Nothing but Our Lives

"We're heading to Cheongryong-dong. Will you come with us?"

Jennifer shook her head. The small earring at her ear swung with her dark-blond hair.

"I'm going to find my team. They'll have run as far as Jujak-dong. Then I'm taking the Central Elevator."

Impressive. In her place I wouldn't have looked for my team at all. I'd have run. Then again, there wasn't much of anywhere left to run to. Kim Ga-young's brows knotted.

"It takes ten minutes just to call that thing, and even after you board you can't move for another ten."

"It's still the fastest way out of here."

Shin Haeryang had been staring outside, as if the talk in the multimedia room had nothing to do with him. He took Seo Jihyuk's pad and showed Jennifer a single photo, angling the screen so the light wouldn't reach Henry in front of us or spill out where anyone else might see it. I knew what it was the instant I saw it.

The man in the picture hadn't had his eyes closed. For a few seconds I had to meet a dead man's gaze. Ah. Goddamn it. Jennifer's face twisted. She bit her lip. Shin Haeryang, still watching the outside, spoke.

"It's too dangerous."

"People are swinging axes to get onto escape pods and shooting each other in the head. You think I'm in any state to sit around weighing risks?"

"We don't know when the pressure regulator in Jungang-dong will fail."

"Then we move faster. If the elevators in Cheongryong-dong or Hyunmu-dong break down, we die just the same."

Jennifer stood. Seo Jihyuk, who had been on his feet the whole time scanning the outside, said:

"We're going to Cheongryong-dong, same as planned."

At that, Henry shot his small hand into the air. Even in the dark, Shin Haeryang's startled face was plain beside that little arm. Hand still raised, Henry made his case.

"I'm going with Miss Jennifer."

"Why…… why?"

"Because she's my dad's boss, and you said you were going to find my dad."

He said it crisp and clear, every word set down in its place, and the adults stared at him in a daze. Sharp kid. When I was seven I was pretty sure I'd been rolling around on the floor begging for toys in front of cartoons.

Everyone here was thinking about how to get out, one way or another. None of them meant to tear through an entire undersea base, with no idea where to even start, just to find Henry's father. The boy seemed to have sensed it too, dimly—that the promises to call his dad, to take him to his dad, were lies. Jennifer quietly took one of the child's hands. Kim Ga-young sighed and took the other.

"I'll go too. My nephew's about his age. I can't stop seeing him in this kid."

"Wouldn't it be safer if you all came with us to Cheongryong-dong?"

"If you can't use the escape pods in Cheongryong-dong either, you'll just take the elevator on that side, won't you? The Central Elevator here or the one for the 3rd Undersea Base—the risk looks about the same to me. I'll take the direct elevator out of Jungang-dong."

"Cheongryong-dong has a multi-passenger submarine, and the elevator to the 3rd Undersea Base as well. Come with us."

They urged her once more. When Kim Ga-young refused, Shin Haeryang seemed to decide that any more talk was useless. He nodded, opened the door of Theater 1, and walked out as he was. Three seconds later Baek Ahyoung—after a silent high-five with Jennifer—followed, and then Seo Jihyuk. Yook Geum-yi squeezed Kim Ga-young's hand hard.

"See you out there."

She let go and left the room. I wrapped my hand in my sleeve this time, carefully swept the bottom of the bag, and passed every chocolate bar and piece of candy to the three of them.

"If these rot your teeth, I'll fix them the next time we meet."

"See you in a bit, Mr. Moohyun."

I watched Kim Ga-young wave, then stepped out of Theater 1.

Baek Ahyoung took the lead. We stopped where she said stop and walked where she said walk. We passed Theater 2 and Theater 3, and had just broken into something like a jog toward the café when Yook Geum-yi spoke, quietly.

"Ga-young unnie's ankle is bad. She used to live in heels and sprained the left one so many times it never really recovered. Keeping up with us at this pace was probably already hard on her. She might have stayed because she didn't want to slow us down. Or maybe she really does think the elevator is safer than going out in an escape pod."

"And you, Geum-yi?"

"I work my stress out with exercise. Every time a professor hit me with 'How's that thesis coming?' I ran the treadmill on pure rage. I've probably put on more miles than your average used car."

The picture of Yook Geum-yi pounding a treadmill in a fury nearly made me laugh. I barely held it in.

"……And how about you, Doctor?"

Seo Jihyuk asked it while he listened to her and kept up the pace. The cat on my back felt as if it were crushing my whole body. I'd gone into the water twice and then hauled six kilos and twenty in turns; I hardly had the strength left to walk. I delivered my comprehensive diagnosis.

"I'm dying."

"You look fine."

Does living on the seafloor ruin your hearing? I looked at the solid line of Shin Haeryang's back where he walked out front, then at Yook Geum-yi. She looked uneasy. So was I. I've never been any good at lying, and I'm not built to live with anxiety piled up inside me. I probably never will be. So I asked Baek Ahyoung outright, the one striding fast beside me.

"What are you, exactly?"

"Me? An engineer."

"No. I mean that knife."

"A knife is essential equipment for any woman surviving in this dangerous world. It's trendy these days!"

Seo Jihyuk agreed. Right, she'd said it was like an accessory. Half wondering if that could actually be true, I looked at Yook Geum-yi, and she shrieked at me for it.

"Why are you looking at me?! You believe that?!"

Something flashed through my mind at the sound of it, and I turned back to Baek Ahyoung.

"Weapons aren't even allowed into the undersea base!"

She fired back at once.

"Guns, grenades, that kind of thing—those are banned. Cold weapons are fine! If knives were banned outright, how would the cafeteria cook?"

"Cold weapons?"

Yook Geum-yi asked what a cold weapon was, and Baek Ahyoung's face went oh, damn. Stunned, I looked at Seo Jihyuk. He turned his head a fraction and dodged my eyes.

"We're screwed. What do we do?"

The question was aimed at Shin Haeryang. He was still out in front. From behind the café building he pressed to the wall, stole the barest glance down the path that led into the convenience store, and waved a hand. What does that mean? We crept over until all of us were flat against the wall, and he said, low, like this was a headache:

"It was already over the moment you drew the knife."

"What are you people? Military? Special forces, something like that?"

"You think every country on earth poured more than six quadrillion won into an undersea base and then staffed it with nothing but clueless civilians?"

Baek Ahyoung snapped it at me. Yook Geum-yi clapped, soft and low, and wagged a finger.

"I knew it! There was a rumor among the researchers! That not everyone in the undersea base was ordinary—that there might be unusual people mixed in! Special agents from various countries, or even criminals. I thought it was just a ghost story, but it was true!"

Her eyes lit, and the questions poured out.

"Is your whole team like this? What about Soojeong and Jihyun? Do Kim Jaehee and Jung Sanghyeon know how to use knives and shoot guns too?"

"Lee Jihyun's the most dangerous one of the lot. That lunatic."

"Th-that can't be right. Jihyun is so kind!"

Yook Geum-yi's objection was timid. Baek Ahyoung kicked Seo Jihyuk in the calf.

"Don't say useless shit. I mean it."

A choked sound escaped him, and his mouth shut. Shin Haeryang explained, abrupt, that from here they were going to sprint to there. No noise. Those of us in shoes—Geum-yi and I—were told to carry them and run on his signal, so we went one at a time.

Now and then, from somewhere, came a tat-tat-tat-tat, like beans rattling in a hot pan. The sound echoed so badly it was impossible to tell where it started. A few minutes later Baek Ahyoung, still in the lead, signaled us down. She wanted us still, so I stayed where I was, flat on the floor.

I tapped Shin Haeryang, then tapped the corner of my own mouth. He didn't move. A few minutes after that he nodded.

"Speak."

A chill went through me. We were shut in with people who had been professionally trained to harm other people, inside a space that was somehow both narrow and vast.

"So the maniacs shooting up Hyunmu-dong might not have done it out of greed for an escape pod. People with professional firearms training might have done it on purpose!"

"……And we don't have guns."

He said it so cleanly that a headache I hadn't had came on anyway. I held my open palm out to him.

"……?"

"This has been fun."

"Sorry?"

"A delightful conversation. Hand over the gun you've got hidden."

"There isn't one."

"I heard Engineer Team Na brought guns. Engineer Team Da looks like they smuggled in liquor by the case, and one of the Mining Technician crews seems to have imported cigarettes in bulk from their own country. What about us? You've already hidden something, haven't you? A multi-passenger submarine that can climb from three thousand meters down to the surface in a single ascent, maybe?"

"This is all I have."

Shin Haeryang dug through his pocket and set, very gently, on my palm the sugar-free grape candy I had handed out before we entered Jungang-dong. Heh. All that came out of me was an empty laugh. I slapped that same palm—smack—and passed the grape candy back.

"We didn't expect it to turn out like this either."

"Which part? Not knowing when we'll drown in seawater three kilometers down? Or the part where every escape pod we reach is broken, or gone, or 'tampered with' and slammed into the seafloor?"

"All of it, if I'm being precise."

He said it flatly, and Baek Ahyoung hurried to pile on.

"How were we supposed to know someone would ram a torpedo into the Jujak-dong Research Center? If we'd known ahead of time, we'd have taken leave the day before and gone to Hawaii. We did not sign up to become fish food in this musty seawater!"

Yook Geum-yi had started to comfort me—I must have looked grim—then she jerked as if she'd been struck and shouted.

"……They fired a torpedo? A torpedo is a missile that runs underwater, right? Someone fired a missile?! Are they insane? Do you have any idea what those research facilities cost? Do you know how expensive the equipment is? Weren't human beings supposed to fight with words first and only then start hitting each other? These lunatics are blowing up four seven-story research centers just to make more garbage on the seafloor?! Fine, the Deep Sea Biology Center where I work, whatever—we've got an obscene pile of jellyfish, one of every kind! But I heard the Rare Earth Center has stockpiled a ridiculous amount of metal for mineral research. Do you know how much money that is? There's gold, there's silver, they even pumped seawater and hoarded a huge amount of uranium! And what did the Marine Pollution Center ever do wrong? Those people came from all over the world to research how to stop seafloor pollution! They came to get rid of this goddamn microplastic spread through the ocean and the garbage we can't even count by the ton anymore, and some maniacs just blew them away? These people are completely out of their minds, aren't they?"

"G—Geum-yi, please calm down!"

"Calm down. Lower your voice! We don't know who might be around."

Yook Geum-yi, a master's holder midway through her doctorate, seethed at the sheer nerve of anyone firing a torpedo at the undersea base's research complex. I asked Shin Haeryang, quietly:

"Was it really a torpedo? Not something like an earthquake?"

"We saw it. We were working outside."

"……If you're with the military, is there a way to contact Korea? The navy? Or some other way out?"

At that, Seo Jihyuk laughed as if the air had gone out of him.

"We…… we're not soldiers or anything like that. You can tell by looking at our ages. Aside from that great white over there, I'm about to hit my thirties, haha. The kids who do that work are all bright-eyed and in their early twenties. We're already retired, uh…… so think of us as mercenaries. 'Mercenaries' sounds a little off, though. Contracted security? That's a little…… Ah…… an outside contractor, then. That's weird too. Contract workers? Contract civil servants? No, that's not right either. We're not even officially registered as civil servants, there's no pension…… Now that I think about it, this isn't a great deal. Team Leader Shin, what kind of garbage contract did you sign?"

"We get paid from two places. Or did you want me to contract with Japan or China?"

"Ah. Fair."

At that, Baek Ahyoung started grumbling.

"There are terms. Priority rescue for Korean nationals, conduct favorable to Korea, naming things inside the base in Korean, an activity report once a week, that sort of thing. Extra material support? There wasn't any. We do our contact by email. Guns—please. They've never even bought us a pair of socks."

"I've been refused four times asking for a satellite phone so we could call from the island. They also refused a multi-crew submarine rated to two thousand meters."

"I'm not…… ha. I won't even compare us to the U.S. or New Zealand. Asia only. Engineer Team Na and Engineer Team Ra have cruiser yachts their teams can actually use. Sure, they've got money, but those came from the countries backing them! I said if nothing else, buy us a twenty-footer, and they came back with why would you need a yacht when you're at an undersea base! Did I ask for a fifty-footer? Every time I so much as ask, it's 'we'll look into it'!"

Maybe because no one was around, or maybe because the grievances had been stacking for a long time, Baek Ahyoung let the irritation pour out. Shin Haeryang sounded as if plenty had piled up on his side too, from support requests that had all been refused. He said it like a sigh.

"We don't have anything but our lives."

"That's everyone. But—"

Shin Haeryang's hand came up over my mouth in a hurry. I was about to pull the rough palm away when a short East Asian woman with long hair passed alongside the café, a gun in her hands and her face crumpled like she was about to cry. All of us froze. Before she vanished completely from view, Baek Ahyoung spoke to him, very small.

"That's Takahashi Yulie. Should we take it?"

"Let her pass."

At Shin Haeryang's gesture, Seo Jihyuk checked that no one else was there and moved out ahead.