Chapter 100 Seven Years Ago
Seven years ago ---
The red light of the sirens tore through the darkness of the stormy night.
When Fang Changling stepped on the stagnant water and rushed into the isolation ward, the pungent smell of formalin mixed with blood hit his face.
The girl's neck was covered with purple spots on the bed, her fingers dug deep into the bed sheet, and her last sob got stuck in her throat.
Amid the shrill long beep of the monitor, the swaying cordon outside the window was reflected in her pupils.
"This is the seventh case."
Qin Xiyang's white coat was still dripping with water, and dark red blood was seeping out of the edge of his mask.
He had just performed CPR on a dying infected person.
The dissecting light flickered suddenly, illuminating the bloody words scrawled on the wall. They were carved with the fingernails of a patient before he died.
"They...are demons..."
Lai Yun's tablet hummed in the humid air.
The latest autopsy report shows that artificially synthesized nanoparticles remain in the alveolar tissue of all the deceased.
The technician's face was pale at this moment, and he looked at the data in disbelief as if it was a declaration of death.
"It's not a natural virus. Someone created death in a petri dish."
Heavy rain hit the glass of the serious crime team's office. Fang Changling took dozens of photos of the scene on the whiteboard.
The distribution area of the dead gradually outlined a hidden triangle, and the intersection was the abandoned factory with the sign of a biotechnology company hanging on it.
When the infrared detector penetrated the concrete wall, the heat source distribution map of the three underground floors made the three people hold their breath at the same time.
“This is probably their base camp.”
The densely packed red dots look like wildly multiplying colonies in a virus culture dish.
"They're live streaming."
Qin Xiyang suddenly zoomed in on the surveillance video, and saw a man wearing a bronze crow mask using a scalpel to cut open the wrist of the experimental subject.
"These beasts turned human experiments into underground programs and sold them to overseas buyers through encrypted channels."
On the screen, the blood-stained syringe reflected a cold light, and the number on the label completely matched the virus strain extracted from the deceased's body.
"Kidnapping, drug trafficking, and smuggling, do these people completely disregard the existence of the law?!"
Lai Yun's fingers flew across the keyboard, tracing the transaction channels of overseas servers.
At the end of the corridor, there was a roar of an iron door opening.
Mixed with the sound of dragging chains and suppressed sobs, it seemed like a call from the deepest part of hell.
Fang Changling pressed the record button. This man-made plague has only just revealed the tip of the iceberg.
-------
The ceiling lights in the conference room cast a pale halo on the wall.
Qin Xiyang smashed the mug into pieces, and the brown coffee stains splashed onto the projector screen, looking very much like undried blood at a crime scene.
"The victim of the seventh kidnapping case was a researcher from the Cultural Relics Bureau. Do you think this has nothing to do with the reselling of bronze artifacts?"
He untied his tie, and veins popped out on his neck.
Lai Yun tapped the keyboard frantically. The satellite image of the warehouse in the holographic projection kept zooming in. Dozens of mobile heat sources flickered among the ruins.
"Thermal imaging shows at least 20 armed men, but the underground structure is so complicated like a maze that we can't even find the entrance."
She checked the black market transaction records and found that the auction price of the bronze tripod was rising by the hour.
"The funds for these smuggled cultural relics appeared in the same offshore account as the drug Haikou No. 1 seized last month."
Liang Zhao suddenly threw a pile of photos on the conference table, each of which captured the transaction scene in the dark alley.
Buyers wearing bronze masks, bronze objects wrapped in oil paper, boxes of white powder,
There are also tubes of light green liquid.
"Cultural relics traffickers, drug lords, human kidnapping organizations...they all share the same transportation channels and may even be the same people behind the scenes."
She pointed at the blurred container number in the corner of the photo, her voice as cold as an icicle.
"This number is exactly the same as the coding pattern of the smuggled containers in the virus case."
Thunder roared outside the window, and the projector suddenly switched to a picture of drug packaging seized by customs.
In the transparent plastic bag, the crystals of methamphetamine are refracting a strange green light, which is exactly the same color as the oxide layer of bronze artifacts unearthed from ancient tombs.
"What on earth are they trying to do? These things don't make any sense together."
"Of course not, it's all about money"
Qin Xiyang said disdainfully that the group of people were like desperate prisoners, like highly intelligent antisocial elements who were blinded by money.
Lai Yun's computer suddenly sounded a piercing alarm, and a distorted audio came from the encrypted channel.
"Don't get in our way anymore, or you'll suffer the consequences!"
"How arrogant! What a bunch of damn bastards!"
Qin Xiyang grabbed the car keys and rushed to the door. His wrist began to ache again.
After the intense dissection work in the past few days, he began to feel exhausted.
The screams in the laboratory, the heat source jumping on the projector, and the thousand-year-old bronzes circulating in the cultural relics market, all the clues were twisted into barbed steel cables in his mind.
---------
("Xi Yang, I don't want to investigate cases anymore,")
("I don't want to be a police officer anymore")
The national emblem on the ceiling of the conference room was covered with a cold light. The police department's top brass slammed the gold-stamped document on the long table. The seal of "Dawn Plan" wrapped in red silk left a deep mark.
"Foreign forces have infiltrated and transnational criminal networks are being ripped apart by this operation."
When the projection screen lit up, Qin Xiyang saw Lai Yun clench his fists.
The densely packed red dots on the map each mark the location of a fallen police officer.
In the command center on a rainy night, the undercover police's last phone call echoed in the empty corridor.
His hoarse voice mixed with the sound of gunfire.
"Underground lab... bronze artifacts and viruses... they are..."
Amid the crackling sound of electricity, the surveillance screen suddenly exploded into snow.
Three days later, the search team brought back only a blood-stained police ID card. Inside the ID card folder was a sun drawn by his daughter, with the words "Dad, come home early" written in her childish handwriting.
(Key evidence disappeared, the informant suddenly changed his confession, and the police officer who was tracking the clues encountered a car accident.)
When the case suspension document was issued, Fang Changling looked at the piles of evidence bags and smiled bitterly.
Bronze rubbings stained with drug powder, action roadmaps dotted with bullet holes, and unfinished investigation reports were all stamped with a blood-red "Top Secret - Permanently Sealed" seal.
The newly appointed chief took off his glasses and wiped them. His eyes from behind the lenses swept over the police officers who were as silent as a mouse.
"From today on, whoever mentions the word 'dawn' will be guilty of destroying peace."
(All the strangeness is a silent warning: don't pursue it any further.)
In the office late at night, the moonlight shines through the air vents onto the dusty metal cabinet.
Lai Yun looked at the three people in front of him calmly.
Qin Xiyang had closed her eyes tiredly, Liang Zhao was dozing off, Fang Changling was writing a report, she looked out the window at the bright moonlight and said in a muffled voice,
"Is it all over?"
"have no idea"
"I guess so"
Lai Yun thought for a moment, looking at his companions around him, and also thinking about himself imprinted on the window.
"I applied for a transfer to the Army Medical Department"
("I'm going to the military hospital. Perhaps I will never be a police officer or investigate cases again.")
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