Chapter 153

Chapter 153: Two Notes, One Slip of Paper

Yu Sheng soon found the two records.

First was a note scribbled in a rush by an operator inside the lab. When he wrote it, the action had already gone out of control and the lab was sealed. The note was messy and hurried, with many parts smeared over or left blank on purpose. The note read: “The isolation door has come down. Alarms are everywhere. Hallucinations and noise are attacking my head. I do not know how long I can stay clear. I leave my last record here and will write as fully as I can what I see and feel. But my senses are being affected, so some parts of this record may be twisted or falsified. I hope later investigators can tell truth from lies and treat these words with care. Two Deep Divers have returned from the Deep Dive Apparatus and are dying. Neither the equipment nor the medics can find the cause. Their minds, or souls, seem to have been damaged before they came back to reality. Now these are only two bodies still running their biochemistry on inertia, trying to pass out the last bits of intel. The one in better shape kept repeating strange words before he totally lost his voice. He spoke again and again of a ‘baby’s crying’ and an ‘Umbilical Cord,’ also ‘sleeping’ and ‘twisted.’ He also said one more word, like ‘boat’ or something close to that, but it came out like a scream, impossible to hear clearly. I cannot imagine what they saw or went through on the other side. That is beyond human thought. The monitoring System linked to the Deep Dive pool transmits only noise. The temperature around me is dropping, but I cannot be sure it is not a hallucination. XX (redacted) suddenly fainted, then woke, shouted, and soon fell again. There are unfamiliar figures moving in my field of view, talking to the people around us, talking to us. I cannot hear them and cannot see their faces. I suspect they are staff from the lab, but I am rapidly losing my memory of everyone here. Everyone looks strange. My memory and judgment are being broken. The noise, like screaming and crying mixed together, comes from nowhere. A voice tells me to keep writing, but I can hardly hold the pen. My sight is dimming. There is a sweet smell in the air. The last rescue attempt may have failed. The ‘Mercy’ System is releasing anesthetic gas to the whole area. (From here, the original handwriting becomes extremely messy and scrawled, with many edits. Please judge with care. Note by the Internal Security Division.) The crying grows clearer. I feel my body and mind sinking. A lullaby is playing. XX is trying to calm us again. It is not yet time. Swaying, sinking, losing control, XX said we would wake in a peaceful and stable new world, but we were abandoned. It was false. I do not know. Breathe, breathe, crying. We are linked together. We hold each other. Breathe, breathe, we are together, we become one, breathe.”

The first record ended there.

Yu Sheng stared at those tangled, eerie lines at the end, stunned. Even though this was only a cleaned copy based on the original, he still felt a chill that seemed soaked into the words, a cold that crossed paper and seventy years to reach him. He imagined that day, that failed operation, the sealed lab, and what happened inside in those last hours or minutes. Without noticing it, his breathing grew heavy. [I can almost hear it.]

Bai Li Qing’s voice broke his thoughts: “That was not the only material left from inside the lab. Other staff who survived for a time also left marks and ‘records,’ but those are even more mad and messy and cannot be read at all. If you are curious, turn to the last page.”

Yu Sheng turned at once to the end. A series of photos and stark black and white rubbings filled the page.

There were strange scratches carved into tables and walls, symbols on paper blackened by layers of ink until they were just dark blots, and odd lines on clothes that might be writing or just abstract shapes.

As Bai Li Qing had said, they could not be told apart.

Even the Special Affairs Bureau’s professional investigators had found nothing in all these years. Yu Sheng, an amateur, could not see anything from a quick glance.

He turned back to where he had stopped and focused on the second record.

This one was a short work note, scribbled by a monitoring staff member outside the lab. It was clearer and easier to understand. It stated: “The lockdown has started. The Adulthood operation has failed. My coworkers are following procedure to gather and move what must be saved. I leave here the last record of the situation inside the lab. At forty minutes after lockdown, life signs inside the lab began to drop fast. Our communications with the inside broke down. They may no longer be able to speak rationally with the outside. At fifty minutes, the monitoring System recorded strange noise. The sound of a baby crying echoed in the lab, along with other sharp and chaotic sounds, like roars. Life signs in the monitored area fell to almost zero. The terrible part was that some inside staff who had no signs of life at all suddenly started to move under monitoring. Their motion lasted only a very short time, but it was horrifying enough. It was as if something had suddenly crawled into their dead bodies and was using those shells to rise and walk. They moved stiffly in the lab, as if they were curious, looking around. Then the shells fell again. At sixty five minutes after lockdown, the lab slowly turned quiet. The strange noise and the roars faded away. All life signs were gone. At seventy two minutes after lockdown, the facility stayed closed under standard safety procedure. The monitored area was fully silent. All noise and unknown energy readings had vanished. The Internal Security Division has taken over this area and plans to open the door in twenty four hours to bring my coworkers home.”

The note ended there.

Head still lowered, Yu Sheng kept his reading posture for several seconds, then drew a deep breath and let it out slowly.

This was his first time reading an action record like this. It was more upsetting than he had expected. [This is the face adults see.]

He lifted his head and saw Bai Li Qing watching him quietly, as if she had watched him for a long time already.

“This is not what I expected,” Yu Sheng said after a few seconds, frowning as he shook his head. “I thought I would be reading exploration logs about the Black Forest or some other subset.”

As he spoke, he suddenly understood why Teacher Su had urged him to come here and read the old action records left by the Special Affairs Bureau.

This file, written by operatives seventy years ago, showed a view very different from the Cursed Children’s picture of Fairy Tale based on their own experience. The information it revealed went far beyond what he had imagined.

Bai Li Qing did not seem surprised. “To Cursed Children and to adults, Fairy Tale shows completely different faces. What we recorded is its more dangerous and essential side.”

“Behind the stage,” Yu Sheng said softly.

Bai Li Qing frowned lightly, as if she connected the dots from his words and understood.

Just then, a sudden ring cut off everyone in the room.

Startled, Yu Sheng looked up and followed Bai Li Qing’s gaze to the large window.

On the other side, a lab worker in a protective suit was waving at them.

Bai Li Qing grabbed the phone on the table and held it to her ear. After only two sentences, her face, which rarely changed, showed a new look.

“Confirmed?” she asked quickly into the receiver.

The worker in the lab held his phone and nodded hard.

“What is it?” Yu Sheng asked, baffled, leaning closer to Bai Li Qing.

“The analysis on that slip of paper is back. They restored what it used to look like,” Bai Li Qing said as she put down the phone. She gave Yu Sheng a complex look, then moved fast on the controls on the desk.

The center of the big window lit up and showed an extra image. In the middle was the restored slip of paper.

Yu Sheng’s mouth slowly fell open. He stared in shock at the familiar emblem on the paper and a few lines of text.

“What is that?”

“It is an old work ID for a Special Affairs Bureau Deep Diver, but the name was erased,” Bai Li Qing said softly. She lowered her head, let her gaze pass over the file in front of Yu Sheng, then turned to the page with the list of names. “It belongs to them.”

Yu Sheng drew a sharp breath.

“So you mean,” he said in a tone full of disbelief, “the Hunter in the Black Forest is a Deep Diver from the Adulthood operation?” [One of their own, left behind.]