RTN 07

Jang Seok-ju printed the report he had written on paper, slipped it neatly into the approval tray, and left the laboratory instead of sending it as a message to Baek Yi-hyeon.

He planned to informally report in person and remind him about the meeting—after all, Baek had said he’d go check on the woman in the lab but hadn’t returned. It was ten minutes until the meeting. The protocol team had already called several times asking if anyone knew where Baek Yi-hyeon was, since he still hadn’t taken his seat.

Please don’t tell me he killed her.

It was entirely possible. Baek had asked for the interrogation room key; he’d almost certainly forgotten how to moderate his strength when roughing someone up.

If Baek reached the woman’s location, there’d be no need to interrogate anyone himself. That tedious, messy work would be handed down to subordinates.

Besides, the woman’s condition was bad. Her whole body was bruised and covered in wounds, and she was tightly wound and mentally overwhelmed.

Her life was on the line—of course. She claimed to be Baek Yi-hyeon’s friend and said she could see a status window, but no one believed her.

“She’s playing for her life. Annoying. Never seen a game? Come on. She definitely watched us kill the man who came out first. She probably figured bringing out the Soul Orb—if that’s what she did—would get her killed anyway, so she tried to save people to draw attention to herself. Our battalion commander was cautious, so he brought the woman on board; if it had been someone else, they’d have killed her on the spot.”

That was the opinion of the squad directly in charge of the gate at the site. Some even suspected the woman wasn’t an outsider at all.

“One guy came out holding the Orb so we killed him instantly. We thought that was the end and let our guard down. We weren’t watching the gate properly. Then suddenly we heard weird noises and saw people swarming out.”

“We didn’t see whether they actually came through the gate. They just said they did, so we treated them as such. Who knows if they were hiding somewhere and then all came out at once, pretending?”

“Who’d be crazy enough to pretend to be an outsider? There are people who’d do worse for money if it meant giving the family some left behind.”

“Someone probably staged it. To take our commander down.”

Recalling the rowdy soldiers who’d handed the woman over to the lab and chattered among themselves, Jang Seok-ju clicked his tongue.

If they found out the woman had two bodies, they’d faint.

For now it was certain she was an outsider. The measurements had shown that.

The question was whether she had colluded with the Cult and intentionally crossed into this world, or whether, like other outsiders, she’d been unlucky and drifted in by accident.

Jang Seok-ju favored the former. Leaving two bodies—one in each dimension—was an extraordinarily unusual condition to be mere coincidence…

Wait.

He gripped the approval tray more tightly.

What do they do with a vegetative patient in that other world?

He had no way of knowing whether, with the guardian’s consent, they practice euthanasia, or if they simply care for them forever, or whether they have technology to preserve a comatose person by freezing them.

Maybe the soul would be lost and the body would weaken and die quickly. If that happened, the woman would be no different from ordinary outsiders.

For a moment the corridor fell quiet. He looked up. Everyone passing by the hall seemed unusually cautious. No one chattered; people walked pressed to the edges of the corridor with tense faces.

Sure enough, a tall man strode toward them from a distance. In the all-white corridor he looked like a lone dark figure. It was Baek Yi-hyeon. He inclined his head in a brief salute as he came straight over.

Jang Seok-ju hurried into the empty lab next to him. Baek Yi-hyeon followed and smoothly shut the door. He then looked over at him.

“The polygraph didn’t register anything.”

At the end of that sentence Baek produced a card key and a silver metal ring. Jang Seok-ju tucked the approval tray he’d been holding under his arm and took the items with both hands.

The polygraph—probably brought from the interrogation room—felt cold in his hands. It showed no signs of functioning.

Normally when a lie is detected it emits a warning sound and heats up; they’d bought a cheap model because of military budget cuts.

“Then she must be a well-trained spy. We’re trying to train folks like that ourselves, but not many can even pass lie-detector training.”

“It may not be a lie.”

Jang Seok-ju stared at Baek Yi-hyeon. After a breath he asked again.

“Huh?”

“If Seol A-yeon really can see a status window, we have to rule out the hypothesis that she’s a spy sent by the Cult. Seol A-yeon herself would be a conduit of the divine—why would the Cult need to use an intermediary? If she wants to, she could cross over from her original dimension while leaving her body there.”

Jang Seok-ju’s mouth fell open.

“You believe that woman? That’s ridiculous…”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Huh?”

“We haven’t confirmed the status window yet, so the odds are fifty-fifty. More importantly, Seol A-yeon’s attitude is too altruistic to be following orders from the Cult. If she’d only come pretending to be a friend of mine to win favor, she wouldn’t have needed to rescue others out of the gate.”

“Maybe she was pretending to be kind to curry the battalion commander’s favor…”

“Even if she’d colluded with the Cult, it’s not easy to risk your life and cross into another dimension.”

“Con artists do anything for money.”

“How much would Team Leader Jang take to cross into another dimension?”

It was a difficult question. To go to any dimension you must pass through a gate, and from then on you’d risk your life.

Besides, leaving your original body in a coma and crossing over takes resolve. It’s tantamount to never returning.

Jang Seok-ju answered awkwardly.

“Well, there may be extenuating circumstances. Maybe they have debt and can’t die, that sort of thing…”

“Does Seol A-yeon look like that?”

He was at a loss for words. Jang remembered the woman fighting bitterly on the lab table, screaming and resisting, pleading and wondering what they were trying to do to her. She’d been all fight, like a fish pulled from water.

“I’ll file the report and then come back.”

Jang blinked and hastily handed the approval tray he’d tucked under his arm to Baek Yi-hyeon.

Baek Yi-hyeon took it, unfolded it, and skimmed through it. He didn’t seem to be reading it properly; he looked oddly flushed. There was no better word for it.

Barely glancing at the report, Baek raised his eyes. Jang felt anxious without realizing it. His superior looked different from usual.

“There are thirty-one outsiders detained on the transport ship that Seol A-yeon rescued. Verify them all. If any of them also have their bodies remaining in that other world, then the Gate has evolved—report immediately to higher command.”

“Understood.”

“Any sedatives?”

Jang couldn’t answer right away. While he hesitated, Baek Yi-hyeon took the drug kit from Jang’s gown pocket and opened it.

Jang watched in a daze as Baek pressed the edge of the thin, flat silver case, and a green chip popped out that he inserted into the watch on his left wrist.

There was a faint sound as a tiny needle built into the watch injected the sedative into the wrist vein.

He looked like a different person. At a glance he might appear the same as always, but to Jang—now used to observing and analyzing—Baek’s eyes had a slight reddening at the corners.

Baek slid the case back into Jang’s gown pocket and said, “Connect the measuring devices to the mock-combat room. Start them right after the meeting.”

Jang’s eyes widened. Baek asked expressionlessly,

“Any problem?”

“The—mock-combat room? For a civilian? She’ll die.”

“She’s not a civilian. She’s an outsider. If she can’t prove the status window, we have to kill her anyway. Isn’t that imperial law?”

He was right. Still, Jang felt strange. Baek seemed stirred by the woman, but there was no hesitation about the procedure.

No—maybe that was why he wanted to finish it quickly.

“You look like you’re stunned by this unusual case.”

“Me?”

“Whether she’s a spy or not, Seol A-yeon is extraordinary. Be careful.”

“The one who needs to be careful isn’t me—”

At that moment his watch vibrated. Baek checked it.

“He’s late. I’ll be back.”

Baek slipped out of the lab. When the door closed, a gust of air puffed Jang’s gown briefly.

The woman—what was her name again? He couldn’t recall now.

Jang Seok-ju was particularly weak with names. But he remembered numbers—those values that had poured from the woman and dripped onto charts—down to every decimal. He could never forget. He probably never would. One soul linked to two bodies.

She was an outlier in every statistic, and beyond that she was clearly no ordinary person. If she were, Baek wouldn’t have reacted the way he did. There had to be something else.

Moving the woman from the lab to the mock-combat room wouldn’t be easy. And that suspicion became reality as soon as he reached the lab.

The lab door, which should have been locked, stood slightly ajar. As soon as he stepped in Jang sensed something was dreadfully wrong.

A researcher lay collapsed on the floor. Jang hurried over and flipped him over. Fortunately the man still had a pulse.

Jang removed a syringe from the back of the researcher’s neck. Half the drug remained in it—an anesthetic. He tossed the syringe to the floor and raised his head.

The iron table where the woman had been lying was empty. The drug cabinet had been smashed open and lay in ruin, totally emptied.

The woman had stolen the drugs and run.