Madness ecstasy

-

John Dou turned his head back, not daring to look at the scenery in the sky again; the flowing tears kept sliding into his collar and his slightly open mouth.

[The client] was still twitching on the ground, like a live fish that had been fished out of the water and thrown onto the ground, thrashing around; his heels kept hitting the elevator wall, making a thumping sound.

The strong smell of cigarettes still permeated the narrow elevator. Thick white smoke drifted upwards and gathered at the top of the elevator, like a thin cloud; the dim light was the sun hidden behind it.

The young man in the yellow raincoat wiped the tears from his face and put his wet palms in front of his eyes to look at them. He suddenly frowned:

"Are you sad?"

John Dou lowered his head in confusion, wanting to respond but not knowing how to put it into words. Would the young man across from him understand? Somehow, he felt that this emotional communication should be possible.

Not through words—but in the overload of tear glands just now, the barriers between humans have been crossed.

John Dou felt a faint but definite sense of relief and joy. The rift between him and his daughter, a barrier that could never be undone, seemed to have been bridged by this pain. Yes, perhaps the person before him would understand.

You will understand

The young man in the yellow raincoat raised his arm and tapped the Hardman cigarette, which was already burning to the filter tip, between John Dou's left fingers.

"You can't smoke in an elevator even if you're sad."

-

It was like an illusion: the boy who had been standing outside the elevator shaft just a moment ago had stepped in front of John Dou's face and made another statement.

Snapped!

John Dou's vision was suddenly blocked a little - the boy's palm was pressed against his face, as if he was about to grab a basketball; the cigarette butt was pressed against his palm, burning with a sizzling sound.

"It is wrong to smoke in an elevator."

【Why? 】

John Dou felt a little puzzled and surprised: How could this happen?

The young man in the yellow raincoat gently pushed forward the hand that was holding John Dou's head.

thump.

The back of John Dou's head slowly hit the elevator wall, making a dull thud.

Snap.

Then came a moist and sticky crisp sound, like the sound of a watermelon being crushed; followed by the rustling sound of small streams of water shooting out like a fountain.

But John Dou couldn't hear a thing. His cigarette, his features, his skull, brain, and hair blended into a pinkish-white mass, forming radiating graffiti on the elevator wall—his headless body twitching against the wall, the pressure causing blood to spurt from the broken part, spraying bright red all over the elevator.

Under the pressure of the palm and the elevator wall, the fragile head burst open and shattered; the brain tissue and blood in the head expanded in an unprecedented way, covering every inch of the elevator interior.

The headless body was embedded in the half-sunken elevator wall, its still-twitching hands stretched out to the left and right; it looked like a withered saint enshrined in a Mexican sandstone shrine.

John Dou is dead.

As sudden as it sounded:

The cries in the city did not stop completely, but they weakened in an instant and became chaotic and scattered; there was no longer a choir of sad people.

After a while, even the scattered sounds fell silent, while the horns of ambulances and police cars blared.

Mong Cai City has returned to its former bustle.

-

[Client] woke up, her throat clogging with solidified asphalt and her eyes filled with double vision. Her eyeballs ached, as if some invisible awl were meticulously pricking them, one by one. Her cheeks were covered in bloody scratches, even covering the redness and swelling from the beating.

She felt her chest cavity ripped open, exposing her organs—she knew it was impossible, because she was still breathing. It could only be that her sternum and ribs were broken, piercing her tender internal organs.

I might be dying.

".ah."

She couldn't fully understand what had just happened - everything seemed like a distant dream brought about by lysergic acid diethylamide, the leisurely and hazy dream she had experienced in her student days.

The world around him was no different except that it was blurry: blurry bouquets of blood and flesh smeared on the elevator walls, sticky chunks of flesh sliding down bit by bit; this hazy and detached illusion was something [the client] had seen many times under the influence of drugs.

But when [the client] raised his eyes and looked at the bright yellow monster, everything was different:

In his overly tearful eyes, the monster had a vaguely human form. But when he saw something that wasn't human, he could still recognize it.

The [customer’s] vision was filled with blur, and mosaic-like blocks of color rolled like flowing water - the light cast from the top of the elevator, and the backlight cast a shadow over the monster’s face.

"Open your mouth."

The bright yellow monster said, its voice was very clear, like two short gunshots.

[Client] shook her head—she wasn't in denial, but she wasn't fully awake yet.

"Open your mouth."

An arm covered in dark red droplets stretched out from the bright yellow and grabbed the [Client]'s jaw - she tried to raise her hand to block it, but almost lost her balance.

Click.

With a teeth-grinding noise, [the client]'s jaw dislocated.

The severe pain brought back some rationality and clarity; but it was stopped by something more instinctive.

"Blow."

The bright yellow monster wiggled its nose. Or was it some part of its face? [Client] I don't know, and I can't tell.

At this moment, the only thing she could do was to try her best to squeeze all the air she had inhaled into her chest out of her throat and mouth.

hiss!hiss!

This time, the [client] really saw it clearly - the dust and ash in the elevator were swirling, flowing out like a whirlwind, and then flowing back into the yellow monster's nasal cavity.

Goo-dong, goo-dong.

The recessed elevator walls trembled and swayed, expanding and contracting back and forth.

"Mm, mmm. Just the smell of blood."

The tip of the bright yellow monster's face moved slightly, and it tilted its head. It loosened its hand and pointed at the field officer whose head had turned into a puddle of goo:

"Oh, don't smoke in the elevator like him."

The [client] held his jaw with his hand, watching it pick up a wet piece of paper from the ground and slap it next to the bouquet of corpse flowers—blood and brain tissue obediently playing the role of paste:

"You can go now. Visitors are advised to register at the security booth."

It turned around and walked out of the elevator silently.

Share the picture of my good friend running

Chapter 20 Package

[Customer] With his broken nails and turned-up fingers, he supported his jaw and used his remaining strength to push against the base of his palm to reset his jaw:

Click!

Get get get get.

As soon as her jaw was reattached, the [client]'s teeth began to clatter against the elevator wall: from her angle, she could just see the straight corridor and the bright yellow figure disappearing into the door at the end of the corridor.

boom!

The sound of the door closing seemed to come from far away, yet it seemed to be right next to my ear.

【Self-check.】

[Client] thought about the training he had received in the company and began to carefully feel the pain in every part of his body——

It would be nice if there was a visual panel for the damage to the body:

She felt her broken ribs, sharp spikes piercing her internal organs. Perhaps it had penetrated her lungs, perhaps it had pierced her stomach; the muscle spasms caused by John Dou's earlier release of ecstasy had turned her minor injuries into serious ones. But the exact severity, [the client] herself did not know.

Perhaps soon, she will suffocate in the sleep of hemorrhagic shock--

But it didn't hit the heart, giving [the client] some final time. She felt that this might be fate: a little mercy from God or some higher being, giving her one last chance to complete the task.

"I will dedicate my best fortune to the people in the high-rise buildings."

[The client] mumbled a prayer, propped himself up on his elbows, and crawled on the elevator floor, which was made sticky with blood; the black and red body fluids were scratched and smeared into stains: the old elevator shook and creaked.

".High-rise office district. Long live the high-rise office district."

She recited silently. Her goal was right beside her, and she would reach it after a little crawl:

The former field colleague who had previously controlled his own life and death was now unable to move again, emitting a rusty and fishy smell. Faced with a dead person, the [client] was startled to find that the anger, hostility, and panic of being chased that had been there just a moment before had quietly vanished.

The real fear comes from something else.

She trembled and fumbled in the inner pocket of the coat of the headless corpse beside her.

【found it】

It was a thick, round tube, wrapped in a plastic bag: needle-free epinephrine, standard issue for Asia-Europe postal field agents, used to prolong the dying. [The client] had never been a field agent, but she was a qualified support; support agents should know everything about field agents.

[Client] struggled to tear open her coat and bit open the envelope of the adrenaline injection with her teeth. Amidst a low roar, she used her right hand, which felt like it had been electrocuted, to slide the injection along the bra strap, aiming it at and injecting it into the area roughly where her heart should be.

Muscle contractions brought another wave of intense pain, followed by spasms and new waves of pain—until the sound of my heart pounding and throbbing filled my skull, overwhelming any discomfort from my physical body.

[The client] knew that he had ten more minutes until he took his last breath in this world.

The [client] once again grasped the twisted door frame and peered out of the elevator, which was filled with a dead atmosphere.

There were no dark red footprints on the floor of the corridor, which gradually faded from thick to thin - such marks should have been left on the ground when you walked out of an elevator covered in blood.

This is not [the client's] professional experience, it's just common sense.

But the ground was empty, with nothing but dust, debris, and the blood that had overflowed from the elevator.

Why didn't the bright yellow monster just now leave any shoe prints?

The corridors and hallways showed few signs of life. The apartments were rarely occupied; there were even some crossed wooden boards blocking the doors.

There was no time for speculation, not with a monster like that—there were more important things to do:

Perhaps it was the adrenaline, or perhaps it was the excitement and fear brought on by the memory of just moments before; [the client]'s body trembled as if it had been electrocuted:

"Yes. Yes - right here, right here."

[The client] had come to Mong Cai looking for the right place – and now she realized there was no better place; like the treasure in Beowulf guarded by the dragon.

The package is absolutely safe here: the protector of the package is far beyond the imagination of ordinary people.

"Ahhh"

She dug her fingers into her open mouth, over her broken and fallen front teeth, and rubbed them vigorously, rotating them until the two dentures came out of her gums.

[The client] peeled off the resin shells of her dentures, stuffed them back into her mouth, and swallowed them along with the blood gushing out of her gums. The stuffy feeling almost choked her to death.

Now, she was left with two long, narrow tubes—the [client] had to fit them together, screwing them together along the spiral line.

According to Asia-Europe Post: This is the "special package" she carries with her: at least the container containing the special package.

[The customer] pulled out the BB phone plugged into her belt, flipped it open along the center line, opened the outer shell and the broken screen, pulled out the circuit board and battery, and the exposed silicone conductive buttons; because her fingers were shaking and twitching, she almost broke the parts.

Then he pulled out the data cable with a needle-shaped connector and the small microphone in the collar from the seam of the blood-soaked hoodie.

Putting these parts together, it becomes a portable terminal without a visual panel but with voice and single-button input: the shell of the BB machine is just a disguise, and this seemingly simple terminal is an experimental product from other companies.

[Customer] inserted the data cable into the round tube and pressed the lonely silicone conductive button——

Tick, tick, tick. Tick, tick, tick.

She used an octopus code, an extension of Morse code, to input numbers one by one into the terminal until she had completed the long and complicated series of numbers and stored them in the tube.

This string of 189 digits was what she brought out from the Asia-Europe Postal Service.

Perhaps it was the key to some experimental weapon, or perhaps it was just a minor sexual quirk of the Asia-Europe Post's top executives; she didn't know; someone else was needed to decipher it.

Division of labor and collaboration are the most important cornerstones of success. [The client] does not have many areas of expertise; at least not enough to complete the entire task alone.

After entering the sequence, [the client] moved the terminal with trembling arms:

She recalled her current neighborhood, building number, and floor number; she continued to input this information into the terminal using the conductive silicone keys—this time using radio signals transmitted on a specific frequency band. Finally, the [customer] pressed the keys in a rhythmic pattern, and the varying intervals of frequency formed a secret code:

[Set this location as a safe house].

Chapter 21 Dying