He looked at the face reflected on the inside of the capsule, which indeed belonged to the observer, but was slightly different from the size of his “game”: he was extremely thin, built like a lonely 2B pencil.
His whole face is sagging, the eyes, the corners of his mouth, the lines of his face, all pointed and thin downwards.
At such a young age, it was as if the weight of the paddle had been lifted from his head.
The room is closed, except for three ‘capsules’ placed side by side and a door.
The man did not rush to get up, but after adjusting to the sudden change in his surroundings, he rolled his eyes and looked around before pressing a switch on his right hand side.
The switch scans his index fingerprint and opens slowly. The man takes off his helmet, smoothes his hair and lifts his legs out of the cabin.
He went to the door and, unable to find a place to open it from the inside, simply raised his hand and knocked.
The door creaked open from the outside, revealing an impatient face.
The man at the door was a woman, wearing an identical restraint collar around her neck, but wearing a silver isolation suit, a different status from the man.
There is an ashtray on the small table beside her, filled with cigarette butts.
The woman asked, “Why are you the only one out? Where is everyone of them?”
The man’s calmness softened and dissolved in the moment he opened the door, turning into nothing.
He rubbed his nose and grinned a little embarrassed.
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The woman got it: “…… been thrown out again?”
The man clutched his helmet, his voice timid: “Too much for me to get in the way.”
The woman handed over a glass of salt water, “It’s to replenish your electrolytes, drink it and go back in. If anyone finds out you’ve gone AWOL, you’ll have to go into the shock room.”
The man said thank you, took the glass of water and took a small sip, not even daring to raise his eyelids, looking like a good pug.
”The last time I told you to try it ……” the woman glanced at the man, wanting to say something, “Forget it, at first glance you didn’t try it.”
The man showed weakness: “I wouldn’t dare.”
The woman squinted at him, lit a lady’s cigarette, held it between her fingers and gave a laugh, “If you don’t dare, you’ll be a C grade for the rest of your life.”
As soon as the woman’s words left her mouth, the side of her neck tingled fiercely.
Before she lost consciousness, the mint-scented cigarette curling up from her hand was gently picked up and held in her mouth, “Thank you for your kind words. Get some rest.”
The man took a skilled puff on his cigarette, then flicked the filter to one side with his tongue, and with one hand he held the woman between his right arm and his body like a book, dragging her straight through the empty corridor and into the room, closing the door behind him, quickly examining her entire body, finding three keys and finally shoving the unconscious person into the can-like “capsule”.
He had guessed correctly that this woman was the “jailer”.
To put it more accurately, she is the “manager” of the General Control Centre, responsible for managing the situation of the three members of her team, controlling the keys to their rooms, checking their personal belongings without notice and taking direct responsibility for all their actions.
In the corridor outside the door, three tin cabinets, two feet wide and one foot high, are stacked from top to bottom.
This holds the personal belongings of three members of the team.
Before entering the “capsule”, they must remove all their belongings and deposit them in it.
Three keys, belonging to three different tin cabinets, and to three different people.
One is a bare, unadorned key ring and the other is a key with a dolphin charm with a small lipstick for ladies.
And on the third key hangs a large, blurred, adhesive key chain with a large head.
Large head stickers adorned with cheap strawberry patterns, the man and a little girl with eyebrows that closely resemble his face the camera, smiling in unison.
This headshot should be classified as “badly photographed”.
The girl’s face is a little overexposed and only half of her face and a mouthful of cute little white teeth can be seen.
In those days, men were not as thin as they are now.
His cheeks were full and he did not have a collar around his neck to represent obedience.
The man took this key, delicately touched the pattern on it and pushed the hidden door back open.
After only half a minute’s delay, the corridor, which had just been empty, was already filled with a small team of five men, coming towards where the men were.
Holding the keys, the man smoothly extinguished his cigarette in the ashtray and bowed, intending to send the small group away.
Unexpectedly, as the small group came up to him, the leader waved his hand and the group stopped in front of him.
The man at the head was wearing the same silver isolation suit as the woman earlier, “Where’s your ‘mastermind’ and your teammates?”
The “master of ceremonies”, the woman in charge of watching over them.
The man swept his eyes over the small group of five, and with a twist of his mind, he already had an answer, “They went first.”
”Tough fucking luck, picking up two slow hands in one breath.” Sure enough, the man at the head of the line didn’t raise any suspicions and said impatiently, “Get your personal belongings and follow the line.”
The man frowned slightly.
…… He came out in such a hurry that he hadn’t had time to try out which cupboard the key he was holding belonged to.
Seeing his lack of response, the “manager” gave him a shove: “What are you doing? What’s the third of the Ten Rules of the Centre? Memorise it.”
The man said obediently, “Centre staff are not allowed to carry out any kind of personal actions without the guidance of the ‘master’. If so, there is ……”
While lying in the “capsule”, the “ten prohibitions” were stuck in black and white on one corner of the inside of the capsule.
He remembered it well by heart, but still pretended to stumble.
Soon, the ‘master’ became impatient: “…… If you leave the team, you have to wait in the same place and be received by other ‘masters’. …… How did your ‘master’ assess you?”
The man scowled, and seeing him in such a state of discomfort, the “manager” lost interest in lecturing him and, with a wave of his hand, repeated, “Take out your personal belongings. Follow my party.”
The man turned his head and looked at the three tin cabinets.
There is no code on the cabinet and no name tag.
He held the key with the inferior headband hanging from it, his palm sweating slightly.
The “manager” waited for a moment, saw something strange and frowned back, “Have you forgotten which cupboard you put your belongings in?”
The man sank down for a moment, crouched down and inserted a key into the locking eye of one of the cabinets.
The men had the lowest level of psychic ability, should have been often bullied in the squad, and used, what should have been, the least useful lockers.
The bottom cupboard, with the twist of a key, opened in response.
He bends down laboriously and takes a bracelet with a sensor from inside the cupboard: this is what you swipe when you go to the canteen to get your food.
He took out another pair of light cloth shoes and hastily slipped them on.
Finally, he pulled out a tattered comic book.
It’s a comic about a superhero with the edges turned up in fur.
–This is all the man has in the General Control Centre.
Behind him came the disdainful snicker of the “manager” and the man, not forgetting his weak personality, did not dare to say anything more, but with his hands protecting his only possessions at the moment to his chest, followed the procession all the way to the front.
The corridor was extraordinarily long and the lead ‘manager’, seemingly to show off, raised his voice and said, “Boys, recite the ‘Ten Rules’ to our ‘new team member’ and help him review them.”
Those members of the team who followed behind him recited in unison with numb eyes, “Rule number one, no unusual contact, in any form, with other centre personnel, or killing themselves in any form.”
They march in unison, their voices straight and emotionless, looking straight ahead.
The rules and regulations seem to have been etched on their retinas with a branding iron.
”Secondly, no entry into areas clearly marked as ‘no entry’ and only permitted in fixed areas.”
”Article 3 ……”
”Article 4: Centre personnel shall not carry more than one kilogram of personal belongings, except for allotted supplies.”
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”Article 5, no secrets relating to the Centre shall be divulged to anyone.”
”……”
To the sound of mechanical recitation, the men sheepishly followed the procession, muffling their heads as they marched.
As far as the eye can see, it is snowy white.
After a high degree of technological and institutionalisation, this excessive cleanliness has instead given rise to a deep and depressing feeling in the marrow of one’s bones.
The hut out of which he emerged was like one of the small hexagonal hives of countless bees, the other worker bees in order, moving in and out, exhausting their lives to provide for a certain fat queen bee that they might not see for the rest of their lives.
The “Master of Ceremonies” leads the group to the accommodation area.
It is said to be a residential area and each person has a separate room, but each room is only a square ten square metres, with a bed at the entrance and a toilet in the corner.
Everyone feels that this place is no different from a prison cell.
But at least here, everyone is the same.
They do not have to worry about being discriminated against here, and their inner order and peace is maintained, but they often overlook the fact that the very existence of the General Control Centre is discrimination itself.
The “manager” looked back and was about to ask which dormitory the two half-wayers were in so that he could take them there, when he saw that only one unfamiliar face was left in the group.
He wondered, “Where is that man?! Where did it go!!!”
……
The man sits at a computer in the main control room, his fingers flying, the head of an unconscious staff member at his feet and his personal belongings belonging to the man at his hand.
One by one, he clicks on the Wen folder on his computer, not trying to remember, but just skimming through it and reading it.
By now, he had a general idea of the purpose of the Catfish project from his computer.
The warning light behind the man, signifying “accident in the main control centre”, had been blaring for a long time, but the man was unconcerned and had no intention of running away, even after completing his mission, and instead picked up the comic book in his hand.
On the title page, written in crooked, circular children’s script, are the words ‘Lu Xiaomei’.
It seems that this is the real owner of the comic, and the man’s daughter.
The man picked up the keys in his hand and once again examined the little girl standing beside the man on the poor quality key chain, smiling with a mouthful of tiny white teeth.
This is a comic about a superhero, but the names of the heroes are all replaced by the words “Lu Qingshu”, which the young girl has taken it upon herself to replace.
The man’s name is Lu Qingshu, a name that sounds heavenly.
A man with only C-rank powers, who is woefully inadequate in front of his enemies, crying on his knees ‘spare me’ and ‘spare me’, is invincible in this comic.
In the minds of most children in the world, their father is the first hero in their minds.
The man flipped through the comic carefully until a numbness in his neck and a highly concentrated anaesthetic was pushed into him through a syringe in the side of his collar.
…… It appears that the General Control Centre has identified ” Lu Qingshu”.
The moment the anaesthetic was injected, the door behind them was broken open and a dozen or so men armed with poison fishtailed in.
The man’s body went limp like mud.
The captain of the escort confirmed that he had fallen into a deep sleep and, with a wave of his hand, the others immediately gathered around him.
The captain stood up beside him, rolled his eyes and scowled.
The “manager” who had taken him away came in a hurry, pushed through the crowd, saw the fainting man and, enraged, went up to him and kicked his body out of the chair: “Fuck! You want to kill me, huh? If you want to kill me, I’ll kill you first…”
The captain was silent and reached out to stop him for a moment.
The “manager” was furious, but managed to hold back his anger: “What’s wrong with him?”
”He ……,” the captain said, “is still in false sleep mode.”
The “manager” didn’t get it for a moment: “What does that mean?”
The captain’s face grew hard: “He’s back in that world.”
”Mastermind: “How is this possible? How did he get back there without a helmet, without a connected device?!”
The captain was just about to speak when the man, who was lying on the ground, suddenly made a sharp, strange sound in his throat, a whirring sound, as if a hole had been broken in his throat.
After a loud bang, his head lolled to the side and he died of exhaustion.
The captain and the “manager” looked at each other, and an extremely horrible suspicion came to their minds.
…… The person who just returned, was it Lu Qingshu?
Or is it something else in that world ……?
Could it be that some shifter snatched Lu Qingshu’s body, arrived in the real world, spied on the information he wanted and then killed him?
However, what really happened is probably known only to the dead and the originators.
The “mastermind” froze for a moment, took his communicator and sent out an urgent message, “Check the landing site chosen by Lu Qingshu’s three-man team, find out if any psychics are or have been in the area, and send three ‘catfish’ teams to clear it out!”
”I’ve got it!” The man on the other end directed his men to remove the unconscious female “manager” from the “capsule”, reached out and took the vital signs of the other two, and with a frown on his face, he returned, “This team chose area D20. There are still signs of alien activity in this area!”
”Who?”
” Wei Shiliu , a B-ranked psychic with good odds, may not be easy to get started ……”
The “master” stood still and said fiercely, “By all means, kill him. Use him as ‘fertilizer’!”
……
It is thanks to a mirror in Chi Xiaochi’s warehouse that ” Bai Anyi ” has been able to reappear.
About an hour and ten minutes ago, after some deliberation, they decided to send ” Bai Anyi ” out on a spying mission.
For no other reason than that ” Bai Anyi” has a special physique that allows him to return at any time should an unexpected situation arise.
” Bai Anyi” looked around and the three were actually in the middle of a desert oasis.
Not seeing the “observer”, he asked, “Where is Lu Qingshu?”
Chi Xiaochi : “Who?”
” Bai Anyi”: “That ‘observer’.”
Chi Xiaochi looks glum.
Lou Ying answered for him, “He died, just now. It was suicide.”
” Bai Anyi” with a frown.
He remembers very clearly that when Lu Qingshu was first arrested, he was in tears, screaming that he didn’t want to die and begging them to let him go.
Would such a person choose to commit suicide?
”After you left, he calmed down quite a bit. He had a daughter, he said.” Chi Xiaochi lowered his eyelids, “He can’t go back. If he dies, he’s killed in the line of duty, the centre will give him a pension and his daughter will live a little better; if he doesn’t die, once he goes back, he’ll immediately be branded a traitor and thrown into prison.”
”He said he’d wanted to die for a long time. The only way to hold on was to flip through his comics at night while he slept and think about his daughter’s face.”
”He was quite nagging, talking a lot about his daughter.”
”The last thing he said before he died was, I’m sorry, I didn’t actually want to kill you guys at all. I only killed you all because I wanted to live.”
After Lu Qingshu’s death, Chi Xiaochi used another instant movement card to move them to a new location.
”My brother has just studied the collar.” Chi Xiaochi said, “He said that while there was no way to block the collar’s other functions, he could at least intercept the injection of anesthetics and lethal poisons. Even if they find out we did it ……”
”Even if they find out, they won’t easily inject poison to kill people,”” Bai Anyi” picked up, “It’s just a threatening tactic. To them, the alien is useful fertiliser.”
Chi Xiaochi pondered, “…… fertilizer?”
He paused and continued, “…… Alter Ego’s can evolve. Evolve, either through training or through their own natural evolution. …… But both are too slow, and the most convenient way, is to kill another shifter.”
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