WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 189: Under Black Water (7)

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Beep, beep, beep-

Joanna's body gave a small jerk. She trembled as if she were cold. Maybe the pitch-black silence had sharpened her hearing. The faint electronic sound, along with their breathing, rang strangely clear. The watch kept beeping for a full minute. The fear Gyeoul felt was like a shard of ice lodged in his mind. Cold and sharp, it stabbed at every thought.

At last, silence returned.

Everything around them was still dark and heavy. But outside the experimental area, fire might already be spreading. Even now, 「Survival Instinct」 and 「Crisis Detection」 were faint and unstable. Both were influenced by Gyeoul's own suspicions, anxieties, and convictions. It was hard to tell truth from falsehood in the warnings scraping at his nerves.

Ten minutes passed like that, then twenty, then thirty....

The air was still cool. Gyeoul found that strange. There was no vibration, no explosion, nothing that should have been there. Could a fire in another section really be this quiet? The expanding hull should have been groaning, pipes should have been bursting, and toxic smoke should have been flowing in through the vents.

At last, it was 1 a.m.

Joanna asked, "What is going on?"

Her voice was exhausted. The frightening wait had worn down both her body and her mind.

"I'm not sure. Could the shockwave have knocked out the Pequod's whole power system?"

"That can't be.... Even if it did, this still makes no sense. The longer they leave the ship alone, the greater the chance that confidential information leaks. Once they judged that an internal incineration procedure was impossible, they should have immediately looked for another method. Nine times out of ten, that would mean a torpedo attack."

"Hmm. Then I guess the evacuation has been delayed for some reason."

"Or it may have been put on hold entirely.... There's no reason for the government's final solution policy to change at this stage, so perhaps something went wrong under the sea along the evacuation route...."

The conflict between the former Chinese military hardliners and the peace faction was fierce. Army Shangjiang Yang Yongbin and Navy Lieutenant General Xieru were at odds. If an accidental clash had broken out between the two major forces, evacuation by underwater route would have to stop. They could hardly pass calmly through waters where hostile submarines were firing sharp sonar at one another and call it a problem that had nothing to do with them.

"Maybe someone really is acting for us. Like Anne hoped."

"...."

For her, exhausted as she was, he needed to offer some hopeful speculation. Every prediction was uncertain anyway.

"Are you hungry? I think we should eat something now."

Gyeoul was wary of the trembling behind him that would not stop. Tension alone ate away at stamina. They had already been trapped here for half a day. It would have been stranger if they were not hungry and tired.

"I have no appetite. I don't have anything either. I'm fine, so please eat, Gyeoul."

For soldiers who never knew when supply lines might fail, carrying the energy bars from their combat rations separately was an everyday habit. But an FBI supervisor who had mostly been deployed on short operations had no such habit.

"Don't say that. Take these. We might get a chance and still fail to escape because we don't have the strength."

Gyeoul took out two energy bars and handed them to Joanna.

Put crudely, suppose that instead of the incineration procedure, they launched a torpedo attack and tore open the hull. Even if they were lucky and a wide crack opened right in front of them, escaping through it would be another miracle. It would take an enormous amount of stamina.

Rustle, rustle. The two of them peeled open the energy bar wrappers. Even in the dark, he could tell the contents had been crushed into a mess. If Jeffrey had seen them, he would have admired them as actual feces. The ensign with the crude jokes was also part of the story they had left behind, so Gyeoul thought of Fort Roberts the entire time he chewed. It was the place where he had dreamed of surpassing humans in the best possible way.

He had finished one and swallowed half of the second when the warning from 「Crisis Detection」 rose sharply.

'What?'

It was a vague signal.

Something was going to happen.

"Gyeoul? What is it?"

Joanna asked when she sensed him move, but since he did not know the source of his unease, he had no real answer.

"I have a bad feeling."

That was all he could say. But it was enough. Gyeoul could feel her tense.

He turned on his lantern and checked their surroundings. The FBI agent frowned, as if the sudden light hurt her eyes. Still, she turned on her own lantern too. The scene lit by the two beams was the same as before. Whatever the approaching threat was, its source did not seem to be inside the experimental area.

'Could it be a torpedo? Or has the incineration procedure started?'

The moment he thought that,

Guuuuung-

A roar with no direction. Everything in sight shook. Objects poured down, crashed together, and flew into the air. The deck seemed to kick his feet out from under him under the skewed inertia, and even Gyeoul nearly lost his balance. He barely steadied himself and grabbed Joanna before the slope could swallow her after she fell. Clack, tack, tack. The lantern she had dropped rolled away, scattering light in every direction.

"What...?!"

Joanna staggered to her feet and went pale at the sight of the entire deck bent out of shape.

Even now, vibrations continued like aftershocks, as if the whole ship were being ground apart. Kiiiiiing- Ki-gigigigik- The hull screamed in a high, sharp pitch. The volume and tone were painful. Joanna suffered even with her ears covered. Gyeoul was not much better.

After the vibration passed, the ship lurched heavily once. Then, instead of the high roar from before, a low, ominous rumbling began, one that resonated deep in the body.

Joanna shouted, "This.... I think the ship has cracked open!"

The waterfall-like sound was flooding somewhere out of sight.

"Look for a way out!"

Gyeoul ran toward the entrance. The impact had acted in one direction, and the inertia had been skewed. The deck had been shoved from right to left. In other words, the damage was more likely to be in the internal frame and bulkheads than in the outer hull. Especially where doors and walls of different strength met.

'It doesn't seem like a torpedo.'

Considering the metallic scraping that had followed the initial impact, the most likely possibility was that a ship of considerable displacement had rammed the Pequod. But did that make sense? The area around the Pequod was completely blocked off by residential districts. Was it even possible to break through the countless ships pressed together bow to stern and gunwale to gunwale, then reach the Pequod?

"I see light!"

As Joanna said, the large, heavy pressure door and its frame had crumpled the thinner bulkhead. Both were extremely thick, but there was still a difference in density and material. Thanks to that, a narrow, deep gap had formed between the three surfaces of the nearly broken, folded wall, doorframe, and deck.

Judging by the light leaking in, the electromagnetic pulse had not escaped the experimental area.

'Since it exploded indoors in the first place, the range would have been limited even without shielding.'

Without a relay, even radio waves were trapped inside the hull.

The experimental area took up half of one deck level. So only one bulkhead touched another section. Even when he checked far to the left and right of the door, this was the only place where light came through. Gyeoul's enhanced senses could feel the deck's tilt changing even now. There was no time to search every weakened spot.

"We have no other way. It's a little narrow, but... I'll have to take off my gear and try."

"...."

The FBI agent did not look confident.

Gyeoul threw his gear to the other side first, then carefully entered the gap. More than the narrow width itself, the sharply torn bulkhead and the depth were dangerous. Everywhere was rough and razor-edged. It would almost have been better to be cut by a blade. At least that would leave a cleaner wound.

Scrape. Tough fabric dragged against metal. The boy moved little by little, carefully. Yet despite taking every precaution, a wound opened on his forearm. His combat uniform grew hot and wet. Gyeoul remembered the depth and shape of the edge that had dug into his flesh, then moved again. He did not simply pass through. He kept twisting his body, stretching his limbs, and feeling around with his hands. Because of that, he was stabbed and cut several more times before he made it all the way through.

The other door beyond the security room had been left open.

After putting his gear back on, Gyeoul faced the FBI agent through the gap.

"Anne. You still have the Detonation cord and explosives, right?"

"I do, but crushing all these edges would be...."

"Let's take care of only the most dangerous ones. I checked them one by one while passing through."

While taking the difference in their builds into account. At those words, Joanna's mouth fell open.

"Were you planning that from the start?"

"Yes."

Then Gyeoul pointed out, one by one, the edges that had stabbed him the deepest. They were hard to tell apart by sight alone, but when squeezing through and rubbing against them, the difference was clear.

Setting the explosives did not take long. Flash. The black gap lit white for an instant. After the blast pressure and smoke cleared, the gap looked almost the same as before, but at least the most lethal parts had definitely been blunted. Then he crushed the smaller protrusions with several gunshots.

"Now come over. I'll tell you how to move so you get cut as little as possible."

No matter how carefully he had looked, it could not compare to the feeling of actually passing through. If she were unlucky and injured her thigh the wrong way, an artery could be severed.

'But this smell, surely....'

From the far end of the corridor, where every light flickered unsteadily, two kinds of stench drifted in, faint enough to be hard to detect without sensory correction. Rot and fish. Both were familiar. Because they were familiar, they worried him even more. The former was the harsh body odor unique to mutants, and the latter was a threat that had arrived too early.

'No. The second one is probably just excessive worry.'

In a sea where everything was rotting, the smell of fish was not rare. The maritime city's food supply depended more on fishing catches than on airdropped goods. The sight of ropes stretched between ships with fish hung up to dry was part of daily life. Smelling it even inside the ship was unexpected, but with the hull cracked open, there were plenty of ways for outside air to enter.

Boom, boom. Violent impacts, smaller than before, shook the floor one after another. Joanna had just started pushing herself into the sharp crack, and she let out a faint groan.

"Are you okay?"

"It's nothing. I was stabbed a little when it shook. But I can't tell what's happening. What in the world is going on?"

A spreading infection. A maritime city running wild. This should be treated not as a chance to escape, but as another crisis. Gyeoul did not say his guess out loud. They did not even know the scale of the infection yet.

Instead, he focused on helping her get out safely while keeping watch on the far end of the corridor.

"Turn your upper body left there. A little more, just a little more. Yes, now come out half a span like that."

Boom! The hull rocked again. It was tilting more and more diagonally, and the slope was now obvious.

"Now push with your elbow. I'll pull you. This will hurt a little."

"Ugh."

She could not come out uninjured. Joanna got stuck several times, and each time, she suffered wounds large and small. Blood flowing along the tilt split into more and more streams. Once half her body was out, she passed the last difficult part and pulled everything below her pelvis free with relative ease. With a sigh, she wiped her forehead, then put on her body armor and vest.

For a moment, she was aware of the closed-circuit camera.

"It would be better to move quickly than to avoid surveillance."

Gyeoul agreed. Whether his prediction was right or wrong, the situation room would be busy elsewhere. Even if Chadwick remained, it would be hard to play tricks. It would be better not to give them time. In ordinary combat, he would never lose.

As they climbed back along the route they had taken, Gyeoul raised a fist. Stop.

Light and shadow spilled through the gap between the railing and stairs. The shadow hanging from the landing above had the shape of a person standing alone. Perhaps it had heard their footsteps, because it came down slowly. Clang, clang.

At last, it revealed itself.

Joanna blurted, "Oh, God."

Bang! Gyeoul's single shot pierced the head of the mutant that had once been a Blue Skull strike team member. Blood and brain matter splashed against the hull wall. Gyeoul's eyes quickly scanned the corpse. The relatively clean skin had not changed much from when it had been human. But the veins carrying altered blood were clear even through the skin, so there was no mistaking it for a person.

"Roughly three or four hours have passed since infection."

"My God. The outer perimeter must have been breached. How could this happen...."

The Pequod was located fairly far inward from the outer edge of the maritime city. If the infection had spread this far, there was no need to say what the rest of the city must be like.

The agent, having reached the same conclusion as Gyeoul, shuddered with her whole body.

============================ Author’s Note ============================

#Publication

Everyone, the print edition is finally coming out. I received my author's copies early.

I was originally supposed to receive ten copies, but I paid for ten more. I plan to send them to the people who have written reviews all this time, and to those who have gifted me fan art and music.

If you want, I will sign them too. But that would be a sorry thing to do to a book, so I hope you won't ask unless you really want it.

Please refer to the announcement for more details.

I had originally thought about holding a review-writing event, but flooding the review board would hurt other authors, and I also wondered what that would make of the people who had already written reviews, so I decided not to.

#Q&A

Q. Cheon-nim: It feels like the story is repeating. Should I say it feels like the same behavior pattern... The combat parts and missions and so on don't feel that different. I think the protagonist needs other abilit... fantasy-like or overtech abilities, or DLC!!! I think it needs a different kind of development. Well then, keep writing.

A. Fantasy, overtech, DLC... I understand what kind of development you want, but it doesn't fit the planning intent of this novel. If the story so far felt like repetition with no difference to you, there is a high chance it will continue to feel that way in the future. Please keep that in mind when using this work.

Q. Calpis-nim: Can't Gaeul learn something like firearm manufacturing technology? It seems like it would be cool if they learned that and made guns and used them.. Like a Big Reproductive Act Gun 9000 or something. And when you said it was pretty good, was that because it was full of childlike innocence after all??

A. No, if I turn Gaeul into Doomguy, what will become of this novel's future...

When I said the next special mutants were good, I meant their design was well done.

Footnotes:

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