Chapter 149

Chapter 149: The Unbelievable Special Affairs Bureau

To be fair, even though Xu Jiali’s car was awful to ride in, his stream of odd facts along the way was pretty fun.

It was much livelier than the dry entries in the Border Communications database.

The scenery outside slid by. The rattletrap left the old city’s worn streets, merged onto a main road, and passed through a bright area packed with high-rises and malls. Foxy pressed her face to the window, eyes wide with curiosity. Even with her ears and tail hidden, her excitement made Yu Sheng feel like a whole bundle of tails was swinging behind her.

“How long from here to your Special Affairs Bureau?” asked Yu Sheng with interest. “We’re going to your headquarters, right… or should I say your general bureau?”

“Headquarters,” said Xu Jiali with a nod, watching the three in the rearview. “It’s quick. Half an hour.”

“So close?!” Yu Sheng blurted, thinking about how impossibly huge this city was. Half an hour could only be nearby. “Your headquarters is near the old city?”

Xu Jiali shook his head: “No. The Special Affairs Bureau’s headquarters is very far away. But from anywhere in this city, driving to the Special Affairs Bureau takes thirty minutes or less.”

Yu Sheng stared: “…huh?”

“Because we take a shortcut,” said Xu Jiali with a little grin that said, finally, I get to surprise you. He turned the wheel, left the main road, and slid along a side lane at the edge of the business district into a quiet spot behind a mall. “We at the Special Affairs Bureau do have a few tricks of our own.”

As he spoke, a parking garage entrance appeared ahead. Xu Jiali drove down the ramp. The first basement level looked normal, full of private cars and signs pointing to the mall, the supermarket, or nearby street exits. But then Xu Jiali took several turns, and from deep inside the lot, he turned onto another ramp.

Yu Sheng hadn’t even seen where that ramp came from. From a distance, it had only looked like a patch of open ground at the end of the lot, with some mysterious puddles. As they approached, the water suddenly showed a sloping road going down. Dim lights lined a passage that looked slightly wrong, a corridor leaning ever downward, as if it could reach the earth’s core.

As they went deeper, the light changed to a cold blue. The world grew very quiet. Even the car’s engine sounded muffled, as if wrapped in heavy curtains. Yu Sheng’s Spiritual Intuition started hammering. Before he could sort it out, Irene beat him to it: “Wait, are we dropping into the Otherworld?!”

“Strictly speaking, we’re passing through the Otherworld,” said Xu Jiali, glancing back. “Depth L-1. An Otherworld ‘shortcut’ that covers the whole Borderland. No Entities form here. Aside from a small risk of getting lost, it’s basically harmless. The Special Affairs Bureau sits at the master junction of this shortcut, and we ‘borrow’ a bit of the Otherworld’s special power. We’re here.”

As he finished, Yu Sheng felt the ground shift. The pounding of Spiritual Intuition faded fast. The car left the passage, passed a gate, and rolled into a brightly lit parking garage.

“Let’s get out,” said Xu Jiali, parking and hurrying over to open Yu Sheng’s door. “We’ll take the central elevator up.”

Yu Sheng slung Irene over his shoulder, and with the fox girl bright-eyed and bouncing, followed their guide. They crossed a surprisingly vast parking level, turned through a maze of corridors, and reached the elevator lobby. Xu Jiali swiped his card, and they stepped into the car.

Right away, Yu Sheng noticed the labels taped on the walls and near the buttons.

Each one had a strange reminder or warning. He read them one by one, puzzled:

“One: the elevator will not stop on floors 1 to 3.”

“Two: lighting on the 4th floor is controlled. If you enter a brightly lit 4th floor, return to the garage at once or go to the security floor on 12.”

“Three: Saturday is elevator maintenance day. If you see the word ‘maintenance’ on the screen at other times, press the blue button and exit. Take elevator 2 or 5.”

“Four: if you are an upper-level employee, you may only use this elevator to reach B1, B2, and above-ground floors. If the elevator announces B3 or deeper, greet the deep-floor staff in the car, but do not leave the cab.”

There were several more like that.

Yu Sheng stared at the taped notes for a few seconds, then turned to Xu Jiali: “Your work environment has a lot of risk, huh? Do you have to pass a rules check every time you come to work?”

“You get used to it,” said Xu Jiali, calm as could be. “The headquarters tower has many special Nodes connected to many places. Some floors are placed entirely in pocket spaces, and a few have ‘natives’ wandering around. But it’s not as dangerous as people think. Most spots and rules in here are not deadly. If you get lost, there are help beacons or returns to the shortcut. There’s also a ‘Peaceful Work Division’ that teams up with Security and specializes in bringing coworkers who get lost in the building back to their desks.”

That made it sound even weirder. Even Irene couldn’t help muttering: “A Peaceful Work Division… So if someone sneaks off to a quiet corner to slack, you treat it as a ‘lost’ case and a bunch of guards drag them back to their seat?”

Xu Jiali shrugged: “What can we do? Our work and environment are special. Especially near the special floors. If you’re gone for thirty minutes and don’t return, who knows if you went to slack off or got swallowed by the office next door. Still, most floors are stable. The high-pressure posts have short shifts. For trained staff, working here isn’t much different from a regular office building.”

“You work in this tower too?” asked Yu Sheng.

“No. I’m out in the field most of the time,” said Xu Jiali, waving it off. “When I’m back, I’m usually on standby in the annex. Besides that, there are ‘outposts’ and ‘garrisons’ for the regular action teams. They don’t connect directly to HQ, but you can go quickly through shortcut floors or special ‘channels’.”

The elevator stopped at a floor labeled 54-1/2. With a soft door opening chime, the doors slid aside, and a bright corridor came into view.

The floor was very quiet. Now and then a few uniformed people passed by, all in a hurry and focused. One side of the hall had rows of closed doors. The other side had a line of wide windows. Through them, they saw the view outside.

Beyond the glass lay a heavy, oppressive rock mantle, crisscrossed by dark stone pillars and huge stalactites. Far away, the rock wall ended in a massive crack. Beyond that crack, a forest stretched out, covered in blinding white snow, sunlight blazing on the surface.

Yu Sheng gaped: “What the heck kind of scenery is that!”

Xu Jiali didn’t bat an eye. He even looked pleased: “Oh, 54 and a half is sunny today. Nice weather. Beyond that rift, it’s been snowing for almost half a year.”

Foxy’s eyes went round: “Are the floors here each a world of their own?”

“Not every floor,” said Xu Jiali, shaking his head. “Like I said, most floors are stable. Only about one third have strange scenery. And they’re not worlds of their own. They just aren’t in the Borderland.”

Yu Sheng was speechless. [Only one third? And they just aren’t in the Borderland? How is this place so weird?]

Xu Jiali, not noticing their faces, kept explaining: “Think of the Special Affairs Bureau tower as a huge spacetime Rift sampling needle. Its floors run through many ‘singular places’. If the Borderland is this world’s space hub, then our HQ sits at the busiest N-shaped intersection of that hub. We even set up two mini customs and a Border traffic station inside. If there’s time later, I can give you a tour. First-timers find it pretty fun.”

“I already think it’s fun,” said Yu Sheng, voice a little numb. “How did you even build this building?”

“A little miracle of civil engineering. I don’t know the details,” said Xu Jiali with a shrug. “But now you see why, when you do a Door Opening, our whole Bureau goes up in arms?”

Yu Sheng froze.

“When a spacetime misalignment is detected, the whole tower sounds the alarm,” said Xu Jiali with a sigh, his tone carrying some not-so-fond memories. “Even the annex and several satellite facilities that share floors with the main building joined in. We found out later there wasn’t any real damage, but while the sirens were blaring, it felt like HQ had fallen. On the busiest night, half the building evacuated in a rush.”

Yu Sheng had nothing to say: “…”