Permafrost (3)
Chae Seol-hwan shyly nudged his slipping glasses back up his nose.
Awkward, quintessentially nerdy — though, of course, it was the media's version of a nerd. The actor playing him, Kwon Min-jae, belonged squarely among the handsome leading men.
"I'm just the figurehead director, so... it would be possible, if the Assemblyman lends his support."
"Excellent. I'll take it upon myself to get that young man placed on the Antarctic dispatch team. I'll also look into someone to keep an eye on him."
And so Assemblyman Kook and Dr. Bae clasped hands.
Moon Chang-min and Go Gwang-il — the two men who had stood at opposite ends in The Garden of Evil — became allies in Permafrost.
At that same moment, Assemblyman Park Chul-moon was paying a visit to Terracell Bio, a pharmaceutical company under one of the great conglomerates.
He opened someone's private laboratory without so much as a knock.
"Yu-na."
"Don't call me that. And for heaven's sake, stop barging in here. You don't know what I could be testing."
"Is that any way to talk to an uncle you haven't seen in ages?"
"You're not even my real uncle..."
Jung Yu-na, the Terracell Bio researcher played by Baek Da-eun, had come out of an orphanage. Backed by Assemblyman Park Chul-moon's patronage, she had become a scientist with her own private lab.
"What brings you here, of all places?"
"You have to go to Antarctica."
"I'm sorry?"
"You know Dr. Bae of the K.I Research Institute, don't you? Your mentor."
Assemblyman Park relayed everything that had happened in the conference room that day. The color slowly rose in Jung Yu-na's face.
"Judging by that expression, the plan is feasible."
"Yes. The vaccine... it can be made."
"Then — then listen to me. If you use the data you bring back from Antarctica to create the vaccine... will you tell me first?"
"...Rather than reporting it up the chain?"
"How long do you plan on letting them bleed you dry from underneath?"
Jung Yu-na's eyes turned fierce. The very first person who had wrung her dry was the man standing in front of her.
He would go on believing to the end that he'd taken in a pitiful orphan and made something of her.
Well, I'll use you right back, Uncle.
But if she could only make the vaccine... she wouldn't be trapped inside a corporation like this. She could found one of her own.
Assemblyman Park was a man who never let a chance at profit slip by, so he would help her. She, too, was a woman with plenty of ambition.
"If you find you can't make the vaccine with it... destroy everything. Make sure no one else can ever have it."
"..."
"You can do that, can't you?"
Jung Yu-na bit down hard on her lower lip. She was ambitious, yes, but she wasn't rotten at her core.
He was asking her to weigh the greater good against personal gain.
The former was a chance to carve out the cancer devouring Korea — perhaps the whole world. The latter was an instruction to smash it all to pieces if it didn't serve her own interests.
And he was handing such a momentous choice to her... Jung Yu-na lifted her head at the touch of his hand on her shoulder.
"Don't forget that I made you. Remember how it is that you're standing here at all."
Jung Yu-na slapped away the hand fiddling with the employee badge hanging at her neck.
Looking at the venom in her face, Assemblyman Park's mouth curved into a satisfied smile.
"Then I'll be off."
The door shut behind him, and Jung Yu-na, left alone, clenched her fists tight.
Meanwhile, in Jin Young-do's bleak, barren home — where on any ordinary day he would have attempted suicide yet again — he sat perched on the edge of his bed, thinking for a long, long while.
"..."
He picked up the desk photo frame he'd thrown face-down. It was a group photo from five years ago: himself and his comrades, dispatched to the Antarctic base.
At last, having made up his mind about something, Jin Young-do pulled on his jacket and stepped out of the house.
Hmm, so Im Ji-hwan and Baek Da-eun are allies, and Moon Chang-min, Go Gwang-il, and Kwon Min-jae are on the same side...
Then what would Yoon Jay show them? A reporter seated in the audience scribbled a list of questions into his notebook.
On screen, the Antarctic dispatch team came together at remarkable speed, and one by one they began appearing at an air force base.
Jin Young-do, holding a rifle for the first time in years. Death-row inmates pulled out as bait. And the handful of soldiers assigned to control them were men of Brigadier General Wee — but also men of Assemblyman Park or Assemblyman Kook.
"Yu-na."
"Chae Seol-hwan. It's been a while."
"So, um... have you been well?"
The two had studied together under Dr. Bae. Chae Seol-hwan, ears burning red, stole a glance at Jung Yu-na.
Anyone could see that Chae Seol-hwan carried feelings for her, and Jung Yu-na, clearly unenthusiastic, seemed to have wished she didn't have to run into him at all.
"You're such a coward — why on earth did you volunteer for this?"
"The vaccine has to be made."
"Is that really all?"
"Hm?"
"Oh, I don't know — get rich off the vaccine, or climb to the very top of the power structure..."
Jung Yu-na probed him, just a little. She'd grown up being called a genius too, but measured against Chae Seol-hwan she still had a long way to go.
She admired him — the man who only drifted further into the distance the harder she tried to catch up — and she envied him in equal measure.
"You work for a national research institute. How can you even say that?"
"Then what if you weren't with K.I? What would you do?"
"Hmm... I'd distribute it for free, I suppose?"
"Why?"
"Because it's the right thing to do."
This is why I can't stand you, Jung Yu-na thought, shoving his shoulder with her own. For an instant, a shadow crossed her expression.
And no wonder. Her own intentions were filthy to the core, and Chae Seol-hwan was unbearably radiant by comparison.
While the two researchers reunited, Jin Young-do took the podium.
"I am Jin Young-do, and I will be in overall command of this operation from here on."
"That's Captain Jin, isn't it..."
"The one who razed that Antarctic base?"
The assembled men murmured among themselves. Jin Young-do let out a long sigh.
"Anyone with a problem, step forward."
Several men came forward. Jin Young-do took them one at a time and put every last one on the ground.
Chae Seol-hwan and Jung Yu-na watched, spellbound. It's already this brutal... will we be okay out there?
Having settled the pecking order, Jin Young-do approached the two who looked, unmistakably, like researchers.
"Are you the researchers?"
"Yes. Ah, I'm with the K.I Research Institute—"
"Skip the introductions. Get aboard. Now."
Jin Young-do was too busy herding the others along. Chae Seol-hwan clicked his tongue.
"What a piece of work..."
"Honestly? I like it."
"What?"
"He looks like a man who'll get the mission done, whatever it takes, however he has to do it."
"Y-you're into guys like that?!"
As Chae Seol-hwan sputtered, Jung Yu-na flashed a wicked grin. This was the golden opportunity she'd been waiting for to get under the skin of this insufferable genius of a classmate.
"Well, he is my type. Handsome, great body... seriously, it's not even a joke."
"Yu-na!"
Watching him flounder, Jung Yu-na finally let a genuine laugh slip. Try as she might to hate him, she simply couldn't.
And so the ones bound for Antarctica boarded the helicopter. It was a near-future setting, so an unmanned heli-drone hovered serenely in place.
The screen showed the faces of Chae Seol-hwan, Jung Yu-na, and Jin Young-do.
The one who would defend the greater good. The one who would move only for her own gain. And the one walking toward his own death. Three gazes tangled in midair.
Assemblyman Kook Min-han had sought out Captain Jin Young-do, intending to put him forward and expose the ills of the sitting government.
But Brigadier General Wee had caught wind of it and sent men to obstruct him.
"Captain Jin Young-do is on the Antarctic dispatch roster?"
"Yes, sir."
"Damn it... I was one step too slow."
Assemblyman Kook pressed a hand to his forehead. If not for someone's interference, he would have secured the man first... and yet he had already left for Antarctica.
He did not yet know Jin Young-do. A man who harbored resentment toward the government that had pinned a false crime on him, dispatched to a place where he might very well kill everyone sent there.
"Let's hope he stays safe..."
Humanity's hope rested in the hands of the Antarctic team. All he could do was pray.
The helicopter carrying Jin Young-do, Jung Yu-na, and Chae Seol-hwan flew for a long stretch before reaching the first base camp on the route to the Antarctic research station.
"We spend one night here. We move out tomorrow."
With that short dismissal, Jin Young-do vanished without another word.
"Are we really okay like this?"
"No — how are we supposed to work with a man that irresponsible..."
The eyes of the soldiers who looked down on Jin Young-do, the death-row inmates who couldn't fathom why they'd been dragged here, and the two researchers all trembled with unease.
Chae Seol-hwan, terrified himself, tried to encourage Jung Yu-na anyway.
"Yu-na. Don't worry. I'll protect you."
"Pfft. You?"
"What? I'm a man too, you know."
And then, on the very first night, something happened.
Someone advanced with their footsteps erased. Someone slipped quietly into Chae Seol-hwan's room. Fingers pried at the sliding door with excruciating care.
It was directed like a scene from a horror film. The instant the intruder raised a knife over Chae Seol-hwan, asleep in his bed—
"What do you think you're doing?"
Jin Young-do, who had been tailing the intruder in anticipation of exactly this, subdued him in one fluid motion and, without a moment's hesitation, drove the knife into his throat.
"G-guhk...!"
"Wh-what on earth..."
"Get back inside."
The intruder was one of the death-row inmates. Why else would a condemned man come to his room out of nowhere? Someone had ordered him to kill Chae Seol-hwan.
Having pieced the situation together, Chae Seol-hwan swallowed hard.
"Lock your door from now on."
"Um, Captain. Your arm — there's blood..."
"Ah."
Chae Seol-hwan stepped toward Jin Young-do to tend to the graze from the knife.
But something in Jin Young-do's eyes was wrong.
This was Antarctica — the place that had carved a trauma into Jin Young-do so deep it had never healed. Monsters that could surge out of the ice at any moment, the crushing psychological weight of a vengeance he had to carry out. For one blind instant, he couldn't tell friend from foe.
"Ugh—!"
Seized suddenly by the collar, Chae Seol-hwan was slammed back against the wall with a heavy thud.
Wincing from the pain, Chae Seol-hwan went blank at the sight of Jin Young-do's ragged, gasping face. Wait — I'm the one who got grabbed by the collar. Then why does he look like he's the one in agony?
"What is going on here?!"
Drawn by the commotion, Jung Yu-na slapped the arm gripping Chae Seol-hwan's collar and demanded an answer.
Slowly, the vacant look drained from Jin Young-do's face, and his expression returned to him.
"...Ah."
"Are you all right?"
"Why are you worried about whether he's okay?! Worry about yourself!"
"No, Captain Jin only came because he was saving me."
"Then what in the world is the situation?"
"It seems... there are people who don't want the vaccine to exist."
One face surfaced in Jung Yu-na's mind.
Her uncle — Assemblyman Park Chul-moon. He knew Chae Seol-hwan existed, her rival. He knew how desperately she strained to close the gap between them.
Don't tell me. Because he doesn't... trust me?
So he'd decided to erase the man entirely... Jung Yu-na bit her lower lip.
"We depart at 0900 sharp. Be ready."
The next morning, Jin Young-do began the briefing without a flicker of anything amiss. Revealing that a key researcher had nearly been murdered on the first night would do no one any good.
Fortunately, no one seemed particularly troubled that they were now one death-row inmate short.
The road from the base camp to the Antarctic research station was anything but smooth.
For one thing, there were the monsters, liable to appear at any moment — above all, the ancient virus freed from the melting glacier that had birthed the whole outbreak. The monsters of Antarctica would be creatures of an entirely different order from the variants in Korea.
The audience knew that the vaccine could only be made with Jung Yu-na and Chae Seol-hwan alive. And yet these same two could be assassinated at any moment — by the very men escorting them.
Worse, the man in overall command, Jin Young-do, had killed single-handedly a monster that entire squads hadn't been able to bring down — dependable, yes, but there was no telling when his trauma might twist him into someone else entirely.
As the audience watching squirmed, palms slick with tension, the perspective shifted back to Seoul.
The Antarctic dispatch was classified. If a vaccine and a cure were developed, the plan was to wield them for the next election — to clamp an even tighter grip on power.
"Where the hell did it leak from?!"
The Prime Minister glared at the television, seething.