Monster - Chapter 45
Chapter 45: Infiltration
In Center City, the April weather had already started to warm up, but at night, the temperature would drop to around ten degrees. As soon as Lou stepped out of the taxi, she felt a cool breeze brush against her face. She subconsciously pressed down on the white maid's headdress pinned to her hair, then turned and retrieved a rectangular, flat black case from the back seat, about half her height.
"...Someone like you, how much do you usually make in a night?" Seeing the strikingly beautiful passenger dressed like this in the middle of the night, the taxi driver assumed she was in some kind of special service. He'd been holding it in for a while and finally asked.
Lou wasn't wearing her glasses. Her waist-length hair was pinned up, and she wore a long black maid's dress with a white, lace-trimmed apron tied over it. With the white headdress on, she looked like a high-class maid accompanying her master.
"Quite a lot. You want to try?" Lou handed him the cash. Seeing that he hadn't mutated into a monster, she had no reason to shoot him.
Before leaving that night, Lou had told Wang Lirou she was going to a villa on business and asked for help with a disguise. Wang Lirou might have had some unnecessary misunderstandings about the word "villa," because he pulled out an expensive maid costume he'd bought earlier, practically flying with excitement.
Lou thought the dress looked nice and wore it without much thought, not expecting to attract so much attention on the way.
"An old guy like me could do it?" The taxi driver looked like she had to be joking.
"There are plenty of people with special tastes these days. You should try on a dress first." Lou closed the car door and, carrying the long black case on her back, walked toward the villa district ahead.
It was now past midnight. The beautiful, lushly landscaped villa district was deserted, with very few houses lit up. Miu transformed directly from a brooch into a crow and flew toward their destination.
After receiving Lin Sandie's call that morning, Miu knew someone would come after them before the night was out. Unless Lou holed up indefinitely in the complex, sunless terrain of the Black Goat Walled City, which would only delay being found, not solve the problem.
If it came to that, Wang Lirou and the others might even get dragged into it.
Miu was a little resentful of Lin Sandie for reporting Lou in such an unsportsmanlike way, but considering that its precious partner's various actions were just as bad, if not worse, than Lin Sandie's "report," it could only chalk it up to bad luck.
However, this incident made Miu even more certain that Lin Sandie was no pushover and was nowhere near as fragile as she appeared.
Compared to Miu's careful deliberation, Lou's approach was simpler: don't wait for Yan Ting's crew to come for her, but seize the initiative and go to them.
Her question to Lin Sandie on the phone about how to "present a certificate of honor" had not been a joke; she really did want to track some people down. After Miu had systematically ruled out every other possible approach, it discovered that Lou's method was actually the most suitable. Moreover, it could interrogate these people for more information to help analyze the mystery of Leviathan's monster mutations.
This could be compared with the information obtained from Aphra during the day.
Based on this idea, after Lin Sandie described the style of the villa she was in, Miu scanned the various villa districts in Center City and, without much effort, found the villa where Lin Sandie had been held before she presented her certificate of honor.
"There are five adult males in the villa right now. They've all mutated into monsters, and it looks like they've all killed before. One is in the basement surveillance room, two are resting in their respective rooms—one is asleep, the other is on his phone," Miu stood on the roof of the target villa, relaying the information obtained from its released "Island" to Lou, who was walking toward it. "Two men are on duty in the main hall; one is watching TV, the other is reading. They're all armed."
"The houses around here seem to have a lot of surveillance cameras on the outside." Lou looked at the villas on both sides of the street as she walked.
"It's a rich neighborhood, after all, and the one we're infiltrating has even more. You should wait on a nearby bench first. Once the person watching the monitors steps away, you can climb into the yard." The Island Miu released was a sphere with a 100-meter diameter, so it could naturally detect the situation in the basement. It saw that the basement had too many camera angles; Lou would be caught on camera no matter which way she entered.
"You create a distraction from another angle to draw the monitor's attention." Lou suggested. Compared to the complex and conservative thought process of a Guide, a Sentinel's way of thinking was always more proactive and aggressive. "Interrogation takes time."
Lou added.
"Let me see." After mentally calculating the distance between the cameras around the villa and the surveillance screens in the monitoring room, Miu flew toward a camera by the front gate. "You go in from the northeast corner."
Lou didn't ask questions and headed directly for the villa's northeast corner.
"Caw!!" A sharp caw echoed through the silent villa district, followed by a series of "tap, tap, tap" sounds.
Miu, beak raised, pecked relentlessly at the camera with its flashing red light, just like a common, stupid bird.
Hearing the caw, Lou immediately grabbed the black iron fence surrounding the villa's yard and began to climb. Watching her perform such crude, unladylike movements in a maid's dress, Miu felt a wave of speechlessness. It breathed a slight sigh of relief only after she vaulted into the yard in just a few moves.
"Stupid bird!" Startled by Miu's sudden appearance, the man inside the villa cursed. Seeing it was just a glossy-feathered crow, he muttered another curse about bad luck.
Meanwhile, Lou had already reached the entrance to the villa's basement. The villa's owner had indeed done a thorough job with security. The basement entrance was located outside, creating two layers of protection. Even if someone breached the villa, the person in the basement could serve as unexpected backup. So, even without Miu saying anything, Lou could imagine that there were cameras not just outside the villa, but also in the living room and hallways inside.
The best plan was to take out the person in the surveillance room first.
Lou approached the door leading to the basement surveillance room and found it locked; it could only be opened from the inside. If she forced it, an alarm would immediately sound.
"I'll buy us some time, at least." Lou moved to a different spot, crouched down, and opened the long rectangular case she had been carrying on her back. She took out a black box with a long antenna.
"A cell phone jammer?" Miu flew to a spot out of the camera's view, turned back into a brooch, and appeared on Lou's chest.
Once inside the villa, most of the work would be up to Lou.
"Yeah. When the person in the surveillance room discovers my infiltration and tries to call for backup, the signal won't go through." Lou set up the jammer, then took an old-fashioned cell phone out of the long black case.
"Won't they know as soon as you set it up? Will the camera signals be affected?"
"I don't know. I don't know much about this stuff. An underworld contact from the Walled City got it for me. He said it's specifically for jamming cell signals. And this... a miniature bomb." Lou took the phone and stuck it to the door of the basement surveillance room. "If he tries to come out to check, it'll explode the moment he touches this."
"That could work. With the cell signal blocked, his only way to warn his comrades is to come out of the basement, which will trigger the bomb. The sound of the miniature bomb might attract the Inspectorate or other accomplices, which will buy us some time." Miu carefully thought through the process. The focus of their operation tonight was interrogation, not a show of force, so every second they could gain for the interrogation counted.
"Let's add a little psychological pressure on the guy watching the monitors," Lou said, taking out a slip of paper and resting it on the back of her hand.
In the dim glow of a streetlight, a woman in a long black maid's dress stood under a gloomy tree. A small slip of paper rested on the back of her hand, her long eyelashes lowered as she wrote on it with a ballpoint pen: Please be advised, a miniature bomb has been installed on the surveillance room door.
The signature was, as always, a simple sketch of a rabbit's head with an "X" for a mouth.
After writing, Lou slid the thin slip of paper through the crack under the surveillance room door.
Having done all this, she closed the long rectangular case. Instead of carrying it on her back, she now held it in her hand.
Carrying the case, Lou got up and walked to the nearest part of the villa, the kitchen. Although there were no lights on, the glow from the streetlights outside was enough to see a bowl of fruit sitting on the marble countertop of the simple, modern kitchen.
Lou pulled on the glass door leading from the kitchen to the yard and opened it without effort. She slipped inside.
"They don't even lock the doors. The people here are very confident in their security."
"What's the situation outside now?" Lou leaned the case against a wall. Seeing the villa had wooden floors, which would make a lot of noise with her hard-soled leather shoes, she took them off and kicked them aside. She casually grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl on the kitchen counter and started to walk out of the kitchen while eating it.
"Wait!" Miu suddenly warned. "Don't go out yet. The one in the living room who was reading is asking his companion if he wants a midnight snack. He might come to the kitchen."
"Okay." Lou leaned her back against the doorframe leading from the kitchen to the living room, eating her banana as she waited for him to arrive. She chatted idly with Miu in her mind, "Why do these thugs seem so domestic?"
"I find it strange, too. Shouldn't this type of person be ordering takeout? And their kitchen is so clean, and they have fruit. It's bizarre. It's not very villain-like."
"It might have something to do with their leader. A lot of people have all sorts of strange compulsions," Lou speculated, tossing the banana peel into the trash can under the marble counter. Hearing the sound of the door sliding open, she silently returned to her original spot and knelt down.
The kitchen door was pushed open, and the man who was planning to make a midnight snack walked in, reaching for the light switch as one normally would.
In the instant the light flickered on, before his eyes could adjust, Lou's fist shot upward.
The man couldn't even scream. The sudden, intense pain from his lower body made him double over, drool uncontrollably leaking from the corner of his mouth. Lou didn't let him suffer for long. As he bent over, she grabbed his shoulders and drove her knee hard into his chin. This kind of heavy impact would suddenly compress the brainstem, causing a severe concussion, loss of balance, and immediate unconsciousness.
To prevent the man from falling and making a sound that would alert the person in the living room, Lou kept a tight grip on his clothes as he passed out, dragging him behind the kitchen counter and turning him over. She first sealed his mouth with clear tape, then bound his wrists and ankles tightly with nylon zip ties. After that, she used another tie to bind his wrists and ankles together behind his back, so that even if he woke up, he wouldn't be able to use leverage to escape.
After efficiently finishing all this, Lou stood up, noticed the tempting, rosy apples in the fruit bowl on the counter, and picked one up to take a bite.
Miu was somewhat astonished to see Lou so effortlessly and silently take down an adult male with killing experience.
"In Leviathan, your physical skills don't seem to be affected by 'Thus Have I Heard.'"
"They are. My strength and agility have dropped quite a bit." Eating her apple, Lou followed Miu's directions toward the living room. The kitchen wasn't far, and she reached it quickly.
"I've seen other Sentinels, after earning points, mostly exchange them for powerful items or abilities. Once they encounter a world like Leviathan, their physical skills drop to the level of an ordinary person. But you seem much stronger than an ordinary person."
A movie was playing on the huge screen in the living room—it looked like a spy film, with the protagonist locked in a close fight with his opponent. Unaware of the approaching danger, the man was leaning against the sofa, engrossed in the film.
"Too many convenient skills make it easy for people to forget to train their actual selves. However, the physical skill I can display now is what Leviathan permits me to display."
"Meaning, it's possible for a native resident to reach your current level."
"Yes."
Lou chatted with Miu in her mind as she approached the man. She unhurriedly held the apple in her mouth and pulled a prepared garrote from the pocket of her long dress. This time, the garrote was as thick as a finger, so it wouldn't cut into the person's skin and draw blood like the one at the amusement park.
Just as the man noticed a strange figure appear on the TV screen, the garrote in Lou's hand was already around his neck.
She expertly pulled both ends of the garrote. The man struggled violently, like a fish caught in a net. Although he couldn't break free from the garrote around his neck, he managed to kick over an empty beer bottle on the coffee table in front of the sofa. The bottle fell to the floor with a loud crash, shattering into pieces.
"I do like convenient skills, but sometimes they make me forget the kind of life I truly enjoy," Lou continued her idle chat with Miu, tightening the garrote.
"What kind of life?"
"The kind of life where you meet every challenge as it comes—a life full of excitement and fun."
Sensing that the man in her garrote had stopped moving, Lou released her grip. She took another bite of her apple, but feeling she wouldn't have time to finish it, she placed it on the back of the sofa.
"What was that?" The sound of the shattering beer bottle was especially sharp in the quiet night, and a voice immediately called out from the second floor of the villa.
"The one who was on his phone in his room is probably coming down to check," Miu warned. "The person in the surveillance room is already trying to make a call... but it's not going through."
"I'll tie this one up first. Three samples should be enough for interrogation, right?" Because she still needed to interrogate him, Lou had controlled the duration of the strangulation, only knocking the man unconscious.
"Three is enough."
She tied up the man on the sofa in the same manner as the first. When no one answered after a while, the person on the second floor had already left his room and was preparing to come downstairs to investigate.
Without a hint of panic, Lou propped the bound man against the sofa, leaving the top of his head visible, so that from behind it looked like he was still watching TV.
Lou picked up the remote and turned the movie's volume to maximum.
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