Meanwhile, somewhere in District 17.
"Stand down, the place is surrounded by Law Enforcers."
"Almost everyone is here."
"Get started."
"According to the agreement, this news will hit the headline of all major media in half an hour."
"Stop, what the hell do you think you're doing!?"
"Don't think you can kill us and still make it out of District 17 alive!"
"Click--"
A soft sound, then silence resumed in the room.
The man sitting at the table jotted down the time on a sticky note after he switched off the complex playback device:
May 6, 2166, from 19:23:37 to 19:25:14.
The man laid out the sticky note with the time and seven similar sticky notes altogether to make a comparison.
Six sentences of dialogue were exchanged during these less than two minutes, coming from four individuals.
It's easy to guess the general situation at the crime scene from the conversation. Currently, we can rule out the unconscious female hostage, she's been knocked out by Chai Ke's men and is still unconscious.
"Honestly, I'm still on vacation!"
The woman in the room lazily crossed her legs and complained while painting her nails.
The big man standing next to her like a guardian spirit advised, "Complain less. After all, the victim was from the Foster Family."
"Anyone who gets dispatched to a place like District 17 can't be an important member of the family."
The woman responded without looking up, "It's common for refugees from some remote small cities to connect with the core family. I don't know what's gotten into the higher-ups, making us rush to this godforsaken place in the middle of the night!"
"Angel Foster is just a minor character."
The man comparing the sticky notes interrupted their conversation. The woman tried to say something more, but after a glance at him, she obediently closed her mouth, her gaze drifting away.
"The key is Chai Ke. At first glance, it looks like a revenge act he took against the local Law Enforcers after his jailbreak." The man calmly examined the conversation in those two minutes, "Once this makes the news, it'll undoubtedly be a humiliation for the local Law Enforcers. But there's a hidden piece of information in their conversation—Chai Ke sought someone else's consent before making his move."
"So, someone wanted to kill Angel Foster using Chai Ke, and then make Chai Ke bear the blame alone?"
"Chai Ke was probably seeking Angel Foster's opinion."
The startling statement by the man rendered the other two in the room speechless for a moment.
What the hell?
Angel's head was blown off by Chai Ke, her corpse is still in the morgue of the Law Enforcers.
Would a High Prosecutor on the rise in the local field order a fugitive to blow up her own head?
No matter how you look at it, it doesn't make sense.
"The key is in the voice."
After comparing the gathered voices from the crime scene seven times, he finally discovered the trick, "The source of the voice is not right. When the other hostages spoke, Angel was not with them."
"But her body was found next to the unconscious hostage."
"Her hands were tied behind her back, a sack was put over her head, but her mouth wasn't gagged. As a member of the Foster Family, her will to live seems rather weak for not saying a word within those two minutes."
"It's possible that she was knocked out from the start."
"A person who's unconscious can't move several meters in less than a second and take a bullet."
The man slowly closed his eyes, in his mind, based on the content of the recording, he constructed the positions of all the people at the scene in those less than two minutes.
"There were four hostages in total, and there's a distance of more than four meters between Angel and Chai Ke..."
Then, the image he constructed in his mind began to move.
The moment Chai Ke pulled the trigger, the two hostages next to his target started desperately crawling towards a corner of the room. And in that moment, which lasted less than a second, Angel crossed the distance of over four meters and took the bullet meant for someone else.
Soon after, Angel Foster was shot and killed, Chai Ke and his men were immediately pierced through their chests from behind and instantly killed.
The man's colleagues finally realized the seriousness of the problem along his line of thinking, instantly feeling a chill run down their spine.
Someone killed everyone in the room within a second, which includes a wanted criminal with a bounty of 620,000 and had 21% prosthetic modification!
Considering Angel Foster's meeting with Chai Ke might have been instigated by her family, their real mission for this trip was to find the person who vanished from the scene.
The woman's action of painting her nails froze mid-air, and the chill in her heart would not fade.
To find that person, they must figure out what exactly happened in that brief second.
This was bound to be a sleepless night.
...
The next morning, Song Lan was woken up by an urgent alarm.
He faced the rising sun, contentedly stretching. The biggest benefit of moving into Lu Xiang's house was that he could sleep soundly every night.
At least he didn't have to worry about criminals from District 17 breaking into a Law Enforcer official's house to cause trouble.
Another piece of good news was that he didn't have to work today.
After sending a text to his supervisor for a leave of absence, he started to search for information on nearby prosthetic hospitals.
He had already promised Lu Xiang yesterday and had even taken his paycheck, so he had to make this trip to the prosthetic hospital.
But that doesn't mean he really needs to cut open his arm and turn himself into a half-mechanic.
As the saying goes, where there is policy, there is counterstrategy. He started to think of a reason to make Lu Xiang believe that he is ready for a change, but due to various irresistible reasons, things didn't turn out as expected.
For example, he might get a full check-up in the prosthetic hospital, and then unexpectedly find out that he has some kind of disease that will kill him if he gets a prosthesis implanted.
Song Lan's medical knowledge was poor, and Lu Xiang would surely see through if he invents a disease on the fly. So, he needs to team up with an expert from the prosthetic hospital for a proper setup.
With the official organization certification stating that "he would die if a prosthesis is implanted", Lu Xiang would probably not say anything more.
He felt proud of his cunning plan.
After praising himself internally, Song Lan shortlisted one of the prosthetic hospitals.
You're the one!
Three Rounds Prosthetic Hospital, which had been filed a complaint for charging patients black money in the past!
Hurry up and accept my black money, then turn me into a "special patient who would die if a prosthesis is implanted"!