"The whole believing in only the existence of a single city's pretty murky to begin with," Cindy pointed out with a slight wave of her hand. "I would say it's more... avoidance of the topic than anything else. You've been to some of the neighborhoods that closely resemble immigrant neighborhoods in outside worlds, right? Where much of the population don't seem to be native English speakers, and so forth. You can tell that there's culture coming in from elsewhere, and sometimes you'll even catch a native talking about 'the old country,' they just can't seem to be bothered with the details of it."

It really was something to head down to Darrow's tiny equivalent of Koreatown, little more than a block or two, and feel practically like she'd been transported to her grandparents' social circles. Except no one could actually talk about specific towns or cities. So hard to find a good doenjang jjigae, she could remember one old woman lamenting.

But any mention of Seoul or Busan was met with blank stares.

"Anyway, there is a Hydra in my world, probably others. Can't say for sure if it's those same folks who started it here, or if Darrow was inspired to come up with a good knock-off, or what," she added. "Maybe it's a mix of both, with native Darrowians being recruited by someone on the outside. But the methods seem similar enough to the Hydra I knew."