Where the Lights Should Have Been
Yook Geum-yi had been walking in silence. She drew up beside Baek Ahyoung, hesitated, and at last made herself speak.
"You didn't see any survivors in Jujak-dong?"
Jujak-dong could house more than four hundred people, and most of those who lived there were researchers. The assignment had been made, they said, because the research center sat so close to the wing. Baek Ahyoung looked at Geum-yi, let out a small ah, and frowned—the sound of someone who had completely forgotten the woman was a researcher.
"When we saw it from the outside work, the Jujak-dong Research Center was already coming apart. We were headed for Jujak-dong ourselves, but we had to turn back to Baekho-dong in a hurry."
Seo Jihyuk said it while straining for the kindest voice he could manage.
"You've seen how many people made it out of Baekho-dong. The quarters sit closest to the escape pods, so a lot of them probably launched before the water came in."
More than half of those who had escaped Baekho-dong had been so drunk they slept straight through the emergency alarm—a fact that would do Geum-yi no good at all just now. A great many of the researchers and professors working through their master's and doctoral programs lived in Jujak-dong and at the Jujak-dong Research Center. Her face had gone grim. Watching her, a question occurred to me, and I asked it quietly.
"Geum-yi, why were you sleeping in Baekho-dong instead of Jujak-dong?"
I whispered it, afraid the answer might be personal, but she replied in a dark voice as if it were nothing unusual.
"The room next to mine belongs to a marine biology professor who came over from the States. Not my advisor. Lately the data just won't come, and I've been so stressed writing the paper that having any professor next door was too much. They greet you with How's the paper coming along? I couldn't sleep, so Martina told me to use her room and we switched. ...What about Martina? I can't reach her. I don't know if it's because she's on a mining shift, or because she was in Jujak-dong."
"Maybe you can't reach her because she's working. The people managing the mining robots outside might not even know what's happening in here."
Just then Nikita, walking at the front, pointed at a small window.
"Look outside!"
What she indicated was a rare round window on the Baekho-dong side, facing south. Windows were precious on the 4th Undersea Base. A corridor might have one here and there, and even those were circular, no bigger at their widest than a person's torso.
I had expected a great panoramic window somewhere. When I found nothing of the kind anywhere on the base, I asked Wang Wei in the next room, and he answered simply.
"They cost too much."
Besides, a window in the deep sea shows nothing but darkness if you bother to look out. According to Nikita, the lights of the Jujak-dong Research Center to the south ought to have shone through Baekho-dong's windows like stars in the dark. Outside, there was nothing. Ordinarily, looking out from here, you were supposed to see dozens of colored lights left burning toward the research center.
They studied deep-sea fish and light, she said, and had left the lamps on like stars—a lighthouse in a typhoon, three thousand meters under the sea. At the end of Nikita's pointing finger there was nothing at all. Only pitch black.
"I don't see anything."
Nikolai said it at his leisure, and Nikita bounced in place as if she might burst.
"There's supposed to be something! The lights are gone!"
"Oh. Right."
"Aaagh! You idiot!"
Vladimir, watching her hop with rage, looked over at Shin Haeryang.
"So it wasn't a lie."
"Don't believe it? Swim over and see."
While the two of them traded words cold as sheet ice, Geum-yi stared out the window as if her soul had left her. Where the research center beside Jujak-dong ought to have been, there was only darkness, and she began to stammer.
"Why... isn't it there? That... why aren't the lights there? No—they have to be. They have to be there."
"Please calm down, Geum-yi. Isn't it possible they aren't? Maybe they moved them. Or switched them off."
She had been shouting that those lights never went out, that four seven-story research centers had vanished, and now she gazed outside with a vacant face. Then she staggered back from the window.
Knowing Geum-yi had a sweet tooth, I meant to dig a snack from my bag and press it into her hand. I rummaged without thinking through the backpack that held the snake, and only after I had pulled out my pad and my phone did I remember the snake was in there. It didn't bite me. I confirmed, so no one else would notice, that my hand was still intact, and let out a rush of breath in relief.
The phone had no signal, and the internet was down, but the internal intranet seemed to connect. I handed Geum-yi a sugar-free apple candy. I was pushing a sugar-free lemon candy into my own mouth when Shin Haeryang passed beside me, and I asked whether he wanted one. He shook his head. Watching that handsome jaw work, I privately admired the line of it. Seo Jihyuk snatched the sugar-free orange candy straight out of my hand.
From the Russian team, Victor and Sofiya took the strawberry candies. Listening to the crinkle of wrappers, I logged in on the pad and tapped the first post on the undersea base bulletin board—the one that had all but wallpapered the feed.
Was I the only person here who had checked the base boards? Had no one else seen it yet? Were they pretending they hadn't? Not one of them was talking about the post. Hadn't Shin Haeryang said Jujak-dong had gone under along with the research center? Then what was this?
If Jujak-dong hadn't flooded and was still intact, then all of Engineer Team A was lying. They were the ones who had insisted on Hyunmu-dong. Was heading there, just as they wanted, really the right call?
If Jujak-dong was entirely underwater, then the post itself was the lie. Someone wanted people to come to Jujak-dong. Which side was lying? The main plaza of Jungang-dong would open ahead of us soon. From here, south led down into Jujak-dong, and north led up into Hyunmu-dong. If I didn't speak now, it seemed everyone would pass Jujak-dong by without a second thought.
"A post went up on the base's internal board. Has anyone seen it?"
The people walking turned their heads to look at me. Introverted as I am, I flinched when dozens of eyes swung my way. I forced strength into a voice that was dying out.
"It says several people are trapped in Jujak-dong, Room 77."
"So?"
"We have to go get them."
Nikita's eyes narrowed. She asked in a voice like the claws of an Amur leopard cutting through a winter wind.
"Who does?"
"We do."
"And why exactly do we have to go?"
The moment I heard that, I knew. This person had already seen the post begging for help. My mouth stopped short, as if someone had clapped a hand over it. But there was a clear reason we had to go to Jujak-dong.
"Because there are people trapped in the quarters, and we can help them."
"You saw Baekho-dong go under. Those rooms are sealed now. They barely escaped drowning, and you want us to go back in there? Whoever goes in after them is gonna die too."
"It says five people are trapped. They could be from your team!"
"Shut the hell up!"
Nikita, her face gone bloodless, shouted it in a fury. Engineer teams usually worked in groups of seven or eight. Engineer Team D probably hadn't been on shift, which was why they had drunk themselves stupid and passed out. Five of them now—so two or three were already food for the fish of the deep. Or they had escaped on their own. Or they were trapped somewhere on this base, or wandering it. One of the four.
"...Or they got out first."
I offered the kindest assumption I could find, the way you soothe someone who looks shaken. I didn't know those people, but I hoped they weren't dead. What I hadn't said, though, they already knew. I said it to Engineer Team A as well.
"The people trapped in Jujak-dong could be your teammates. Or someone you know."
At that, the Russian team folded their arms and glared at me. Carlos didn't look pleased either. They had no desire to walk back into a flooded residential wing on purpose. Neither did I. I didn't want to swim through that water again. But a post was sitting on the board, begging to be saved.
"Our four teammates already got out on the escape pods."
Seo Jihyuk answered awkwardly, then shut his mouth at the ruined mood. Shin Haeryang held a hand out to me. Thinking it meant yes, I moved at once to take it—but with neat skill he took the pad I had tucked under my arm instead. Then he read the post that had gone up. I asked him in a dumbfounded voice.
"Haeryang, where's your pad?"
"Mine is in Baekho-dong, Room 22."
Ah. Sunk forever, then. How much pressure could a fully sealed electronic device survive once it went into the sea? An ownerless thing left in salt water would stay powered on until the battery died, or until the pressure broke it.
Whether Baek Ahyoung had opened the base's internal board on her phone, I couldn't tell. I only heard Seo Jihyuk saying they ought to look at it together. Geum-yi chewed her lip for a long while before she spoke.
"I'm going to Jujak-dong. I might not be much help, but those people who are trapped—I'm going to try to save them. I don't know who's in there, but my advisor could be. Or someone from my lab. Or someone I know."
It was Jujak-dong, so the odds were good the living would be researchers. Or Martina, who had traded rooms with her. I had no idea why five people would be gathered in a single room.