Lan Yu wanted to pretend to be sick, but just as she finished speaking, Lu Rankong saw that he was half bent over, holding his stomach, and his back was hunched.
His brows were furrowed, his nostrils flared, and his mouth was slightly open as if he was out of breath. He wanted to moan but tried hard to hold it back. His lips were bitten white and trembling slightly.
He looked up at Lu Rankong, his handsome eyes full of pain and panic. At that moment, Lu Rankong held his breath, his heart tightened, and he almost blurted out to ask him what was wrong.
"Officer, officer, 0356 seems to have a stomachache." After coming to his senses, he hurriedly stood up and called the remaining prison guard.
Liu Junjie and his friends were watching a movie, and they all leaned over to ask with concern, "What's wrong with Brother Qiao? Did you have a stomachache?"
"There must be something wrong with the dish tonight. It doesn't taste right to me." Qiu Dao said angrily.
Lin Lin also turned around and called to the prison guard: "Sir, he is in real pain, and sweat is pouring down his forehead."
The prison guard squeezed over from the side to look at Lan Yu. Lan Yu groaned twice at the right time and raised her hand to grab Lu Rankong's arm, her knuckles so tight that they turned white.
The guard asked, "What's wrong?"
Liu Junjie and Qiao Fei rushed to say, "Sir, he has food poisoning." "He's going to be poisoned to death, quickly send him to the medical officer to have his stomach washed."
The prison guard frowned and said, "Nonsense..."
"It's okay, it's okay, I just feel a little uncomfortable." Lan Yu spoke intermittently, taking a few deep breaths in between.
The prison guard looked at him and felt that he was not just a little uncomfortable, so he said to Lu Rankong: "0357, take him to the medical officer, don't delay."
Lan Yu's lips trembled. "I can still hold on. I have to write a review after watching the movie..."
"Don't worry about the movie, go see the doctor first." The prison guard said seriously: "0357, take him there quickly, don't delay."
"Yes..." Lu Rankong squatted down, and the others helped Lan Yu onto his back.
"It hurts..." Because of the change in posture, Lan Yu let out a low cry of pain.
Liu Junjie and others hurriedly said, "Brother Bao, Brother Bao, slow down."
"Officer, let us go too." Wang Jin said to the prison guard.
Qiao Fei nodded and said, "Yes, we will go too. Brother Qiao looks like he really needs someone to take care of him. We can take turns."
"No, you guys stay." Lu Rankong quickly stopped them, "I'll take him to check first, and let you know if there's any problem."
"Then can you do it alone? We can have two more people to help."
"No need, I can do it alone." Lu Rankong didn't give any time to explain. He carried Lan Yu on his back and walked out. The other prisoners stood up to make way.
"Okay then..." Seeing him like this, the others had no choice but to agree.
When they arrived at the door, the prison guard saw the pass gesture of the prison guard inside and let him in after a brief inquiry. Lu Rankong carried Lan Yu on his back and walked along the dark playground.
"On the left, the prison guard dormitory is on the left." Lan Yu reminded in a low voice.
"I'm watching from behind. Go to the medical room first, and then turn left when you're out of sight." Lu Rankong replied and then asked, "Does your stomach hurt?"
Lan Yu asked curiously, "Aren't you pretending?"
Lu Rankong breathed a sigh of relief and sighed, "You're pretending so well that I almost thought you really had a stomachache. Just think about the mission and forget about it for now. You have to go to the medical room first."
After crossing the playground and seeing that the people in the warehouse were no longer visible, Lan Yu slid off his back and the two of them walked along the wall in the shadow of the building towards the prison guards' dormitory.
They didn't meet anyone on the way. The prison guards were all in the warehouse watching the movie with them. They soon arrived outside the prison guards' dormitory.
This is a ten-story apartment suite. For security reasons, there is a high wall outside the building and a metal door in the middle, which is equipped with a surveillance camera and a scanning information lock.
"How to get in?" Lan Yu looked at the door from a distance.
"Bar……"
After Lu Rankong finished speaking, he walked around to the side of the wall, took a few steps back to run, stepped on the surface of the wall, and then jumped up, landing on the top of the wall like a roc.
He squatted on the top of the wall and nodded at Lan Yu in the dark, motioning him to come up.
Lan Yu looked at the smooth wall, then looked up at Lu Rankong above, took a few steps back, took a deep breath, started to run, jumped, and stepped onto the middle of the wall.
The wall was too slippery and his foot almost slipped and the force was immediately removed. Just as he was about to fall, a hand grabbed his arm from the air and pulled him up, and he stood steadily on the top of the wall.
The two of them slid gently from the top of the wall to the ground and hid in the darkness on the left side of the small courtyard.
"It's too slippery..." Lan Yu explained in a low voice.
Lu Rankong said: "There is a bump on the wall, but you didn't step on it. Do you think you are a monkey?"
"I didn't see it..." Lan Yu said a little annoyed.
"Shh, don't make noise."
"You are the one making the noise, so what?"
After entering the dormitory building, Lu Rankong said to Lan Yu, "I'll go to the laundry room to check the clothes they sent for cleaning. There are labels with dormitory numbers on them. You stay here and check the surrounding environment."
"703." Lan Yu said.
"ah?"
"No need to look at the label, he lives in 703."
Lu Rankong asked: "How did you know?"
"Because I have inquired about it in advance." Lan Yu said in a deep voice: "This is what you must prepare before doing the mission."
Lu Rankong said nothing and walked towards the stairs, and Lan Yu followed him.
He secretly glanced at the wall on the right side of the passage. There were a few big words on the top that read "Civilized Dormitory Display Window". Below were enlarged half-length photos of the prison guards, and under each photo was the room number of their dormitory. Officer Liu's smiling face stands out among the serious faces.
They did not take the elevator but chose to climb the stairs. Both of them were tall and had long legs, so they took several steps at a time and soon reached the seventh floor.
The sensor light in the corridor was broken, and it was completely dark. Only the moonlight shone through the windows at both ends onto the ground, vaguely reflecting the house numbers on a row of doors.
Lan Yu followed Lu Rankong, quietly moved forward along the row of doors, and stopped at the door of 703.
No light came through the gap at the bottom of the door, and there was no light on inside, so Officer Liu might be sleeping.
Lu Rankong took out a metal card from somewhere in his pocket and fiddled with it through the crack in the door.
After a slight click, the door opened a crack.
As Lu Rankong gently pushed the door open, Lan Yu's heart was beating so fast that it was about to jump out, and she held the injection tightly in her hand.
The door was pushed open, and the two of them quickly slipped in, each rushing into a room.
With the moonlight outside the window, Lan Yu first saw a single bed against the wall, but the quilt on the bed was neatly folded and there was no one on it.
He flipped the switch on the wall and the room lit up. Then he walked over slowly and leaned over to look under the bed.
It was empty there too.
He opened the door of the closet opposite the bed and saw only two uniforms and a shirt hanging inside.
Apart from that, there was no room for anyone else in the entire bedroom.
Lan Yu walked out of the bedroom and saw Lu Rankong also coming out of the room he had rushed into. He stood at the door and shook his head at him, saying, "This is the bathroom. There is no one there."
After saying that, he walked towards the bedroom, as if he wanted to confirm it in person before he could feel at ease.
Lan Yu was no exception and walked towards the bathroom.
The two passed each other and went into their respective rooms. As soon as Lan Yu stepped into the bathroom, he exclaimed in his heart: The accommodation conditions for the prison guards are so good. The bathroom is so big, it is almost as big as the bedroom in his small suite in the military headquarters.
He looked at the shower room with separate wet and dry areas with envy, then walked in and pushed the wall.
It didn't move at all!
You can take a shower however you want, even if you sing, the people next door won’t be able to hear you!
There was a mirror on the opposite wall, and simple toiletries were placed on the shelf. Lan Yu opened the cabinet next to it and found only a set of clean underwear.
He walked out of the bathroom and saw Lu Rankong also walking out of the bedroom. The two looked at each other and shook their heads, indicating that they had not discovered anything.
"Where would he go so late?" Lan Yu sat down on the single sofa in the small living room.
Lu Rankong continued to search in the living room, saying, "No matter where you go, you will come back eventually. Just wait here."
The living room is very simple. Apart from a single sofa and a coffee table, there is a desk under the window.
Lu Rankong pulled out every drawer of the desk, which was filled with miscellaneous things, but there was nothing unusual.
He pushed the drawer in, took a step back and looked at the desk, squinting his eyes. "This drawer is not deep, but it doesn't look like that from the outside..."
"What's wrong?" Lan Yu couldn't help but lean over and ask.
Lu Rankong didn't reply. He squatted down, reached his hand to the bottom of the drawer and fumbled around. He didn't know what he touched, but with a click, the drawer panel in front of him flipped down, revealing two drawers inside, one above and one below.
It turns out there is a secret cabinet underneath.
Lan Yu quickly stood up and walked to Lu Rankong.
Lu Rankong slowly pulled the drawer outwards, revealing a thick stack of documents.
Lan Yu reached out and took out a small stack, quickly flipping through the pages one by one.
"They are all Longte Star. They are all." He said as he flipped through the pages, "It also wrote Qichu Star."
These are hand-bound booklets, and the contents are all printed by myself. It can be seen that some of them are recorded in books with illustrations, and some of them are based on other people's oral narration and then recorded in books.
Lu Rankong also picked up a stack and flipped through it, frowning slightly and saying, "These contents are both true and false. Whether it is folk legends or the contents of banned books, he has collected them all here. It looks quite complete. Some of them I have never heard of."
Lan Yu caught a word, stopped and asked, "Is it true or false?"
"Yes, but overall there are really quite a lot. Some are even military secrets. It seems that he spent a lot of effort collecting them." Lu Rankong put the booklet in his hand back.
Lan Yu happened to turn to a page with a picture of a bird. It had white feathers, a bright red tail, and a thin leg slightly curled under its abdomen. It was a three-legged gull. There is also a handwritten note next to it: The three-legged gull is not a real bird, but a fictional creature from the planet Qichu.
It can be seen from these booklets that the people who made them were very serious and attentive. He flipped through two more books, threw them on the table, and said dejectedly, "Maybe we guessed wrong. Officer Liu is not from the Lonte star."
Lu Rankong said: "If he was from Longte, he would not have collected this information, and some of the content was true and some was false."
Lan Yu placed both hands on the table, lowered her head, and asked in a muffled voice, "What is he then? An avid fan of Qichu Star, a crazy data collector?"
"But we can't be sure. The fanatical fans of Qichu Star will not hide all the collected information like him. If he is not from Longte Star, he must have other purposes." Lu Rankong said.
"Are you not sure? Do we still want to catch him and interrogate him?"
Lu Rankong did not answer. He just took the information out and continued to look through it quickly. When the last booklet was picked up, an upside-down photo frame was revealed at the bottom of the drawer.
Lan Yu lowered her head and happened to see the photo frame, so she said, "Take it out and see what it is."
"It might be another painting about Qichu Star." Lu Rankong said as he took out the photo frame.
He turned the photo frame over, Lan Yu leaned over, and a photo of the two of them appeared in front of their eyes.
Officer Liu and a prisoner in prison uniform sat on a bench, leaning close together and smiling towards the camera.
The prisoner was about the same age as him, and looked a little thin. Spots of light shining through the gaps between the leaves above his head seemed to dance as they fell into his smiling eyes.
Happiness and satisfaction were written on their faces.
The background is the old ginkgo tree in the prison, and there are some prisoners next to it.
Lan Yu didn't know how they had the chance to take this photo.
A scene appeared in front of him: Officer Liu was taking pictures with the prisoners one by one, just to take a photo with someone in his heart under this cover.
Lu Rankong looked at the photo with him and asked in confusion: "Why did he hide a photo of a prisoner here? Who is this prisoner?"
Lan Yu said calmly: "You didn't even see this."
"What did you see—" Lu Rankong paused and said suddenly, "It turns out that Officer Liu fell in love with a prisoner."
"Maybe they are a couple? The prisoner also smiles happily." Lan Yu said while looking at the photo.
As soon as he finished speaking, there was a sound at the door and the door was suddenly pushed open.
The two men suddenly turned around and met the eyes of Officer Liu who was standing at the door.
Lan Yu quickly put down the photo frame and clenched the injection in her hand.
He stared at Officer Liu nervously, ready to pounce on him and control him immediately if he showed any abnormal behavior, regardless of whether he was from the Lonte star or not.
The three of them didn't move, just stood there silently and vigilantly.
Officer Liu's gaze slowly passed over the two of them and fell on the open drawer cabinet. He took another step forward and closed the door with his backhand.
"Who are you two?" His usually smiling face darkened and his voice became cold.
Lu Rankong asked back: "Officer Liu, who are you?"
"I'm just an ordinary prison guard."
"We are just ordinary prisoners."
Officer Liu's chubby face showed a hint of cruelty, and he said, "You two ordinary prisoners actually had the guts to sneak into the prison guard's room and search everywhere. Tell me, what exactly are you two doing here?"
"When Officer Liu opened the door, he saw two prisoners in the room. They didn't make any loud noises or call for help, and they even closed the door. Are you really just an ordinary prison guard?" Lu Rankong replied slowly.
Lan Yu's eyes moved back and forth between the two of them. She was so nervous that she dared not breathe, but she kept her composure, looking mysterious.
"Prison guards... I guess they can't date prisoners." Lu Rankong turned around and picked up the photo frame. "Are you two dating secretly behind the prison's back?"
Officer Liu kept a sullen face and said nothing.
Lu Rankong sighed and said, "Officer Liu, don't be nervous. Under the current circumstances, it doesn't matter if I tell you our true identities and purposes. There's nothing to hide. The person next to me is a specialist..."
Lan Yu: "Colonel K of the Second Mecha Battalion of the Empire's Army stationed on Star Ta suspects that you are from Star Lonte and is now on a mission to eliminate you."
Lu Rankong: "I was commissioned by the warden to investigate whether there are any prison guards and prisoners having affairs—"
Two voices sounded at the same time, and as the other voice became more and more powerful, Lu Rankong paused.
He turned his head speechlessly to look at Lan Yu, but Lan Yu didn't look at him. She only stared at Officer Liu in front of her with burning eyes and continued, "If you can prove that you are not from Longte, I will let you go. Otherwise, I will immediately execute the elimination mission against you."
After saying this, he held the injection to his ear and said slowly: "Officer Liu, you can't escape."
Lu Rankong could only frown and introduce himself: "Colonel Lu Rankong of the Third Mecha Battalion of the Empire's Army stationed on Star Ta, working with Colonel K, we are here to carry out the clearance mission. If you have any doubts about our identities, you can verify with the warden."
After saying that, he and Lan Yu stood still, paying attention to whether the person on the opposite side would suddenly resist or escape.
Two prisoners in prison clothes were looking at the prison guard in police uniform with dignity. The scene was very strange.
Officer Liu did not show any of the reactions they imagined, nor did he defend himself. He just stared at the two of them, his expression changing inexplicably, but there was no tension or hostility in it.
He murmured, "So you are here to eliminate the people of Longte... So you are here to eliminate the people of Longte."
The room fell silent. Officer Liu raised his hand to wipe his face, then walked slowly towards the desk without paying any attention to the two people.
Lan Yu tensed his body alertly, and Lu Rankong pressed his back calmly, meaning to wait a moment.
Officer Liu walked between the two men, took out the photo frame, carefully stroked the mirror surface with his hand, and then wiped off the non-existent dust with his sleeve.
Lan Yu and Lu Rankong exchanged glances without saying anything, just watching his movements quietly.
After a moment's silence, Officer Liu spoke in a hoarse voice: "You have all seen the photo, so I don't need to hide anything. His name is Xu. He grew up in an interstellar gang and naturally became a space pirate. After being arrested, he was sentenced to life imprisonment and sent to Quye Prison. Just as you guessed just now, he and I fell in love."
"The prison doesn't allow guards and prisoners to be together, so he worked very hard to get his sentence reduced so he could get out early and live an upright life with me. We agreed that when he gets out, I would resign and we would find a planet with beautiful scenery and spend the rest of our lives together."
Officer Liu looked at Xu who was smiling in the frame, and a smile appeared on his face. His eyes softened and were full of warmth.
Lan Yu could see that he loved the person in the photo very much.
"After discussion, we chose Jaya as our home planet. It's a blue planet covered by sea water. We bought a small fishing boat and built a small wooden house by the sea. We went out to sea every morning and returned home together at night, listening to the waves and drinking some local wine..."
"While serving his sentence, he saved several mining company personnel who fell into a deep well. He made great contributions and was granted a commutation of sentence. So he was released from prison a year ago after serving his sentence. According to our agreement, he will go to the main planet to wait for me. I still have a six-month contract with the prison. After the six months, I will not renew the contract. I will go to the main planet to find him, and then go to Chaya Planet together."
"The waiting seemed like an eternity. Although we only communicated through the terminal every day, every day was full of hope. Until... until..."
Lan Yu saw a tear drop falling on the mirror frame, blurring Xu's face.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
