“How much Credit do I have to save up to get released?” Jae-hee asked.
Razor looked back at him, puzzled. “What’s your sentence?”
“Three hundred years, sir.”
“Damn, they really threw the book at you. What’d you do, sell out the country?” Razor clicked his tongue before giving him the exact figure. “Reducing your sentence costs one hundred Credits per day.”
“Oh… so then…”
“Three hundred years is… what, about 110,000 days? So you’d just need to save up eleven million Credits and you’d be free to go.”
The staggering number stunned Jae-hee for a moment, but then he reconsidered. He’d just earned 500,000 Credits from a single mission. Didn’t that mean he only had to run about twenty more missions like that one?
Huh? This might actually be doable.
Just then, Razor asked with a smile, “Thinking this might be doable, aren’t you?”
“Eh?! No, I mean… how’d you know?!”
“Everyone thinks that at first. But you’re wrong. It’ll be tough as hell. Both earning it and keeping it.”
With a meaningful chuckle, Razor led Jae-hee toward an elevator at the forward section of the ship.
“All right, that’s enough of the shopping arcade. Let’s go to the deck where we’ll be staying.”
At the ship’s bow stood a large, steel-reinforced elevator, guarded by heavily armed correctional officers.
Their gear was far more intimidating than that of the guards patrolling the shopping arcade. Clad in helmets and body armor and armed with shotguns and tactical batons, one of the officers shot Jae-hee a menacing glare.
Scary…
Under their watchful eyes, Razor and Jae-hee went through a security check before being allowed to board. Inside the spacious elevator, two more heavily armed guards joined them.
“Good afternoon!” Razor chirped, offering the guards a cheerful greeting. They seemed to know him, returning the pleasantry with a nod.
“Where to?” one of them asked.
“First Deck, Officer!”
“Got it.” The guard nodded and whispered “First Deck” into a microphone installed in the elevator.
K-thunk.
A moment later, the elevator began to move. It wasn’t operated by pressing buttons but was controlled remotely from a central room that managed all elevator traffic.
“All right, Jae-hee,” Razor began as the elevator slowly descended. “It’s going to take a minute to get down there, so I’ll give you a quick rundown of the ship’s layout. This ship is basically a skyscraper floating on water. It’s made up of thirty decks.”
“This ship is seriously huge, Razor bro.”
“The top ten decks are for us inmates, and the bottom twenty are for facilities and the correctional staff. Basically, we only need to worry about the top ten.”
A map displaying the entire cruise ship’s structure was posted on the wall. It was a massive cutaway diagram, and even it struggled to convey the ship’s sheer scale.
The 9th Deck common area they had just toured was a mere fraction of the whole vessel.
“The upper decks, where the prisoners are housed, are numbered. The Rooftop you were on earlier is Deck 10. The Shopping Arcade is Deck 9. Get it? Those two floors are common areas for all prisoners.”
Razor reached out and tapped the section of the map showing Decks 1 through 8. “This is the Residential Wing. You’ll be spending most of your time here.”
“So these are all cells, then.”
“The higher the deck, the better the rooms. When you first get here, you can only use the 1st Deck. But you can move up by raising your inmate grade—like I said—or by paying with Credit.”
The cabins, once intended for throngs of cruise ship tourists, had all been converted into prison cells.
Next, Razor ran his hand over the lower section of the ship on the map. It was a vast, deep area colored entirely in red, far larger than the ten decks allocated to the prisoners.
“And these lower twenty floors are the Command Decks. We don’t need to know anything about them. It’s where the ship’s facilities are and where the officers live. Absolutely off-limits to inmates.”
“Uh, what if you go in there by mistake?”
“Mistake or not, any inmate who enters an unauthorized area gets…” Razor made a small pistol with his hand. “Bang! No questions asked.”
“Yikes…” Jae-hee instinctively pulled his head in like a turtle.
“That’s what happens.”
Razor just chuckled.
“There are a few other trivial details, like how the ship is divided into three sections—Forward, Midship, and Aft—and how each section has its own working elevator. You’ll pick it all up soon enough once you settle in.”
Jae-hee nodded along, but then he let out a small “Huh?” and pointed to a specific floor on the map. “Razor bro, what’s this deck here?”
Between the prisoner decks from 1 to 10 and the staff-only Command Decks below, there was one floor Razor hadn’t mentioned. The area was so thoroughly covered in black tape that the map itself seemed to deny its existence: Deck 0.
Hearing Jae-hee’s innocent question, Razor paused. “Mm. Deck 0… don’t even go near it.”
“What?”
“Actually, more than that. Forget it even exists.”
The easygoing expression on Razor’s face had hardened. “Even in a hellhole like this, there’s a place they call Rock Bottom. That’s Deck 0. No one who’s gone in there has ever come out in one piece.”
“…”
“You’d have a better chance begging for your life and walking away from the Command Decks. But Deck 0… no matter what, you stay away. Got it?”
Was it his imagination, or did the guards in the elevator also look uneasy at the mention of Deck 0?
Jae-hee swallowed hard. Just what kind of place is Deck 0?
He quickly committed the layout to memory.
Okay, so: Deck 10, the Rooftop, is for deployments, returns, and has the Bank, Workshop, and Clinic.
Deck 9 is the Shopping Arcade, a common area, but watch my spending.
Decks 8 through 1 are the Residential Wing, where I’ll live.
Deck 0 is Rock Bottom—super dangerous, stay away. And everything below that, the negative-numbered floors, are the Command Decks for staff only. Go there, get shot on sight.
The elevator arrived at the 1st Deck.
Ding!
With a shriek of metal, the steel doors slowly opened, and Razor stepped out first.
A checkpoint with another iron gate stood before the elevator. A guard on duty glanced at Jae-hee and announced, “New inmate, ‘Boy’ Jae-hee Han. Awaiting final processing. Stand by.”
“Yes, sir~” Razor answered for him, then gestured to Jae-hee with his chin. “Pretty tired, huh? You’ll be shown to your room, get your standard-issue supplies, and then you’re done for the day. Hang in there.”
“Alright! Thank you, bro!”
“Don’t mention it. It’s what a deck leader does. Let’s get along, like friends!”
Razor flashed a good-natured smile, his youthful face radiating kindness. Jae-hee was genuinely moved.
I’m so lucky to have made a friend this nice on my very first day…
“Oh, right, Jae-hee. While we’re waiting, tell me about the mission. I’m dying to know. Two A-Ranks were deployed and both of them died, so how in the world did a rookie like you make it back alive?”
Jae-hee’s face lit up as he began to speak. “So, here’s what happened…”
A natural-born chatterbox, Jae-hee had been bursting to talk about the terrifying events of the mission. Once he started, the words flowed without end.
He recounted the events in Daejeon, spicing up the story with plenty of embellishments. Razor was an excellent audience, chiming in at all the right moments with affirmations and gasps of amazement.
When Jae-hee finished the story of the final battle against Miss Hellth, Razor let out a mirthless laugh. “Huh. So that’s how Miss Hellth died…”
“Yeah! She turned into this totally horrifying monster, with tentacles writhing all over her body! And her scream was like, Kraaaah!”
“Don’t even want to imagine it. Whew.”
“But I summoned my courage and charged that terrifying Miss Hellth like a storm! Smashed her right in the inner thigh!”
Jae-hee once again launched into a wildly exaggerated account of his own heroics.
He’d sent Miss Hellth flying into the air, tossed Ghost a weapon, and Ghost had finished the core off with a slash! Mission complete!
Razor covered his mouth and snickered. “You tell a great story. The guys on our deck are gonna love you.”
“Oh, heh heh. You think so?”
“Yeah. I’ve got a feeling you’re going to fit right in here.”
Just then, a guard who had apparently received a message nodded and stepped aside. “Processing complete. You may enter.”
“Thank you~!”
K-thunk.
The iron gate of the checkpoint opened, finally revealing the corridor of the 1st Deck’s residential wing.
A little nervous and a little expectant, Jae-hee took a step forward into the prison that would be his new home.
And then—
“Welcome back, Boss!”
“Welcome back!”
A thunderous roar echoed down the hall.
Dozens of burly inmates, who had been waiting in formation in front of the checkpoint, immediately bowed low the moment the gate opened.
Jae-hee stood frozen with his jaw hanging open. Razor walked right past him and stood casually before the bowing men, chuckling.
“I told you,” he said, unfazed by the display of deference. “I’m the Deck Leader for the 1st Deck.”
“Uh, so when you say deck leader, you mean…”
“It means I took it.”
Had Jae-hee only imagined Razor’s friendly smile?
For some reason, it felt colder than before.
“This whole deck. Me and my crew.”
In Paradise Lost, Deck 1 was where all newcomers serving less than three years were gathered. Yet someone had managed to conquer this deck in just six months after arriving.
That someone was none other than Razor.
“…”
Jae-hee swallowed hard. The man he’d casually befriended was a far bigger deal than he’d realized—and now, a faint, ominous aura clung to him.
Just then, one of Razor’s men spoke.
“Ehh, Boss,” he asked, looking around in confusion. “Where’s the Boss Lady? Wasn’t she supposed to return today? We thought you went to meet her.”
“…”
“Why’d you come back with this stranger instead?”
“Ahh…”
Razor answered his subordinate with a serene smile. “She’s dead. My girlfriend.”
“…”
“Apparently, the idiot got bit by a zombie, then got chosen by a Gate. Turned into some hideous monster with writhing tentacles, I hear.”
“…”
“In the end, she was taken down by the team on her mission. Torn to shreds, apparently. What was it again? They sent her flying into the air, then hacked her to pieces with a knife…?”
Jae-hee felt cold sweat pour down his back.
Wait a minute. No way.
Could Razor’s girlfriend be…?
“And the one who so brutally finished off my beloved girlfriend, Miss Hellth…”
Razor slowly turned his head to look at Jae-hee. His eyes narrowed to slits, dark pupils glinting with murderous intent.
“…is this motherfucker right here.”