When they were out of the dark and reeking tunnel, Gloria finally had a good look at the man and what he looked like - it was someone she knew. Detective Marcus Cai, from the 17th Prect of the PCPD.

  It was surprising, to say the least. Firstly for all she knew about the city’s w enfort agencies, none of them would be willing to set foot in the South Eastern District at this time of the day, uhey really o, or were actually doing something unseemly. Sedly the dock areas were overrun by local gang operations, and the local vendors all had to pay them prote fees in order to operate here, yet gang matters in this district were no way uhe jurisdi of the PCPD.

  “Sitch - where are - you?” Detective Cai mumbled under his breath: “Run - run and call someone!”

  “Okay, cop, let me bring you somewhere safer.” Gloria checked her phone, and saw that her queued messages to Sue and Gyuu Park were both successfully sent. She quickly followed up with a message telling them that she was safe. She then pushed her Qi to increase her muscle power, and hastened her footsteps lest she was seen by anyone.

  The option to send the man to a care ter fshed in her mind. But she decided to push it down. For o would bring a lot of trouble to the district when a city police officer was injured, presumably in the line of duty, under circumstances involving the paranormal; for two, for someone who had survived in an area affected by Blood Rainbow, this man would have very likely tracted omens as well. And she did not want t that to the care ters among other patients.

  With a bit of stumbling and dragging, she brought the detective to her temporary hiding pear the docks area. She had some emergency supplies stocked, some blessed artifacts and talismans, inse burners and even some scriptures that watchers and clergymeo perform exorcism. They should be enough to stabilize the detective’s dition for now.

  The detective’s jacket and shirt was torn, so she just tore those off him. There retty grievous wound on his waist, which had luckily almost stopped bleeding. Gloria checked the areas around this wound, then the pulses and breathing - it seemed that he would not be in any kind of real life danger soon. But his ditions would definitely get worse if not addressed right away.

  Gauze, bandage, rubbing alcohol and gloves, it was not the first time Gloria had to address some wounds on others, but this would definitely be oop ten list in terms of seriousness. This man was a mystic martial arts practitioner, so it could pose some potential challeo her as well. Before proceeding, she sent awo quick texts to Sue and Gyuu Park, telling them the address of this hiding pd the fact that she brought an injured PCPD detective over.

  She tied the detective’s arms to the bedposts when she was ing up the wound and the surrounding area. The detective twitched and flinched slightly, but did not struggle as hard as she imagined. He just kept mumbling something, telling someone named “Sitch” to run and hide. Though she had no idea who that was, it sounded like some kind of street name used by punks ang members. It would be quite curious, if this PCPD police officer was somehow w with a street gang member.

  “No… no… dad, where is mom?” After mumbling for a while, Detective Marcus Cai seemed to have goo another dream and started saying something differently: “No! No! Where is she … where is she? This ship is sinking, we must find her!”

  This almost sent a bolt of lightning through Gloria’s body, and she uionally stopped unrolling the gauze and bandage and started staring at the detective’s face.

  “No… no… she was in the room with us…. why is the ship sinking! Why is it sinking!?” The detective turned his head left and right, seemingly uress: “Why is everything burning down!? No… no dad! Grab something! Get away!”

  It was still not very clear, but the idea that the detective was also a passenger on that fateful cruise ship had already arisen in Gloria’s mind. And if that was ihe case, it meant that he might be here for a reted, if not simir purpose - to iigate what was going on iy, and what was happening with the 15 year cycle.

  “No - no - dad - I don’t care if they don’t want us to look. They are not gonna stop us. Please - don’t you - don’t you want to know what happely? … The ship did not just sink. It was tampered with! Somebody got to have …” Detective Cai tio talk while not in any state of sciousness. He started sweating on his fad his chest.

  Gloria sighed and turo find some tissues so she could wipe the sweat off the detective’s body. It looked like the detective indeed had more in on with her than she previously expected. She herself had once looked into the circumstances of the sunken cruise ship. Her attempts did not go very far partially because she was still very young and did not know anyone when she was stra this part of the city, and partially because she was in no position to iigate anything ih because her pseudo-adoptive family led by Luoshan Zi and sisting of the neighbors of her older residence were having a hard time with their lives as well and she o earn her keep.

  And with the 15 year anniversary ing up, it seemed like people who survived the i were also starting to look into things again. Though Gloria was uain what the detective was looking fht now, her guts said they probably share simir goals.

  Just this moment, her ph - it was Sue.

  “What the hell?! Where are you?” Sue sounded worried and agitated at the same time.

  “Calm down. I just texted you the address.” Gloria lowered her voice: “The cop’s still out. He’s talking in his sleep. I think he’s looking into the 15 year cycle like us. ”

  “Yes, but he’s still a fug cop! Are you out of your mind?!” Sue’s voice became higher pitched: “What are you thinking?”

  “Just e here, okay? I’ll o watch over him a little. ” Gloria sighed: “Just e here and we discuss this.”

  “Alright! I’m on my way!”

  Not a sed past since Gloria had put down her phone, someone was knog at her door. She looked through the peephole, and found it was her ndlord - a tall, slightly chubby man with a limp on his left leg.

  “What do you want?” Gloria opehe door by a small crack.

  “What is all this blood on the floor?” The ndlord asked.

  “I don’t know, I just came from a butcher shop.” Gloria shrugged.

  “Stop with the bullshit. I saw you carrying an injured man in there - and I know he’s not from around here.” The ndlord narrowed his eyes and tried to push the door: “What’s going on?!”