I'm a Train Robber
I led the half-dazed prisoners out of the dead underground bunker and we started moving again. That was when I felt it — a gaze boring into my back. I turned my head just enough to check.
Sure enough, among the Team 1 members trailing not far behind, one guy was staring me down with murder in his eyes.
The bunker hadn't worked the way he'd expected. The blame had piled onto him, and now I'd been crowned the prisoners' new hope. That clearly grated on him something fierce. Surviving was everyone's top priority now, though, so he couldn't show it openly. He'd just started watching me — the guy who'd suddenly taken the lead.
People with bloated egos and a desperate hunger for recognition usually react like that. The type who can generously forgive their own failures, but can't stand it when someone better than them shows up. And if that better person actually succeeds? He'd rather his guts burst and kill him than sit there watching with a stomach full of bile.
So I decided to keep a close eye on him too.
He's a criminal at his core. No way he'll just let this slide.
Most ordinary people become criminals because of a lack of education or a lack of patience. Even someone born with antisocial tendencies can live like a normal person if you raise them right. But the ones whose brains are fundamentally fried? You can lecture them gently or beat discipline into them — they'll never grow any patience. So they endlessly envy, resent, rage at, and despise other people, until finally their brains get eaten alive by twisted desire and they commit every kind of grotesque crime.
And I was currently moving with a tail of those human dregs. Being careful couldn't hurt.
"Hey, more importantly — do you even know the way to the subway station?!"
A prisoner threw a sharp question at me then, but I answered smoothly.
"The underground bunker is a high-security facility, so you can only reach it by following special emergency lights like we just did. But the subway is a public facility anyone can use, right? So it's easy to find."
"How the hell are you supposed to find it in this fog?!"
"Look at your feet. There's tactile paving."
"Huh?!"
"There's actually tactile paving on the floor! How did we not notice this until now?"
Right. Tactile paving.
After the 2020s they stopped installing much of it, citing budget problems. But in the era before that, the Korean government had gone all-in, obsessively laying the stuff down across every major road and public facility. The blocks had a distinct pattern and came in a bright, unmistakable yellow, so even in this murky fog they weren't hard to spot.
"But how are you supposed to find the subway station with just tactile paving?!"
I'd already answered more than enough, but someone was still hammering me with questions. Someone who didn't trust me, most likely. Probably from Team 1 or Team 2. Still, I couldn't afford to look rattled here.
"You moron. You think the tactile paving in a public facility is going to lead blind people to some random shop they don't even need, or is it going to guide them exactly where they need to go?"
"That's... a fair point."
"The places tactile paving leads you in a public facility are pretty much set. The information desk where you can get help from staff, the restrooms, and whatever the facility is actually for. In this case, the path from the underground mall to the subway station, the bathrooms, and maybe the elevators — that's about all the paving is going to show you."
Imagine following the tactile paving and ending up at a hair salon or a pho shop. Even a blind person would laugh in disbelief.
I threw his own criticism right back at him, and he seemed to run out of things to say. No more annoying tackles after that. Thanks to the exchange, the prisoners who weren't thinking too hard started trusting me even more as I led from the front. And the ones who still suspected me? I could pick them out now just from the vibe.
They'd have been better off not even showing they were suspicious.
Then again, if they had that much sense, they wouldn't have gotten caught in the first place.
If they'd had any street smarts, they at least would've tried not to get caught. If they'd had any brains, they wouldn't have committed the crime to begin with. When you really thought about it, most of the criminals who ended up in prison had neither sense nor brains.
Leading a whole pack of those idiots, following the tactile paving straight through the underground mall — that alone ate up maybe ten minutes. Gradually, the Smokers trailing behind us started outnumbering the ones blocking our path ahead.
Which meant we were going the right way.
Playing my part at the front of the pack, I took one of the two Smokers charging from ahead on the shoulder and flung it aside, then drove a knife into the other as I brushed past. The one with its nape cleanly pierced collapsed without any real resistance and got trampled under the prisoners' feet. The one I'd shoulder-checked was finished off by somebody else.
I didn't touch my main weapons at all — not Pretty, my claw hammer, not the alloy-steel machete, not the compound bow. And of course the Modular Exo-Suit was powered down. Not that holding the lead of this pack was particularly hard.
The most dangerous thing about Smokers was that they could instantly tap into a kind of all-in physical power that didn't come with a reverse gear. You just had to deal with them before they committed to using that strength, knowing their own bodies would collapse. EFD newbies who couldn't catch that subtle timing got dropped in a single hit. But a veteran like me, now equipped with this excellent body, could read the timing without much trouble.
"Looks like there aren't any more of those monsters up ahead? I've only been hearing them from behind for a while now."
"Then that's great! Doesn't that mean we're about to escape?!"
"Y-yeah. Let's get the hell out of this miserable place already!"
Having a dream is a good thing. Dreams give people the drive to keep living, and they spend their lives without reservation in pursuit of them. And the leftovers after all that spending become excellent fertilizer, so this society can keep growing.
At last, our dream revealed itself.
"The subway station entrance!"
Someone's shout, and I could feel the mood ignite. If this were the outside world, some state-certified agent who looked like he spent at least twenty bucks a meal just keeping that physique would have popped out to check our tickets. But these were free spirits, unbound by the rules of the outside world.
Disposable tickets and all the rest of it be damned — we vaulted the turnstiles without a second thought. I wondered if this was how a sheep felt when it boldly leapt the pasture fence, refusing to spend the rest of its life getting sheared. We may not have made it over the prison walls, but we sure as hell cleared the fence of capitalism.
A countless number of Smokers were still on our tail, though. If we couldn't shake them, we'd end up in the same situation as when we got cornered in that underground bunker.
If I weren't here, that is.
Places that doubled as disaster shelters, like subway stations, came equipped with basic defenses against common hazards — protections against toxic gas flowing in or out, or fire spreading from a blaze. Halfway down the stairs below the turnstiles, I opened the fire-hydrant cabinet mounted on the wall and smashed the emergency button with my fist.
Instead of a fire alarm going off, a thick fire shutter dropped from the stairwell ceiling. The Smokers that arrived a step behind us piled up against it, crushing each other until their fragile bodies started bursting. Good thing it wasn't one of those state-of-the-art shutters that opened if a person pressed a certain spot hard enough — just a stupidly thick old-fashioned slab. We got lucky.
I used to use this gimmick all the time to shake a Native Species Wave before escaping via subway. And it actually works.
Honestly, I'd been half-skeptical even as I opened the hydrant cabinet. But yeah — this world really was EFD.
I dusted off my hands and came down to the platform. The prisoners who'd arrived ahead of me were scattered around, breathing hard. They'd fought nonstop against Native Species pouring in like mad at the department store, fought again on the way to the underground bunker, and kept fighting in the bunker until they got cornered. After pouring out every last ounce of strength just to make it here, even sturdy grown men were completely drained. Some were so exhausted they'd even dumped the heavy backpacks crushing their bodies and were just gasping for air.
A truly heartwarming sight.
"Hah, hah. So where's the damn subway? Why is the platform empty?"
"Don't tell me we got played again...?"
"Which bastard was it who stirred everyone up about escaping on the subway..."
See that? The second they catch their breath, their true nature comes crawling out. I never get tired of this.
"Wipe those looks off your faces and get ready. It's coming."
"What's coming...?"
Clunk! Clunk! Clunk!
The rumble of a heavy vehicle barreling toward us echoed from far off, and every prisoner's head snapped around. Charging out of the fog-choked tunnel with headlights blazing was the one we'd been dying to see.
"It's a train! It's a real train!"
"Holy shit, we're alive! We're actually alive!"
"Kh-hhk, we can finally get out of this goddamn place...!"
The train that had come roaring in screeched to a halt in front of us with an ugly, drawn-out squeal. Then every car's doors opened, and the prisoners piled in, shoving past each other without a shred of order. Nobody was getting off anyway, so they could've boarded comfortably — but they all stampeded into a single car like they'd planned it that way.
Team 1 and Team 2 brushed past me last, shooting me complicated looks, but boarded without a word. They were all too wrecked, mentally and physically, to pick a fight over pride right now. Especially Team 2, who'd been the backbone of our firepower — they were completely out of ammo.
I confirmed every backpack had boarded, then got on last.
"But you see..."
I looked over the prisoners sprawled across the car and dropped the signature line of a famous TV host — the guy behind shows like That's What I'm Curious About, Food Z-Files, and PD's Notes.
"Did you know that the subway escape route doesn't actually grant you an 'escape clear' just for boarding the train?"
Unlike outside, the view in here was crystal clear, not a wisp of fog — and through that clean air, the prisoners stared at me with faces that said, What the hell is this guy talking about?
I didn't care. I pressed on, drawing on the vast experience and knowledge of a ten-year EFD veteran. After all, if I didn't say it now, I wouldn't get another chance.
"Some escape routes give you an escape clear just for entering, so you get transferred immediately to an isolation room managed by the prison. But there are plenty of other exits that only count once you've satisfied a whole list of conditions."
Elevators and underground bunkers, for instance, needed a power supply, operational authorization, and so on. Cramped vent shafts and sewer-pipe exits wouldn't let you escape if you were carrying a medium-or-larger backpack with that ridiculous bulk. On top of that, there were escape helicopters you could call with a flare, exits that only opened during certain time windows — EFD had all kinds of bizarre escape routes.
"You little shit, what the hell have you been going on about..."
"So here's the question. How do the Prisoners who boarded this subway earn their escape clear?"
The Dark Zone granted enormous wealth and power depending on luck and skill — but it also imposed trials and despair to match. High risk, high return. That simple system was the basic framework.
Screeeech, clunk, clunk, clunk.
The train had already started moving. Which meant the prisoners aboard had entered the final stage of earning their escape clear. There was no turning back now.
"The way to get an escape clear is simple. You survive the Death Tunnel."
"I'm telling you, what kind of bullshit have you been—"
CRASH!
Just as one of the pissed-off prisoners was about to unload a stream of curses at me, the outer window of the car shattered, and something punched through and snatched him by the nape in an instant.
Gh— ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah!!!
Wind howled through the broken glass. The clanking noise, the violent shaking, the interior lights starting to flicker — and through it all, the victim's scream receded in a grotesque fade. He'd been so exhausted he'd taken off all his gear and his backpack, which made him an easy snatch from outside.
And there just so happened to be about twenty guys like that in here.
I kindly drew my alloy-steel machete and gestured at them.