Permafrost (4)
"Dr. Bae?"
The news reported that experts had been brought in, and that if the Antarctic dispatch operation succeeded, the world could return to a peaceful era—one with no monsters, no infections to fear.
The expert holding forth on screen was none other than Dr. Bae Hong-ik, director of the K.I Research Institute. The Prime Minister narrowed his eyes as he stared at the broadcast.
"That fellow... is he interested in politics?"
"From what we've gathered, no, sir."
"Then why is he making a show of himself like that?"
"I'd say it's his reputation as a scholar. He probably believes he's the one who can save the world."
"Tsk tsk. This is why scholars..."
The Prime Minister shook his head with a sour expression. It irritated him immensely, but he needed Dr. Bae for the vaccine and cure research.
Dr. Bae, stepping out of the broadcasting station, let out a long sigh.
I only hope drawing their attention to me actually helps...
The truth was, Dr. Bae had never believed the Antarctic dispatch team would be assembled properly. Everyone would have planted their own people in it, all angling for their own interests.
His prediction had been right. On the very first day, Chae Seol-hwan had nearly been assassinated.
So he had turned Seoul's eyes toward himself, for the sake of his students. The more attention he drew, the longer Antarctica would be forgotten.
But Dr. Bae had no idea of the ripples his words would create. What could a man who'd spent his whole life buried in a laboratory possibly know?
The common people were watching the same news.
"So we'll never have to see those monster bastards again?"
"They say they can even cure people who are already infected!"
"Whoa..."
In the slums, dozens of people had gathered around a small television.
Dr. Bae withdrew, and the news anchor closed the broadcast with a hopeful voice. Hope began to bloom among the crowd—but for someone, it was about to be doused with cold water.
"Ha! You really think that'll work out?"
A grizzled old-timer of the slums. He grumbled constantly, yet he was a good man who shared his own food with the little ones.
"They sent that Antarctic team out in secret, didn't they? Soon as a vaccine's made, the fat cats will keep it all for themselves. That's what this means."
"Well..."
"Oh, come on, no way."
Nobody could offer a spirited rebuttal. What the privileged class had done to them all this time was still fresh in their minds.
When a few slum dwellers died to monsters, the government forces responded at a snail's pace—but when a monster appeared in the wealthy heart of Gangnam, they dispatched it in an instant.
"Remember when they said there wasn't enough food, told us to hold out just a little? How did that turn out?"
"...Someone exposed the Prime Minister for carving up steak at home, sir."
There was no reason at all to be grateful for the crumb of bread they tossed out, strutting as if the government were truly trying in these hard times—while the privileged were carving beef behind closed doors.
Come to think of it, something had been strange all along. The election postponed yet again on the excuse of the monsters' intrusion into the National Election Commission... the movements to keep the current state of affairs going indefinitely.
"You really think we'll get to use the vaccine if they develop one?! Supplies are scarce enough because of the monsters. The rich will use it first, and us—we'll get it tossed to us like charity after we're all dead!"
"That's... that's going a bit far. We're all citizens of the same country..."
The dissatisfied uncle—and the young man whose attitude was shifting with every word.
The two of them were, in fact, members of the rebellion. Agitators, both.
"Staying here like this changes nothing!"
"That's right!"
"Amen to that!"
"Then what do we do now?"
"Let's head to Gwanghwamun!"
Those swept up in the incitement began to rise to their feet, one after another.
A spark of unrest was kindling in Seoul.
Meanwhile, the Antarctic dispatch team passed through two base camps before arriving at the ruined research station.
They got the power running, found relatively intact quarters near the central research wing, and everyone settled in to rest their exhausted bodies—but Jin Young-do was different.
He had not forgotten the monster that had ravaged this base. How would he have to avenge them for it to feel satisfying? It haunted him even in his dreams.
He wasn't the only one still awake while the rest lay dead asleep. Chae Seol-hwan was transferring data while analyzing it on the spot, working to synthesize the vaccine and cure right then and there.
"Chae Seol-hwan."
"Yes?"
"You should get some rest."
"I can't do that."
Even with fatigue soaked into his face, Chae Seol-hwan's eyes still shone.
"People's lives are in my hands."
"Doesn't the burden weigh on you?"
"Hmm... if not me, a researcher, then who?"
Jin Young-do leaned against the wall and silently watched him work.
"Aren't you afraid of me, then? I could mistake you for an enemy and attack again at any moment."
"Oh, that? Even back then, I wasn't scared."
"Why not?"
"You weren't looking at me. You were looking at something else. Ah—I figured then that you must have quite a story."
"Isn't that all the more dangerous?"
"You saved me, though."
Jin Young-do didn't hold it against him—Chae Seol-hwan, timid as he was, brimming with a sense of justice and unwavering conviction. If anything, Jin Young-do liked people like that. A smile spread across his lips.
As he fiddled with the augmented reality display, watching Chae Seol-hwan improvise medicine out of thin air, Jin Young-do noticed Jung Yu-na behind him, her eyes rimmed with red.
Jung Yu-na has an inferiority complex toward Chae Seol-hwan.
That look in her eyes—sharp enough to suggest she might do something reckless.
And besides, the composition of the Antarctic dispatch team was a masterwork in its own right.
One researcher from the national institute, one from a corporate lab. Fine, that much was understandable.
But death-row inmates who could drop dead at any moment had joined, along with soldiers whose careers had derailed after stirring up trouble in the military. Some of them were surely Brigadier General Wee's people, too.
Every last one of them a disposable pawn. And yet they actually believed they'd survive and come home safe—the sight of it was pathetic.
The next day, Jin Young-do went out alone, faced the monster prowling near the station, and returned.
"That's not normal..."
"Exactly."
By now, the surviving soldiers were looking at Jin Young-do not as a man, but as something else entirely.
This was the man who had killed, single-handed, a monster that had taken several of them attacking at once just to bring down. Fear and awe—and even a strange relief that as long as they stayed near him, at least they wouldn't die.
At first they'd seen him as a defeated failure who'd gotten his whole squad killed through incompetence. Now, the distrust had drained out of the way they looked at him.
"Hey."
"..."
"If you want to die, die alone. Stir up a racket for nothing and the other monsters come swarming—then we've got a real problem."
What he'd done just now had been reckless. He had deliberately provoked a monster he could have simply ignored and killed it. What if the others had come running at the noise?
Jin Young-do, about to drink straight from the bottle, burst out laughing. Jung Yu-na frowned at him.
"What's so funny?"
"Nothing. You just said the same thing someone I know did."
"Whoever it is, they're a wise person."
"Ahh... yes. She is."
He thought of Professor Im, who had once nailed a pill bottle into the back of his head. Was she doing well? The thought of her made his throat burn, and he tipped the bottle back.
"By the way, isn't this the first time we've actually talked this long?"
"...So what?"
Jin Young-do had been a blunt, by-the-book soldier. But now something about him seemed to have come loose, a screw missing somewhere.
Part of why people thought he wasn't in his right mind was this very attitude. The closer one got to this base, the more visible it became—a man going mad in real time.
"Want me to tell you an interesting story?"
"Why are you talking down to me, anyway?"
"Researcher Jung Yu-na. Shall I tell you an interesting story?"
A laugh had crept into Jin Young-do's voice. This wasn't mere drunkenness. Antarctica was his trauma. This land held far too many things that drove him mad.
Ohhh, that chemistry.
Director Lee Han-lim let out an involuntary hmmm of admiration.
Even cutting it himself, he felt a chill run down his spine. The chemistry between Yoon Jay, radiating a dangerous allure, and Baek Da-eun's prim, rigorous researcher was nothing short of electric.
It wasn't really all that surprising. Yoon Jay had long been called the chemistry fairy among his peers. Hadn't his scene conversing with Kwon Min-jae a moment ago crackled with its own strange current?
"Do you know why I came here?"
"Why else? You came to protect us, didn't you?"
"They're calling back the man who sank this station five years ago and was handed over to a court-martial. If you were in their shoes, would you use me again?"
"That's..."
Jung Yu-na found herself at a loss for words. The other soldiers within earshot froze mid-action and strained to listen.
"I suppose... it's because you're the only captain who's survived this land."
"There are plenty of people who've faced monsters out on the outskirts of Seoul."
"..."
"You know it, don't you? That I was framed."
Jin Young-do's eyes swept over the soldiers who were inching closer, drawn by the conversation. They had noticed the strangeness too.
The monsters infesting Antarctica were far too numerous for the base to have been wiped out by a single man's mistake.
Besides, the ruined station bore countless marks that suggested it had been torn apart by the creatures.
"You know it as well as I do. They sent me up here to die."
Korea was already in turmoil. If they had simply pinned it all on Jin Young-do and shut the project down entirely, the clues to the vaccine and cure would have been known five years ago.
And if that truth ever came to light again?
Jung Yu-na swallowed hard and spoke in a trembling voice.
"Then why did you come, Captain Jin? Knowing... you might die?"
"I came here gladly, to die. And while I'm at it, to put one more bullet in the heads of the bastards who killed my men."
"..."
"But that's not you, is it."
Jin Young-do tilted his head back and looked at the soldiers who had been eavesdropping from behind as well.
"In any case, on this land, let's think about one thing only—making it back alive. All except me."
"..."
"Don't let yourselves be used all the way to the end."
Jin Young-do's cryptic words sent ripples through the hearts of the two researchers and the other soldiers alike.
Should they trust the people who had shoved them out here? Or the man who was, right now, saving their lives?
"We knew we were disposable from the start, but..."
"Honestly, I didn't even know there were monsters here."
"Me neither. They just told us to come along—said to think of it as a short vacation."
Jung Yu-na shot a glance at the murmuring soldiers, then headed off in another direction.
Her destination was the laboratory. She draped a blanket over Chae Seol-hwan, who had apparently collapsed into sleep from exhaustion over the data.
She worked the console, floating into the air what Chae Seol-hwan had been working on. Jung Yu-na let out a small groan.
"I... I couldn't even analyze this data..."
They had looked at the data together—and Jung Yu-na hadn't managed even the analysis, while Chae Seol-hwan had gone further, sketching out the initial schematic of the cure right there.
Then, suddenly, Park Chul-moon's voice echoed through her mind.
Jung Yu-na, who had been gazing at the augmented reality glittering like stars, felt her gaze waver faintly. Before long, her breathing quickened.
If I just destroy this...
Her trembling fingers crept toward the data reset button.
"Tsk. Don't they all have anything better to do?"
The rebellion, riding the tide, had exposed the misdeeds of the privileged class, and the crowd massing at Gwanghwamun was swelling by the hour.
The songs they sang carried all the way to the Blue House.
"Scare them a little and disperse the crowd."
"Yes, sir."
The Prime Minister dismissed it as nothing. These were people who had lived as if dead, gathering for the one assembly they were granted. Ignore them, and the fire would die out on its own.
Besides, a monster could attack at any moment. If they were told the protest had kept the forces from putting down a monster, no one would dare rise up again.
"Restart the elections!"
"The Prime Minister is not the President!"
The camera swept across the marchers holding candles and lit upon a suspicious figure who seemed to be concealing a weapon. And there—Yoo Hyun, the right hand of the rebel Jin Young-do had encountered.
Beside Yoo Hyun stood Kim Myung-woo, leader of the rebellion, played by Heo Sung-ik, silently surveying the crowd.
The first true appearance of Kim Myung-woo, the rebel leader who until now had existed only in shadow. Heo Sung-ik was a famous, seasoned actor.
Even a fleeting entrance let him command the screen. He made the audience anticipate what was about to unfold.
And that wasn't all. Opposition lawmakers had joined, led by Assemblyman Kook Min-han. Even the S University Hospital residents who had once appraised Jin Young-do's face and body in the emergency room could be spotted among the crowd.
"Let's do a candlelight wave!"
For a gathering held after so long, it was remarkably peaceful. The people had come simply to show the privileged class one thing—that they were still alive.
"Thirsty? Shall I bring you some water?"
An old man struck up a conversation with a police officer holding a riot shield. The officer had evidently been conscripted at the last minute—bewildered, and young-faced, too. He looked about the same age as the grandson standing at the old man's side.
"Um... th-that's, if I take it, I'll be in trouble."
"Then don't get caught. Did we come here to fight? We just came to shout."
"I... I'd be honored to accept, then."
"Yeongmin. Bring that man some water."
Instead of his grandmother, whose movements were frail, the grandson lifted the cup of water and stepped toward the officer—and in that very moment...
BANG!