The Rescue Team's Name

The mock collapse site was a sixty percent scale model of the actual eighth floor. At six in the morning, three judges sat at the observation deck, and five dolls lay on the floor.

Yura sat in the waiting seats below the observation deck. Because of the unregistered personnel clause, she couldn't get inside the examination hall itself. Just one pane of glass away.

Saebyeok looked at that glass once, in front of the entry line. Yura held up five fingers. The number of dolls.

He counted the dolls too. Five. And he said the number out loud.

"Five dolls. No sixth one?"

"Five," the judge said. "Question time counts toward entry time."

"Include it," Saebyeok said. "Confirmed."

The third line of the paper made yesterday was pre-entry headcount confirmation.

The start signal sounded. The ceiling hydraulics began to descend. Sixty percent speed of an actual collapse.

Igyeol called out the coordinates first.

"Right passage. Ten steps. Three dolls at the end. The other two under the rubble on the left."

Saebyeok raised his shield and took two steps into the right side. Then he stopped.

The reason he stopped was a sound. A cycle different from the hydraulics was coming from the right wall. A two point four second interval. The hydraulics ran at two point eight.

It wasn't fear. Thanks to measuring it three times yesterday, he could now tell the two apart. When it was fear, his body froze. Now it hadn't. Only his hands had stopped.

"Halt."

He said it loud enough to reach the observation deck.

"Halt with cause, number one," he added. He had to attach the clause number so it could be counted later.

"Reason," Igyeol asked. Not an order, just the procedure of the clause.

"There's a sound with a two point four second cycle on the right wall. It doesn't match the hydraulics. Cause unknown."

"When unknown, the principle is to proceed," the judge said from the deck. "Unknown cause isn't grounds for a halt."

"I'm stopping because the cause is unknown," Saebyeok said. "Known dangers you avoid. Unknown ones you check."

"That contradicts the survey results," Igyeol said. "My assessment is that the right side is safe."

"Then are you treating my halt as a halt without cause?"

"No," Igyeol said. "It's a halt with cause. The cause just differs from my assessment."

One of the judges leaned forward at the deck.

Igyeol raised a hand. The posture for using an ability. Then he lowered it.

"Dohyeon," he said. "I'm handing over the routing decision."

"Taking it," Dohyeon said, pulling the gauge from his belt.

Dohyeon pressed his forehead to the right passage wall. The gauge read the wall thickness as uniform. He turned off the screen.

Four seconds. He stepped back.

"The two point four seconds is a pipe expansion sound behind this wall," he said. "When it expands, the wall pushes inward. Right now ten steps becomes eight. The shield width won't fit."

"Then what about the right side," Igyeol asked.

"If we go in, Saebyeok gets wedged. We'd recover the three dolls and be left with one person."

"What does the sensor say," the judge asked from the deck.

"It says uniform," Dohyeon said. "My ears say otherwise. I go with my ears. I was right once under these conditions yesterday."

"The record will note a discrepancy with the sensor value."

"Note it."

Igyeol's assessment had been wrong. It took him half a beat to admit it.

"I'm withdrawing my assessment," he said, loud enough for the deck to hear. "The right side safe assessment, canceled. We go left. The two under the left rubble first. What about the three on the right?"

"From the left end, the back of the right passage opens up," Dohyeon said. "The distance is double, but the shield fits."

"What about time?"

"Eleven seconds longer than the original plan."

"Eleven seconds is two stages of the hydraulics," Saebyeok said.

"So if we pull the two dolls out first, it drops to six seconds. Less weight, faster movement."

"Did you factor the weight of the dolls into the calculation," the judge asked.

"Factored it in yesterday," Dohyeon said. "I found out by entering Yura's body weight. If you don't put a person's weight in as a variable, the calculation is wrong."

Saebyeok glanced toward the glass once. He couldn't tell if Yura had heard that sentence.

"Then that's how we go," Igyeol said.

Under the left rubble, Yura's clause activated. To lift the rubble, they had to break the support beam, and breaking it would close off the space underneath.

"Checking below," Saebyeok said, taking his hand off the beam.

Mirae, without looking at the camera toward the deck, put her flashlight into the space under the rubble.

"Empty. No dolls, no person."

"Log the confirmation," Saebyeok said.

"Logged. 06:06:12, confirmed by Park Mirae."

Saebyeok broke the support beam. Two dolls came out.

Before breaking the beam, he checked once where the broken piece would fall. The space below was empty, and the fragment fell outside the recovery line.

"Recovering the broken support," he said. "If we leave scrap metal on site, the next team steps on it."

"That's not a review item," the judge said.

"We do it whether it's an item or not."

While moving from the left to the back of the right side, Saebyeok stopped once more. This time he froze. The collapse sound playback device switched on in that section.

Three point one seconds.

A hand came from behind twice. Igyeol. Not beside him but behind. The side wasn't in the line of fire in this section.

"Continue moving," Dohyeon's voice came. The decision authority already rested with him.

Saebyeok's feet moved again. He himself didn't know he'd moved again. The person who needed to know was behind him.

The back passage on the right was half a hand-width wider than the shield. Saebyeok went in first, handed the three dolls to Igyeol, and Igyeol handed them to Dohyeon. The three handoffs never overlapped once.

While handing off the second doll, the sound from the right wall grew louder. The two point four second cycle shortened to two point one.

"It's coming," Dohyeon said.

The right passage wall pushed inward. Not the concrete but the force of the pipe behind it pushing. Saebyeok tried fitting his shield into the gap. Half a hand-width of shield space remained, and the wall kept coming. The half hand-width disappeared.

He pulled the shield out. Two minutes and eleven seconds earlier, he had been two steps inside that space.

Total recovery time: five minutes forty four seconds.

The review standard was six minutes.

The hydraulics stopped and the lights came up. Five dolls were inside the recovery line, and four people stood there.

One of the judges flipped through the paperwork.

"Recovery time standard passed. Full doll recovery. No injuries," he read. "However, a command inconsistency was observed."

"What was the recovery time," Dohyeon asked.

"Five minutes forty four seconds. Sixteen seconds faster than standard."

"If we'd gone right as originally planned, how many seconds would it have been?"

The judge tapped the calculator.

"By calculation, four minutes fifty seconds."

"And one person gets wedged in the wall," Dohyeon said.

"Fifty four seconds slower, and no one got wedged," Saebyeok said. "Please log that trade."

The judge set down the calculator.

"At what point," Igyeol asked, stepping half a step toward the paperwork.

"At two minutes eleven seconds into entry, the surveyor's safety assessment and the vanguard's halt declaration collided. Field command authority shifted twice. That's a deduction."

Saebyeok stepped forward.

"I am the one who gave the halt order," he said. "I will sign it under my own name in the official log."

Saebyeok placed his hand on the signature line. Four years ago, the judgment document had a box the same size.

"Trainee Yun Saebyeok," the judge said. "The trainee's assessment turned out to be correct, but procedurally the vanguard follows the surveyor's assessment. If you sign, this becomes an insubordination item."

"Surveyor," Saebyeok said. "If you settle this here as a procedural error on my part, the deduction disappears. If that's what you want to do, do it now. I won't object."

That was what the clause said. A halt with cause could be overturned, and the one who overturns it also leaves their name on it.

Igyeol walked toward the judge and took out the paper folded yesterday. The first line lay along the fold.

"Trainee Saebyeok's halt stands," he said first. "I won't settle it away."

"I'm submitting this document," he said. "The first line is anyone can halt the operation. This team has no final decision authority today. I erased my own name from that box."

"That's an incomplete command structure," the judge said.

"Today's result was better than if it had followed my assessment," Igyeol said. "If we'd gone right, someone would have gotten wedged. Engineer Im Dohyeon produced that calculation in four seconds."

"Are you going to put in the record that the surveyor's assessment was wrong," the judge asked, pen pausing.

"I'll put it in. Under my own name," Igyeol said.

The judge wrote two lines on the paperwork. Deduction for incomplete command structure, and below it, the recovery score.

"Results will be notified at noon," he said.

"One question," Mirae said, stepping up to the deck. "The command structure item was added yesterday afternoon. Can I know the name of the person who requested the addition?"

"That's not subject to disclosure."

"Then what time was it added?"

The judge flipped through the paperwork. Then stopped his flipping hand.

"The time isn't written."

"Please write that down too," Mirae said. "The fact that there's no time."

The judge wrote down that sentence. While writing it, he looked at Mirae's name tag.

"Recorder. If you keep asking things like this, it'll make the team's position difficult."

"It's already difficult now."

The last person to come down from the observation deck was the supervisor who had come to the training ground yesterday. He slowed his steps as he passed in front of Saebyeok.

"You didn't settle it down to one person in charge," the supervisor said.

"There was no one to settle it on," Saebyeok said.

The supervisor tucked the folder under his arm. Something red was stamped on the cover. Saebyeok didn't know what kind of stamp it was.

The person who would know was behind him. Mirae's hand was already reaching for her notebook.

Across the glass, in the waiting seats, Yura stood up. The person who couldn't get into the examination hall raised her hand, counted to five, then held up a sixth finger.

There were only five dolls there. The sixth was Yura herself.