Upon entering the Jujak Building, I saw the words Jujak Building written in large letters at the front. Before it stood a sculpture—or perhaps an image—of a huge red bird, presumably the Jujak, along with an explanation describing it as a mythical creature.
[A creature of immortality, born anew from fire. Jujak. Even in death, it is reborn. Our research is aimed at the continuation of humanity.]
Reading the explanation, which sounded as if it were describing a phoenix, I found myself wondering whether the bird called Jujak had always been like that.
During the five days I had been in the undersea base, I had mostly stayed in the Baekho Building and the Central Building. So this was my first time in the Jujak Building, and the building itself looked even larger than the Baekho Building. Between the dormitory sections were essential facilities like the laundry room, lounge, and showers, as well as the research center. Presumably, the researchers here ground away their lives in the research center, then spent the rest of their time in the dormitory area that was the Jujak Building.
Just as everyone was about to head straight into the Jujak Building, Yugeum stopped and looked toward the research center. It was the connecting corridor leading to the Deep-Sea Research Center, the Rare Earth Center, and the Undersea Pollution Center. A barrier—or something like a wall—had come down over the corridor, completely blocking it off. Looking at Yugeum’s back, I said,
“It might not be as badly damaged. The research center might be fine once the fire’s out. Don’t worry too much. Let’s think about it after we save Kim Gayoung.”
Yugeum stared for a long while in the direction of the research center before saying,
“......I’m sure they survived on their own somehow. Researchers are good at enduring hardship. They’re people specialized in torturing themselves. My thesis is all on a USB and in my email anyway. It’s just...”
“Just what?”
When Baek Aeyeong asked, Yugeum spoke as if sighing.
“There are sea creatures confined in the Deep-Sea Biology Center for research. There are quite a few that could escape if we just opened the tank doors.”
“No.”
“Yes. I know.”
Yugeum turned away from the research center and took a heavy step forward.
“I know.”
Right before entering the Jujak Building, Sin Haeryang, who had at some point been walking ahead, headed toward the place where the escape pods were. What about the Jujak dormitories? The question immediately popped into my head, but my body was already following the people in front. Baek Aeyeong slid in as if flying toward the escape pod port controls and checked the panel.
“Three can be used!”
There were six of us in total right now, but only three escape pods had green lights on. Since they were for one person each, the thought of who we should put in them flashed through my mind. When I looked around, Sin Haeryang was staring at a monitor that took up an entire wall.
He didn’t seem interested in whether there were many or few escape pods, so I looked along with him to see what it was. Seventy-seven pods launched within ten minutes were displayed like tiny icons on the screen, rising toward the surface. For a brief moment I thought, Quite a lot of people escaped, but then the escape pods, which had been shooting upward at tremendous speed, began slowing down little by little.
Fewer than five were properly making their way toward the surface with any force. Unlike the escape pods that had entered the surface seawater layer (-200 m), the rest were failing to break out of the middle deep-sea layer (-1000 m), their speed steadily dropping. Most of the escape pods, which should have been ejected from the deep seabed zone (-3011 m) where Undersea Base No. 4 was built and headed in a straight line toward the surface, had failed to get past the middle deep-sea layer (-1000 m).
I didn’t know much about water pressure, but if you simply calculated the distance between the middle deep-sea layer (-1000 m) and the sea surface (0 m), it was roughly the height of twenty-two fifteen-story apartment buildings stacked together. It was in no way a distance where a human could abandon the escape pod and swim up to the surface under their own power.
The escape pods that had failed to reach the depth sunlight touched struggled to break free, but were now sinking back down under their own weight. Watching the seventy-two escape pods descend lower and lower, Yugeum screamed, and Seo Jihyeok swallowed his breath. Baek Aeyeong looked uneasily at the escape pods on the screen and said,
“......I don’t think we should get in those.”
Watching the escape pods arc back down into the dark sea, Sin Haeryang ground his teeth and said,
“Someone tampered with the escape pods.”
Looking at the escape pods glowing like lightbulbs on the screen, I thought blankly. There must be nothing but endless screaming inside those pods right now. Since there was no way seventy-two had all broken down at once, did that mean someone had deliberately sabotaged them? Dazed, I asked Sin Haeryang beside me,
“......What kind of lunatic would mess with those?”
“I don’t know. ......There are so many.”
There’s nothing proper in this undersea base, people or things alike. Are they insane? Seriously.
“What do you intend to do now?”
“The original reason we came to this Jujak Building was to rescue Kim Gayoung and use the escape pods here. Since escape from the Jujak Building is no longer possible, let’s rescue Kim Gayoung.”
I was surprised that Sin Haeryang was still aiming to rescue the researcher. I had expected him to say that rescue or whatever didn’t matter and that we should head straight to the Hyeonmu Building or Cheongnyong Building to look for escape pods, but maybe he wasn’t that sort of person. Or maybe I had so little expectation of him in terms of character.
Sin Haeryang immediately gathered the dazed people together and headed for the Jujak dormitories. He didn’t let the people swallowed by shock delay, but kept them walking without pause. I looked at Sin Haeryang’s back, then asked him to hand over the child he was carrying. Sin Haeryang slowly shook his head. Looking at him, I asked,
“Do you think the escape pods on the Baekho side got out safely?”
At those words, Sin Haeryang frowned. Perhaps thinking of his own team members who had boarded the escape pods, he remained silent for a moment before saying,
“I saw the first pod launch enter the deep-sea water layer (1000 m–3000 m), but I don’t know beyond that.”
Seo Jihyeok and Baek Aeyeong also seemed shocked, but they quickly returned to reality and began discussing why the escape pods had ended up like that. The launch system was the problem. No, it looked like there was an issue with the pods’ engines. No, that happened because the ejection went wrong. What do you know? Then what do you know? Listening to them bicker, Yugeum asked the two of them,
“If that happens, what happens to the people trapped inside those escape pods?”
It was the question I had wanted to ask but couldn’t. No, when I thought about the question again, I didn’t want to hear the answer. What I had gone through so far was already hard enough. I didn’t want to know any more tragic or sad things. Seo Jihyeok scratched his cheek and answered the question with a question.
“They’ve got GMDSS and GPS attached, so they can be tracked, but who around here is going to retrieve each of those pods one by one and help them?”
“There’s...... there isn’t anyone.”
At Yugeum’s dark answer, Seo Jihyeok nodded. There wasn’t.
“Do you think they put seventy-two hours of oxygen into a one-use escape pod? Or do you think they only put in a tiny bit for escape purposes?”
“......A tiny bit?”
“Ding-ding-ding!”
Seo Jihyeok played a xylophone with his mouth, and Yugeum’s face turned despairing. Mine probably looked about the same as Yugeum’s. Frowning, Seo Jihyeok began a slightly longer explanation.
Of course, the escape pods didn’t contain that little oxygen. The compression ratio of air you breathe three kilometers under the sea and air you breathe on the surface is different. If there were a ship or something near the escape pods that reached the surface, they might survive. Under the sea they had two minutes to breathe, but at the surface they had two hours. I listened blankly to such words until I felt the pad tucked under my arm vibrate and opened it. It had vibrated because of a post alert. A post had gone up on the Undersea Base No. 4 board.
Title: We’re waiting! Please come quickly!
Content: The fire’s out! We’re still waiting. Please save us! I want to get out of here. This is Jujak Building Room 77!
The alert dragged me back to reality again. Waiting for others in a dark room filling with water, holding only a single pad—how terrifying must that be? I couldn’t even imagine it. Even in that frantic situation, we kept walking diligently, and now, once we went down the stairs, we would be right at the Jujak dormitories.