The giant apartment complex was unfinished, like almost everything else in Pyongyang. It loomed over the city, a grey, oval-shaped mass rising like a fungal growth on the bank of the Taedong River, swarming with half-lived lives. The western side was wall-less, held together with sagging electrical wires and iron bones stripped of their skin. Multitudes of drones hovered outside windows, transporting deliveries or simply spying, like mechanical wasps searching for a nectar that no longer existed.

The air inside the elevator was thick and sour, with a pervading stench of rotten eggs. A dead rat lay in one corner, the toes of its pink feet bent pathetically into its body. Sora couldn’t drag her eyes from it as they ascended, the elevator shuddering and groaning at intervals.

“I hate this city,” Gyuri said, digging her hands into the pockets of her trench coat. “Reunification was the worst thing that could’ve happened to this damn country.” She looked to her superior. “I keep forgetting. You voted for it, didn’t you?”

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