Beacon of Light in the Dark Sea

[Fingerprint does not match.]

The voice was so far away that my translator could no longer translate it into Korean, and I could only hear the original voice saying “Access denied” very faintly. With tension stiffening my body, I asked Yoo Geum-yi in a rigid voice,

“How many failed attempts before it doesn’t open?”

Yoo Geum-yi pondered as if thinking about the distant past, then answered,

“About ten times?”

Kim Ga-young kept folding her fingers to count, then said in a small, frightened voice,

“I think it’s been more than 7 times now.”

“What happens after 10 attempts?”

“Well… You have to try again after 10 minutes.”

Jihyun frowned while gripping the scalpel. Is it multiple people? As soon as I had that thought, the idea that one person could be attempting the fingerprint access occurred to me. Wow. No way. It can’t be. Ignoring the chills running down my spine, I asked Yoo Geum-yi,

“Can you only enter with fingerprint recognition?”

Yoo Geum-yi paused to think, then nodded.

“After it became known that access could be gained through AI voice modulation, the labs abandoned that method early on. Originally, we used card tags, but there were people who played pranks with the card tags for clocking in and out, so they were all discarded. Now, only fingerprints will probably work.”

As soon as she said that, there was a sound of a door opening with a click in the distance. We all froze for a second, looking at each other’s faces. Seeing Kim Ga-young’s horrified expression, Jihyun quietly approached and hurriedly locked the metal door connecting the animal rooms.

Footsteps could be heard very faintly and distantly. Yoo Geum-yi looked at the nearly empty aquarium tanks, then at the locked door and the hydrochloric acid bottle in her hand, and her face turned pale as she shouted at us in a small voice,

“The key! The key!”

“Yes?”

“The key to this metal door! It should be next to the reagent cabinet!”

“I have it here. I grabbed it. Don’t worry.”

Kim Ga-young said, showing the jellyfish-engraved key in her open palm. As Yoo Geum-yi exhaled deeply and gripped the hydrochloric acid bottle with both hands, the footsteps grew closer and closer.

The door connecting the animal room could be opened by pressing the button on the floor with your foot. As soon as I had that thought, there was a sound of the door opening, as if the other person had pressed the button on the floor. It seemed the other person had entered Yoo Geum-yi’s animal room. The sound of dragging feet was close. Slippers? Jihyun asked Yoo Geum-yi in a small voice to go to the office.

“How do you open this?”

“Press the button on the side.”

When pressed, the door blocking the adjacent lab’s animal room opened, and we could move to the office of the adjacent lab. We all looked at each other with frozen faces full of tension. ······What do we do now? Should we run out of here right now, hoping our feet are faster than that person’s, and run up the stairs to the 3rd floor? Jihyun opened a random notebook and wrote with a pen as if dashing off the words. She had written “run out of here right now” when a sound was heard.

Knock knock knock.

The other person was knocking on the metal door with the back of their hand. Knock knock knock. As we exchanged glances while listening to the knocking sound again, a man’s voice was heard.

“I know you’re in there.”

Then he kicked the door once with his foot. Bang! At the sound, Kim Ga-young gasped and held her breath. Yoo Geum-yi jumped up from where she was standing.

• ·····It’s a metal door. You bastard. Go ahead and kick it. Seeing Yoo Geum-yi frozen like a statue while holding the hydrochloric acid bottle, I took the bottle from her and placed it in the center of the office desk. The man’s voice, previously speaking in normal English, came from the other side of the metal door. It was a rather deep voice.

“Why didn’t you come to the 3rd floor?”

All of our gazes turned to Yoo Geum-yi. Yoo Geum-yi stammered and asked us in a small voice,

“······Should I answer? Or stay quiet? Which method would be better for us?”

Now even Jihyun had a clueless expression. I whispered softly,

“Wouldn’t it be okay to ask what he’s doing? Why he didn’t escape from the underwater base where water is leaking, if the research center is intact, what the hell he’s been doing. What he’s trying to do by coming in here.”

We only stopped by here briefly before going to the underwater pollution center via the 3rd floor, but why is that bastard hanging around here? Jihyun thought for 5 seconds, then nodded.

“······Alright. Let’s try talking. But Yoo Geum-yi, pretend you’re the only one in this lab.”

At Jihyun’s words, Yoo Geum-yi said “Ah” and nodded, then quickly wrote “OK” in the notebook. Then she left the office, crossed the door, walked to the other side of the metal door, and answered loudly,

“Who are you to enter someone else’s lab without permission?”

“I entered after scanning my fingerprint though.”

The man’s voice answered as if mocking Yoo Geum-yi. Yoo Geum-yi, with a face full of tension, bit her lip once and shouted with a frown,

“If you’re going to say such nonsense, I don’t want to talk, so get out!”

When Yoo Geum-yi spoke sternly as if annoyed by the attitude of the unidentified person on the other side of the metal door, the other person was silent for a while, then responded to Yoo Geum-yi’s words.

“I work at the underwater pollution center. Do you work here? Or did you wander in like me?”

“······How did you get in?”

“I picked up some researchers’ index fingers. What about you?”

Kim Ga-young made a face as if she would vomit from biological disgust. Yoo Geum-yi hesitated, looked at us for a few seconds, then answered,

“I work in this lab.”

“Did you come in from the main building? Or have you been here the whole time?”

“I’ve been here.”

The man kicked the door once more with his foot. Bang! The sound rang out, and Kim Ga-young and I flinched and were startled, while Yoo Geum-yi jumped up from where she was standing and took a few steps back. At the scratching sound, I turned my head to see Jihyun writing in the notebook.

Jihyun, tightly gripping the scalpel in one hand, was scribbling with a complicated expression. She had written, “I’ll open the door from this side and go to Yoo Geum-yi’s lab to ambush and capture that man. Please stall for time until then.” But as soon as I saw the contents, I shook my head.

He seems crazy, and Jihyun is going to fight him with just a scalpel? Didn’t he say he has some weird microbe gun? Can Jihyun take him down alone? What if someone is waiting right outside the door for this lab door to open?

And if that man had closed the door after entering Yoo Geum-yi’s lab by scanning his fingerprint, we wouldn’t be able to enter that lab without Yoo Geum-yi’s fingerprint. An ambush would be impossible. The man spoke to Yoo Geum-yi with a sneer.

“Don’t lie.”

The man spoke to Yoo Geum-yi leisurely.

“Let’s exchange information without falsehoods for the sake of our survival. Both you and I are busy people, aren’t we?”

Yoo Geum-yi frowned and crossed her arms. Then, in contrast to her trembling lips, she answered coldly.

“First, give me some information that could help me. I’ll judge after receiving it.”

“The barrier lowered on the 3rd floor of the underwater pollution center can only be opened with authority on the level of Center Director Riley or Center Director Malone. The same goes for the barrier that came down between the main buildings.”

Upon hearing the man’s words, Jihyun’s eyes widened. Then she immediately took out Roarke’s pad, turned it on, and checked the contents through the map of the underwater pollution center. She then scribbled with her hand.

[The barrier was down.]

Kim Ga-young took the pen with a puzzled look and wrote,

[I’ve gone back and forth hundreds of times between my lab in the underwater pollution center and the main building, and it’s never been blocked.]

Perhaps originally, researchers were able to freely come and go between the research centers. I took the pen and quickly covered Kim Ga-young’s writing.

[Then that bastard is trapped in this deep-sea creature center now?]

Suddenly, I remembered the shattered pad next to Angela Malone. And the barrier that had blocked the corridor connecting to the main building. Perhaps, I thought, Angela Malone had lowered the barrier to block it.

Jihyun began checking through the pad to see if there was a way out of this deep-sea creature center to somewhere else. We also ended up entering the research center because of this pad; otherwise, we probably wouldn’t have been able to enter at all. It seemed that regular engineers couldn’t control an entire research center through the pad.

Yoo Geum-yi uncrossed her arms and pointed at the metal door with her finger to us. Then she made a gesture of twirling her finger around, as if asking what to do. Jihyun quickly wrote something. And she showed it to Yoo Geum-yi.

[In exchange, give him the information that a missile attacked this place.]

Is this important information? To me, it doesn’t seem important at all. Jihyun probably thought the same. Whether a missile destroyed the building or people caused an explosion inside, the fact that the underwater base has become like a leaky shoe remains unchanged. It also doesn’t change the fact that we need to run away for our immediate safety. Yoo Geum-yi hesitated, licked her lips once with her tongue, and answered the other person.

“The reason the research center ended up like this is because it was attacked by a missile. Now it’s my turn to ask. Did you kill the people in the corridor?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Because I could.”

Yoo Geum-yi’s mouth fell open blankly. Kim Ga-young, whose mouth was similarly agape, was writing to check if she had heard correctly. Jihyun quietly frowned at the metal door. Only after taking a deep breath in and out did Yoo Geum-yi seem to shake off the shock from those words. Yoo Geum-yi now stood askew with her arms crossed, glaring at the metal door. The man asked Yoo Geum-yi,

“Now it’s my turn to ask. Why did you return from the main building to the research center? Without escaping there?”

Yoo Geum-yi glanced at us, saw Jihyun shaking her head back and forth, and answered expressionlessly.

“It’s true that I’ve been here the whole time. I took sleeping pills and fell asleep, and when I woke up and left the lab, people were dead in the corridor. I was shocked and headed to the main building, but when I saw the barrier lowered there, I came back to the lab.”

“Why did you come to the lab? Instead of going to the 3rd floor underwater pollution center?”

Kim Ga-young was surprised and scribbled something. It was so messy that I couldn’t read what it said, so I wrote a question mark next to it. Kim Ga-young then silently waved her arms frantically and wrote again neatly in print.

[That bastard must have been in the corridor connecting the 3rd floor deep-sea creature center and the underwater pollution center.]

Ah. We came down before going to that connecting corridor on the 3rd floor. If we hadn’t come to Yoo Geum-yi’s lab, we would have almost ran into that bastard head-on.

Yoo Geum-yi shook her head and asked,

“Answer my question first. Why didn’t you escape?”

“There aren’t enough escape pods in the underwater pollution center. There are only 350, but the 500 or so people in the research center can’t leave.”

500 people? I thought there were about 400 researchers.