Chapter 24: The Escapee (1) |
─ An inmate has escaped from Gangwon Northern Correctional Institution, located in Sokcho, Gangwon Province. The inmate is believed to be a climber, and casualties within the prison have been confirmed to exceed thirty. In response to this unprecedented crisis, the government has deployed military forces to conduct a search…
It was a bright Monday morning, and the moment I woke up, the news was spewing something insane.
“What the hell.”
A prison break? By a climber?
The escapee’s face and personal details were already plastered all over the internet. Seo Dong-woo.
The important part was that he still hadn’t been caught.
Climbers committing major crimes had happened a few times overseas, but for something like this to happen in Korea too. Good lord.
I was thinking about what a mess the world had become and opened the Communication Channel out of habit.
Somehow, things were just as chaotic over here.
[So-yeong: By the way, everyone’s working real hard to find me right now, yeah? Curious where I am? Not telling! Good luck~]
“What the hell is this now.”
The Hard difficulty Communication Channel.
Some lunatic was posting and drawing every bit of aggro imaginable.
*
“This guy is completely out of his mind. We need to find him fast.”
Kang Ju-hyeok was driving, struggling the whole time with the nausea still churning in his stomach.
Gangwon Northern Correctional Institution, the site of last night’s gruesome bloodbath. They had just stopped by to survey the scene. The acrid stench of blood that had hung in the air inside the prison still seemed to linger at the tip of his nose like an afterimage.
Shin Su-jin, seated in the passenger seat, was silent, seemingly lost in thought. Kang Ju-hyeok spoke to her.
“What do you think, Team Leader? How high do you figure his level is?”
The man had ripped his cell door clean off its frame and walked right out. He was far from ordinary, to put it mildly.
Seo Dong-woo. Sentenced to life for murder and incarcerated ten years ago, which meant he had become a climber while inside the prison.
There had been three prior cases of inmates becoming climbers in South Korea. Inmates who reported their climber status could receive a pardon in exchange for special oversight, and all three had accepted the deal.
Yet Seo Dong-woo had hidden the fact that he’d become a climber, secretly climbed the Tower on the sly, and ultimately carried out a prison break. By the most brutish method possible.
The only conclusion was that the man was simply insane.
How he had managed to enter the Tower without being detected was a mystery, but for now, the best guess was that he’d kept his cellmates quiet and entered during the night.
The average clear time for Hard difficulty was around ten minutes. As long as his fellow inmates kept their mouths shut and he avoided the eyes of guards on patrol, sneaking in wasn’t entirely impossible. Of course, since Seo Dong-woo had slaughtered every last one of his cellmates before breaking out, there was no way to confirm this.
What was hardest to determine was Seo Dong-woo’s level.
“Team Leader?”
“…Hm? What did you say?”
“Oh, nothing. I was just wondering what level Seo Dong-woo might be.”
“Right. Probably somewhere around level 20, I’d guess.”
They had reviewed the CCTV footage from inside the prison and the testimonies of the guards who had survived engagement with him. Even bullets hadn’t worked properly on the man.
That meant his level was either very high, or he had a skill that enhanced his body’s durability, or some kind of defensive skill. One of those was certain.
Seo Dong-woo had used his extraordinary physical abilities to break through the armed guards’ resistance, scaled the prison walls, and fled just like that.
He was believed to have entered the mountains after leaving the prison grounds, and the military was currently conducting a search of the Seoraksan area.
The Tower Climbing Special Agency’s Tower Monitoring Division had also been deployed in response to this unprecedented crisis. There had been a handful of minor incidents involving climber violence, but nothing on this scale before.
That said, there wasn’t much they could actually do at the moment. Receiving intel from the search parties and moving toward one of the predicted escape routes was about the extent of it.
“Predicted” was a generous word; even the search itself seemed to be hitting walls.
For all they knew, he might have already slipped out of the mountains. A high-level climber’s capabilities were far beyond what common sense could account for. Rugged mountain terrain would be no more trouble to him than strolling through his own living room.
“Even if we do find him, couldn’t he just flee into the Tower? As long as he’s not mid-combat. God, how does something like this even happen…”
On top of everything, this maniac was raising hell on the Communication Channel too.
A climber going by the nickname “So-yeong,” who had appeared on the Hard difficulty Communication Channel.
Find me already, climbers should all be running wild together, let me tell you why killing is fun. He was spouting every kind of deranged nonsense like a certified psychopath.
They couldn’t be certain that he was actually Seo Dong-woo, but given the circumstances, the probability was high.
Kang Ju-hyeok glanced over at Shin Su-jin, who had been unusually quiet this whole time. She was staring intently at empty space, so he asked.
“Is something wrong? Is that guy spouting off again?”
“…No. It’s nothing.”
Her demeanor had sunk to a strangely dark place, so Kang Ju-hyeok read the room and shut his mouth.
‘Maybe she’s just really angry?’
More than twenty guards had been killed by that man, so it would’ve been understandable.
Kang Ju-hyeok hadn’t worked with Shin Su-jin for very long, but one thing he did know about her was that she loathed evil people, practically hated them.
She was one of the few climbers in all of South Korea above level 20.
With the competition between each nation’s climbers gradually intensifying, high-level climbers were effectively national assets. And Shin Su-jin was one of them.
Young as he was, Kang Ju-hyeok deeply respected her.
She could have enjoyed far greater wealth and prestige if she’d wanted, yet she served as a climber under the perpetually understaffed Tower Climbing Special Agency, carrying out her duties for the country…
“There’s a rest stop coming up. Want to pull in for a bit?”
“Sure. You don’t look so good. I’ll drive after this.”
“What? No, I’m fine!”
Kang Ju-hyeok replied quickly.
She even overflowed with consideration for her subordinates. Truly a superior worthy of respect, through and through.
While Kang Ju-hyeok was privately feeling a good deal better, Shin Su-jin turned her gaze toward the window.
Still staring at the Communication Channel with cold eyes, she clenched her teeth until they nearly cracked.
*
Kim Seong-ho had been feeling rather unsettled lately.
He’d raised two children, and in all his life, the only one he’d ever had to worry about was the younger one. Yet now, out of nowhere, his eldest, who had never once given his parents cause for concern and had always handled everything on his own, had gone and become a climber like a bolt from the blue.
After scrambling to look into things, he’d heard that Easy Floor 1 wasn’t considered dangerous by most people. And with Repeat Clearing, one could leave whenever one wanted.
But still, worrying was simply what parents did.
He did have faith that his son, who had never once caused him grief, would be perfectly capable of taking care of himself. That was why he couldn’t bring himself to object.
The boy always listened to his parents, sure, but separate from that, Kim Seong-ho also knew his son’s nature: once the kid made up his mind, he’d stick to it stubbornly and never change course.
“Section Chief Park, you said your son is two now, right?”
“Yes, sir. Fifteen months.”
“How would you feel if your son told you later that he’d become a climber?”
Section Chief Park tilted his head for a moment before answering.
“My heart would drop, wouldn’t it? It’s dangerous.”
“Right? Then what about Easy difficulty?”
“Easy difficulty… I suppose I’d worry a bit less? As long as he’s not going to the higher floors, they say hardly anyone dies on Easy.”
Kim Seong-ho immediately wanted to push back.
“No. But when it actually happens to you, don’t you think you’d feel differently? That’s just how a parent’s heart works.”
“Ah, yes… I suppose that could be true.”
Section Chief Park gave an awkward smile and said,
“Still, I would have thought you’d have almost nothing to worry about with your children, sir. Your son is a Seoul National University medical student, after all. Ha ha.”
“…Right. Well, we should head out. You too.”
Kim Seong-ho sighed inwardly and got ready to leave.
He suddenly found himself craving a beer, so on his way home, he stopped at a convenience store and had a can for the first time in a while. He sat in one of the convenience store chairs, sipping it as he scrolled through the news on his phone.
─ The whereabouts of escaped prisoner Seo Dong-woo remain unknown at this time…
“Tsk tsk, how have they still not caught him?”
Seo Dong-woo, the climber who’d massacred prison guards and escaped.
They’d even mobilized the military to search for him, and three days later, he still hadn’t been caught. Public anxiety was soaring, and the mood across the nation was uneasy.
Thinking that the world was truly going to hell, Kim Seong-ho drained the rest of his beer in one long swig.
Slightly tipsy, he decided to get some air and took a different route home, looping around the long way.
He was walking down a quiet, empty alley lit by orange streetlamps when a man came walking from the opposite direction.
A man wearing a cap, a hood pulled up, and a mask over his face.
His build was imposingly large, so Kim Seong-ho subtly shifted to the side to give him a wide berth as he passed.
“Hey, mister.”
The man suddenly called out to him.
Kim Seong-ho flinched and stopped in his tracks.
“How do I get to Yeongdeungpo Station from here? Just asking for directions.”
“…Yeongdeungpo Station? It’s over that way…”
Kim Seong-ho kindly explained the route. Something about the man felt dangerous, and tension hung in the air.
“Ah~ so it was that way. I was going completely the wrong direction. Thanks.”
Fortunately, the man heard him out and went on his way.
Kim Seong-ho, privately thinking the young man’s manners left something to be desired, was about to start walking again.
“Oh, but hey, mister, hold on a sec.”
Kim Seong-ho turned back toward the man. At the same moment, the streetlamp flickered.
Kim Seong-ho glanced up at the unsteadily blinking light for an instant, then looked back at the man.
“Wh, why? What is it?”
The man walked closer and looked Kim Seong-ho’s face over, studying it from different angles.
“…You look like him.”
“Like, like who…”
“Like my old man, the one who beat the living shit out of me and then ditched me when I was ten. You’re not actually him, are you? Heh heh.”
The man’s eyes were dangerous. Whatever nonsense he was spouting, he looked mentally unhinged.
Kim Seong-ho’s heart pounded in his chest as he shook his head frantically.
“I, I am a man with a proper family. You’ve got the wrong person.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m kidding. But you really do look like him. Pisses me off, is all.”
The man smirked and waved the hand he’d pulled from his pocket.
“So let me just hit you once. I mean, you were nice enough to give me directions, so I’ll go easy, yeah? If you die, well, can’t help that.”
WHAM!
Kim Seong-ho’s body went flying and slammed into the alley wall before crumpling to the ground. His consciousness cut out instantly.
The man walked off in the direction he’d been heading, whistling a cheerful tune.
*
“…What did you just say?”
Late at night, a phone call came from my father’s number, striking like a thunderbolt.
My family and I threw on clothes in a panic and rushed to the trauma center.
“If he’d arrived even a little later, it could have been very serious, but everything went well. There’s no threat to his life, so you can rest easy.”
“Th, thank you. Doctor. Thank you…”
My mother practically collapsed as she wept, and my sister burst into tears too, so I had to be the one holding them both together.
My father, lying on the hospital bed with his eyes closed after the emergency surgery.
I looked down at him, my face set hard as stone.
They said he’d been brought in with his ribs completely shattered, as if he’d been hit by a truck.
By some miracle, there was almost no damage to his internal organs, so the surgery had concluded without much difficulty.
“Are you the patient’s family?”
The police came and explained the situation.
They said my father hadn’t been in a traffic accident. He’d been assaulted.
“Assaulted? He’s hurt this badly, and who on earth would…!”
“…You know Seo Dong-woo, right? The climber who broke out of prison recently. It’s not confirmed yet, but we’re looking into his possible involvement.”
The prison escapee? Seo Dong-woo?
None of us, not me, not my family, could make sense of what we were hearing.
“There’s CCTV footage. We can show it to you if you’d like, though…”
We watched the footage the police showed us.
An alleyway. My father was walking when he seemed to exchange a few words with a man coming from the other direction.
They are about to go their separate ways when the man approaches my father again.
What followed was shocking. My mother and sister gasped sharply.
The man suddenly swung his fist, and my father’s body flew, slammed into the wall, and crumpled to the ground.
“…”
The moment I saw it, something inside my head snapped.
“Since he’s exposed his location like this, we’ll likely be able to apprehend him soon. We’re mobilizing the full force of the police right now to track his route…”
If he were the kind of guy who could be caught that easily, wouldn’t they have caught him already?
The thought crossed my mind, but in any case, the police finished their explanation and left.
It was deep into the early morning hours when my mother spoke to us.
“You two go home now. I can look after your father by myself.”
“I want to stay too.”
“There’s nowhere here for you to sleep. I’ll be fine, so go home and get some rest. You have school tomorrow.”
I took my stubborn sister and headed home.
Even after getting back, my head kept feeling hot. It was the anger.
I didn’t think I’d ever been this furious in my entire life.
“Hoo.”
I sat down at my desk and opened the Communication Channel.
The bastard who’d been spewing every kind of garbage on the Hard difficulty Communication Channel for the past few days.
He was most likely Seo Dong-woo.
[So-yeong: The world is so beautiful. That’s why I want to kill everyone, you know?]
[So-yeong: Anyone out there want to start a revolution with me? Climbers take over the world. Wouldn’t it be great to live however you want, killing whoever you feel like?]
[So-yeong: You’re all slaves. Pathetic slaves who don’t even know what freedom is]
I found the messages he’d left, stared hard at the nickname until my eyes burned.
Then I sent him a Whisper.
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