Almost all the members of the Collector come together to watch the newly received surveillance video. Among them were Middendorffi, who had just been "interrogated," and Eli, who had almost finished his cooperation.
In the conference room, the colleague puts his mobile phone on the TV and starts to play the surveillance video footage he has just received.
A child's room appeared on the screen. The cot was placed on one side of the room, and a TV hung on the wall on the opposite side. Due to the surveillance angle, the TV screen did not see fully into the mirror; only part of it could be seen.
The TV was still playing regular nursery rhymes at this point, and judging by the corner of the screen that was revealed, and it was also standard color animation. A grandmotherly parent was going back and forth across the room, holding the child, presumably putting it to sleep. Soon after, the grandmother puts the child in a cot and leaves the room.
The nursery rhyme continues to play.
"Is this asleep?" My colleague said, "You can't really see much of the crib at this angle."
Yes, since the fence around the crib was made of soft cloth and was still relatively high, you couldn't see the child himself in the bed. Though theoretically, even if you can't see the baby now, it's only fitting that it will always be recorded when he's taken out of the crib. But since this video has been sent to the "collector," it means that there must be something strange about the child's disappearance.
The wait was nearly twenty minutes.
The police have already said there is a section in the middle of the video; nothing is unusual, and you can fast forward. But "collectors" look at things differently from ordinary people, at least the first time to go through carefully. Therefore, the entire conference room lasted for more than ten minutes. Of course, some people were distracted in the middle, but Middendorffi never took his eyes off them.
Eli was sitting behind him, looking straight ahead. But it was hard to tell whether he was looking at the TV or the back of Middendorffi ...'s head.
Finally, that legendary strange tune came on abruptly.
The TV screen should have changed along with it, but there was only a corner of it, so I needed to find out what the entire content was. The sound quality of the song could have been better, and it sounded increasingly muddled through the not-so-clear surveillance equipment, but it was barely audible as a foreign language song. It was languid and somewhat scattered. Honestly, if it weren't for the fact that the song was heard in this situation, it probably wouldn't have raised any alarms. And probably because of that, the song blended smoothly into the children's audiovisual material.
Henry turned and scanned the crowd, "Do you see any visions?"
"Nope." The crowd shook their heads. They also took out their mobile phones to identify the music, but several song software were still needed to determine the correct song title.
"Forget it; send it to those people abroad to concur afterward. It's a song in their language, and their libraries should be more complete." Lupin said, "Keep looking first."
The crowd nodded.
The song was short, a minute or so, and no other visions occurred after it was sung. But after the song, those strange voice prompts did come.
"Please cultivate your child's sense of independence and get him used to being alone."
"It is normal for the child to cry; no need to check immediately."
"Checking immediately after your child cries may result in adverse consequences ..."
"Let the fucking shit go! What kind of dodgy expert advice is this that parents don't take offense to hearing?" Henry couldn't help but comment sharply and then leaned close to Middendorffi and whispered, "You don't see what's wrong yet, either? Is there a similarity between this video and what happened to you last night?"
"The sudden insertion of other videos and the giving of strange advice are similar. Other than that, it's not quite the same. There were no voice prompts in that Red Moon video from last night." Middendorffi returned, "Probably couldn't sense it just by looking at the monitor that way."
"Also ... but that would be too dangerous to go to the scene. It's not like it's a cat or a dog to consume when you're still mostly scrapping kids." Henry was sighing; just at this moment, the video suddenly came from the baby's cry.
"Crying?" The "Collector's" man immediately shook in spirit, "The first child disappeared when it cried!"
Soon, the child's cries attracted the grandmother. The grandmother had just entered the room when the crying stopped, and the video's electronic voice exhortations continued.
The grandmother seemed puzzled by the strange parenting advice, glancing toward the TV and pausing in her steps. But instead of dealing with the matter immediately, she quickly continued toward the cot. After a few steps, she stopped at the edge of the bed, and her whole body became fixed.
In less than a second, she suddenly reacted and bent down to lift the covers off the bed. Even if the camera didn't capture the actual situation in the bed, those watching the video could understand that there was no child. The grandmother lifted several blankets and clothes in a row. She immediately ran out of the children's room in a panic, shouting a name and asking the other woman if she had "taken Xiao Bao away."
A minute later, another older man - presumably the child's grandfather - and the grandmother hurriedly returned to the children's room. They searched every corner of the room and opened the window to look out, but they found nothing. In the process, they finally turned off the annoying TV. Grandma started pulling out her mobile phone to make a call while Grandpa moved closer to the security camera. Then, the whole video ended.
"That's it? That's gone?"
"The crowd at The Collector discussed, "It was gone in a few seconds! The baby was still crying before she entered!"
"And there's nothing else near the cot, and I don't see the baby floating up from the bed, so ... is suddenly invisible?"
"Is that weird video a trick, or is it about some kind of 'rules'? Would the child still be missing if you followed it and left the crying alone ..."
After all the chattering, everyone finally remembers to ask Middendorffi, "Bear, when you said the red moon attempted to 'suck' you in last night, was it a physical attraction or some kind of induction?"
"Physical, something invisible was pulling me upwards. The force was so strong that it was hard for the average human to resist." Middendorffi returned faintly, "Then Eli split it open with a sword, and the force immediately disappeared."
"So, if the Red Moon wants to take someone captive, it's sucked into the Red Moon?" Lupin said, "We haven't asked Mr. Jones what was inside the Red Moon when it split. Did you see it? Bear seemed to say he saw a glowing part in the middle, but it was gone in a blink. I wonder if Mr Jones got a good look inside?"
"There was electricity, lots of metal and non-metallic structures assembled in various sizes." Eli returned, "When it disappeared, it disappeared from sight and then completely from perception, so I could not track it."
Middendorffi sniffed and said, "Yes, when it first disappeared from my sight, I could still sense it. But the next instant, it was completely gone."
The crowd listened and looked at each other, "How does this sound ... like a high-tech integrated machine?!"
But it isn't? According to Middendorffi and Eli, the thing could have the physics of suction, splitting apart to reveal its internal structure as if the machine had been destroyed. The optical invisibility followed by instantaneous movement would be much like the emergency escape process for highly sophisticated equipment!
"Then the fact that these two videos are not caught in the same way and behave differently makes it certain that these are visions from two sources." Lupin said, "They can't be combined; they have to be investigated separately."
"That's true, but any thoughts now?" Someone pointed out the difficulty of the investigation, "In the case of the red moon, now we only know that Bear has encountered it, we can still guard Bear, but what about the missing children case? So many children; how can we keep an eye on them? Start by analyzing what these disappearances now have in common?"
Another person said, "Finding commonalities, how can we be as professional as the police? Just ask them about their current investigations - if they can talk."
"With the number of reported missing children cases related to this video now up to six, I think it's time to issue an advisory to parents." Another colleague suggested, "Adopt an opinion-led approach, reminding parents to try not to leave their children alone, especially not to watch the video on an internet-connected device while alone in a space. The argument could be that hackers and viruses are rampant these days and can easily hack into electronic devices and play inappropriate clips to children, triggering discomfort. Combined with the heat that these disappearances have fired up, parents are bound to feel discomfort in their minds and pay more or less attention."
"But you can't guard against the fact that some parents just have a stiff upper lip and don't believe any of this." Henry returned, "Some video creators make money from making videos with their children and purposely put them in dangerous situations just to rub off on them and get attention!"
As he said that, he glanced back at Middendorffi; in his opinion, Middendorffi dared to propose "find a child to draw out the strange video," there is a possibility that he could do such a thing as "go out on his own to draw out the red moon again." Therefore, Henry knocked the desk in front of Middendorffi with his backhand: "And you, don't be tough. Be safe; don't risk your life to find Red Moon!"
Middendorffi was distracted and only let out a "hmm" when he knocked the table in his face.
"The Collectors knew he was still distracted, but they were more or less used to him looking thoughtful. In the past, they would have asked him about his thoughts, but after Middendorffi replied, "My mind is a bit messed up; I need to sort it out," a couple of times, they stopped asking questions. After all, this child has lost his memory, and his brain is understandably confused, and it is better not to interfere with his self-thinking.
But this time, Eli asked, "What were you thinking?"
Middendorffi looked back at him and responded, "Thinking ... about the sound of the child crying on the monitor, why does it sound a bit like the sound effects I've heard on TV programs?"
After this remark, Lupin was suddenly woken up in general.
"Go ask the parents for the video of that child crying before; compare the soundtrack!"