14 November 2022. 5:20 in the afternoon.

A little past five, and the sun was going down fast beyond the ridge at Goseong.

Under a clouding sky the last of the evening light went too, and the hill sank into darkness in a moment.

Clouded over, and a good while yet before the moon.

Only a cold wind blew, shaking the dry branches and working its way through the mountain.

"Well now. What is this place?"

Park Jeongho got out of the car and looked slowly around him.

"That's no survival-game site…… isn't it an abandoned army base? And if it isn't that……."

Park Jeongho and Lee Sangmin had set out from Yeongdeungpo in Seoul early in the morning.

They had stopped at Sokcho Police Station and started with the material on the van.

Luckily the CCTV record they wanted was still there.

The van in question had been caught clearly on the road's security cameras.

Toward evening. Moving north along the road on the outskirts of Sokcho.

The van had been found on a remote empty lot, with nothing of its course in between.

The trouble started after that. No security cameras at the lot.

Who got out of the vehicle, how many, where they went from there — there was no way to confirm any of it.

For want of anything better they went through the cameras along the run of the roads nearby.

They followed the line the cameras gave, narrowing the range one at a time, and ended up here.

The last camera the van appeared on was in this area too.

They had come up a small road with nothing to go on, and a wide site sitting deep in the mountains appeared in front of them.

It was ringed with a high steel fence, and surveillance cameras set up here and there caught the eye.

And barriers to keep outsiders from going in.

Some of the tiredness that had been on Lee Sangmin's face a moment ago went out of it.

"Sir……."

He looked past the fence. Some way off, a few container buildings…