Welcome to Hell, You Maggots

Walking in behind the security robot, I realized the lore was probably ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠true: they really had flattened the old Southern Detention Center and thrown up a massive expansion. That would explain why the outer grounds of Seoul Southern Prison were so much vaster and more imposing than anything I'd seen in-game, where I'd only ever dealt with the interior.

The outer cell blocks alone stretched farther than the eye could count, and the barrier sealing the inside from the outside was a monster in both thickness and height. Once upon a time, a prisoner who played his cards just right might still have found some faint, flickering scrap of a chance at escape. Now, between the cutting-edge surveillance gear and an automated management system woven tight as mesh, you couldn't even get the first letter of "escape" past your lips.

Tens of thousands of criminals locked up in a place like this — at minimum. And new ones pouring in day after day, enough to make the guards sick of the sight of them.

Even with the expansion, they should've hit capacity a long time ago.

In the game, most of the inmates were players except for a handful of NPCs, so that had been fine. This was reality now. That excuse no longer existed. A few things struck me as off as I gave the interior a once-over, but I had my own ass to worry about. I kept my mouth shut and walked.

Before you got locked in as an inmate, you had to go through something like an immigration screening. In the real world, that meant stripping naked and getting checked in every intimate place for anything you might have smuggled in.

Here, it was different.

The prisoners froze at the sudden voice over the isolation chamber's PA. They were probably wondering whether something was about to be done to them.

No need to worry about that. A mass of light poured down from overhead without warning and swept the entire chamber in a single rapid pass.

A feminine mechanical voice — nothing like the guard's broadcast — rang out once, and one of the prisoners started dripping cold sweat. That would be Inmate No. 77750.

"W-wait! What the hell is this...?!"

While he was still sputtering, a security robot walked up without a flicker of interest and forcibly clamped the same kind of special restraints I was wearing onto him. Then it treated him to an electric spa day from hell.

"Gyaaaaaaagh!"

He must have figured he was some kind of kangaroo, hiding something in his digestive tract. But the world of EFD was a dystopian near-future set in the 2040s, and highly advanced technology had been grafted onto every environment you could name. That strange mass of light that had just swept over us — commonly called a Bio-Scan — was one of those grafts.

I heard it was originally built to tell humans from things that weren't human, then settled into a basic biometric screening tool.

Intake kept rolling right along while the freshly electrocuted inmate foamed at the mouth and seized on the floor.

Baskets had been set out inside the chamber, each holding a uniform labeled with a name and an inmate number. There were no personal name tags. In here, you were either "Prisoner" or your number.

Everyone else got a deep blue uniform. I was issued an orange one — the color that marked a death-row inmate.

Right. I did come here with a death sentence.

The whole thing had felt so unreal I'd briefly forgotten. I changed into the uniform stamped with the loaded number 77777. I already knew this body belonged to a sturdy guy in his late twenties named Han Seungho, so that much, at least, wasn't a problem.

The moment we finished changing, the floor lurched — and the entire isolation chamber began to sink. Turns out the chamber was also a giant freight elevator.

Early in the game story, then? Looking at this freight elevator, we're not exactly at "state-of-the-art" yet.

The fact that this prison used the underground as well as the surface levels didn't exactly land as a shocking twist. Unlike the game, avoiding a capacity crisis would have meant expanding the facility as far as it would go. Of course they'd ended up with a layout like this.

When the freight elevator finally reached the underground, a real final sentence came through the speakers — nothing like what any of us had heard from our judges.

The elevator doors holding us in slid open, and another vast, brutal world unfolded in front of our eyes.

"Newbies!"

That was the first thing we heard the instant the doors opened — a shout aimed at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a group that had just become the center of a few hundred stares. What followed was a roar of cheers and whistles, threaded through with faint, sly snickers, inexplicable sighs, and jeers. None of us had ever received this much attention in our lives. The fact that the audience was a pack of criminals only made it weigh heavier on the shoulders.

"Quiet! You bastards! Quiet! The newbies are freaking out!!"

A big guy deeper in slammed a steel table over and over as he barked the warning, and the noise dropped off in a hurry. A few still didn't give a damn about his warning and kept making a racket — and that, if anything, was the part worth noting.

He's not the king of this place. But he definitely carries some weight.

I still didn't know whether I'd actually fallen into the game or just crossed into a world with similar lore. Either way, I had no memory of a guy like him from ten years of playing. Which meant he either wasn't important, or he'd exit the stage before the story proper even started.

From the most primitive times to the most advanced, human animals have always loved ranking themselves inside a pack. If that man held an absolute position in this prison, he wouldn't need to shout that hard to dominate the room — and the whole room wouldn't have any reason not to listen. In other words, there was no need to let the atmosphere swallow me whole.

That said, I shouldn't stand out too much either. In a pack, the most hated isn't the bad guy. It's the one who sticks out.

Before my body could react on its own again, I kept my mouth shut and scanned the surroundings. Dumped in here with nothing but my bare skin, what I needed most was information.

"Hey, Hamma. Go grab those guys."

"Come on, boss. It's Muhammad. You're calling me the same thing the old boss did, seriously."

"You eat pork AND lab-grown meat anyway! Just go with Hamma!"

The man the big guy had called Hamma stepped forward, scratching his head — dark skin and the distinctive features of the Middle East. This world's Korea, like the real one, had achieved the overwhelming double crown of the world's lowest birthrate and the world's highest suicide rate, and when it finally couldn't take the population collapse anymore it had thrown the doors wide open to foreign immigration. That was why foreigners and mixed-race inmates weren't an ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠uncommon sight even in here. It was also why multinational players had never felt awkward customizing their characters.

"You lot. Line up by inmate number, lowest first, and follow me. Boss wants a word."

Muhammad, who'd just been trading dumb jokes with his "boss," swept his gaze over us with a face gone hard and the intense eyes particular to Middle Eastern men, then jerked his chin. The pressure coming off a Middle Eastern criminal who spoke native-level Korean sat in a completely different weight class from an ordinary inmate. Not in a racist way. That was just how it felt.

"You don't need to come."

I'd been about to fall in with the others when Muhammad casually stepped into my path and shook his head. We were all newbies. The only difference was the color of the uniform and the tag — and yet the way he treated me was already different.

So I asked.

"I'm a newbie too, aren't I?"

"You're an Orange. We don't deal with Oranges here. Maybe if you'd been one who'd lasted a while."

In the game, every player had been a death-row inmate forcibly drafted into Dark Zone exploration, so nobody had bothered drawing lines. Here, apparently, they did.

So they discriminate against death row even though we're all prisoners?

I didn't know why. I just knew the current was there.

"So what am I supposed to do?"

"Those guys get handled on this side. You're over there."

I followed the chin-jerk Muhammad tossed to the side. Another metal gate rolled open over there, and someone walked in.

An utterly ordinary man, early-to-mid thirties by the look of him. Nothing distinctive about his face. The kind of impression you'd forget the second you looked away.

The moment he appeared, every stare in the room swung from this side to that one.

They really don't even try to hide how much they hate him.

Hate wasn't even the word. Loathing. The kind of atmosphere where the whole crowd might grab knives and rush him as one. The man himself couldn't have cared less. He yawned wide, shuffled over, and came to a stop beside me.

"This the fresh Orange who came in today?"

"Yeah."

Muhammad's voice was a lot stiffer than a moment ago. He was radiating, without a shred of subtlety, that he didn't want to share the same air for even one more second. Not that I couldn't understand. The other guy was death row, same as me.

There's no sliding scale for the harm you've done to other people — but even so, a death-row inmate in orange is always worse than a regular inmate in blue. Physiological revulsion was only natural, even among criminals.

"Unclench, Muhammad~. People are gonna think you're about to eat him."

"..."

"You don't need to worry that much. I'm not big on foreigners either."

He flicked his hand like he was shooing a fly, then let it settle onto my shoulder as if it belonged there. It was a light touch that still managed to knead, just slightly, and the sensation crawled over my skin — but I didn't let it show.

"Alright then, newbie. Shall we head to your new sweet home?"

"What, they lock you up for working as a tour guide? Real sweet."

"I like a guy with some spine."

Yeah, well, I'd rather not be some death-row bastard's type.

Just like that I left the plaza-like den of criminals behind and followed the man down the corridor beyond the bars. If this was before the game story had started, even I didn't know exactly what sat in this vast underground space beneath Seoul Southern Prison. I knew in detail what facilities would appear later, and which people would settle into which spaces — but I didn't know the game's beginning, and I didn't know its end.

Come to think of it, EFD was a game with no ending.

The story had dropped indirect breadcrumbs about what kind of situation the prisoners were in, and how they might escape a prison stuffed with oppression and control. Nothing had ever been confirmed. Maybe the tenth-anniversary mega-update had finally added a real ending.

More immediately, the situation a minute ago had been definitely off. Normally the security robots would lock the place down ironclad, clamp down on any suspicious movement, and strictly keep large groups of inmates from gathering in one spot. This was far too open for a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠prison.

"You're thinking this place is way too open, aren't you?"

"Ah. Full-service tour guide. Picnic blanket and all."

"What can I say — I read people. Human observation is my specialty. That face of yours is screaming, 'I have a mountain of questions!'"

A death-row inmate casually announcing that human observation was his specialty carried a certain weight. Talking any further felt like stepping into his rhythm, so I changed the subject just enough.

"So where are we headed? There a cell block just for death row?"

"As if. Maybe in the old days, but this prison doesn't have a dedicated death-row block anymore. Thing is, the Blues around here are extreme color-supremacists — they won't give you a scrap of guidance, information, or kindness. Couldn't just leave a cute newbie to waste time and become a laughingstock, so I came to pick you up myself."

"Appreciate it. I'll buy you a meal if we ever meet on the outside."

"Heh. You're a real riot."

The man walking ahead of me was a lot more talkative and sociable than he looked. Whether that was a mask or the real thing, being able to walk up to a stranger this naturally meant he understood people. Human observation as a specialty. Yeah. I could believe it.

We traded small talk down the corridor, and it wasn't long before we stepped into a space that was, at a glance, a cell block. Unlike the glossy modern blocks on the surface, this was a real prison — the underground carved out wholesale, sturdy walls and pillars driven in to hold it. No windows, to boot.

AI-managed lighting and air circulation in the ceiling, plus CCTV and PA speakers. They dug deep enough that the underground cell blocks run at least three floors. Early-stage facility layout, all right.

It was a simple structure, like an American prison: cells packed tight along the walls, a long corridor out front connecting to a large central staircase and smaller emergency stairs. Exactly one hundred and twenty cells in this one massive zone. Twenty to a floor along one wall.

Assume at least four to a cell and you could house four to five hundred easy.

The surface blocks had already been that huge. If a single underground block was built like this, the prison was holding a staggering number of inmates. It made sense if you thought of them as stand-ins for the players. Just because the numbering had landed on 77777 with me didn't mean there were actually fewer inmates than that. There could be far more.

While I was taking in the scale and the layout, the man who'd guided me here turned around with both arms thrown wide in a theatrical flourish.

"This is Cell Block H-050 of Seoul Southern Prison — your sweet home starting today. Well? Like it?"

"What's the H stand for?"

"Whoa. Not many people ask that on day one. Pretty obvious, though. Hell, right?"

"...Looks like it."

He was wrong.

The H attached to the cell block names stood for Heaven. Ironically enough, for the inmates who ended up in this prison, the cell blocks were the safest, most comfortable, happiest places of all.