If we had touched that thing, it would have been as good as advertising to everyone in the Second Undersea Base that we were all here. I was grateful for the luck that had brought me into the exhibition hall together with the people beside me. Because there were several people more rational and self-controlled than I was, I had at least been able to get swept along with them. If I had been just a little greedier, or if the others had decided to take the gems with them to the end—
Even at the android’s voice, only Baek Ayeong and Shin Haeryang did not look at Seo Jihyeok, instead watching the front and the sides. Baek Ayeong muttered something low while looking ahead, and to my ears it sounded like the word moron. She was right. Jewels, in the middle of an escape.
We were passing through the jewelry exhibition hall in silence. Our pace grew a little faster. After all, everything beside us was truly beautiful, dazzlingly pretty, but we now knew very well that if we touched them wrong, or greedily tried to take them, they were things that could ruin our lives in one blow.
We were passing enormous blue and orange gemstones called sodalite and spessartine—both names I’d never heard before—when Baek Ayeong, who was ahead, clenched and unclenched her fist and waved her hand. Shin Haeryang and Seo Jihyeok saw the signal and stopped. Then Baek Ayeong slipped around behind a blue stone labeled dioptase, which was about the size of a person. Yugeum and even Seo Jihyeok hid behind a spinel the size of a bear. I didn’t know why we were hiding, but judging from everything so far, someone was probably coming.
And not long after, I realized that people really were coming. Since we had entered through the entrance of the exhibition hall, they were coming from the direction of the exit. If not for Baek Ayeong, we would have run right into them head-on.
There were about six armed people holding guns, and three people were walking among them. One face looked somehow familiar. But the other two were people I had never seen before. When Baek Ayeong breathed out, “Michael Loaker,” I was wondering, Who is that? when the man I’d met in the elevator suddenly flashed through my mind. That person was some kind of… something, wasn’t he?
The three of them were walking toward the diamond in the center. Good. If their goal was to go to the center, our goal was to go to the exit. More precisely, our goal was to get to the cable car connected to the exit. We just had to go in opposite directions without running into each other. But neither Baek Ayeong nor Shin Haeryang moved. The same went for Seo Jihyeok, who had gotten down from the android’s arms and was practically leaning against the display stand holding the spinel, and for Yugeum. Why weren’t we going now?
Only a few seconds later did I realize that the reason our team wasn’t moving was because a man was standing with an assault rifle at the place where a blue mineral about two meters tall was located. And about ten meters away from him, beside a red mineral the size of a person’s torso—I think that one was called red beryl or something—two men were holding guns and looking around.
The group that had come in from the exhibition hall exit were, as they moved, leaving one or two armed people behind at regular intervals, like Hansel and Gretel leaving bread crumbs. No… why not just move all together? Why go out of their way to leave people with guns behind? Were the people who went to the center going to merge back with them one by one, two by two, when they headed out toward the exit?
Maybe this jewelry exhibition wasn’t designed to show the gems well to the people using the exhibition hall. When walking down the central aisle, you could only see the jewels beside the aisle; you couldn’t see all of them. In the rectangular exhibition hall, the other gems were arranged here and there as if scattered outward from the central diamond in an explosion.
If we had to act right now in order to escape, I thought it wouldn’t be impossible to hide behind the scattered gem pedestals and rely on the size of the gems as we made our way toward the exit. In any case, we just had to make as little sound as possible, hide well, and get to the exit, didn’t we? But the veterans apparently didn’t think so. Shin Haeryang told us not to move and to stay still. He said it to me in a very small voice, and gestured it to Seo Jihyeok. Seo Jihyeok whispered to the android that had been carrying him to stay quietly still and admire the gems, then whispered into Yugeum’s ear. He was probably telling him to stay still too.
Holding my presence in and hiding behind a huge gemstone was extremely uncomfortable. It wasn’t as though there was enough space for three people to hide. After crouching for a long while, I stretched out my numb legs, and Shin Haeryang told me to fold them back in. I quickly folded them and even breathed more softly. The armed men were standing in a passage about two meters wide, snickering and talking among themselves. Sometimes they spoke over the radios, but I couldn’t really hear what they were saying.
Sitting on the cold floor while my body was utterly exhausted made it feel as if all my senses were receding. The sound of the ventilation system, the voices of the armed men, and, occasionally, the low voices of Shin Haeryang and Baek Ayeong all buzzed in my ears. All I could think was that I wanted to wash up, brush my teeth, lie down, and get some sleep.
This is killing me. It’s because I’m tired. With my thighs pressed to my chest, my calves gripped tight, curled up so that I couldn’t be seen from outside somehow, and hugging the cat bag, I felt like a child. Baek Ayeong glared at the people beyond the gemstone and cursed in irritation. Fuck. Hurry up and get lost, you bastards. Her voice was so low it sounded like the wind.
Before I knew it, I was lying on my side inside an overturned car. My father was holding my hand and pulling me. Get up! Hyeon-a! Get up! You have to come to your senses!
I didn’t know how much time had passed, whether I had fallen asleep for a few seconds or fainted, but Shin Haeryang had one hand over my mouth and was shaking my shoulder. When I woke, we were exactly as we had been when we’d hidden earlier. It seemed we were still waiting. But I could hear footsteps. The nine people who had walked toward the center were coming back this way. I covered my mouth with my own hand now. And I quietly prayed that they would pass us by. Baek Ayeong and Shin Haeryang didn’t even stick their heads out to look. They simply held their guns and hid their bodies in the shadow of the large dioptase and its pedestal, holding their breath.
Seo Jihyeok and Yugeum also crumpled themselves up as much as possible, apparently trusting that the tremendous spinel beside them would protect them. As I listened to the footsteps of people passing beneath the gemstones, a strange thought formed in my head: if I wanted to end all this suffering, I should jump out at them. Since they were taking hostages, wouldn’t it be far less exhausting to lie on the floor like Jennifer and the others and stare only at the ground than to keep escaping like this?
They wouldn’t treat us well. But wouldn’t that still be better than suffering through all this—holding our breath and sneaking around, searching for escape craft we couldn’t board, checking elevators we couldn’t use, heading for an undersea cable car that might not even work? Thoughts like that brushed through my mind.
But I looked at the people in the same situation as me and suppressed the impulse. We had come from the leaking Fourth Undersea Base, three thousand meters underwater, all the way here to the Second Undersea Base. We’ll be able to escape soon. We just have to hang on a little longer!
Besides, at the Third Undersea Base, we had attacked two of those same cultists, and we had definitely killed one of them. There was also a believer tied up and locked in a bathroom in the Second Undersea Base. Would they really not shoot us if they found out what we’d done? Wouldn’t they just shoot us all dead and deal with it easily? I leaned my head against the pedestal and stared blankly at the place where Seo Jihyeok and Yugeum were. Yugeum and Seo Jihyeok were also waiting for them to pass. Please. Just pass by. Just pass by.
But the man at the very front of the cultist group, holding a gun, called the android. “Maris!” At that word, the android that had been sitting beside Seo Jihyeok sprang to its feet. I could tell from the sound alone that the muzzles of their guns were being aimed in that direction.
Yugeum froze with both hands over his mouth, and Seo Jihyeok, dazed, watched the android that had stood up beside him leave his side. Seeing the bones stand out on the back of Baek Ayeong’s hand as she gripped her gun, I swallowed silently in tension.
Seo Jihyeok looked down at his own legs and gritted his teeth. Yugeum slowly raised his body from where his butt had been pressed flat against the floor and crouched slightly, ready to run at any moment. I, too, looked around at the gems displayed beside me, trying to figure out where I should run if I had to run right now. My back was beginning to grow damp with cold sweat, but as I listened to Shin Haeryang’s breathing, peaceful in contrast to the tense situation, I felt strangely unsettled.
Though the android was surrounded by gun muzzles, it walked without hesitation, stopped in front of the man who had called it, and said,
“Welcome_to_the_exhibition_The_Sea_The_Birth_of_Great_Life_and_Its_Time_Mr_David_Knight_how_may_I_help_you?”
“Tell me how many people are in this exhibition hall.”
Tell him how many people? The man’s question shocked me so hard my mind seemed to stop. An android cannot lie. With a simple question like that, it would normally give the answer it knew. There were nine cultists, and five of us. Depending on how that android answered, our existence would be exposed immediately.
Shin Haeryang grabbed my back and slowly made me crawl along the floor. Not toward the exit, but toward the center of the exhibition hall, telling me to move while hiding among the gems. I pressed myself flat to the floor and, with my fists clenched, crawled on all fours, trying only to get farther away from the group of armed people. Behind me, Baek Ayeong crawled forward on her stomach. The android named Maris waited in place for a few seconds, then answered.
“There_are_currently_a_total_of_14_people_located_in_this_exhibition_hall.”
At that answer, the man named David Knight raised an eyebrow. I crawled about five meters and curled myself beneath the solid marble pedestal of a deep blue gemstone called benitoite. Then Baek Ayeong, who had come closer, bit her lip and hid beside me. Far away, judging from the shape of Seo Jihyeok’s mouth, he seemed to be spewing every curse imaginable at the android. I licked my dry lips. What do we do? What now? What are we supposed to do!
I could hear the cultists cursing at that answer all the way over here. Shin Haeryang suddenly touched my back with his left hand, and I almost screamed. From his gesture, it seemed he was signaling me to calm down a little. I tried to steady my breathing, which sounded as loud as a ship’s horn. I was so frightened that my palms and back were drenched in sweat.
“Besides the nine of us, where are the others hiding?”