Bad news: another family member of a missing child opened a window and jumped to his death.
Good news: saved.
I can't say whether this family member was lucky or unlucky, but in any case, she attempted suicide while the police were still investigating the home. When she ran to the child's room and opened the window and was about to climb up the stairs, the police suddenly realized that one of the people who had been in the house was missing, even if it was to go to the bathroom for what seemed like a bit too long. Anyway, the cops immediately sprang into action to find the person and ripped the family member back a handful of times before they planted themselves out of the house.
Because of the shocking nature of this case and the overlap with the possibility that it was still oozing, there were people within the police force alerted to the situation. They informed the "Collector" of part of the case and then asked the "Collector" to send someone to check out the problem. After all, at this stage, the police are also worried about the rising number of casualties. Murder can be prevented, but suicide is complex to avoid. Do not want children to have not been found and then take in a bunch of adults!
"The Collector arranged for three people to go, one Middendorffi, who had been actively following the case recently, one Henry, and another colleague who was said to be "very inspired." Henry also half-joked that he was to act as a driver, just take the two "radar" running around, not bother.
But so run, or Henry is the most tired as a driver.
There is no way, in the past few days, the police lost the child of a total of five families and can not be detained as a suspect. In addition to people, it is best to look at the environment, which can only run from house to house. But even if you rush to run, also from day to night.
The result was that everything was still being found.
Whether it was the house where someone tried to jump off the building or several others, the two members of the Collectors who acted as "radar" didn't see anything unusual. They also watched the two videos they hadn't gotten before and restored the scene "at the time of the crime" one by one, using the equipment used to play the video. But even so, the crowd still did not witness the strange clip the parents said.
Faced with this fact, the parents insisted they had seen something strange.
They also said that it was that video that was constantly reminding the parents to leave their children alone that made them walk away in a god-awful way. If not, the child could never have disappeared.
"If you ask me, they should have seen a psychiatrist immediately."
On the way back, Henry voiced his opinion as he drove, "All the evidence right now doesn't seem to be anything beyond the usual at the crime scene. A cop just said to me that the excitement of the missing child may be causing their group memories to go haywire, and they're taking the family's metaphysical plots that they talked about at the beginning and turning them on themselves. A few of these families have also posted on the Internet, saying that they have encountered such strange things. The more such posts there are, the more they will be spurred to believe their conjectures."
"But that doesn't tell us what's going on with the child's disappearance." A colleague sitting next to Middendorffi said, "And why is it that more than one parent has committed suicide when the child has only been missing for a short time, and the police are all still keeping a close eye on it?"
"That is the same evidence that these people in the back are 'opening up' on their own." Henry returned, "The parent who attempted to jump in the back didn't hear or see that weird video at the time, which is the biggest difference between that and the hanging victim before her. It's also more evidence that the suicidal parent may have influenced her to engage in 'copycat behavior.'"
"That sounds reasonable, but you still can't get to the heart of the matter - how the child disappeared." My colleague said, "The first one could have killed the child and hid it; what about all these later ones? They can't all have killed their children and hidden them at the same period, can they?"
"Maybe the caretaker lost them at some other time to avoid responsibility?" Henry said, "And they claim to have seen strange videos, yet none of them were filmed. According to modern thinking, shouldn't the first thing you do when you see something strange be to film it and send it to your friends?"
"You're now assuming the outcome first and backtracking the process, so you think it'll fit. But there are still a lot of details about this that don't make sense." The colleague paused and turned his head to look at Middendorffi, "Bear, what do you think?"
Middendorffi said, "... I don't understand what you guys are talking about."
This sounds less intelligent, but everyone knows that Middendorffi's brain has been hit hard and sometimes shows a little slow and empty thinking. His colleague didn't find him uninteresting but said, "You don't have to shut up about what we say; just say what you think."
Middendorffi seemed to ponder momentarily, then said, "When those videos were replayed afterward, there were no kids on the set."
"... That's a dangerous idea you've got there, Bear," Henry commented, "It's just a matter of blaming the videos for not coming if they do get a kid, and if they do, causing the kid to disappear. Now that's confirmation of the rumors, but how do we get the child back to the parents!"
Middendorffi asked again, "That video, how did it replace the video that was originally shown?"
"You seemed to be particularly concerned about this video, to begin with. Is there a reason for that?" Henry said, "Assuming this video exists, and assuming it's still a special phenomenon, there are many possibilities for where it came from. For example, in 'Midnight Run,' the grudge directly washed over the information in the videotape, overwriting what was originally on it. Then again, radio and TV signals have been hijacked in the past, and it's also possible to suddenly cut away the picture being broadcast."
"What an age for signal hijacking. Analog signals have long been changed to digital signals, improving confidentiality. There is no possibility of hijacking with a signal truck, right?" The colleague returned, "You might as well say it's hacking into the network; at least these TVs, mobile phones, and tablets can connect to the network now."
Middendorffi looked over at him, "Hacking into the network?"
"Well, you'd simply understand it as something using the network to spread, a program quietly installed in someone's electronic device that forces it to run ..."
"The more you say, the less he understands. Don't give Bear a headache." Henry said, "It's the idea that any device that has access to the internet can be manipulated along with it; just think of it that way."
Middendorffi nodded plausibly.
"Ah, we're almost at the underground entrance on line three, Bear; get ready to get off."
The two colleagues in the car were going home in different directions, so Henry was ready to drop Middendorffi off at the metro exit first, but as usual, he careered on, "You remember how to get on the metro, don't you?"
Middendorffi said, "Remember, took it."
Henry nodded, "Well, call us if you need anything."
So two minutes later, Middendorffi was put on the curb. The underground entrance wasn't here, though, and you had to walk across the road just a hundred meters or so to get there. Henry and his colleague confirmed that Middendorffi had gone in the direction of the tube station before restarting the vehicle.
They needed to know that Middendorffi had walked to the center of the pedestrian street and sat down again on a bench at the side of the road.
He watched the crowds coming and going, sometimes checking out the billboards and big screens streaming everywhere. He hardly moved except for his head and eyes, which would roll a little. He just kept watching until the late hours of the night.
The bustling crowds had disappeared, most shops had closed, and the underground was gone.
Middendorffi stood up and looked around, then took a step in the direction of home. There were plenty of shared bikes and shared motorbikes alongside the pedestrian street, but he didn't even glance at them. Walking back on two feet was not a painful endeavor for Middendorffi.
The street was devoid of pedestrians and open shops, and the street screen still showed advertisements, which became conspicuous and illuminated the street pavement in the same color as the video footage.
Middendorffi walked past one of the screens, and the pavement in front of him was white. But when he got to the center of the screen, he saw a sudden flash of red.
He turned and saw a half-human-high red disc hanging alone on a large screen in a shop just three or four meters away on his left.
Just as Middendorffi looked over, the screen suddenly darkened, and two lines were reflected on the all-black screen.
--Please look up to the sky.
--Enjoy the red moon
"Invasion of ...?" Middendorffi's colleague's words flashed through his mind, and then he pulled out his mobile phone and clicked on Henry's video call reasonably smoothly.
Oh, and he didn't look closely at whether it was video or voice, but it defaulted to video call anyway, so he pressed it. And then, the big screen changed to the image of the red moon again. Conspicuously, that moon became more extensive and more oppressive.
Middendorffi stood expressionless, not running away or looking up.
Henry quickly answered the call, and his giant head popped on his phone screen, "Bear? What's wrong? Where are you? Haven't you gone home yet ..."
Middendorffi held down the rear camera and then pointed it at that screen.
"What's this? A red ball ... hmm?" Henry was puzzled, then watched as the screen turned black with white text or two lines.
--You look at the red moon in the air
--The red moon in the air is looking at you
"'Red Moon'? What the hell is that?" Henry intuits that something isn't right, and a series of questions fly by rapidly: "Where are you? Is it safe?"
Middendorffi turned the phone again towards the sky.
A substantial red moon was there.
No, it wasn't a moon; it was just too big and getting bigger. It looked like a hot air balloon slowly descending from the sky or a blimp, glowing red all over. The piercing chirp reached Henry's mobile phone stereo, making his heart beat wildly.
Even if he didn't remember the moon's phase today, Henry knew that this was not a real moon!
"Run!" Henry immediately stood up, grabbed his keys, and rushed out the door, "Duck indoors and send your location to ..."
Before the words left his mouth, the video call had hung up. It wasn't either party that hung up; it was Middendorffi's mobile phone signal that went from complete just a moment ago straight to an 'X,' now it was impossible even to call the police.
This is supposed to be caused by the approaching red moon pressing down. It also triggered an intense tinnitus in the ears of living creatures and even called for a fierce dizziness, the same movement Henry on the other end of the mobile phone had heard earlier and made his ears ache. Yet Middendorffi didn't fall to the ground in pain or run away in panic after putting down his mobile phone, not even showing a hint of panic.
He stood still with an expressionless face, staring fixedly at the approaching red moon.
If anyone - such as Henry, Lupin, and the others - saw this scene, they would probably think that Middendorffi had been blinded by fear and that his legs had gone weak from fright, and that was why he wouldn't even move his legs at a time like this. However, Middendorffi only gently clutched the mobile phone and put it into his pocket.
By now, the red moon had descended to a distance of fewer than fifty meters from the ground.
It was a little larger than a hot air balloon, and instead of the usual pits and holes of the moon's surface, it was somewhat smooth. The red light emanated from the surface's lower layers, but Middendorffi needed help understanding the principle. He just stared at the red sphere; his black pupils were also printed by the red light on the color of blood. Middendorffi felt that this so-called "red moon" came from a sense of pressure, stagnation, and a ... indefinable suction force.
He stepped forward a small half-step, fingers gently curled ---.
The red moon was split in half!
Middendorffi was extremely rare to be stunned.
His first step hadn't gone out because he hadn't done it! He still maintained his posture of looking up, only to see that a silhouette appeared between the red hemispheres that parted to the two sides.
Holding a long sword, he leaped high into the air!