Five Dummies in the Mock Rescue Drill

The mock rescue drill used five dummies. The points differed for each dummy, and the scoring chart was released five minutes before the start.

Their weight matched a person's, and their joints bent the way a person's did. They were scattered inside the collapsed structure, and the time limit was six minutes.

Before the start signal, Doyun read through the contract one more time. Article Twelve through Article Sixteen.

As he read, he knew what he was doing. He was memorizing. What needed memorizing was what hadn't settled into his body yet.

The proctor said three times that this was the permanent branch team's first drill. Saying it three times meant it would appear three times in the record.

Before the start, Mirae set the team's order. It was one sheet of paper, four lines.

Detection: Yi Garam. Cost calculation: Park Mirae. Structural anchoring: Yu Seorin. Reopening: Han Doyun, after approval.

"My name is last," Doyun said.

"It's last. You're the fastest, so you need to be placed at the very end."

"What kind of logic is that?"

"If the fastest person goes first, everyone else just follows." Mirae folded the paper. "Then it stops being an order and becomes an instruction."

"Begin."

Seorin moved first. She looked at the collapse line and made her judgment in two seconds.

"Abandoning upper left. Anchoring right pillar." Seorin's voice struck the structure.

She declared it and anchored it. Her Verdict Anchor lit up, and the pillar stopped at the angle it had been about to collapse from.

Two dummies were underneath it.

Doyun went toward them. Then he stopped.

One dummy was half buried under the debris. Lifting the debris required a specific angle, and that angle was the direction it had already collapsed toward.

If someone had been moving this and given up partway. If whoever had set up the structure had meant to put this debris somewhere else and stopped.

He could reopen it.

And the contract procedure began.

Article Thirteen. State the cost aloud before use. The target, the time, what the other party would lose.

The target was debris. An object. For an object target, ten seconds with a witness present.

A witness was needed. Someone who could say exactly who had tried to move this debris where, and why they'd stopped.

"Mirae! Is there a setup record for this debris?"

"No! Drill structure setup records aren't disclosed!" Mirae shouted from the direction of the corridor.

Without a witness, the reopening range widens. If it widens, there's no telling how far back the object might revert.

Doyun spent thirty seconds standing right there.

What he spent those thirty seconds on was procedure. Confirming no witness, confirming object target, confirming permitted range, requesting team approval.

"Requesting approval. One piece of debris, within ten seconds, no witness."

"Hold." Mirae's voice came from the corridor. "Opening an object without a witness means the range can't be confirmed. Find an alternative first."

"Is there one?"

"Working on it."

Working on it was the most honest answer procedure allowed, and the most useless answer in the field. Doyun knew both were true.

He didn't open it without approval. He could have. Opening it would have taken ten seconds, and no one would have been hurt.

There was one reason he didn't open it. On the paper he'd signed yesterday, his name came third.

By the time he'd finished the procedure, Seorin had already lifted the debris.

It wasn't an ability. It was a lever. She hooked a broken piece of rebar against a fulcrum and pressed down with her own weight.

"Yu Seorin, that's against the rules..." Doyun started to say.

"Using a tool is within the rules," Seorin said. "If I wait for your procedure to finish, this angle collapses."

The dummy came out. Two minutes ten seconds.

Doyun stood there and counted what he'd just done. Nothing.

Not exactly nothing. He'd followed procedure. The result of following procedure had been doing nothing.

"Seorin."

"What."

"You didn't wait for my approval."

"There was nothing to wait for. I didn't use an ability." Seorin brushed off her hands. "The contract governs the procedure for using an ability. A lever isn't a target."

"Then is there a hole in the contract?"

"Not a hole. A scope." Seorin said. "But I'm the one who defined that scope. That's the problem."

She said that sentence loud enough for the proctor to hear. Doyun knew that was Seorin's way. Reporting her own point deduction herself.

"Doyun." Garam's voice came from the left. "There are two more here."

Where Mirae and Garam were was a narrow corridor. Three dummies were inside it, and the corridor couldn't fit two people at once.

"I'll set the order," Mirae said. "Garam, go in and push them out one at a time. I'll catch them."

"But then the time..." Doyun checked the clock.

"Three minutes ten seconds left out of six. If we push all three, that's two minutes forty seconds."

"The highest point route is up there," the proctor said. It was information he was allowed to give. "There's one dummy up top, and bringing it back first doubles the score."

Mirae calculated. Going for the upper dummy would double the score. But it meant giving up one of the three in the corridor.

"We're not going."

"Why." Doyun asked.

"The score is doubled because the risk is doubled," Mirae said. "And if we leave one of the three in the corridor behind, that one is someone we didn't rescue."

"It's a dummy," Doyun looked at the upper route.

"It's because it's a dummy that we decide now," Mirae had already taken her position. "If we decide when it's a person, it's too late."

Garam went into the corridor. It was narrow enough that his shoulder brushed the wall, and he pushed the three dummies while listening to that sound.

On the second dummy, the top of the corridor sank three centimeters. Garam heard the sound first.

"Something sounded up top."

"Come out," Mirae said immediately.

"One's left."

"Come out. That's the clause."

Garam came out. After he came out, Doyun looked at the corridor.

"I'll go in."

"No," Mirae blocked him. "We heard that Garam judged it dangerous. Swapping people to go in ignores that judgment."

"Then we can't rescue that one."

"We can't."

It took Doyun two seconds to accept that answer. Two seconds was shorter than yesterday.

Seorin checked the corridor wall from a different angle. "I can reinforce it. Thirty seconds."

"We have thirty seconds," Mirae checked the clock.

Seorin hung two pieces of rebar against the wall. It wasn't an ability. After that, Garam went back in and pushed the third dummy.

The end signal rang just as the third dummy came out.

Five minutes fifty four seconds. Three out of five dummies. Highest point route not completed.

"Checking scores," the proctor read out. "Branch Team 7, thirty four points. Rank six out of eight teams."

The top teams were scoring in the forties. They'd completed the highest point route.

Doyun looked at the scoreboard. Then he looked at the entry beside his own name.

Han Doyun, reopening used zero times. Procedure compliance, three instances.

Procedure compliance, three instances. That was everything he'd left behind over six minutes.

"Student Han Doyun," the proctor said. "You have the ability and you didn't use it."

"There was no witness."

"That's your team's internal rule, not academy regulation."

"Yes. It's our rule."

"I'll record it. Non-use by voluntary rule." The proctor wrote it down. "But I'll add one more line. The situation was one where use was permitted under academy regulation."

"Please write that down," Doyun said.

"Why are you asking me to write that down."

"If you don't, our rule just looks like incompetence," Doyun said. "Not doing something you could have done and not being able to do it have to be different."

The proctor wrote that line. Mirae copied the sentence into her own ledger too.

"In the next drill, the time limit is half." The proctor turned the page. "Three minutes. Can you follow the full procedure within that?"

Mirae answered. "We can't."

"Then what will you do."

"We'll fix the rule. Not give up on keeping it."

The post went up on the top teams' board that evening.

The title was short. An open challenge regarding the procedure drill.

The body was three lines. We would like to confirm whether Branch Team 7's procedure holds up in an actual rescue. Do you agree to the three minute time limit for the next drill. If you do not agree, the procedure should be recorded as something only possible when there's time to spare.

It wasn't Ha Taeyun's name. It was a different team.

"Do we have to answer this?" Garam asked.

"If we don't answer, that sentence stays as it is."

Mirae captured the post. "We agree."

"At three minutes?" Doyun asked.

"If we don't, that sentence stays. The one that says the procedure only works when there's time to spare."

Garam pressed his palm to the desk. "I can't hear it in three minutes."

"Then put that in the terms too," Mirae said. "Garam, how much judgment time do you need?"

"... I don't know. It depends on the situation." Garam lowered his hand.

"Then we'll have to measure it," Mirae opened a new page. "We'll measure it ten times within the week."

On the way back to the dormitory, Doyun didn't take his left hand out of his pocket.

There had been a line that heated up when he signed the contract yesterday. The contract wasn't ability use, and yet it had heated up.

And today he hadn't used his ability even once. Yet since the afternoon, his left hand had been faintly warm.

Doyun didn't tell the team about that fact. Article Sixteen said to report offers received from outside the team. This wasn't an offer.

As he built that logic, he remembered the look on Mirae's face yesterday when she'd raised the clause.

Mirae was withholding something too. Doyun knew it, and knowing it, he didn't ask.

He couldn't tell whether not asking was consideration or a trade. The calculation that if he didn't ask, the other side wouldn't ask either, was already in place.

In front of the dormitory, Garam called out to him.

"Doyun. Was following procedure today frustrating?"

"It was frustrating."

"Me too," Garam said. "But today, for the first time, I said out loud that I couldn't hear something I couldn't hear. In the corridor."

"That was a good thing to do."

"I don't know if it was good. One dummy came out late." Garam pressed his palm against the door. "But Seorin reinforced it for thirty seconds. If I hadn't said anything, she wouldn't have."

Doyun wrote that sentence in his notebook. It was an entry that hadn't made it into today's team ledger.