Rescue Operation (9)
A ferry loaded with people crossed the sea. It was late afternoon, and soon the twilight would paint the sea in a brilliant glow.
While Jinsoo was reviewing the list of guards and prisoners in the central control room, inside the ferry, so prisoners who still had strength left were talking. Of course, instead of idle chatter, they were having more practical conversations.
“We didn’t make a mistake, did we?” Nina glanced around nervously.
“What do you an?” Sasha asked.
Instead of answering, Nina gestured around with her chin. Everywhere you looked, the cabins were packed with people. And heavily ard robots were patrolling through the crowd. The way they subdued the prisoner who had caused a disturbance earlier was quite impressive. The woman hit in the shoulder couldn't get up for a while and just gagged on the spot.
Her companions checked on her, but there were no broken bones or visible injuries. The strike had precisely targeted the muscles to cause maximum pain. If this wasn’t a coincidence and was intentional, that was terrifying in its own way.
“From now on, we’ll be under the control of those tin cans. If you don’t listen to them, they’ll just beat you up.”
Nina had dealt with police officers and prison guards before, but even with prisoners, she'd never seen anyone treat won like this.
“The place we’re going to stay looks pretty tough.”
“No, that’s not it.” Sasha replied to Nina's complaint. “It’s not that the place is tough. The world itself has beco a tough place.”
Sasha’s gaze was fixed on the advertisent screens installed throughout the ferry. They were showing a pre-recorded educational video. It wasn’t teaching anything new, just showing images and videos of how the outside world had changed.
It was a compilation of ruined cities and landmarks in Korea, and the final desperate news broadcasts before the stations stopped airing. The point was probably to make the prisoners accept reality and comply with control. But there wasn’t really a need for such a video. Everyone here already knew what had happened to the outside world.
About 30% of the prisoners had been transferred to the island during the war, and the remaining 70% had been moved when Korea was on the verge of being completely devastated. Many had even passed through the ruined cities shown in the video.
“Sniff…” So prisoners, perhaps triggered by PTSD, were huddled in a corner, crying. They had witnessed their prisoner transport buses being torn apart by monsters during an attack. Even without this ntal conditioning, everyone here longed for a safe haven.
“I’m starving to death.” Jisoo said and rubbed her stomach.
Of course, hunger wasn’t just her problem. The sound of growling stomachs echoed from all directions. When you pack a lot of starving people into a small space, the growls resonate everywhere.
“Ugh, it’s so loud. Can’t you shut up, you bitches!” Nina snapped irritably, but what could they do about their hunger? Everyone was too weak and afraid of Nina, so they just glanced nervously, and the security robots showed no intention of intervening.
“Guard!” Jisoo raised her hand.
“What, what is it?”
The guards huddled in a corner looked at her in confusion.
“Not you lot.” Jisoo sneered at them. “After being locked up for so long and finally released, do you still want to be treated like guards?”
The guards’ faces reddened with embarrassnt, but they didn’t say anything.
“Guard! Guard!” Jisoo called out energetically to a nearby security robot. She didn’t seem to mind submitting to a machine. Perhaps she realized that these robots weren’t ordinary by any ans. Her situation was far from normal, and she was quick to adapt.
The security robot checked her prisoner profile and assessed her threat level. It then approached her with its shotgun held in a ready position.
“Wow, you look even tougher up close.”
[Jisoo Ha, do you have a request?]
“Yes! I have a request. I’m really hungry. Can we get sothing to eat?”
[We will arrive at our destination soon. After completing the sanitation procedures and dical checks, food will be provided.]
Jisoo had been in the restroom when the two prisoners got into a fight and were subdued before departure, so she didn’t know what to expect.
“I see. Is there going to be enough food?”
[The standard worker’s al will be provided.]
Jisoo grinned and sat back down as the security robot moved on. The other prisoners looked at her as if she had lost her mind.
“I’m starving…” Jisoo ignored their stares and just smacked her lips. At that mont, a speaker crackled to life.
[This is an announcent. The ferry will soon dock at the shelter's rear gate. It is a secure underground city that will provide for your needs. Please follow the instructions to move to the rear of the vessel. Any inappropriate behavior will be dealt with according to our zero-tolerance policy.]
Jisoo recognized the voice. It belonged to the young woman she had briefly t in the auditorium of the offshore prison. Was her na Rose? She was stunningly beautiful, she thought.
“Sasha.”
“What?” Sasha was inspecting her nails.
“What kind of man do you think is in charge of the place we’re going to?”
“Who knows?”
“Don’t you know anything more about him? Judging by the way his subordinates behave, he seems like a scary guy.”
Sasha paused in thought. “I don’t know either. We’ll find out soon enough.”
The fact that Sasha had influence among the prisoners ant that she was a useful tool for controlling them. Surely, they’d have a chance to et whoever was in charge.
As they wondered about their new administrator, he was dealing with another problem elsewhere.
***
[Warning. Warning. An object approaching this vessel has been detected.]
A security robot, stationed at the ferry's bridge, reported to .
“What’s approaching? Could it be another ship?” I put down my cup of coffee. Having spent the ti leading the operation and catching short naps in the central control room, even caffeine couldn’t shake off my fatigue.
[No. It’s not marine debris. It’s approaching from below the water’s surface.]
“Could it be a whale or a shark? A submarine, maybe?”
It's not widely known, but in Korean waters, not only whales but also large sharks like great whites and makos occasionally appear. If not that, it could still be a surviving South Korean Navy submarine.
[No. I will transmit the sonar display.]
A visual appeared on the central control room screen. The ferry was represented by an icon emitting sonar waves in the middle of the map. A mysterious object, approaching in a straight line from a distance, was displayed.
[It’s moving faster than a whale or a shark could. And no existing submarine is that large.] Artemis spoke.
“Is it targeting the ferry?”
[As soon as we detected its approach and altered our course, it adjusted its trajectory to follow us. It is clearly chasing the vessel.]
“How long until it catches up?”
[Thirteen minutes.]
“That's cutting it close.”
The rear bridge at the shelter is complete. The ferry’s boarding area is wide enough that, if properly organized, up to eight won can enter shoulder to shoulder at once. They aren’t ordinary civilians either, but prisoners used to moving in formation, so if managed well, everyone should be able to disembark before it catches up.
“Whatever it is, we must assu it’s extrely dangerous.”
The unidentified object displayed on the screen was drawing nearer to the ferry. The tir in the corner, counting down in real-ti, ticked down second by second. It was an increasingly unsettling sight. By the ti it reached the ten-minute mark, the ferry arrived and docked at the temporary bridge constructed from the shelter’s rear entrance with less than eight minutes remaining.
[Disembark imdiately.]
Under the control of the security robots, the won quickly began to get off the ferry. Following my orders, Rose was the first to disembark and was already inside the shelter. She wanted to stay until the last passengers had disembarked, but I had ordered her to get off at once.
[Maintain order.]
With less than five minutes remaining, not even half of the passengers had disembarked. The massive unidentified object detected by the ferry’s sonar had already reached a close range. It was clearly targeting the vessel.
And now, five minutes remained.
Then four minutes.
Three minutes.
Finally, with less than two minutes remaining, so of the won, hurrying across the bridge, suddenly stopped.
“What’s that?”
Cries of shock, exclamations, and murmurs of astonishnt echoed everywhere. They were looking beyond the ferry. A massive dark shadow was rapidly approaching beneath the water’s surface.
As it drew closer, the vast surface of the sea began to split as the object rose, its presence becoming increasingly clear. Sothing enormous, too vast to be hidden by the scattering twilight, was headed straight for us.
[Move quickly. Don’t stop.]
The security robots imdiately stepped in to control the situation, and the won resud moving. Instinctively, they understood that this was not just so spectacle to be gawked at. When less than a minute remained, everyone had finally disembarked.
“Send the ferry away imdiately.”
[Understood.]
The ferry, now under Artemis’s remote control, sped away from the shelter at full speed.
Then, thirty seconds passed.
Twenty seconds.
Ten seconds.
Finally, the shadow surfaced.
Its first appearance resembled that of a mantis shrimp. Its large, round eyes, a mix of purple and blue, appeared to be at least five ters in diater. Below them, its dark blue exoskeleton extended in segnts, forming joints with each segnt just slightly smaller than the ferry itself.
Water that had pooled between the joints ca crashing down like waterfalls, hitting the sea and causing the ferry to sway pitifully from the impact. Its lower body, still subrged, was made of muscular tentacles resembling those of a cephalopod, though their full length was impossible to gauge.
But the most striking feature was sothing else. Its enormous, mountain-like chest was flanked by two massive arms, each ending in a fist that looked like a wrecking ball for demolishing buildings. The fists were curled inward, and the tension in the anaconda-like muscles running from the fists up through the arms and body was palpable.
Boom!
A deafening noise, more akin to an explosion, erupted. The won, who had been making their way across the bridge, scread and clutched their ears in unison. So even lost their balance and tumbled into the sea. When I looked back at the ferry, there was nothing left on the deck. The second and third floors, along with the bridge, had vanished.
Boom!
At the second explosion, the middle section of the ferry blew apart, splitting it in two. A massive amount of seawater rushed into the open gash, sinking the vessel rapidly. But the gigantic creature didn’t seem inclined to wait for it to fully sink.
Boom!
At the third explosion, the front half of the ship was blown into the distance, as if it had exploded. The massive creature observed the remaining back half of the ferry for a mont, then, like a whale twisting its body, subrged back into the water. As it did, enormous tentacles shot up from the sea and spread out in a wide circular formation, resembling a sunflower.
Boom!
The tentacles contracted all at once and generated a massive shockwave that propelled the creature at lightning speed. A sonic boom echoed above the water, while powerful waves surged below.
“Aaah!”
“Kyaaaa!”
The spray from the sonic boom shot toward the cave’s entrance, knocking down all the won who were still running across the temporary bridge. In an instant, the black shadow disappeared over the horizon. Now, the remains of the ferry were nowhere to be seen.
“Help us!”
“Mommy, please…”
All that remained were a few won, bleeding from their ears and crawling desperately toward the bridge, along with others floundering in the sea. As the reserve boats were dispatched to rescue the won, Artemis spoke.
[Leviathan…]
It was indeed a fitting na for such a creature.
“The sea isn’t safe either. Who knows how many of those things are out there, or how many different kinds…”
Even the faint hope I had that there might still be a survivor group led by the navy was fading. A question suddenly ca to mind. “Why did it only appear now? We were lucky, but it had plenty of opportunities to attack us before.”
[Maybe it finished off everything it could and was taking so kind of break. Or it went hunting farther away. We can co up with plenty of theories. But one thing’s certain: if we set sail again, it won’t take long before another one of those things shows up.]
I gazed out at the darkening sea. Whether on a clear day, at sunset, or in the dead of night, the sea was once a treasure trove of scenic beauty that shifted with ti. But now, even that beauty felt tainted, sothing I could no longer fully appreciate.
I had already accepted that many of the simple pleasures I used to enjoy, like walking through the woods with my hands in my pockets or strolling through a park, had vanished. But now, realizing that even the sea had beco a part of that loss weighed heavily on my heart.
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