The "Secret" in Secrets

[T: I have her, dear Mr. Cavendish. The ransom is fifty million pounds, and not a penny less. Once twelve hours are up, I guarantee your precious daughter's private scandals will be scattered across the streets of all Britain.]

"Fuck you!!!"

Mr. Cavendish flew into a rage in his office upon receiving the ransom text. He swept everything off his desk, and crashes and cracks rang throughout the office. Outside the door, every guard kept his lips tightly shut, trembling with fear.

If he had known that all the bodyguards he had arranged would be useless, he would never have let Emily attend that damned social gathering.

He didn't care about his daughter's so-called private scandals. All he cared about was whether she would be physically or psychologically hurt because of them.

"Mycroft, where are the people I asked you to find? Get them working! Didn't you swear you'd help me solve this problem?"

Whenever Ande thought about Emily's unknown whereabouts, his scalp prickled and throbbed.

"Please stay calm, sir. They'll be here soon." Mycroft had just received a request from his younger brother to look into some records. Raising an eyebrow, he had his assistant send the files to his email.

"Sir's heart rate is too high! Get him his medicine, quickly!"

Seeing that something was wrong with his boss, the assistant rushed into the office and checked the man lying on the floor with a device. The man hadn't managed to hang up before losing consciousness, and Mycroft had also heard his plea clearly.

"Help my child."

"We've arrived, but the social gathering isn't over yet. The people inside are all important figures, and Emily's bodyguards don't dare make any rash moves right now."

Anyone would be at a loss after discovering that their employer had vanished right under their nose. The head of the security team was now being questioned by Sherlock and the others in Emily's private theater box.

"While Miss Emily was disappearing, our electronic devices suffered interference and damage to varying degrees. We suspect an electromagnetic pulse jammer was planted."

"But before Miss Emily entered the theater this morning, we searched the entire box in advance and didn't find anything..."

Sherlock glanced at the stage outside the box and the neighboring seats. The performance was continuing as usual, and the guests' whispers were full of satisfaction and delight. No one would have imagined that a kidnapping had taken place right beside them, in full view of everyone.

"How long did it take from the time you discovered she was gone to the time you restored communications and contacted us?"

There were two seats in the box. The young lady who had been seated with Emily had already been escorted somewhere safe.

"Almost no time at all. We have equipment to counter jammers, and we noticed something was wrong within about three seconds. After countering it, we also got the other lady to safety immediately."

Sherlock looked at the head bodyguard. "Three seconds? You're saying a living, breathing person vanished right under your nose in three seconds?"

It sounded far too fantastical. Sitangna and Watson shook their heads. Neither of them had a clue, so they could only help the other security personnel look for anything unusual in the box.

The head bodyguard was embarrassed. He knew it sounded incredible, but everything he had said was true-facts he had witnessed with his own eyes.

"Then how did she disappear? She couldn't have just suddenly vanished, could she? Or did she gradually fade and disperse like particles?" Sherlock joked.

"Yes, she dispersed like particles," the captain answered truthfully.

"?" Where had they ended up, the magical world of Harry Potter? Was the kidnapper they were about to face a wizard?

[Are you sure this is an orthodox mystery world, a world without any magical elements?]

Sitangna immediately questioned Candy.

[We're one and the same. Why would I lie to you? Trust me, this world doesn't have the slightest thing to do with magic.] Candy felt indignant at her host's suspicion.

Something flashed in Sitangna's eyes. Frowning slightly, she looked at the theater ceiling outside the partially enclosed box, where a glass dome three meters in diameter had been installed to let in more light.

"Perhaps you know about holographic projection?"

An idea had occurred to Sitangna, but she wasn't sure whether the technology in this world had developed that far. What she had seen online connected the technology only with entertainment, film, and television.

But logically speaking, whether for war or the economy, the authorities would have developed it further.

"It's like those virtual singers. You can install equipment onstage to project them. Do you know Hatsune Miku? Ievan Polkka? World Is Mine..."

Looking at the silent people before her, who had no idea what she meant, Sitangna explained helplessly.

"Anyway, it uses some kind of interference principle to record and reproduce a real three-dimensional image of an object."

Sherlock glanced sideways. He remembered coming across the term before. Had it been at the police station? Or somewhere else?

"How often is the glass dome on top of the theater cleaned?" Sherlock found a theater employee and asked.

"Usually once every three months, because dust affects the theater's lighting effects. The last cleaning was just a few days ago. I checked it myself-the cleaners polished it until it shone. There definitely aren't any stains."

The employee thought someone from some department had come looking for trouble and hurried to explain.

"Does every box have a mirror like this?" There was a large floor-length mirror beside the door to the box, its exquisite, intricate design blending perfectly with the theater's decor.

"Yes, every box has one. Many of our distinguished guests like to straighten their clothes and touch up their makeup before leaving. Our mirrors were specially designed, with a particularly high refractive index and a clear surface... uh..."

"What is it?" Watson had noticed his hesitation too.

"This... we usually place these mirrors along the side. This one isn't quite in the right position. I'm sorry, it must have been an oversight on our part! We'll be sure to supervise things properly from now on!"

Realizing there had been a mistake in his work arrangements, the employee nearly lost his wits and hurriedly apologized to the head bodyguard.

Sitangna inadvertently met Sherlock's eyes again. She went over and sat in Emily's previous seat. A vertical shaft of light passed through the dome and was reflected precisely onto her back by the mirror.

It really was a 3D projection!

After the panicked employee was asked to leave, a bombshell went off inside the box. The head bodyguard and Emily's personal assistant nearly exploded.

The young assistant had been sitting behind Emily the whole time, helping clean a stain off her coat. Aside from a trip to the restroom midway through, Miss Emily had never left her sight. No wonder she had kept feeling that something was strange about her afterward.

"But a projection shouldn't have been able to take what I carried over." The head bodyguard had helped the servers bring in dessert, and Miss Emily had most definitely taken it from him herself.

"That's the box's restroom, isn't it? You mentioned that Miss Emily went to the restroom midway through. Was the dessert handed to her before or after that?"

"! Before. Miss Emily went to the restroom after eating the dessert."

Sherlock understood. It seemed that in the investigation to follow, this grand theater would be lucky to escape with its skin intact. A social venue reserved for the rich and powerful had left so many holes in its security.

"Just check the restroom for anything unusual. See if there's a hidden room, a tunnel, or anything like that." Sherlock took the infrared temperature guns from the agents, one in each hand, and checked the temperatures of the backs of both sofa seats at once.

Beep, beep. The infrared thermometers gave readings of 28 and 25 degrees Celsius respectively.

"The air conditioner shows a room temperature of 25 degrees Celsius. The leather sofa should be the same temperature. Genuine leather conducts heat well, so after someone sits on it for a long time, its temperature should be fairly close to body temperature-anywhere from 33 to 38 degrees Celsius."

"After the heat source leaves the leather seat, it generally returns to near room temperature within 15 to 20 minutes, although the backrest cools more slowly. The other young lady hasn't been gone long; it shouldn't have been 20 minutes yet, so..."

"Your poor Miss Emily was probably kidnapped in the restroom. The person who opened the door and came out was just a 3D projection they had prepared in advance. Put more effort into searching the restroom."

"If it was a gang, that girl has probably already been taken a long way away." Sherlock returned the thermometers to the dumbfounded technicians.

Because the hostage had disappeared in front of them, no one had suspected the restroom. During the comprehensive search earlier, they had only given the seemingly empty place a cursory check.

Bang! A police officer clumsily burst through the restroom door.

"Captain! We found a cavity in the wall beside the mirror."

Without waiting for the officer to point it out, Sherlock, Watson, and Sitangna filed in. Sherlock rapped his slender knuckles against the wall beside the mirror, where the color was slightly off.

"This is it. John, have the captain give us a locator."

Sherlock felt around, trying to find the switch for the hidden room. Click. He braced both palms against the wall and pressed hard. It seemed to be a self-locking push-button door.

Feeling the pressure against his hands, he relaxed his grip, and the hidden door opened with ease. It was pitch-black and extremely narrow inside, only wide enough for about one and a half people standing side by side. At 185 centimeters tall, Sherlock even had to duck his head slightly.

Watson looked at the brawny head bodyguard and his team and sighed. "Give us the locator. Hurry and report the situation to Mr. Cavendish. The three of us will go in and have a look."

"Right. Tell him to focus on investigating the more accomplished teams working on holographic projection in Britain, as well as the ingredients found in the items submitted for testing yesterday."

Sitangna gave the instructions before entering the tunnel.

"For any lab that fits both criteria, I suggest going straight there and taking roll. Make a list of anyone who's absent today because they have something to do."

With that, the three of them each took a powerful flashlight and squeezed into the hidden passage.

"Jesus, who would've thought that after following you all over the streets, I'd now have graduated to crawling through secret tunnels?" After speaking, Watson covered his nose and mouth with his sleeve. The nauseating smell of the various gases mixed together in the passage was suffocating him.

Sherlock's expression gave nothing away, but his slightly furrowed brows betrayed his condition. It seemed everyone could smell it: the strong odor of phenethylamine derivatives.

With such a large dose, Emily had probably already been delirious at the time. No wonder there had been no sound when she was kidnapped and no signs of a struggle in the room.

They walked for quite a while, finally reaching the end just as their patience was wearing thin. When they emerged from the passage, a long stretch of abandoned subway tunnel appeared before them.

"Is there no way out?" Sitangna looked around. This appeared to be the former site of a subway station; signs and damaged public facilities were still faintly visible.

"Over here. To keep people from entering by mistake, abandoned places are either sealed off or have a passage left open."

The excellent reconnaissance skills Watson had learned at military school allowed him to find the passage left here with ease.

"Impressive, Little John. You take the lead, then. Nana, send the captain our location." Sherlock followed right behind Watson, while Sitangna, protected between the two men, sent a signal to the captain's locator.

It was a rare occasion indeed for Watson to lead the way. Fear of the unknown mingled with excitement, and his body automatically released a large amount of adrenaline, making his scalp tingle.

"Wait, I hear water."

Sherlock had sharp ears and had heard waves lapping against the tunnel from a distance. Watson hurriedly called the captain. They had already returned to headquarters and were discussing the rescue.

"The locator shows you're in the riverside district. That area was closed several years ago because of a construction mistake. If you want to come up, keep going to the far end of the tunnel. There's a fixed maintenance ladder there that leads straight up."

Following the locator's guidance, they climbed up and finally stood on land again. Fortunately, they were by the water, and fresh footprints confirmed that someone else had come out here not long ago.

The subway station here had been abandoned, and transportation was inconvenient, so most of the nearby residents had moved away. All that remained before them was a desolate scene, with a half-abandoned church still standing on the bank, gazing across at the bustling streets on the opposite shore.

"Sherlock, I just saw light reflecting off glasses at that window!" Sitangna called softly. If that really was the kidnappers' hideout, there was a good chance they had already been exposed.

"The one in the upper left corner." Sitangna pointed it out to the two men.

Although the church had been abandoned, its exterior was still intact. One of the windows on either side of the main entrance had its ornate, solemn stained glass broken, and that was precisely where Sitangna had seen the reflection.

If it had only been a spot of light, she wouldn't have been suspicious. But she had clearly seen the outline of light reflected off glasses, though she didn't know whether the other person had seen the three of them standing so conspicuously out here.

"Guoguo, help me check-" [Five task points.]

Sitangna said, "...Why are you suddenly charging me? Didn't you help me see other perspectives before?!"

Candy appeared before her, a tiny point of light bobbing in front of her eyes.

[That was a free trial. You're on a mission now, sis. If you still need my help, you have to pay for my trouble~ Five task points isn't much. You can earn them back with any little task.]

The world was unfair; even Candy had been forced to become a profiteer. She had heard other systems say they charged taskers at least ten points for their services! She was already being very kind. If she leveled up sooner, wouldn't she be able to help Nana more?