Emergency Safety Texts
“So this is how things are going to play out after all.”
Among the three-tier system of green, yellow, and red, a red air-raid alert was the kind issued only when a single city stood on the brink of annihilation. Setting aside the special black and blue alerts, it ranked among the most dangerous warnings of all.
With a monster air raid descending on the whole of Seoul, of course it had to be this grade.
In preparation for monster invasions, the capital’s functions had been divided among Seoul, Busan, Sejong, Incheon, and others—yet Seoul remained the true capital of Korea, home to every critical facility that mattered. If Seoul fell, the nation’s economic power would wither overnight, and the country would be left helpless against the monsters pouring down from the North. The outcome was obvious: the destruction of Korea itself.
The fact that the red alert was only now being issued—when it should have gone out long ago—was itself proof of the government’s sluggish response.
“Should we move?”
The words of a still-inexperienced maid sent me into thought. The government had told us not to stay in the shelters but to get out of Seoul entirely if the situation allowed—clear evidence that things were far from fine. In cases like this, one of three possibilities usually applied: something existed that rendered the shelters themselves meaningless, an unknown virus was spreading, or the government had given the wrong instructions.
Did the government give the wrong instructions?
No standard protocol ever told people to abandon the shelters and move. Leaving only raised the odds of being spotted and killed by monsters, and the shelters—built underground—possessed a certain resistance to monster attacks.
“Is there any more detailed explanation?”
“Uh… doesn’t look like it. I even checked the National Disaster Safety Portal, but there’s no update.”
The government agency with the best information intake didn’t know the details of a monster air raid that had just slammed the entire city of Seoul? And thirty minutes had already passed since the incident began?
Is someone controlling the information?
The situation was growing more and more unsettling.
—Laplace, is there any information floating on the black market, or anything you can pull through hacking?
Someone is aggressively blocking access to the core information of this incident. It is a security architecture I have never encountered before; learning it will take time.
—How long?
You may assume approximately thirty minutes.
Thirty minutes until Laplace could breach the firewall and retrieve the core data on this incident.
—That’s longer than I expected.
It appears to involve an innate ability. The structure is utterly unlike any previous hacking framework. If past cyber warfare was a matter of raising walls and then breaching them, the present enemy is digging trenches and lobbing mortar shells.
They weren’t merely blocking access—they were actively resisting the hack. If it was going to take Laplace a full thirty minutes, the level of that resistance was beyond anything I could gauge.
But my deliberation didn’t last long.
Beep—! Beep—! Beep—!
The phone that had fallen silent after delivering the air-raid alert suddenly chimed with another safety text.
The instant I confirmed the message, a colossal tremor slammed through the entire shelter, so violent I could barely stay on my feet.
Rumble—!
“An earthquake…?”
“Why now, of all times…!”
People staggered in confusion yet still moved quickly—diving under tables or heading for the open center of the room where nothing could fall. Fortunately the quake subsided almost as soon as it began.
“Is it…?”
“Has it stopped?”
The moment the shaking ceased, people clustered together and began arguing.
“Shouldn’t we go outside? The safety text said to evacuate outdoors…”
“There are monsters out there. The shelter itself has some seismic reinforcement, so waiting here is—”
“But the government said evacuate outdoors immediately. If we have to leave Seoul anyway, better to go now…”
“It must have been sent by mistake… Earthquake alerts are automated, not written by people. Considering the monsters outside, staying inside is—”
Opinions collided. Twice already the government had warned us, via safety texts, to get outside and escape Seoul. Even if the decision looked wrong to us, it was the experts’ call—perhaps we ought to follow it. On the other hand, with monsters prowling the streets for certain, trusting a single text and walking out didn’t seem especially wise either.
“Shall we try the news?”
“Let’s. The shelter has radio equipment…”
We decided to listen to a news broadcast before making any choice. The head maid worked the controls with practiced ease, locked onto a signal, and switched on the shelter’s built-in display.
“Let’s see what they’re saying.”
Until that moment we had assumed the news would give us clear instructions. What greeted us instead was nothing but a crackling, dead screen.
“Huh? Why is it doing this?”
We adjusted the antenna again and again, half-convinced we had simply mistuned the frequency. Every attempt produced only the same result: a black-and-white static screen and a sound like the cry of some monstrous creature.
Strange… far too strange…
The whole situation felt staged—as if someone wanted us to leave the shelter. The most vital means of information delivery, television, had gone dead, while the disaster safety texts kept repeating the same command: get out.
“Could the broadcasting stations have collapsed? Most of them are in Seoul.”
“Unlikely. Plenty of stations are outside the city as well.”
“What about the base stations, then?”
“That… might be possible.”
Listening to the maids, I suddenly spoke.
“No.”
The base stations had collapsed? Then how had the safety texts reached us at all?
“Seo-hyun…? What are you doing?”
“Just a moment.”
—Laplace, forget the core data for now. Hack the central base station’s CCTV. It’s not a closed-circuit system, is it?
It is not. Please wait a moment.
Laplace immediately breached the central base station’s CCTV and fed the nearby feeds to me.
And there…
What…?
There…?
I jolted so hard the phone slipped from my hand and clattered to the floor.
“S-Seo-hyun! Are you hurt?”
“J-just a second!”
With trembling fingers I slowly picked the phone back up.
On the screen, grotesque creatures of raw red flesh crawled everywhere, parasitizing every corner of the base station. The instant one of the things clinging to the equipment pulsed—
Beep—! Beep—! Beep—!
—another disaster text arrived on my phone.
Once I saw the true state of the base station, my mind began racing at full speed.
The base stations have been taken. Every broadcast and every internet connection is now under their influence.
Except for Laplace.
—Switch every connection to satellite internet right now. Even this conversation is inside their range.
Understood.
Satellite internet was slow and expensive—something I would never have used under normal circumstances. But with the central base stations occupied, it was the only remaining channel to the outside world. Processing still ran on zombie PCs located elsewhere; the phone’s only job was to receive the electrical signals and pass them to me.
The central base stations must have fallen long before the incident even started. Except for the very first disaster text that arrived when everything began, every message since has been sent by them.
Monsters that could directly manipulate the internet—something once considered humanity’s exclusive domain—had appeared. Their threat level far surpassed even A-class monsters.
Everyone else who received those texts will already have gone outside, trying to escape Seoul.
And outside, the monsters were waiting. The fate of the people who trusted the “government” alerts and walked out was obvious. They had already been torn apart.
Damn it. At least tens of thousands will die.
If people had simply stayed put in the shelters the way they always did, the casualties would probably have been limited to a few thousand who failed to evacuate in time. Korea’s protective systems were among the best in the world, and decades of monster raids had left the population well-trained. Yet a single monster that seized the base stations had killed tens of thousands—with nothing more than the absurd command “Go outside.”
First priority was to explain this to the others. I carefully rephrased what I had learned and told them. Their faces turned grim.
“Monsters that can use the internet…”
“They’re intelligent. Quite highly so. Even at a conservative estimate, at least human-level.”
“Is the one that took the base stations the source?”
“No. From what I saw, they looked more like offshoots.”
Their forms resembled parasitic organisms specialized for electronic devices rather than true intelligent beings. Something else was giving the orders—a main body that remained hidden.
“…”
This couldn’t continue.
“For now we stay here. Outside, we’ll try to get word out somehow through satellite communications.”
“Yeah. I think we understand well enough how dangerous it is beyond the shelter.”
The sky overhead was red. As though stained with blood, crimson clouds of demonic energy swirled and blanketed the whole of Seoul.