Rebel Seoul

by Axie Oh

  I’m running across the Skybridge when there’s an explosion in the Tower. I’m thrown to the floor. Beneath me, I feel the reverberations of metal bending as the Skybridge gives an ominous groan. A screaming wind whips through the corridor in a howl. Above me, small fractures appear in the glass ceiling. There’s another explosion, this one from up ahead. A wall of smoke plummets down the walkway, and instinctively I raise my arm. The storm sweeps around me, particles of the dust sticking to the sweat on my skin.

  What’s going on? The attack was planned for 0400 hours. I couldn’t have been in that room that long. Outside the glass walls of the bridge, the sky is dark. It must be some time around midnight. I’d only met Oh Kangto briefly, but he didn’t strike me as someone who’d go back on his word. If he says he’ll destroy the Tower at 0400 hours, then that’s when he’ll do it. But if he’s not triggering explosions in the Tower, then who is?

  I push myself up and sprint into the smoke.

  The loud thump of my feet gives way to a resounding echo as I enter the hangar. The smoke from the explosion is thick, and I can’t see beyond my hands. I listen for the sounds of voices, gunfire, to suggest the Tower’s under attack, but there’s only silence. The floor transitions into a metal industrial walkway. I’ve been in the hangar once before and remember the design, an open space with upper floor industrial walkways level with the chests of GMs.

  I take a step and catch myself on a railing, then shimmy to the right until my foot hits the edge of the escalator, powered off. I creep down the steps, listening ahead of me. Halfway down, I leave the smoke behind. Bodies are strewn about the hangar, dead or dying from gunshot wounds. I duck low, an open target on the escalator, but I don’t see any signs of the enemy.

  Then again, who is the enemy?

  At the back of the hangar, the Extension lies on a flatbed. In Ama’s vision, Tera had been cuffed on the floor of the back room where the machinist had been working with her on sims the first week I met her. Keeping low, I hurry the rest of the way down the escalator. I can hear the groans of the dying soldiers around me — except, they’re not soldiers. They’re engineers and machinists. They’re civilians. I don’t want to believe this of Oh Kangto.

  I run across the floor of the hangar. Outside the back room, though, a figure slumps against the door. I recognize the stooped shoulders and thick glasses.

  “Dr. Koga!” I crouch beside him. He has a bullet wound in his upper chest. I reach out for his wrist. Relief sweeps through me at the hint of a pulse. I need to find a medical kit, or he’ll bleed to death.

  He grabs my arm. “Lee Jaewon.”

  I tug gently. “Dr. Koga. Let me get you some help.”

  He shakes his head. His glasses are foggy with tears. “No.” His breaths are shallow. “There’s no time.”

  “What happened here?”

  “We were under attack.”

  “By who?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t see.” He doesn’t speak for a while, his breathing labored, but then he gathers his strength. “I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t think of Tera and Ama as my daughters.” He coughs, a low, wracking sound. “I’m too old to have daughters that young.”

  “You’re not too old, Dr. K.”

  “I think — I think grandfathers have a special love for their granddaughters, don’t you?”

  I lower my head, unable to speak. He reaches for my hand and places a small metal object at the center of my palm, closing my fingers over it.

  “The key to Tera’s cuffs,” he says. “I should have given it to her a long time ago. Will you give it to her for me?”

  I nod and get to my feet. Koga closes his eyes. He’s not gone yet, but . . .

  “Go,” he says.

  And so I go.

  The doors to the back room are slightly open, and I slip through. Immediately I see Tera, spotlighted at the end of the room, hands cuffed. She still wears the flight suit from earlier. None of this makes any sense. Why is she sitting there alone? My instinct tells me something’s wrong. I pause on the threshold, still crouching.

  Tera’s eyes widen as she sees me. “No, Jaewon,” she says, panicked. “What are you doing? You can’t be here. You have to leave. It’s a trap.”

  The lights in the room power on. I flinch and the door snaps shut behind me.

  I’m met with a circle of guns held by a group of men and women, all dressed in black with masks concealing their noses and mouths. I stand slowly, skimming faces, recognizing none.

  The circle breaks apart, and a man steps forward, pulling his mask down with a gloved hand.

  “Welcome, Lee Jaewon,” Park Taesung says. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  I take a breath before responding. “Strange. I hadn’t been expecting you.”

  Although I should have been. The bodies. Park Taesung doesn’t care about hurting civilians to get what he wants.

  Park Taesung takes a cigarette from his pocket and lights it.

  A woman behind me snatches the key from my hand. “I’ll take that.” She walks toward Tera.

  If they think thirty thugs with guns will stop Tera, they’re in for a surprise.

  Park Taesung watches me with a cold expression. He drops his cigarette, crushing it beneath his steel-tipped shoes.

  “Why are you here?” I ask. “What do you want?” Is he here for Tera? Did he realize I never had any intention of bringing her to him?

  “What do you think I want?”

  I grasp for the obvious reasons. “Power. Money. Respect.”

  He shakes his head. “I have all those things.”

  “Then what?”

  The smile drops from Park Taesung’s lips, and for once, he looks deadly serious. “I want revenge. The Director and his little lapdog of a general are already amassing their troops. Soon they’ll be here to try to take back the Tower.”

  “You won’t win. NSK soldiers are trained in GM combat. Your thugs aren’t.”

  “Yes, but I have the Extension, and I have Tera.”

  I frown. “She won’t fight for you.”

  Park Taesung watches me, a curious expression on his face. “I know,” he says simply.

  He raises his voice to address the Red Moon members. “It’s about to begin. Pick a GM and wait for my signal.” They bow, disappearing silently through the door, leaving only two behind with their guns still trained on me.

  What is Park Taesung’s goal? He said he wanted to destroy the Neo Council and the UKL. But his actions suggest this is a coup d’état. Was this always his goal? Not to “end war” like some enlightened leader, but to instate himself in the seat of power?

  Park Taesung closes his eyes. “It’s almost time,” he says. “Before I go, there’s something I’d like to share with you. A story, if you will.”

  I shake my head, frustrated. “General Tsuko’s main target will be this hangar. He’ll want to take out the weapons before you can use them. If any of us hope to survive, we need to get out of here. Now.” I calculate the time elapsed since the first bomb. We’ve got minutes before Tsuko arrives with a GM aerial battalion.

  Park Taesung ignores me, his mind rooted in the past.

  “The story begins with two friends. They grew up together on the streets of Old Seoul. They were nothing alike. While one believed he could take what he wanted with force, the other believed in earning the right to the things he wanted. One believed in forgiveness, the other in revenge. Yet that didn’t stop them from knowing beyond a doubt that they’d do anything for each other. They treasured each other, because in a world as cruel as theirs, finding a true friend to trust was the only kindness afforded them.

  “When the time came for them to serve their military quotas, they left for the war front. It was in their platoon where they met a man unlike any other they’d met before. He had thoughts they never thought to thi
nk. He had dreams they’d never hope to have. He was charismatic, brilliant. He was a revolutionary. He believed in a unified Korea. He believed in a nation. One boy got caught up in the fervor of that dream. The other didn’t.

  “Four years later, when they returned from the war, they came back to find that a girl in their neighborhood, a girl who had followed them around when they were boys, had grown up. Kim Sunhee was a very beautiful girl.” Park Taesung stops speaking, as if lost in his memories.

  “To this day, I still think she’s the most beautiful girl in the world. Even though one boy could only offer her heartbreak, she chose him anyway. It’s a simple story, really. The girl chose one boy. That one boy chose revolution. And the other boy was left with nothing.”

  I hold his gaze. “You want revenge on my mother for choosing my father. You want revenge on my father for choosing the revolution.”

  “No,” Park Taesung says. “I want revenge on a world that destroys more than it gives. I want revenge on a world that allows these choices to be made. I want this city, this nation, to burn and suffer and feel what it is to give up on its people.”

  “It’s not the world’s fault. It’s the fault of the people. If they can destroy it, then they can fix it.”

  A strange look passes over Park Taesung’s face, a look of loss and confusion. “You sound just like your father.”

  “Jaewon-ah?” I turn to see that Tera now stands uncuffed. A rush of relief sweeps through me. Together we can get out of here. But she doesn’t move. What is she waiting for?

  There’s a click. Park Taesung holds a gun to my head. “I’m sorry,” he says, “but this story doesn’t have a happy ending.”

  “Jaewon-ah!” Tera screams.

  “Don’t move. I will shoot him.”

  Tera’s fast, but there’s a chance she won’t get to me before he or the other two Red Moon members get a shot out.

  And she won’t risk my life. Park Taesung knows this. He’s using our feelings for each other against us, as he always has. He walks around me and kicks the back of my legs. I fall to my knees, then look up into his face. I realize that I’m more familiar with his face than I am with my father’s. The scar. The cold eyes. The small frown on his face that sometimes makes me think maybe, maybe he’ll change his mind, that although this is the path he’s chosen, that he’ll step off or turn back. It’s never too late.

  There’s a sharp pain in my shoulder from behind. An empty tranquilizer clatters to the floor.

  “Lead Tera to the Extension,” Park Taesung says to the other Red Moon members in the room. “She won’t resist.”

  My blurred vision only catches the shadow of Tera as she leaves the room.

  “That’s the trouble when you love someone,” Park Taesung says. “It gives even someone with inhuman powers the most human of weaknesses.”

  We all have this weakness, I want to say. Except for you.

  “Sleep, Jaewon-ah,” Park Taesung says, his words sounding muffled. “This world isn’t safe for kind-hearted people like you and your father.”

  My hands are on the floor, my cheek pressed against the stone. I’m falling into the deep abyss of oblivion. My last thoughts are of Tera and how if love is a weakness, then how it is that I — even with the world darkening around me — have strength in the hope that Tera and I will find a way back to each other?

  Everything goes black.

  37

  C’est La Vie

  I’m jolted awake, thrown from a bed onto an ice-cold floor. My stomach drops, and I feel the familiar pull of gravity as the floor and ceiling dip and rise. I’m on an airship. I scan the room, taking in the details. Beside the bed is a low metal table with one chair. I get to my feet, and the door to the room slides open.

  “You’re awake.”

  For a moment I’m speechless. The newcomer wears a flight suit, her pink-tinged hair pulled back in a fierce ponytail.

  “Sela? What are you — ?” A sinking suspicion grips me. “How should I feel right now, gratified or betrayed?”

  Sela raises an eyebrow. “I’m not in Red Moon, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  “Then this is an NSK ship.” What the hell did I sleep through? Has Park Taesung’s coup ended? Did Tsuko arrive to take back the Tower?

  Where is Tera?

  I start to panic, my heart hammering in my chest.

  “Lee Jaewon, focus,” Sela says. “Remember when you visited me in the hospital. I told you I wanted to ask you something.”

  I think back to that morning, only yesterday. I’m reminded of why Sela had been in the hospital in the first place. She’d been shot. Looking at her now, she stands with one hip cocked, no evidence of a gunshot wound.

  “What did you think I was going to ask you?”

  “I thought you were going to ask me if I liked you.” It sounds ridiculous now, but it’s what I thought at the time. My mind had been on Alex and Ama, and on how Ama’s favorite flowers were roses.

  “Do you like me?” Sela asks the question without emotion, her expression giving away nothing.

  I answer with the truth. “I don’t know you.”

  The starry-eyed singer is gone, replaced by an intelligent, enigmatic girl. Sela’s lips quirk in a small, barely there smile. “Let me tell you who I am. My name is Gu Saera. Eighteen years ago I was born in the Neo State of Japan, to parents of Korean descent. My parents were nationalists who fled the NSK when accused of having UKL sympathies. When I was eight, they were assassinated in our home. I was spared only because the assassins didn’t know I was there. My mother told me to be quiet, and so I was. I didn’t make a sound. It’s ironic, considering who I am now, the NSK’s representative vocalist. Most everyone in Asia has heard my voice.”

  “C’est La Vie’s a cover,” I say, not hiding my amazement. The most famous band in the Neo State is a cover.

  “Yes.”

  I shake my head, replaying all our conversations in my head, everything I know about her. “You’re one hell of an actress.”

  “I know. I’ve won awards for it.” She smiles, a confident, knowing smile.

  The ship tilts, and we brace ourselves, reaching out to hold the walls. “I was wrong, wasn’t I? About the question you were going to ask me back in the hospital?”

  “I was going to ask you to join the UKL,” she says. Before I can respond, she shakes her head. “I wasn’t going to ask you because I think you are a great soldier or because I think you’d add anything to the revolution.” She pauses. “No offense.”

  I grimace. “None taken.”

  “I was going to ask you because I thought it was what Oh Kangto would have wanted. Oh Kangto is like a father to me. He adopted me after I was abandoned by the neighbors who found me crying beside the bodies of my parents. When I had nothing, he gave me everything. He gave me my brothers, my family. He’s given me an unconditional love that is — that is . . .” She searches for a word. “Unrepayable. He’s given me the means to fight for what I believe in. He has never asked anything of me in return.” She takes a breath. “Not until today. Today he asked me if I would save the son of a friend he had loved.”

  To think, one man had loved my father enough to hurt me, and another had loved him enough to save me.

  I open my mouth — to say something, to thank Sela — but suddenly the ship takes a sharp turn. We both stumble, missing the walls and falling to the floor.

  Sela’s the first to jump to her feet. “What is he doing?” she asks cryptically before rushing from the doorway. I’m quick to follow.

  She runs down a short hall, passing through a set of double doors that slide open at her approach to reveal the ship’s bridge. My stare passes over the crew, situated around the bridge in various concentrated roles, and focuses on the clear shield of glass separating the bridge and the sky. Now I understand the reason behind the erratic mo
vements of the ship.

  We’re in the middle of a battle raging over Neo Seoul.

  The ship’s pilot, C’est La Vie’s friggin’ drummer, expertly directs the ship through a melee of battling GMs, fighter planes, and bombers. Her two guitarists act as gunners for the ship, shooting down any GM or aircraft that gets too close.

  “Nunim.” A tall boy with a shock of dyed white hair swivels in his chair to face Sela. “We just received a message from the commander. They’ve begun the countdown for the Ko Cannon.” Which means it’s nearly 0400. Oh Kangto’s final threat is imminent.

  I look up past the battle raging beneath the Dome to the higher sky above it. A massive battleship looms overhead, an island in the sky. The triangle of light that signifies the Ko Cannon glows a bright red, aimed directly at the Tower. When the cannon is fully charged, it’ll let out a powerful beam of energy, a concentrated nuclear explosion that’ll break through the Dome and destroy the Tower and everything in a three-and-a-half-kilometer radius. The outcome is undeniable, and yet the battle still rages on.

  C’est La Vie’s drummer swerves the ship out of the way of a falling GM, its metal chest incinerated through.

  “That’s going to fall on the city,” I say. My gaze flits across the battlefield, from burning aircraft to burning aircraft, all crashing-falling toward the city.

  The boy with the white hair pulls up a live video feed of Neo Seoul. It’s lit with the blue light of explosions.

  There’s no sound, but I don’t need to hear the screaming to know what it sounds like. The bridges from Neo Seoul into Old Seoul are packed with civilians attempting to flee, but it’s after midnight, and the Dome has solidified. They surge against the barrier that traps them inside. It’s chaos, anarchy. In order to prevent enemy aircraft from entering the city, the government must have refused to lower the barrier for fleeing civilians.

  “This is what Park Taesung wanted. Not the Tower, but total destruction of the city.”

  Sela nods, her expression grim.

  “Tsuko should have realized Park Taesung’s intent. Why didn’t he recall his troops?”