Episode 07. Same Pursuit Net
# Episode 07. Same Pursuit Net
The crack behind the preservation room was barely wide enough for one person to pass through.
Sion twisted in first, and a broken shard of metal scraped along the side of his coat. Seorin followed immediately behind, and Sern moved half-crouched, scanning the crack's inner structure as he went. Ater checked behind him until the very last moment before entering.
Behind them, another sound struck metal.
Closer than the one before.
The front corridor was already compromised.
Past the narrow gap, a low ventilation pipe corridor continued.
Built long ago for maintenance, the ceiling was far too low, and the floor was slick with oil and dust caked together. Every breath pressed the smell of metal, rust, and old insulation deep into the lungs.
Seorin cursed low.
"Nice. Even the escape route is rotten."
"Alive is enough."
Sion answered, looking ahead.
Sern spoke from just behind.
"Be glad it is alive. On official blueprints, this section is already sealed."
"And why are you the only one who knows that."
Sion tossed the words out, and Sern answered without evening his breath.
"People outside the houses found the roads that trap your feet long before us. We only learned them after."
It was brief, but Seorin immediately read the old chill embedded in it. *Learned* — a strangely heavy word. The kind of road that was survival for some and management for others. And this pipe and maintenance bridge the four of them now crawled through was itself closer to the remains of an old escape line — where people and goods outside the records had quietly slipped away since long before.
Sion, crawling ahead, suddenly raised his hand.
Everyone stopped at once.
A faint metallic vibration hummed from above the pipe.
Footsteps — someone running through the corridor directly above. Not one. Three, four — different weights. And a very brief cut of electronic noise. Similar to the sound Empire-standard comm-jamming equipment made at close range.
Ater said low.
"They have begun closing above."
Seorin followed immediately.
"Then below gets faster."
As if answering her words, somewhere below the pipe, an old panel cover shook violently.
Not a formal suppression team — port-floor people climbing the route from underneath.
Sern murmured short.
"Both sides."
Sion grimaced.
"Great. Really the same pursuit net."
This time, no one disagreed.
The corridor ahead split in two.
One path was narrower but dropped straight below the outer maintenance bridge; the other was slightly wider but had two open inspection hatches along the way. The faster exit was the latter — but with someone sweeping from above and below simultaneously, the path with hatches was more dangerous.
Sern spoke first.
"Left is slower but does not close."
"Right?" Seorin asked.
"Faster, but exposed twice in between."
Sion did not hesitate.
"Left."
Ater spoke immediately.
"A slow path invites pursuit from behind."
Sion said over his shoulder, half-mocking.
"A fast path — get spotted and it is over."
"A slow path can also end."
"I still pick it."
The moment the two were about to clash again, Seorin cut in low.
"Both of you, shut it.
Sion's right. Right now, not being seen comes before being fast."
Sern agreed at once.
"Agreed. The Empire is closing above; below, those who heard the rumor are climbing. If we are exposed, the response types differ — which makes it worse for us."
Ater was silent briefly, then said, short.
"…Left."
Only then did Sion move his body again.
The pipe grew narrower still.
Now it was no longer stooping — nearly crawling. Through the metal grate below, the faint lights of the port's outer edge were visible, and beneath that, an endless tangle of maintenance bridges and dead hull shadows layered over one another.
Seorin glanced back and whispered.
"The ones following those two — their sounds are separating."
"How many?"
"Three above, two below. But the two below feel like hired legs. Light on their feet."
Sion clicked his tongue softly.
"Brokers attached."
"Expected."
Sern added.
"It was anticipated from the moment the archivist rumor spread inside the port."
Sion heard that and smirked.
"If you anticipated it, you should've said so earlier."
Sern's answer was cold and short.
"You are not the type to share first either."
The instant those words ended, a panel cover was ripped clean off somewhere behind the pipe. Someone had found the route properly.
"Run."
This time Ater spoke first.
Sion looked back. It was slightly funny hearing that word come first from the composed one's mouth, but strangely, it was not wrong.
Where the narrow pipe ended, a single vertical ladder dropped to the maintenance bridge below.
The problem was that the space below the ladder was not entirely clear. Beneath the outer maintenance bridge, temporary power lines and waste discharge pipes tangled in a complex web — one wrong step and the sound would be loud, the ankle gone.
Sion scanned below and spoke immediately.
"I go first."
Ater answered reflexively.
"Reckless."
"I read paths faster."
"You cannot be cert—"
Seorin cut in again.
"No time for certainty."
And gave Sion's back a short push.
"Go, nose."
Sion swallowed one curse and descended the ladder.
His toes found the first rung, his hands gripped the rusted side bar, his body slid downward. One rung in the middle was completely corroded and empty, but he stepped onto the side pipe as if he'd already known — shifting his weight across.
After touching down first, Sion looked up.
"Clear."
Seorin came down second.
The moment she saw the corroded rung, she took the same pipe-edge Sion had used without hesitation. Once down, she stepped one space aside and called up.
"Next."
Sern's eyes calculated the structure below before the ladder itself.
Where to step for less sound, where the metal only looked solid but was hollow inside — he read it almost at once. His descent wasted no force.
Last was Ater.
Sion watched from below and twisted the corner of his mouth, just briefly.
"Climb routes like this often in that uniform?"
Ater answered short, standing midway on the ladder.
"First time today."
Seorin let out a brief sigh. This mess, on the first day.
"Thanks to you."
The moment Sion was about to smirk, a flashlight beam flared from the pipe entrance above.
"Down!"
At Seorin's shout, everyone dropped low simultaneously.
The beam swept across the maintenance bridge below. A fraction slower and they would have been caught.
Sern whispered.
"No more vertical movement is possible. Our position will be fixed shortly."
Sion pointed to the left side of the lower maintenance bridge.
Behind a bundle of power lines, a half-collapsed inspection corridor was visible. Barely wide enough for one adult to squeeze through, but at its end the structure let out toward the outer docking layer.
"There."
Ater asked immediately.
"Are you certain."
"No.
But right now it looks like the least-dead path."
Seorin followed at once.
"Then that's certain enough."
The four moved again.
This time the order was different.
Sion read the path; Seorin cut the rear sightlines; Sern calculated the actual pursuit interval and escape angle; and Ater predicted how remaining traces would be read by the Empire's blockade lines and chose the least-bad option.
For the first time, what each did best meshed differently.
It was nothing close to trust.
But in this kind of escape, the fact that they did not trust each other mattered less than the fact that without each other, they would die faster.
Halfway through the inspection corridor, the port's outer edge opened all at once through the grate leading outside.
Rough, cold wind rushed in, and in the distance, perimeter lights were going dark one by one. The Empire was closing the upper access lines.
At the same time, an entirely different kind of disturbance rose from the docks below.
Two civilian cargo ships changed berths in a hurry, and from the bar alley side, several people began running in the same direction — like animals that had caught the scent of money. Whoever had spread it, the lower level was already flooded with bounties and rumors.
Sion saw it and cursed low.
"They're really all here."
Ater looked out and said short.
"The Empire has closed above."
Seorin picked up.
"Below, the money-driven side has spread."
Sern placed the last piece.
"From now, if we do not move in the same direction, we cannot even cover each other."
Sion turned his head at those words and looked at the other three, one by one.
The Approval Bureau man in the black coat. His shadow of a strategist, even more silent. And beside him, Seorin, already waiting for the next decision.
Like it or not — here, the four were one unit.
He said, short.
"We get out alive.
After that, we can go back to disliking each other."
Seorin laughed low.
"Nice.
Not fond of it as an agreement, but for now it's enough."
Sern wordlessly pointed toward the exit ahead, and Ater nodded once.
Finally, the four pushed open the end of the inspection corridor and slipped out below the outer maintenance bridge.
Cold wind struck their faces.
Behind them, someone was still climbing down the route, and ahead, the port was already a chaos of closing roads and seeping paths tangled together.
But at least — in this moment — they had caught the outside air first.
And Sion realized it only then.
From the instant they had seen Jun Aster's name, these four were no longer people from separate worlds — they had become people passing through the same pursuit net. And probably, only those who had seen the same fragment would be driven, in the end, down the same road.