The Right to Object

Five hours until the review. Igyeol set a single sheet of paper on the table in the waiting room beside the training grounds.

Only one line was written at the top.

Anyone can halt an operation.

"This is the draft," he said. "One line. We fill in the rest here."

Last night he had rewritten this paper three times. From twelve lines to six, from six to one. The more lines there were, the more the person who wrote them held the right to interpret them.

Saebyeok read the line. Dohyeon read it twice. Mirae photographed it before reading it.

"If it's anyone, does that include me?" Yura asked.

"It includes you," Igyeol said.

"I'm not a team member," Yura said.

"You're the subject of the operation. If the subject can't halt it, then it's not an operation. It's processing."

Yura looked up.

"Processing. Someone at the agency used that word yesterday too. About my treatment. Said I was 'behind in the processing order.'"

Igyeol wrote the word down in his notebook.

Yura pulled the paper toward herself. Her left foot was propped on a chair. The area above the splint was swollen, and painkillers weren't dispensed until her identity was confirmed.

"Then I'll write my condition," she said. "I'll stop out of fear too. Even if I can't give a reason. Is that allowed?"

Saebyeok turned his chair toward her.

"A halt with no reason given is something I understand better than anyone," he said.

"So you can stop without a reason too, Saebyeok?"

"If that's the rule, then yes."

"You're the one making the rule."

"That's why I'll write my own share first."

Saebyeok wrote his name on the paper and attached a clause number beside it. One unexplained halt, Yun Saebyeok.

Dohyeon picked up his pen.

"How many unexplained halts are permitted," he asked. "If it's unlimited, the operation can't function."

"One," Saebyeok said. "One with no reason. From the second on, a reason is required, but there's no penalty for being wrong. From the third on, the weight given to that person's judgment is lowered."

"Who lowers the weight?" Igyeol asked.

"The other three, by agreement," Saebyeok said.

"That makes it a structure where four people cut one out," Igyeol said. "That's the same shape as the proposal the supervisor made to Saebyeok yesterday. When the majority clears out one person, the rest survive."

The waiting room went quiet. Yura pressed at the swelling above her splint.

"Then we write it this way," she said. "From the third time on, instead of lowering the weight, the team takes on the responsibility of finding out why that person is stopping. If they can't find out, the operation doesn't happen."

"That's a clause that could make operations impossible," Dohyeon said, holding his pen upright.

"Right," Igyeol said.

"Good," Dohyeon said, writing it down. "It's a worst case, mathematically. But it's better to have the worst case written down."

The paper was filled in twenty three minutes.

Under the pre entry notification item, Saebyeok caught a line.

"This is something we're already doing."

"A charter is for writing down what you're already doing," Dohyeon said. "If it's not written, it counts as not done."

Under the resource loss item, Yura raised her hand.

"For decisions to destroy equipment, please add confirmation of anyone on the floor below."

"We don't know if anyone's on the floor below," Dohyeon said.

"That's exactly why you check."

"What if there's no way to check?"

"Then write that there's no way," Yura said. "So that later, if someone was there, it's on record that we couldn't find them, not that we didn't look."

Dohyeon read the clause twice and wrote it down. He didn't attach a decimal point when he wrote it.

Igyeol put his own name column last. It was the final decision authority item. He didn't write his name in that box. He drew a line through it instead.

"No final decision authority," he read aloud. "Route proposal authority only."

"Surveyor," Saebyeok said. "That's a point deduction in the review. If the chain of command item has no commander."

"If there's a commander, then nobody can correct whatever that commander forgets."

Saebyeok didn't argue. Instead he added another line at the bottom of the paper.

Vanguard halt assumed at three seconds. Contact signal twice. Route decision rotates.

Mirae wrote the four names and the time on the back of the paper. Then she stopped in front of Yura's name.

"If I write your name in, this document becomes evidence of your location, Yura."

"Write it in," Yura said.

"It gets submitted for review. The agency will see it." Mirae didn't pick up her pen.

"Then the agency will find out I'm here." Yura said. "Right now I'm someone who doesn't exist. Nothing happens when you erase someone who doesn't exist."

Mirae pushed the pen toward Yura.

"If I write it, it becomes my decision," she said. "You write it, Yura."

Yura wrote her name. The letters were large. In the signature box, she pressed her fingerprint. There was no recognized signature for someone whose identity was unconfirmed.

Jin Yura, fingerprint in place of signature. Identity unconfirmed.

"If I ever tell you to erase this document, erase it," Yura said.

"I'll erase it," Mirae said. "But the request record stays. When and who asked. That's not erasing you, that's keeping a decision on record."

"Put that in a clause too."

Dohyeon wrote it as the twelfth line. Right to correction and deletion request.

"Let me try it once now," Yura said. "The photo of my splint, the one you took earlier. Take it out. I don't want my leg handed over."

Mirae opened her terminal and deleted the file. Then she logged the deletion in the record. Requester Jin Yura, time, one item.

"It works," Dohyeon said, marking a check beside the clause.

Three hours and twenty minutes until the review. When Igyeol spread out the eighth floor blueprint, Yura reached out over it.

"There was a mark here," Yura said.

The spot she pointed to was the entrance to the side corridor. Igyeol knew that spot. It was where Saebyeok said he'd seen an arrow yesterday.

"That's a halt marker. The direction was reversed," Igyeol said.

"It's not reversed," Yura said.

Yura rotated the blueprint. She flipped it upside down. Her hand trembled once over the paper, and he moved that hand to the edge of the blueprint and pressed it down.

"I came out from the inside. I didn't go in from outside," she said. "Seen from the inside, that arrow points the right way. It was drawn from in there."

Igyeol's hand stopped.

Facility blueprints were drawn from outside going in. That was the standard for entry teams. For three years he had only ever read coordinates by that standard.

A mark drawn by someone inside always looked backward by that standard.

"Then what I've been seeing this whole time." he said.

"You've been seeing it flipped, Surveyor," Yura said.

Saebyeok came up to the blueprint. He pressed it flat with both hands to fix the orientation.

"Read it again," Saebyeok said. "By the inside standard."

"Dohyeon," Igyeol said. "Can you recalculate the coordinates with the blueprint flipped?"

"It's not a recalculation, it's a number change," Dohyeon said, looking at the back of the blueprint. "Zone numbers are assigned based on entry direction. If you flip it, 8-A becomes 8-B."

The zone the bracelet last responded from was also 8-B.

"I've confirmed it's the same number range. I don't know if it's the same place," Dohyeon said. "Number ranges are reused across floors."

"Gyeongmin's ledger had 8-B in it," Mirae said. "A transport record. That's not agency data, it's company data."

"Two sources are better than one," Dohyeon said. "But it's not three."

"Then where does the sixth footprint lead?" Igyeol asked.

Dohyeon pointed to the direction the wet footprints traveled. On the blueprint set by the inside standard, that direction didn't lead toward the main corridor.

"This way," Dohyeon said. "Away from the main corridor, down under the drainage groove."

"A closed off passage," he said. "The number is... 8-B-3."

"What's the current status of that passage?" Igyeol asked.

"Sealed according to the blueprint. Closed three years ago," Dohyeon said. "And here's where it stalls. If it was sealed three years ago, that doesn't match yesterday's footprints. A person can't walk through a sealed passage."

"Then either the seal was broken," Saebyeok said.

"Or the seal record is wrong," Igyeol said. "Neither has been confirmed. So we're holding this as a hypothesis."

Igyeol opened his notebook. For the first time, something was written in the empty line under the sixth column. 8-B-3.

He hadn't used his ability. He hadn't even raised his hand. The coordinate didn't come from his own empty sense. It came from the direction of someone who had been sitting inside there for two days.

"Dohyeon," he said. "This isn't my judgment. Put it in the record under Yura's name."

"Unconfirmed identities don't get listed as proposers."

"Then write my name in the listed spot, and make a new column beside it for original proposer."

"There's no such column in the format."

"Then make one. Yura made a column that didn't exist earlier too."

"Yura," he said. "Why are you telling us this only now?"

"Nobody showed me the blueprint," Yura said. "The only things anyone asked me were my name and where it hurt."

The waiting room door opened. Mirae came in holding a piece of paper. Her face had changed color.

"Surveyor. There's one more item added to the review."

"What is it?" Igyeol asked.

"Whether an unregistered person is present within the team."

The paper with Yura's name written on it sat on the table. It had been written twelve minutes earlier and not yet submitted.

The four of them looked at the paper. Erasing the name would make the review easier. Erasing it would make Yura someone who wasn't here again.

"Don't erase it," Yura said first.

"Erasing it raises the chance of passing," Dohyeon said. "Numerically, that's true."

"Is that number calculated with me included?"

Dohyeon paused for a moment.

"No," he said. "I calculated it for a team of four. I'll redo it. For five."

Two hours and forty minutes until the review.

Igyeol folded the charter paper and put it in his inner pocket. The first line sat across the fold.

Anyone can halt an operation.

"I'm bringing this document into the review," he said. "If it costs us points, we'll take the deduction. But 8-B-3 gets said after the review."

"Do we keep it on record now?" Mirae asked.

"Keep it. Include the time," Igyeol said. "If someone later says we spoke up too late, when we knew becomes the evidence."

"Why not say it now?" Saebyeok asked.

"If we say it now, the agency goes into that passage first," Igyeol said. "If there's someone in there, they'll be found without a name on any list."

No one objected. Mirae wrote down one line. Who had made the decision, and the fact that no one had objected.