Chương 20: I’m Not Running Away, I’m Avoiding It Because It’s Annoying

The sprinkler water was colder than he'd expected. Kichan ran down the flooded corridor. Water kept pouring from the ceiling, and the floor was a mess of security guards' shoe prints and the wheel tracks of refrigerated crates. The alarm blared from inside the walls. Every time the red emergency lights flashed, the shields at the end of the hall seemed one step closer.

"Stop!" Someone shouted. Kichan didn't stop. Somewhere in the back of his mind, his mother's ringtone was going off. It was a call he couldn't answer. He swung the equipment bag off his shoulder and carried it in one hand. The wake-up rod was already out. Inside his coat, the metal plate from the Book of Soyga pressed coldly against his chest. The storage device in his pocket slapped against his thigh every time he ran. Everything he was carrying kept getting in the way in its own special manner.

Kichan didn't head for the freight elevator. That route would obviously be blocked. Instead, he shoved open a low door on the right side of the corridor. A sign on it read `MAINTENANCE ONLY`. The card reader was glowing red. Kichan placed the tip of the wake-up rod against the wall beside the door. The metal contacts inside the card reader came into focus under his fingertips. The current running through them was shaking all over the place.

His Rohonc sense read the metal, while the metal plate inside his coat skimmed the access conditions attached to the door. Tiny lines of text on the reader screen kept changing. Authorization. Time. Purpose of entry. Night approval.

"What a complicated way to live." He gave his wrist a slight twist, and the red light turned green. The door opened. Kichan slipped inside. Behind him, he heard a shield slam against the floor.

The maintenance passage was narrow. The ceiling was low, and both walls were crowded with pipes and cables. If Kichan ran while holding the wake-up rod out normally, he was bound to smack it into everything. He held the rod upright and turned his body sideways. The first guard following him slowed at the entrance. His shield got caught. Kichan stopped the moment he rounded the corner. As the guard forced his way in, Kichan tried to press at the lower edge of the shield.

The tip of the wake-up rod struck the raised lip of a floor pipe before it hit the shield. Thunk. The sound was so loud Kichan flinched first. That made the shield snag on the pipe edge, and the guard's knee pitched forward. Kichan raised the rod to keep the man's shoulder from crashing straight into him. The man didn't fall. Instead, he hit the wall and sucked in a breath. Kichan tried to pull the taser from the man's belt, but his fingers got caught in the strap.

"Ah, why won't this come out?" When he yanked harder, the taser came free and dropped to the floor. The stream of water pushed it under a metal grate.

"Sorry. That looked dangerous." The guard swore at him. Kichan was already moving for the next corner. Halfway down the passage, there was a cleaning worker. It was the same woman who had been pushing the cart in the hall earlier. She stood there frozen with a bucket in her hands, her eyes moving back and forth between Kichan's wake-up rod, his soaked coat, and the guards running after him. Kichan pressed himself flat against the wall.

"Go. Go." The woman nearly dropped the bucket. Kichan reached out and caught the handle for her. The small metal pins set into either end of the plastic grip trembled against his fingertips. Muttering something too fast for him to understand, she disappeared through a side door. Before it had even finished closing, the second guard entered the passage. Kichan didn't raise the wake-up rod. Instead, he kicked the remaining water in the bucket. His foot caught the side awkwardly.

The bucket rolled halfway over and spilled its water, and the guard stepped into it and slipped. In the instant the man lost his balance, Kichan thrust the rod forward. The tip caught the man's arm as it folded under him. The taser hit the floor. The man cursed and caught himself against the wall.

The stairwell ran from B3 to B1. Kichan didn't go straight up all at once. He stopped on the B2 landing and listened to the footsteps behind him. Three. No, four. Two of them had shields, and one had a lighter step. That one might have been handling the drone. He opened the fire hose cabinet on the landing. The hinges and valve inside came into focus under his fingertips. The hose was old, and the metal nozzle was heavy. Kichan took only the nozzle and wedged it between the stair rails.

The first pursuer came up the stairs. Kichan didn't run upward. He went down. When someone going down the stairs collided with someone coming up them, the result was much messier. The shield lost its angle, and the tranquilizer gun hit the wall and couldn't aim properly. Kichan went for the equipment first. The shield handle. The muzzle of the tranquilizer gun. The radio antenna. He connected with the shield handle. The tranquilizer gun's muzzle only bent after the wake-up rod struck the railing and bounced off it.

The radio antenna got knocked loose when the man's elbow tangled with someone else. Metal crumpled, fell away, and rolled down the stairs. The second man tried to grab Kichan's arm. Kichan didn't pull away. Instead, he stepped in closer. The force of the other man yanking him made Kichan's body swing hard. His back slammed into the railing. The breath caught in his throat. Even in the middle of that, the handle of the wake-up rod hooked behind the man's shoulder.

Kichan pressed down on it, almost hanging off him, and the man sank down still clutching his arm. The third pursuer hesitated. The moment Kichan saw that brief pause, he sprinted upward. Near the B1 door, the hose caught on the nozzle he'd wedged in place and snapped taut. Cursing broke out from below. Someone had tripped over it. Kichan shoved through the door.

B1 held a staff break room and a delivery waiting area. Two delivery workers sitting in front of a vending machine looked up at Kichan at the same time. One was holding a cup of instant noodles. The other still had a game open on his phone. Kichan came through the doorway in a soaked coat with the wake-up rod in hand. All three of them stared at the same point for a second. The worker with the cup noodles said,"Nope." He stood up with the noodles still in his hand and walked out through the opposite door.

The other worker grabbed his phone and followed him. Kichan stepped aside to let them pass.

"Sorry." Of course, they probably didn't understand him. They never looked back. He appreciated that. The TV in the break room was running the news. A ticker at the bottom briefly showed something about pharmaceutical clinical trials and investment news. Kichan started to put the wake-up rod back into his bag, then stopped. The anchor on the screen was smiling. The news wore the face of something that knew nothing. He didn't look for the remote. He went out through the back door of the break room instead.

It led to the parking garage.

The parking garage was wide. In a wide place, several people could move at once. Shields had room to spread out, and cameras could line up clean angles. Kichan didn't run straight between the cars. He first swept the pipes along the left wall, the ceiling cameras, the exit gate, and the emergency doors in one glance. Two black vans had already come down. One was near the exit. One was near the elevators. There was still no one near the door Kichan had come through. Which meant they would be there soon.

He slung the equipment bag back over his shoulder and walked between the parked cars with the wake-up rod in hand. He didn't run. Running made noise. Every step of his wet shoes left a small trace of water on the floor. A dashcam in one of the cars blinked red. As Kichan passed, he brushed his fingertips along the body of the car. The dashcam didn't power down. Its angle shifted only slightly. He did the same thing while passing the second and third cars. If he broke them completely, that would leave a trace.

If he nudged them a little out of place, someone would just curse and fix them later. The van by the exit opened. Three men in black uniforms got out. One of them was carrying a camera. The instant Kichan saw it, he changed direction. He didn't head for the exit. He went deeper into the garage toward the car wash bay. A narrow space, water hoses, drains, a low ceiling, barely enough width for a single car. The men in black followed him.

"Sir! Drop the weapon!" Kichan looked down at the wake-up rod. At the end of the metal bar he still hadn't managed to shove fully back into the bag. If he dropped it, that was the end of it. The car wash floor was already wet. A hose lay stretched across it, and several metal hooks were bolted to the wall. Kichan nudged the nozzle at the end of the hose with his foot. Water burst out. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. The man in front lost sight of him.

Kichan aimed for the man's wrist. The wake-up rod caught the camera strap before it hit the wrist. The man reflexively tried to save the camera and lost his balance, and only then did the rod brush his wrist. The camera fell to the floor. Kichan didn't smash it outright. Instead, he pressed only the metal ring beside the lens. The lens dented inward. The second man came in with a shield. It was too narrow. The shield caught against the wall. Kichan struck one of the metal hooks on the wall with the wake-up rod.

It hit the wall and bounced back into the edge of the shield. As the man twisted his shoulder to free it, Kichan stepped back and shoved the rod against the side of his thigh. The man's knee folded inward. The shield scraped across the floor, and he collapsed beside a low piece of car wash equipment. The third man didn't come in. He aimed a tranquilizer gun from outside the bay. Kichan ducked. The dart struck a detergent container on the back wall. It burst and spilled foam everywhere.

The floor became even slicker. Kichan swallowed a curse. While he was doing that, the emergency door behind him opened. It was Mina Han. She brushed her wet hair back behind her ear and said,"Not that way." Kichan looked at her.

"Another trap?"

"An exit this time."

"Why?" Instead of answering, Mina Han pointed inside the emergency door.

"If you get caught, my name stays at the top of the B3 access approval log."

"Then this isn't help."

"I'm not helping you. That data has to get out if I'm going to survive too." She was gripping her phone in one wet hand. One undeleted filename was still visible on the screen. `FAMILY_PRESSURE_FAILED` Mina Han turned the screen off at once.

"The stairwell with no cameras locks in forty seconds." Kichan didn't look at her face for long. If he looked too long, he would want to ask why. He ran for the emergency door. Mina Han held it open. As Kichan passed, she said in a voice barely above a whisper,"I didn't create the file on your parents." Kichan didn't slow down.

"You still should've deleted it." The door closed.

The stairs were old. Unlike the clean lobby at the front of the building, this place had peeling paint and dust caught on the railings. City buildings were always different on the outside and inside. The Reading Society in London had been like that, and so had the data company in New York. Kichan climbed. If he went straight out onto the first floor, he would hit the lobby. The lobby meant cameras, guards, and glass walls. He didn't stop at the first floor. He went up one more. The second-floor door was locked.

The card reader was dead. The metal plate from the Book of Soyga clung coldly to the inside of his coat. Kichan grabbed the doorknob. This time he didn't force it. He let go instead and climbed a little farther. Third floor. There was the smell of food under the door. He opened it. It was a small office corridor. In one meeting room, employees working late were eating a late dinner. Plastic plates, cans of cola, laptop screens, a project schedule taped to the wall. A woman inside the room looked toward the door.

Kichan stood there in a wet coat with the equipment bag in hand. The woman blinked. Kichan pointed into the room.

"Delivery?" Someone inside laughed.

"Wrong floor, man." Kichan lowered his head.

"Sorry." He walked to the opposite end of the corridor. Someone would probably think it was strange. Someone else would dismiss it as just one more odd thing they saw while working late. That difference might keep him alive tonight. At the end of the hall was an emergency exit for employees. It couldn't be opened from the outside, but it opened from within. Kichan pushed it open. Cold air came in. It was the fire escape at the back of the building. Below was the alley. Above was the roof. Kichan went down.

The moment he stepped into the alley, the noise of New York came back all at once. Taxi horns, laughter outside bars, the brakes of delivery bikes, sirens in the distance, somebody shouting a name. If the world had been sealed shut in B3, this place was too open. Kichan shoved the wake-up rod back into his bag. It didn't go all the way in, so he hid the protruding end with his coat. There were still people across the street.

Office workers heading home, a couple holding hands, a man walking his dog, a woman wearing earbuds, tourists lined up at a hot dog cart. A black van moved slowly through them. Kichan blended into the crowd. That didn't make him invisible. It just made him harder to grab immediately. He didn't head for the main road. He went down into the subway entrance. The stairs smelled of trash, iron, and old water. Underfoot rose a smell that seemed to mix London's rain with New York's current.

Kichan stopped in front of a MetroCard machine. The person ahead of him took forever to refill a card. Without turning around, Kichan rested his fingertips on the metal corner of the machine. The card refused to come out. The person in front slapped the machine, and someone behind them let out a sigh. The station agent was looking at a phone inside the glass booth. Two black-uniformed men appeared at the top of the stairs. Kichan slipped aside from the machine. The card for the person ahead finally came out.

He turned while swearing and nearly ran into Kichan.

"Hey!"

"Sorry." Kichan used the gap to move toward the turnstiles. He didn't have a card. And it wasn't easy to pull out cash right away either. The Soyga sense stirred faintly from inside the turnstile. Fare and passage conditions were tied together there. Kichan grabbed the metal bar of the turnstile. A sharp pain stabbed through his head. He ground his teeth and twisted only a little. Beep. The light turned green. Kichan passed through. Behind him, the station agent looked up.

"Sir?" Kichan didn't turn around. There were a lot of people on the platform. Too many. The smell of wet coats, perfume, subway wind, and food all mixed together. Kichan stood beside a pillar. He set the equipment bag between his feet. The edge of the bag brushed somebody's shoe.

"Watch your bag." Kichan lowered his head.

"Sorry." The train came in. The wind arrived first. Kichan didn't board. People spilled out, and more pushed in. The two black-uniformed men came down the stairs. They scanned the platform. Kichan kept looking at the advertisement panel beside the train doors. It showed a smiling family. Another ad for a treatment drug. Just before the doors closed, Kichan stepped back instead of getting on. The two black-uniformed men boarded the train. The doors shut. The train departed.

Kichan looked toward the stairs leading to the opposite platform. He began walking slowly. A surveillance camera at the end of the platform turned toward him. Kichan didn't raise his head. Instead, he pinched one small piece of wire inside his bag. The camera bracket. The wiring. The old screw. He didn't turn the camera off. He only delayed its angle a little. The lens followed half a beat too slow. Half a beat was enough. Kichan got on the train across the platform. The doors closed.

Only then did some of the tension leave his hand. A mark from the wire remained on his palm.

There were no seats on the train. Kichan stood holding the pole by the door. He set the equipment bag beside his ankle. Water dripped onto the floor. The woman standing next to him saw it and stepped away. He nearly said sorry, then shut his mouth. If he spoke, people would look at him longer. His phone vibrated. An unknown number. He didn't answer this time. A text came in. `You cannot escape. ` Kichan looked at the screen. The train entered a tunnel, and the window went dark.

His face overlapped in the glass with the faces of the passengers behind him. A man in a suit. A woman in workout clothes. A young guy dozing. And Kichan in his wet coat. He typed a reply. `I'm not running away. I'm avoiding it because it's annoying. ` Send. The train shook. Kichan's shoulder bumped the person next to him.

"Sorry." This time, he said it first. The other person only nodded with earbuds still in. His phone vibrated again. This time it was his mother. Kichan looked at the screen, but he couldn't answer. The train was too loud. If he picked up, his voice would shake. The call ended. A text came in. `Are you asleep? ` Kichan rested his thumb on the screen. He couldn't type anything back. The train reached the next station. The doors opened. People got off and got on.

In the middle of that, one man standing behind a pillar on the platform never took his eyes off Kichan. He was wearing an ordinary coat and hat. Kichan didn't get off. The man didn't get on either. The doors closed. The train started moving. Kichan tightened his grip on the pole. The people following him didn't necessarily come in uniform.

Kichan got off two stops later. When he emerged from the station, the night air hit his face. Across the street was a small place that stayed open late. Through the window, people were standing inside eating something. Kichan went in. The worker looked at him and said,"Slice?" Kichan nodded.

"Cheese." The slice came out quickly. The paper plate was thin, and the cheese had already started to cool. Kichan stood in the corner. There were no chairs. Everybody ate standing. That was easier. If he sat down, getting back up would be hard. He folded the tip and took a bite. It wasn't hot, and it wasn't especially good. Still, this time he finished it. He sent his mother a reply. `Not asleep yet. Eating right now. ` He considered taking a picture, then stopped.

A picture wouldn't reassure anyone in this situation. Instead, he folded the paper plate and dropped it in the trash. At that moment, the storage device in his pocket gave a tiny vibration. Kichan went into the restroom in the back. The door was old, and the inside lock was half loose. He slid the bolt and stood beside the sink. The mirror reflected his wet hair and pale face. The metal plate inside his coat was still cold. Kichan connected the storage device to his phone. The screen flickered a few times.

A file list appeared. Most of it wouldn't open. Some entries showed only the names. `SOYGA_KEY_LAYER` `ACCESS_CONTRACT_TEST` `KOREA_CASE_OBSERVER` `ROME_TRANSFER_LOG` Kichan's hand stopped on the last file. He opened it. English sentences, dates, transfer logs, and code-like strings scrolled down the screen. He couldn't read all of it. But a few words stood out. `LOAGAETH` `CHANT PROTOCOL` `ROME` `ARCHIVE CONTACT` `BASILICA DISTRICT` Kichan enlarged the screen. The address wasn't complete.

But the city name was enough. Rome. Loagaeth. A language read like a song. Kichan set the phone down on the sink. The screen light spread through the droplets of water there. Outside, someone knocked on the restroom door.

"Occupied?" Kichan yanked the storage device free.

"One second." His voice cracked. He turned on the water. Cold water hit his palms. The faint burn from the coffee was still there on the back of his hand, and the wire mark in his palm was cut red into the skin. He washed for a long time, as if he could hide those marks under the running water. The person outside knocked again. Kichan shut the water off and pulled out a paper towel. It was thin enough to stick to his hand. He opened the door. The man outside took a step back when he saw Kichan's face.

"You good?" Kichan nodded.

"Yeah." The man didn't look convinced, but he didn't ask anything else. New York wasn't kind, but busy people didn't hold on to you for long. Kichan left the shop.

Every route back to the lodging made him think of black cars and cameras. Even after seeing the sign toward it, Kichan turned his feet another way. He walked two more blocks. He went into a convenience store and bought water and a cheap charging cable. The cashier raised an eyebrow at his soaked coat but said nothing. Another small slip of paper was left in his hand. Kichan almost crumpled it up, but in the end he put it into his pocket.

From the airport to here, every place he had passed through had stacked up into thin little sheets of paper. Things that could become part of somebody's file later. He stopped in front of the trash can outside the convenience store and took them out. Throw them away? Tear them up one by one? The phone in his pocket vibrated again. It was his mother's reply. `What did you eat? ` Kichan thought of the paper bag he had just thrown away. He typed back, `A slice of pizza.

` Then after a brief hesitation, he added, `It wasn't very good. ` Send. This time, it wasn't a lie. His mother's answer came back quickly. `Then I'll cook for you when you come back to Korea. ` Kichan looked at the screen, then folded the little papers again. He couldn't throw them away. Instead, he tucked them between the photocopy envelopes inside his coat.

When he reached the alley near his lodging, a black car was parked across from it. Kichan didn't slow down. There were people inside. Driver's seat. Passenger seat. One in the back. The windows were dark, but the positions of the metal and the movement of the people inside snagged at his fingertips. Somebody was holding a phone. Somebody had equipment resting on their knees. Kichan walked past the entrance to his lodging. He kept going to the next block. The black car started. Kichan didn't run.

Instead, he read the metal around him one by one: the bike rack by the curb, the construction fence, the handle of the trash can, the metal of the subway vent. His Rohonc sense read the metal, his Soyga sense read the conditions for opening and closing, and the old Voynich sense told him the direction in which his body was wearing down. His head hurt. But his feet kept moving. As he passed the construction fence, he touched the padlock with his fingertips. Click. The gate opened. Kichan didn't go inside.

He just left the gate open. The black car rolled closer. Two men got out. They saw the open construction gate. One of them went inside. The other watched the street. Kichan was already pressed into the shadow beside the vent. From inside the site came the sound of a metal plate falling. Clang. The man cursed. The one still on the street looked that way. In that brief moment, Kichan slipped out toward the opposite side of the alley. He only let out his breath after he had rounded the corner. His palms were sweating.

The open gate. The fallen metal sheet. The man's curse. All three had rolled in the same direction. Kichan wiped his palms on his pants and kept walking. At the end of the alley, a message from Mina Han came in. `If you're going to Rome, take the first flight tomorrow morning. If you stay in New York any longer, the airport will close. ` Kichan looked at the screen. There was no sender name. Rome. The archive contact. Loagaeth. Everything pointed there. But his hand didn't move to the reply window.

Kichan opened his mother's last text again. `Then I'll cook for you when you come back to Korea. ` A meal. The front door. The crosswalk his father used on the way home from work. The door his mother came through with groceries. And above that door, the small wire body he had left there. Kichan ground his teeth. The photograph pinned to the lab wall came back to him. Above the front door. An enlarged image of Dust.

If there had been somebody there to take that photo, then they had also seen his parents coming and going. Rome wasn't going anywhere. But home might not wait for him. He heard men running in the alley behind him. Kichan opened a flight app. In the search box, he typed `Incheon`. The price appeared.

"This is honestly ridiculous." He didn't pay right away. Payment was a trail too. He stepped out toward the main street. New York at night was too bright. People were still laughing, taxis kept passing, shops still hadn't closed, and the billboards were still selling somebody's illness, medicine, and insurance. Amid all that light, Kichan pressed his hand against the pocket of his wet coat. The metal plate from the Book of Soyga. The fragment of the Rohonc copy from London. The photocopy envelopes.

The crumpled little slips of paper. And his mother's promise of a meal, still unanswered. He stopped at the crosswalk. Even though the light was red, a few New Yorkers crossed first. Kichan didn't follow them. Only when the light turned green did he step into the crowd. He had to go home first. This time, he really had to wear a face that said nothing was wrong at all.