Time — prior to Freya's discharge
The conference room on the eighth floor had no windows and too much fluorescent light. A steel carafe of coffee sweated onto a stack of requisition forms, and the projector hummed as a map of Gyeonggi Province flickered on the wall—red pin over Suwon, green ring for the stabilized gate.
Director Kang Joon-sik stood at the head of the table, jacket off, sleeves rolled, a man who looked like he'd long ago traded sleep for control. To his right sat Section Chief Ryu from Field Ops, expression unreadable. Down the table were Captain Park Jae-sung of Rescue, medic liaison Choi Soo-min, and inspector Do-hwan with a folder he hadn't let go of since dawn. A few regional administrators dialed in by speaker, their voices a tinny chorus whenever they spoke.
"Let's get to it," Kang said, clicking to the next slide: INCIDENT—SUWON/BR-17, SUBJECT: SEO FREYA. "Report."
Captain Park opened his notebook. "Rescue Team One entered at 08:11. Primary dungeon environment: arboreal, root-dense substrate, elevated mana density. We located a secondary structure—double dungeon—white gate film. We did not enter. Subject was found near the secondary structure, on the stone of the primary, alive with catastrophic thoracic trauma. Evac at 09:01."
Kang's gaze shifted to the medic liaison. "Condition?"
Choi kept her tone clinical. "Through-and-through chest puncture. No burn, no toxin signs, edges unnaturally clean. Subject presented agonal respirations without palpable pulse. We sealed anterior and posterior, ventilated, gained EJ access, and transferred. She's now stable at Seoul General."
"Alive with that wound," one of the administrators on the speaker muttered. "Ridiculous."
Kang clicked his pen once. "Time discrepancy?"
Park didn't flinch. "Our logs show she was missing a few hours. Wound characteristics suggested… longer. I won't speculate."
Kang let the silence drag, then turned. "Inspector Do-hwan. Background."
Do-hwan straightened, jaw tight. "Freya Seo-Hallrún, twenty-three. Dual citizenship, Korea and Norway. Registered C-rank support—ecology specialization, unaffiliated. Known to assist mid-rank teams with field research. No disciplinary record. Her last contact with the Association prior to entry was my call from the registry—flagged unusual terrain. She acknowledged and entered alone."
The projector threw up Freya's ID photo. In it she looked a little older than her age and a little too serious. Do-hwan felt the same dull twist he always did when a file turned into a story with blood on it.
Kang noted the dates with a quick glance. "We're not in the business of policing freelance C-ranks out of B-rank gates," he said. "But a double dungeon changes the calculus. And a survivor like this—"
"Sir," Ryu cut in, voice mild, "we should also consider chatter about that E-rank case two, three weeks ago. Sung Jinwoo. Similar survivor profile, conflicting timelines, a party wiped."
Kang's lip thinned, but he nodded once. "Rumors. Still, we don't ignore patterns." He tapped the table. "Options: we escalate to the International Guild Federation and invite outside oversight, or we lock this down and treat Suwon BR-17 as a contained anomaly."
A deputy director on the speaker sputtered. "If we escalate, the media will sniff it out. We don't need panic about 'another Kamish' in the public square."
Another voice—a logistics chief from Busan—added, "And if we don't escalate, and this is a systemic shift? Our hands will be tied when it proliferates."
Kang let them argue for thirty seconds, then snapped the pen closed. "Enough. We lock it down. No public release. Subject remains on medical hold until our liaison physician clears her. Double dungeon is black-listed 'R-level only.' We station a quiet perimeter and block any civilian chatter. If this evolves, we escalate on our terms."
He turned back to the room. "Captain Park, write it up clean. Chief Ryu, you coordinate with Hospital. Inspector Do-hwan, you'll compile the incident brief for internal circulation. I want precise facts. No poetry, no speculation."
Do-hwan nodded. "Yes, Director."
Kang clicked to the last slide—ACTION ITEMS—and the meeting devolved into assignments. When it broke, chairs scraped and the hum of the building returned. Do-hwan gathered his folder and stepped into the hallway, heart pounding harder than the coffee warranted.
---
The incident reporting bay was a bullpen with partitions that stopped short of privacy. Do-hwan dropped into his chair, woke his terminal, and brought up the standard form. He typed in the cadence he'd learned from longer, uglier nights: date, time, coordinates, personnel, procedures.
Subject located alive… wound inconsistent with primary fauna… secondary structure observed…
He stopped. On his desk, a body cam still frame from Captain Park's team showed Freya on the stone—grey, blood-slick, the seal patch spread flat over her sternum like a second skin. He remembered the faint sound of her breathing on the audio when they'd rolled her. He remembered his own useless prayer that she'd keep doing it.
He resumed typing and softened edges as he went.
Subject stabilized at hospital. Recovery rate notable. He erased remarkable and wrote within acceptable variance. He removed the line where a medic had breathed, this shouldn't be possible, and replaced it with no further comment.
"Careful with that eraser," a voice murmured.
He looked up to find Ji-eun from Data Integrity leaning on his partition, eyebrows raised. "You'll rub a hole through the server."
He shut the window with a click. "Cross-checking terminology."
"Sure." She tapped the file with her pen. "You know Kang will want anything that smells like an anomaly spelled out in block letters."
Do-hwan thought of Freya's little sister's name—Hana—on the emergency contact line. He thought of what happened to outliers in the Association machine. "My job is to submit facts," he said. "Not feed a bonfire."
Ji-eun studied him, then shrugged. "Facts, then. I didn't see anything." She moved on.
He reopened the report and kept writing the way he wanted to remember it: clear, careful, human.
---
Down the hall in a smaller briefing room, Rescue Team One sat in a circle of mismatched chairs. Their gear bags were piled by the door; their faces showed too much dawn. Captain Park flipped his notebook shut and looked around the circle.
"Off the record," he said. "Anything you didn't put in the form that you think I need to hear."
Seung-woo, the tech, rubbed his eyes. "The white gate film fuzzed focus at under two meters. I couldn't get a clean close. I logged it. But—" he hesitated, "—there was a… hum. Low. Not mechanical. Like standing next to a transformer, but it vibrated in my chest."
Han Juri, crossbow propped against her chair, grimaced. "The roots moved. Not like trip hazards. Like… they were deciding where to be."
Minsuk, the shield, snorted. "Roots aren't sapient."
Juri shot him a look. "You weren't the one stepping on them."
Soo-min, the medic, sat forward. "I've sealed a hundred punctures. That one was… perfect. No ragged tissue, no tearing, minimal external bleeding by the time we found her. The blood under her didn't match what was on her. If you're asking for a hunch, Captain? She was injured somewhere else and then placed there."
Minho—the youngest, whose hands still shook sometimes after rescues—swallowed. "I thought I heard something. When we were at the perimeter of the hollow." He flushed as the others turned toward him. "A voice. Not a language. Just… a direction. Like a thought that wasn't mine. I put my boot down and it was gone."
Minsuk opened his mouth, but Park raised a hand. "You didn't write that."
"No, sir," Minho said quickly. "I didn't want it to sound—"
"—like we're telling ghost stories," Park finished. He looked at each of them, weighing the miles in their eyes. "Here's how we handle it. You report what you can swear to in a court. You keep the rest in your head where it can't be twisted. Understood?"
They nodded. Park stood. "You did good work. Go home. Sleep. If anyone outside our chain asks for details, send them to me."
As they filed out, Minho hung back, staring at the incident terminals down the hall. After a long minute, he slipped into a side cubicle, opened the archive, and created a private note under a flagged tag he'd never used before.
SUBJECT: BR-17 subjective impressions
FLAG: BALANCE ANOMALY (UNVERIFIED)
He typed fast, fingers trembling, saved it, and locked it behind a passphrase only he knew. Then he closed the window and followed the others.
---
Director Kang's office had a view of the river and a door that muffled guilt. He stood with his hands in his pockets as the secure line on his desk chirped. When the connection stabilized, a face appeared on the screen: Dr. Lee Hyun-tae in a crisp coat under too-white hospital lights.
"Doctor," Kang said.
"Director," Hyun-tae replied smoothly. "To what do I owe—"
"Spare me." Kang leaned on the desk with two fingers. "You're the hospital's mana physiology lead. I want full diagnostic data on Subject Seo within forty-eight hours."
Hyun-tae smiled without his eyes. "Dr. Min has the scans under personal encryption."
"And your point?" Kang's voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. "Half the equipment you're standing in front of has Association stamps on it. Remind Dr. Min of that if she forgets."
"Of course," Hyun-tae said, the smile deepening now that it felt like a win. "Between us, Director—what am I looking for?"
"Anything that makes her different," Kang said. "Anything that proves this isn't a one-off fluke."
Hyun-tae nodded. "Then you'll have it. With or without her cooperation."
The line went dead. Kang stared at his reflection in the black screen for a moment, then turned back to the river.
He didn't believe in flukes.
---
By late afternoon, the eighth floor had thinned to the faithful and the stubborn. Do-hwan was both. His incident brief was long without being flowery, careful without being evasive—he told himself that, at least. He added a final paragraph: Subject to remain under medical observation pending physician clearance. Recommendation: defer escalation until hospital submits formal findings.
He uploaded it to the internal queue and sat back, rubbing his eyes until colors danced.
"You'll go cross-eyed like that," Captain Park said from the doorway.
Do-hwan looked up. "Sir. I thought you'd gone home."
"Rescuers nap in cars," Park said. He pulled the spare chair forward and dropped into it with a grunt. "Director read us all the same sermon?"
"Lockdown. No leaks." Do-hwan hesitated. "Sir, do you think I buried too much?"
Park considered him for a long beat. "I think there are two kinds of lies," he said finally. "The kind you tell to save your own hide and the kind you tell to keep something human from getting sliced up. I'm too old to pretend I don't know the difference." He stood. "Watch your flanks, Inspector. Kang doesn't like surprises he isn't holding."
When he was gone, the room felt bigger and emptier.
Do-hwan took out his phone and scrolled to the picture of a gloved hand pressing an occlusive seal to a blood-slick sternum. He didn't know why he'd taken the still from the video. He didn't know why he kept looking at it, except that it reminded him the girl under all the forms had a face that wasn't numbers.
His desk phone rang. He answered on the second ring. "Inspector Do-hwan."
"Director Kang," came the voice. "Your report reads… careful. Fine. Keep eyes on the hospital. If Dr. Min moves to release the subject, you will be present. If there's anything unusual, you inform me before you inform your mother."
"Yes, Director."
The line clicked off.
Do-hwan set the receiver down. In the quiet that followed, he imagined a hospital room without fluorescent hum, a girl waking to the sound of machines and a sister's voice. He imagined Director Kang's version of help—a van at the curb and a door that locked from the outside.
He opened his brief again and added a single internal note to himself, unshared, attached to the case file under a marker no one else used.
If forced to choose between protocol and the life in front of you, remember which one can write its own apology.
He saved it and closed the file.
---
Evening bled into night. The bullpen emptied. Somewhere down the hall, a printer coughed out reams of nothing someone would sign tomorrow. The river threw back city lights in broken pieces.
Do-hwan gathered the papers he needed to carry and slid the rest into the drawer. He paused with his hand on Freya's slim folder—the one with too little in it and too much between the lines—and stood there a long time.
"I don't get paid enough for bullshit," he said under his breath, not sure who he was addressing—her, himself, the machine humming around him. "I wonder if any bars are open during this time."
He flicked off his lamp and left the eighth floor to its ghosts.