Chương 19: The Book of Soyga

The door to his lodging room made more noise than he had expected. Kichan paused for a moment with his hand on the knob. At the vending machine at the end of the hall, a man was buying a canned drink. The man glanced at Kichan once, gave the can in his hand a small shake, and went back into his own room. Only after that door shut did Kichan step inside. The equipment bag under the bed was exactly where he had left it. He knelt and dragged it out. The sound of the zipper scraping open ran long across the room.

The wake-up rod was wrapped in black cloth. The iron bar had already been handled once in London and again on the way to New York, and now it fit his hand better than it had when he first made it. Kichan lifted it. The small desk in the room, the old chair, the thin door, even the sound of a television through the wall suddenly felt uncomfortably real. If he took this into the hallway, someone would definitely see it. Someone would ask questions. Someone would remember.

He set the wake-up rod down on the bed and picked up the coat hanging over the chair by the window. Small slips of paper came out of the pockets. Airport, taxi, street stall, copy shop. Kichan spread them out over the desk. The numbers were small and crowded. The money that had gone out had left a record of his movements with it. He took out the copy shop envelope. Inside were several copied pages from the materials he had brought from London.

One of them held a faintly printed chart linking Raon Bio to a New York partner company. There were several lines, and even more names. Hospitals, investment firms, data analysis companies, clinical management firms, foundations. One drug that had saved one person was tied to this many companies and this many streams of money. Kichan folded the envelope again. His phone screen lit up. It was a message from his mother. Make sure you eat. Kichan stared at the screen for a long time, then turned the phone face down.

If he replied, his hands would only slow down. He picked up the wake-up rod again. Then he looked at the long poster tube propped beside the bed. He had bought it that afternoon at a stationery shop. The clerk must have assumed some tourist was buying a poster and had not asked any questions. The wake-up rod did not fit inside the tube. Of course it didn't. Kichan stared at it for a long time, then finally tossed the cap away without even managing a laugh.

"Calling this a plan. Really." He grabbed the side of the equipment bag. The thin metal reinforcement inside the seam bent little by little under his fingertips. The fabric did not tear. Only the shape of the bag warped sideways. Kichan shoved the wake-up rod inside and forced the zipper shut. From the outside, it looked like an unusually long gym bag. From the inside, it was a weapon. Kichan slung the bag over his shoulder. His shoulder dropped at once. He stood in front of the mirror.

Hair flattened as if still damp, a face that had not slept, a black coat, an equipment bag hanging off to one side. As he was now, he looked less like anything else and more like the kind of homeless man you could find on any American street. Laughter sounded in the hallway. Two women passed by talking loudly in English. The sound of suitcase wheels, a trace of perfume, the elevator chime—all of it slipped in through the gap under the door. Kichan looked away from the mirror and opened it. 10: 47 p. m.

The freight entrance behind the Aster Clinical Data Solutions building was lit. The men who had been smoking there during the day were gone. In their place, two delivery workers in gray uniforms were unloading refrigerated boxes. The rear doors of the white truck stood open, and cold air spilled out from inside. Kichan walked with his phone against his ear. The screen was dark. He only looked as though he were on a call. The equipment bag hung from the opposite shoulder.

The weight of it tilted his stride ever so slightly. One of the delivery workers looked at him.

"Hey, this area is for delivery." Without lowering the phone, Kichan pointed at the building with one finger.

"Inside. Aster."

"Badge?" That much he understood. Kichan searched inside his coat. Naturally, there was no badge. Just as the delivery worker's expression began to change, the door inside the freight entrance opened. The woman with the Raon Bio access badge from earlier stepped out. She looked at Kichan, then at the delivery worker. A very short silence. She spoke first.

"He's with compliance." The delivery worker shrugged.

"Nobody tells me anything." He went back to pushing the box. Kichan looked at the woman. She had a phone in her hand. She was the same person whose voice had warned him over the phone earlier that day. Up close, she looked to be in her mid-thirties. Her name was printed on the badge hanging from her neck. Mina Han The plastic corners of the badge were a little worn. Beneath the name was a small added sticker. AUDIT HOLD Kichan did not know exactly what it meant.

What he could see was that Mina Han kept rubbing that sticker with her thumb. She said, in Korean,"Come inside." Kichan did not move.

"Is that an invitation or a trap?"

"I'd prefer it to be neither."

"That's the answer I hate most." Mina Han held the freight entrance door. Inside, he could see a card reader, a security camera, and a terminal for confirming deliveries. Kichan glanced once up the alley. A camera was looking down at him. Mina Han looked at that camera once as well.

"If you get caught here, today's entry approval will be recorded under my name."

"So this isn't you helping me."

"I'm not helping you. If this material doesn't get out, I don't survive either." The delivery workers were already pushing the boxes inside. Kichan adjusted the strap of the equipment bag and went in. The walls were white and the floor was gray. Pipes and cables ran neatly along the ceiling, and small cameras were fixed here and there. It was the exact opposite of the damp stone walls in the London basement. This place wasn't even pretending to be old. Mina Han walked ahead. Kichan kept about two paces behind her.

The delivery workers grumbled under their breath as they pushed their carts. Each time the box wheels crossed the floor, a low vibration rose through the soles of Kichan's feet. In that vibration, he caught the rails of the freight elevator. Basement 1. Basement 2. Basement 3. The elevator could go a little farther down than that. Kichan's fingers twitched when he saw the blocked seam beneath the button panel, but he only tightened his grip on the hand holding the rail. Mina Han spoke.

"It would be better if you set down whatever's in the bag." Kichan did not answer.

"There are a lot of metal detectors here."

"Then I suppose you already know."

"I do." She did not break stride.

"That's why nobody has come out with guns yet." Kichan looked at her back. Gray jacket, low heels, phone in hand. She did not look frightened. She didn't look completely calm either. Her left thumb kept rubbing the corner of her badge. That small movement caught Kichan's eye. In front of the elevator, one of the delivery workers said,"B2?" Mina Han shook her head.

"B3." The delivery worker looked at her.

"We don't go B3."

"Tonight you do." At that, both workers' expressions hardened. Kichan shortened his grip on the bag strap a little. The elevator doors opened. There was no mirror inside. That was a relief. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Five people stepped into the narrow metal box: the two delivery workers, Mina Han, Kichan, and three refrigerated containers. Kichan stood beside the containers. Cold air spilled down against his trousers. The doors shut.

The elevator began to descend. B1. B2. There was no B3 button on the panel. But the elevator did not stop. One of the delivery workers swore.

"What the hell." Mina Han was looking at her phone. Kichan looked at the metal screws beneath the button panel. A different circuit was running behind them. This was not a floor for ordinary employees. The sensation of Soyga brushed faintly across his fingertips. Kichan ground his teeth. The back of his neck went cold. The elevator stopped. The doors opened.

Server fans, the flow of coolant, a machine alarm sounding somewhere far off, someone typing on a keyboard, the scrape of a wheeled chair against the floor—he heard all of it at once. At the far end of the corridor, two researchers passed by while reading papers. One carried coffee. The other had protective goggles hanging around the neck. Mina Han said,"Delivery to cold storage." The delivery workers pushed the boxes to the left. One of them kept looking back. Kichan looked down the corridor to the right.

Small labels were fixed beside each door. DATA INTEGRITY TRIAL MODELING PRIVATE ARCHIVE SOYGA INTERFACE The moment he read the last one, the back of his neck tightened. Kichan clenched the hand holding the bag strap. Mina Han looked at him.

"You can feel it?" Instead of answering, Kichan looked at her badge.

"What exactly do you do here?"

"Liaison work."

"Between Raon Bio and this place?"

"Raon Bio, the Golden Dawn, the investors, the research team. I make sure each side understands the words the others need them to understand."

"Does that include turning patients into cost and profit figures?" Mina Han closed her mouth. Two guards appeared at the far end of the corridor. They wore black uniforms. They carried more equipment than the guards in London had. At their waists were a taser and a pistol, and a long case was fixed along each of their backs. The moment Kichan saw the pistols, he stopped walking. Mina Han spoke immediately.

"No guns." One of the guards looked at her.

"Protocol changed."

"Change it back."

"Ma'am, he breached London." Kichan did not understand the entire sentence in English. But he understood `London`. His hand went to the zipper of the equipment bag. The guard's hand dropped toward his waist as well. At that moment, a door on the right side of the corridor opened. A cleaning cart rolled out. A woman in a gray apron came pushing it, then froze the instant she took in the mood in the corridor. She was wearing rubber gloves, and on the cart were trash bags and bottles of disinfectant.

The cleaning cart ended up between Kichan and the guards. Kichan took his hand off the bag. The guards froze too, still unable to take their hands off their guns. The cleaner said in a small voice,"I can come back." Mina Han said,"Go." The cleaner tried to turn the cart around. One wheel caught in a groove in the floor. The cart jolted and tilted sideways. One bottle of disinfectant fell. Kichan reached out on reflex. The bottle stopped before it hit the floor.

The thin metal ring inside the bottle cap caught on his fingertips. He jerked his wrist back, and the bottle landed with a light tap in his palm. Kichan set it back on the cart. Everyone in the corridor saw it. The cleaner's eyes widened. The two guards stiffened even further. Mina Han drew in one very short breath. Kichan lowered his hand.

"Sorry." He said it in Korean. The cleaner did not understand the words, but she seemed to understand the bow of his head. She pulled the cart away quickly and disappeared down the corridor. One of the guards reached for his radio. Mina Han spoke before he could.

"If you call it in, this floor becomes unusable for a week." The guard's hand stopped. Kichan did not understand the sentence precisely, but he understood the effect. These people cared more about the laboratory than they did about Kichan. That was a usable fact. The `SOYGA INTERFACE` door was secured by two visible locks. One card reader. One palm scanner. And inside the door, there was a third lock that was not marked anywhere. The moment Kichan stopped in front of it, he felt it.

It was neither metal nor current. It was a thin membrane like an entry condition. A fine line dividing the people allowed inside from the people shut out. The Book of Soyga was inside the room, and traces of it were already caught in the door. Mina Han held her badge to the reader. A green light came on. She placed her hand on the palm scanner. The second light came on too. The door did not open. Kichan looked at her. Mina Han's fingers were trembling ever so slightly.

"And the third one?"

"A person doesn't open it."

"Then who does?"

"It opens when the conditions are right." Kichan did not laugh. He knew that line too well. It had been the same when the Voynich Manuscript first opened the dream café. It had been the same when the Rohonc copy made metal appear to him in a different way. It wasn't an explanation. It was a condition. The door did not yield to the one who understood. It yielded to the one who matched. Kichan put a hand on the door. The metal beneath his palm was cold.

Something else rose from inside it—a feeling like old paper being folded and unfolded, as though the room had already decided who would be allowed in. Kichan took his hand away.

"How obnoxious." Mina Han said quietly,"Most people say that." Kichan lowered the equipment bag to the floor. Both guards moved at the same time. He opened the zipper slowly. The wake-up rod appeared. One of the guards swallowed a curse. Kichan did not lift it. Instead, he touched the tip of the rod to the lower edge of the door with his fingertips. As the sensation of Rohonc read through the metal, he slid the thin wires he had tucked inside the bag into the crack along the floor.

Below the door, behind the card reader, through the palm scanner circuitry, and along the edge of the unmarked third lock. Kichan did not close his eyes. He was afraid that if he did, he might go too deep. He looked at the small camera above the door. Inside its lens, he could see his own face reflected in miniature. Mina Han stood beside him. The two guards were behind him. Farther away, at the end of the corridor, was the door through which the cleaner had disappeared. This was not a door he was entering alone.

Too many eyes were pushing on it with him. Kichan twisted the wake-up rod just slightly. The metal gave a low hum. Inside the door, the third lock released. Click. The sound was so small that everyone seemed to hear it louder. The door opened. The air inside was cool. And quiet. The Book of Soyga was not sitting on top of a shelf. In the center of the room stood a transparent preservation case, and inside it lay several sheets of old paper together with a black storage device and several thin metal plates.

On the wall monitors floated patterns. Circles, squares, lines that looked like letters, arrangements that looked like musical notation, numbers that resembled equations—they overlapped and unraveled over and over. SOYGA STRUCTURE MODEL CONTRACTUAL LANGUAGE LAYER WORLD-RULE INTERFACE Kichan could not read all the English. This was not a room for storing an old book.

It was a room for experimenting with how an old book changed people, how people could use an old book, and what kind of door existed between those two things. Beside the monitor, photographs had been pinned up. An alley in Korea. A Raon Bio conference room. The London Reading Society basement. And the front entrance of Kichan's house. Above the front door, one tiny wire-bodied shape had been captured in a blurred image. It was Dust. Kichan stopped walking. The photo had been enlarged.

The resolution was poor, but Dust's legs and body were visible. Beneath the photo was an English annotation. FAMILIAR-LIKE METALLIC AUTONOMOUS STRUCTURE Kichan nearly tore the photograph down, then stopped his hand. If he removed it, it would leave evidence. If he didn't remove it, the evidence was already there. Instead, he twisted only the metal pin at the bottom with his fingertips. He loosened it only enough that it would not break. The photograph tipped slightly to one side.

That tiny slant alone was enough to let Kichan breathe out once. Mina Han said behind him,"That's more dangerous than you think." Kichan looked at the preservation case.

"The photo, or what's inside it?"

"Both." The case had four locks. Two mechanical locks. One electronic lock. And a final lock laid directly over the paper inside the case. Kichan planted the wake-up rod on the floor. Clack. The metal plate beneath the floor gave a low ring. The two guards outside the door shifted their stances immediately. Kichan did not look at them. He stood in front of the case and raised his hand. When he had touched the Rohonc copy, the feeling of metal and mineral had entered his body.

Structure, pressure, grain, impurity, the direction in which something hardened. The Book of Soyga was different. His fingertips did not move first. His eyes did. One pattern called another. One blank space made the next. The lines did not point to objects. They bound relationships. A name enclosed within a circle became property. A name pushed outside a line became something that could not be reached. The door was not shut by wood or metal, but by conditions of entry.

Kichan looked at the old paper inside the case. He could not read the writing. But he could tell where he absolutely should not touch. He did not open the case. Instead, he pulled out the black storage device beside it first. An alarm sounded. One of the guards outside grabbed his radio. Mina Han shouted,"Wait!" Kichan pushed the second metal plate with his fingertips. The temperature display inside the preservation case wavered. The patterns on the monitors blurred all at once, then drew together again.

The room lights flickered a beat late. The sensation of Soyga brushed the back of Kichan's neck. Conditions and records overlapped at the same time. Kichan frowned. This felt less like power than paperwork. Exceptionally important paperwork. He took a picture of the old paper. The shutter sound rang through the room. He deleted it at once. The shutter had already gone off, and the image had already been saved. His hand had been too slow.

Mina Han said,"If you take that, the Golden Dawn won't be the only ones trying to stop you." Kichan slipped the storage device into his pocket.

"It already looks crowded enough."

"Government agencies may move too."

"Then the government can start by looking at this material." Mina Han could not answer. At that moment, a small drone dropped down from a corner of the ceiling. It was smaller than the ones he had seen at the London Reading Society. Nearly palm-sized. It moved quietly, and at the front was a device that looked like a syringe. Kichan lifted the wake-up rod. The drone backed away immediately. This time it was not alone. Three more came down through the gaps between the ceiling panels.

The two guards stepped inside the room. Instead of pistols, they now held unfamiliar devices fitted with metal rings. They looked like something meant to clamp around an arm or neck and tighten. Mina Han stepped back. Kichan heard the heel of her shoe catch briefly on the floor. She was not moving like someone trying to run. She was moving like someone choosing where she would be hurt the least. Kichan nudged the equipment bag toward the door with his foot.

"Move." Mina Han said,"If you go out there, you'll be caught."

"I'll be caught if I stay in here too." She had no answer to that. One of the drones moved. The syringe tip aimed at Kichan's neck. The wake-up rod snapped upward in a short motion. Thunk. The tip of the rod clipped past the side of the drone and hit the ceiling light cover first. Transparent plastic fragments fell like rain. The drone lost its bearings for an instant, and only then did one propeller catch on the wake-up rod and crumple. Kichan drew his arm back a beat late.

"Ah." The drone dropped to the floor. The second drone curved sideways. One of the guards threw the metal ring. Kichan tried to step back and felt his heel hit the pedestal beneath the preservation case. His body twisted halfway. The metal ring had probably been aimed at his arm. But because of the awkward angle, it caught on the handle of the wake-up rod first. The sensation of Rohonc read the grain of the metal only an instant later, and Kichan twisted his wrist almost on reflex.

The ring's closing direction bent back the wrong way. The device crumpled in the air and hit the floor. The guard's expression changed. These people were not like the London guards. They were startled, but they did not back off. They were trained. Kichan let out a small breath. He looked back and forth between the drone on the floor and his own hand. His lips almost parted. He shut his mouth at once and adjusted his grip on the wake-up rod. If he swung it wide, the equipment in the room would break.

If the equipment broke, the alarm would get louder. If the alarm got louder, it would become news. If it became news, his mother would see it. He shortened his grip. Not a long staff. A heavy handle. The first guard came in. Kichan aimed for the wrist. The wake-up rod slipped under the wrist and struck the handle of the ring device instead. The device dropped and smashed down on the guard's foot, making the man curse as his stance collapsed. In that opening, Kichan drove the wake-up rod in beside the man's knee.

The heavy iron bar shoved the man sideways. He sank down where he was. The second guard pulled out the taser. Kichan did not retreat toward the preservation case. He did the opposite and closed the distance. A taser was harder to deal with at range. Up close, the elbow and shoulder got in the way. Kichan had learned that in London. Not because he had wanted to. Even so, the moment of closing in was messy.

His wet shoes slipped on the floor, and the tip of the wake-up rod scraped the corner of the wall monitor before it reached the guard's elbow. Then the tip of the rod pressed into the inside of the elbow. The taser fell to the floor. A third drone dropped. From the side, Mina Han grabbed a fire extinguisher and threw it. It did not hit the drone. But the drone dodged it. In that half beat, Kichan's wake-up rod caught the propeller. The drone dropped to the floor. Kichan looked at Mina Han.

She said at once,"Don't get the wrong idea. I'm not on your side."

"Then let's settle for not being in the way." The alarm grew louder outside the door. More footsteps sounded from the far end of the corridor. Kichan looked once more at the preservation case. He could not take the old paper itself. If he did, this room would become a battlefield immediately. But what he needed to take was already decided. The black storage device from the server, the photograph still on his phone, and one metal plate. He pulled at the smallest metal plate inside the case with his fingertips.

It was the thin backing plate laid under the paper. An auxiliary plate for recording the positions of the writing and the overlap of the patterns. An object carrying the shadow of the Book of Soyga. The moment it came free, the air in the room seemed to compress. The patterns on the monitors scattered. Mina Han's face went pale.

"That—""It's a copy, right?"

"It's a key." Kichan slipped the metal plate inside his coat.

"Then I should definitely take it." Someone shouted in the corridor.

"Containment team moving in!" Kichan did not understand all of the English sentence. But he understood that it meant he had to move. He grabbed the equipment bag and headed for the door. Mina Han stepped aside. Just before passing her, Kichan said in a low voice,"Tell them not to touch my parents." Mina Han did not answer. Instead, she turned her gaze toward the far end of the corridor. Black shields were appearing there. This time it was not only private security. Vests marked with blue lettering.

The name of some agency he did not recognize. And one person carrying a camera. Kichan saw the camera and stopped. The lens turned toward him. For the first time, he swung the wake-up rod in a wide arc. Not at a person, but at the ceiling. The overhead piping bent, and the fire sprinklers burst. Cold water poured across the entire corridor. The camera lens was instantly covered in droplets. The guards swore. The delivery workers shouted from somewhere far off.

From behind a shut door, the cleaner was yelling something as well. In an instant, Basement Level Three in New York was no longer a quiet secret laboratory. Kichan ran through the falling water. The wake-up rod was heavy in his hand, and the metal plate inside his coat pressed cold against his chest. The Book of Soyga did not follow quietly the way an ordinary book might have. Behind him, doors and locks and access permissions responded one after another. The alarm filled the entire corridor.