```
Hearing the noise, Amanda, who was already panicked, tried to turn and run upstairs, but Oliver caught her and yanked her down the stairs by her wrist.
"Quiet, did you hear the gunshots just now?"
Amanda shook her head blankly.
"Drug dealers fired those shots." Oliver accurately judged, "They are using old guns with badly worn rifling, causing a sound that is more muffled compared to the standard-issue weapons carried by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents."
Amanda stopped in her tracks, frowning as she said, "They fired shots? Why would they fire shots?"
"For them, sneaky assassinations are the best approach. The disaster isn't over yet, people are hesitant to rashly move to other floors, and they can simply target the people on the second floor to achieve their goal and get hold of the Gold Coin," Oliver analyzed.
"If they shoot, the crowd on the first floor might rush to the second floor, and those on the second floor might run downstairs, which would result in total chaos and make it inconvenient for them to lock onto their targets," Amanda also realized, saying, "So unless absolutely necessary, they definitely wouldn't fire shots."
"That's why we need to go down to the first floor."
Amanda grabbed the handrail tightly and said, "Shiller went to the first floor, right?"
"How else do you think I managed to get you out of there?" Oliver looked around before saying, "After tackling you to the ground, I intended to drag you out, but then I noticed you were unconscious, meaning if I didn't take down Shiller face to face, I wouldn't have been able to lead you to safety."
"Just when I was preparing myself to confront him directly, some reckless fool charged up the stairs, and upon seeing Shiller's corpse lying there, got so frightened that he turned and ran. Shiller followed him, and that's how I was able to transfer you to safety," he added.
Amanda furrowed her brows deeply; it seemed like she had thought of something but didn't immediately speak. Nonetheless, she nodded and said, "Let's go down to the first floor. If Shiller really has an anchor point like you said, then these drug dealers are the perfect test subjects. We won't need to risk ourselves; the two of us observing together will surely uncover clues."
Oliver nodded, and as they descended the stairs, Amanda quickened her pace to come alongside him, raising her eyebrows as she said, "And thank you for saving me. But I'll soon be out of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, so I'm afraid I won't be much help with your situation."
"Don't speak so ABSOLUTELY," Oliver said, gazing into the dark corridor, "Up until the last moment, nobody knows who the final winner will be."
Through the corridor, a man with silver-gray hair, wearing a pink jacket, and sporting flashy pink sunglasses staggered across, followed closely by a figure quickly walking behind him.
Eduardo Flamengo, once a Gothamite, had left Gotham but still made a place for himself within the Penitent Cartel because of his Gothamite identity and his illustrious history of having stayed at Arkham Asylum during his drug trafficking career.
After joining this transnational criminal organization, he committed several major murders in America for positions or payments. After each murder, he would eat the victim's face, earning him the nickname "Face-Eater" by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Though he was wanted for numerous crimes, he always managed to evade capture.
It wasn't until he was cornered by the leader of the FBI Special Major Case Group and forced onto the ship, that he realized the Penitent Cartel had long arranged things aboard. This made him feel that joining the organization was a wise decision.
Thus, Flamengo saw it as an opportunity. Perhaps his past life in Gotham had endowed him with a madness gene far beyond ordinary people. While others simply wanted to kill, he intended to capture someone alive.
By capturing an important individual on the ship, he could prove his worth both to the Penitent Cartel and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a crucial step for advancing further.
However, since he was not on a mission on the ship, Flamengo did not know who the target was. But because of the unclear relationship between the Penitent Cartel and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Flamengo recognized an important Federal Bureau of Investigation agent hiding among the passengers on the first floor—David Pedridge.
Flamengo somehow managed to extract a list from David and then he knew that Oliver Queen, the thorn in both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the US Government's side, must be the most valuable target. Since Oliver ended up resorting to getting on the ship, he must certainly be on the second floor.
Ten minutes earlier, Flamengo had quietly made his way up to the second floor, hoping to kidnap Oliver Queen amidst the chaos.
As he moved softly to the staircase entrance, he noticed a shadow lying on the ground, which could have been a body.
Initially, Flamengo didn't pay much attention, assuming it was one of his accomplices robbing someone. But as he stepped onto the last stair, lit by moonlight, he saw David's face, now completely purple-black.
Flamengo's legs turned to jelly, and he fled in panic, but after descending just two stairs, he realized that a shadowy figure had mysteriously appeared behind him.
The figure moved silently, almost like a ghost. Flamengo couldn't see how he had covered half the corridor's distance so abruptly and loomed behind him.
Caught off guard, Flamengo missed a step and tumbled down the stairs, only to feel a hand grab his ankle. Instinctively jerking his leg back, he was swung up the next second and slammed into the opposite wall with a thud.
Dizzy, he made out the figure, thanks to the faint moonlight, of a man wearing an Octopus Mask, through whose eye holes only lifeless gray eyes were visible.
"Who are you?! I think we can talk..."
The man approached, grabbed Flamengo by the neck, and hoisted him up. Flamengo rolled his eyes upward to see the man reaching for the window handle above his head, then pushing his neck against the window frame.
Remembering David's death, Flamengo's face showed sheer terror. He twisted violently, attempting to knock the man away with his elbow.
Bang!
His neck slammed hard against the window frame. His eyes bulged, his tongue shaking from the impact cut by his teeth, and a mouthful of blood spurted out as he screamed incoherently, "NO! NO!!"
At that moment, the sound of something cutting through the air reached him, and Flamengo felt something hit the wall. Straining, he twisted his head to see someone rushing toward him from the direction of the stairs, right next to where Shiller's palms lay.
```
"Let him go!"
The voice was young yet very resolute, but it didn't draw the attention of the hands' owner; the window continued to be raised.
"Save me… Save me!!! Help!!!!" Flamengo screamed in agony. Although he exerted a lot of strength, the blow he had just received had completely torn his neck, shoulder, and muscles on the side of his shoulder, and his jawbone was also shattered, so his voice was both indistinct and not loud.
Flamengo, his head and face covered in blood, watched in horror at the falling window. Suddenly there was another bang, and he felt himself being pulled to the other side, not realizing somebody had attacked the assailant until his nose hit the side of the window.
He quickly pushed everything off of himself, tremblingly drew his gun, and in a vision clouded with red, without distinguishing who the two people struggling together were, he fired a shot.
The bullet passed through muscle and bone, blossoming into a tiny spray of blood. The young man emitted a low, pained grunt as his previously firm arm went limp for an instant due to the pain.
It was that instant when he was seized by the neck and thrown out, slamming against the wall before sliding down, his shot arm hanging limply at his side.
"Shiller! Shiller…" called the young voice.
Bang!
Another shot hit Shiller's left shoulder as he staggered forward, his back to the shooting Flamengo, and the flabbergasted Beihan watched from the ground.
"Stop shooting!!!!!" he yelled.
Bang!
Yet another shot, this one missing.
Shiller vanished in an instant, or rather, he moved so quickly he was instantly in front of Flamengo, seizing his shooting wrist with a vicious twist, and the Gunfish mask's spike followed the twist of the wrist and arm, stabbing into the ribs.
Flamengo shrieked in agony, not caring about the handgun that dropped into Shiller's arms; he used all his strength to break free from Shiller's grip and, like a madman, he turned and ran towards the first floor.
Shiller pursued.
Flamengo, clutching his wound and limping, ran as Shiller, ignoring the gunshot wound on his left shoulder, simply held onto the Gunfish mask's strap and moved forward with firm, powerful strides.
Flamengo had already used all his strength to flee, but no matter what, he couldn't shake off Shiller. During one glance back as he tried to escape, blood flowed more and more from the wound hit by the bullet, staining half of his crimson cloak a deep red.
But Shiller seemed impervious to pain, and he didn't even care about the wound, his speed only increasing more and more.
Ten steps, nine steps, eight steps...
Tap... Tap... Tap, tap, tap, tap tap tap tap—
Whoosh! The spike struck out; Flamengo tumbled fiercely, but the next second, his ankle was seized again, a snap sound as he was pulled down, his upper body crashing heavily to the ground.
At the end of the hallway, Oliver and Amanda saw Flamengo's pink sunglasses crash to the floor, shattering in an instant; he was covered in blood, desperately clutching the ground, the completely shattered jawbone allowing only a weak whimper to seep from his throat, but it didn't change his fate of being dragged away.
The blood flowing from the wound under his ribs left a long trail behind him; the desire to live made him claw at every seam in the floor with his fingernails until all his nails were left in them, leaving ten bloody traces from ten fingers.
Shiller turned around, grabbing Flamengo's ankle as if dragging a corpse, pulling him across the hallway, rounding a corner, and arriving at the door of the cold storage at the end of the staff corridor.
After the power outage, the cold storage wasn't operational, but to prevent the possibility that the door would not open due to energy supply issues, there was a manual crank next to the large cold storage door.
Shiller threw Flamengo to the ground, stepping on his neck to prevent him from escaping, and opened the glass cover of the manual crank.
The crank turned slowly as the large cold storage door was pulled open, and a fierce chill swept in.
Shiller grabbed Flamengo by the neck and tossed him under the cold storage door, Flamengo flipping over, trying to make sense of how to get up from the ground without the restraint.
Suddenly, he saw the door above him slowly closing.
"No… no… no!!!!!"
Thud!
Crack!
The abdomen frozen by the low temperature on the door solidified into an eternal display of flesh and organs, while outside, two legs laid intertwined together as if huddling for warmth.