Drunk Female Driver Veers Off Course

What did spatial teleportation actually feel like?

In Sing Sing's original imagining, it should have been a high-end commuting experience.

Like boarding a private jet, surrounded by a dazzling starry sky, with a gentle announcement in your ear: "Next stop, China."

But reality was often far less appealing than the ideal.

Especially when you were riding in an unlicensed cab whose driver had just polished off an entire bottle of whiskey.

The light around them spun violently. Weightlessness and centrifugal force tangled together, churning their insides upside down.

"Buuurp—"

A loud belch was followed by the smell of whiskey and cumin from the roast turkey.

Edith mumbled drunken nonsense no one could understand.

With that belch, the previously steady purple tunnel suddenly began to buck violently.

It tossed them up and down and rocked them from side to side, shaking them so hard their bones felt ready to fall apart.

"Oh, crap!"

"Everyone, grab the handrails!"

Behind him, Lorna was thrown against Sing Sing's back. She gritted her teeth. "What handrails? Tell her to steady this thing!"

"She can't! This is serious drunk driving and overloading, and the navigation system's completely dead!"

As soon as he finished speaking, the purple light around them suddenly flickered twice, then went out with a "pop."

"Aaah—"

Amy let out a piercing scream.

"Splash! Splash! Splash!"

With a series of splashes, everyone plunged straight down from midair, one after another.

A pool of viscous liquid greeted them.

After finally managing to get his head above the surface, Sing Sing wiped the sticky substance off his face and looked down.

The white suit that symbolized an agent's elegance and melancholy had become a pitch-black rag.

"My Armani!"

Sing Sing threw back his head and let out a shriek like a pig being slaughtered, clutching his chest and gasping.

"That was my high-quality knockoff limited-edition Armani!"

A gurgling sound came from beside him.

Sing Sing turned and saw that Edith had completely exhausted herself. With the alcohol going to her head as well, she was floating spread-eagle on the surface of the mud, completely unconscious.

Her strikingly exotic blue skin was evenly coated in mud, glossy black.

Her mouth hung slightly open, steadily blowing black mud bubbles that smelled of whiskey.

My Armani!

"Splash—"

Lorna stood up in the waist-deep mud.

She gasped for breath and roughly swept the wet green hair plastered to her face back.

Thick mud slid down her chin and neck.

The sight was a visual disaster.

Sing Sing instinctively turned his head, his eyes landing right on the scene.

"Comrade Little Lorna, you've really been hiding that figure. You usually look like a tablet, but who'd have thought you had assets tucked away, just about ready to come bursting out..."

On the surface, he was marveling at the effects of the mud bath, but his words carried a double meaning; the old hand's dirty joke was practically running Lorna over.

Lorna froze for a second, then looked down at her current state.

Shame and anger churned wildly in her mind.

"Ste! Phen! I'm going to gouge out your eyeballs and stomp on them like light bulbs!"

Lorna's chest heaved as she roared at the top of her lungs.

A long-handled iron shovel covered in black mud burst through the thick sludge, forcibly drawn out by Lorna's powerful magnetism, and slammed down toward Sing Sing's head!

Sing Sing let out a strange yelp, his movements unusually slippery.

He even caught sight of the bubbling surface beside him.

He reached in, grabbed an ankle, and pulled Anton, who was about to sink to the bottom, safely out of the mud.

"Riptide! Catch your brother! This kid almost became fish bait!"

With a flick of his wrist, Sing Sing tossed Anton toward Riptide, who was not far away.

Riptide was in a sorry state himself.

His wind powers were severely hampered in the viscous mud and could only blow up a few drops.

He caught his unconscious brother in a flurry, hoisted Anton onto his shoulder, and looked around warily.

"Where the hell is this?!"

Riptide roared as he wiped the mud from his face.

On the other side, Amy was half submerged in the mud, her face full of bewilderment.

"Stop, stop, stop! Little Lorna! Quit hitting me!"

Sing Sing scrambled and hopped his way up to the edge of the mud pit, flung the heavy bedsheet bundle onto the bank, then turned around and raised both hands in surrender.

Lorna stood in the mud, panting, still holding two rusty steel rods in both hands, her chest heaving.

She stared coldly at Sing Sing, as if considering whether to stick them into his left eye or his right.

"First take a look at where we are, then decide whether you want to murder your immediate superior." Sing Sing pointed around them.

Desolation stretched as far as the eye could see.

Rolling sand dunes filled their entire field of vision.

A fierce wind swept yellow sand howling through the night sky.

And not far behind them stood a metal drilling rig that towered into the clouds.

A pumpjack clanked away in the darkness.

They had fallen into an abandoned drilling mud circulation pit!

"Where are we?"

Riptide climbed onto the bank with Anton on his shoulder, his face full of confusion. "Do China's special zones all look like this?"

"Special zone, my ass!" Sing Sing slapped his thigh, pointing at Edith, who was still blowing bubbles on the ground, and let loose.

"I told her to navigate to a bustling metropolis, to an infrastructure construction site! But this little blue-skinned comrade went and put her foot down, taking us straight into the heart of the Taklamakan Desert! This is an oil field in the great northwest!"

Sing Sing stamped his feet. "That drunk-driving detour took us a full five thousand kilometers off course! Five thousand kilometers, comrades!"

Lorna tossed aside the steel rods and climbed onto the bank. When the cold wind hit her, her mud-soaked bodysuit made her shiver.

"What do we do now? Sit around in this godforsaken place and live on thin air?"

"What's the panic?"

Sing Sing straightened his tie, struggling to save face. "An agent's first rule is to adapt to circumstances. What's wrong with the great northwest? It's part of our motherland's magnificent landscape too. This place has abundant oil reserves, making it just the place for special talents like you to shine..."

Before he could finish,

A burst of ferocious barking suddenly came from the distance. Judging by the deep, powerful sound, they were clearly well-trained Rottweilers or Caucasian Shepherd Dogs.

Two camouflage pickup trucks shot out from behind a sand dune and screeched to a stop a dozen or so meters away.

Several burly men stood in the truck beds, carrying riot batons.

The loudspeaker on a pickup's roof crackled with a piercing burst of static. Then a rough male voice with a thick northwestern accent boomed deafeningly through the night sky:

"Oil thieves up ahead, listen up! You're surrounded! Hands on your heads and squat down! If you dare run, we'll set the dogs on you and let them bite you to death!"