Don't Meet Me in the Darkzone

The veteran guard who'd put in a good long stretch at Seoul Southern Prison swallowed hard, his body locking up before he even realized it.

Every inmate assigned to Special Duty had already come back—or been written off as dead—and he'd figured the day's work was finished. Then, just shy of midnight, the last returnee showed up like he owned the place.

Exactly as the AI announcer's bloodless voice declared, a man walked into the isolation chamber with the stench of scorched cloth rolling off him in waves.

One look was enough ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to know he was no ordinary returnee. That acrid burnt smell told the story on its own—his clothes and gear were caked in soot, scored and torn in more places than not. The worst of it was the gas mask. For reasons the guard couldn't begin to guess, the man had wound black duct tape around roughly half the goggles. The tape itself was blistered and slightly melted, same as everything else.

"Never thought I'd live long enough to miss the air in a prison."

Muttering that, he peeled the mask off slow. A crust of dried blood showed at his forehead. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Beyond that, no obvious trauma. Not yet, anyway.

Only then did the guard, burying his bewilderment, take up the microphone and put a question to the final returnee.

"I don't. Most of it's just scrapes. No signs of infection."

"Even the medical service for minor injuries is just a first-aid kit and some regen ointment, isn't it?"

He was right. And that was not something a rookie inmate—only a week inside, minutes away from day eight—had any business already knowing. Still, the man didn't want medical services, so that was the end of it. He could always apply later on his own. They'd just squeeze him for a steeper fee when he did. Regretting it then would be his problem.

"If you're going to replace it anyway, I'd like something sturdier ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠next time. I almost died out there."

Not the attitude of a typical inmate, but the guard didn't bother sending a security robot to administer any discipline. Inmate No. 77777 had been flagged as a person of interest—the Warden himself had issued separate instructions. Right now the priority was watching his every move and reporting anything unusual. And privately, the guard was curious whether this newcomer might walk the same road as those monsters.

I only managed to get out of the communal washroom after midnight. Then I checked the amount that had just landed in my Prison Banking.

Twenty million won. That was what I got after they'd taken their cuts and rounded it off clean.

I might look impressive for shattering records two Darkzone deployments in a row, but this was nothing more than riding a transitional period. Suppose I'd farmed the same items in the present day and come back with them. How much would I have gotten? Ten million? Five million at worst? The answer was around two million. At the ten-year mark of EFD, the haul I'd brought in today would be, at best, the kind of gear you'd call decent.

So by simple math, I'm getting twenty million right now—ten years early—for stuff I'd be lucky to fetch two million for a decade from now.

A full ten-year gap in the story meant the value of each item was bound to split that wide. The single most expensive piece I brought back today was, without question, the fresh biological tissue sample from the Screamer. Whether most inmates had never run into one, or they'd met one and gotten wiped because they didn't know how to handle it, people who'd returned with Screamer tissue—myself included—could be counted on one hand. And the ones who'd gotten samples before me had mostly dragged back low-grade scraps they'd mangled past any real research value. That said it all.

On top of that, I sold off everything I'd farmed inside the research facility, plus the security-personnel gear from the armory. The body armor was too limited in performance for my taste, and the pistol was powder-based—far too dangerous to use in the Darkzone.

In the end I sold off most of what I farmed, nice and tidy. That's a win for me.

I worked the stiffness out of my muscles, joints popping, and walked the long corridor. Past midnight, most cell blocks were in lights-out, so the place was dark and quiet. At this hour the bulkheads came down and sealed the corridors in every block except the neutral ones, which meant inmate movement was locked down. Except for cases like mine, where the guards had specially authorized night passage, even the nastiest inmates kept their heads down after lights-out. And unless it was a place like Cell Block H-088, where the merchants stayed open late, the other Neutral Zones weren't much different.

With nearly every light gone except the emergency lamps and the glow of the internal CCTV, I walked the night prison savoring a freedom I'd never felt before.

An inmate on authorized night passage? In the real world they'd have laughed in my face and told me to stop talking shit.

This prison was bizarrely open with inmates in some ways and oppressively tight in others. I felt that all over again. I was starting to wonder if this was even a prison I recognized, or just a city for criminals wearing a prison's skin. Or was it this: they packed all the filth—criminals—into this giant cesspit so it wouldn't overflow into the world, then left them to stew among themselves?

Given that they slap Time-Limited Human Rights on every inmate and push them into Special Duty, it's not that far-fetched.

EFD was a dystopian horror co-op set in a fictional 2040s South Korea, wasn't it? If they could throw useless inmates at Darkzone exploration—anomalies, extradimensional spaces, the whole nightmare—they probably figured it didn't matter. Surprisingly, whether real or fictional, Koreans probably wouldn't care much how criminals got treated. If word got out that they were grinding inmates through Darkzone expeditions, the government's approval rating might actually skyrocket.

Well. That's none of my business.

What mattered to me was surviving and growing right now, and someday digging up EFD's countless secrets and seeing the ending I never got to see. I'd already spent ten years on this. Nothing said I couldn't do it again.

Maybe this time I won't even need ten years.

I still had every scrap of experience and knowledge about EFD, and I'd been handed a high-performance body to go with it. Being locked into a one-credit run was a bit of a shame, but it wasn't like I couldn't work with it.

...Thud. Thud.

A dull impact rolled out of the darkness, and I narrowed my eyes.

A streak of light punched through the dark. I snapped my torso hard to the side. What flashed past my vision looked like a blade at first glance. It wasn't.

A chain?

Heavier and meaner than a whip, with a thick weight at the end so it would throw clean. The instant I registered that, I dropped my hips. The chain I'd thought I'd slipped with a sidestep cracked a sonic boom and smashed through the space where my face had been. Same principle as grabbing one end of a long line and yanking—the far end writhes like a snake and lashes everything around it. This one was a little slower because of the weight. A leather whip would have been much faster.

"...There's always one asshole who just has to stay up and act out when the grown-ups tell him to go to sleep."

I sneered into the dark the chain had slithered back into, and someone walked out of it, slow. The chain dragged across the cement, scraping out an ugly kak, kakaak.

The figure who stepped into the emergency light was a man with an unsettling presence. Tall and slender in a way that didn't sit right on a man, a faintly fox-like face smeared with dark red. How to put it—he looked like he'd dressed himself in unpleasantness, clothes and accessories both. His eyes rolled down to the name tag on my chest.

77777. Confirming the inmate number written there in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠place of a name, he licked his lips.

"You're an Orange too, huh?"

At the word too, I checked the color of his jumpsuit. Same orange as mine. I'd missed it because the emergency lights were a soft green.

"So because we're both Oranges, I'm supposed to bond with the guy who just flung a chain at me out of nowhere?"

"I do feel bad about that~. But at this hour, the only Oranges wandering around fall into two types. Can't blame a guy for getting mixed up, right?"

"What types? The pervert who walks around with a chain? Or a decent, law-abiding citizen like me?"

The moment I said it he cackled and made a huge fuss, like he'd just heard the funniest joke in the world, ready to roll on the floor clutching his stomach. It didn't last. The laughter vanished in a blink and he toyed with the handle of the chain in his hand, like a predator waiting for an opening.

"Like I said, there's only two kinds of Orange wandering around alone at this ungodly hour. One is someone like me—too much of a sense of duty to leave the vermin alone. And the other is... vermin whose human rights got wiped out a long time ago, who can't sleep easy in their own cells, so they sneak out."

"Ah."

Only then could I make out another silhouette, crouched and groaning in the darkness. Regular inmates usually left death row convicts alone even after their Human Rights Guarantee Period expired—there was nothing to gain by touching them. But another death row inmate? Especially the ones whose Human Rights Guarantee Period was still comfortable and who had the strength to match. Their bodies would ache every night with an urge they couldn't contain. The urge to kill. And what would those types do? Touch an inmate whose rights were still active and you'd get instant retaliation. So of course they'd go hunting for easy prey whose Human Rights Guarantee Period had already been wiped.

"So you can understand why I got mixed up, right?"

"Of course. We've both still got plenty of Human Rights Guarantee Period left. No need to get ugly over nothing."

I didn't care if this guy hunted inmates with expired rights every night. It wasn't my business, and he wasn't targeting me. I brushed past him like nothing had happened and gave his shoulder a light pat. Of course, I didn't forget to return the favor for the chain he'd accidentally thrown at me.

"Doesn't matter here, but don't run into me in the Darkzone. You look like the kind of moron who'd be real easy to loot."

"...!"

Every inmate here had Time-Limited Human Rights. Especially the death row convicts who had to rot in this place for life—they got thrown into the Darkzone often. So someday, we were bound to cross paths.

I left Inmate No. 37811 behind me and walked on through another peaceful night at the prison.