Gloria stared at Marcus: “John Mitchell? Is that - ?”

  “Yeah.” Marodded.

  It’s the name of the missing member of the emergency reparations team. The ohat did not work the shift that night due to some mysterious reasons, and the ohat supposedly survived.

  “Help! Help! Please! The graceful Bodhisattva, please help us!” The pleas tiheir voices were shaking and dwindling, while the sound of wind and the weeping in the background seemed to be ramping up.

  “What did you hear?” Kevin asked with a whisper.

  Marcus made the “shh” gesture again, his eyes twitched lightly as he listened. Gloria almost did the same - there was something in the background noise. Some kind of murmur that could make some vague sense if she had just listened closely for long enough.

  “Please … Bodhisattva … help us! This is - this is a terrible, terrible thing to fall onto our world. Please… not for us, but for everyone…” One particur voice caught the attention of Gloria. But just wheried to piore of what the voice said, it was repced by a loud screed some almost senseless ramblings.

  “e with me! Die in my stead! Die!” It was anurgling voice, seemingly from either a child or a female.

  “The light’s gone!” “The light’s gowo voices, one was terrified, full of despair, and the other was ecstatic with palpable bloodlust.

  The voices of peared to be the members of the emergency reparations team disappeared. What followed were the stomach ing screams, moanings and lives being torn and stripped away.

  Gloria covered her mouth, almost out of instinct. She might have lost a few days worth of appetite.

  Marcus, oher hand, seemed to be thinking about something and was scratg his jaw.

  After a while, the ramblings and the terrifying sounds gradually died dowually, all that there was was silence. Another moment passed, the voices came back. And this time, there was only the voice of those reparations team members, and barely anything in the background.

  “What is this? Why is it dark all of a sudden!? What’s with the lights!?” One voice sounded fused and angry.

  “How is it so cold? What the fuck is this? ” Another voice, sounded like the teeth were gritting.

  “The sky! Look up! LOOK UP!” Another voice came.

  “Blood Rainbow! It’s the Blood Rainbow! What the fuck!? RUN!”

  It did not take long befloria and Marcus pieced the clues together. Form some reason, this crushed metal box had bee some kind of “repy mae” for the sounds in this se. It “recorded” the st moments in this pce, and was stantly repying it.

  “ we record this?” Gloria sighed, then stood up.

  “I was trying - but I don’t think it’s physical sounds, not really.” Kevin shook his head and raised his phoh a voice rec - all that came out was Gloria and Marcus talking, with the sound of the wind and some straatic sounds.

  “Let me try.” Gloria took out her phone and hovered it over the metal box.

  Marcus stood on the side in his own thoughts while he and Kevin waited floria to finish her experiment. She pyed the rec after about half a minute - it was only the sound of the wind, the surrounding traffid the crag noises of straatic.

  “It’s not a voice, it’s just - signals.” Kevin nodded.

  “Did something happen here? I mean after everything.” Gloria thought for a while and put her phone back: “It’s been a while, why isn’t this pce fixed? They could just send folks here during the day right?”

  “It’s still quite uling for the workers to be w here, to say the least. And the subsequent teams in charge of repairing this pce did try, at first.” Marcus shrugged: “A lot of them refused to work following their first few days. I suspeething lingered here kept b them. The other detectives might know more about this - I meaive Pahaik aive Lahe teams that came to fix this alsht their own mini altars in peachwood boxes. They say these are going to protect them from the bad energy here. But I guess it’s just not enough.”

  “So - who is this John Mitchel guy?” Gloria nodded a out a long exhale.

  “It’s not a real name, an alias.” Kevin shook his head: “This name has been used for several years, and is very believably fed, which is why we did not detect it at first. And when we found out, it appeared to be already too te. We are trying to track down the person’s inal identity, and the city is applying additional pressure on the exit checks. It’s a possibility that the person is no longer iy. From the looks of his ditions - his pce is very , newly rented, all cash, a very short term lease; he had several blessed items in this pce, and he had practically no savings even though he was retively well paid and his pce is as cheap as it get. So - that adds to the suspi.”

  “Or, he could just adopt a new name and is hiding in the South-Eastern District as we speak. ” Gloria shrugged: “This has happened before with some criminals, right?”

  “Right. That’s aheory we’re w on. But in order to do that kind of iigation, we o unicate to the city and have a liaison from the unity collective.” Marcus sighed and shook his head: “Right now we have a liaison w with us on some of the iigation we’re doing OVER HERE. But we’re some hoops away from doing an actual thh iigation, much less a manhunt over there.”

  “Who is this liaison?” Gloria asked with a frown. “And - not that I don’t believe myself, but if you have someone from our district, what oh do you need me for?”

  “Tyler Khan. He’s an iigator from the unity collective. But just as you’d expect, he’s here in official capacity, and there is information we’d rather not ask of him.”

  “Never heard of him. But I uand.”

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