She could be down there. She could be locked down there.
He has concerns, he argues in his mind, concerns for a customer’s safety. Shouldn’t he act on those concerns? If, indeed, they are concerning? He frames this carefully in his mind, and he finds that the answer is yes. If he acts out of concern, he may well save the day. If he is wrong then who could begrudge an over-efficient employee?
And with that his mind is set. He will check on the room. He will need to enter the house to check on the room.
He heads around the building to where he knows the mains enter it as camera eyes follow him. Once there, he removes his rucksack, pulls some tools from it, and sets about removing the external electrical panel for the building.
Five minutes later all the blue lock panels in the building fade, locking solid.
But around the back of the building, one door does not. This is the one mandatory emergency-release fire door that does not deadlock in the case of a full power cut—instead the door buzzes open.
Joon-gi gathers his equipment back into his bag, slings it onto his shoulder, and heads off to find where that one door might be.
—
THE SUN IS BEGINNING TO set through the palms as Joon-gi slips inside the dim house, and the change in temperature causes him to shiver, his wet trousers clinging to his legs.
He moves briskly through the house, the way familiar to him, branded on his brain through four nights of obsessive thoughts and unsettling dreams.
He takes the stairs down two at a time. When he reaches the basement, he sees immediately that the door to the white room is shut, and his pace slows. He stops outside the room and places a palm to the coated metal door.
After a moment he pounds his palm on it. He presses an ear to it, squinting to hear through it. He pulls back.
“Hello,” he calls. “Is there anyone in there? Are you okay?”
He presses his ear again.
He shouts again.
His blood pressure rising with each new attempt.
He pulls back suddenly, as if hearing something; he can’t be sure. He stares at the door inert for a moment, his thoughts whirring. Then just as suddenly he is racing back up the stairs and back out of the building, his face set.
Outside in the burgeoning twilight he quickly scans the grounds, jogging to the edges of the grassed areas to find what he is looking for. Then between the bright verdant branches of a purple-flowering frangipani tree he spots the gray bulk of something.
He sprints to it. A power substation. A small gray bunker. This is what he suspected; this is what his mind has circled around in the dead of night these last few days.
The electrics in the white room, in the rooms he suspects continue beneath the house, do not route back to the building’s mains. They need a separate source. And here in the heady-scented shade behind a wall of frangipani trees, he has found it.
He tries to turn the handle on the bunker’s tiny door but it does not shift so he puts his weight against it and slams his shoulder hard, once, twice, three times. Then he pulls back, takes a half skip, and rams his entire body weight hard at the little wooden door. It splinters and the rest he makes short work of with repeated kicks until the dark concrete interior of the bunker is revealed.
He steps inside the bunker, waistband flashlight flicked on, and three minutes later, inside the house, the door panel light on the white room fades, its hydraulic door sliding open into its emergency position, the room beyond it now visible.
And Joon-gi feels a kind of triumph he has not felt since his youth.
He cannot possibly know that he will only remain conscious for another ten minutes.
CHAPTER 20
NINA
L ook in the mirror. I quickly raise my gaze. But I can’t look in the mirror. Its surface is too fogged to see a reflection in.
Hesitantly, afraid of what I will see when I clear it, I raise a hand to wipe away the fog but freeze mid-motion, suddenly certain something is right behind me. I whip around, but there is nothing there except the dripping shower.
Skittish, I turn back toward the mirror, inhale deeply, and drag a wet palm across its surface. My own terrified face is revealed as I wipe, then my shoulders, the wet room behind me, my towel-shrouded body, and finally the bathroom around me.
I am looking in the mirror, and all I see is myself.
