Chapter Sixteen - The Doctor Is Calling
Project 86Chapter Sixteen – The Doctor Is Calling
“The reports are still sketchy and the video footage we have received so far is unfortunately not quite clear, but multiple sources and citizens claim the same sight as seen in this video; a whale with an island on its back flew across the mountains last night.”
Taeyeon turned the TV off and looked over at Tiffany. She had an expression of disbelief just as herself and nothing of that report made sense. Behind Tiffany leaning on the kitchen doorframe Yuri’s expression told of a similar story; what in the world was going on?
“Do you have any kind of educated guess what that was about?” Taeyeon asked. Tiffany was the expert on weird phenomena out of the three but this just seemed too weird.
“Honestly, I don’t know. I can guess, I have a guess. But how…” Tiffany shook her head and buried her forehead in her palms as she tried to think what was going on. Her fingers now began to furiously massage her temple as if it somehow could help stimulate her neurons to fire faster and make the much needed connections quicker.
The three had just had their breakfast and Yuri had put the TV on so that they could watch the morning news like they usually do. The top story had made them all get off from their seats and find another spot to sit. Sitting still didn’t seem like an option with what was being reported.
What had been shown on the screen were poor quality videos taken from a couple of different phones that night, and in them was the outline of something big and streamlined that floated and flew above in the air and it had something on top of it that felt like it was out of place. The people reported that what was in the video was a very large whale, possibly a whale, and it had land stuck on its back complete with plants and wildlife. It had drifted over the villages near the mountains and then eventually vanished into the night just as dawn broke.
While normally news like this could have been just brushed off as a fake video or prank this time it came from multiple sources and not just from people living in the villages but from outsiders and people passing by. Everyone had seen something and all of their stories seemed to match in their description. The news also reported that even more people had fallen into coma’s that morning and that the situation was becoming dire; where even foreign experts were pouring into the city to investigate the phenomena of mass comas. It was an epidemic.
“So what would that guess be?” Taeyeon interrupted Tiffany’s thoughts, the latter eventually releasing her head from the furious poking of her fingers and looked over at Taeyeon.
“It would seem that the dream world has somehow connected to ours.”
“Connected? You mean reality and dreams are being mixed?”
“Yes, something like that,” Tiffany seemed to once again lose herself in her thoughts leaving Taeyeon and Yuri to stare at her in silence. “This was my father’s goal, kind of.”
“Kind of?”
“Yeah. Not exactly this,” Tiffany waved her hand randomly in air as some kind of an attempt to mimic what had happened with the flying whales. “He always wished to create a bridge between the two worlds and control the flow between them. This is more like a rip, a wound. It shouldn’t have happened like this. Something is wrong.”
“So this is your fathers doing?” The so far quiet Yuri finally managed to utter a question. Her mind had been too boggled and muddled with the news, not quite comprehending anything that was being said.
“Yes, I’d think so. I don’t know. Most likely. Yes. It has to be,” finally acknowledging the only real possible reason; that her father was at the centre of this mess.
“What can we do?” Taeyeon asked as she got up from her seat. She walked over to the coffee table that had multiple pieces of paper spread out, all pertaining to the current investigation. She began to gather them up preparing for their departure to the shrine. “We are still going to the shrine are we?”
“I think the only real way is to shut the project down. We’d have to infiltrate the labs, find the core controls and shut it down, or better yet break it if we can.”
“Do you have any idea where those are?” “No… the old labs disappeared eleven years ago after all and I don’t know anything about the new work that my father had been working on,” Tiffany looked up defeated. Betrayed by her father, her research usurped. To add insult to injury, she had spent all that time researching to find out what was causing the mass comas and in the end it was her own father who was the cause to it all.
Taeyeon looked at the woman on her couch mired in misery over her situation. With the phone call from Kangin still fresh in her memory, the pain of not knowing if his friend was safe and worry for their own safety compounded to an ever growing itch. An itch that had been growing since they first started to investigate the cities coma epidemic. One that made her fear the magnitude of the conspiracy they had stumbled upon and were now wretchedly entangled in. Like vines slowly wrapping around her limbs, creeping up all over her body about to engulf her, eventually fully covering her, chocking her. She wished she could just get away from everything and for now the visit to the shrine seemed like the perfect get away. A perfect little reprieve for this trio of women maimed by the malice of their misfortunes.
“In that case our best bet is to go to the shrine and see what they want. I have this itching feeling that what is happening there is linked to all of this,” Taeyeon said as she finished cleaning up her mess off the table, all her papers and files crammed into her laptop bag. “We should get ready to go.”
“Yeah… yeah,” Tiffany seemed to still be in her thoughts as Taeyeon left the living room to go change. Yuri looking very concerned about Tiffany walked over to the sitting girl and placed her hand gently on her shoulder. Yuri’s touch brought her back to the present; she snapped back to reality and looked over her shoulder at Yuri.
Yuri smiled as reassuringly as she could. “Let’s get ourselves going.”
“Yes. You’re right, yes,” Tiffany returned the smile and got up from the couch. “Thank you.”
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The hustle of the office space was as hectic as usual with people dashing around to their cubicles or friends spots to chat before work officially started. Half of the workforce was fetching their coffee or walking in from the elevator balancing their bags and instant coffee cups from the shop downstairs, cups that would get thrown into the bin a few minutes later. As the time for work to begin approached most people were in their seats and the unified clattering of keyboards and ringing of phones began. The swishing of map files and papers being passed around, names unknown to most yelled across the hallway, the noisy scrunch of the paper shredder busily tearing and creating tiny flakes from the paper; all joined up together into a deafening orchestra of discordant sounds.
Seohyun sat quietly in her seat in her own cubicle with her frog plush on the side and drawings from her niece pasted on the wall. Her computer screen was still off and she sat there as if utterly lost, the noise of the office fading in the background, eventually disappearing altogether. Her mind had drifted out from the present and instead unpleasant thoughts filled her pulling her away from reality even more.
The space to her right, Yoona’s cubicle, was empty with nobody in there. She was unsure whether she was relieved that the fake Yoona was not working alongside her or whether she wished that something would be going on inside that cubicle. It was always full of life yet now, deadly silent. She worried for her friend now that she knew, now that she believed that Yoona had really swapped bodies. How could she leave her friend alone in a situation like that? How could she be so sceptical and not believe her? Yoona must have felt so alone and sad when she, her best friend, did not believe her.
But in reality how could she have believed such a thing? It was not normal; it was not of this world. It was something beyond the living, beyond the everyday squabble of mere mortals. It was supposed to be something of supernatural standard, but her belief and discomfort at herself was raised even more with the odd news she had seen this morning; flying whales and islands in the sky. Something extremely out of the ordinary had happened and nobody was giving any explanation why. If flying whales were possible then Yoona’s miserable situation was just as possible as well. She felt terrible for leaving Yoona alone at the shrine for the night. She should have stayed.
Seohyun was brought back to reality as her ears started to register something close to her name being shouted and a hazy figure standing at the corner of her vision. She blinked a couple of times and looked to her right immediately straightening up in her seat. It was Jaesuk-nim, Hopper.
“Seohyun-shi.” “Ahh, sorry sir, I- I was just lost in my thoughts, I’ll start working right away,” Seohyun reached to turn her computer on.
“That’s fine no need for that. You are needed upstairs in a couple hours. Kim Jongkook needs to have a word with you. It is a very important talk about the company’s future, and yours so it might stretch into the evening.”
Seohyun stopped what she was doing and turned to look at Jaesuk. “The evening? But I have an appointment in the afternoon and my day was only suppo-”
“I’m sorry but you’ll have to cancel whatever it is you have planned. This is an important meeting, one that will determine your future in the company as well as the future of the company itself. Big things are about to happen. We need you there.”
Seohyun’s eyes faltered and she looked at her feet as Hopper walked away to continue his usual rounds. She needed to be at the shrine tonight, she couldn’t leave Yoona alone. But if she couldn’t make it she would need to call Hyoyeon. They would all be disappointed and they had that specialist coming in to take a look at her and…
“Hey Seohyun, what’s up?”
Seohyun looked back up and saw the fake Yoona standing by her cubicle, smiling like she always did. Even though she knew this one was fake, that she was called Saebyuk and not Yoona, she still felt like her best friend. All her mannerisms, her whole body, everything screamed it was her friend. But she knew better now. She knew it all.
They had not properly discussed the details of everything that transpired in the dream world during dinner last night so on their drive back from the shrine Hyoyeon had filled Seohyun in. She told her that this Saebyuk consciousness was some kind of copy of Yoona. This Saebyuk was stealing her precious friend’s body.
“Nothing much. Did you hear the news this morning? About the whale? Unbelievable right, it has to be fake. Has to be,” Seohyun faked surprise and familiarity. She needed to seem as regular and normal as she always was. If this fake Yoona wanted to harm her friend there was no telling who else wanted the same. No knowing who else was in on this.
“Yes I saw! I agree it has to be fake, no way it’s real!” Saebyuk replied, feigning surprise much like Seohyun. The exchange between these two ‘friends’ was as fake as it could get.
After last night’s triple terrors; the fight with the devil woman, being tricked by Sooyoung and losing Sunny, and finally the awakening of Yoona – Saebyuk was thoroughly terrified. Once she had returned back to the labs after the loss of Sunny almost all sensors and apparatus there had been on full blast. Most of them had overloaded from dream power and this whole night and the morning they had been fixing things best they could.
Thomas Hwang had been unimpressed and charged Saebyuk with looking after Seohyun and making sure that she was brought to the labs with her later this afternoon. They had wanted to avoid dragging in unnecessary people, the less that knew about the project the less risk of exposure. But things had taken such a serious and unpredictable turn that they had to change their modus operandi and improvise a lot more than they were comfortable with.
Seohyun turned around in her chair to face her computer, turning it on and adjusting her posture before running her hands through her hair to straighten them out, her long silky black locks running along her back in an amazingly orderly and exact fashion. “Well let’s get to work, no sense wasting time talking about a hoax!”
Saebyuk smiled and obediently went over to her cubicle and started working. Seohyun glanced as she did this and the feeling that this Yoona was fake grew stronger. The real Yoona would’ve at least whined about working.
The two continued diligently in their duties for the next couple of hours without a break. The usual banter that would have accompanied Seohyun’s and Yoona’s day was absent all of which made the former miss her best friend more and more. The days at the office were so much brighter with her around.
It was a little after lunch that Seohyun managed to slip out of Saebyuk’s sight for a while as she had to go to the toilet. Taking this chance while looking around her surroundings actively to make sure she wasn’t caught off guard, Seohyun dialled in Hyoyeon’s number and after a few seconds of ringing the call went through.
“Hi Seohyun.”
“Hi Hyoyeon yes it’s me. I’m calling to tell you that I might be a bit late for our engagement at the shrine tonight so no need to come pick me up.”
“How come? Need me to pick you up later then?”
“No no, I think I’ll just take a taxi there once I get out. It might stretch late into the afternoon. Apparently it’s some meeting with the bosses today that I can’t skip.”
“You can’t get out of it at all?”
“I’ll try my best but… I think it’s best if you just go to the shrine first and I’ll catch up later.”
Seohyun caught sight of Saebyuk down the hallway. She was clearly looking for her and just as she caught sight of her so did Saebyuk see Seohyun at the opposite end and began walking towards her. Seohyun smoothly turned to her right so she was facing sideways to Saebyuk preventing her from seeing that she was on the phone.
“Okay I really need to go now, sorry. Call me if anything happens!”
“If you say so, Seohyun. Bye.”
“Bye.”
She quickly ended the call and stealthily tucked her phone into her pocket, turned to face the hallway just as Saebyuk rounded the last pillar.
“There you are.”
“Hey you,” Seohyun replied smiling back.
“I just bumped into Hopper, wound up as always,” Saebyuk laughed Seohyun following suite, “but he said I needed to drag you to this boooring meeting now.”
“Oh you are joining us too?” “Yeah, I don’t really know what it’s about, but they keep yapping that it’s something important so I guess it is right?”
Seohyun faked another friendly laugh before walking next to Saebyuk, linking her arm around hers and moving towards Hoppers office. “Let’s not keep them waiting then.”
The two moved along the busy hallways of their floor, the usual chatter and ringing of phones dampening their steps to Hopper’s office. There Hopper joined their group and they moved to the elevators where the simple press of a button flew them to the forty-third floor of the building.
The look of this floor was miles apart from the simple cubicles and the noise level of her own floor. From the elevators that ran at the heart of the building, whether you turned right or left, ran a corridor in a rectangular shape. The outside of this corridor was lined with large individual offices all of which had large windows facing out into the city. This was upper management and Seohyun had only been in a similar floor like this once before, when she had first started working at Omnicorp. She could only imagine what the floors of the top executives looked like. Probably a whole damn apartment.
The little troupe took a right turn around the corridor and Hopper lead the two all the way to one end of the rectangular layout. He knocked on the door of an office that was one of the corner offices, clearly larger and bigger than most. Soon a muffled ‘come in’ could be heard and Hopper opened the door encouraging the two women to take a step inside.
“Thank you Jaesuk, you can go.”
This came from the man standing at the large desk at the corner end of the room. A large, very buff and clearly a strong man. Hopper bowed and then stepped back outside closing the door behind him.
“Thank you for coming. Seohyun, Yoona, please have a seat.”
Motioning to the two seats set in front of the man’s desk, Saebyuk started off enthusiastically and walked right up to the chair on the left while Seohyun followed her more timidly to the right chair and sat down.
“My name is Kim Jongkook. I’m the head of the international supply sector of our company. I’ve called you here because some of the higher ups have seen great promise in you two, particularly in you Seohyun.”
Seohyun looked over at Saebyuk who faked her disappointment with Jongkook’s statement. She returned to look at the man. “Thank you but you are too kind, I’ve only done what is expected of me.”
“I’ve heard of your humble attitude which is admirable, but you deserve the credit being presented to you. As a result of your outstanding work we would like to incorporate you further into the leadership.”
“Are you talking about a promotion?”
“Yes a promotion. If you would accompany me I would like to take you to our Research & Development sector where our current Head of Research and senior board member is waiting eagerly to talk to you. We have been extremely lucky and also have one of our key investors to be present today.”
Seohyun leaned back for a moment. A promotion so soon? She hadn’t even been working in the company for that long. For her to already be in consideration for a promotion was amazing and extremely rare. Very extremely rare. This caused Seohyun to really wonder what was going on. Something wasn’t right here. She had never been specifically recognized for outstanding work even if she did go beyond expectations daily, and no matter how much confidence she had in herself this nagging feeling would not go away.
“Isn’t that great Seohyun! A promotion!” Saebyuk chimed grabbing Seohyun’s hands in excitement. This caught her off guard and she almost wrenched her hands away from Saebyuk’s but managed to stop herself halfway through this action, following the clasping arms up to the eyes of her ‘friend’. “Yes it’s amazing! Thank you, Yoona,” she smiled as sincerely as she could.
“What about me then?” Saebyuk turned to look at Jongkook while still holding Seohyun’s hands.
“While your performance has not been exemplary,” he tapped the pen he was holding in his hand on the table before continuing, ”the two of you have been an effective combo. We are looking to see if we could find you a spot to work with Seohyun under her supervision. She would be your boss, but you would get to move up the ranks and into R&D.”
Finishing his sentence Jongkook placed the pen he had been using to tap the table into the pocket of his tailor made suit, a move which revealed the intricate and undoubtedly expensive cufflinks. He stood up from his chair with Seohyun and Saebyuk quickly following the example of their senior.
“If everything is clear I would like you two to follow me to the labs. We are expected there imminently,” He motioned for the two to walk towards the door as he trailed behind them, locking the door to his office after all of them had stepped out. “This way.”
They followed Jongkook down the corridors to the elevators and to Seohyun’s surprise started travelling down.
“Are the labs on a lower level?” She inquired.
“Yes, very much so. We will have to switch elevators as it isn’t accessible through the common elevators.”
After a quick descent to the ground floor they got out of the elevator and followed Jongkook through a side door. It was only accessible with a keycard. This lead to a set of stairs in a narrow plain white stairwell and a couple floors lower they once again went through another door using a keycard. Here they entered into a long corridor. This corridor was lined on both sides by full glass walls. Everything about this area felt extremely sterile.
Right at the entrance to the door they had entered through they were greeted by a security team to which Jongkook presented his ID pass and both Seohyun and Saebyuk were provided guest passes. They continued forward through this corridor and now Seohyun could see that on either side through the glass walls were labs, both chemical and an electrical engineering. At the end of the corridor, once again with the swipe of a keycard, they stepped into another elevator.
“We’re really going quite a ways down.” Seohyun chimed with a nervous smile.
“You aren’t too claustrophobic are you?” Jongkook inquired, looking over his shoulder at Seohyun for a brief moment.
“No sir, not at all.”
“All good then.”
It wasn’t claustrophobia that bothered her. It was that the deeper they went the harder it would be for her to get out and leave. As the elevator descended further down the rabbit hole, the reverberations of their steel cage and the hum it created grew louder and louder driving them deeper down. This ever growing low moan eventually ended in a dull thud as the compressed air under the speeding elevator cushioned their descent and they seemed to have reached their destination. They were extremely deep. It was like a nuclear bunker. Seohyun made sure she committed the route they used to her memory as well as she could. She slid her hand into her pocket fishing out her phone on the sly and glanced down at the screen. No cell reception. No messages can come in or go out.
The doors of the elevator opened and Jongkook led the two out into a huge open space. It was like an underground Colosseum, with levels circling a central stage as individual rings. Each level, starting from the outer most one which was also the highest in elevation, descended at regular widths a metre or so lower than the last, all the way down towards the centre of this amphitheatre of science. On each level there were desks sprawled with lab equipment and technicians around them and each level was separated by a glass wall from the one above and below it.
At the centre of this arena was a huge machine. It had wires and tubes stuck to it leading to the ceiling and stood at a height of at least ten metres. It must have been at least another five metres wide and as Jongkook lead them through the outer most ring of the labs, she could see that it housed what looked like reclining seats at the heart of the operation.
They were very expediently directed to one of the many offices that dotted the very edge of the outer most ring, the various offices circling all the way around and back to the entrance. Stepping in to this particular room Seohyun noticed it was a conference room with a long table at the centre and sixteen chairs lining the sides. At the opposite end of the room from where they had entered was another slightly smaller table with a podium next to it. By this desk stood two figures both in their middle ages, a woman and a man. Jongkook lead them to these two introducing the two parties to each other.
“Seohyun, Yoona. I would like you to meet the Head of Research, Thomas Hwang.”
The man identified as Thomas Hwang moved in to shake her hand. “It is great to meet you, Seohyun. I’ve heard great things about you and I’m sure you’ll be the perfect fit for our new role.”
“An honour, sir.” Seohyun replied.
With an emphasis on her new role he released his hand from the handshake and motioned at the woman standing by his side.
She was very striking. Probably somewhere in her mid fifties, she had taken the natural greying of her hair with a stride and had instead highlighted it with different tones of gray to enhance the contrast and the richness of her hair colour. The hair was cut shoulder length, the left side of her face covered by the hair that was partitioned on the right, the right side tucked behind her ear. Deep vermilion red lipstick enhanced her maturity and the crows feet by the corners of her heavy mascara eyes were almost hidden with well applied concealer. Simple pearl earrings adorned her ears as crowning jewels to this ensemble.
She stepped forward; her elegant black and silver laced high heels clicking on the marble floor. She was dressed in a black business suit, a black skirt with a white shirt underneath ed at the top to reveal a little bit of cleavage. This woman was attractive and she knew it. She used it to her full advantage.
“Park Luna,” she reached out and shook Seohyun’s hand, “a pleasure, I’m sure.”
Still half admiring and enamoured by this woman and wishing that she herself looked that good in her fifties, Seohyun replied giving a small bow as well. “The pleasure is all mine.”
While Saebyuk introduced herself, although Seohyun got the feeling her and Thomas Hwang had met before, she noticed while glancing around her that Jongkook had disappeared from the room with little fanfare. Her attention was caught once again as Thomas addressed her.
“So Seohyun, let me get you up to speed about your new role and why you are down here in the R&D department.”
Thomas took a step back and leaned on the desk next to him.
“What do you know about dreams?”
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