I don’t clearly remember what I was thinking when I left Room 52. I forced my unwilling feet to move and walked down the residence corridor. Each step was heavy, as if weights had been tied to my ankles. It had been better, if anything, when I was walking through a corridor filling with water. Why was it that, no matter which residence I was in, walking down the hall on two feet felt like wearing shackles?
I kept repeating to myself that I had promised Seo Jihyeok five minutes. I barely made it to the staircase beside Room 40, and just as I was about to climb it, I turned my head at the sound of someone’s presence. I thought, perhaps, Sumire had come out of her room.
But the person I spotted was someone from the rooms in the seventies, and because of the distance, I couldn’t make out their face. They seemed unsure who I was as well, with me in their line of sight for only a few seconds. I practically threw myself up the stairs. I couldn’t see their face clearly, but even from far away, the black gun slung diagonally across their upper body stood out sharply. Who was that? Was there someone armed among those who hadn’t gone to Baekho Wing?
I considered locking the door connected to the Cheongnyong Wing residence, then decided against it. If the water surged in, or if Sumire happened to change her mind, she would come up using this central staircase. And I didn’t want to block other people’s escape route just because I was terrified right now.
There was no one in the corridor between the escape pod port and the Cheongnyong Wing residence. Walking alone through the bleak corridor filled my head with all sorts of thoughts. Would the people from Engineer Team Ga still be waiting for me? The promised four minutes were passing. I thought there was about one minute left, but even if I rolled from here all the way to the submersible port, I doubted I could get there within a minute.
I was running while thinking that when someone called out to me. Doctor! At first, I thought I had misheard. But when someone called me a second time, I could no longer mistake it.
The moment I turned my head, Zixuan came into view in the distance. She seemed to have come up the stairs beside Room 80. Holding a gun, Zixuan looked at me with a bright, delighted smile. But the instant our eyes met, goosebumps ran down my back.
“How did you end up here? Doctor, you live in Baekho Wing, don’t you?”
…Exactly. How had I ended up all the way in the Cheongnyong Wing residence? The words rose to my throat—that I had come here because Sumire, who had been wandering around armed with a gun, had gotten hurt, and I had brought her back to her room—then stopped.
The gun Zixuan was holding bothered me. No matter how many times I thought it over, judging by the way Sumire treated Kang Sujeong, there was no way she would be on good terms with Zixuan from Engineer Team Ra. I remembered Sumire saying she had no one she was close to among the people inside the undersea base.
No matter how I looked at it, there seemed to be very few East Asians here who were actually on friendly terms with one another. I didn’t particularly want to tell Zixuan that Sumire was in her room. The same went for the people of Engineer Team Ga. Seo Jihyeok’s leg and Haiyun’s corpse circled through my mind. The bullets embedding themselves in the elevator wall and those urgent moments flashed through my head one after another.
If she asked why Sumire had been hurt, unless I said she had tripped over her own feet, I would have no choice but to bring up Engineer Team Ga. I decided to give a vague answer.
“Baekho Wing flooded. I ran away, and somehow I ended up here.”
“Is that so? You came quite far.”
As Zixuan said that, she raised the muzzle of her gun in my direction. A light fear washed over my ankles like an incoming wave. Though I had never been taught to do so, I opened both hands and lifted them beside my ears. Zixuan scanned the area around me with her eyes and asked,
“Do you have any other companions hiding?”
“No.”
“Did Engineer Team Ga send you?”
“No.”
“Have you seen Team Leader Xin Hailiang today by any chance?”
“No.”
Zixuan looked as though she didn’t believe a single one of my answers. But I couldn’t hide how frightened I was. I had only said three words, yet my mouth had gone completely dry. Zixuan looked at me and asked another question.
“Before coming here, did you go to the Cheongnyong Wing escape pod port?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you escape from there? There should have been a few escape pods left.”
“There weren’t any left. They’d all been ejected.”
At that, Zixuan’s face stiffened. It was probably because the escape pods she had intended to use to leave the undersea base were gone. Instead, I found the courage to ask Zixuan,
“Is there no other way to escape? Like a hidden escape pod or something.”
“I wouldn’t know either, Doctor.”
Zixuan answered with a light laugh. Hearing that cheerful voice, I recalled the Zixuan who used to have tea with me and asked,
“Why didn’t you escape? Why were you in the residence?”
“I was a little busy searching the rooms of the engineer team leaders.”
She was holding a gun and robbing other people’s rooms. Was she a burglar? If she had thought she might as well loot someone’s room and make a profit before going back to land, I supposed that was possible. There had been people who knowingly stole from the room next door even while Kim Gayoung and the others were trapped in their own room because the door had broken.
“Was it because of money?”
Zixuan shattered my imagination as she said,
“Four people from our team are trapped in Baekho Wing. Originally, anyone team leader level or above had free authority over opening and closing the building wings, but strangely enough, neither our team leader nor the Japanese team leader can leave Baekho Wing. We need someone with authority above team leader level, or their pad.”
“I see.”
For an instant, Chief Engineer Michael Roaker’s pad flashed through my mind like lightning. But I quickly tried to forget that thought. I knew nothing about it. I had not seen Engineer Team Ga today.
It seemed that among Engineer Team Ra, four people in total—Haiyun, Li Wei, Weiqi, and Haoran—were trapped in Baekho Wing. Unlike Shuran, Zixuan had not abandoned her teammates. She must have been busy in the Cheongnyong Wing residence, where the engineers stayed, looking for a way to get the trapped people out. I found that a little surprising. Was it because of Li Wei?
“Do you happen to know where it is?”
“I don’t.”
I was about to add that I knew nothing about engineer authority, but I thought that if I rambled on too much, it would seem suspicious, so I kept my mouth shut.
Zixuan waved the muzzle of her gun, telling me to walk, so I began to move slowly down the corridor with my arms raised. Zixuan walked at a distance far enough that even if I suddenly attacked her, I would not be able to reach. In front of the escape pod port entrance, she told me to go inside, so I slowly entered.
…I was glad Zixuan wasn’t aiming for the submersible port. One wrong move and we might have run into each other at the escape pod port, or at the submersible port. What would have happened if we had? Someone surely would have been shot.
As soon as I entered the escape pod port, I turned my head away from the mountain of corpses piled there. Zixuan, who had followed me in, confirmed that there really were no escape pods and let out a small irritated sound. Looking at the front panel, where the escape pods were shown safely ascending toward the surface, I felt relieved inside. Zixuan looked at me for a moment, then asked,
“Who betrayed us?”
“What?”
“Was it Hongtao? Or Shuran? …Or maybe our team leader, Haiyun?”
“I’m not sure what you’re asking about.”
Realizing that I truly didn’t know, Zixuan answered with a sigh.
“I heard your broadcast. The one saying we were waiting at the Cheongnyong Wing escape pod port, armed and ready for people to come. Did someone report us to you, Doctor?”
Zixuan looked at me with a hint of laughter on her lips. Ah. Hadn’t they said Engineer Team Ra had fought badly over this? I chose my words carefully so that no one would be unfairly blamed because of my broadcast.
“Someone sent an anonymous report to the dental clinic, so I don’t really know either.”
Zixuan trampled mercilessly over my efforts and said,
“Is that so? Then let’s make it Haiyun.”
“What?”
“We’ll say Haiyun betrayed the team. Hongtao or Shuran would be fine too, as additions.”
“…What are you talking about?”
Zixuan answered me indifferently.
“History doesn’t record the facts. It records things the way the survivors want them recorded. We just have to make someone we don’t like into the culprit.”
It felt as though a cold wind had stroked the back of my neck.
“What will you do if those three didn’t betray you? What if it was Li Wei, or Weiqi…”
“That’s impossible. Li Wei isn’t that kind of person.”
“Then perhaps Haiyun isn’t that kind of person either.”
“That’s none of my concern.”
As if she was cold, Zixuan gave a small cough and said,
“What people want isn’t the truth anyway. We can just fabricate something appropriate. If you go out of here and give a good statement, Doctor, you’ll be rewarded well enough that you won’t feel slighted.”
“And what if I don’t want to lie?”
“You want to die right now?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Zixuan curved her eyes and smiled, then said to me,
“Don’t worry. It’s not as if you and I are on particularly bad terms. If you listen well, we should be able to get out of here together.”
“How are you going to get out of here?”
We couldn’t leave Cheongnyong Wing by escape pod. It would be best if there was a submersible left. Zixuan spoke as though it were simple.
“We just have to tell the people at the Second Undersea Base that we failed to escape.”
“You mean the people from the Infinite Church?”
“Yes.”
“Then will they let me out to Daehan-do?”
“Well. You’ll probably have to wait about seven or eight hours before leaving. The biggest problem is the people trapped in Baekho Wing. Because of that bastard Xin Hailiang.”
I wasn’t so sure. Those people were unlikely to let anyone leave the undersea base that easily. It seemed the Infinite Church and Engineer Team Ra had made some sort of deal, but I doubted fanatics who said they needed sacrifices would keep their promise. Watching Zixuan grind her teeth at that last part, I asked cautiously,
“…Did you try to stop your teammates from going to Baekho Wing?”
As if she found the question absurd, Zixuan stared at me and asked,
“Doctor, have you ever bought a boat or yacht?”
“I don’t even own a duck boat to float in my bathtub.”
At my honest answer, Zixuan let out a small laugh.
“They’re incredibly expensive. And since we’ve suffered so much at the hands of Engineer Team Ga, we can’t just leave without paying them back.”
“Weren’t you close with Deputy Team Leader Kang Sujeong of Engineer Team Ga, Zixuan?”
“Deputy Team Leader Kang Sujeong is a decent person. The problem is Xin Hailiang.”
I wasn’t so sure. As far as I knew, before Xin Hailiang did anything, he seemed to get at least some prior approval from his deputy team leader. I quietly swallowed those words.