"Wow, such a big car for regular folks to use! And the view is really nice," Adrian said, full of curiosity on his first bus ride. He'd been in cars before, but never in a big vehicle like this.
It was afternoon, not many passengers. Adrian kept moving seats excitedly, looking all around.
Outside, the streets were busy. Cars flowed between tall buildings, people walking everywhere. You'd never see a city like this in the other world.
"What do you think of this world? If you really like it, why don't we just stay here?" I suddenly had a bold idea and quickly asked him.
Earth is way safer overall. No monsters, no endless wars. With our abilities, surviving here would be a piece of cake!
"Uh, that's not impossible..." Adrian was stunned. He'd never thought of this new path before, so he didn't react right away.
"But it's such a big decision. I need to think about it more," he said after a moment, looking worried. Probably thinking of things he'd miss. He quickly apologized and changed his answer.
"No worries. We still have a long time before the one-month deadline. Let's talk after you decide," I nodded, feeling a bit disappointed inside. But I expected this. Moving between worlds is a huge deal, so it's natural for Adrian to have doubts.
We kept going, but the good times didn't last!
After passing several stops, I noticed this familiar bus route had suddenly turned off onto a side road, away from where it usually went. I couldn't help asking:
"Driver! What's going on? Aren't we supposed to go through Science Academy Street? Why are we suddenly going a different way?"
I used to take this bus often. Even after a few months, they shouldn't change the route so much.
"Didn't you see the notice? We had to change the route! They suddenly announced military traffic control ahead, including Science Academy Street. No vehicles allowed in or out. Most streets and stops inside the Second Ring Road are blocked. We have to go around!"
Hearing the driver's frustrated answer, Adrian and I couldn't help looking at each other.
Anyone would know something fishy was going on with such big controls suddenly put in place. Considering the Aurora Entertainment was in a similar situation, the reason might be related to the other world!
We had to check it out! We got off at the next stop, went to a quiet place with no people, and turned invisible again.
Invisible, we could fly freely. But we didn't rush straight into the restricted area. We went back to the original route first, and soon came to a heavily guarded checkpoint.
"Military control area ahead. Vehicles and pedestrians without passes prohibited!"
We saw a warning sign first. There were several layers of roadblocks in the middle of the road at the edge of the controlled area. Behind them, we could see armed H-country soldiers patrolling. Good thing they couldn't see us.
We easily passed the checkpoint, but surprisingly found lots more obstacles on the other side too. It was like they were trying hard to keep people inside from rushing out.
Could there be some kind of riot inside the controlled area? I thought that at first, but what we actually saw as we went further was totally different from what I imagined.
This road was the same size as the ones outside. Soon there were all kinds of shops on both sides again. A few were even still open! The only difference from outside was there were way fewer people because of the controls. It was really quiet.
"Everything looks fine! Why do they need to block the roads?" I wondered.
There weren't many civilian cars at this time, but there were still some military and construction vehicles going back and forth, hurrying to different edges of the area.
It looked like just blocking the roads wasn't enough. The government seemed to want to fence off the whole area!
"Let's go further in and look?" Adrian didn't understand the reason either, but he wasn't in a rush to figure it out. He pulled me to keep slowly moving towards the center of the controlled area.
Good thing we had our phones with us. After some tricky efforts to get online, we found quite a bit of news about this area in the south of the city. But it had clearly been toned down on purpose.
The official reason was control of infectious hepatitis A! It sounded like they were trying to cover something up. The excuse was too weak - since when did they need to block roads to control hepatitis?
Looking at earlier news, there was nothing at all about a hepatitis outbreak. But surprisingly, just two days ago, there was explosive news about several gang fights with police on this street!
Gangs again! The news didn't say if this gang was connected to the one at Aurora Entertainment, but it left a lot to the imagination.
Walking on the streets of the controlled area, there were surprisingly few people. But as we got closer to the center, things finally started getting busier. Not more people, but we could see propaganda vehicles using loudspeakers and drones to call out to the surrounding neighborhoods, telling people to cooperate with the lockdown.
"During this special time, please stay home and wait for disease screening notices. Try not to go out!"
Hearing this, I felt something was off! It's just hepatitis. Being careful about food and drink can control it effectively. Why make people stay home?
The military controlled area wasn't that big, but not small either. North to south it was only about 3-4 streets long. There were lots of people living and working in this area. The lockdown left everyone confused. Many still hadn't gotten over the shock.
"What are they doing over there?" Adrian asked, pointing at a crowd of people lining up in front of a row of tables in a community square ahead.
Many of them had suitcases. They looked like local people who had just come out of nearby neighborhoods. But they couldn't leave right away. They were all gathered in the middle of the square.
"Hmm... probably taking blood samples!" I looked closer.
The people sitting behind the tables were clearly medical staff in white coats. There were test tubes and other medical equipment on the tables. Many people who had just left the tables had their sleeves rolled up, like they'd just been stuck with needles.
Hepatitis can be checked through blood tests, so that made sense. But organizing such large-scale community screening still seemed like overkill to me.
And even if they were doing tests, why were there armed police and soldiers standing around the square? That didn't make sense either! They were clearly focused on watching these ordinary people waiting for tests. Were they afraid people would refuse to cooperate?
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Suddenly, something unexpected happened!
Three sharp gunshots rang out from a neighborhood not far behind us. The crowd started getting restless.
"Quiet down! This has nothing to do with you. Hurry up and line up to cooperate with the hepatitis A screening!" A military officer in charge of keeping order quickly spoke up to calm people. He also kept chasing away people who were still hanging around the square.
"Those who've already had blood drawn, don't stay around here. The tests take several hours. During that time, follow the guides to ride buses to centralized quarantine areas to wait for observation. Once we confirm you're not infected, we'll arrange for you to leave the controlled area!"
"But what if we don't want to go?" As soon as he finished speaking, someone objected. But the officer didn't agree. He waved his hand impatiently, and several armed police immediately stepped out of line and started chasing people away.
Soon there was movement from the neighborhood where the gunshots happened! A team of heavily armed soldiers came out of the neighborhood gate. The last few were carrying a stretcher together. You could clearly see there was a body in a bag on it. They loaded it into a van parked by the road and drove away.
"Something's not right. There's definitely something fishy going on!" Seeing this scene, even someone slow-witted could tell things weren't as simple as the government was saying.
"Should we follow that car that just left?" Adrian was still focused on that body. Whatever mission they were on, those soldiers must have had a reason for killing their target. The car hadn't gone far yet. If we went all out to chase it, we could definitely catch up.