Someone's Still Here

The moment I stepped out of the room where the cat had been, someone came bursting into the corridor, jarred loose by the alarm. It was Vladimir. Drunk or not, he was staggering out of room 65.

He took one look at the water already up around his calves and pressed something on his wrist pad. Every door along the hall flew open at once, and the alarm that had been howling in one long wail now hammered out a piercing, relentless beep. It felt as if my eardrums would split. Hadn't they said Vladimir was the team leader of the Russian engineer team? A woman came out of the room he had just left, tying back her blonde hair.

"What's going on? ...Oh, fuck."

She stared at the water climbing her calves and spat a curse in Russian. Vladimir bellowed at her.

"Nikita! Get to the escape pods, now!"

The instant the words left him, the woman called Nikita seized Yook Geum-yi by the wrist and ran, not a heartbeat of hesitation in it, and Geum-yi was dragged into a run before she knew what was happening. The floor was a sheet of water, so they couldn't get up any speed; their backs receded slowly. Geum-yi twisted toward me and shouted.

"Moohyun!"

I flapped a hand at her—go on ahead—and swept my eyes over room 66. Vladimir was staring into room 67.

"You're not going, Vladimir?"

"My whole crew drank themselves to sleep. Kick them and they still won't get up."

In room 67, sure enough, a man who reeked of liquor was asleep in the middle of that shrieking alarm. Vladimir charged in and cracked him across the cheek with a palm the size of a pot lid. Watching from the doorway, I thought a molar must have gone flying; the man's head whipped around hard enough to turn twice before he jolted awake.

"Nikolai! Get up, you stupid bastard!"

Russian curses trailed after me as I found someone lying on the bed in room 68. Before I went in, the name beside the door caught my eye: Sofiya. She was asleep with her top off. I called her name from the threshold. Of course no one was going to wake to an alarm like this. I snatched the blanket off the floor, threw it over her, and yanked the pillow out from under her head.

"Sofiya!"

I watched her push herself up with her eyes half-shut, then sprinted for room 69. A man who had to be two meters tall was sleeping there naked, without so much as a blanket, vodka bottles rolled around the bed. I read the nameplate by the door. Victor Vasil—yev? Or Lev?

I clicked the end of a pen lying on the desk beside the bed, retracting the point, and raked the blunt end hard down the sole of his bare foot. His body bucked and thrashed, and his head came up. Drink had flushed his face a deep, ugly red.

"Get up! Hurry!"

Vladimir had already gone as far as room 72, but there was no one there. When I tried to run for room 73, a hand seized my shoulder from behind. The grip was so strong I nearly went down.

"Dentist! We've got to get to the escape pods."

The seawater was just reaching my thighs. Only then did I realize I was shivering all over. The water was viciously cold. Had the sea always been this cold? When I'd splashed around in it, the water had been warm. I looked toward room 74 and pointed both ways at once.

"I haven't checked them all yet!"

"Then check every last one and die!"

Vladimir left it at that and went splashing off—not toward the stairs beside room 80, but toward the central staircase by room 40. The other Russians followed him. Was this the best I could do? I hadn't so much as glanced at rooms 1 through 37. To check all the way to 80, six rooms were still left.

About two and a half meters a room. The water was up to my thighs, which meant at least twenty-one meters out and the same back again. Something squirmed against my back. I startled, then realized it was only the cat shifting inside the bag.

...If I don't look, I can't save them. If I've decided to do this, I have to do it fast. I ran the opposite way from the others. I won't be late. I won't be late! I shouted it inside my head as I splashed past the open doors of rooms 74 and 75. Empty. In room 76 I found one long snake. What kind of lunatic kept a thing like that?

There was no time to think. With my bare hands I grabbed the snake and shoved it into the bag I'd been using, down between the candy and the chocolate bars, and yanked the zipper shut. Rooms 78 and 79 looked empty. I lurched and splashed all the way to room 80. By then even walking was nearly impossible. Please let there be no one. Please, no one.

There was a boy asleep in room 80. I was going to lose my mind. The alarm was shrieking like that, and he still hadn't woken. Even with my brain feeling as if it were about to shut off, I dutifully scooped the pill bottle off the table that doubled as a desk into the bag that held the cat, and slung the bag with the snake across my front. Then I hauled the boy onto my back.

Coming back as far as room 76, I couldn't think of anything at all. The only thought that surfaced was that I had to walk faster. Bracing a hand on the wall, I followed the path the others would already have taken. The water that had been at my thighs surged to my waist in an instant.

Walking through it was brutally hard. Every step felt like I was kicking the water aside. Against my stomach the cat gave a squirm now and then, and the sleeping boy didn't so much as stir, even though his feet were sunk entirely in seawater. Splashing past rooms 74 and 73, I kept murmuring to myself that I was almost there, that there wasn't far left. Don't let the fear take you. If the fear takes you, it's over. I can get out. Stay calm.

...Don't fall. If you fall, it's over. Walk fast. Just don't fall. I braced the boy's hips with one arm as he started to slide down my back, and bit down on the bag with the snake before it could plunge into the water. The shrieking alarm felt as if it would deafen me for good.

On my way out after checking room 80, I had finally seen where the water was coming from. It was leaking down the stairs right beside that room. Had the Russian team leader known, and gone for the central stairs on purpose? Was the side with the central staircase by room 40 safe? It had to be safe. That was why they'd gone that way. Wasn't it?

Goddamn it. What was I supposed to do if the central stairs weren't safe? I'd already come more than halfway in order to use them. And why were the lunatics on this undersea base keeping pets they'd been told not to bring in? A child, on top of that—what was that supposed to be?

No one who wasn't authorized staff could be on the base at all. Minors, especially, were barred from entering the 4th Undersea Base entirely. The boy on my back, who looked about seven, did not strike me as essential personnel. Why the hell was there a kid here?

I poured out every curse I knew and somehow reached the central staircase beside room 40, but the water was already higher than my waist. Walking through it had jammed my breath up into my throat.

Gasping, I started up the stairs and nearly slipped twice. Each time I grabbed the handrail with one hand and hung on with my whole body. One arm propping up the boy's backside, a bag clenched in my teeth, the other hand hauling me up the rail—I was going to lose my mind. When I climbed clear of the water, something was blocking the stairs.

The staircase itself had been sealed with a door, so I couldn't go any higher. So they could shut the stairs off halfway like that. The dorms were flooding, and they'd cut them off completely, to keep the water from reaching the escape pod port and the other bases. The moment the thought hit, the world went black in front of my eyes. I crawled up the stairs and pounded the door with my whole body, screaming.

"Open the door! There's someone here! I said there's someone here!"

The water was already chasing me up the steps. Even standing on the highest one, what had touched the tops of my feet now climbed to my ankles. The thought that I was going to die surged over me.

"You bastards! You lock the door while you run so only you get to live? There's someone here! Open the door! Open it, now!"

The sobs broke out of me.

"Open the door! You're just going to run so you can live? How can you do that to a person? Open it! You sons of bitches! There's someone in here! Save me!"

I had screamed so hard I could barely see. I thought I was still in the middle of it when a sound came from the other side of the door, and a hand came through at the same time.

A huge hand reached in from outside, hauled my body up as if lifting me, and flung me into a corner. Only after I was slammed onto my side on the floor did I realize the one who had thrown me was Victor, that giant of a man over two meters tall. He shut the door again before the water climbing the stairs could rise. Victor locked it, then smashed the panel beside the door to pieces. Dazed, I asked.

"You didn't take an escape pod?"

"Don't know."

With that, he lifted the child collapsed beside me in one hand and settled the boy onto his own back. Then he started walking toward the escape pods.

Only then did I understand that this man had come back from the escape pod port—back toward the dorms—for me. All I had done was get a child of six or seven off my back, and I felt as light as if I had set down a length of rebar. Only then did I register how the seawater-soaked clothes were crushing down on me.

Maybe the adrenaline that had been driving my body had just run out. Even a single step was more than I could manage. I hurriedly scrubbed the mess of tears and snot off my face with my sleeve. Fighting the urge to throw away everything the seawater had soaked, I walked toward the escape pod port.