Chapter 105: There Is No Line １０ in Seoul (５)

****

Getting back up from the underground bunker didn’t take long. Setting aside the exploration, it was just a matter of climbing the stairs.

I made it to the exit in about ten minutes… and was immediately surrounded. Recovery Section staff had their guns trained on me. What’s going on?

Ah, right. The mimic.

“Director! Take off your gas mask!”

I hastily tossed the gas mask aside. I set my weapon down on the ground too.

“Director Geum! Operation complete!”

“Dr. Geum!”

The Recovery Section Chief lowered his gun and shouted. Can a person’s voice really get that loud?

“The Director came back alive! Medical team, stand by!”

They must have thought I was dead. As I looked around with a bewildered expression, the Chief of Recovery Section 1 walked up to me.

“Good work. Come this way for now…”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing. These are all problems that’ll be resolved now that you’ve returned safely. The operations in the other sectors seem to have succeeded as well.”

I nodded reluctantly.

The Chief handed me a foil blanket. Why does this goddamn foil blanket never improve? It’s incredibly uncomfortable.

****

The scene was still chaotic.

I sat in one of the ambulances, wrapped in that crinkling foil blanket. The sun I could see outside was already setting.

About twelve hours had passed since I entered the bunker.

“What about the other team members?”

The Recovery Section 1 Chief let out a sigh.

“Most of them made it back. They said everyone withdrew once visibility was cut off on basement level 4. We just can’t figure out where the task force science officer is… You witnessed his death?”

“He fell into the pit.”

The Recovery Section 1 Chief squeezed his eyes shut.

“Understood. Please rest up for now — who knows how badly you might be hurt.”

“I’m not hurt at all.”

“You can’t know that until we check. I knew a guy who lost three toes to a small landmine in the field and didn’t realize it until he got back to base and took off his socks.”

“Why?”

“Adrenaline constricts the peripheral blood vessels. It suppresses pain perception. So you don’t even notice your toes are gone, and the bleeding is limited…”

He was suddenly talking a lot — the Recovery Chief’s mind must be complicated. Is it because of the fatality during this operation? Or—

“Actually. The mimics kept coming out of the bunker, Director. In the form of the task force members. We killed as many as we could.”

I flinched. That couldn’t have been a pleasant experience. Just imagining it is horrifying.

“The Black Faith cultists weren’t the real problem. Our enemy threatening humanity was lurking barely a sewer’s distance away.”

Right. I nodded.

“Understood.”

My head hurts. Did I inhale some gas down there? I was wearing the gas mask the whole time, though.

But my questions still weren’t answered. Why did the science officer fall into the pit, and what the hell is at the bottom of it?

****

My head hurts.

“Blink for me.”

A doctor who’d followed to the scene shone a penlight in my face. I did as instructed.

“No pain anywhere?”

I shook my head.

“First time meeting you, Director. You’re just as I heard. You really do look like a woman of student age, don’t you? I thought it was an exaggeration.”

I frowned a little. This doctor fellow — what nonsense is he spouting in the middle of an examination?

“Are you tense?”

“Ah. Yes.”

“I’m fine, go see other patients.”

The doctor nodded.

And then disappeared somewhere.

****

I boarded the vehicle heading back to the base. Nanami was driving. Probably doubling as my escort, I figured. Not sure, honestly.

“Why the long face?”

“Ah. The science officer who accompanied me died.”

“I don’t know if this helps, but… every underground organization in the country got wiped out today. They brought down the hammer with full state authority.”

“A blessing in disguise, then.”

“Don’t take it too hard. Every member of a task force knows they could die at any moment. They’re prepared for it.”

I nodded slowly.

“His death isn’t your fault.”

“Even though I told him to go down to the deepest level of the underground bunker? And he fell because of it?”

Nanami chewed on my words for a moment.

“The slip wasn’t your fault. Do you think a better decision would’ve been made if it weren’t you? No. If it had been anyone else, they couldn’t have even gone down there with them in the first place.”

Nanami looked out the window.

“It’s strange, isn’t it. We made that whole mess, and yet the people in this city don’t know a thing. About what just happened here.”

Well, of course. Making it that way is our job.

The city visible through the window was peaceful to a surprising degree. The people looked like they knew nothing, either. Just another day, business as usual.

****

[ ※ ACCESS RESTRICTION WARNING ※ ]

[This document is locked under Director’s authority.]

[This document is protected by a harmful memetic agent. Anyone without clearance must never open this document.]

[On the Subterranean Autotrophic Ecosystem]

[Filed by: Professor Park, Department of Geology]

[I’ve read the report carefully.]

[So. Your claim is that a stratum-scale ecosystem several kilometers deep exists underground, producing organic compounds such as petroleum, and that it forms an autotrophic ecosystem based on geothermal energy or hydrocarbons. Is that correct?]

[And that this is the source of petroleum.]

[It’s not entirely without merit. Oil companies have been researching microbial communities living in subterranean hydrocarbons for a very long time. They affect oil quality, you see.]

[Identical bacteria have been found in oil fields on the opposite side of the globe. This could serve as evidence for that massive SLiME-oil stratum that Ms. Lee Seah was arguing for.]

[More to the point. Even granting that a subterranean biosphere is possible. Are you saying the entrance to the underground world is in Seoul? That’s a bit hard to believe.]

****

[ ※ ACCESS RESTRICTION WARNING ※ ]

[This document is locked under Director’s authority.]

[This document is protected by a harmful memetic agent. Anyone without clearance must never open this document.]

[Re: On the Subterranean Autotrophic Ecosystem]

[Filed by: Head of Research, Lee Seah]

[Professor Park, Department of Geology. I hear you were close with the former Director, who is currently missing. Have you heard any news from him recently? I’m curious what the former Director’s opinion on this matter would be.]

[In any case. The truth is far more complicated.]

[There is no city without an underground. The most famous example would be the catacombs beneath Paris, dug since the Roman era. Even now, entrances to the underground world exist throughout the city.]

[Here’s what the reality of an urban underground world looks like.]

[First, basement level 1. The surface layer. A space containing sewers, storm drains, building basements, and the like.]

[Basement level 2. The depth where bunkers, air-raid shelters, and subways are found. Roughly 100 meters deep.]

[Basement level 3. This is the depth where endlessly sprawling cave networks exist. Ecosystems based on petroleum, geothermal heat, and hydrothermal vents are found here.]

[Basement level 4.]

[Well… I don’t know about this one myself. But if we go down into that 8-kilometer pit we discovered this time, we might find out.]

****

[ ※ ACCESS RESTRICTION WARNING ※ ]

[This document is locked under Director’s authority.]

[This document is protected by a harmful memetic agent. Anyone without clearance must never open this document.]

[On the Subterranean Autotrophic Ecosystem]

[Filed by: Professor Park, Department of Geology]

[One last thing. You said the science officer fell into the pit. Would a trained task force soldier really have slipped?]

[The Abyss must have called to him. I don’t know exactly what kind of anomaly it is. Nor do I need to.]

[It’s no coincidence that a city was built atop a place where the Abyss had opened. Because the Abyss is open, people gather above it, and a city forms. Do you understand what I’m saying?]

[The Abyss that calls to us is not simply somewhere far away. Whether it’s in the shadows of a closet, the darkness of subway tracks, or the sea—every place unseen is the domain of the Abyss.]

[Ah, truly dreadful.]

[Those who join the Group of Interest know this truth. And so they choose to join the Abyss rather than resist it.]

****

Lee Seah tore her eyes from the screen. She buried her face in both hands. It wasn’t that a ghost had appeared, or that she’d seen something gruesome.

“Hoo.”

She’d merely exchanged a few lines of text about research on paper. And yet, she had to imagine a terrible truth worthy of tonight’s nightmares.

This one was especially unpleasant.

****

[Underground Bunker Infiltration Operation]

[Filed by: Team Leader, Task Force Moon of Seoul]

[The objective of the operation was the elimination and exploration of the Group of Interest in the underground bunker. The objective was achieved, but the task force’s science officer is missing.]

[According to the testimony of the Director, who witnessed the situation at the time, he fell into the deep underground.]

[An expedition into the cave in question is being considered to recover his remains, but it does not appear feasible in the near future.]

[Numerous mimics and Group of Interest personnel were neutralized.]

****

[Sick Leave Request]

[Filed by: Team Leader, Task Force Moon of Seoul]

[I wish to take three months off using all available sick leave, annual leave, and vacation days. I apologize.]