then, we saw the Jujak Hall research center disappear entirely."
"Jujak Hall is the largest facility in the 4th Undersea Base. How can it just disappear?!"
At Baek Ayeong's answer, Yu Geumi, a researcher who practically lived in Jujak Hall, bit her lip and spoke.
"Wouldn't it be better to take the central elevator up to the surface? There are fourteen elevators in total, including the one under construction. Can't we take one in good condition and go up?"
Shin Haeryang, who had been listening, objected.
"If we take another impact like the one twenty minutes ago, or if something goes wrong while we're in the elevator, it's over. Escape pods are much safer."
As people each discussed methods of escape, I crossed my arms and started watching. I didn't know anything about the undersea base anyway. Even if someone said swimming out right now was the best option, I had no grounds to object. Would an engineer who'd been here for years know the base well? Would a dentist who'd only arrived a week ago know better?
I stood a little apart from the discussion, simply listening to the engineers, and beside me was Baek Ayeong, watching with her arms crossed like an X-Mon that had unleashed its team leader. I quietly asked Baek Ayeong.
"Ms. Baek. Um... there's something I'm curious about from what was discussed earlier. I'm sorry, but may I ask you something?"
"Well... go ahead."
"Like Yu Geumi said earlier, why can't we just take the central elevator that goes directly up? Wouldn't the central elevator be the fastest way to escape to the surface?"
Fortunately, Baek Ayeong didn't laugh at me or call me stupid. She simply looked at the location of the Hyeonmu Hall escape pods that Team Leader Shin was pointing at, then turned her head to look at me.
"You know we're currently three thousand meters below the sea, right?"
When I nodded, Baek Ayeong hesitated, as if wondering how to explain to someone who knew nothing, and then spoke slowly.
"There are fourteen elevators made to go up from -3000 meters where we are to 0 meters at the sea surface. Only two of them move directly. One is the central elevator. The other is a cargo elevator inside the Jujak Hall research center."
I had only ever used the central direct elevator to enter and exit the undersea base. And for good reason—having only arrived five days ago, it was hard enough just finding my way around Baekho Hall where the quarters were and Central Hall where the cafeteria and dentist's office were located in the 4th Undersea Base without getting lost.
You had to wait about ten minutes for the central elevator, but compared to taking the subway or bus, it saved a lot of time. Besides, standing in front of the elevator meant running into all sorts of people, so it wasn't bad for greeting others, memorizing names, or making small talk. Baek Ayeong spoke slowly to me.
"The remaining twelve don't travel the full 3 kilometers at once; they move in segments. So, there are three elevators that move from 0 meters to -50 meters, three that move from there to -200 meters, three that move to -1000 meters, and three that move from there to -3000 meters. There's also one elevator currently under construction in the hadal zone."
Easy enough to remember. Three from Daehan-do on the 0th floor to the 1st Undersea Base, three to the 2nd, three to the 3rd, and three to the 4th. Twelve in total, plus two that cover the whole distance, making fourteen. Is that a lot of elevators? A few? I don't know. Seeing my puzzled expression, Baek Ayeong explained more simply.
"Imagine this isn't the seabed but the rooftop of an incredibly tall skyscraper. If an earthquake or something occurred in that building, you'd know very well whether taking the elevator down would be safe or not."
I nodded along, throwing in affirmations like "I see" as I listened to Baek Ayeong. I heard normal elevators move about six hundred meters per second, but the ones here apparently didn't. It took about ten minutes just to descend to the 4th Undersea Base at -3000 meters. From a passenger's perspective, they were agonizingly slow.
So, taking the central elevator in a situation like this means experiencing ten minutes of danger and terror enough to bring you to the brink of death, doesn't it? Or dying, for that matter. Ah, then of course stairs would be much safer. Even I, if I lived in a 250-story building on land and received some kind of impact or an earthquake hit, would take the stairs rather than the elevator if I had to escape.
But if that height is about 3 kilometers, walking down all those stairs itself becomes an impossibility. Would it be less dangerous if there were more direct elevators? Couldn't we take an elevator that seems less likely to break down? Are escape pods safer? I spoke cautiously to Baek Ayeong.
"Please think of this as a layman asking out of complete ignorance. ...Couldn't they have built more elevators when constructing the undersea base?"
Baek Ayeong let out a small laugh at those words. It was the first time I'd seen a smile form at her lips, but it didn't seem like a smile born of good humor.
"A thousand-meter skyscraper has at least sixty elevators, so why does a base buried three thousand meters under the seabed only have fourteen? That's what you mean, right?"
Without calling my question stupid, Baek Ayeong simply answered sharply.
"It's not easy building elevators on the seabed. The cost is no joke either. This undersea base facility was originally created for mining purposes, not as a place for people to live. Nowadays they pour astronomical sums into undersea base development while spewing rhetoric like 'the Pacific Undersea Base, first of its kind ~ Earth's last frontier of hope ~ the last frontier excluding space~,' but construction began before environmental pollution became visible, so there wasn't much capital in the early stages. Most of it was built to send down drilling equipment and mining robots. They've only been trying to create a human-friendly environment for less than eight years."
I hadn't expected the conversation to turn to costs. I recalled a newspaper article I'd looked up diligently before joining the undersea base and asked.
"I saw before that even Canada had invested at least 50 trillion won here. Isn't that enough to add more elevators?"
"They did expand them, actually. ...Everything used on the seabed is expensive. You'd faint if you heard the cost of that dental clinic alone, Doctor."
It seemed the costs far exceeded those of opening a typical clinic. My legs hurt from standing, so I sat on the bare floor. I wasn't the only one sitting on the ground. The child was lying on the floor too, and a man named Nikolai was sprawled out, but no one cared. As I sat, my tailbone area hurt—perhaps from the impact of falling out of bed. I suddenly recalled the situation in which I'd woken up and asked.
"Do you think this situation is because of an earthquake?"
Just as Baek Ayeong was about to open her mouth, Nikolai, who had raised himself halfway from the floor, pointed his finger at Baek Ayeong, Shin Haeryang, and Seo Jihyeok, then at the escape pods.
"How about fixing those? There are three sober engineers right here."
Then, as he swept his drunken finger across the escape pods with red indicator lights showing they were broken, Baek Ayeong answered coldly to Nikolai, who was half-sprawled on the floor.
"You fix them."
So Russians being engineers didn't mean they could fix everything in sight. Seo Jihyeok, who was one of the three engineers, shook his head.
"The outer hulls are dented, or there's something wrong with the pressure regulation devices—that's why the lights are on. I could do a very rough repair since all I have are my bare hands, but by the time we reached the surface, Nikolai's hunk of meat would be a mangled corpse."
Whether they were close or not, Nikolai and Seo Jihyeok amiably exchanged middle fingers.