Before Constantine had a chance to contemplate the corpse that suddenly appeared before him, he heard the roar of a vehicle engine drawing nearer, followed by the sound of a car door opening. It was clear that someone was approaching.
Constantine glanced left and right, noticing a heap of scrap piled up deep inside the warehouse.
Without a second thought, he dashed towards it and hid himself under a piece of plastic sheeting. Following that, a dazzling light flooded into the warehouse through the gap of the rising roller door, illuminating the ground as if it were covered in snow.
The trails of fresh blood spreading across the floor resembled blossoming plum flowers in winter. Constantine's pupils contracted sharply. From his point of view, at least seven or eight bodies lay on the warehouse floor.
The people who entered were a man and a woman. With the light behind them, Constantine could not make out their faces. However, they were speaking English with a British accent like him so he could clearly hear their conversation.
"Laura, I've told you before, Patient No.1 should not have been released this early. When we brought him back, his performance significantly exceeded all our previous subjects. Furthermore, he suffers from high functioning autism and is mentally unstable..."
"Enough." the woman interrupted, "This was a joint decision and you were also eager to see the abilities of Patient No.1, weren't you?"
As she finished speaking, she jerked her chin towards the bodies and said to the man, "See? This is him, our most successful subject so far. A 15 year-old who killed 11 fully armed and trained security personnel with nothing but a knife..."
On hearing this, Constantine's brow furrowed. He looked in the other direction and sure enough, there were bullet marks on the warehouse walls.
However, judging from the bloodstains on the ground, none of the bullets had hit anyone. All the bodies that lay on the ground had died from blade wounds, which would explain the far-flung splatters of blood.
"Patient No.1..." Constantine whispered to himself, "Who are they referring to? If this is Shiller's memory space, could it be Shiller?"
Just then, the woman known as Laura spoke again, "The results are not bad but it's unfortunate the security personnel that old man sent to escort us all ended up here. However, he had it coming for interfering with our experiment."
The man beside her shook his head in slight dissatisfaction, "Our manpower was not abundant to begin with and yet you've wasted so many people..."
"But it was worth it, wasn't it?" Laura shrugged nonchalantly, crouching down beside a body to examine the wounds. "Such a beautiful strike; elegant, accurate, and deadly."
"Alright, enough of your admiration. I'm calling for backup to clean up these bodies and then we should promptly transport Patient No.1 to the target location. Otherwise, if we're discovered by the locals, we'll be in trouble," said the man.
Laura scoffed at his warning, "A country as destitute as this one doesn't have the resources for effective security measures. Relax, they don't even have us on their radar. In my opinion, there's no harm in running a few more rounds of experiments."
Hearing their conversation, Constantine grew increasingly puzzled. He lifted his gaze to inspect the warehouse once more, then turned his head and saw two stickers on the wall. Of course, Constantine didn't know these were called flyers, but he could recognize the Chinese characters they bore.
"Is this not England?" Constantine murmered inaudibly to himself, "Could these people actually be British spies? ...Oh, good Lord, what nonsense am I speaking? How could there be traditional British spies?"
Before long, another group of people arrived. The roller door was completely hoisted up and they began to clear the bodies from the warehouse floor. As the flashlight beam gradually neared him, Constantine realized he needed to find a way to escape.
He was here to find the Spirit of Curse and had no interest in Shiller's past. Therefore, he only wanted to get out of this place as soon as possible.
However, just as he was considering employing unconventional means to make a distraction, he saw the warehouse doors transform into a bright square and a shadow abruptly appear in its center.
Judging by his frame, he was rather slender and less than 1.8 meters tall with virtually no traces of exercise. Outside the warehouse, the passing headlight beam swept over his face and Constantine realized that this was not Shiller, at least not in appearance.
But he wasn't a purely Asian person either. He appeared to be of mixed race. What truly piqued Constantine's interest, however, were his eyes. In the fleeting instant that light passed over them, he saw that the young man shared the exact same grey eyes as Shiller.
As a master of the occult arts, Constantine knew that the phrase 'the eyes are the windows to the soul' was more than just a metaphor. If the human soul manifests physically in any way, it would be through the eyes.
If Constantine meets a spirit in the Spirit Realm and wants to find it in the real world, the best method is to look into the eyes of its real-world incarnation. Those with heightened spiritual awareness can see a person's soul through their eyes. Constantine just so happened to be one of those people.
The moment he saw the young man's eyes, Constantine knew that he was likely Shiller. But why did Shiller's memory space representation appear different from his real-world self?
Constantine thought it was perhaps due to a personality discrepancy. He had previously encountered patients with Dissociative Identity Disorder who possessed several personalities, each with differing physical and spiritual appearances.
Just as Constantine pondered on this, Shiller, stationed at the entrance, provided him no further time for contemplation.
Constantine saw him holding a long blade somewhat like a cleaver, roughly the size of a forearm. The weapons seemed mismatched with his frail figure, but very soon, Constantine found he had no more mental bandwidth to consider such incongruities.
The flow of cars on the opposite highway, all with their high-beam lights on, flashed and disappeared outside of the warehouse door.
The fleeting light was like a gentle hand, brushing over the cold slaughtering knife. Constantine saw the reflection of neon lights on the blade. Quickly, the brilliant shadow disappeared, leaving only a patch of blood-red.
The moment they detected an intruder, the man and woman pulled out pistols from their waists, but it was already too late.
With a horizontal swing of the butcher knife, the fleeting light cut through the air, landing on the attacked wrist. Dodging another bullet, he swung the knife again.
When the butcher's knife was pulled out, there was a "swish" sound. The warehouse floor illuminated by the light, streaks of the blade trailing, the traces of blood intense.
Once again, he retreated. Using the blind spot of the backlight, he dodged the gun sight and concealed himself behind the man, piercing the sharp knife into his body, then letting go of the hilt.
Not until the body fell to the ground did he step on the man's spine and pull out the knife.
Constantine swallowed, he thought it was not a good time to leave just yet.
But the young man apparently sensed there was still someone alive in the warehouse. As he walked towards Constantine with the knife, Constantine knew that today things wouldn't end well.
Of course, Constantine is a magician. Even in memory space, he had the means to use magic. With a flash of fire, he appeared behind Shiller, both hands glowing golden.
With a gentle twist, a golden magic array appeared between his hands. "CLANG", the long knife sliced onto the magic array, and at the moment the sparks flew, Constantine's face was illuminated.
His appearance seemed weathered and weary, the young man across from him was thin and pale-faced. When these two morbid faces confronted each other, Constantine could feel his inherent madness and evil being instantly ignited.
The magic array condensed into a beam of light, brushing past the ear of the young Shiller. He turned his head slightly, looking at the spot where the light fell, and a burnt black mark appeared in an instant.
The grip of the long knife spun from his index finger to his little finger, then back to the index finger. The moment the skinny knuckles gripped the hilt's cloth band, Constantine rapidly retreated again, another beam of light shooting from his clenched fists.
The young Shiller advanced once again. Constantine conjured up a magical shield for blockade, but at that moment, he saw the young man across from him revealing a cold smirk.
The next second, he sprinted to the right at a speed that was too quick for Constantine to see clearly and threw his butcher's knife.
Constantine hastily rotated his magic shield, but was instantly knocked down by the long knife. It was only when it hit his body that he realized, the knife was heavier than he thought, and Shiller's strength was also greater than he imagined.
The blade cut through his skin and kept flying forward, clanging as it fell in front of Constantine's right side.
Lying on the ground, Constantine screamed and gasped heavily. He saw young Shiller coming over, picked up the knife, turned around and examined him. But then, Constantine broke into a cold smirk.
A series of electric sparks leaped from his body. The moment they touched Shiller's feet, they numbed him for an instant. Another streak of light sent him flying away. Constantine, swaying, climbed back up, picked up the knife, and said,
"What a good knife..."
The moment he touched the hilt of the knife, he knew that he had found the "weakness item" that Zatanna talked about. But this also meant that this world would become even more terrifying.
The injured Constantine did not linger, and while Shiller had not yet recovered from the shock of the light, he quickly ran out of the warehouse, pulling down the shutter door.
While he was carjacking, he saw, in the dark warehouse door, a figure standing there watching him, but he didn't follow.
Constantine held the hilt of the blade, his knuckles exerting slight force. But quickly, he hung the long knife inside his coat, then hijacked a car, driving off to an unknown intersection.
As he raced down the highway, Constantine was certain that this was not England. The unfamiliar architecture, the undecipherable mysterious texts, the car music that was completely different from English radio…
For the first time, Constantine became curious about Shiller's past. Why did he have a personality that grew up in the east? And why did he finally come to the East Coast of America, to Gotham?
But what concerned Constantine more was, who were the man and woman with British accents that appeared in the warehouse? What were these so-called experiments and patient number one all about?