Puzzle Madness

Chapter 40 Pipeline
Doudou's voice, which was deliberately made shrill, echoed in the narrow pipe and gradually became a rustling sound like the movement of a mouse.

"You...you're speaking with your throat pinched, and your voice is very low."

The mathematician covered his mouth with his palm and gasped.

"Huh? I saw that's how they talk during covert operations in movies. Is there something wrong with my learning?"

Doudou turned his head and rolled his eyes in confusion; then he turned his head again and flew back and forth in the pipe.
-
Hiss--Boom. Hiss--Boom. Hiss--
The mathematician stretched out his arms again, pushing the cardboard box in front of his face a short distance forward; then he grabbed his sides and dragged his body forward. Doudou wanted him to leave the cardboard box, which had been twisted into an irregular polygon, outside - but the mathematician once again insisted on his own will and refused to obey no matter what.

Of course, Doudou wouldn't really beat him to death: Doudou thought he was still very understanding, and such a small matter wouldn't require chopping someone's head off.

“Eh—eh?”

Doudou in front suddenly let out a strange and puzzled cry, which could be heard far away.

The mathematician struck a cat-like yoga pose in the narrow tube, straining his back and tilting his head back to look ahead over the cardboard box.
Doudou's ten fingers gripped the two sides of the hard board tightly like paper balls, his torso and lower body suspended in the air, motionless. He was squinting, looking down at the dark window pane below him from above.

"What's wrong? What's wrong? Do you want to run now?"

After crawling in the pipe for so long, the mathematician had long been accustomed to Doudou's strange movements; but it was the first time that Doudou made such a surprising sound, which made the mathematician not care about the tone of his words.

"Shh!"

Doudou raised one hand, put his index finger in front of his mouth, and spit out a vicious breath; then he pointed downwards:

At the edge of the vent, a narrow electronic device rested on a base. It resembled a microphone, except the protrusion wasn't an oval sponge, but a mirrored, one-eyed object. A blue light flickered in the corners, making it stand out prominently within the duct.

Camera!
Doudou twisted his face and spoke in an exaggerated manner.

The mathematician quickly retreated back into the cardboard box. Who had installed a camera in the police station? No wonder the vents looked so clean, as if they had just been mopped. It turned out someone had been there before him.

And it doesn't look like the common one - it doesn't even need wires or data cables to work, it should have a built-in battery and a floppy disk for storage. If that's the case, then it's not something you can buy on the market.
"Ha ha--"

A shrill laugh suddenly rang out, then stopped abruptly:

At some point, Doudou had grabbed the camera in his hand, his face twisted as he tried to hold back his laughter - there was a grayish colloid in the powder stuck to the bottom of the camera, which was pulled out by Doudou and became a thread in the middle.

chewing gum!
Doudou played with the dirty colloid in his hands while lip-syncing; the mathematician had no idea why Doudou thought it was so funny.

The mathematician lowered his head and hid his face in his arms - the musty smell in the ventilation duct made him irritated:

Who would install cameras in a police station? Using chewing gum as a mounting point meant they weren't intended for long-term surveillance; it could even be a spur-of-the-moment decision. With such reckless abandon, could it be that the pursuers anticipated their arrival at the police station?

The mathematician pushed the cardboard box inwards, then moved forward to the edge of the vent, facing Doudou: He wanted to see what was going on with this camera.
Squeak and snap.

A sudden sound came from directly below the pipes. First came the teeth-grinding sound of a door opening, followed by a sharp crack and the lights coming on: the abrupt change interrupted their unfinished conversation.

Someone walked into the office where Doudou and the mathematician were sitting, and there was more than one person.
-
The mathematician lowered his head, opened his eyes wide, and used one hand to hold his glasses to prevent them from falling.

Looking down from above, the scene was somewhat comical—two figures in medical coats walked in, but they were pressed so closely together that they almost looked like the same person.

This is like a scene from a comedy action movie:

The man in the white coat behind him followed closely, his toes almost touching the heels of the man in front with every step; it was as if his belly button was about to connect with the other person's lumbar spine.
But even a short-sighted mathematician could see it: the person lagging behind, the shiny round tube sticking out from the slit in the clothes.

The mathematician recognized the object—in fact, he had found it earlier that night in the sofa in his new home.

It was a pistol with a silencer extending from the barrel.
-
Is it necessary to be so close? What kind of coercion are these two people doing? Kidnapping?

The sudden and bizarre scene once again stretched the mathematicians' nerves, which they had thought were beginning to harden, to their limit:
How to do?
The mathematician looked at Doudou and asked this question in his mind. It was clear that he wasn't the one who could make the decision at this moment.
Whether Doudou, who could make decisions, could think straight remained uncertain. If he could make his own decisions, he would absolutely not act rashly. Intervention would undoubtedly bring trouble, and it wouldn't be a minor one. He would enter a law enforcement agency in the middle of the night with a silenced pistol and threaten the medical examiner. Who knew how powerful the forces behind this were?

There was already a wave of terrifying guys with the power to cover the sky with one hand following the mathematician, and he didn't want to add another group: he still didn't want Doudou to suddenly jump down and twist off the kidnapper's head along with the hostage.

First observe what's going on down there, eliminate the danger, and then wait until the person with the gun leaves.
At this moment, the mathematician saw Doudou turning around:
He opened his mouth into an O shape, raised his thumb and index finger to form a pistol, and with his other hand, he held the monitor and gum between his fingers, twirling them back and forth. Doudou's hands had already left the walls of the tunnel, but his body remained parallel to the bottom; the tip of his sneaker had, at some point, dug into the wall, firmly locked in place.

It was a circus-style pose; mathematicians hadn't expected to see anyone doing it so casually in real life, as if it were just a matter of crossing one's legs.

[Bang, bang, bang.]
His mouth opened and closed constantly, and his hand, which was like a pistol, imitated the action of firing: Doudou's eyebrows were raised very high; the mathematician guessed that he was laughing.

Doudou raised his hand, pointed at himself—then pointed downwards:
The mathematician's hands twitched. He wanted to throw his arms up, wave them with all his might, make an "X" sign, or any gesture or movement that could represent negation: Was it really necessary to create such a complication at this already complex juncture?

But in the next blink of an eye, he saw Doudou had already put his palm on the bottom of the pipe.

【Hold. 】

A single word flashed through the mathematician's mind like a meteor -
boom!
Then, he saw the galvanized steel plate under Doudou shattering like a Wangwang snow cake with an explosive sound; and according to the material science knowledge mastered by mathematicians, this kind of tough metal is much more likely to deform than to break.

boom!
There were two concave shapes at the top of the ventilation duct, which looked like footprints: Doudou had disappeared from the mathematician's sight.
-
Doudou fell to the ground faster than the galvanized steel plate of the ventilation duct and the outer layer of gypsum board.

Da da da da da.
Doudou casually picked up the nearest piece of plasterboard: he used it as if it were a dinner plate, catching every falling piece of debris - the originally loud and high-pitched clatter of the collision became crisp, echoing only in the morgue.

Not far away, the hostage-taker and the hostage-takers were stunned; the scene before them seemed so inexplicable that no one could react.

Hey.

When Doudou caught the last piece of galvanized sheet metal, he turned around and winked at the mathematician above him, as if to show off.

(End of this chapter)