Qing Gang nodded, and just as he was about to turn back to continue watching, Zhuang Ningyu suddenly asked, “Were you just eating cookies?”
“Yeah, I saw them on a plate in the kitchen,” Qing Gang said, still savoring the taste. “Orange flavored. They were pretty good. Where did you buy them?”
An ominous premonition surged in Zhuang Ningyu’s heart. Seeing that his expression was off, Qing Gang also became vigilant. “What, is there a problem with the cookies?”
There was no problem with the cookies themselves, but the story behind the cookies was a big problem. Zhuang Ningyu wanted to speak but stopped, unable to figure out where to even begin explaining. Although he didn’t yet know how Yi Ke would react upon learning the truth, he didn’t want Yi Ke to have any reaction at all. So, he pointed at the culprit and emphasized again, “Remember, I was the one who finished this plate of cookies. It has nothing to do with you.”
“…Okay.” Qing Gang was rather panicked, but also genuinely confused. “But why?”
Zhuang Ningyu refused to answer. This is not something you should know.
The patrol officers worked in two shifts. At eight o’clock in the evening, Yi Ke finished his work and came home on time. Zhuang Ningyu asked, “Any discoveries?”
“A middle-aged housekeeper lives with Lan Lan, responsible for her daily care. Her name is Cui Hua, and she’s from the same hometown as Cheng Ye. Apart from that, the young couple living in Unit 2, apartment 301, seems to be quite concerned about 201. In the afternoon, not only did they help Cui Hua carry her shopping bags home, but ten minutes ago, they also bought a large bag of oranges from the supermarket, saying they wanted to share half with their downstairs neighbour.”
The young couple were also tenants, both in their early twenties and from the Northeast. The boy was called A’Sen and ran a small lock shop. The girl was called A’Ye and worked in an electronics factory. They had lived here for two years.
“The Northeast, huh? No wonder they’re so enthusiastic,” Qing Gang mused. “Cui Hua and Lan Lan have no connection to the Northeast, so we can rule out concern based on being from the same hometown. Are they just simply happy to help people?”
“It seems so at the moment.” Yi Ke washed his hands, then squatted in front of the wheelchair to check Zhuang Ningyu’s leg injury. Qing Gang didn’t find this behavior inappropriate at all and even proactively came over to help, only to be shooed away by both parties involved. Needless to say, Yi Ke wanted him gone. Zhuang Ningyu, on the other hand, felt the scene was already awkward enough; there was no need to form a three-person household.
Old injuries plus new ones; it would be difficult to heal completely in a short time. Whether to have a third surgery after they got out was still up for discussion. Yi Ke finished changing his dressing. He had only just lowered his head slightly when he was pushed away by the guilty-hearted Zhuang Ningyu. My heart can’t take this kind of stimulation. In front of a colleague, please be a little more composed.
Yi Ke had to turn his head to the side. His peripheral vision caught the empty plate on the coffee table. He was a little surprised and asked doubtfully, “You ate them all?”
Zhuang Ningyu’s expression didn’t change. “Yes, I was a bit hungry this afternoon.”
Yi Ke’s gaze shifted.
With the speed of a lightning bolt, Qing Gang slipped into the kitchen.
Zhuang Ningyu was dumbfounded. That was too fast of an exposure! Can’t you have a little more backbone?
Yi Ke tapped his knee with his fingertip. “Explain.”
What is there to explain? It’s not like I’m your boyfriend-ethics-cookie-manager. Zhuang Ningyu wheeled himself backward, changing the subject. “Is there any way to get into 201?”
“There’s a patrol officer outside the door and a housekeeper inside the house. Theoretically, my actions would be safest only when both of them are gone,” Yi Ke stood up. “But the patrol officer at the door of 201 is on duty 24 hours a day, and the housekeeper just bought a whole week’s worth of groceries today. It’s unlikely she’ll go out again. So—”
Before he could finish, an alarm suddenly blared through the night sky! The piercing sound almost tore the entire community apart. The motion-sensor lights in the corridors all lit up at once. Qing Gang drew his gun and rushed to the window, only to see patrol officers moving at high speed everywhere under the streetlights and on the walls. They looked like giant, hungry spiders, their limbs splayed out, twisting and deforming the world along with them.
“This is the emergency assembly signal,” Yi Ke said. “I’ll go take a look.”
Zhuang Ningyu nodded. “Stay in touch. Be safe.”
Yi Ke strode downstairs. Qing Gang continued to observe from the window for a while and said, “It looks like they’re looking for something.”
“They are indeed looking for something,” Yi Ke’s slightly helpless voice came through the earpiece. “Lan Lan has disappeared.”
A single woman, without the constitution of an evolved person, with her windows sealed, a housekeeper by her side, and a patrol officer at her door, had managed to vanish into thin air. Even Zhuang Ningyu couldn’t figure out how she had done it for a moment. He adjusted his earpiece and listened carefully to the voice on the other end.
Amidst a cacophony, Cui Hua was wailing. After dinner, Lan Lan had suddenly said she was dizzy and wanted to eat canned yellow peaches. Cui Hua hadn’t wanted to go, but Lan Lan, as if triggered, had thrown the sofa cushions on the floor and screamed at her to get out. This kind of thing happened often in this house. Cui Hua was well-paid and had some distant relation to Cheng Ye. She knew this woman’s husband was in gambling debt and the whole family was now relying on her distant nephew for support. Naturally, she didn’t take this emotionally unstable madwoman to heart. After reluctantly agreeing, she grumbled her way out to buy the canned food. But it turned out the shelves were out of stock. The shop owner rummaged in the warehouse for a long time before finding two cans. The whole trip back and forth took about forty minutes. When she got home, she found the house empty. The person was gone, and the small envelope usually used for spare change was also gone.
“This isn’t just my responsibility!” Cui Hua’s face was completely drained of color. She tightly gripped the sleeve of a patrol officer. “If I hadn’t known you were guarding the door, I wouldn’t have been gone for so long. What do we do now?”
The patrol officer’s face was also ugly. Logically, he should have been there, but just now there was a sudden scream for help from the third floor, so he went up to take a look. He found it was the resident of 301. A tall cabinet had fallen, and things were scattered everywhere. The person was pinned and couldn’t move. She was holding her waist and standing at the top of the stairs, saying she really had no other choice but to shout for help.
“I was only gone for less than ten minutes,” the patrol officer said.
“Yes, it really was only ten minutes. You can’t run far in ten minutes. Besides, she doesn’t have an access card for the other units. She must still be in the building.”
The words were spoken clearly and articulately, without a single stutter, as if they had been rehearsed many times. Yi Ke looked up at him. The moment their eyes met, the latter quickly retracted his neck and limped upstairs.
“Find her first!”
The first round of searching began. One team was responsible for searching the building, another for the courtyard. All the residents of Unit 2 were very cooperative. They opened their doors one by one, with expressions of curiosity, impatience, or schadenfreude. Floor by floor, door by door.
Yi Ke knocked on the door of 301.
A’Ye was also at home. The two of them looked like they were organizing their refrigerator. Seeing the patrol officer, A’Ye said with some dissatisfaction, “Brother Li was just at our place. How could the person be hiding here? What is there for you to search?”
“Routine work. Please cooperate.”
A’Sen pulled his girlfriend behind him, trying to smooth things over. Yi Ke ignored him and walked around the room himself. There was no trace of a third person. He returned to the living room, glanced at the seven or eight cans of yellow peaches in the refrigerator, and asked, “Are you very close with Patrolman Li?”
“Yes, we say hello when we see each other. He’s always in our corridor, so we got to know each other over time,” A’Sen said. “We’ve even had drinks together.”
Yi Ke also asked, “How’s business at the lock shop?”
“Huh?” As if not expecting the topic to jump so drastically, A’Sen first froze, then stammered, “Business is, it’s not bad.”
“If you’re done searching, then hurry up and leave,” A’Ye said, opening the door. “We need to sleep.”
Yi Ke nodded. “Sorry to have disturbed you two.”
The emergency assembly alarm was still sounding in the night sky. A’Ye peeked through the crack in the door, watching until the patrol officer’s back disappeared before letting out a sigh of relief.
A’Sen swallowed nervously. “How is it? Did you hide her well?”
A’Ye patted her chest and also took a moment to recover. “When I do things, you can rest assured.”
Running down the stairs, Yi Ke said, “They’re helping Lan Lan in secret.”
The method may not have been clever, but in the end, it achieved its goal. A’Ye had emptied the small shelf of all its canned yellow peaches before Cui Hua got there, forcing the supermarket owner to rummage through the warehouse for stock, thus delaying the nanny and buying Lan Lan more free time. And the ten minutes that A’Sen was pinned under the shelf was enough for her to leave her prison-like home. As for a hiding place after her escape, there were plenty of empty rooms in the community. Since A’Sen often drank with the patrol officer, it wouldn’t have been difficult to copy a master key card that could open both the unit door and the apartment doors while the other was drunk.
Zhuang Ningyu glanced at the clock on the wall and reminded him, “In fifty minutes, the last bus of the day, number 155, will pass by Meiman Jiayuan. If we miss this bus, we’ll have to wait more than ten hours for the next one.”
“You and Team Leader Ye arrange it,” Yi Ke said. “Tonight, I guarantee I will get Lan Lan on that bus on time.”
Qing Gang took Zhuang Ningyu’s laptop, put on his headphones, and began reporting to Ye Jiaoyue on site. The team members at Taoli Community also got busy. The monster in 1601 was currently sound asleep. Zhong Mu, carrying the unconscious Xiao Cong, quietly moved to the vicinity of the Spring Breez Supermarket, ready to get on the bus and leave at any moment.
Zhuang Ningyu put on his night-vision goggles. The living room curtains of 301 opposite him were swaying slightly from side to side, as if blown by the wind. Then, two pairs of eyes appeared stealthily in the gap between the curtains.
“She won’t be found, right?”
“She won’t.”
“You said you weren’t even close with her. Why are you meddling in this business?”
“She was locked up all the time, it’s so pitiful. And she begged us so much.”
The young couple sighed, and in unison, they both craned their necks to look to the left.
Following their gaze, Zhuang Ningyu said to the person in his earpiece, “Target is in Unit 4. Floor uncertain. Search the empty, unoccupied rooms first.”
“Received.” Yi Ke quickened his pace and, getting there before the other patrol officers, swiped open the access door to Unit 4.
It was easy to distinguish between occupied and unoccupied apartments. 101 and 102 were occupied, 201 was vacant, 302 was vacant, 401 and 402 were vacant. By the time Yi Ke reached the 5th floor, noisy sounds were already coming from downstairs. It seemed the other patrol officers had also searched their way here.
“How can there be an outsider in our home?” the residents were complaining unhappily. “It’s so late at night, can’t you let people watch TV in peace?”
Yi Ke swiped open the door to 502.
The beam of his flashlight shone on the floor. Because the room had been unoccupied for a long time, there was a thin layer of dust on the originally white tiles. From a certain angle, one could see some faint footprints. Yi Ke followed the messy footprints forward and finally stopped at the bedroom door.
It was very quiet all around, so quiet that even the softest breath was magnified countless times. Lan Lan was curled up under the bed, biting her hair, a knife clutched tightly in her hand.
Before leaving, A’Ye had also pushed a few empty cardboard boxes and woven bags in front of her, blocking the view of any outsiders, making this small hiding place even safer. But, was it really safe? For example, at this very moment, she could clearly sense someone standing by the bed, staring at this spot without moving.
Fear washed over her like a tide. She clamped her hand over her mouth, not making a single sound.
“Don’t be afraid.” The man in the room suddenly spoke. His voice sounded very young and gentle, without the usual ferocity and coldness of the other patrol officers.
“The 155 bus will arrive in about twenty minutes. Your child is also on the bus. I’m here to help you.”
Lan Lan’s eyes widened in the darkness. Child? Before she could even determine if he was telling the truth, beep—, the sound of the security door in the living room being swiped open came again.
“Why are you here alone?” The two patrol officers at the door looked at Yi Ke suspiciously.
“Because you guys are too slow, and I don’t want to waste time.” Yi Ke pointed his chin at 501 across the hall. “She’s not in here. That one hasn’t been searched yet. Are you going or am I?”
The patrol officers looked at each other, then continued their rude questioning. “I mean, why are you acting alone?”
Yi Ke looked annoyed. “Why can’t I act alone?”
“The ‘Work Manual’ states that new recruits—”
“Sorry, first day on the job, haven’t had time to read it.”
The patrol officers were choked by his slightly cold and matter-of-fact tone.
Haven’t had time to read it, what kind of reason is that?
Seeing them speechless for a long time, Yi Ke shook his head. It wasn’t clear if he was bemoaning his own fate for having to work with idiots, but it definitely looked like that was what he meant one hundred percent.
Not getting a response, he simply walked straight between the two patrol officers, secretly blocked the sensor with his finger, and pretended to swipe his access card for a long time.
No reaction. So he turned his head and asked, “What are you standing there for? Whose card still works?”
The card works… but wait, you’re not our team leader, are you? The other patrol officers were baffled at being ordered around by him, but they still begrudgingly swiped the door open.
One of them deliberately shouldered Yi Ke hard, then swept the room with his flashlight. “Not here either.”
“Work’s over.”
The jumble of footsteps gradually faded away, and the surroundings returned to their initial quiet.
Yi Ke returned to 502 and knelt on one knee by the bed.
“Your child, is his name Xiao Cong?”
…
Zhuang Ningyu listened to Yi Ke’s voice in his earpiece, his eyes fixed on the intermittent footage on the computer screen. It was from the camera clipped to Zhong Mu’s chest. She boarded the 155 community bus, holding Xiao Cong. The monster driver let out an dissatisfied huff from its nostrils and turned around, cursing, “Can’t you read the rules either? Get off!”
“Drive,” Zhong Mu said coldly. “Otherwise, I’ll file a complaint against you. We’re both passengers, why can others violate the rules?”
The monster driver was stumped. Which others? No one can violate the rules! He tried to explain that the previous few passengers had forced their way on without his consent, but the words had barely left his mouth when he was intimidated back into silence by Zhong Mu’s extremely dissatisfied, almost murderous, savage glare. In the end, he could only mumble, “There’s no such thing.”
“Xiao Zhong!” Ye Jiaoyue drew her gun and roared into the night sky. “Go, now! The monster has found you!”
Zhong Mu kicked the ticket box hard. “Go!”
“Ahhh, what are you doing!” The monster driver hadn’t expected her to suddenly lash out and was clearly terrified. But he didn’t have the guts to argue with this violent maniac. Without even buckling his seatbelt, he slammed on the gas and sent the bus roaring off.
THUD! The monster dodged a bullet and suddenly shot up from the ground. Its massive body streaked across the night sky like a cannonball, and like an octopus, it attached itself to the rear of the 155 bus with its splayed limbs.
The monster driver felt like he was going crazy. “What is that thing?”
Two team members broke through a window, aimed their guns at the rear window. “Don’t worry about it, just drive your bus!”
The monster’s blood-red eyes stared fixedly at the frail figure huddled in the bus seat. Though it was a “father and son” relationship, its voice was as eerie as if it came from the deepest abyss. “Give… the… child… back… to… me…”
Two bullets pierced through the glass and shot through its soft lower jaw.
The monster, with half its face missing, did not die. Its flesh and blood slowly gathered and grew, the corners of its mouth pulling into a grotesque arc, utterly terrifying.
“Ningyu!” Ye Jiaoyue’s voice was torn to shreds by the rushing wind. “We have fifteen minutes!”
“No problem,” Zhuang Ningyu replied briefly. He bent down and pulled a syringe of strong painkiller from the schoolbag under the table, plunging it into his own knee.
“Team Leader Zhuang!” Qing Gang caught this out of the corner of his eye and was startled. He rushed over to stop him, but the 5ml of pale pink liquid had already been completely injected. His head was buzzing. “Bro, my bro, NO.9 is a banned drug! Where did you get it?”
“If you don’t tell, no one will know,” Zhuang Ningyu said, skillfully destroying the syringe, looking like this wasn’t his first time.
“This isn’t about telling or not. Xiao Yi’s mission is going smoothly, and Team Leader Ye and the others are here. The Order Maintenance Department isn’t short-staffed. You have absolutely no need to use this stuff.” Qing Gang felt his schoolbag. “Is there any more? I’ll hold onto it for you.”
Zhuang Ningyu: “No.”
Qing Gang indeed didn’t find any more, but he still slung the bag over his own shoulder. “Alright, Team Leader Zhuang, I’ll keep it for you for now. Don’t worry, we guarantee we’ll handle this mission. We absolutely won’t let you have to make a move.”
The monster’s fist suddenly appeared in the center of the computer screen.
The next moment, the screen went black. Only Zhong Mu’s pained, suppressed grunt could be heard.
“Yi Ke,” Zhuang Ningyu asked, “what’s the situation on your end?”
The bedboard was knocked with a thud. Yi Ke reached out in time to support the emotionally agitated woman crawling out from under the bed.
“You’ve seen my child? Where is my child?” She lunged forward, her hands gripping Yi Ke’s shoulders fiercely.
“He’s on the bus,” Yi Ke soothed her. “Don’t get agitated yet, I’ll take you to find him right now—”
His words were cut short. He grabbed her arm and turned his head to look out the window.
Two patrol officers were hanging there silently, upside down, a strange light glinting in their eyes.
