Cut Off the Ability

Yura spoke first.

"Cut off that ability. Now."

Her body already knew how to ration breath. Four minutes thirty seconds. Every sentence cost two seconds. So she kept it short.

The collapse antechamber was square. A center door in the left wall. The door was shut, no handle. To the right was the passage they'd come through, now collapsed. The wall facing them was bare. Water came down from above in three lines.

The one who called out coordinates was looking at that front wall. He had been for two minutes.

For two days Yura had called these people the one with the shield, the one with the sensor, the one who called out coordinates. That wasn't enough anymore. If she was going to be the one who'd have to explain later who decided what, she needed names.

"Tell me your names first," Yura said. It cost two seconds. "All three of you."

"Yun Saebyeok." The one with the shield spoke.

"Im Dohyeon." The one with the sensor didn't look up from his screen.

The third answer came half a beat late.

"Han Igyeol."

Yura looked at those eyes. The same eyes that had pulled her ankle free yesterday. Yesterday they'd had two points of focus, her foot and the pipe. Now there was no focus at all. The pupils were caught somewhere past the wall and hadn't come back.

"Surveyor Han Igyeol." Saebyeok said. "Can you use it once more?"

"I can."

"State the conditions."

"Saebyeok's sight, Dohyeon's hearing. Twelve seconds."

"And the cost."

". . . the same."

Yura understood the length of that pause. It was the same as yesterday, when she couldn't answer what color her own eyes were. It meant the cost wasn't the same at all.

"Whose memory?" Yura asked.

Igyeol turned his head. The turn came half a beat late.

"It concerns the rescue target."

"I'm the rescue target."

Igyeol looked at his notebook. Yura had seen yesterday that the sixth line in that notebook was underlined. It was the line with her name.

No one answered.

"Cut off that ability. Now." Yura said it again. The second time. "If you use it again you might not recognize me at all."

"We don't have the exit coordinates yet."

"I'm not dead yet." Yura pushed her mask aside. It cost two seconds. "When a dying person tells you to stop, that's an order. Someone told me to push through yesterday too."

Saebyeok's eyes moved.

"That's right." Saebyeok said. "I said that."

"Then now I'm pushing."

Saebyeok took a half step toward Igyeol. Yura counted that half step.

"Surveyor. I'm registering Yura's request to stop. If you object, say so now. You have three seconds."

"Three seconds."

"One."

Igyeol's hand was already raised. The stance for starting the ability. Yesterday that same hand had gripped her shoulder and pulled her out of the passage.

Before Saebyeok reached two, the hand came down.

"Stopping." Igyeol said.

"No objection?"

"I have no grounds to object. The coordinates only exist in my head, and I can't prove whether that head is functioning normally right now."

That man is more afraid than I am. Yura thought it for the first time. Somehow it was oddly comforting that a person who was more afraid than her had still carried her out.

"Then who finds the way?" Saebyeok asked.

"We look one at a time." Igyeol said. "I looked at that wall for two minutes. It was a wall. So I don't know. We need other eyes. Not borrowed ones, each person's own."

No one responded to the admission that he didn't know. Yura counted the length of that silence to three.

"Empty."

The one with the sensor was knocking on the front wall, three times. The same way Yura had done under the pipe yesterday. A fist, even spacing.

Yura didn't say she'd done it that way yesterday. Saying it would cost two seconds, and right now listening to him knock mattered more.

"Here, here, here." Dohyeon pointed to three spots. "The middle is thin. It's hollow behind it. This isn't a wall, it's a panel."

"Basis." Saebyeok asked.

"Sound. I figured it out yesterday when I lent out my hearing. My own ears are what I use best." Dohyeon glanced at his screen, then shut it off. "This doesn't show on the sensor. The echo reads as a wall. That's why no one saw it."

"So you've known since yesterday?" Saebyeok asked.

"Yesterday I wasn't sure. Even now it's sixty percent." Dohyeon drew a bracket in the air with his pen. "Not saying what I wasn't sure of, that's my problem. I'll have to write that in the log too."

Saebyeok laughed, short. Yura took it as a good sign that at least one person still had room to laugh.

"What's behind the panel?"

"Pressure. Probably." Dohyeon added a decimal point. "Sixty point two percent chance. The other forty is water. If it's water, we all get soaked and that's it."

"At sixty percent, we go." Saebyeok said.

"At forty percent, Yura gets soaked. If she gets soaked her body temperature drops, and if that drops she burns more oxygen." Dohyeon said. "That wasn't in my calculation. Factor it in and sixty becomes fifty four."

"Then we go at fifty four."

"That's not really the surveyor's call to make. Sounds more like Yura's."

The three of them looked at Yura. Yura spent two seconds.

"Go. Staying here costs four minutes anyway."

"What's the surveyor's opinion?" Dohyeon asked.

"I'm deferring to Dohyeon's judgment." Igyeol said. "I'm handing over the route decision. I'll only watch the timing."

Who had handed over what, and when, Yura memorized in order. It felt like she'd be the one who'd have to tell it later.

The three of them each took on one part of opening the panel.

"Valve's there." Dohyeon pointed to the lower right of the front wall. Two handles stuck out. "One of these two is pressure, the other's drainage. Open the wrong one and water comes."

"Which one?"

"Don't know."

"I'll open it." Yura said.

Saebyeok didn't object right away. That, too, was new for Yura. Until yesterday, whenever she said she'd do something, people had said no first.

The three of them looked at her.

"I can't use my left foot. I can't run either." Yura gripped the wall and dragged herself along. "But my hands work. And if it opens wrong and water comes, someone standing being able to pull me is faster than me pulling someone standing."

Saebyeok calculated for a moment.

"That's true." Saebyeok said. "In exchange, I'll wedge the shield into the door frame. If water comes, get behind it. Yura, which valve do you take first?"

It was a question. A question came where an order should have been.

"The top one."

"Why."

"The bottom handle has more rust. That's the side water passes through more often."

"Where did you learn this, Yura?" Saebyeok asked.

"I didn't learn it. I've been here two days."

Dohyeon flicked his screen on, then off. ". . . that's data."

Yura gripped the upper valve. Her hand slipped, twice. Saebyeok pulled off his own glove and handed it over. Yura put it on and on the third try turned it half a rotation.

Air escaped.

The panel pushed inward thirty centimeters, and Saebyeok jammed the shield's lower edge into the gap. The same shield he'd folded in eight seconds yesterday. Because of the angle it had folded to, it caught better this time.

"It's opening." Igyeol said. "Yura, let go of your hand. Now."

Yura let go. She didn't ask why. Asking would cost two seconds.

When the panel opened all the way, a passage appeared. Narrow, dry, rising upward. At the far end, the color of surface lighting.

The water didn't come. Fifty four had been right.

"Noting this down." Dohyeon said. "It worked, but the odds were fifty four percent. If I ever suggest going with that number again, stop me."

"Oxygen." Yura asked.

"Two minutes forty seconds left." Dohyeon said. "Thirty seconds to the threshold is enough."

One last problem remained. The pressure that had opened the panel was being held back only by the grip on the valve. Let go, and the panel would close.

"I'll stay." Saebyeok said.

"No."

Yura said it. The third stop.

"Was pulling me out yesterday just so I could leave someone behind here? Then I didn't come out yesterday at all."

"Then say what to do instead." Saebyeok said. Not an angry voice. A voice taking notes.

"The locking pin." Dohyeon spoke first. "There's a locking pin on the valve. Pull it and drive it back in reverse, it locks. But the pin breaks. This valve won't be usable again."

"If it can't be used again, what about whoever's on the level below?" Yura asked.

The room went quiet.

"Is there someone on the level below?" Saebyeok asked.

"I don't know." Yura said. She'd been about to say, starting with Majun. If she brought up that name here, it felt like the three of them would go back in, and there were only two minutes forty seconds of oxygen left. "I just asked because we're about to make it unusable."

"That's a question that has to be asked." Saebyeok said. "I'll put it in the log. That we broke this valve. And why we broke it."

"We lose one piece of equipment and four people get out." Igyeol said. "We'll do it that way."

Dohyeon pulled the pin and drove it back in reverse. The metal twisted once and snapped. The panel froze in place, open.

"Take the broken pin with you." Saebyeok said. "If the agency asks what we broke, it's faster to show them the thing itself."

Dohyeon picked up the two broken pieces of the pin and put them in an envelope. He wrote the time on the envelope.

The four of them went into the passage. Yura was second. Saebyeok in front, Dohyeon behind, Igyeol last.

While climbing, Yura memorized the order. The one who registered the stop, the one who counted to three, the one who handed over the choice, the one who corrected the odds. Four, counting herself. Yesterday there had been six, and the other two, she'd been told, had already gone out ahead.

Crossing the threshold at the end of the passage, the agency lights came in white.

In front of the reception desk, Saebyeok took his hand off Yura's shoulder. For the first time in two days, no one was holding onto her.

"From here you have to walk on your own, Yura." Saebyeok said. "Three steps. Do you want help?"

"That's the first time anyone's asked."

Yura walked three steps alone. She didn't use her left foot.

On the screen mounted on the wall, the rescue count came up. Six thermal signatures. And below it, a number.

Five.

Yura looked at the number. She spread her fingers and counted again. One, two, three, four, five, six.

"It's six."

The screen read five.