Chapter 698 Mystery
The taxi stopped in front of the hotel, which was not far from the coordinates - the abandoned railway station, making it convenient for her to observe and pick up the goods at any time.
After paying and getting off the car, she dragged her suitcase into the hotel lobby.
The receptionist was a young woman with a professional fake smile:
"Welcome, do you have a reservation?"
Zhao Jingyi reported the name of her disguised identity:
"Yes, the person who made the reservation is Dong Shuanghan."
The front desk checked on the computer and quickly confirmed:
"Welcome, Ms. Dong Shuanghan. The standard single room you reserved is on the 23rd floor. Here is your room card, room 2307. I wish you a pleasant stay."
The front desk clerk skillfully completed the check-in procedures and handed a room card to Zhao Jingyi.
Seeing this, the waiter standing by immediately stepped forward and reached out to take Zhao Jingyi's suitcase: "Ma'am, this way, please."
Zhao Jingyi smiled and shook her head. At the same time, she exerted a little force on her hand and gripped the suitcase handle tighter.
"No, thank you. The box isn't heavy. I can do it myself."
Take the elevator directly to the 23rd floor, find room 2307, swipe the room card to unlock the door, and there is a slight "beep" sound.
Zhao Jingyi closed the door with her backhand, locked the safety chain on the inside, and gently turned the additional locking knob under the door handle.
She did not rush to pack her luggage, but instead took a quick look around the hotel room - the bed, table and chairs, wardrobe, and bathroom, all of which looked normal.
Then she placed the suitcase flat on the bed, unzipped the outer layer, and took out a palm-sized portable detector from the inner layer.
Turn on the detector switch and a faint blue light will appear on the screen.
Zhao Jingyi scanned a corner of the room very carefully to confirm that there was no pinhole camera or anything like that.
Girls must learn to protect themselves when they go out.
It took about ten minutes in total before she turned her attention back to the suitcase.
He opened the box and spread it out, then casually pulled a thin quilt from the bed to half cover the box.
Then she went into the bathroom, stood in front of the sink, faced the mirror, and gently tore off the carefully crafted disguise mask on her face along her hairline and jawline.
There was a slight hissing sound as the mask separated from the real skin.
She hadn't let her skin breathe freely for so long that she felt the pores on her face were a little stiff and numb.
She simply washed her face, walked back to the bedroom, stood in front of the window, slowly opened a crack, and looked into the distance.
The hotel's 23rd floor provides a very broad view.
From her current position, the coordinates - the long-abandoned train station area - seemed unusually quiet, even a little dead.
No unusual human activity was observed, no lights from the blue and white cars, and no signs of martial law.
At least, on the surface, everything seems to be normal.
"Maybe... I'm really overthinking it?"
Zhao Jingyi murmured to herself,
"The lockdown of District 9 may have other reasons, and it's not targeting the instructor. If that's the case, the train station should be relatively safe, at least for now."
However, Zuo Bai’s teachings once again came to mind – “Never rely on ‘should’, trust verification.”
"I still have to find out and confirm what exactly happened in District 9." She thought.
It was too risky to explore the train station directly, so a safer source of information was needed.
Coincidentally, in District 9, Zhao Jingyi does know such a person, someone who may be able to access information at a higher level.
The other party may not know all the inside information, but he certainly knows more than the taxi driver on the street.
Thinking of this, Zhao Jingyi took out a tablet computer from her backpack.
Instead of initiating a communication, she first connected to a USB-style encrypted relay to disguise her real IP address and ensure the security of the communication link.
Then, she opened the encrypted communication software and found the other party in the contact list.
After the communication request was sent, a regular and long "beep beep..." waiting tone came from the tablet.
While she was waiting, the suitcase at her feet, covered by a thin blanket, seemed to tremble ever so slightly, perhaps because she had accidentally bumped into it while walking.
……..
Adjacent to the Maple Forest Hotel where Zhao Jingyi was staying, just across the street, stood a slightly old, old-fashioned building.
The neon tubes on the "Yongye Parking Lot" sign on the ground floor of the building were broken in several places and were flashing with incomplete light.
An inconspicuous black car drove in slowly, its tires rolling over the slightly damaged slope, making a slight bumpy sound.
The car stopped in a remote corner of the parking lot and turned off the engine.
The driver's door was pushed open, and a man of medium build wearing a gray jacket and with a somewhat languid look common among the people in the Executive Yuan walked out.
It was the unknown man from the maintenance department.
He took out his cell phone, slid his finger across the screen quickly, found the number he had just contacted, and dialed it again.
"I have arrived."
There was silence on the other end of the phone for two seconds before a voice without much emotion came through, asking:
"Are you alone?"
The man from the maintenance department was a little annoyed, but still replied:
"Yes, it's just me."
The voice on the phone did not answer immediately, but waited for a few seconds before saying calmly:
"Wait, don't move. I'll send someone down to pick you up."
The man from the maintenance department originally wanted to say, "Don't bother, just tell me the specific address or floor, and I can find it myself."
However, before he could open his mouth, a busy tone came from the receiver.
He frowned and looked at his phone, and couldn't help but spit:
"Fuck, so mysterious, is it really that serious?"
Helpless, he could only stuff the phone back into his pocket in disappointment, and stood there as he was told, leaning against the hood of the car, waiting anxiously.
The parking lot had poor air circulation and was filled with a stuffy atmosphere.
While waiting, he subconsciously took out the pure white business card made of special material that Commissioner Zheng had given him from his inner pocket.
He turned the business card over and over between his fingers; it felt smooth and slightly tough.
There was no title, position, name or company logo on it. It was clean and plain white. The only mark was a phone number.
If this business card had not been given to him by Commissioner Zheng Geng, and he knew where Commissioner Zheng got it, he would never have obediently waited here foolishly and would have left angrily long ago.
To put it bluntly, those behind the business cards are the ones who do the dirty work. Even if they are the black gloves of the parliamentarians, they are characters that are not worthy of being on the stage.
Even though he is not as valuable as a finger of a congressman, he is still a regular official of the Executive Government.
The longer the man from the maintenance department waited, the more unhappy he felt, and he felt seriously offended.
Time passes by every second.
Five minutes...
Ten minutes...
Still no sign of anyone coming to pick me up.
The man in the maintenance department's brows knitted together into a knot, his impatience almost overflowing. He raised his head and scanned the surroundings.
After taking a closer look, he suddenly realized that this underground parking lot was significantly different from most of the parking lots in District 9 that he knew of.
Too many cameras!
You should know that in District 9, due to a variety of complex reasons such as budget, privacy disputes, and the game of various forces, the "Sky Eye" surveillance system proposal has been in a shelved state since it was proposed.
Therefore, throughout District 9, except for some particularly important or sensitive buildings that have relatively complete surveillance and security systems installed, most public places do not have cameras.
But this parking lot in front of me looks quite old, with every load-bearing column, every corner of the wall, every corner of the ceiling...
One, two, three, four... fifteen, sixteen...
The man from the maintenance department hadn't paid much attention just now, but when he realized what was happening, he started counting silently in his heart. The result shocked him secretly - wherever he looked, there were densely packed surveillance cameras of various models.
And just as he looked up and around, he saw that all the cameras had silently adjusted their angles and were all aimed at his location.
It was as if countless pairs of eyes hidden in the darkness were examining and analyzing his every move through the lenses over and over again, even the changes in his facial expressions were clearly captured.
Inexplicably, a chill crept up the spine of the man in the maintenance department, causing the hairs on the back of his neck to stand up slightly.
His scalp tingled, and almost instinctively, his right hand reached for the car keys, wanting to open the car door immediately.
But his reason eventually overwhelmed the urge to escape. He remembered what Commissioner Zheng had said and the possible merits and promotion opportunities this incident might bring.
He forced himself to stay where he was and not move, but the anger in his heart was like dry firewood poured with oil, rising up and almost bursting through his head.
Suddenly a voice came from behind him:
"This way!"
The anger in the man from the maintenance department was instantly doused as if by a basin of cold water, and he suddenly turned his head to look behind him.
"When?! When did he appear behind me?!!"
The pupils of the man in the maintenance department suddenly shrank to the size of needles, and what came into his sight was a middle-aged man in a black suit.
The other person's face was so ordinary that there was almost no memorable feature, except for an extremely conspicuous penetrating scar in the middle of his lips, which looked like an ugly centipede lying there, adding a sense of danger like a desperado to the whole person.
The man from the maintenance department had a face so gloomy that water could drip out of it. He suppressed his shock and anger and asked in a bad tone:
"You guys... have been watching me from behind the surveillance camera?"
The man in the suit turned a deaf ear to his question, neither denying nor admitting it. His scarred lips repeated clearly:
"This way."
The man from the maintenance department frowned, and before he could say anything, the other party handed him another eye patch.
The man from the maintenance department swept his gloomy eyes across the eye mask. He had already guessed the other party's intention, and a feeling of being offended surged in his heart again.
He asked knowingly, his tone filled with suppressed anger: "What does this mean?"
The man in the suit was still very frugal with his words, and uttered four cold words:
"Blindfold it and follow."
The man in the maintenance department almost laughed out of anger:
"Are you kidding me? I..."
He had just uttered a few words when the man in the suit made a move to turn around and leave.
The man from the maintenance department immediately fell silent and quickly snatched the blindfold from the other man's hand, sneering inwardly:
"Well, well, well, the councillor's black gloves are truly impressive. They're as impressive as the councillor himself."
When I put on the eye mask, I felt an unusually cool touch, not the softness of ordinary fabric.
The surface of the eye mask is not completely smooth. It is covered with a layer of uneven texture, like a strange pattern sewn on the surface with special silk thread, or... the complex circuit outline of some kind of microchip printed under the fabric.
The man from the maintenance department put on his blindfold and suddenly felt his vision plunged into complete darkness. His mind became confused and he lost his sense of direction. He couldn't even tell which side his left and right hands were.
The hand did not speak, because in this state, even if someone told it to go forward, backward, left or right, its senses would not be able to make the correct judgment.
Fortunately, that palm seemed to be able to accurately sense the changes in his body's center of gravity.
A force that was not strong but just right came from his palm, skillfully causing his body's center of gravity to shift slightly.
He couldn't tell whether it was his own consciousness or the guiding signal transmitted by this hand that controlled his body's movement at this moment.
In short, his steps began to move consciously following the shift of his body's center of gravity.
He couldn't tell how far he had gone, whether he was walking in a straight line or taking a detour, or whether he was going up or down stairs.
The sense of time also became blurred. Maybe only a minute or two had passed, or maybe more than ten minutes had passed.
When he felt the hand on his shoulder removed and heard a simple "Okay" prompt, he couldn't wait to pull off the blindfold on his face.
Light flooded back into my vision, bringing a moment of stinging and trance.
When he adjusted to the light and took a closer look at his surroundings, he found himself in an unfamiliar corridor.
There are no windows on both sides of the corridor, and it is extremely narrow, barely accommodating 1.5 people. Even if someone is too fat, they may not be able to squeeze through.
Just like the underground parking lot, the front and back ends of this narrow corridor are also densely covered with silent rotating cameras, covering every inch of the corridor in all directions and without blind spots, recording every subtle movement of the intruder.
Led by the man in the suit, he walked about twenty or thirty meters through the narrow passage.
Finally, at the end of the corridor, a gray-white metal door appeared.
He looked up at the small sign hanging on the door, his steps paused slightly, and a look of surprise flashed across his face.
There are four words written on the sign - Jieyou Studio.
The man from the maintenance department's mouth twitched subconsciously, and an extremely absurd feeling surged in his heart:
"What the hell? Are the names of the Black Gloves this...literary these days?"
The man in the suit didn't knock on the door. He reached out and pressed the fingerprint reader next to the door. With a slight "beep", the door lock popped open.
He pushed the door open, stepped aside, and motioned the man from the maintenance department to go in, but he himself remained outside the door like a door god.
The man from the maintenance department took a deep breath and stepped into the door.
As soon as he entered, the extremely cold air hit him in the face, making him shiver.
The temperature inside the house dropped by at least seven or eight degrees compared to the corridor. It was as if I had instantly stepped from a normal temperature area into a cold storage, and goose bumps immediately appeared on my skin.
(End of this chapter)
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