Yu Geum, who was sleepwalking, approached Baek Ae-young. Hesitatingly, he spoke up.
“Did you see any survivors at the main complex?”
The majority of those who stay at the main complex, which can accommodate over 400 people, are researchers. It was placed near the research center on purpose. Baek Ae-young looked at Yu Geum with annoyance and let out a sigh of disbelief. She had completely forgotten that Yu Geum was a researcher.
“From what I saw when I was outside, the main complex and the research center were collapsing. We were supposed to go to the main complex, but we had to return to Baekho-dong in a hurry.” Seo Ji-hyuk tried his best to speak in a gentle tone. “As you can see, many people escaped before the flooding. Their lodgings and the evacuation routes were the closest.”
It didn’t seem like the fact that more than half of the people who escaped from Baekho-dong were unconscious from alcohol and couldn’t even hear the emergency alarm would be helpful to Yu Geum at this moment. Most of the researchers and professors who were with him during their PhD program had been staying at the main complex and the research center. Yu Geum’s expression was not good. I looked at Yu Geum and asked a question that came to mind.
“Why were you staying at Baekho-dong instead of the main complex?”
I whispered, thinking it might be a personal issue, but Yu Geum answered with a dark expression as if it was nothing.
“A professor of marine biology from the United States was staying in the room next to mine, not our professor. But these days, the data is not coming out well, and he’s been so stressed out writing his paper that he couldn’t even handle having another professor staying next to him. He even said hello to me as if I were his professor. He couldn’t sleep well, so Martina moved to his room. But I can’t get in touch with her now. She might be busy with her mining shift or might not be able to contact me because she was at the main complex.”
“Maybe Martina is just busy with work, and those who are managing the mining robots outside might not know what’s going on here,” I said quietly, thinking it might be a possibility.
At that moment, Nikita pointed to a small window in front of us.
“Look outside!”
Nikita pointed to a precious circular window facing south from Baekho-dong. There were no windows like this in the Fourth Undersea Base. There were only a few circular windows in the hallway, but they were about the size of a person’s upper body.
According to Wei Wang, the windows in the main complex cost a lot of money. Besides, even if a window was installed in the deep sea, all you could see outside was darkness.
According to Nikita’s explanation, the lights of the main complex research center should have looked like dozens of colorful lights shining in the darkness if you looked outside from the window of Baekho-dong. But at the end of Nikita’s pointing, there was nothing to be seen. Only pitch black.
“What should we be seeing?” Nikolai said calmly, and Nikita jumped up as if he couldn’t hold back.
“What should we be seeing?! There’s no light!”
“Oh, right.”
“Ah! You fool!” exclaimed Vladmir as he watched Nikki run around wildly.
“It seems your lie was not a lie after all,” he added, turning to look at Shin Hae-ryang. “If you don’t believe me, swim out and see for yourself,” he suggested.
Meanwhile, Yu Geum was staring out the window, looking as if she were in a trance. When she saw that the research center, which should have been located next to the main building, was nowhere to be seen, she stumbled over her words.
“Why…why is it not there? Why isn’t there any light? It should be there, it has to be there!”
“Calm down, Miss Geum. It could be that it’s gone, or perhaps it was turned off,” Vladmir tried to rea*sure her.
“That thing doesn’t turn off! The 7-story Research Center Building 4 has disappeared!” Yu Geum cried out, her face pale as she stared outside before staggering back from the window.
Knowing that Yu Geum liked sweets, I rummaged through my bag to find something to give her, only to realize that the snake I had caught earlier was inside. The snake didn’t bite me, and I breathed a sigh of relief before pulling out my pad and phone. There was no reception, but it seemed like the internal intranet was still functioning. I handed Yu Geum a sugar-free apple candy and popped a sugar-free lemon candy into my mouth before offering one to Shin Hae-ryang who pa*sed by.
Watching Shin Hae-ryang’s jawline move as he chewed, I couldn’t help but admire its handsome shape. Suddenly, Seo Ji-Hye snatched the sugar-free orange candy from my hand.
In the Russian team, Victor and Sophia were carrying strawberry candy with them. As I listened to the sound of rustling candy wrappers, I accessed the underwater base bulletin board and clicked on the first post, which was almost flooding the page.
Title: It’s Room 77!
Content: Help us! The room is flooded outside! We can’t get out because of the water pressure, and the door won’t open! There are five of us here! Please help us.
“Has anyone here checked the messages on the base forum? Am I the only one who has seen it? Or are you all pretending not to have seen it? Nobody has talked about this post. Didn’t Shin Hae-ryang say that the main operations building was submerged in water? So, what is this message all about?
If the main operations building is submerged and in a bad condition, then the entire engineering team is lying. They claimed that we should head to Hyeonmu-dong, but is that really the right direction?
But if the main operations building is indeed submerged, then this post itself is a lie. Someone is hoping for people to go to the main operations building. Who is lying here? We will soon arrive at the central square in Jungang-dong. If we go south, we will reach the main operations building, and if we go north, we will reach Hyeonmu-dong. If we don’t speak up now, nobody will pay attention to the main operations building.
“Have you seen the post on the internal forum?” I asked the pa*sersby.
They turned their heads to look at me. Being an introverted person, I flinched at the dozens of pairs of eyes staring at me. I strengthened my voice, which was faltering.
“There are a few people trapped in the main operations building 77.”
“So what?” a man asked.
“We need to go save them,” I said firmly.
“Did you see what happened to Baekho-dong? It was submerged in water. Why go back to a place like that? The ones going to help will just end up dying too.”
“They say there are five people trapped there. They could be from our team!”
“Shut up!” Nikita, his face turning pale, shouted in anger. Engineering teams usually have 7 to 8 people per team working together. The engineers were probably drinking and having fun during their off hours. Now, with only 5 people left, 2 or 3 of them might have already become food for the deep sea creatures, or they might have escaped, or they might be wandering around somewhere in the base.
“Or they could have already escaped,” I suggested, trying to calm Nikita down. The worried look on his face was clear. Even though I didn’t know these people, I hoped they were not dead. But the unspoken message was probably already clear to everyone. I also spoke to the engineering team.
“There may be some trapped people in the main operations building who are part of our team or someone we know,” I said.
The Russian team members looked at me with their arms crossed, and Carlos seemed uneasy. No one wanted to go to the flooded dormitory building, risking their lives again. I felt the same way. I didn’t want to swim in that water again. But there was a message on the forum asking for help.
“Four of our team members have already escaped through the escape pods,” Seo Ji-hyuk said hesitantly, but he stopped speaking when he saw the chaotic atmosphere. Shin Hae-ryang reached out her hand to me. I thought she was going to shake hands with me, but she cleverly took the pad I was holding on my side. She then began to read the message that had been posted. In a bewildered voice, I asked her: “Shin Hae-ryang, what about my pad?”
“It’s in room 22 of Baekho-dong,” she replied.
Ah, it had been submerged for good. I wondered how long an electronic device completely sealed in saltwater could withstand the pressure. When lost items were left in seawater, the power supply was likely to remain on until it ran out of power or was destroyed by the pressure.
Baek Ae-yeong’s voice was heard on her phone, asking if they had accessed the underwater base forum. Seo Ji-hyuk suggested they should take a look together. Yu Geum chewed her lips for a long time before speaking up.
“I’ll go to the main operations building. I may not be of much help, but those people are trapped, and I’ll try my best to save them. They could be my supervisor, or someone I know from the lab, or a colleague.”
The chances of researchers being trapped in the main operations building were high, or maybe Martina had switched rooms. I didn’t know why five people were in one room.
