Permafrost (2)
The monster that had attacked the Antarctic base five years ago was buried under a strict veil of secrecy — and the blame was dumped squarely onto the man in overall charge, Captain Jin Young-do.
As murmurs rippled through the gathered officials, Brigadier General Wee raised her hand.
"So. Was the data sent back from Antarctica of any use?"
"Of any use? The mutated virus has splintered into hundreds of strains by now, hasn't it? In Antarctica they found the original source — and they'd already begun work on the initial algorithm for a vaccine—"
"Briefly. Explain it briefly."
"If we can retrieve just that — we can build a perfect vaccine. No. We can build it. We could return to an era of peace."
Across the conference room, eyes met and tangled. Some read opportunity in the moment. Others read catastrophe.
"If only that project hadn't been shut down so abruptly back then..."
Dr. Bae lamented the past as he removed his glasses. The role was played by Go Gwang-il, a grand senior actor with more than forty years of performance behind him.
Had they not scrambled to bury the Antarctic disaster, the data transmitted to the institute could have been verified far sooner — and by now, the virus might have been eradicated altogether.
The Prime Minister cleared his throat.
"It was the best we could do at the time. Reassuring the public is our job too."
"..."
"What's with the faces? Every one of you agreed back then."
The Prime Minister declared that what was past was past — it was time to think of the future — and authorized an emergency dispatch to Antarctica. And yet, even after the meeting adjourned, no one moved to leave.
"If this ever goes public, you understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"Our elections are right around the corner. Not one of you breathes a word about the man from Antarctica. To anyone."
The disaster had forced the elections to be postponed. The nation was only just beginning to turn over again, and voices were already rising to resume the vote. Public trust in the current government, meanwhile, was plunging toward rock bottom over its botched initial response to the virus.
But those who had tasted power had no intention of letting go of it.
"This is our chance."
"Shouldn't we secure the vaccine first, though?"
"Does anyone here have a connection at the research institute?"
The people gathered in that room were nominally on the same side — but even among them, friction simmered beneath the surface.
Park Chul-moon of the ruling party, played by Im Ji-hwan, was a hunter who watched for his moment to strike upward. He needed to secure the vaccine before anyone else in the room did. Clear away the useless ones, and the presidency would be his.
When they filed out of the conference room, opposition lawmakers were somehow already waiting for them in the corridor, arrayed like a firing line.
"Well, well. Assemblyman Park."
"...Kook Min-han. What brings you here?"
"I have eyes and ears too, you know. I couldn't help noticing what a crowd you'd gathered for your little cabal."
Sparks flew between Assemblyman Kook Min-han — played by Moon Chang-min of the opposition — and Assemblyman Park Chul-moon.
"Eavesdropping like a rat in the walls. Some things never change."
"If I didn't, you'd never spare me a glance, Assemblyman Park."
"Excuse me?"
"I'm simply curious what you're hiding, dear Assemblyman."
The two were political rivals — and the leading contenders for the next presidency.
"This is none of your business, Assemblyman Kook."
Park didn't bother snapping back at the sly barbs Kook kept needling him with, as he ordinarily would. He merely snorted.
Keep listening in, by all means. I'm the one who'll have the vaccine in hand.
Assemblyman Park led his people out.
'So confident. He must be holding something.'
Assemblyman Kook tracked Park's retreating back with narrow, sharpened eyes — and then spotted someone who seemed profoundly out of place in this room.
"Secretary Kim."
"Yes, sir."
"That man there. That's Dr. Bae of the K.I Research Institute, isn't it?"
"It appears so, sir."
Kook didn't take his eyes off Dr. Bae as the man shuffled nervously out of the chamber.
Brigadier General Wee watched the assembly from a distance, then turned and headed somewhere of her own.
The emergency room of a university hospital in the heart of the city. The virus had improved how doctors were treated — but done nothing for their work-life balance.
What good was better pay, when there was no time left to spend it?
Today, too, the ambulance deliveries packed the ER beds to overflowing.
"Whoa. Look at that jawline."
"Why would a guy that handsome do it?"
"Right? And that body."
"What is all that? Is he from the underworld or something?"
Crowds clustered around one bed in particular. Professor Im shoved the onlookers aside without ceremony.
Found in his home, apparently — a man stripped to the waist, drawing every medical eye in the room at once.
"What have we got?"
"Professor Im."
"Gorgeous, sure — overdose, right?"
The resident flinched at the Professor's bark and corrected himself. Professor Im looked down at the face of the man sprawled across the bed, and her brow creased.
"Ugh. Him again?"
"You know him?"
Without a word, she held up her tablet and showed the chart. It recorded attempt after suicide attempt — and every single time, he'd come right back here, to the nearest hospital, like clockwork.
"Unbelievable. A serial offender."
"We're already run off our feet because of the virus — you two, take the other cases."
Having shooed everyone off, Professor Im drew the curtain, cutting off the stares. Then she gazed down at Jin Young-do's haggard face with eyes full of something complicated.
A little while later, Jin Young-do opened his eyes. He hauled himself upright, swaying, and his expression said everything: despair, plain and unvarnished.
He'd been certain this time would be the one. And here he was, alive again.
"..."
Jin Young-do — Yoon Jay in the flesh — was nothing like the man from his earlier filmography. Yoo Tae-hyuk had tasted his own fall from grace, but there had been fire in him still: his music, his burning desire to catch up to the genius Jung Yi-hyun, the bright restlessness of a man chasing a dream. Jin Young-do had passed through death after death and drunk from a despair deeper and darker still. What radiated off him now was something dried out and withered, like a field after frost.
Staggering to his feet, Jin Young-do ripped the IV line out of his arm.
Someone — who, he never knew — had left a T-shirt at the foot of the bed. He pulled it on, shoved his feet into the slippers, and walked out of the hospital.
"Hey! Jin Young-do!"
Professor Im, returning from another patient, found his bed empty and bolted out after him.
She hurled the empty bottle of sleeping pills off the back of his head.
"I prescribed those so you'd sleep, not so you could check out! Do I look like I'm running a suicide dispensary?!"
"..."
"How long are you going to keep doing this?!"
She screamed at him to answer her. Jin Young-do sighed, turned, and faced her.
"Young-do."
"...What."
"You really think that if you keep this up, my husband comes back?"
Her voice cracked on the words. Jin Young-do had nothing to say to that.
Among the team members lost in Antarctica had been Kim Yong-taek — his friend, and Professor Im's husband.
"If you're going to keep trying to kill yourself, go somewhere far away and do it. You hear me? Never let me see your face again."
"...Okay."
Jin Young-do gave the ghost of a smile, and walked on.
Professor Im, who had just thrown those words at him like knives, couldn't tear her eyes from his retreating back.
The role of Professor Im was played by Chun Se-hee, an actress who stood at the very top of her generation. Every name in this cast was lavish enough to be called a supercasting coup.
Jin Young-do weaved down the street like a drunk — until, in a quiet back alley, a voice calling his name stopped him in his tracks.
"Jin Young-do, sir?"
"..."
"It is you, isn't it? You match the photos... the sole survivor of the Antarctic base, five years ago."
"What do you want?"
The man was Yu Hyun, right hand of the rebels — a special cameo from Choi Wooju, a top actor of his thirties who stood shoulder to shoulder with Kwon Min-jae.
Yu Hyun threw a hand strike at Jin Young-do. Jin Young-do brushed it aside and countered instantly. The sudden brawl ended with Jin Young-do seizing the back of Yu Hyun's neck and slamming him into the wall.
"Ow, ow, ow — you live up to the reputation, sir."
"I said, what do you want."
"Just — hold on a second!"
As Jin Young-do's grip tightened, the man wheezed and choked. Yu Hyun wriggled free and staggered well out of reach, laboring to catch his breath.
"Our boss would like to meet you, sir."
"Why me?"
"You were thrown away by your country, same as me. Doesn't that burn? Don't you want revenge?"
"Why would I be your boss's anything."
"Share one round of fists, and we're all friends. That's how it works."
Yu Hyun only grinned. The rebels' overtures were nothing new — they'd been circling Jin Young-do for a long time. To them, he was both a superb propaganda weapon capable of exposing the truth of the Antarctic base and cornering the government, and a combat asset.
"If your boss wants to meet me that badly, he can come find me himself."
Not that I'll be in this world by then. The next attempt won't fail.
Back home, Jin Young-do found a note in his pocket — no idea when Yu Hyun had slipped it in. He moved to toss it in the trash, stopped, pulled his hand back, and put the note in his pocket again instead.
"Ugh..."
He'd drained a bottle of lukewarm liquor with not a bite of food to line his stomach, and now he clutched his head and crumpled.
In flashes, the monstrous thing that had attacked the Antarctic base surfaced before his eyes — and behind it, the pleading faces of his team members, begging him for help in the seconds before the creature killed them.
Jin Young-do moaned, his body shuddering as if seized by convulsions.
And by sheer coincidence, this was a film audiences were watching mere hours after Yoon Jay's past — the truth of Jin Young-do's body — had been laid bare. The operator all but confirmed to be Yoon Jay had survived Asad Yasin Qadir's monstrous torture and killed him. Among those who had broken under Asad's torture and been murdered were famous tycoons and politicians. And this man had endured it — and walked away whole.
Perhaps that was why, on screen, Yoon Jay was delivering a staggeringly convincing performance as a former soldier ravaged by PTSD.
Is acting like that rooted in lived experience?
I'll have to ask him later. The reporter scrawled the question into a notebook and turned back to the screen.
By then, Brigadier General Wee had come to Captain Jin Young-do's home.
The actress playing General Wee, Choo Young-mi, was legendary for both her skill and her ferocious presence — but Yoon Jay gave as good as he got. The two of them circled each other in a standoff neither would concede an inch of — and then came the General's offer.
"Captain Jin. What number is this — how many times have you woken up in an ER? Doesn't it wear on you?"
Probing, needling — and quietly fanning the embers of his spirit back to life.
"You're dying anyway. Wouldn't you rather die taking your revenge?"
The offer from the man called Yu Hyun had left him cold. He'd already lost everything; what could revenge against the government possibly return to him?
But this — a chance to return to the Antarctic base and take his vengeance on the monster that had slaughtered his team — made his dying heart beat again.
"Think it over. This time, I'll let you die a hero."
Assemblyman Kook Min-han came looking for Dr. Bae Hong-ik at the K.I Research Institute. And Dr. Bae thought well of him — of the assemblyman who stood with the people and pushed one welfare policy after another.
"So. What actually happened in Antarctica?"
Once Dr. Bae had told him the truth of the incident, Kook passed a hand over his forehead.
"And it was never... never made public, all this time. What were you doing, Doctor?"
The Antarctic massacre, buried under a scapegoat — an Army captain named Jin Young-do. And with it, the hope of a perfect vaccine.
If the truth had come out back then, the whole country might be vaccinated by now, and at peace.
"Are you afraid the past will catch up with you? Is that it?!"
"It isn't fear!"
At Kook Min-han's jab, Dr. Bae shot to his feet.
The key to a perfect vaccine was sitting right there. Someone — anyone — had to ask for help. He knew the current government couldn't be trusted. But there was no other way. The opposition, powerless as it was? The rebels? Who else was there to appeal to?
"What am I supposed to do?! A government dispatch is all I have! And if I so much as misspeak, I could end up assassinated — like Professor Park of Terracell Bio!"
"Even so, you of all people should have brought the truth to light! Fifty-four people died in that sacrifice! Fifty-four!"
"And aren't you doing this for your own career, Assemblyman?!"
"Yes. I won't deny it. But even you can feel it, can't you, Doctor — that this government is rotting from the inside."
Dr. Bae took off his glasses and pressed his fingertips hard into his eyes, massaging them.
"...There is a way."
"How?"
Dr. Bae pressed a button and summoned someone. The man who appeared was Kwon Min-jae.
"My disciple. Seol-hwan — greet the Assemblyman."
"Uh — yes. Hello, Assemblyman Kook. Chae Seol-hwan, senior researcher at the K.I Research Institute."
That sheepish-looking kid is a senior researcher? Kook Min-han's eyes narrowed.
"'Genius' doesn't begin to cover him. He's more capable than I am — and he's the one who decoded the data from the Antarctic base, five years on."
"I see..."
"I'm sending this young man with the Antarctic dispatch team."
There was ironclad trust and conviction in Dr. Bae's voice. The genius Chae Seol-hwan — he was the keystone of the vaccine.