Miss Ai

"Was that all there was to my first assignment?"

At first glance, the night's events seemed a little bizarre, but the more he thought about it, the more reasonable they seemed.

During the assessment, the little fatty team leader had told them that a task like theirs—one bowl of instant noodles, one pack of cigarettes, and watching an elevator all day—was actually the norm.

Things had gone wrong soon after, leading to a bloodbath.

But that had been a test the Disaster Management Bureau had deliberately arranged. In ordinary circumstances, spending an entire night on a boring elevator watch was what counted as normal.

If he was hoping for something to happen, that was his problem!

Sure enough, once he adjusted his expectations, everything went smoothly. Day after day passed, and Han Su went on to carry out several more similar assignments.

Sometimes he had to patrol a certain street, using a full-length mirror set up by the roadside to look for people who didn't appear in its reflection.

Other times he had to enter a building and count the steps between the third and fourth floors over and over. If there were thirteen steps, everything was normal. If there were fewer or more, he had to report it immediately.

On other occasions, he had to go to customs, show his credentials, and help the staff inspect a group of maritime travelers entering the country. The hidden detail that only the field agents knew was that they had to check whether the travelers had grown gills beneath their jaws.

The assignments were strange and tedious. It was only when he stopped to think about their details that they occasionally seemed frightening.

But if it had been just one assignment, that would have been one thing. After several in a row, Han Su couldn't help wondering whether someone had it in for him.

After all, Zhang Chiguo had said that once he joined the Disaster Management Bureau, he'd realize there were invisible enemies everywhere.

He asked Secretary Cui Qiao about it in private. She seemed a little exasperated.

"The D1D2 Work Group operates independently. That's to train your investigators in advance to deal with the bizarre."

"As for your assignments, there's no need to doubt them. All new recruits start out like this. Besides, Miss Ai personally assigns your current tasks. There's absolutely no chance of anything going wrong."

"..."

Han Su was curious. "Why are you so confident? Isn't this Miss Ai just an intelligent program run by the Disaster Management Bureau?"

"Program?"

Secretary Cui Qiao let out a cold laugh and shook her head. "Miss Ai isn't a program. The concept of her existence is difficult for you to understand right now, but you can try thinking of her as a kind of mysterious machine."

"Anything she's involved in has been made as fair and reasonable as possible."

"For now, the only thing you need to do is complete more assignments and improve your standing with Miss Ai. Don't complain that the tasks are too tedious or boring. You should know that four of your fellow trainees have already died."

"..."

"Four?"

Han Su was startled. "How did they die?"

"They were recording flickering streetlights when, for no apparent reason, they lost their heads."

Secretary Cui Qiao spoke calmly. "The cause is still being investigated. Since they worked for the Disaster Management Bureau, the incident didn't even make the papers."

Her words made Han Su instantly wary. He'd done a streetlight-flickering assignment himself. Had it really been that dangerous?

He had a feeling he needed to take things more seriously. At the same time, he'd grown curious about this "Miss Ai."

She didn't call herself some kind of intelligent program. She called herself a mysterious machine?

He looked down at the Tulin Hai Snowfield app on his phone. Compared with some of the popular commercial apps on the market, the Disaster Management Bureau's dedicated app was extremely plain. Its icon showed only the vague outline of a snake coiled around a tree.

Once he tapped it, it looked more like a chat window.

On a whim, he typed a message to the program. Up until now, he'd only ever received assignments from it. [Hello.]

The reply came almost instantly. [Esteemed Executor Mr. Butcher, what can I do for you?]

Han Su thought for a moment and replied, [What can you do for me?]

Miss Ai: [I can issue commissions suited to your current work level and review completed assignments. I can quickly navigate you to designated task locations, and provide information searches and technical support within your authorized access.]

[If you feel empty or bored, or if your mood is unusually low, I can also offer emotional support and psychological analysis.]

"?"

Han Su found it a little strange. "Isn't that just an ordinary intelligent program?"

He didn't think much of it, nor did he try to chat with the strange machine that seemed simple but might have secrets of its own. He simply got used to working for the Disaster Management Bureau.

The assignments he'd carried out so far had all been tedious and dull, but at least each completed task came with a commission deposited into his account.

The commissions were surprisingly generous: ten thousand yuan each time.

Han Su didn't pay much attention to them. He hadn't even opened the page with the commission calculation details.

Following Cui Qiao's reminder, he'd started keeping an eye on his rating in the Disaster Management Bureau's app. He'd gone from C+ right after the assessment to B-.

He didn't know exactly how they calculated it, but his rating probably rose with every completed assignment, alongside the corresponding commission.

Once his B- became an A+, he'd be eligible for a promotion.

For now, there was nothing else he needed to worry about. He just focused on handling his assignments. When he didn't have one, he still went to school as usual, and his life seemed to have changed very little.

The only thing he hadn't gotten used to was that Xu Ji, who'd always been pestering him, had disappeared.

There were rumors that he'd been grounded by his family after getting into an illegal street race that resulted in someone's death.

Han Su found it strange. Xu Ji being grounded made sense, but given the Xu Family's way of doing things, why hadn't anyone come to see him yet?

Of course, after thinking it over, he'd also abandoned the idea of buying a couple of pounds of apples and visiting Xu Ji at the Xu family residence.

He'd started worrying about something else.

Ten whole days had passed since his last kidnapping, when he'd been abducted from the Disaster Management Bureau for listening to the whispered incantation.

Han Su had no idea when the next Kidnapping Case would happen.

Going by the interval before, he'd be kidnapped again after about fourteen days. But there'd been one unusual kidnapping in between. Did that mean the original interval still applied?

He didn't know the answer, but an invisible sense of urgency was already hanging over him.

These repetitive assignments finally took a turn while Han Su was carrying out his fourth one. The details were:

[E4 level commission: Go to Dadi Cinema at 31 Daochun Street, East City District. Between ten p.m. and one a.m., select a movie with no audience and watch it alone from beginning to end. If you encounter an obvious abnormality, immediately send an alert through this app.]

[...]

By now, Han Su was used to these baffling assignments, so he went to the cinema as usual.

The place was tiny, so tiny that it was hard to believe a cinema like that could survive in such a vast city. But Han Su had an assignment to complete, so he picked a movie that no one had bought tickets for and that the theater was already considering canceling, then went inside.

The movie was boring. Han Su had no idea what the assignment meant by an obvious abnormality, so he could only wait patiently for it to end.

At first, assignments like this had struck him as unreasonable. If there really was something bizarre in the cinema, wouldn't it be better to shut it down entirely?

At the very least, shouldn't they evacuate the audiences from the other theaters?

But the fact was, many of the assignments the Disaster Management Bureau gave them were like this: strange, discreet, and unknown to the public.

The movie was more than halfway over. Thinking this would be another excruciatingly dull assignment, Han Su was about to write "No abnormalities" in his Black Notebook.

Then he froze. A chill crept up his spine.

He quietly took the Mysterious Sword in hand and lifted his head without drawing attention to himself. The image on the screen seemed to have split into multiple shadows.

It was as though, behind the movie screen, a blurry shadow was moving along with the characters in the film.

Han Su narrowed his eyes slightly. Keeping his movements subtle, he pressed the alert button in the app, then quietly edged forward to get a better look.

But the moment he shifted, it was as if he'd disturbed something.

A rustling sound suddenly came from the air, like a flock of invisible sparrows flapping overhead.

The inexplicable noise made his scalp prickle.

He immediately tightened his grip on the stun baton, but everything around him had already returned to normal.

His phone chimed. A reply appeared: [Task report received. Please leave the theater immediately. A designated investigator will take over the next stage of the assignment.]

Han Su was confused, but he followed the instructions, took his Briefcase, and left. By the time he emerged from the cinema, he could already see a police car approaching in the distance.

When he'd walked three hundred meters away from the cinema, the area behind him had already been sealed off in layers.

Rows of police cars, armed personnel, firefighters, and even a glimpse of someone in a black trench coat carrying a briefcase had surrounded the cinema. It looked like a battle unfolding beneath the night sky.

So we field agents are just used as abnormality detectors?

Han Su grumbled inwardly, but he understood now. Not every assignment was so dull. It was just that, for now, he was the one who got stuck with the boring work.

He accepted his role without much fuss and took a taxi back to his apartment. But by the roadside, he heard a warm voice call out to him.

"Mr. Han, have you been busy lately?"

Han Su turned in surprise. A high-end black car was parked by the road, and a man in a white shirt with a suit jacket draped over his arm was smiling at him.

He paused. Someone from the Xu Family had finally come to see him.