Who Is Entity (3)

"Hah… haah…"

Ragged breathing filled the veranda. The moment my sweat-soaked back touched the floor, a clammy, unpleasant chill spread across my skin and crawled through my whole body.

But I had nothing left to lift myself with. I didn't even have the strength to wipe the cold sweat running down my face.

All I could do was lie sprawled on the veranda floor and chew over a single fact.

I had survived by sheer luck, and—

The Echo has become reality…

An entity from Paranoid Institute, that very game, had nearly taken my life mere moments ago.

Could that really be coincidence?

Cold night air poured in through the half-open window. I groped across the floor for my abandoned phone and picked it up.

The last thing I remembered, the screen had been showing the game. Still, just in case—if only to rule out the possibility that it had been that novel—I shut down every app, trusting nothing but the feeling in my fingertips, and connected to the game again from the very beginning.

Paranoid Institute

The opening voice that had once saved my life flowed out again.

Ignoring the tutorial character's greeting, I opened the entity codex. The moment I tapped the codex icon, everything I had learned over my years of play bloomed across the screen. From among them, I searched for an entry matching the thing that had just tried to kill me.

"Found it."

"That's it…"

The moment I read those lines, I was certain. This game, and the world that had changed—the two were connected, at the very least.

Had the game foreseen the future? Or had someone inside the Bureau made it? If not that, had the game itself caused the phenomenon?

There was no way to know. But the connection was undeniable.

And only one person in the world could untangle that question. I reached out to the sole person who might hold the answer.

"Damn it… no. Or should I say—of course."

A sigh escaped me. The Director was not taking calls.

Who on earth had he been? What kind of person made a game like this? Still sprawled on the floor, I searched for the game company. As expected, it had vanished without a trace as well.

Exactly one thing remained to prove the game had ever existed.

The community.

So I wasn't hallucinating, then—good to know I hadn't spent the last four years staring at a mirage.

It was a place I visited only to gauge opinion after game updates. Scrolling through it now, the game itself was apparently no illusion.

"Ugh!"

Midway through scanning the titles, nausea surged up out of nowhere. My heart hammered like mad every time I read a post.

The content wasn't the problem. My body was reacting to the act of reading itself.

But I'd learn nothing lying there. I whipped myself onward and forced my body upright, then crouched in the corner of the veranda and ground through the threads.

Once I'd skimmed the community, a few pieces of information fell into place.

The company and the Director had definitely erased themselves from existence. And sightings of entities and Echoes were beginning to trickle in, one and two at a time.

Every last piece of circumstantial evidence pointed to a single fact.

'Congratulations on the official release, Director. Fuck.'

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine the launch would go like this.

'So when they ported it to mobile, they went ahead and ported it to reality while they were at it.'

I steadied myself on the veranda and made my way back inside, where I sank alone at the dining table and dragged a hand down my face.

The clock read just past midnight. Subjectively, I felt as though I'd spent twenty hours on that veranda; in reality, barely an hour had passed.

It was time to be asleep. But I was not a man calm enough to drift off after what had just happened—and with no telling what entity might break into the apartment while I slept, closing my eyes frightened me all the more.

'An entity wouldn't invade a house with no narrative…'

Entities always follow their narratives. The Echo, their very source, is an absolute law to them. So the odds of one barging, context-free, into a perfectly ordinary house with no connection and no story of its own were vanishingly small.

But nothing in this world is absolute. These things ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠deliver their most horrific deaths precisely when you let your guard down—so I could never, ever relax.

I scrolled blankly up and down the screen, shuttling between the community and the internal medicine group chat. Posts were flooding in as if the place were on fire, yet not a single one registered.

'Damn it.'

Perhaps it was the aftershock of everything. My head felt fogged over, as if wrapped in gauze. I stared vacantly into the air and turned my ears outward. The trauma was still too fresh to look out the window directly—but nothing worth noting came from outside. None of the screams I'd expected, no horns, no cars skidding and colliding on the asphalt, none of that end-of-the-world racket.

Which, maybe, was only natural. The world had changed barely an hour ago, and the Echoes would need time to find hosts they could resonate with.

'How is the world going to change?'

I couldn't begin to guess. Would it become an apocalypse? An urban fantasy? Or would it settle into nothing more than a slightly stranger everyday life?

'I don't want to think about it.'

The game offers no answer key. It is a story about jostling and scheming alongside entities and Echoes inside a single facility. It never touches on what happens once they're loosed upon the world.

Because the moment they escape, that is the bad ending. What would there even be left to tell you?

I dipped back into the community.

A truly varied cast of humanity, all jumbled together. Those who saw the coming turmoil as their one shot at climbing the social ladder. Those who dreamed of quelling the quiet chaos and emerging as heroes. Those scrambling to gather—or monopolize—information just to survive. And those who dismissed the entire thing as a conspiracy theorist's hidden-camera stunt.

Their reactions ran the whole spectrum, but at least they were moving. Unlike me, sitting pathetically alone in my kitchen.

'I'm jealous.'

I envied, more than anything, their resolve—their ability to adapt this quickly and pick a course.

Just then, my phone trembled on the table. I bolted out of the chair as if startled and snatched at the screen. I assumed another emergency alert at first, but the phone just kept quivering. Only then did I realize it wasn't a text notification. It was a call.

A third-year resident from my own department. I accepted immediately.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"Oh—hey, Soyeon. What's up?"

"Professor! I'm so sorry to bother you on your day off, but you need to come to the hospital right now—no, immediately!"

"Whoa, whoa. What happened?"

"Our hospital just declared a Code Black! It's absolute chaos here—they're calling in every professor!"

At those words, by pure spinal reflex, I began changing my clothes.

Code Black.

Not the one that had come through on the emergency alert—a code hospitals use in emergencies. Hospital codes employ colors that evoke the situation at hand. A Code Blue means there's a patient in cardiac arrest. A Code Red means the hospital is on fire. Roughly like that.

And Code Black means the worst of them all.

"I'm on my way. But why in the world did a Black go up!?"

I threw on my clothes, left the house, and started the car—all without hanging up, taking the situation report in real time.

"I don't know! They say every university hospital in the country has gone Code Black! Suicide attempt victims are suddenly pouring in all at once—"

My mind went white.

Simultaneous suicide attempts. That could mean only one thing.

'Oh.'

With trembling fingers, I pulled up the latest chapter's view count for the novel I had been reading mere minutes ago.

'…'

It had gone up in the dead of night—barely an hour ago, at that. So not everyone who read the novel would have gotten to it yet. But the story carried real weight in its own right, and a considerable number of people had already read it.

I froze on the spot, phone in hand.

'All of these people…?'

My breath came short. My vision went white, and cold sweat soaked down my back. And in my head, another piece of information about the entity surfaced.

This entity's most horrific nature reveals itself only after the first victims die.

Once the first victims are gone, the people who were close to them in life will move heaven and earth to see the work—to explain the death of someone precious, or simply out of curiosity about the contents of a story that has been declared forbidden.

Even knowing that reading it means death, they open it anyway—as if their minds had been contaminated. As if it were their solemn resolve.

And among those "close to the victim," there is room for the medical staff who tried to save them.

At the boundary between life and death, patient and physician exchange emotions every bit as violent as any lover's.

'If I walk into that hospital as things are…'

The second victim might well be me. The instant a patient died before my eyes, I might open that novel myself, to explain the death.

'Besides—in a world where Echoes have broken loose, are hospitals even remotely safe?'

Echoes always resonate with beings that carry a narrative resembling their own. And the horrific ones all take the form of ghost stories or urban legends.

The problem is that the hospital is a staple guest that never fails to appear in ghost stories.

Which means that even as I saved patients tonight, our hospital might, without warning, transform into an entity itself.

Of course, with countless hospitals scattered across the world, the notion that ours in particular would resonate could be nothing more than paranoia.

But why do people fear plane crashes more than car crashes?

Fear is not a question of probability. It is a question of the most horrific thing that could possibly happen to you.

'Resonance can't be blocked, predicted, or even detected.'

The thoughts were settling into place, one by one.

'The smart play is not to walk into a place where a narrative already exists.'

The longer I thought, the more obvious it became that sprinting to the hospital right now was lunacy. A patient would die, and The Most Romantic Choice would seep into my mind. I'd smuggle drugs out of the hospital stockroom and meet a quiet end somewhere no one would ever look.

And even if it somehow came to nothing, there was every chance our hospital would turn into an entity the moment I let my guard down.

'Power it off…'

My finger drifted toward the phone's power button. I would switch off and go dark. The world was about to be in chaos for a long while; no one would think ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it strange if one unremarkable man vanished. They'd assume I'd been caught up in an entity on the way in.

All I had to do was find a place with no narrative. A perfectly ordinary, boring, unremarkable place—and carry on a safe life there.

'Sure, I became a doctor to save people. But I never signed up to throw in my own life with the deal.'

There are many varieties of the spirit of service, and mine had always been less about sacrifice than about a kind of surplus—a goodwill born of ease. The sort of generosity that flows from a full granary.

This time, of my own volition, my finger moved toward the end-call button.

'One press, and it's over—'

"Professor! Are you listening to me?!"

'And here I thought I was living large…'

"Professor! We don't have a single free attending to confirm orders, so I need your sign-off! Female, thirty-four, TCA overdose. She's had a full bolus and sodium bicarbonate. She seemed to be stabilizing, but her BP keeps dropping!"

My brain—which had been busy plotting an escape from the panic—decoded the report on pure instinct.

TCA overdose. A suicide attempt with antidepressants. One of the most common cases that come knocking on the ER door. The reason cardiology gets called in is that these drugs usually precipitate an emergency when they hit the heart.

The finger headed for the power button stopped.

"Is she in fib?"

"No, Professor. But she's not responding to the bolus or the bicarb—her pressure's stuck at 60/40. We're running norepinephrine at max dose with no response there either. She's anuric and in refractory shock."

"…What's the EKG show?"

"We're running it right now… oh, the intern's back. Hand it over. Yes. The QRS is prolonged past 180 milliseconds. I can't decide whether we should keep escalating the bicarb and the norepinephrine."

Before I knew it, my lips were moving beyond my own will.

"Hang a bag of Intralipid 20%. Now."

"Did you say Intralipid, Professor?"

"TCA is lipophilic, isn't it? The drug is parked in the fat of her myocardial cells, so nothing else can muscle its way in. So we flood the plasma with fat and dissolve it back out. You're a third-year—you followed that much, didn't you?"

"Oh—yes, Professor! Thank you!"

"Get lidocaine drawn up as well. Don't place the order—prep only."

"Professor, forgive me, but I was taught lidocaine is contraindicated with TCA—it works through the same mechanism, doesn't it?"

She was right. Lidocaine, like TCA, slows the heart. From where she stood, I might as well have been ordering more poison poured into a poisoned patient.

But what determines whether any substance in this world is poison or medicine is the dose—and the circumstances under which it's given.

"Lidocaine works as a competitive agent here. It elbows its way into the channels the TCA is squatting in and back out again, which opens up room for the other drugs to get a foothold."

"Oh… I'm sorry. I didn't know that."

"You're not supposed to. It's not standard treatment—it's a gamble. That's exactly why I told you not to place the order. If we thread that needle wrong, the patient dies, so I'll make the judgment myself when I get there. Five minutes. Cover the hole for me until then."

"Yes, Professor!"

I hung up.

Vrooom!—Before I knew ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it, I was flooring the accelerator toward the hospital. Then a red light caught me, and I rested my forehead against the steering wheel and muttered.

"I suppose taking after someone means I'll never amount to a proper gentleman after all, Father."

I'd sworn I wouldn't live like a sucker and die for nothing. But when I came to my senses—just like the person who had once sprinted at full tilt toward a burning building—I was racing flat-out toward exactly that kind of place.

"Blood will out, I guess. Damn it."

And the corner of my mouth, even as I said it, for some reason refused to come down.

One life, lived only once. It'll work out somehow.