Getting Rid of the Boss
"HQ's gotten too comfortable to live in. That's the problem. And why isn't this hitting me? Did they water the liquor down?"
The average lifespan of HQ's indoor staff had shot up. Thanks to that, HQ's population did nothing but climb, day after day. He'd never once thought of that as a problem, but the Boss had his own reading of it.
"No matter how advanced an underground city gets, underground is still underground. There's a limit to how far you can spread your power."
In the Geofront, they said, colossal drills never stopped chewing through the earth, widening the space. Just hearing about it made his chest tighten — the kind of slog that lodged in the throat.
"The surface isn't like that, is it? Relatively speaking, it's open ground. There's still possibility out here. That's why the underground lot are having a fit."
"Monsters, zombies, air raids pouring down on you — what possibility is there in that?"
"Right. The ones underground probably thought the same thing at first. But look at HQ now. How much easier has it gotten to live?"
The Old Man used to talk about the Geofront until you were sick of hearing it. A vast underground city already finished before the first air raid ever fell. Dug so deep and so wide that they even had something they called a sky down there. While ruin came to the surface and history stumbled backward, time underground only ever flowed forward. HQ had spent more than fifty years clawing its way back to something like pre-collapse civilization; underground, they had never stopped walking into the future.
Would people like that have any reason to fear HQ?
"No matter how livable this place gets, you really think it can stand up to the ones down below?"
"What's that, you bat? A minute ago you were saying they're keeping us in check, that they mean to kill every last one of us."
Damn. Clueless Woo Jungkook had popped out again. He slipped back into Jo Yong-han.
"Well. Maybe they figured we still couldn't match them, but that it wouldn't hurt to be careful. Living corked up underground all that time, they might've grown some trauma or inferiority the rest of us can't understand. A fear that belongs only to people from below."
He'd more or less spat it out along the current of his thoughts, but—
"That's what I think too. A fundamental fear that has nothing to do with the gap in technology."
The right key again. It hadn't been entirely baseless. Even the most powerful master doesn't live without some worry that the slave might one day pick up a knife.
"Anyway, I like that you and I can actually talk."
The man emptied the bottle with a gravelly laugh.
"These bastards definitely watered it down."
"Anyway, nothing's certain. It's all guesswork."
"I'm telling you it's certain! There's no way I wouldn't be drunk on this. You think I started drinking yesterday?"
"Not that. The stuff from before."
"Ah."
Boss flung the empty bottle aside and reached into his coat again. Another bottle came out. Had he drunk so much he'd reached the point of giving birth to liquor?
"Yeah. This is it. A proper forty percent, nothing watered in."
Boss only ever drank whiskey.
"You can feel it on the tip of your tongue. That's what experience is. Guesswork? That comes out of experience too."
Everything Boss had told him sounded plausible — plausible enough that it wouldn't be strange if all of it were true. The conclusion, of course, was that there was no guarantee any of it was. Then again, if they drove every last person out of HQ, the Geofront would feel it too. HQ gathered surface resources and sent them down below. So maybe they weren't planning to chase everyone out — just a careful thinning. He'd know if he waited and watched.
"Kh... The sun's going down... Not bad."
The sun was setting. He'd run until the soles of his feet sweated, and still hadn't finished the day's business before nightfall. Clock-out Man was locked in for a night of sleeping rough outside.
"This is all your fault, mister."
"Hm? What is."
If he kept hanging around here, he wouldn't have any sleep left either.
"If we're done talking, I'm going."
"Already? Shame."
"We've got radios now. What's the problem."
"Ah, right. Then I'll call you tonight."
"...No. Don't."
A joke, of course. A radio didn't just eat electricity — it burned the energy of a communication Core as well. You could swap in a fresh battery and be done with it, but a comm Core didn't work that way. If the pieces hadn't been split from the same Core, the link simply died.
"Aw, don't be like that. Pick up if I call. I'm bored."
A joke. It had to be.
"Tell me that before you go. You said Kkamagwi gave you a spare radio, right? Who are you giving it to? We're going to be knowing each other from here on. Better to know in advance."
"Meaning you want to run a background check."
"Whoa. This really is forty percent. I'm getting drunk."
Hmm. Who should he give it to.
"Secret."
"Even if you tell me now, I won't look into it."
"I'd bet my wrist that you absolutely will."
"I'll bet Kkamagwi's right leg."
"He doesn't have it anymore."
"Shame."
...Surely his leg hadn't actually been cut off over a bet like that.
"Did you ever—"
"Hey. I didn't do it."
Then Boss held out a clenched fist.
"What."
"You said you're leaving. From now on, our goodbyes are fist bumps."
"A fist bump?"
"We're colleagues now."
He'd taken the radio, but he had no intention of becoming the kind of thick-as-blood colleague who shared life and death. He'd made that clear to Kkamagwi, too.
"And if you call and I'm outside comm range, so I can't pick up?"
"Then I guess I wasn't born to live long."
What did Boss think?
"If you call and I'm outside comm—"
"Things you can't help are things you can't help."
If that was how he saw it, fine. But answering a call didn't mean he meant to help no matter what. If he had something more important, he wasn't about to throw it away just to cultivate a little camaraderie. In his own terms, loose colleagues, maybe.
A clean tok. His outstretched fist met Boss's square on.
Loose or not, a colleague was still a colleague.
To the chicken coop. No — on the way to the living quarters, he spotted two familiar women. The Jo sisters. He meant to walk past as if he hadn't seen them.
"Jungkook!"
"Jungkook?"
Too late.
"Are you coming back from a delivery?"
"You went out once, right? Took quite a while. A Postman's face is a hard thing to catch."
Do you actually need to see it? rose all the way to his throat, but—
"Yeah."
He decided to move his mouth as little as possible. Shake them off fast and get to a bed.
"How was it? Was the noise generator I gave you any good?"
"I told you he probably just sold it. Right?"
Jo Shin-hye, still reading him perfectly. But you couldn't live only by what you thought.
"Something came up. I used all of them."
He'd used them to scatter the eyes of the masters gathered at the Clock Tower. Jo An-na's work was loud and threw sparks — useful enough.
"You used them? You did? All of them?"
"Is there a problem?"
"Wow... Delivery's a lot more dangerous than I thought. Even someone like you has to throw away every last consumable just to get the job done."
He was a little curious what someone like you was supposed to mean, but—
"Yeah."
The bed came first.
"Want me to make more?"
Jo An-na's eyes were sparkling. Looked like she'd settled into life at HQ and found her footing. An An-na-made noise generator was worth buying even if you had to pay for it. If she was offering to make them for free, there wasn't much reason to refuse — but.
"I can't keep taking them for nothing."
Helping the sisters escape had already paid him well enough. He understood An-na's goodwill, but letting free labor go on as if it were owed was a problem. A favor shouldn't turn into a given. A lot of trouble between people started the moment something became expected. Especially with an older sister beside her who could fire beams out of her eyes, and a brother behind them who stopped at nothing where family was concerned.
"But how could I take your money, Mr. Jungkook—"
"He's right. You do need the noise generators, don't you? Then buy them at a fair price?"
"Fine. Three more. Same as before."
"Um..."
When An-na didn't answer, her sister jabbed her in the side.
"Uk— ah, yes!"
"You must be tired after the delivery. You're heading for the living quarters, right?"
Don't tell him they were going the same way. That would be the worst of it.
"Then we're not. We were heading that way."
"Huh? We're going to the living quar—mmph!"
Jo An-na, dragged off like a kidnapping.
"See you later, then, Jungkook!"
"Mmph mmph!"
Once the sisters vanished in a clatter, the walk home went quiet again. The sky had darkened before he noticed. When the light went and the field of view narrowed, stray thoughts multiplied, and the senses sharpened with them. The unfamiliar weight of the radio at his hip felt heavier.
Jo Shin-hye. Jo An-na...
If the rumors were true, they might be driven out of HQ as well. Even Jo Yong-han had been smoking hard enough to show how much it worried him. This was something that would be difficult to dodge.
What about the two of them, as people to give a radio to?
Hmm... Not easy.
Coldly speaking, they were low priority. Among the HQ indoor staff he knew well enough to hand a radio to, the one with the best chance of staying alive was Min Yeo-jin. She was a hunter, and a survival instructor besides. That alone was proof enough. Give the radio to Min Yeo-jin, and it would clearly be of use to him as well. Handing one to anyone else was less for his own sake than likely to benefit them. If there was someone he absolutely had to keep alive, giving them a radio was one way to do it.
There was another reason the Jo sisters ranked low. The three siblings were a team, and Jo Yong-han, the one who led them, would find a way somehow. Maybe it was better to let the three of them solve it on their own.
If anything about the sisters still nags at me, it's the Core ability.
The reason they'd gotten out of AAA in one piece. The reason the sisters had kept every limb while Captain Choi took a critical wound under anti-aircraft fire.
One of the sisters has a defensive Core ability.
Not confirmed — but if it wasn't that, there was no explaining it. A defense capable of shielding two people through anti-aircraft fire. Good enough to throw them in as field hunters tomorrow.
Anyway, they aren't who the radio is for.
Carrying two of the things around kept grating on him. Better to hand one off soon.
The moment he reached the room, he collapsed onto the bed. The fatigue soaked through him seeped softly into the blanket. Close his eyes, and it felt as if morning would be there when he opened them. But for a moment, he decided to think.
What kind of dreams tonight. Another nightmare?
Who had died on this delivery? Clock-out Man was fine, and Tofu had lived. Caesar Man and Locke, was it — dead, but strangers. The Human Meat Factory's Special Forces Commander. Side effects of the combat stimulant. A shame, but he'd brought it on himself. The billiards had been fun, though.
Ah. The ones who'd died in the greatest numbers were the raiders. Maybe the real reason the outside world was dangerous wasn't monsters, or zombies, or air raids. Anyway, people who deserved to die had died. Yakson from the Cradle clinic had gone to his grave too. He'd deserved it. Madangbal had said the father died after him. He didn't know the story behind that, which was fortunate. Unknown things were easier to set aside.
Was that all of them? An ordinary count. An ordinary delivery. He'd had company, but it was Clock-out Man, who wasn't going to die over anything minor. Otherwise he hadn't taken anyone he didn't need, and in the end none of his company had died.
Not a bad delivery.
Then he could rest easy—
...The Feeder. The one who'd been feeding the zombie.
There was one more. Had he deserved to die? He didn't know.
A machine sound he'd never heard before came out of his own body. For a second he wondered if he'd turned into a machine, or if he was already dreaming — but when he felt around, it was the radio.
"..."
This man had actually lost his mind.
Let the talk drag on and they'd only waste each other's battery and Core energy. Ignore it.
Damn drunk.
There had to be a volume control somewhere. It wasn't the model he used, so he had no idea what was what.
"I hear you."
Maybe he should just give the radio back.
"If you've been drinking, sleep like a decent person. Every single second of this costs money."
"I thought the trip was leaving on Monday."
No chance he'd left the black market with nothing to do. Boss was busy too.
"You confirmed it works. That's enough, right?"
Had this man really called because he was bored?
"Kkamagwi? He's not answering."
"..."
Somehow that pissed him off.
"I don't have one."
What a pain. Give him what he wanted and get rid of him.
"I do have one."
"What do you get if you roast medicine too long?"
"It burns. Burnt medicine. Ammunition."
Boss was gone at once.