Seed Vault 2
Once inside, we watched a second iron door—similar to the one outside, only smaller—slowly grind open, and the same thought crossed both our minds: the security here was no joke.
The moment we stepped through that second door, a bizarre scene greeted us.
Three zombies stood motionless, facing yet another door—a third one—while three corpses that looked as if they had been dead for quite some time sat slumped against the wall.
I started toward the zombies to put them down, but Yang Jin-ju caught my arm.
“(Wait a second, Oppa. Something’s… off.)”
She flicked on her suit lights and swept the beam carefully over the zombies.
Only then did we see it. Every one of them had its hands and feet bound tight with thick rope, and each mouth was gagged with what looked like torn scraps of clothing.
“(…They subdued all the zombies?)”
I muttered, puzzled. At Jin-ju’s call I moved closer to the third door and found even stranger traces waiting there.
The surface of the door was pocked with deep dents, as if someone had hammered it with bare fists, and shattered pieces of a chair lay scattered across the floor.
“(Oppa….)”
Yang Jin-ju’s voice trembled.
“(This wasn’t the zombies. Those people… they were desperately begging that woman to open the door.)”
A chill ran down my spine. In this narrow, lightless space, what kind of nightmare had played out?
We kept our faces blank and silently finished off the three bound zombies.
Then we rapped on the third iron door with our palms—thud, thud.
The door began to open with a long, sharp creeeak, but it stopped after leaving only a gap wide enough to slip a single hand through.
Through that slit, a woman clutching an iron pipe peeked out at us.
“…D-did you take care of them?”
Her voice shook with raw wariness.
“Yes. All of them.”
She hesitated a moment, then the door slowly swung wider.
When it finally stood fully open, the woman we faced was nothing like what we had imagined.
Glasses suited her intelligent face, yet her hair stuck out in a wild bird’s nest. Under a stained researcher’s coat bearing a name tag that read Choi Hana she wore what looked like pajamas, and she had only one slipper on—an utterly strange, half-dressed mess.
She carried an atmosphere that simply did not belong to the end of the world.
“Researcher Choi Hana.”
She introduced herself, but the two of us only stared. Is this really the person who created the horror we just saw? Suspicion and confusion filled our heads.
Yang Jin-ju slowly pointed back the way we had come.
“There were only three zombies. The other three were still alive. They were begging her to open the door.”
The woman who called herself Choi Hana ignored every word.
“Wow, what amazing armor!”
Her eyes sparkled like a child’s as she stared at our suits.
“I want one. Really.”
Then, as if nothing had happened, she suddenly grew calm again.
“Now it’s my turn to keep the promise. Let’s move to the seed research lab.”
She brushed past us and led the way outside.
Thinking she had been dismissed, Yang Jin-ju hurried after her, ready to speak again—then stopped dead, as if she had seen something. She came back to me and whispered.
“(Oppa… that person isn’t Choi Hana.)”
“(What?)”
“(I just saw the organization chart hanging in the hallway… the photo of the researcher named ‘Choi Hana’ looks completely different from this woman. She’s just wearing someone else’s name tag.)”
Another chill slid down my spine.
I thought it over for a second and reached a decision.
“(…Got it. First we get the seeds. No matter what happens after that, we don’t get involved—we just run. Understood?)”
As we left the main building and headed for the seed lab, the woman who called herself Choi Hana limped awkwardly ahead of us on her single slipper.
We arrived once more at the four-layered reinforced glass doors we had seen earlier.
She walked to the wall and, with practiced ease, began tapping something into the input pad.
One after another the remaining three doors—everything except the first one I had smashed open by force—unlocked with heavy clunk, clunk, clunk sounds.
The instant the last door fully opened, a cold mechanical voice echoed from inside the laboratory.
> Researcher Lee Hyeon-yeong. Identity confirmed.
At the sound she froze in place and gave a sharp, full-body flinch.
For a long time she stood utterly still.
When I finally stepped close and tapped her shoulder, she jolted as if waking from a trance and spun toward us.
“Ah…”
She stared at us with vacant eyes for a moment, then spoke again.
“…I’ll give you the seeds. Follow me.”
She staggered into the building.
Turning the name Lee Hyeon-yeong over in our minds, we slowly followed her inside.
The laboratory was filled with countless machines humming softly—whiiir.
“These facilities… they run on their own generators for power, and rainwater purification units for moisture. No matter what happens, these seeds have to be protected…”
She kept muttering as she worked the controls of a large machine.
A section of it opened and a tray slid smoothly toward us, holding dozens of small glass beakers no bigger than a finger.
Inside each beaker, tiny seedlings that had only just begun to sprout were visible.
“Agricultural rice, potato, sweet potato, green onion, cabbage… twelve essential crop seeds in total, all certified genetically modified safe-grade.”
She continued.
“They’ve all been flash-frozen for long-term storage as seeds. If you just carry them out like this, they’ll thaw from the outside in, the cell walls will rupture, and every last one will wither and die.”
She carefully placed the tray into a large white specialized bag that had been sitting to one side, closed it, and pressed a button on the exterior.
A low hum rose, followed by the sound of the interior sealing into vacuum.
She pushed the bag toward us and spoke one last time.
“It’s a special storage bag with an ‘ultra-fast thaw’ function. When you’re ready to plant, just press this button. Some of them will die, of course, but at least seventy percent should survive healthy.”
Sharing a quiet surge of relief, we took the white bag that held our last hope and left the research building.
As we headed straight for the truck, the woman—Choi Hana or Lee Hyeon-yeong, we still didn’t know—limped after us with desperate determination. Finally Yang Jin-ju spun around, irritation sharp in her voice.
“We’re truly grateful for the seeds. But… exactly how long do you plan to follow us?”
The woman stopped and looked at us with pleading eyes.
“Could you… take me with you as well?”
“Is that not possible? I can help with growing the plants.”
Jin-ju carefully secured the bag in the cargo bed, then turned to face her.
“I saw the organization chart earlier. You’re not Choi Hana, Lee Hyeon-yeong.”
Yang Jin-ju’s words were ice-cold and absolute.
The woman began to tremble, sweat pouring down her entire body, then suddenly erupted in a screaming fit.
“I am Choi Hana! The name tag says Choi Hana! These glasses too! Everything belongs to Choi Hana!”
At her sudden hysteria, Jin-ju and I instinctively scanned our surroundings.
Then she flung the glasses to the ground, clutched her head, and began to sob and shake.
“There were infected outside the door! Why would anyone say they were going to rescue them…! You couldn’t even tell if the knocking was zombies or people, so why open the door…! I told them no… I told them…!”
Watching the bizarre breakdown, I quietly signaled Yang Jin-ju toward the truck.
She deactivated her suit, climbed silently into the driver’s seat, and started the engine.
At that the woman lunged at us again, screaming, “Take me too! Take me with you!”
I caught her and held her still, looking straight into her eyes.
“Yeah. You are Researcher Choi Hana. So calm down.”
Every movement stopped. She began to murmur, “That’s right… I am Choi Hana… glasses… my glasses…” and turned to pick up the pair she had dropped.
I used the opening to vault into the truck bed. Without a second of hesitation the truck pulled away.
She put the glasses back on and stared blankly after us as we receded, then limped once more toward the dark, solitary main building of the Seed Vault.
“…Looks like she’s going back inside.”
Yang Jin-ju watched her through the rearview mirror and spoke softly.
“…Yeah.”
I answered, tasting the bitter aftertaste that filled my mouth.
Whatever nightmare had happened in that place, there was no way to know now. And I no longer wanted to know.