louisehourcade Chapter 718 We're just a hair's breadth away from the answer!
Chapter 718 We're just a hair's breadth away from the answer!
Rachel looked at her, her eyes completely expressionless: "But you still came."
Jason suddenly shouted angrily from outside: "Don't move!"
Then the glass shattered. Derek had apparently tried to climb out the window, but Jason grabbed him. The plainclothes officers all rushed over there, and footsteps echoed outside.
Lynn didn't get distracted, only staring at the person in front of him: "Where is the stuff in the gray box?"
Rachel chuckled softly: "You're asking that question too late."
“Let me rephrase the question,” Lynn said. “Was it the transit list or the sample index that was taken away last night?”
Rachel's eyes showed a very subtle change for the first time. It wasn't much, hardly a surprise, but more like she was trying to figure out which part of the chain had broken first.
Aida looked at him, her voice hard: "It's an index, isn't it?"
Rachel didn't answer.
Lynn, however, had already seen the answer. He stepped forward: "The empty liner box on the table doesn't contain paper."
Rachel's smile faded slightly.
“The paper is just for Michael to see,” Lynn said. “The real test is what’s in the box. The page you had just now is the comparison table.”
Rachel looked at him and finally placed the folded piece of paper on the table. “Federal Abnormal Affairs,” he said. “I’ve always been curious about the criteria your department uses to ultimately screen people. Intuition? Luck? Or the irritability from insomnia?”
“You can take your time guessing today.” Jason’s voice came from outside, and he followed him in, his shirt cuff ripped, but he had already pushed Derek in, twisting him behind his back. Derek’s face was scraped, and he was still cursing, but he was forced to his knees on the ground.
“Derek,” Rachel glanced at him, her tone indifferent, “really ugly.”
Derek gritted his teeth: "You're just going to stand there and watch?"
“Haven’t I always been like this?” Rachel said.
Jason chuckled: "Your boss culture is really good."
Michael was also brought to the door, trembling as if he were about to fall apart: "I don't know anything! I was just delivering as instructed—"
"Shut up," Rachel said curtly.
Michael actually shut up instinctively; those two words were more effective than handcuffs.
Lynn watched this scene and asked, "He's afraid of you, not because you know he's taking bribes, but because you know something else."
Rachel didn't laugh this time: "You have a lot of questions."
“Because I want to pick the one you least want to answer,” Lynn said. “For example, why did you specifically open the grey box two years ago? For example, why don’t you let your own people access the transit list alone? Are you afraid they will find out where the people you screened went, or are you afraid they will find out who you used as a sample?”
There was a half-second of silence in the room.
Michael's face went from deathly pale to an even more unsightly ashen.
Aida also stared at Rachel, as if she herself only knew half of the chain.
Rachel stood there, her hand still raised, her face expressionless. After two seconds, he said softly, "Agent, have you noticed that you're always just a little bit away from the answer?"
Lynn kept his gun steady: "Even a little bit is enough to handcuff you."
"Yeah."
As he said this, his gaze suddenly drifted very lightly to the left corner of the wall.
Lynn realized something was wrong almost simultaneously: "Next—"
Behind the unassuming old-fashioned radiator cover on the left wall of the study, a blinding white flash suddenly erupted. It wasn't a flame, nor a normal explosion, but an extremely sharp, high-frequency flash. In an instant, the entire room seemed to be sliced in two by a white blade; everything disappeared from sight, leaving only a piercing ringing in the ears.
Lynn instinctively turned to the side, raising his arm to shield his eyes. Ada cursed a very short swear word by the door. Jason pinned Derek to the ground.
The next second, after the flash of light passed, the spot where Rachel had been standing was empty.
Behind the old bookcase that shouldn't have been moved, a narrow crack, just big enough for one person to squeeze through, was revealed, through which a cold wind blew straight in.
"Fuck!" Jason roared.
Lynn had already rushed over. Behind the hidden door wasn't a normal stairwell, but a narrow service mezzanine hidden during the renovation of the old building, as dark as an upright well. The wind blew upwards, carrying the smell of old ash and metal.
In the earpiece, the guards at the back alley shouted simultaneously, "There's movement! Someone's coming down the fire escape—no, wait, from inside the wall!"
Lynn rushed to the edge of the mezzanine and looked down, only to see a gray shadow flash by below, like a shadow sliding away from inside the building.
“He’s going down!” Jason caught up.
“It’s not a normal staircase,” Lynn said. “It’s an old pipe mezzanine.”
Aida stood by the hidden door, her face extremely pale: "I told you, he never waits for a second time."
Lynn turned to look at her: "You know this road?"
Aida gritted her teeth: "I know roughly how it goes, but I've never been there. He won't let anyone else go."
“Then you can learn now.” After saying that, Lynn climbed over the mezzanine.
"Are you crazy?" Jason cursed, but he had already followed them downstairs.
The mezzanine was ridiculously narrow; you had to tuck in your knees, shoulders, and even your gun. It wasn't a proper staircase, but rather a series of staggered iron frames, old pipe supports, and maintenance steps—a simple misstep could easily cause an ordinary person to lose their footing. The metallic echoes coming from below indicated that Rachel was moving even lower, and at an extremely fast pace.
As Lynn scrolled down to the second paragraph, she heard a very soft "click" coming from somewhere below.
"Don't step in the middle!" he shouted immediately.
Jason had already hooked his foot onto the left-hand pipe bracket. The next second, the middle section of the metal stepping stone they had just been on flipped open, revealing a dark hole below. If someone had actually stepped on it, they would have fallen straight down. The old building was damp inside, and below was either a ventilation shaft or an abandoned shaft, with a drop of at least three stories.
“Do you think he installs this kind of thing in his house every day?” Jason said, panting.
"Enough with the nonsense," Lynn continued.
Through the headset, Blake's men on the ground kept reporting their positions: "No target in the back alley! Empty underpass! Wait—there's an unusual heat source on the east wall, it's moving!"
“It’s not the east wall,” Aida’s voice squeezed into the channel, clearly she had followed along. “It’s the old shaft connection. This building might be connected to the back alley of the laundry room next door.”
"Is the back alley next door sealed off?" Lynn asked.
"Unsealed!"
Suddenly, there was another metallic clang, followed by something flying diagonally upwards from below. Lynn tilted his head to avoid it, and a thin, long needle grazed his ear and embedded itself in the wooden beam above, disappearing completely. Jason cursed under his breath, "Rachel uses her stuff too?"
“No. He just grabbed it without thinking,” Aida said from behind. “He uses everyone’s things.”
Lynn continued down. It grew colder and more humid down there. The last section was almost no longer the interior of the building, but a narrow, old maintenance shaft barely wide enough for someone to squeeze through sideways. As soon as he reached the bottom, he saw the gray shadow flash by again, disappearing into a crack in a brick wall that should have been sealed off.
"Stop!" Lynn shouted.
Rachel actually paused for half a second and glanced back at him. The bottom of the interlayer was too dark; she could only see half his face and his extremely calm eyes. His gaze didn't seem like that of someone fleeing for their life; it was more like that of someone still observing the results of an experiment.
“You see,” he said, “in the end, architecture is more honest.”
“Your path is gone.” Lynn raised his gun.
Rachel glanced at the muzzle of his gun and said softly, "Are you sure?"
Jason landed on the ground and was about to flank around from the right when the old bricks at his feet suddenly loosened for a moment. He reacted quickly, pulling back sharply, but a layer of ash sprayed out from the cracks in the bricks. It wasn't poison, but excessively fine mineral dust that blurred his vision.
In that very second, Rachel stepped back and disappeared into the darkness behind the brickwork.
"Get in!" Jason yelled.
Lynn rushed forward, his gun barrel piercing the gap, and discovered that behind it was an abandoned maintenance tunnel connecting the ground floor of the adjacent building to the old ventilation shaft. Both ends were ventilated, the airflow was turbulent, footprints were lost, and sound was easily dispersed.
Rachel is gone.
But on the right wall, there was a very new scratch, as if some hard-edged box had just been swept past and rubbed against the corner of the brick.
“He was carrying something,” Lynn said.
"Which way?" Jason asked.
Lynn crouched down, touched the water stains on the ground, and looked up to the left: "Left."
The two of them chased after it at the same time.
At the end of the maintenance lane was a modified iron mesh gate, leading to the back alley of the laundry room next door. The gate wasn't locked, just ajar. Lynn kicked it open, and a cold wind mixed with the smell of rain rushed into his face. This was a completely different New York from the front street: trash cans, wet cardboard, exhaust vents, and brick walls blackened by the rain. A gray figure was hurrying towards the street corner at the alley entrance, indeed carrying a dark box the size of a palm.
“Rachel!” Jason yelled.
The man didn't turn around.
At the alley entrance, a waiting motorcycle suddenly started. The rider wore a full-face helmet, and the motorcycle was painted black, as if it had appeared out of nowhere from the rain. Rachel barely slowed down before throwing the box directly at the rider.
"Don't let the box go!" Lynn shouted.
Jason raised his gun.
Rachel had clearly anticipated this. Instead of running towards the motorcycle, she suddenly swerved sideways, using her body to block the angle of fire. Jason abruptly lowered his gun, cursing under his breath. The rider caught the box and immediately floored the accelerator.
Without hesitation, Lynn fired directly at the front wheel of the motorcycle.
The bullet shattered a brick next to a trash can at the alley entrance, but the shards also forced the motorcycle to veer sharply. The motorcycle lurched, and the box almost slipped from his grasp. The rider cursed, but managed to steady himself and charged towards the street corner.
Jason lunged at Rachel. The two collided violently on the slippery ground, their backs slamming against the brick wall. Rachel looked thin, but her strength was formidable; she raised her knee to strike Jason's injured ribs. Jason's face paled, and he retaliated with an elbow to Rachel's collarbone. Rachel's grip loosened, and a thin thread slipped from her sleeve, heading straight for Jason's throat.
“You hid one in your sleeve too!” Jason yelled.
Lynn rushed forward and slammed the butt of his gun into Rachel's wrist. The thin wire slipped from her grasp. Rachel stumbled, attempting to slide off the wall again. But this wasn't his building, nor did it have any pre-planned weaknesses. He was a beat too slow.
It's just this half-beat.
Lynn grabbed him by the back of the neck and slammed him against the brick wall. Rachel's forehead thudded, and for the first time, she actually frowned.
“It’s over,” Lynn said.
Rachel's breathing was a little erratic, but she was still smiling: "No. The box has already been taken out."
The motorcycle at the alley entrance had already sped onto the street.
Suddenly, Blake's roar came through the headphones: "Get down!"
The next second, an unmarked hitchhiker suddenly cut in from the side of the street and slammed the motorcycle shut. The door slammed open, and Blake himself jumped out of the driver's seat, almost hanging outside the vehicle, and fired his gun at the ground next to the motorcycle's rear wheel. The rider instinctively swerved, the motorcycle slid sideways, and he and the motorcycle were thrown violently to the ground, the box flying into the air.
Another police officer lunged forward, grabbed the box and rolled it around twice in his arms. His back hit a fire hydrant, and he groaned, but the box didn't fall to the ground.
"Got it!" the person in the earpiece shouted.
The alleyway fell silent for a moment, with only the rain and panting remaining.
Jason leaned against the wall, rubbing his ribs as he chuckled. "I take back half of my opinion on Blake."
"Only half?" Blake gasped and cursed into the headset. "You bastard."
Lynn forcefully twisted Rachel's hands behind her back and snapped the metal handcuffs on.
Rachel pressed her face against the damp, cold brick wall, remained silent for two seconds, and then suddenly said, "Agent, just because you have that box doesn't mean you can understand it."
“If you don’t understand, I can explain it to you,” Lynn said.
"I don't usually explain."
“Then learn slowly.” Jason walked over, raised his hand and locked his other wrist, then casually searched his sleeve and removed the second thin thread and the small, almost pencil-knife-like blade from his waist. “You have a lot of classes today.”
Rachel didn't say anything more.
A few minutes later, the entire back alley was completely under control. Derek, Michael, and Rachel were assigned to separate vehicles, while Ada remained alone in a hitchhiker's car, with smothers covering the windows. The motorcyclist was badly injured in the fall; the man who took off his helmet was a young man in his early twenties. He was tough-talking, but when he saw Rachel being dragged out as well, his face turned ashen.
Blake walked into the alley carrying the dark box, which was already wrapped in two layers of evidence bags: "Your lifeline."
"Don't shake it," Lynn said.
"Don't worry, I'm even more curious about what's inside than you are."
Jason took the box and looked down at it. The box wasn't large, it was matte black, and the four corners were sealed with extremely fine edges, like some kind of custom sample box. It wasn't an ordinary jewelry box, nor did it resemble a standard bank document box. Sure enough, there were shallow scratches on one side of the lid.
Aida looked at the box through the car window, and after a long while said, "Not all of it."
Several people turned to look at her.
"What do you mean?" Lynn asked.
“I told you, Leon didn’t hand over just one copy,” Ada said. “The one Rachel took away was only a part of it.”
Jason's smile faded slightly: "Where are the rest?"
Aida looked at Leon being led into the car and said softly, "On him, or on the road he left behind."
Lynn's eyes changed, and almost simultaneously he turned to reach for his communicator: "Black, immediately stop that car with Baron, search him on the spot, check his shoe soles, waistband, collar lining, braces, anywhere he can hide a smuggler. Also—don't let him touch any walls, the ground, or the car door."
The first thing I heard in my earpiece was a "Received," followed by a flurry of footsteps and the sound of a car door opening.
A dozen seconds later, a furious curse suddenly erupted from Blake's end: "Damn it! There's something in his mouth!"
Lynn's expression darkened: "Alive?"
"Alive! We've got him! It's not poison, it's—wait." Someone shouted, "Tweezers!" A few seconds later, Blake said breathlessly, "It's a small piece of wax-coated metal, hidden in the socket of his denture near his back molar. Damn it, if we'd been any slower he would have swallowed it." (End of Chapter)