In just over three hours, Lin Qi ate a midnight snack and then lay in bed pretending to be pathetic, while the emergency center doctors did not know where they had gotten some random stuff to smear on his face, making him look utterly haggard.
When he was wheeled out of the emergency center, everyone breathed a sigh of relief, including the Federal Revenue Service Director of Sabine City, who had not left at all and had been waiting right here, only letting his heart settle at this very moment.
As long as Lin Qi did not die, the issue would not escalate to a point where it could no longer be patched up. In truth, whether it was him, people in the Upper Class, or regulatory departments, how could they possibly be unaware of certain working-level problems existing at the bottom?
As long as matters were not pushed to an irremediable stage, those above would simply turn a blind eye and pretend to know nothing. Everyone could also show mutual understanding; if everything on the front line were done strictly by the rules and regulations, probably nothing at all would ever get accomplished.
Appropriately delegating power or even overstepping rules was not considered too excessive, as long as they could complete their work and their tasks, then none of it was a problem.
Every year, the Bayer Federation had no less than several hundred contradictions caused by issues of law enforcement discretion. In previous years there might have been even more, yet local law enforcement agencies had never been deterred from reaching out because of it, let alone seen law enforcement departments locked in cages by their superiors.
However, if Lin Qi died, then this matter would become extremely difficult to handle. Any effective and healthy mechanism inherently possessed a set of internal cleanup processes to purge corrupted parts, and the Federal Government was no exception.
The Supervisory Department of the Bayer Federation was one such special department, with many subordinate branches under it. Among them, the more famous ones included the Bureau of Investigation of Duty Crimes, the Disciplinary Committee, and the Counter-Infiltration Investigation Office.
Once public opinion began to boil over, some of these people would soon appear in Sabine City, conducting investigations surrounding excessive law enforcement discretion and potential duty crimes. When that time came, it would not just be Michael who was out of luck.
A tiny Investigation Team Leader could not shoulder such weight; there had to be a scapegoat who went down together with him and got dismissed from office, and this person was extremely likely to be a bureau-level figure guilty of "knowing and failing to report."
Fortunately, Lin Qi had regained consciousness, which also meant that the situation would not turn out too terrible—provided one did not consider the continuous stream of medical bills he was about to see next.
Lin Qi spoke with the doctor and thereby facilitated this simple cooperation between them. Here, the doctor's actions were not counted as a major fault.
One had to know that in the Bayer Federation, medical structures were all controlled by medical conglomerates. In other words, hospitals were equivalent to storefronts run by capitalists wearing the outer skins of medical groups.
What they sold was a thing called health, and wanting to obtain health required paying money. Doctors and nurses were salespeople; they worked here not to rescue the dying and heal the wounded, even though they always touted themselves that way.
From the very beginning, the purpose of studying this medical knowledge was to enter a hospital and become a doctor or a nurse, in order to join the high-income demographic.
Their essential job was also to create profits for the conglomerate. So why would a doctor refuse a risk-free cooperation to earn a huge commission? Of course, this was also the reason why whenever the President brought up the issue of Medical Reform, it would gain the people's support. With treatment costs remaining high and the cold attitude of hospitals, most people hoped change could happen, yet it was truly difficult to achieve.
This was just like asking those big capitalists not to make money. They were not philanthropists, and even if they were philanthropists, a philanthropist first needed to suck enough blood from commoners before they could have a brightly colored philanthropic heart to dedicate to others. That was basically an impossible thing to accomplish.
In short, the news that Lin Qi had been subjected to violent coercion by Michael and was gravely ill quickly spread out. Michael, who was cooperating with the investigation at the Police Station, never expected Lin Qi to be injured this heavily.
Several police officers hesitatingly let him cooperate, putting Handcuffs and Ankle Shackles on him. In the Police Station, this already counted as top-tier treatment, and it simultaneously meant that Michael might be implicated in a first-degree murder case, with him as the perpetrator—if Lin Qi kicked the bucket in the middle of the night.
This series of changes did not alarm too many citizens of Sabine City. Even when dawn arrived, they might still not know that a guy named Lin Qi had been beaten into the hospital by a Federal Revenue Service Investigation Team Leader named Michael, complete with a critical condition notice.
The days of the overwhelming majority of people had not the slightest difference from usual. Little Michael was no exception.
After waking up in the morning and eating a not-very-delicious breakfast, he entered the prison workshop together with everyone else. Sometimes, everything about the Bayer Federation could leave people feeling bewildered.
A prison clearly ought to be a state-run structure, but within the Bayer Federation there were many privately run prisons. The power of capital truly permeated everywhere, to the extent that even prisons and convicts had turned into factories capable of squeezing out profits in the eyes of certain people.
Fortunately, however, the Sabine City District Prison was not a privately run institution. The inmates of this small city were not numerous enough to make the Sabine City Hall feel strained, so they could temporarily still afford these expenses.
The criminals detained here did not eat for free every day either; they had to work as well, only this kind of work felt more like the result of a... epochal policy under the current system.
Previously, some people believed that the main reason criminals continued to commit crimes after leaving prison lay in the fact that they lacked specialized skills, making it impossible to rapidly integrate into society upon release, unable to earn enough money to support themselves, and possessing no other work capabilities, leaving them with no choice but to step back onto the path of crime.
Consequently, after several years of discussions, a piece of trash named the "Inmate Skill Training and Employment Guidance Act" was ultimately passed, requiring every inmate to master a way to make a living during their sentence.
From the start of its implementation, this act birthed many new problems, and resolving these new problems birthed even more problems, but none of that mattered.
What mattered was that Little Michael sat honestly in front of a sewing machine, starting sewing work in accordance with his Master's requirements. This was the employment skill of the Sabine City District Prison.
The veteran-teaching-novice method allowed inmates to skillfully master the techniques of using a sewing machine. If they themselves had an interest, they could also self-study machine-repair-related content, so that upon release from prison, whether they went to be workers or did anything else, they would possess a specialized skill.
Generally, newly imprisoned cellmates would be arranged into the novice group, and the prison side would arrange some veterans to teach them until they could independently make a prison uniform for themselves, which counted as success.
At that time, they could choose to go bask in the sun, exercise, or work here. For every piece of clothing they finished sewing according to the requirements, they would obtain some monetary rewards.
These rewards would be issued to them all at once when they left prison, or used for consumption within the prison.
After Little Michael sat down, his Master did not let him start working yet. Instead, gazing toward the direction of the door, the man casually said, "There are newcomers coming today, and the higher-ups arranged for you guys to be in the same group..."
Little Michael had no problems with that. He had recently started adapting to the life inside here; it was not as terrifying as people said, and he felt that even without Michael's help, he could safely and rapidly complete his sentence here.
Not long after, several newcomers were led into the workshop. They all walked toward Little Michael's side; since they were all newcomers, uniform learning progress was not troublesome.
Just as everyone started preparing to learn, a guy who had been staring fixedly at Little Michael suddenly said in a loud voice, "Hey, I recognize you. Your dad is a guy with a 'license'!"
In a flash, the entire workshop grew silent for a moment. Little Michael swallowed a mouthful of saliva, abruptly feeling that the atmosphere right here had turned somewhat abnormal, and even his "Master," who had been joking and laughing with him over the past few days, wore a shift in his expression as he looked at him.
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