Welcome to Escape From Darkzone

In a sealed-off world where not a single ray of sunlight ever reaches, telling night from day is no easy thing.

For prisoners locked inside especially, without the alarms that blare once at morning wake-up and once at lights-out, it is not uncommon to have no idea what time it even is.

But humans are creatures of adaptation. Do what everyone else does, and you are already halfway there.

Maybe that was why.

After repeating that so-called daily routine just a handful of times, the day arrived in what felt like an instant.

Before the main story of Escape From Darkzone could begin, the last chance had arrived for a handful of lucky petty criminals to crawl out of this hell.

Men who had been serving anywhere from a few months on the short end to one to three years on the long end now held, on this very day, a golden ticket back into society.

I looked at my cellmates — men whose names I still did not know and whose inmate numbers I had never bothered to memorize. Or rather, at the soon-to-be civilians they were about to become.

"Boss! I won't forget you even after I get out!"

"I'll come visit all the time!"

"I'll even send you care packages!"

"Yeah, sure you will. Spare me the bullshit."

I smacked each of their heads in turn as they hopped around, buzzing with excitement.

This prison was about to become a landlocked Alcatraz — a place no ordinary visitor, no human rights group, not even a lawyer would ever be allowed to approach again.

Just like in EFD, every last connection between this place and the outside world was about to be severed completely.

"I'm a death row inmate, so maybe I'm not the one who should be saying this — but once you get out, don't commit another crime. I'm not telling you to be a good person. I'm telling you to live like you will never, ever set foot in this prison again."

"Of course not. We're completely reformed now!"

"First thing I'm doing is getting a job."

"No more breaking into empty houses, I swear."

There was no guarantee these idiots would stay clean once they hit the street. I warned them anyway, hoping that if they did slip, they at least would not slip into anything ugly enough to land them back in here.

"I'm being serious, so listen. This prison is about to be completely cut off from the outside. The second you walk out that door, you will not be able to get a single scrap of information about this place, and you will not be able to come anywhere near it. Not as long as you stay ordinary civilians."

The sudden shift in my tone wiped the grins off their faces. They listened.

"Once you're out, forget this place ever existed. Don't go digging around out of curiosity. Don't even let anyone know you did time here. The second you leave, your criminal records get wiped clean anyway — so live like the brand-new people you technically are."

"...Just what the hell is going to happen?"

"Something worse than anything you can imagine."

And something I had been preparing for a very long time.

I left it at that and personally walked them to the elevator, now changed out of their prison uniforms and into ordinary clothes.

Today, even inmates from other cell blocks — even the most vicious long-termers and death row convicts — turned out to see the release group off. They understood, in a vague, instinctive way, that the people leaving today had burned through a lifetime's worth of luck to claim one last right to survive.

A few of the ones who felt, deep down, that they themselves would never walk out of here muttered curses under their breath or quietly shed tears. There was nothing to be done about that.

In the face of a current this vast, what could a mere human do? What could prisoners — people already ranked well below mere humans — possibly do?

You either submitted and accepted it, or you resisted with everything you had and were ground to dust. That was the entire menu.

Security robots and guards were already in full readiness, braced for a riot that might or might not come. If the inmates who had been holding it together finally snapped and rose up demanding to be let out too, genuine chaos would follow.

But contrary to the guards' fears, the prisoners simply stood and watched the lucky ones go.

I watched in silence as well, as the men who had spent a short stretch as my cellmates and self-appointed underlings vanished beyond the elevator doors.

At last every elevator in every cell block carried its release group back into society, and the same old ominous hush settled over the prison once more.

The ones left behind were still restless, killing time with nothing in particular, when a familiar voice rolled through the internal speakers.

There it was.

A little earlier than I had expected, but not meaningfully different from the event I remembered.

The very first thing any new EFD player heard upon logging in for the first time was this exact announcement from the Warden.

"H-hey, what the hell is this...?"

"This is insane, fuck! I only killed one guy and got five years!"

"So I kidnapped a couple of kids, big fucking deal?! I didn't do anything bad enough for a death sentence!"

"Warden, you son of a bitch!!"

Sure enough, the inmates who had been slouching around a moment ago exploded, roaring and thrashing like animals. But this had been decided long before today, and even the Warden himself could not have stopped it.

How could he? This deranged policy had been cooked up jointly by the President of South Korea, the ruling party, the opposition, the corporate consortium, and the military.

When the executive branch, the legislature, the corporate bloc that could strangle the national economy, and the armed forces all moved as one, the idea that the judiciary could stand in their way alone was a joke. If that had been possible, the theme of this world would not have been dystopia.

So this, at least, had to be accepted.

"Fuck it! Screw all of you! Let's just kill each other and get it over with!!"

One inmate whose last thread of reason finally snapped yanked a homemade pistol from inside his clothes and charged the guards. A cheap pipe gun like that could reliably put one person down — but he had picked the wrong opponents.

BRAAAAAAT-AT-AT-AT-AT!

The instant the homemade pistol came out, the security robots unloaded their 20mm autocannons without the slightest restraint and, in a heartbeat, turned one human being into something that had once been a human being.

"......"

"......"

"......"

The thick stench of blood tangled in the gunpowder smoke dumped a bucket of ice water over every inmate whose head had been boiling a second earlier.

The murderous atmosphere vanished so completely it was hard to believe it had ever been there. An ugly silence rushed back in to fill the gap, and the Warden drove the nail in over the speakers once more.

More precisely, every scrap of information about the Dark Zones had been locked down from the start, and the ones who actually ran this world — the real ones — had been paid off with a slice of the profits in exchange for looking the other way.

Everyone starts equally at the bottom of the Dark Zone. Everyone meets their end equally in the Dark Zone.

No one can survive forever. No one can escape forever. And ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠because that hope is absolutely, permanently impossible, we gave this place a name that holds every last scrap of that impossible wish.

Escape From Darkzone. EFD.

"What the hell good is that, fuck!"

"We can't even get out! What's the point of making money?!"

"If you've got a problem, you go do it, asshole!"

They said that. But by now, most of them would have figured it out.

What the prison actually wanted. And that they themselves were the only "manpower" capable of providing it.

Needless to say, no one else stepped up to lead a riot.

Every last one of them wanted, with their whole chest, to shoot a guard, stab a guard, blow a guard apart right then and there. Not one of them moved.

Because they were afraid of dying?

No.

Because dying a pointless dog's death here would be a waste. Better to give the prison what it wanted, and in exchange wring every last drop of power and pleasure out of the arrangement. For now, they would endure.

A bare-minimum insurance policy, freshly installed to head off any mass strike by the newly minted death row population — a semi-compulsory Dark Zone deployment system.

In the actual EFD story, there had been no such gentle condition as "at least once a week." You either went in voluntarily, or you were executed on the spot. That was the whole choice.

As if anyone was going to focus on Special Duty without complaint. Still, that was the official line, and there was nothing to be gained by pushing back now.

The inmates swallowed their rage and started hunting for a new way forward. If they were never getting out of this prison alive, they might as well become kings among death row inmates. Anything less would just feel like a waste.

With that, the Warden's broadcast ended.

The guards, security robots in tow, applied a quiet, unmistakable pressure to the inmates around them as they dispersed to their posts. The old, almost cozy relationship between guard and prisoner was officially dead. That much had just been proven.

Still, give it enough time and the guards will start greasing the wheels for inmates again, just to skim their own cut. For now, both sides are right to keep their heads down.

A brand-new policy and a brand-new system had just gone live. The prison could not afford even a small error or a single loophole, so they would have locked everything down tight. Once everyone settled into the new rules, the quiet little deals between guards and inmates would start circulating again.

If every prisoner who walked through these gates was never getting out, the administration would look the other way when the guards took their cut. That much was obvious.

Hoping that day would come around again, I pushed myself up from the railing I had been leaning on.

What I needed to do next was obvious.

New system just dropped. Time to adapt.

It was not new to me at all. But it was the first time, since I had woken up in this world, that the real story was actually starting.

Just as I expected, the first thing I saw when I got back to Cell Block H-050 was a massive machine that had descended from the ceiling.

It looked like someone had taken a bank's ATMs and welded a whole row of them together, and from the way people were using it, that was more or less what it was for. A few inmates were already standing in front of it, tapping at the touch panels and poking through the functions.

"Yo, what the hell is this thing exactly?"

"Looking at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it, you can apply for Special Duty through this now, plus there's an auction house where ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you can trade anything, and... a squad recruitment system so you can put your own team together."

"The kind of freaky machines you only used to see on the outside are showing up in prison now. End times, I'm telling you. End times."

"Yeah. Purists can sit this one out~."

So it was no longer a matter of hunting down your assigned officer, sitting through a review, and filing an application one step at a time. Anyone could decide for themselves whether to drop into the Dark Zone.

Throw in the auction house and the squad recruitment system, and they were not even pretending otherwise. They were shoving inmates in the back and asking, You're still not going into the Dark Zone? Really?

They want it that badly? Fine. I'll go.

I stepped up to a free machine — and for some reason, a spot opened the moment I walked over — scanned my iris and fingerprints, and logged in.

The integrated system sat on an intranet called PrisonNet, and it used a prisoner's biometric data as their account information. Prison Banking ran on the same structure, so it was not that different. It had a thick sci-fi smell to it, I had to admit.

I put off applying for a Dark Zone drop for the moment and opened the squad recruitment board first.

Inmates who had gotten there a step ahead of me had already plastered the thing with recruitment posts.

That was a party you joined if you wanted to suffer.

One look and you could tell it was just two horny bastards sitting in there.

Hmm. Smells like takoyaki~.

Cilantro's a bit much for me too, honestly.

"Jesus. Not a single normal person in this whole place."

Nothing for it, then. Time for this prison's most well-adjusted citizen — the Super Rookie everyone was already watching — Han Seungho himself to drop a recruitment post.

"Hey, if you've got a problem, go apply to another party~. I'll just whale and spam the board~."

This insane pay-to-post system charged you a fee every time you wanted to keep writing. I used it exactly as intended — copying the post like a man possessed and slamming infinite paste.

If they don't show up for interviews soon, this game is actually going to die!!!