Chapter 9

At three in the morning, Evelyn Allen heard the sound of the phone ringing downstairs. The ringing stopped abruptly, and not long after, someone knocked on the door.

  "Miss, it's a level C alert."

  Evelyn Allen sighed. "Help me change my clothes."

  A woman in a fitted suit came in, helped her up from the bed, took off her pajamas, and then put underwear on her pale, bare body.

  The thin girl was supported to stand in front of the mirror, leaning on a cane.

  "Which one should you wear today?"

  "The black one I bought a few days ago, with a long skirt. Remember to bring a blanket."

  "Okay."

  Fifteen minutes later, Evelyn Allen, sitting in a wheelchair, was pushed into the car by the woman holding an umbrella. In the pouring rain, the car drove all the way, finally showing credentials outside the barricade, and entered the scene.

  The heavy rain had already washed away the bloodstains outside, leaving no trace. Only white sheets could be seen covering the bodies, but the scene inside remained intact.

  As the car arrived, someone came up to greet them.

  The window rolled down, revealing the girl's slightly pale profile from lack of sleep. "What happened?"

  "It's a special crime," the person outside said. "According to regulations, we must notify the local prosecutor of the Astronomical Society immediately to handle it."

  "As expected..."

  Evelyn Allen sighed wearily and patted the armrest of her wheelchair. The driver, holding the umbrella, carefully lifted her and the wheelchair out of the car, placing them where the rain couldn't reach.

  "What's the situation at the scene?"

  As if it had nothing to do with her, Evelyn Allen asked coldly, "Any survivors?"

  "None."

  The person at the scene shook their head. "Jinhao Bathhouse, a newly opened club—clients, girls, security, not a single survivor from inside out. The food delivery guy discovered the situation. By the time we arrived, an hour had already passed... Then, a police station in QP district was attacked, but there were no casualties."

  "I see."

  Evelyn Allen didn't ask any more questions, just tilted her head back and said to the capable female driver behind her, "Push me around, I haven't toured a brothel before."

  The scene wasn't large, four floors plus a basement.

  There were only bloody footprints and horribly mangled limbs. In the lounge, the beautiful corpses still bore traces of brutal abuse too gruesome to look at.

  After looking around, Evelyn Allen yawned expressionlessly. "Any surveillance?"

  "It was removed. All the cameras were destroyed, but we just found some footage from the nearby traffic cameras."

  "Let me see it first."

  Evelyn Allen tapped the armrest of her wheelchair, looking uninterested.

  The person at the scene sighed helplessly, not angry, and instead signaled the engineer to send over the surveillance footage.

  Anyone who saw Evelyn Allen would first notice her face, drawn in by those calm, almost indifferent eyes.

  Next would be her wheelchair, and then a sense of pity from the heart—such a beautiful girl, yet her legs were disabled. What a waste.

  Even if her personality was eccentric and cold, and she had never smiled at anyone.

  After working together so many times, the person in charge at the scene was already used to her indifference and no longer found it strange.

  There wasn't much footage in the surveillance—mostly fleeting black shadows, people being torn apart in an instant. Only at the end, when the figure exited through the main door, did the traffic camera across the street capture a frontal silhouette.

  Nothing could be seen clearly.

  "All useless stuff, no need to watch anymore."

  Evelyn Allen looked away and asked the person at the scene, "What about the other police station? No casualties?"

  "Right, because it attacked the evidence room, broke through the wall directly. The door was locked at night and no one was on duty, but there is footage."

  The person at the scene hurriedly pulled up the footage and played it.

  On screen, the evidence room was silent. Suddenly, there was a loud bang, like an earthquake, and the wall shook. Then, a crack appeared.

  A hunched figure crawled in, and in the brief time before anyone arrived, turned the place upside down. Finally, after smashing open a cabinet and grabbing something, the figure looked back at the surveillance camera, threw something, and the screen went black.

  Evelyn Allen reached out, paused the video, and rewound a few seconds.

  On screen, the person facing the camera wore an ape mask, hunched over, holding something in their arms...

  "Zoom in here."

  Evelyn Allen's eyes widened slightly as she leaned in, staring at the enlarged image and the box in the person's arms.

  "This—what is it?"

  "No idea... a Rubik's cube?" The person at the scene was baffled, immediately feeling foolish for such a wild guess.

  After a moment's thought, Evelyn Allen asked, "Is there a record of the items in the evidence room?"

  Soon, a management log locked in a cabinet was sent over. Flipping to the end, there was a photo of a strange iron box, a dispatch record, and the case file from the crime scene.

  "A corpse?"

  Evelyn Allen frowned. "Whose body was found when the report was made?"