Puzzle Madness

Chapter 11: Evil
John Dou didn't look back, but raised his palm and hooked it -
Richard took out his sidearm, a Czechoslovakian CZ-75, and handed it to John Dou: his sloppy partner had never loaded a bullet into his gun.
"The marketing department felt that [Ecstasy] sounded more high-concept, as if they were just reading Plato. We might change the name later."

"Obsessive-compulsive disorder? It's hard to say. We'd need an autopsy. Someone who re-enacts a crime scene too many times might also experience this kind of physical changes—"

boom!Boom!

The sound of gunfire interrupted Richard's unfinished words. John Dou lowered his forearm from covering his face, casually tucked the CZ75 back into Richard's holster, pulled out the plastic bag, and picked up the shell casings from the ground one by one.

"He's a patient. I'll record it in the report first. I can't rule out the possibility of a combination of the two."

Richard bent down. There were three shallow dents on the human-shaped pile of fat. The bright silver bullets were floating in the pool of blood beside them. He picked up the bullets that hadn't penetrated the target and handed them to John Dou, asking him to put them in a plastic bag.

[Close-range shooting cannot penetrate the skin.]

Richard understood that John Dou was not wrong; the thing before him far exceeded the physiological limits of human beings.

He shrugged, crossed out the number 48 in his notebook, and wrote a new number and note:

[47 new cases of patients were found in Mong Cai City in 1996. (One case was a special abnormal patient)].

"It's very strong, really rare. You don't see many of these, do you?"

John Dou did not answer, but lit another cigarette with his burning cigarette butt and stared blankly at the three bullet craters that were so faint that they were almost invisible.

".Arrived at the coordinated protection site"

Blurred conversations with noise came out of the walkie-talkie on Richard's waist, which was difficult to hear amid the crackling sound.

He closed his eyes and read the message on the intercom:

"Police cars and backup teams are almost here."

Snapped!
John Dou stood up and threw his cigarette butt into the bloody water:

"Let's go, let's not do this anymore."

Richard raised his head, and even his glasses couldn't hide the surprise in his eyes:
"Huh? We're leaving now? Didn't we say we were going to wait for the support team to come and clean up?"

John Dou didn't even turn his head, but raised his middle finger and swung it back and forth:

"Whatever. This kind of thing has had its head ripped off. Do you want to get involved? You haven't even finished your own orders."

He stomped on the bloody water and in a blink of an eye he had reached the emergency exit.

"The support team caught us and asked for help, which delayed the progress again."
-
Richard stood there for a while, looking down at the man with glasses in the bloody reflection with anxiety: Although he was nominally the superior of the duo, it was true that John Dou had much more field experience than him.

Working in the Asia-Europe Post, one really has to understand how to seek benefits and avoid risks. Especially for field work, Richard didn't even have time to fill out the beneficiary of his personal safety insurance.

But sometimes, the opportunity to climb up in the workplace is just a thought away -
"Eh?"

At this moment: he saw the white thing next to his leather shoes; his wandering thoughts were interrupted.

He picked up the ball of paper that was half submerged in the blood. It had been soaked and become sticky and soft.

Richard bit the flashlight and very slowly and gently unfolded the paper to avoid tearing it. In the dark red, scribbled and abstract graffiti was faintly visible:

A distorted oval outline with two long and wide rectangles extending outward; the edges of the brushstrokes are blurred by moisture, with undulating ripples.

Richard looked around - this piece of paper seemed to be the only one:
"Mystical symbols? An oval is an [egg], representing birth, hatching, and metamorphosis. A rectangle... what is it? Structure and order? Dualistic balance? Boundaries or gateways?" This line of thought was quickly abandoned and replaced with a new idea—if there are no longer religious groups operating in the Jiaozhi Autonomous Prefecture, then perhaps it's a more ordinary symbol:
"No, no. Could it be a code for communication, or perhaps the murderer's signature? Pattern codes are so inefficient, do people really still use them?"

He adjusted the direction, looked over and over, and muttered to himself; but no matter which angle he looked at it from, he couldn't connect it with his knowledge of semiotics.

The more I think about it, the colder the sweat on my back becomes.
"Are you going to leave or not? The more you get involved, the faster you'll die."

John Dou's head popped out from under the emergency exit sign, and the cigarette butt in his mouth was cast a green light.

"And you're not the fucking FBI, so stop talking to yourself like an autistic genius on the mission scene every day. Damn, you keep babbling on and on. Why don't they just put you in the Analytics Department?"

Richard sighed - he knew John Dou was right.

"Okay, here we go. You're right, we really can't follow this case."

He placed the wet and soft paper on the iron rack beside him, leaving it to the support team that was about to arrive, and ran out through the emergency exit.
-
"Died from a natural disaster? What do you mean I will die from a natural disaster?"

John D'Anono had the earphones stuck on his head, pinching the filter tip, which had been stained yellow by tar, between his thumb and index finger. Two streams of smoke rushed out of his nostrils, and he repeated the question:

"A natural disaster is a natural disaster? Does it mean being struck by lightning? Being swept away by a flood? An earthquake? Does being choked to death by smoke or getting lung cancer count?"

His partner, Richard, snatched the Walkman and turned off the tape that was halfway through. He expressed disdain for John Dou's question:

"Why would someone in their forties still listen to divination tapes all day?"

John Dou pulled out the earphone cord, ruffled his dry, messy hair, and tucked it behind his ears—his ears were tangled up like dumplings.

"Killing time. What else can I do? Help the support team with that shit from last night?"

He reached into his windbreaker and picked at the square hole cut out on the breast pocket of his shirt: this was the symbol of special field staff in the Asia-Europe Post Office - then he pinched out another cigarette from the bottom of the pocket; the hard pack of Hardman cigarettes issued by the company was also a benefit only available to errand boys like him.

John Dou's ears, which were left by years of wrestling training, were too round to hold cigarettes, so he always kept loose cigarettes in his chest belt.

Two field operators from the Special Package Handling Department sat in the private room of the listening bar, just like the elderly people who came out to listen to a radio drama after dinner.

Hahahaha cough haha
From the adjacent private room came bursts of laughter mixed with coughs, and the sound of hands slapping on the coffee table: John Dou guessed that the patrons in the adjacent private room were listening to a crosstalk performance—
Snapped!
John Dou raised his hand and slammed the partition of the box:
"Keep your voice down!"

Richard was oblivious to all this. He simply unplugged the headphone cable from the jack in front of him, switching between listening options. His knuckles tapped against his knees, making a soft, clicking sound.
Each private room has a panel with peeling paint, neatly arranged like a honeycomb, with 3.5mm headphone jacks arranged in a regular pattern. The jacks are covered with tape, and the channel content is written in marker—along with two small red and green light beads to indicate the broadcast status.

"Excitement 1996", "Offline World War", "Mong Cai Traffic Radio Station", "Douquzhai Crosstalk Selection Vol. 5".
Richard plugged the plugs into the jacks one by one, tightened the headphones, and listened attentively, even including those unbroadcast channels with red lights on and only electronic noise.

John Dou took the smoldering butt of his cigarette and used it to light the cigarette in his mouth. This was the fifth cigarette he had smoked in a row:

"So patients or sinners? I'm talking about [the client] this time."

Richard pushed up his glasses with the heel of his palm and changed the jack for his headphones:
"Neither. A healthy, ordinary person with a clean background. Graduated from the National University of Singapore with a degree in magnetic writing. Joined Asia-Europe Post straight out of college: three years in archival work, two years in regional communications coordination. Born in 95. Transferred to our department last year—never done field work."

John Dou looked at the posters and beverage menu above the panel. The acrylic panel covering the outside was covered with bizarre graffiti and text; advertising phone numbers were scratched out and replaced with new ones. From license and locksmith services to card cheating, X-ray glasses, and qigong training, the classified ads formed a simple frame with a complex design:

"Last year? We haven't been back to the department in so long? But this order doesn't seem like something that can be handled by a support person sitting in an office. He stole something and ran all this way, and he even asked us to handle it urgently. What he stole is not an ordinary thing."

Richard frowned and shrank back into the sofa: squeezed together with a man who was over 1.9 meters tall and full of body odor and cigarette smell, he couldn't help but speed up the work at hand:

"Regardless of the difficulty of the order, we've always done field work, so the higher-ups pushed the work over to us. This one's a big deal, and the department head doesn't want to assign it to a field representative who knows the client."

(End of this chapter)