Su Bai pulled his police cap down a little to hide his face, but soon, he smiled because he saw his reflection on the window of the door keeper's office. His face was somehow changed; now he looked very plain and had some qualities that belonged to an older age.
It seemed that these were all set in this story world. So, the audience in that car earlier— those couldn’t be their original appearance; they must have been altered as well.
What was their task?
To catch the murderer?
To stop or catch the real Silver serial killer?
If so, it indeed did not seem dangerous to him at all.
As long as he could lay low and fit in the social environment, he could simply be a watcher, staying safely at the police station all the time until those five audiences finished their task, and then he could just leave.
“Liu Yang, why are you late? Director Zhou is already waiting there! You’d be lectured if you don’t go now!” A cop patted on Su Bai’s shoulder and said to him.
Su Bai turned around, looked at this cop and nodded.
He came to a meeting room. Right now, there were over 20 cops sitting in the room already, men and women, young and old.
The one sitting in the first seat must be Director Zhou. He was holding a cup of tea; after seeing Su Bai come in and sit down, he coughed but didn’t ask anything about his late arrival. Instead, he spat out the tea leaves in his mouth onto the floor, dropped his cup down heavily and said:
“Comrades, I believe you all clearly know about the atmosphere in our local community, and you all understand how anxious and scared our people are. After all, you need to go home and live with your families as well. People’s police originates from people; thus, you are all closely united with this society.
“The murderer, who committed two crimes and killed two people a few years ago, has showed up again!
“He has killed another person!
“But we cops can do nothing about him! We haven’t found any useful clue yet! It has become a huge negative influence on the social stability of our local community as well as the living of our people and even caused some social panic to some extent!
“This is our duty, our mistake and our misconduct!
“Therefore, I now announce the establishment of a special investigation team on this case. Everyone present is a member of this team, and I am the team leader. All of you are required to drop what you were on and start to work on this case with all your efforts!
“Now, let’s welcome Captain Qin to go through these three cases in details for us.”
A middle-aged man with a stubbly beard stood up, nodded to Director Zhou and then everyone else, walked to the small black broad in the room and started talking while attaching some photos one by one to that black broad:
“The first case happened on......”
The meeting continued until noon. During that time, tasks and responsibilities were assigned, and Director Zhou’s cup was refilled several times; at last, when the meeting ended, he drank up all the tea and picked up his hat:
“Dismissed!”
Su Bai picked up the notebook in front of him, walked out of the meeting room and headed to the other large office on the same floor. This large office was now set as the temporary working location for the special investigation team, which indicated that the higher authorities were dedicated to solving this case with all their might.
“Come on, let’s have some lunch first.”
“Lunch time!”
All the other cops dropped their stuff and went to lunch in small groups.
Su Bai also put his stuff on his desk and went out.
The mess hall of the police station wasn’t big, and the food prepared in large pots seemed undoubtedly tasteless for someone from the future. Luckily, Su Bai wasn’t picky. After getting his portion, he looked around, sat beside some co-workers in the special investigation team and started to eat with them.
There was some sort of depression in the team; everyone was eating quietly without talking to one another, and all they wanted was to finish the meal sooner so they could get back to work.
So it was a quick lunch. Su Bai went back to his dormitory room in the police station. It was a room for two, but the bed opposite to his was empty; clearly, he was the only one staying here for now.
On the bed, Su Bai found a diary; he started to read at will.
After reading it, Su Bai had a rather thorough knowledge of his own identity. He had graduated from a police training school. At this time, a police training school graduate would be considered a phoenix when he got to a local police station; as long as he behaved well without making huge mistakes, at least he would have a promising future career.
He was from a single-parent family— his mother died early, and he had lived with his father, but they hadn’t been talking very much after his father remarried. Therefore, he stayed in the police station all the time.
He felt a little funny when he found out that he had a girlfriend.
But they couldn’t be very close; they might have just started their relationship.
Su Bai shook his head. This story world was indeed very interesting; it gave him a brand-new identity, but for what?
Just to protect him, an experiencer, from becoming the meat on the real audiences’ chopping board[1]? Just some remediation of a bug?
He felt sleepy; he picked up a thermos in the room, poured out a glass of hot water for himself and had a few sips. Then he walked out with the glass and headed towards the building where the special investigation team was located.
Su Bai was one of the earliest arrivals. Right now, there were only three or four members in this office; when Su Bai came in, they just looked at him, nodded as a greeting and went back to work.
Most members of this special investigation team were out at work after lunch, as assigned during the meeting in the morning. Su Bai was assigned to a group for data collection.
At this time, digital working was not very popular yet; even in the police station, there were not many computers. Therefore, case data and related information of interviews had to be filed manually, which was a great amount of work.
Su Bai walked to his desk. But the look in his eyes froze: he had put his notebook on the desk before lunch, but he had this habit of putting the pen upside down on the notebook; now, the pen was placed aside.
He picked up his notebook, looked through it and found obvious marks suggesting it had been read: several pages were newly folded.
Su Bai had certain habits that could even be described as paranoid. For example, he would never fold any page of a book or a notebook; he didn’t care about the price, it was just a style he had formed since he was a kid.
Apparently, someone had gone through his notebook intentionally. In this notebook, there was only some key notes and contents about the meeting held in the morning.
Su Bai left his desk and went to several other desks. Those notebooks seemed to be read as well. One of the notebooks seemed to be stuffed into the folder in a hurry; it was slant and crooked, but everything else was in great order, which indicated that the owner of this desk had a good working habit as well. If he had put it himself, it wouldn’t be stuffed so casually like this.
Su Bai took out this notebook and went through it. Then he was surprised to see that there wasn’t much about today’s meeting; of course, there weren’t many words, but all the content was well summarized.
There were circles, one after another, with marks and arrows; the handwriting was lively and swift, and the pages were covered with spots and tags. Apparently, the owner was thinking thoroughly during the meeting.
Then Su Bai turned it to the first several pages. It was a used notebook, similar to how Liu Yang’s— or to say right now, Su Bai’s— notebook was..
But everything written on the first several pages of this notebook was meticulous, detailed and tidy. It could be told that the user was a doctrinaire; therefore, the notes of today’s meeting couldn’t be more inharmonious with the previous contents.
Suddenly, Su Bai seemed to have realized something; he looked at those co-workers who were still concentrating on the files with their backs towards him.
Was there another experiencer apart from him?
Or, was he an audience?
Then who was this person going through everyone’s notebooks looking for clues on identities?
What was his purpose?
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] Being the meat on someone’s chopping board: A Chinese phrase describing that someone has the rights to decide whether you live or die while you can do nothing about it.
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Author’s Notes:
Audience: Those who have gone through three experience tasks and started real story worlds of the Dreadful Radio. According to the number of stories they have been through, audience can be classified as: newbie and veteran.
Experiencer: Those who are still going through their first three experience tasks. Even if they are lucky enough to gain some story points, they will not be able to make ordinary exchanges, unless they find something disregard the exchanging rules, like Su Bai’s “Broken Vampire Blood”.
An experiencer is an audience-to-be, as described in the previous chapters.