Rescue Operation (7)
In the auditorium once used for worship services and mental education, around sixty women had gathered. Each was a faction leader with her own influence. Controlling and persuading over two thousand inmates at once would take too long, so it was easier to move the others through them. Sasha had played a big role here. I understood her desire to impress the new owners of their soon-to-be home, but her dedication went beyond imagination. She ran around nonstop, drenched in sweat from head to toe, coaxing and soothing the leaders into assembling in the hall.
They sat on chairs to the left and right of the central aisle. Western block inmates sat with their own on the west side, while the eastern block inmates occupy the east side. The difference in their conditions was stark at a glance. The western block prisoners, including the tall woman thrown into the warden's office with Sasha, looked somewhat drained but manageable. In contrast, the eastern block inmates all showed signs of severe starvation—listlessness, their cheeks hollowed, hands and feet bony with protruding joints. Some women could barely keep their eyes open. At this rate, they wouldn't last a week.
The leaders on the long church pews varied wildly too. Fierce-faced women. Venomous-looking ones. Women who didn't seem criminal at all, with kind faces. Short cuts, sporty buzzes, skinheads. Short women. Tall ones. Ones with muscular builds. There are even some who are skinny as rails. Those who have piercings or are tattooed everywhere. Druggy vibes. Naturally androgynous. Doped-up androgynous. Slavic types. Latin American. There are even those with indigenous blood showing in some minority women. Black women. Even a Muslim woman with an improvised hijab made from a towel—who knew where she got that.
The central control room screens were filled with this diverse array of women. It felt less like a prison and more like a multicultural family vocational training center. They eyed the entrance guards and surveillance security robots with uneasy glances.
"All the foreign criminals have been sent here too, right?"
Seyoung said. For years, Korea had been in chaos akin to a war with foreign residents. Legal or illegal, they were tangled in big and small crimes, mostly prostitution and trafficking. Even when caught, Korean prison life beat street living back home, so they gritted their teeth and came anyway.
"I'm not defending the inmates. But many became victims out of ignorance or recklessness, then perpetrators trying to escape that. Plenty reflect and try hard. We can't just lump them all together."
Seyoung defended them despite her own rough treatment. Murmurs grew or voices rose now and then, but Sasha calmed them each time. Impressively, she communicated with nearly every nationality. Her eager pitch on her usefulness and cooperation wasn't bad. If she was reading the room and genuinely scraping for a way to survive, it was even better.
"Shouldn't that be your role?"
Rose asked, watching Sasha bustle among the inmates.
"Gotta admit what's true, even if it stings. In this mess, she's better at controlling them than me. I've just relied on administrative power and bureaucracy. Without public authority backing it, I'm just another inmate."
Seyoung pointed at her own feet self-deprecatingly. She was barefoot.
"If you want to check who has authority here, see if they're wearing shoes or not."
The negotiations revealed some surprises. First, the prison population was smaller than expected.
"We figured around 2,700 inmates and 252 guards."
"After the riot, guards got locked up, and inmates split into two: those leaving the island and those staying."
Sasha answered Rose's question. She'd grasped the situation better than Seyoung, who'd been imprisoned since the revolt and only have been briefly freed for comms repair.
"They took the emergency boats, packed to capacity. About 400 escaped that way. Then just two boats came back."
Sasha grimaced, recalling the bad memory.
"One loaded with near-dead people, the other blood-soaked with half-mad women. It took days to get coherent talk out of them. No matter what, they just repeated 'monster' over and over."
Sasha shrugged.
"And the one with the dying folks?"
"Nina! Come here a sec."
Sasha called over another woman at Rose's question. A woman with brown bobbed hair, Slavic, profile age 22. A russian like Sasha. Convicted of assault. Stressed from work, she hit a host bar to unwind, got too into it with another woman over the same host. When the host sided with Nina, the rival slapped her. Nina lost it, beat the woman to a pulp—and kept going even after she passed out. Landed her in here after sentencing.
"You were the closest to saw that boat, right?"
"Boat? Oh, that. It's a total nightmare."
Nina, fluent in Korean, hugged her arms.
"Looked like they'd been boiled alive and pulled out. No way they'd last a day, so I stayed back. If I catch some disease, and it's my loss, yeah?"
Rose pulled up the prison map on her PDA.
"Know where the boats were wrecked?"
Nina pointed.
"Sending drones."
Rose told me. Moments later, the drone feed matched Nina's words—horrific. The wrecked boat on the coastal rocks brimmed with corpses. A few had spilled out onto nearby boulders. Boiled and pulled out, indeed. Rot had set in, making it unbearable to look at. But worse than the gore was the Geiger counter on the drone going berserk. The whole boat was a radiation hotspot.
"Nuclear."
Did a nuke drop mid-escape, irradiating them? Or did they blunder into a fallout zone? Who fired the nuke? No clue. But a nuke had hit the peninsula—that much was certain.
"Pull back."
Any closer, and it'd damage the drone.
"So the effective population is around 2,500?"
Rose asked.
"Gotta count to know, but subtract some more. Plenty dead or missing for various reasons—suicides included. I don't have the exact numbers."
Sasha said. Sofiya, listening nearby, chimed in.
"But good news too."
"What is it?"
Rose asked.
"Those boat escapees? Mostly the bitchiest bitches. Strong ones grabbed the boats—what does 'strong' mean in prison? Top-tier cunts. Most of the ringleaders were there."
Sofiya spat it out bluntly, unlike Sasha minding her language to impress.
"For bitches like that, you and Sasha seem pretty capable."
Rose's screen zoomed on a cluster of buff women. A gym owner and staff busted for tax evasion—muscles rippled around them.
"Everyone's got circumstances. The women are just staying quiet, those worried for their blockmates, and ones knowing outside's an even worse hell. Reasons vary, but staying wasn't a bad call."
Seyoung said. By the time they isolated the women here, the front lines had collapsed. With the southern mass exodus, joining via boat was very iffy. With some bad luck, they might have run out of fuel near monster-overrun cities—then you're done.
Risk life for freedom, or prioritize survival awaiting an uncertain future? Plenty chose the latter.
With intel gathered, Rose offered two choices: stay or join the Shelter. Staying was free, but Shelter meant strict rules—such as assigned work for city labor and punishment for violations.
"Fuck no! It's the same as prison life!"
Nina snapped.
"These foreign chicks speak Korean real good."
I was admiring from the side. Her curse accent was spot-on natural.
"Then stay. Your hoarded food's running out anyway right?"
Seyoung sneered.
"Bitch locked in a cage like a dog, who're you to yap? Hey, nice shoes you're rocking."
Nina lifted one foot like a pissing dog. The dress shoes on her feet. Veins bulged on Seyoung's forehead. Nina stole her shoes.
With that, inmates mocked Seyoung, their voices rising. BAM! The security robots silenced them. Rose's backups, the entrance guards, and those encircling the seated inmates stomped in unison, cracking stone floors with thunderous booms.
"Kyaa!" "Blurgh!" "Hic!" "Ah, fuck!"
Classic. Half of these women's startled exclamations were swears.
"Staying's your freedom. But waiting here means starvation. Look."
The auditorium projector lit the screen with last satellite shots of major Korean cities. None intact. Flames, black smoke and writhing horrors.
"The ferry outside is the last ship coming for you. No more after. Even if one did come, what's the point? No farmers, ranchers or water workers left. No one to produce your food and water."
Rose calmly laid out their doom, cycling through hellish cityscapes. Reactions were split 3:7. The early-arriving 3 were shocked but half-expected it—their tough natures rebelled at regaining control. The later 7 rode in watching the apocalypse unfold live, facing the infected, losing loved ones. Beyond that, cold and hunger. The weather turning dire, no heat, hot water, or winter gear. They wouldn't last winter anyway—but it'd end them for sure. They'd all favored the ferry from the start.
"Safety, warmth, clean beds, medical care, steady food. Some labor required, but limited to city maintenance and growth—it's not for profit."
Most of the women flipped. Maintaining status quo was a slow suicide. The clincher? A mountain of 200,000 beer cans.
With boarding settled, it was the guards' turn.
"Warden!"
Charlie Squad freed the imprisoned guards with the warden. Screen showed starved, ragged women—with dusty bare feet, uniforms stripped to underwear, some were even naked. Seyoung had briefed them on the situation, minimizing any potential chaos. They rounded them up smoothly.
An hour later, 2,500 women assembled in the yard. Inmates clustered by groups under their leaders. Guards formed their own ranks.
"All personnel, depart."
The great exodus began. Countless women left the prison behind, clutching their fragile hope and fear. Light footsteps of the hungry echoed across the silent island.