Red Dot - 78

“Junseong! Hanseo!”

“Are, are you both okay?!”

“Oppas!”

Changmin, Gyeong-oh, and Jian each pressed against the wall, knocking on the wall surface.

Meanwhile, Changmin carefully scanned the surface of the wall that had just turned around. He was looking for a handle or something similar, but all he found was a thin rectangular groove. There was no button or any other interface, so he didn’t examine it closely.

As Changmin pushed a part of the wall with force, a voice came from beyond the wall.

“We’re okay.”

Judging by the slightly trembling voice, it seemed certain that there was a somewhat spacious area beyond the wall.

Following Junseong’s voice, Changmin, firmly attached to the part where Junseong might be, spoke.

“The door doesn’t open from this side. Can you see if there’s a mechanism to open it on your side?”

“I don’t see anything specific. It won’t open even with force. But I see a path leading elsewhere; I’ll check this way.”

“Are you sure? Isn’t that a place you haven’t seen even in your dreams?”

When Changmin asked, Hanseo’s voice was faintly heard. It sounded like he was talking to Junseong rather than trying to convey something to the group in the corridor. The thickness of the wall made it difficult for even Changmin, who was close by, to understand Hanseo’s words clearly.

Listening briefly to Hanseo’s words, Junseong responded to Changmin’s question.

“Well, yeah, I see an emergency exit sign in that direction, so we should be able to get out.”

“Really?”

Changmin and the others breathed a sigh of relief. If there was an emergency exit sign, there must be a way out, so it seemed certain that they could meet outside the blood center.

Still, due to the sudden separation, worries prevailed.

“Do you have a walkie-talkie? If anything happens or the path seems strange, radio us. We’ll still be connected even if we go outside.”

Changmin took out one of the two walkie-talkies from his pocket, like a flashlight, which he had been carrying since early on, thanks to Junseong’s preparations with the fake nurse Park Hyeon-je and the 5th-floor organization members at the Inhan Hospital. They had been useful before, like when rescuing Gyeong-oh.

One of the walkie-talkies was carried by Changmin for emergencies, while luckily, the other was in Junseong’s backpack carried by Hanseo. So even if the group was split, there was not a complete lack of communication.

“Got it. Don’t worry too much, and let’s meet outside.”

“Yeah. Be careful.”

Reluctantly, Changmin, accompanied by the other two, led the way down the corridor. Now that things had turned out this way, it seemed better to quickly go outside and see if they could find where the emergency exit they would come out of was connected. It would also be good to remove any zombies nearby for safety.

Looking back at the wall from which Junseong’s worried voice had come, Changmin, as well as Gyeong-oh and Jian, filled with worry like him, comforted each other and left the spot.

After the conversation with Changmin’s group in the corridor ended and their footsteps disappeared, Junseong finally looked up at Hanseo, whom he had been holding.

“How long are you going to hold me?”

Hanseo stroked Junseong’s head and buried his face in his neck.

“I’m trying to purify the unpleasant smell with your scent.”

“Purify, huh?”

Frowning, Junseong pushed Hanseo away, but he couldn’t help but sympathize with his words.

“But… it’s still… quite strong.”

It was different from the usual smell of blood he smelled outside.

Various medicinal scents, including a strong disinfectant.

It felt like the scent commonly found in hospitals was concentrated several times over. It was enough to make his nose tingle.

Junseong, separated from Hanseo, illuminated the space with the flashlight he was holding. At the end of the dark path, which extended straight like the outside corridor, a green light reminiscent of an emergency exit was briefly visible.

That light wasn’t the “emergency exit” sign mentioned to reassure Changmin’s group but resembled the facial recognition device seen when entering the lab. Furthermore, the appearance of the device connected to a double-door steel gate also bore a striking resemblance.

In that moment, Junseong felt a chill run down his spine.

The smell in this corridor was much stronger than the one in the previous space where various experiments were conducted, even more so than in the maze-like underground area. It was an overpowering odor, so strong that it seemed to penetrate even through the sealed metal gate. Junseong couldn’t begin to imagine how many medications were present beyond.

“It’s an electric field fingerprint recognition system.”

Hanseo recalled the wall that had served as a barrier and door to allow him and Junseong to come here. He walked toward the iron gate, leaving Junseong shining the flashlight towards it.

“After passing through the barricade that served as the wall, then…”

Junseong, who had quickly followed behind Hanseo, stopped in front of the iron gate, staring at the green light of the recognition device Hanseo was looking at. It looked identical to what they had seen outside the lab.

Hanseo opened his mouth, facing the lens attached to the recognition device.

“You can open the door to the ‘real lab’ through iris recognition.”

The green light emanating from the recognition device momentarily turned blue.

Immediately afterward, the firmly closed iron gate silently began to open to the sides.

As the door began to open, Junseong instinctively raised his hand to cover his mouth and nose.

An enormous amount of medication odor, so strong that it couldn’t be adequately described, rushed in. Just the brief whiff of that smell made his head ache, causing Junseong to take a step back involuntarily.

As the door fully opened, Hanseo turned to look at Junseong with a chilling light in his eyes. It didn’t seem like he was looking at Junseong coldly, but rather as if all of his few remaining emotions were freezing over like being caught in a snowstorm.

“It’s not that the lab outside is ‘fake,’ but it’s not ‘real’ either.”

“What do you mean?”

Junseong remembered the lab outside as he asked.

The facial recognition devices in the lab could only be penetrated by a very limited number of researchers. Among the survivors at the time when the zombie virus first spread, Junseong knew that only the director of the blood center could do it. Maybe Nam Gi-hyeok knew that too, which was why he took the director’s head with him.

In that lab, there were openly stored virus stabilizer samples and research data.

But if this lab wasn’t ‘real’?

Hanseo pointed to the dark space filled with the strong medicinal smell.

“The experiments themselves were all conducted in the lab outside, so we can’t call that place ‘fake.’ However, the ‘real’ data is stored here.”

Junseong, surprised, shone the flashlight towards the dark space Hanseo indicated.

He could see the long corridor and several lab doors connected to it on both sides. The structure was exactly the same as the “outside lab” they had entered through the facial recognition devices.

That alone was astonishing, but what was more important was elsewhere.

Hanseo was familiar with the layout of this place. He had even managed to bypass two facial recognition devices himself. It would have been impossible unless he was an “associate.”

Approaching Junseong, who looked bewildered, Hanseo stroked his head.

“As long as there’s something ‘real,’ the ‘dead’ shouldn’t be able to pass through here.”

As Hanseo’s hand, which had been petting Junseong’s head, moved down to his neck, memories of the director’s severed head flashed through Junseong’s mind, causing him to flinch and hunch his shoulders.

“The ‘dead’? What do you mean?”

Even if it’s said that facial recognition devices recognize the faces of the dead, they only work properly if the faces are not decomposed or severely damaged.

However, fingerprint recognition systems using an electric field response method, like those embedded in smartphones, do not recognize the fingerprints of the dead. They rely on the tiny electric field response flowing through the fingers of living individuals to recognize fingerprints, so they are ineffective on “biometrics” that are not alive.

Furthermore, the iris recognition device uses infrared to contract the pupils and recognizes the reflected iris. Naturally, the dead cannot contract their pupils, and even if the iris is extracted from a living person, the recognition device cannot be penetrated with a severed optic nerve.

Both devices can only be opened by a “living person.”

Despite the existence of a real lab, why create another lab to deceive and install such complicated recognition devices in this secret passage?

Was it to prevent someone who had killed the director or researchers from using them to bypass the recognition devices?

However, even if they were conducting illegal research in secret, was it necessary to set up such a complex setting, considering that in law-abiding South Korea, researchers might be killed and utilized?

“Probably to prepare for people who might become zombies.”

To create a safe lab that even people turned into zombies, or in other words, the dead, couldn’t penetrate.

And perhaps, to perfectly safeguard the potential vaccine and research data.

Watching Junseong organize his thoughts, Hanseo took the flashlight from his hand. Junseong, now without the flashlight, found himself being pulled inside by Hanseo, who had grabbed his hand unnoticed.

Without a word, Hanseo continued walking, and it was then that Junseong finally asked what he should have asked before.

“How did you know all of this?”

Hanseo continued to walk without answering. Feeling frustrated, Junseong pulled his hand away from Hanseo’s grip and stopped. As if it were obvious, Hanseo also stopped and turned to look at him.

Hanseo’s face looked more emotionless than ever.

But Junseong, who had been watching Hanseo all along, knew that this seemingly emotionless expression was when he actually felt the most “emotions.”

“Dohanseo.”

Hanseo’s eyes flickered in the light of the flashlight, looking in various directions.

“Could it be… you were also an experimental subject here?”

At Junseong’s trembling question, one corner of Hanseo’s mouth lifted slightly, almost as if recalling something from the past.