Taking Action

A detached house somewhere.

Karen looked at the report in his hands, his fingers tapping the tabletop again and again, the breath he exhaled thick with the smell of alcohol.

He had been under a lot of pressure lately.

His colleague Galan had vanished for no reason.

The other man's assignment had been handed over to him.

The key was...

He and his dead colleague Galan had not been very close. All he knew was that before the incident, Galan had investigated that man, Brian.

But he was not certain whether Brian was the killer.

To be safe...

He first investigated Galan's movements before the incident, and finally found a name in the man's home: Andreas.

After investigating...

Karen discovered that Andreas was the killer who had died mysteriously in a certain case.

Coincidentally...

NW Department had only just been established at the time.

The autopsy work for that case had still been dumped on the medical examiner's office.

The target, Brian, had been a former employee of the medical examiner's office.

According to the work files Karen retrieved...

Brian had even been involved in the intake process for the deceased Andreas back then!

Karen suspected that perhaps some secret was hidden between his colleague Galan, the target Brian, and the dead killer Andreas.

So he had used a case as an excuse to test the target.

Based on his observations over the past few days...

The target, Brian, had not made any unnecessary moves.

That was the source of Karen's pressure.

According to a normal person's reaction, no matter the reason, they would feel at least some curiosity about the note he had given them.

But the other party had shown no reaction at all.

This made Karen uneasy.

His many years of investigative experience told him...

This Brian really did have a problem!

"Fuck!"

"Everyone in Sixth Squad of Team B has something wrong with them. I really don't understand why that bastard Galan had to pick this Brian!"

"Maybe I should switch targets..."

Karen could not help cursing out loud.

In truth, he also understood why his colleague Galan had chosen Brian as the target.

Sixth Squad had originally had four members: medical examiner Brian, the former detective Teddy Duo—Ivan and Glenn—and Old Harden, the rehired old police logistics officer.

Among them, the Teddy Duo had a terrible reputation in the field. Their combat ability was extremely high, yet their brains were also somewhat abnormal, and they acted without any regard for consequences, making them very difficult to provoke.

Old Harden was a veteran employee who had worked in the police system for over forty years.

No one wanted to know what kinds of people an old guy like that knew when it mattered.

Only Brian looked like an easy mark, the easiest to handle.

But now it seemed...

This Brian was not right either!

Karen shut his eyes in agony.

Could Sixth Squad of Team B not recruit some normal people?

What the hell kind of people had they brought in!!!

Karen wanted to back down.

It was not that he was afraid of Brian.

It was that he felt this was too thorny.

An official NW Department employee had a status even more sensitive than his previous identity as a detective.

Without any leverage...

There were many methods he could not use.

If this continued, there was no way he could complete the assignment handed down from above.

Just as he was wavering.

A sense of unease surged through Karen's heart.

The hairs on his body stood on end, and he whipped his head around.

Behind him.

Under the orange glow of the desk lamp, the room was empty and pitch-black. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Karen let out a breath of relief.

Despite the gold-rimmed glasses he wore, in his early years, he had in fact come through hails of bullets. Otherwise, he never would have made it into Team A of the powerful NW Operations Department.

"Looks like I've been too anxious lately."

Karen exhaled a thick reek of alcohol and made up his mind. Tomorrow, he would go to the new team leader and turn down the man's assignment.

Without absolute certainty, he would not take even the slightest risk.

That was the rule that had allowed him to return alive from the battlefield to Los Angeles all those years ago!

Once he had made up his mind, Karen slowly rose, ready to change clothes and go to sleep.

The next moment.

A round tranquilizer dart, something like a syringe, shot out from the darkness and struck him precisely in the neck.

"Damn it."

As his consciousness sank into darkness, that was the last thought Karen had.

"Pretty alert, aren't you? Sixth sense, maybe?"

Brian, his whole body bulky and swollen-looking, wearing a pig-head mask, slowly walked out of the darkness. He kicked the motionless Karen, then used the homemade crossbow in his hand to give him another dose of his homemade anesthetic.

This stuff was not as effective as medical anesthetic. Its effects were average.

But with two shots in him, even a strong adult man would not wake up for several hours.

That was the power of professionalism.

After making sure there were no surveillance cameras in the room, Brian walked to the desk and picked up the report Karen had put down.

It was a log sheet.

After reading what was written on it, Brian felt a burst of relief.

Good lord.

All this time, the guy had actually been secretly observing him.

Fortunately, every time he had gone out to watch Karen's route home and residence, he had snuck out of the apartment and disguised himself. It had also counted as preparation in advance for tonight's operation. Otherwise, he really would have worried that Karen might notice something was wrong.

"People's hearts are treacherous!"

"Good thing I struck first!"

Brian muttered inwardly, deciding that he would continue carrying forward this style in the future.

As long as he acted fast enough, he would not have to fear getting shot in the back!

After cleaning up the traces he had left while sneaking in, Brian hoisted Karen up, dropped a thumb-sized, bloody-looking pig-head sculpture on the floor, then went straight beneath the surveillance camera outside the house, made a throat-slitting gesture, and swaggered off, disappearing into the night.

Three in the morning.

The familiar little cabin in the suburbs.

Brian was digging a pit.

This was the place the Camo Family had once used as a temporary stop when organizing family hunting trips in the wild. It was very remote and had been abandoned for a long time.

Aside from the legal hunting season, people generally would not come near this place.

Brian had dealt with Li Sen here before.

Now Brian was using it as a temporary garbage disposal site.

But things should not happen more than three times.

After this time, Brian did not plan to keep coming back here.

The pit was dug.

Brian directly stripped Karen, who was just about to wake up, and threw him into the pit.

After doing all that, he took out a plastic bucket filled with dense clusters of hideous little snakes, set it to the side, and waited for poor Agent Karen to wake up.

Here, Brian sincerely thanked Miss Aina, the illegal practitioner.

This abnormal woman charged a little brutally, but her methods were genuinely wild. She could get her hands on all kinds of things, kept her mouth very shut, supplied goods privately and worry-free, and even allowed service first, payment later.

He waited for roughly half an hour.

Karen, still in a drugged sleep, finally began to wake in a daze.

He felt like his current state was a little strange.

It was like after a hangover, before the alcohol had fully worn off—half awake, half not, muddled and hazy.

His body was a little weak too.

He opened his mouth, wanting to call for help. "Is anyone there?"

But to Brian, standing above the pit, it only sounded like indistinct whimpering.

He was not surprised.

This was a normal reaction during the process of waking from anesthesia.

In fact, many people lost their dignity the moment they woke up on an operating table.

When a lot of patients had just woken up, there was nothing they would not say.

That place could be considered a disaster zone for social death.

Another dozen minutes or so passed.

The effects of the crude anesthetic Brian had prepared completely faded.

Only then did Karen's consciousness fully return.

At this moment, the moon had withdrawn, the morning sun had yet to rise, and the world was at its darkest.

Karen looked around in terror, but he could only vaguely see, above the pit, Brian's blurry figure wearing a pig-head mask. He looked like a psychopathic killer from a horror movie, sizing up his prey with great interest.

Completely naked, Karen curled up helplessly in the farthest corner of the pit. "No matter what your goal is, I'll cooperate."

Brian:

I haven't even made a move yet, and you're already compromising.

Isn't that a bit disrespectful to the snake feast I prepared for you?

Brian, having lost interest, could only take off the pig-head mask on his head. "Agent Karen, I'm very curious. Why have you and your colleague Galan been making trouble for me all this time?"

When Karen heard that familiar voice, despair flashed through his eyes.

The person who killed Galan really was Brian!

He was dead for sure!

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Good night.