Operation Change: Survive Ten Minutes

The only sound in the dead-silent space was the low hum of a ventilation fan.

Kang Howon, member of BOND Field Team Na, finally gave in to an hour of uninterrupted silence and opened his mouth. "Rice in milk versus pizza-flavored toothpaste."

Even in a whisper, he couldn't keep the mischief out of his voice. "If I absolutely had to choose, I'd go with rice in milk," came Choi Unseong's deadpan answer.

"Why?"

"Pizza-flavored toothpaste would leave my mouth feeling gross even after I brushed. Might as well eat rice in milk, nice and clean, then rinse with a perfectly normal tube."

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"Our Unseongie, how do I put this... Your answers are so boringly sensible they're no fun at all."

"You want fun?"

"...How?"

"We tie your legs together and toss you down there, see how the boys below react. If things go south, we'll rescue you."

"...You're joking, right? The only ones down there are gun-toting muscleheads."

"If you want entertainment, senior, you have to put your life on the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠line. Isn't that right, Team Leader?"

At that, Team Leader Moon Chaeyoung simply shrugged. "Eh. If you're that bored?"

Can they seriously not hear us from down there?

Even as idle chatter bounced back and forth above the drop ceiling, Lee Seohyeok's mind was fixed entirely on what lay below them. He found himself recalling the brief that Moon Chaeyoung had tossed their way right before the mission.

A government-requested emergency assignment, received just yesterday afternoon. And then—

A simple mission on paper, and yet nothing about it added up — not just one or two things, either. For starters, the building in question was a lone concrete block slapped up in the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of Gyeonggi Province. From the outside it looked like a run-down mixed-use commercial building, but inside, cutting-edge security sensors ran around the clock. And the most unsettling detail of all: from what they'd managed to scout, the underground levels went down at least three floors.

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There's definitely something down in that basement.

The deeper underground, the tighter the security got. His guess wasn't likely wrong.

On top of that, one final directive from the director had nagged at him for the entire operation.

So they weren't supposed to get caught, and even if they were caught, they weren't allowed to shoot back. Honestly, he'd rather walk into a dungeon alone and take on monsters. Telling a hunter not to kill armed civilians was the same as telling him to do nothing but run away and come back.

"Hey, what about our maknae? Seohyeok?" A light tap-tap on his arm. Seohyeok snapped his head up. Kang Howon had his seagull eyebrows arched to their limit, demanding an answer. Now, what was the question again...

"...I'd also choose rice in milk."

"Oh! And the reason?"

"I used to eat rice in milk when I was little. From what I remember... it was pretty edible."

"...You're serious?"

"We had a freak hiding here all along."

Between the recoiling Kang Howon and Choi Unseong, Seohyeok felt a flicker of genuine indignation. What exactly was wrong with rice in milk?

"Maknae, I'll buy you milk on the way home from work today. Pour it on cereal, though. Not rice." Kang Howon grinned and thumped him on the back, and from the other side Choi Unseong slid in without missing a beat. "Yeah, senior. Buy the kid a proper meal while you're at it. Gukbap, something like that. It's already soupy, so at least he won't pour it into milk."

"No, that's not the same thing at—"

—THUD!!!

Is it, though? That was the moment Seohyeok was about to shoot back.

Something slammed into the floor directly beneath the space they were sprawled across, and the whole passage lurched violently. All four of them dropped flat against the ground in an instant, reading Moon Chaeyoung's hand signal at lightning speed.

Hold position.

"......"

Where they were crouched was a hidden crawlspace above the third-floor ceiling — so narrow that even a full-grown adult woman could barely fold herself into it. Inside that duct-like passage, Field Team Na's four humans — two women, two men — pressed themselves against the floor and held their breath.

...What on earth is going on?

A moment later, frantic footsteps echoed up, followed by voices.

"Fuck! An intruder got in! Scatter and find them, now!"

"Another sensor glitch, isn't it? After the hell we went through last time, get your damn facts straight before you open your mouth."

"You little bastard, I told you then and I'm telling you now — it wasn't a glitch! You think the security program is a toy? You think it runs just because you hold down one button? Quit broadcasting how stupid you are!"

"What's that? You don't want to see tomorrow's sun?"

"I never wanted you people here in the first place, calling yourselves guards! Collecting paychecks and secretly slacking off!"

"Oh, that's rich. It's been pissing me off plenty that you couch-sitters rake in more money than we do."

Chinese? Wait, there's some Japanese mixed in there too.

Judging by the vibe, they're fighting each other.

He couldn't make out every word, but it sounded like an internal fracture had broken open. The other team members seemed to have reached the same conclusion, because they each added their two cents.

"If they wipe each other out like this, that's a good thing for us, no?"

"Hard to say. From how loud they are, I don't think anyone's actually going to fight."

"Personally, I think just lying here a while longer isn't a bad plan~"

"......"

I swear, I have to be the one to keep a clear head... No matter how he looked at it, his teammates had absolutely no contingency plan.

"Looks that way, doesn't it?" Moon Chaeyoung asked, sounding almost apologetic. Everyone nodded without objection.

So that's it — we can't keep running this covert operation any longer.

The request had only landed on them in the first place because the director had pressured them into it, so nobody had a shred of regret. They'd started out faking it, gotten suspicious, and dug a little deeper. That was all.

"We're wrapping up here for today. We did our part." Having made the call, Moon Chaeyoung peered down the spinning vent shaft to gauge the situation below, then turned to Kang Howon. "Howon, is your teleport cooldown up?"

"Ah, could you give me just a bit more time? First trip out to the provinces in a while — it'll take longer to recharge."

"How long?"

"Uh... ten minutes?"

Ten minutes. That meant Kang Howon, the team's Teleporter, needed at least ten full minutes of surviving inside this building before he could use his ability again.

"Then our objective is now an immediate return to the office. We hold out for ten minutes — and if it turns unbearable, we don't need to make it back to the company anyway, so we just pop out wherever we can."

An A-rank Teleporter like Kang Howon burned mana at a rate that scaled with distance. In other words, to travel all the way from a mountain valley in Gangwon Province back to the Seoul branch, he'd need to secure enough recharge time to cover that entire distance.

...In that case.

He broke the request down in his head — what had been completed, what hadn't — and re-established the final objective. Then he set a ten-minute timer on his watch.

"I'll keep the time."

"If my hunch is right, this whole request was handed to us to screw us over." Moon Chaeyoung muttered it like a sigh, and three pairs of eyes contorted in their own particular ways.

"Why? You said the government requested this one first."

"Technically, a director with government connections picked it up himself and frantically shoved it onto us."

They'd go that far just to spite us? What on earth earned them that much bad blood?

Moon ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Chaeyoung clearly shared every one of those questions, because she shook her head wearily. "How the hell would I know what goes on inside those snakes. These directors — young or old, they all act exactly the same. But... there is one thing I've got a guess about."

"What is it? What exactly is this place?"

"...No. Not that. I mean the reason they want to screw us over."

"......"

I think I actually know.

Seohyeok had heard it even without hearing it. And judging by their faces, the other two seniors had reached the same conclusion. Knowing her... she must have done something.

"At last week's board meeting, I got summoned in together with Team Ga's leader, and one of the directors grabbed the field report and started sneering at us."

"And then...?"

"You know Team Ga's leader, right? Gyeon. He did his usual Gyeon thing. He picked apart the director's logic piece by piece, and every single word out of his mouth was dead-on, so all I did from the sidelines was toss in a few sounds of agreement."

"......"

"That must be what did it. But I seriously only made agreeing noises! I'm innocent here!"

"What exactly did you say?" Seohyeok couldn't help but cut in, dumbfounded.

"Attaboy! Nice! That's right! Well said!"

"......"

Why is this woman the way she is?

"Honestly, I'd hate you more than Team Ga's leader does."

"Why?"

"If you keep living like that, you might learn why during your life-flashing-before-your-eyes moment."

"...Ugh, Unseongie scares me sometimes, she really does."

Well, no kidding. You don't get hated without doing something to earn it.

So the situation finally made some sense. Their team leader, having properly rubbed one of the directors the wrong way, had come back saddled with an absolute migraine of a request. It being a government request, she couldn't reject it — she figures she needs to attempt it at least twice so they'll acknowledge the effort.

"Did I really do something that wrong? Then they can go talk their own shit with their own mouths."

"Yes, Team Leader, you stay right here. We're leaving." Choi Unseong said it with a perfectly straight face.

Seohyeok tried his best to think through the optimal route and their options going forward, but...

Even in a situation this serious, the conversation kept sliding into comedy sketches, and in the end he could only let out a hollow laugh. ...Forget it. Let's just survive the ten minutes.

"Ah, then I might as well lie down and relax a little." Kang Howon wriggled around and pressed his back flat against the floor. Truly, there was no human being more comfortable in his own skin.

"If we just lie here ten minutes and clock out, that'd be perfect. Nothing happens to nobod— gah!"

—Whoosh.

It happened in an instant. Kang Howon was gone. And not just gone — he'd gone down.

...?

"What the—?"

—Whoosh.

The team leader was gone.

"Hey, Seohyeok, stay put, I'll head down and—"

—Whoosh.

"...Senior?"

Seohyeok called out to the vanished Choi Unseong, his face utterly vacant. Nobody. Everyone was gone. He frantically felt around the floor — his hand found a gaping, hollow space where solid ground should have been.

"Huh?"

—Whoosh.

A rush of air surged from below, up through the opening. His body floated free for a split second — then dropped.

—CRASH! CLATTER! BANG!

—RRRRRRRRENG!

By the time he understood what had happened, he was a heartbeat away from slamming into a hard corridor floor.

They found us.

We've been discovered by the people inside.

"Hey! Seohyeok! Roll! ROLL!"

Kang Howon's shout cut through the staccato of gunfire. Seohyeok tucked his body and rolled before his feet could even touch the ground. Gunshot echoes and screams erupted in every direction.

He slid behind a corner to catch his breath. At a glance, Kang Howon was throwing his ability around recklessly, doing his best to subdue everyone without actually killing any of the civilians.

...And Unseong's already on the move, working her ability.

"Maknae, focus."

"Team Leader."

Moon Chaeyoung was standing right in front of him. Her face smeared with blood.

"Wipe your face first, ma'am." Moon Chaeyoung roughly wiped the blood away with her hand, then gripped Seohyeok's shoulder and issued her orders.

"Operation change. We're made."

"Yes. Give me the orders."

Seohyeok immediately discarded every objective he had stored in his head and began engraving her words into his mind, one by one.

"The moment I unfold my ability, you sweep this entire building. Fourth floor above ground down to the third basement. Since it's come to this, we might as well find out what this place actually is. Time limit is one hour — in one hour, you wait at the rear door on the first floor."

"Understood."

At his answer, Moon Chaeyoung flashed a sharp grin, rounded the corner, and was gone.

Seohyeok closed his eyes briefly, then opened them.

Slowly, an illusion began to overlay the colorless corridor. An apartment hallway with its sense of space warped out of true stretched out before him — an old, corridor-style apartment block. Warm, homey sunlight poured down through it, and yet the whole place carried a desolate, dreadful air. A midsummer afternoon; darkness was creeping over that once-warm memory like a stain.

"Let's go."

Team Leader Moon Chaeyoung — A-rank Illusionist. A power capable of conjuring fakes indistinguishable from reality. And within that illusion, she might as well have been a god.

...At her signal, Seohyeok began walking calmly down the corridor.

Corridors swallowed by utter night exuded a bleak, hostile atmosphere. Sparse, cut-off screams drifted through the dark. But the scenery around Seohyeok himself was markedly different. Above his head there was no evening darkness — only the fluorescent lights of the corridor from moments ago. And the hallway he walked was not old, cracked mosaic tile but clean, polished ceramic.

"You said start from the fourth floor."

Seohyeok boarded the elevator at his leisure and pressed the button — all while thinking that on his way home from work today, he absolutely had to stop by and apologize to the Dolphin Class teacher.