Lucian raised his leg to step through, then suddenly stopped and glanced back at Wong with a half-smile.
"Old Wong."
The fat on Wong's face stiffened. "Huh? Is there something else, Mr. Lucian?"
"The wireless internet in the library is pretty fast." Lucian pointed at the tip of his nose and said unhurriedly, "If I come back next time and find someone's changed the Wi-Fi password, I'll haul those shelves of books of yours onto the streets of Manhattan and sell them by the pound like old newspapers."
The muscles at the corners of Wong's mouth twitched, and a sheen of cold sweat broke out on his forehead. He didn't dare talk back, nodding repeatedly with a miserable expression. "...Rest assured, the password absolutely won't change. I swear on my reputation as a sorcerer!"
Lucian paid him no further attention and stepped through the glowing doorway.
The next second, the golden sparks contracted and closed, and space settled back into place.
Vought Tower, the president's office.
"Boss."
Simona had already been waiting nearby. She hurried over in her high heels and handed him a black encrypted tablet.
"It happened three days ago. Rosa Dalton suddenly went off the grid on her way back to her apartment after work. We pulled surveillance footage from seven intersections along her route and found a Chevrolet with special federal government plates tailing her the whole way."
Lucian swiped across the screen, examining the surveillance stills and crime scene photographs.
"They were extremely professional. They used a highly concentrated military-grade anesthetic, and the whole operation took less than five seconds," Simona reported rapidly. "But what happened afterward was strange. When we followed the trail to an abandoned air-raid shelter in Queens, all that remained at the scene was a corpse."
A high-resolution autopsy photograph appeared