BA3 - Chapter 24

Boiling water sprayed in a violent, whistling mist. Hiro turned to see what had caused the noise, getting a face-full of hot steam. He growled in pain, but I didn’t wait to see what he did next. I jumped from my cross-legged position on the floor only to find my right leg was still too numb to use.

“Jiyong, stop!” Hiro yelled, his voice pained.

‘Do you know where we are? Can you turn us back toward land?’

“I don’t have enough processing power to take control like you, but I can highlight the culprit systems you’ll need to use.”

I dropped to all four, scrambling across the deck and up the stairs, dragging my leg like a wounded animal. I’d planned on saving my infused zo for the journey back to land, but if I didn’t use it now, I might not even make it to the hatch.

With a thought, I cracked open the reserve of infused munje in my muscle, and leapt like a TK_greni frog. With a single push of my good leg I rocketed forward three meters, clearing the distance to the first door. I slammed it shut behind me and twisted the lever to lock it.

“I thought you could use my mental signature, or whatever. Can’t you control it?” I asked aloud as I galloped like a disoriented hound.

“Yes, I can command your munje, but processing power isn’t the same. I’m not integrated into the submarine, and I’m not familiar with language or the GUI—oh, it’s too complicated to explain quickly! Just run and I’ll lead.”

Bang!The door behind us shuddered and whined but I didn’t look back. I knew what was happening. I turned for the side hatch he’d pulled me in through while my frantic thoughts searched through the skeleton of the monstrous submarine.

Highways of light appeared in my mind’s eye as Mae guided my willing thoughts to where they needed to go. I barreled through the narrow halls one second, then roads of brilliant neon, then metal grates under my hands, then flashing lights—and pain in my head.

“Here,” Mae said and my vision was overtaken with the images of my mind’s eye.

I skidded to a stop and felt my way to a corner behind a jutting pipe system. It was dark in the halls, and if I could hide for just a second while I operated the controls, that was all I needed.

The system Mae had lead me to was complex, modular in its existence. The information flowed in and out from the fractal sphere like bees from a hive on Hiro’s munje with no apparent order I could discern. Well, it was time to kick the nest. I burst my way through like a needle spear, rotating my munje like a tiny storm.

“You never learned what was too much for you!” Hiro’s voice echoed through the tiny chamber and reverberated through my consciousness. I could hear him through my munje in the walls!

I couldn’t think about that revelation now. I pressed through the weaving highways of functions, Mae guiding my spear and Hiro’s munje attacking along the way. At last, she turned the deteriorating spear toward a glowing epicenter nestled in twisting green ribbons of data.

The spear sliced into the cloud-like hub, populating my vision with an interface similar—yet deeply more complex—to what Mae used to show me my munje reserves. Hiro’s footsteps echoed down the hall and into my ears. He was close, and there wasn’t enough time.

In quick succession, information I could read filled up the rows and shapes that made up the submarine controls. Depth was forty meters, and the function to ascend flashed below. I held my breath and activated the button.

‘What are my chances of surviving manual ascent from this depth?’

“Low. But if you can get to fifteen meters, much higher.”

Hands gripped my wetsuit and the controls flickered in my vision, then popped out of existence as my eyes focused on Hiro. A yellow boil swelled above his left eye, and the surrounding tissue was seared red.

“You think you know everything! If you’d just listen to me instead of pretending to be the smartest boy in your class just because you have an AI imbedded in your consciousness, maybe you wouldn’t have gotten your schoolmates killed!”

Dread reached its icy tendrils out from the pit of my stomach. “Hana?”

“No, the boys at the farm. If you’d just come with me, no one would’ve gotten hurt.”

“You’re lying!” I reached out for what little ma I had left in the submarine. I needed to get this door open, no matter the depth.

“We would’ve escaped Wong’s men at the compound and once I’d secured the Valeria, we could’ve disabled all the signals in a safer manner—one that could’ve undone the lasting damage. But you had to trust your idiot instinct.”

“You had a knife to my mother’s throat! You had my family captive! You didn’t promise their safety—” The skeleton of the outer hull pulled into view and I focused on the thick bolts securing the door.

“How could I? They had my children! I wanted to end it with as little death as possible.” Tears welled in his eyes.

I fought the disgusting feeling of sympathy and found the automated door lock on the wall. “Engage”, and “Disengage” appeared clearly in my vision.

“Jiyong, are you sure you want to do this?” Mae warned.

“Please,” Hiro begged through gritted teeth. “For once, son, just listen to me.”

A hundred thoughts blazed through my mind, one of them slowed and took hold. Trust him. Back down. Let him explain. Hana and the others would carry out the mission without me, somehow. Hiro would take me to another safe harbor, away from Dokun who would use Mae like a weapon. He would train me to protect my family, and keep Minjee a secret until Dokun could be defeated.

Another lightning-fast thought blasted all others from mind. He ran away to work with Dokun. Then he lied and cheated his way back into my homeland and poisoned its people. He had abandoned his family in our time of greatest need because it was too much to deal with. He was a liar, and a coward to the core, tricking me into the very outcome I wanted to avoid.

I looked back to him, my heart hammering with fear. I let en trickle down the pathways to my palms, then gripped the pipes behind me. Hiro’s eyes widened and he followed the angle of my flickering gaze to the hatch behind him.

“Jiyong, don’t,” he whispered. “You’ll die. Think of your family.”

Eun-bi’s angry sneer filled my mind. “We don’t need you.”

She was wrong. They did need me, but not to take care of them from home. They needed me for this. They needed me to drown Hiro and end Dokun’s threat. They needed me to figure out how to keep the dangers of the world from their doorstep. And if I died doing it, then I’ll have died as the brother I had always tried to be.

Hiro’s ma was swarming around mine at the lock, trying to pick it apart. “I won’t save you from this,” he growled.

“I’ve never needed your saving.” I disengaged the lock and bashed my head into Hiro’s.

A wall of water burst open the door and pulled the bloody-nosed Hiro away. The hall filled with water and carried him along, battering me as I held to the pipes for just another second. I swirled my arm overhead, trapping one of the last bubbles of air, and forced my way out into the crushing black depths.

“Depth, twenty meters. You can do this Jiyong!” Mae reported as the swirling water tried to suck me back into the ship. I sliced through the gushing force with my en and pushed forward, toward the fading light in the golden clouds.

I kicked hard and my aching muscles replied with pain. The left leg was near exhaustion and the right was just coming back under my control. I swooped my arms through the air, mimicking the rowing gesture, and I rocketed upwards.

“Fifteen meters!” Mae said and a depth counter appeared in the corner of my vision next to my en levels; only enough left for two more row movements.

I pulled myself through the water once more, jumping another three meters in depth. The air was heavy, and hot, leaving my lungs aching for oxygen. The bubble was a drag I had to lose, and it wasn’t doing me anymore good. I made a hole in the en barrier around the air over my head and bubbles rippled out of the side, shrinking the sphere by the second. When the water closed in around my face, I propelled myself with the en row again.

“Just four meters. Come on, Jiyong!”

The sky darkened and I let the last of the air from my burning lungs. I swooped my hands forward, draining all my en into the last push. The pressure of my ascent forced my head down as I breached the water like a TK_whale. Wind ruffled my soaking hair and I gasped deeply, then plummeted back into the sea.

I paddled chaotically as air bubbles and waves rocked me on the open water. The shore was a good two kilometers behind me. I could see frantic figures climbing aboard departing trains.

The sea trembled more violently as a dark shadow moved up toward me from the deep. The submarine blasted through the horizon five meters away, creating a tidal wave half that. I dove under to avoid the slapping water, and rode the undertow until I could surface again.

The ship hung in mid air as if possessed with the essence of anti-gravity. The monstrosity was at least sixty meters long, pitch black, with silver letters reading Valeria. Water gushed from each side of the twenty meter wide vessel, and above it sat my father in mid-air. I sat cross-legged, glowing vibrant blue with air rushing over his body and into the top hatch.

How was my father doing that?

I stared in wonder at the thing that could not possibly be.

“He’s rewriting the nanite code around him on a massive scale—just like you did when we killed the shūspekta_TK(write that in during the “night after” scene after bear fight),” Mae replied, breathless.

When the water surging from the vessel slowed to a trickle, my father’s eyes opened. His gaze narrowed on me.

It was loud, the water from the submarine slapping all around me, but I heard him clearly when he spoke. “Don’t choose the wrong side, son.”

He dropped into the ship, and all the hatches closed at once. The hanging submarine dropped into the water and I dove again. Waves rocked overhead and bubbles turned me over and over. My legs and arms gave out, unable to keep fighting against the turbulence. I drifted on the waves, keeping my eyes shut tight… waiting for it to end.