Chapter 5: Night Roster

Gyeol read the roster twice and put his phone face down.

"Mandatory means if I skip it, I lose my license."

"I know what it means."

"Then what do we do?"

"You go in the front," Woo-seok said. "I'll go in the back."

At 10:50 on Friday night he pried open the boiler room door again.

The drain level was under the whole building, a maze of low brick tunnels flooded to the knee.

The builders had never made it that big, but the gate had.

He went down the maintenance ladder in the dark and stood in black water that smelled of soap and rust.

Far down the tunnel, lamps were coming.

Byun's plan was simple, and Woo-seok had heard versions of it for ten years.

The lanterns walked the long tunnel east with their lamps on, and the drain eels followed the light.

At the west end, in a chamber where ten years of dead things' stones had washed into the silt, the hunters dug for cores.

Then everyone climbed out the hatch.

Woo-seok followed the lanterns at a distance with his lamp off.

He knew their walks by now.

The twins splashed side by side, arguing in whispers about soup.

The knitter held her lamp high and steady, the way she'd held a ladle over four hundred children.

Chil-seong hummed an old trot song under his breath until somebody hushed him.

Gyeol walked at the back, too close to the water.

The eels came at the second bend.

They were long and pale and thick as a man's leg, and they moved under the surface without a ripple.

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