Gloria stared at Marcus: “John Mitchell? Is that - ?”
“Yeah.” Marcus nodded.
It’s the name of the missing member of the emergency reparations team. The one that did not work the shift that night due to some mysterious reasons, and the one that supposedly survived.
“Help! Help! Please! The graceful Bodhisattva, please help us!” The pleas continued, their 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 particular voice caught the attention of Gloria. But just when she tried to pick out more of what the voice said, it was replaced by a loud screech and some almost senseless ramblings.
“Come with me! Die in my stead! Die!” It was another gurgling voice, seemingly from either a child or a female.
“The light’s gone!” “The light’s gone!” Two voices, one was terrified, full of despair, and the other was ecstatic with palpable bloodlust.
The voices of what appeared to be the members of the emergency reparations team disappeared. What followed were the stomach churning 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, on the other hand, seemed to be thinking about something and was scratching his jaw.
After a while, the ramblings and the terrifying sounds gradually died down. Eventually, 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.
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“What is this? Why is it dark all of a sudden!? What’s with the lights!?” One voice sounded confused 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 before Gloria and Marcus pieced the clues together. Form some reason, this crushed metal box had become some kind of “replay machine” for the sounds in this scene. It “recorded” the last moments in this place, and was constantly replaying it.
“Can 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 phone with a voice recording - all that came out was Gloria and Marcus talking, with the sound of the wind and some strange static 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 for Gloria to finish her experiment. She played the recording after about half a minute - it was only the sound of the wind, the surrounding traffic, and the cracking noises of strange static.
“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 place fixed? They could just send folks here during the day right?”
“It’s still quite unsettling for the workers to be working here, to say the least. And the subsequent teams in charge of repairing this place did try, at first.” Marcus shrugged: “A lot of them refused to work following their first few days. I suspect something lingered here kept bothering them. The other detectives might know more about this - I mean Detective Pahaik and Detective Lance. The teams that came to fix this also brought 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 and let 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 forged, which is why we did not detect it at first. And when we found out, it appeared to be already too late. We are trying to track down the person’s original identity, and the city is applying additional pressure on the exit checks. It’s a possibility that the person is no longer in the city. From the looks of his conditions - his place is very clean, newly rented, all cash, a very short term lease; he had several blessed items in this place, and he had practically no savings even though he was relatively well paid and his place is as cheap as it can get. So - that adds to the suspicion.”
“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 another theory we’re working on. But in order to do that kind of investigation, we need to communicate to the city and have a liaison from the community collective.” Marcus sighed and shook his head: “Right now we have a liaison working with us on some of the investigation we’re doing OVER HERE. But we’re some hoops away from doing an actual thorough investigation, 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 on earth do you need me for?”
“Tyler Khan. He’s an investigator from the community 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 can understand.”