Under the lights, Hailey's face was completely busted. It looked like she'd taken concentrated blows especially around the nose, philtrum, and mouth. Seeing several footprints on her clothes, it seemed the plan had been for Hailey to grab and cling to Baek Ae-young while Jennifer dealt with me using the axe.
Judging by the results alone, it hadn't been a very good plan. Three people were injured, and it was a miracle no one had died. Fortunately, everyone seemed to be running on adrenaline, so they weren't feeling much pain yet.
"Kiyaaaaaaaah!"
A sudden scream from the corner startled me into looking. Dana was shrieking as she sprang to her feet. Then she started kicking Jennifer's leg where she lay on the floor. Whether it was the part that had been shot, Jennifer groaned in agony.
"I got hurt because of you! What are you going to do about it! What are you going to do!"
Looking closely, Dana was speaking while clutching her right arm. She'd probably been struck on the forearm by Jennifer's blind axe swing when the lights went out, only realizing it now.
There were more than one or two people here who'd been hit by an axe like that—did all of them have to kick Jennifer? I yelled at her to stop, but Dana stomped on Jennifer with her foot as if she couldn't hear me. Baek Ae-young stopped examining Hailey's wounds, pointed her gun at Dana with a look of exasperation, and said,
"Sit down if you don't want to get shot too!"
Only after hearing Baek Ae-young's sharp roar did Dana stop kicking Jennifer and slump back down in her original spot.
The brown mouton coat Baek Ae-young was wearing seemed to have taken the axe blade in her stead; the chest area was torn this way and that, with fleece sticking out in clumps. Looking at Baek Ae-young, then at my own clothes, I saw that my black leather jacket had been grazed or sliced by the axe blade, leaving the sleeves and shoulders in tatters.
Now I understood why she'd ordered us to put on extra thick layers. If that had hit bare skin, my left hand or shoulder might have disappeared entirely. My left hand throbbed with pain. Staring at it would only make it hurt worse, so I tried to focus on the people around me.
By Baek Ae-young's assessment, she seemed to have ranked the urgency as Jennifer, me, then Hailey. Baek Ae-young grabbed Hailey's chin and turned it this way and that, examining the state of her beaten eyes, nose, and mouth. Though it probably would have been better if I looked at the split lip.
Baek Ae-young snatched the large scarf Dana had been wearing around her neck and stuffed it against Hailey's nose to stop the blood. Hailey snapped in annoyance and swatted away Baek Ae-young's hand. Looking at Hailey's state, Baek Ae-young sighed and said,
"I went easy on you."
"Bullshit."
"Then you should have dodged better."
Leaning against the elevator wall, I looked at Jennifer's shot leg. Jennifer was curled up on the elevator floor, clutching her calf with both hands. Only pained groans and small sobs could be heard.
No one except Baek Ae-young was moving, and no one was talking, so it was quiet. It felt like a funeral parlor. I turned my head and made eye contact with Hailey, who was leaning against the elevator wall. Almost reflexively, I asked her,
"Why did you do it?"
"I thought it would work. Dentist. How are your fingers?"
Hailey's pronunciation was a mess as she asked, pointing at my left hand with her chin. Hailey stuck out her tongue to lick her split lip where she'd been hit, then winced at the sting.
"They burn and hurt so much I feel like passing out."
Hailey said through her bloodied snout.
"Your left hand, huh. A bit disappointing. Why don't you pass out right now?"
So that's just her personality.
"Be thankful I still have eight fingers left. Because I'm the only one around here who'll fix your broken front tooth for free."
Or else he could go back to Canada and get dental treatment costing over a million won per tooth. Baek Ae-young had been listening to the conversation and replied to Hailey with a terrifying edge to her voice.
"If that man passes out, I'll kill everyone here. And I'll only drag the unconscious person out. The only reason I'm not killing anyone is that a living person is slightly more useful than a corpse full of bullet holes."
To think having Baek Ae-young on my side could be this reassuring. At her warning, I tried to steady my mind, which was growing hazy from the pain. The temptation to just let go briefly rose, but I endured it somehow. Hearing what Baek Ae-young said, Hailey moved the scarf covering her bloody nose and split lip and said,
"You weren't this kind of person normally, were you?"
"I've always been like this."
"You weren't like this in front of your team leader."
Baek Ae-young answered as if she'd heard something absurd.
"My team leader can fight well on her own. I can just watch comfortably."
Hailey rubbed her philtrum with the scarf, smearing blood all over it, and said,
"You weren't like this in front of your deputy team leader either."
Baek Ae-young shuddered the moment she heard that.
"Ugh. It's just that person is in the habit of give and take, compromising with each other. If you'd actually fought with Sujeong— Deputy Team Leader Kang, you wouldn't be talking like this. If that person threw a punch, even if I hit back once, it would've had the effect of taking five blows."
Watching Hailey touch and wiggle her broken front tooth with her tongue, I started to offer some advice but sighed and closed my mouth. None of Hailey's behavior around her mouth was to my liking. As she blocked her nosebleed that was dripping down again, Hailey muttered,
"Talking to you suddenly reminds me. Team Leader Shin told me not to gamble."
He'd said the same to me. Was Hailey bad at poker? Being on the Canadian engineer team, she was dead last, after all. Then again, looking at the current situation, maybe she really can't play poker. She'd jumped into the game, but didn't seem to have gained much. Aside from Baek Ae-young, Dana, who'd done nothing, seemed the least injured.
What good is cutting a dentist's fingers if you break your own nose and more than two teeth in the process? Hailey looked at Jennifer groaning on the floor and Dana cowering quietly in the corner, then said,
"Bad hand? Seems like bad luck today. …Jen. Get a grip."
Hailey tapped Jennifer's wrist on the side of her shot leg. Jennifer, who had been lying down groaning, tried to spring up and lunge at Hailey at this, but moving her leg hurt too much to go through with it. Hailey flinched greatly at Jennifer's sudden movement, then giggled as if to say she'd been surprised.
Jennifer finally seemed to be coming to her senses after barely getting over the shock of being shot; she grabbed her calf, which was bound with cloth, and looked around. After quickly assessing her condition, her eyes swept over me leaning against the elevator wall and then fixed on my left hand.
"You shot me?"
So dark in the elevator that she didn't even know who shot her leg. Before I could answer Jennifer's question as she lay sprawled on the floor, Baek Ae-young spoke.
"I shot you. Be thankful it wasn't your head."
Twisting in pain, Jennifer spewed curses, peppering every phrase with F-words. After spitting abuse at her mother and father, at Jesus—who had nothing whatsoever to do with this incident—and at Koreans who were just sitting quietly in their own country, Jennifer launched into an even longer tirade. She damned the cursed elevator, the fucking engineers and researchers from every country, the very existence of the undersea base built on the ocean floor, the shitty gun and bullet manufacturers, distributors, and retailers, the politicians who passed the laws needed to make guns, the former Ma Team engineer leader sitting in prison, the Ma Team engineers who treated her words like dogshit, Baek Ae-young who'd pulled the trigger, me who'd caught the axe, Hailey who'd been completely useless, and even Dana—who'd done nothing but sit there with wide eyes watching—and consigned each and every one of them to hell, flinging fucks far and wide.
The people suddenly bombarded by this machine-gun stream of abuse were left stunned. Hailey, who'd been chuckling while swallowing her nosebleed, smiled at Baek Ae-young and asked,
"Can't you hit her in the mouth too?"
The engineer team leaders I'd met all seemed to have unbelievable personalities. I couldn't tell if they only selected people with such personalities to place in this undersea base, or if you simply couldn't survive in an undersea base without that kind of personality. I suddenly remembered Seo Ji-hyeok cursing out the engineer team leaders.
Jennifer, who'd been cursing forcefully, began taking deep breaths again as if the pain was flooding back. Baek Ae-young looked at Jennifer's state and said,
"She's fine."
Judging by the way she talked, like team leader, like team member. I copied Jennifer's breathing technique. …It didn't help much. If anything, it seemed to hurt more. I started by apologizing to Baek Ae-young.
"Ae-young. I'm sorry. I should have just done as you said and left. This happened because I insisted."
Though Hailey and Jennifer had attacked us, if I hadn't brought them along, this might not have happened. I recalled Jennifer, captured and tied up by Muhan-gyo cultists at Undersea Base 2. She'd stayed there uninjured without us forcing her onto the elevator. There might have been another way. And Baek Ae-young had warned me in advance that something like this could happen.
"…I'll accept your apology. I. Well. It's fine. I wasn't hurt either."
Baek Ae-young looked at my left hand, then trailed off and closed her mouth. It was truly fortunate that Baek Ae-young was skilled at fighting in the dark. Good thing it was my fingers—if Baek Ae-young's fingers had been injured, I wouldn't have been able to show my face. Baek Ae-young's eyes swept over the ruined elevator and the injured people as she added,
"The deed is done. Now it depends on how we clean up the spilled water."
Hailey kept touching her broken front tooth with her thumb, so when I couldn't stand it and said something, she awkwardly pulled her finger away from the tooth and said,
"What's there to clean up? We just go to Daehan-do and lie right down in a hospital bed, right?"
"Terrorists have occupied this place, and all we've done is take weapons. No matter how sloppy a terrorist group is, they would have left a few people right in front of the elevator."
"What's the point of telling me that? I'd rather surrender to the terrorists than go with you. At least I wouldn't end up like this."
I shook my head and replied to Hailey.
"That terrorist is temperamental, so if he finds it too bothersome, he'll shoot the hostages dead. He already killed them saying too many hostages had escaped to Daehan-do using another elevator."