Late at night, a double room for rent in an old neighbourhood.
Knock, knock, knock!
The knocking echoed in the darkness, making the silence sound like a thunderbolt in the sky. But the neighbours, upstairs and downstairs, heard nothing. For what was knocking was the closed wooden door of one of the bedrooms!
There was a girl curled up in the bed, not daring to answer, desperately suppressing her breathing, vaguely sobbing. Her eyes were wide open, staring towards the door. Even though she couldn't see anything, she didn't dare close her eyes, as if she could hold on to this precarious last "line of defence".
Knock, knock, knock!
The bedroom door was knocked again, accompanied by a female voice: "Lily, open the door; I brought you your favourite food ...".
This voice is Lily's roommate, but the staccato in the statement is extremely strange. Some primary school students read aloud the kind of stereotypical ups and downs of the text, but even in the "most" word, where the broken sound is. This grotesque "late-night snacks invitation" scared the soul, and hands tightly covered the ears. But the knocking at the door became more and more urgent, and the voice seemed to penetrate the door, the wall and the hands and reach her ear, murmuring in her ear:
"Open the door, Lily. Aren't barbecued chicken wings your favourite food..."
The highly unorthodox words trailed off as if an old-fashioned player had jammed the tape, startling Lily so much that she sucked in a breath of cold air and nearly collapsed. A hand came from behind her back and covered her mouth, preventing her from screaming.
"Shhh."
A masculine, airy voice rumbled in Lily's ear, covering the treacherous call, "Don't answer her."
The girl stayed close to him, giving a slight but quick nod. The male youth behind her added, "Close your eyes, don't look."
The girl closed her eyes, tears finally rolling down and across her face, soaking the gap between the boy's hand and her face.
The shouting outside the door continued and became more urgent, the clicks and clacks signalling that the lock was being turned hard. The boy paid no attention but turned his head and, with his other hand, pressed the light on his mobile phone, sending a quick message, [It's outside the bedroom door.]
Someone quickly replied, I understand. Act now. Wait to open the door, don't answer and don't go near the entrance!
The boy pushed the mobile phone straight out without answering, and the room returned to darkness. The doorknob was still shaking violently, with a force far removed from that of an ordinary girl, as if the door would be violently broken open in the next second. The female voice also turned up, calling out to Lily with a scream, repeating the words she had said.
But they were the exact words Lily had heard last night.
Lily curled up tighter and tighter, clutching the blankets and stifling her sobs. The boy behind her, however, was calm and collected. If you were to turn on the light and look at him now, you would see that he was staring fixedly in the direction of the doorway, his face expressionless, as if no urgency could quicken his heartbeat.
I don't know how long it had been, maybe a few minutes, maybe ten or twenty, but the sound of the door opening and closing came from outside the house. Someone seemed to be coming from outside, and it was hard to hear through the door panel. But soon Lily heard a stern male voice from outside: "Warning!"
-- a voice she had heard before!
Lily's spirits lifted, and then she heard a no, a loud bang that almost merged into the same sound - "BANG!!!"
Lily's breath stopped momentarily as she heard something hitting the bedroom door and wall hard! She even thought she listened to the splintering of the wooden door as it was knocked out and fell to the floor. But no matter how wide-eyed she was in the dark, she couldn't see what was happening.
And compared to Lily, who didn't dare to move, the boy behind her dropped the hand covering her and climbed straight out of bed.
Lily said subconsciously: "You ..."
At that moment, the light in the outside living room came on and shone through the gap where the wooden door had been broken open onto the boy walking behind the door.
The boy turned his head, looked at Lily on the bed and said the words that lit the light in her heart.
"It's all right; it's over."
***
Two hours later, Silver Arch, a 7x24 fast food chain.
"Bear, you see, the mission is still simple and safe, isn't it?"
A rough-faced man came over with two food trays, one of which he placed in front of the youth who had previously sat on a bed with Lily, before sitting himself down across from the youth, "Oh yeah, you said you'd eat the same as me, and I was afraid that you wouldn't be able to finish it, so I just got you a burger, is that enough?"
The middendorffi looked at the burger, fried chicken, chicken nuggets, pie, and a large Coke before him, "... Enough."
"Then eat, and I'll send you back to bed afterward." The man unwrapped his burger and took a significant nibble, "The funding for the mission will come down in about a week, then I'll send it to your account, get you to sign a signature receipt, and it's over. This time, this 'pseudo man' is good to clean up, just one alone, and did not succeed in capturing alive, estimated to give to you on five hundred it. Oh, you still have no problem eating these days, right?"
middendorffi: "No problem."
"That's fine." The man continued, "You shouldn't mind it being too little; after all, you're just scouting the situation in front this time, and the danger of this 'pseudo-human' isn't too great, so the total cost isn't too high ..."
He was a tall man with a pretty, rambling mouth. It was a good thing there were no other customers in the fast food restaurant in the early hours of the morning, and there were very few clerks on duty. The two sat in the corner and talked and wouldn't be overheard by a third party.
The middendorffi just listened silently until the other suddenly startled, "You eat so fast! So hungry?"
The middendorffi, who had already swallowed an entire burger and an order of fried chicken nuggets, had just opened the nuggets and swallowed the first one in one gulp, "... It's okay, not hungry."
"I thought I ate fast enough; you're even more dramatic than me. You, this little body, did not expect wow." The man said, "Why don't we buy you some more? Anyway, the night snack is reimbursed, so I'm not afraid of you eating too much."
The middendorffi said, "No need."
The man asked again, "Then don't you dip your food in some sauce? Also, did not drink two mouthfuls; you just so eat not dry ah?"
The middendorffi looked at him, and his eyes passed over the other's box of chicken nuggets doused with the whole packet of sauce, then returned a "forgot," slowly opened the ketchup and poured it on the chicken nuggets and took a sip of Coke.
The man watched the youth's movements, finding the other man strangely interesting, one to the other. He was about to continue with something when Middendorffi asked, "Where's Wang?"
This asked the man who was on a mission together tonight; the man returned, "He's still cleaning up the scene, and he's going to give that little girl a new bedroom door after sunrise. That new gadget was powerful enough tonight; it directly shattered the upper half of the 'pseudo man,' and the door was directly sprayed with slag. It's a good thing you guys obeyed and didn't stand behind the door, or you'd have definitely been seriously injured along with it! However, according to the information obtained, dealing with the 'False Man' would require such a single blow. Otherwise, it would be easy for it to confuse its mind."
middendorffi remembered the odd voice outside the bedroom door earlier and commented, "At that level of dialogue?"
"Hey, you can't underestimate its language. While 'pseudo-human' speech may be a bit odd, it's now widely suspected that it emits brain-affecting electromagnetic waves when it speaks, so people are easily confused by it!" The man paused, narrowing his eyes, "I don't suppose you didn't read the 'textbook' we sent you, did you?"
The middendorffi blandly returned, "Read it."
The man saw that his complexion was unchanged and felt that he wasn't lying, so he said, "Alright, then you eat quickly, and then I'll send you back ..."
***
It wasn't more than a few hours before dawn when Middendorffi returned to his tiny rental house.
And he was in no hurry to go to bed.
He didn't even turn on the lights, nor did he walk anywhere to sit or lie down. He stood near the door without moving much for several minutes before his mobile phone beeped from low battery, and he pulled it out to check it.
Then again, in the darkness, he walked towards the charging cable on the side of the couch ..., plugged in his phone, and smoothly sat down on the couch. Reaching out, he came and went as he pleased. The light of the re-lit mobile phone screen illuminated his face, and he remained expressionless.
Looking at the screen of his mobile phone, middendorffi remembered the video mentioned by Zhang Qi - the man he had dined with and sent home earlier. So he slowly researched and finally found the so-called "teaching material" from the chat logs and clicked on it.
On a dark blue background, a few rows of simple numbers, titles, departments, and confidentiality levels appeared, and in the middle of the rows, the largest of which was in bold, white letters - "Entity: Pseudo Human."
The middendorffi set the phone down on the couch, keeping the voice of that video playing while he got up and made his way smoothly through the dimness to the window. The building across the street wasn't far enough away that it was possible to see across the street with the naked eye, but it had been a long time since Middendorffi had pulled the curtains closed. Not only was he not afraid of being seen, but he enjoyed standing in front of the window and looking away.
"... Pseudo-humans: non-human creatures that mimic humans in disguise; they expand through proximity, mimicry, and substitution and are capable of causing the death of a human through psychological warfare or in some way that can affect them. And again, by fully mimicking the dead and replacing them, they are able to approach the friends and family of the dead. There have been no reports of pseudo-humans being able to replace non-human beings, and the origin of the pseudo-humans and the purpose of their attacks on humans has yet to be fully confirmed. Some pseudo-humans can be distinguished using physical feature discrimination methods. The types of pseudo-humans known to date can be broadly classified into three types:
"Type I: Fully anthropomorphic. This type has completed mimicry of a single human being and has completed learning in a number of areas, including appearance, movement, and voice, making it difficult to distinguish its disguise at first glance. However, if communication with the individual continues, it can be distinguished by a variety of characteristics, such as lack of speech, the tendency to repeat itself, and a stiff and singular demeanor. Note: It is possible for a pseudo-human to begin mimicry on the spot to a human. Be sure to quickly control or outright kill someone who is identical to you in all traits of appearance, demeanor, and voice ..."
The middendorffi heard this and glanced back in the direction of the light emanating from the mobile phone on the couch.
He was silent for a few seconds before slowly opening his mouth, and the sound he made became far from what it had been before - it was actually the same timbre as the AI voiceover on the phone!
"... A direct kill on someone identical to all the features of your appearance, mannerisms, and voice."