Flower Path to Hellfire
Most people figure that as long as the convicts locked up in Seoul Southern Prison keep their Time-Limited Human Rights in good standing, they don't actually need that much money.
That is the kind of thing you only believe if you have no idea how this place really works.
Goddamn Special Duty. If it weren't for the money, I wouldn't be doing this shit…!
Kim Jeong-ho cursed under his breath as he jammed anything that looked like it might sell into his pack. The oversized backpack already sagged with a serious haul, but his hands and his eyes never stopped. And why would they? There was no telling when a chance like this would come around again.
"Hey! We need to start pulling out!"
A man's voice crackled over the radio, and Kim Jeong-ho's face twisted.
"I told you to wait a little longer!"
"Just grab what you can and get out here! Everyone's looking like they can't hold much longer!"
"…Damn it!"
Useless garbage. Opportunities like this did not come around every day. Did they honestly not understand that this was exactly when you had to grab a real share?
Then again, we slapped this plan together with a bunch of ragtag nobodies. Of course it's falling apart at the finish line.
The fact the plan had even gotten this far was a miracle. He had no choice but to tidy up his pack and rejoin the teammates waiting outside the store. They had clearly gotten the same complaint-soaked radio call, and they were not bothering to hide how pissed they were.
We handed those bastards a chance to loot this mega department store at will, and now the people who actually put the plan together cannot even farm properly. Of course they were pissed.
"I get that you're unhappy, but those idiots holding the line downstairs are starting to whine. Nothing we can do. We'll have to wrap this up and get out."
"Can't we just ditch them and bounce on our own? I'm too pissed to want them coming with us."
Kim Jeong-ho shook his head. He wanted to abandon them too, but the siren was already screaming. Visibility was already garbage with fog in every direction. Dumping that reliable headcount and walking out was no guarantee they would make it out alive themselves.
Like it or not, they had to stick together until the end. Winner-take-all was not an option in a situation like this.
"They're here! Team 1!"
"Good. Let's get out of here!"
"Cover us! These monsters just keep coming!"
"Peel them off and start getting ready to move!"
Gunfire rattled and rang through the department store's central hall, under the siren that never stopped wailing outside. At the heart of it, roughly twenty convicts held a circular formation, cutting down the monsters pouring in from every side. With this many inmates packed together, they could weather a rush for a while, even when the things came on hard.
Next time I should just recruit competent teams and run a proper joint operation. First, though… we have to get out of here.
A pore-riddled Smoker spotted him at the foot of the central stairs and came charging. Kim Jeong-ho met it with a spike-studded club and put everything he had into the swing. The thing was not as tanky as he had expected — one hit turned it into a flying hunk of gore. Peak satisfaction. There were just so many of them that dropping one or two barely registered.
"Stick close this way! We're opening a path!"
"Everyone on Team 1! You remember your positions, right?!"
"Don't screw this up! Anyone who falls behind gets left!"
Aside from Team 2, who had been with them from the start, most of them were a ragtag mess — but when it came time to escape, they actually synced up pretty well.
Well, if these guys make it out and blab about what we pulled, that's not so bad either.
More inmates would get interested in his methods, and Kim Jeong-ho could leisurely pick the wheat from the chaff and take them in. The way the prison worked them like dogs, the way the strong inmates ran the inside — he would just treat Special Duty like a business and take it over. Keep making money, keep making more, and someday he too would…
"There! The passage to the underground mall!"
"Pick up the pace! We're punching through in one go!"
That was as far as the daydream went. Kim Jeong-ho took the lead so some half-assed nobody would not start pointing fingers, guiding the team with practiced ease. The heavy lifting was mostly Team 2's job anyway — they had the guns. Their firepower plus this many bodies, and getting out would be a piece of cake.
They peeled off the monsters charging from every direction and somehow forced their way into the underground mall. Through the fog, pale green emergency lights glowed faintly. Those lights kicked on automatically once power was restored and the underground bunker's blast door opened. In this maze of an underground mall, they pointed the way with perfect accuracy.
Two shots cracked through the fog.
"We're almost out of ammo! How far is the bunker entrance?!"
"Almost there! That's… the last emergency light!"
According to everything they had gathered from countless runs, if you found exactly ten emergency lights in this underground mall and followed them, you reached the bunker entrance. The catch was you had to restore power first or the lights would not come on — and the second you did, the siren screamed and monsters came flooding in. That made the whole thing a nightmare to pull off.
But they had done it. A fat haul, almost no stragglers, and they had reached the final gate.
"The underground bunker!"
"The blast door's actually open?!"
"Get in! They're coming!"
The blast door was huge enough for a truck or two to drive through. Confirming it stood open, Kim Jeong-ho allowed himself a smile of triumph. He had been right all along. Once everyone was inside and they shut the door, the exit on the other side would open. Then they could walk out with this precious intel, this experience, and everything that was worth money.
A monumental moment. The road ahead turning into a flower-lined path.
Right up until the touch panel controlling the blast door flashed red and went dead.
"…What?"
"Hey, what's going on? Shut the blast door already!"
"No, it's…"
It would not close. He tried the panel again. Same ominous beep, same blinking red light.
"W-why is this…?"
"Damn it! What now?! Did you mess with something?!"
Team 2's leader finally snapped, firing off a round as he demanded answers, but Kim Jeong-ho had nothing. By his calculations the blast door should already be sealed and they should be prepping to escape. Instead the one thing that mattered refused to close.
"It won't close."
"What?!"
"The blast door won't close, goddamn it!"
The bright flower path had just become a road through hell, writhing with infernal fire.
If it had been an analog key or a manual crank, my interference would not have worked. Unfortunately for them, this underground bunker's blast door ran on an electronic security system.
Which meant the Crazy Clock on my wrist, having just finished its work, got to shine.
Unauthorized personnel cannot use ■■■ Corporation security facilities.
According to this Crazy Clock, I was authorized personnel — a test subject — but that did not really matter. My goal was not escaping through the underground bunker anyway.
"Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me! Now what?! We trusted you bastards to get us this far!"
"The fog's got the humidity high… there's a chance the electronics just failed. Or the system sat dark for so long that powering it up all at once threw a temporary error."
"Bullshit! Anyone can see your method was wrong! Incompetent sons of bitches!"
"I have been listening to this shit long enough, you son of a bitch… When we were all splitting the good stuff you didn't make a peep, and now that it isn't going your way you're looking to cut us loose? You want to run your mouth like that, put down everything you took thanks to us and get the hell out."
"Other way around. You only made it this far because of us. If anyone should walk out empty-handed, it's you."
Two shots cracked. A slide racked.
"Stop fighting and hold the line, you morons! We're out of ammo!"
"…You fix this. If we don't get out of here, you die first."
"I don't need you to tell me that, asshole."
A simple shouting match had been a few words away from turning into a fire they could not put out, but the friends from Team 1 and Team 2 seemed a little more rational than I had expected. Rationality can sit on a problem for a while, though. It cannot sew the thing shut. Human beings will preach reason and good sense right up until they are backed into a corner, and then they hand the wheel to instinct.
And the Darkzone is overflowing with things that know exactly how to yank on a human being's most primitive instincts.
Fear, for example.
"AAAAAH!"
I waited behind the convicts who had formed a defensive line at the mouth of the blast door, picked my moment, hit one of them from behind, and steered him into the Smokers' reach. The milky fog already made it hard to see anything, and the Smokers were coming on so viciously that when a scream went up, nobody thought to suspect one of their own.
That was the blind spot. The instant one man left the line, the gap in firepower became everyone else's problem. The heavier that burden got, the faster the anxiety swelled, and a swollen anxiety does not stay anxiety for long. It turns into a fear that eats mind and body alike.
"H-heeek! Get away!"
"Hold the line!"
"Don't fold, you bastard! If you drop out, somebody else dies!"
Easy to say. Since when has yelling at a human being ever made one obedient? These were men who had not even kept the most basic laws of the outside world, which was how they had ended up in here in the first place.
I put my faith in the contrarian streak and the distrust living in every one of them. Panic was inevitable. It was only a matter of time.
"Th-this is all wrong! We trusted those bastards to get us here, and now look! Why can't we get out?!"
"Goddamn it! We're peeling off on our own! I am not sitting here waiting to die like a dog!"
"Don't move! Hold your ground!"
"Fuck off!"
The ones with the weakest nerves went first, one after another, and the line came apart. If this had been a war, a commander would have known at this point that the battle was lost.
I, however, wanted these people to taste an extremely high high and an extremely low low together. They had put me through hell. They could pay for it. Which meant I could not let the team collapse just yet.
More to the point, the backpacks they were carrying were far too valuable to leave behind.
"…The subway!"
"What?!"
"It's the subway! I can hear the subway!"
There was no sound at all, but once I said it, they looked like people who had just found a new hope at the bottom of a very deep despair.
"The subway… that's right! You can reach the subway station through this underground mall. If we can't get out through the bunker, we take the train!"
"I-I've heard that too! In a modern-city Special Duty zone like this, there's always a subway exit somewhere!"
"Damn it, why didn't we think of that?!"
"We're already deep in the underground mall, so we can't be that far from the station! We'll be there in no time!"
"That's it! Forget this bunker and move for the subway station!"
The sight of several dozen ugly little backpacks threatening and accusing one another, then suddenly laughing and promising to cooperate all over again, was so tearfully beautiful, so moving, that I felt full without taking a single bite.
Because those backpacks would, in the very near future, have their titles transferred to me. Tax-free.
"To the subway! We're convicts — we don't even have to pay the fare!"
"Free ride!"
"Priority seats are free too!"
I stood in front of those fog-blinded convicts and shouted it with complete confidence, leading them toward their final destination.