Bab 25: Chapter 17: Battle for Memory 7
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A moment of silence.
The only sound in the hallway was the static from the communicator.
After a while.
"You can't escape. In another 20 minutes, I will have complete control of the situation!" Mr. Zou's voice came through, chilling to the point of making one's hair stand on end.
"Oh!" Chen Xiao simply responded with one word and continued stripping off the guard's riot gear, seemingly uninterested in talking to him.
Mr. Zou's breathing became noticeably coarser, his anger palpable through the communicator.
"What the hell are you doing?" Mr. Zou couldn't hide his emotions any longer and shouted fiercely into the communicator.
By this time, Chen Xiao had already changed into the guard's uniform. Standing in front of the surveillance monitors, he spoke with some annoyance.
"Isn't it obvious? I'm disguising myself as a guard!" He said, spreading his hands as if to say, "Can't you see that?"
Mr. Zou continued in a fierce tone, "Your disguise won't work. I can see everything you do! All the surveillance equipment here is bulletproof. In another 20 minutes! No, 18 minutes, I'll catch you! Then you'll greatly regret not listening to me. So, I suggest you cooperate with me..."
"Ah, stop nagging." Chen Xiao waved his hand, showing an expression of impatience, "I used to think you were kind of interesting. Alas!"
He sighed, clearly disappointed.
"But thanks for telling me the cameras are bulletproof. I've always been a rather calm person, as you can probably tell, so I generally don't like such crude things as firing a gun!" Chen Xiao said, picking up the prison garments he had taken off and prepared to cover the cameras.
"Wait a minute!" Mr. Zou yelled, his panic evident, not knowing why, but he felt that if this guy named Chen Xiao disappeared from his sight, something terrible would happen.
"You know covering the cameras won't work. I'll check the face of every guard!" Mr. Zou said.
"So...what exactly are you planning to do?"
Chen Xiao helplessly curled his lip, as if he had to explain something to a kid full of questions.
"I'm thinking of leaving..." he said, bored.
He hadn't finished his reply, but of course, Mr. Zou knew what he meant. So, almost as soon as Chen Xiao uttered the word "leaving," Mr. Zou angrily interrupted him.
"You can't open the doors! Damn it, you're delusional! You can only wait for me to come and catch you, then you will understand how stupid your actions are right now!" Mr. Zou shouted. Extremely angry.
In the time he had encountered Chen Xiao, he had lost his temper more than he had in several years combined!
Chen Xiao frowned, clearly no longer wanting to listen to Mr. Zou's incessant ranting. Instead of covering the cameras, he walked directly towards the direction of the "D-391" room.
Mr. Zou panicked. He knew Chen Xiao couldn't open the doors to those containment rooms...
But what if he actually managed to open one? Any one of them.
The guards had key cards. But to open a door also required a password.
Had he learned the password already? Impossible, he couldn't possibly know...
But what if...
Truth be told, Mr. Zou was indeed somewhat panicked at this point. Watching the figure in the riot gear, skipping past the bodies of guards, he felt a very dangerous sensation, one that he had only felt once before, during his first "field mission" as a young man.
As it happens, Chen Xiao did indeed know the password, because when those two guards opened the "D-391" containment room, they didn't hide it from Chen Xiao at all, assuming he wouldn't remember anything after coming out. And the password for all the rooms in that guard's jurisdiction was nearly the same...
Now, let's take a god's-eye view of what will happen next.
Chen Xiao will casually make his way into the "D-391" room, and at this time the old man is still in a state of crazed laughter (this old guy is still laughing...), and Chen Xiao will pick up guard A's key card and continue to amble to the "D-416" room.
So why doesn't he just randomly open a door to any other containment room nearby?... Uh, because Chen Xiao wants to see what this little guy who breathes fire and likes listening to nursery rhymes actually looks like.
In short, what happens next is he first enters the number "9527" because that's the old man's room password. But the door doesn't open.
Chen Xiao will pout slightly in displeasure, because from his observation, this guard is definitely not the kind to set a different password for each room, having to remember them daily for fear of getting it wrong. So, he casually inputs the number "9528"!!
And this time... the door opens!
Chen Xiao also gets his wish to see what "D-416" looks like.
As expected, the little guy with the bad temper isn't much to look at. To avoid suspicion of word padding, we won't describe him further here!
Next, Chen Xiao will have a conversation with this little guy, and it will go something like this.
"Roar~~ Don't come any closer! I'm super fierce!"
"I'm not coming over, bye bye!"
Yep, that's about it. After that, Chen Xiao turns and leaves.
...
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In the following fifteen minutes, Chen Xiao used the guard's card and "9529," "9526," "9530" as passwords, opening three additional doors in turn.
And as expected, these bizarre settings had thrown the entire "D-level containment area" into utter chaos. Coupled with the old man, now only capable of goofy smiling, whose range of memory absorption was growing, a series of chain reactions occurred, subjecting the containment region to the most significant crisis since its inception!
Of course, all of these had not happened, because at that moment, Mr. Zou, watching Chen Xiao's retreating figure, felt an increasingly intense unease and finally made the most correct decision of his life.
...
"Chen Xiao!" Mr. Zou called out his name directly.
Chen Xiao started, as if he had just remembered his name, thought about it a bit, found it to be a good name, and thus was very happy.
"What's up?" He turned around with a smile and asked the surveillance camera.
Mr. Zou took a deep breath.
"Could you do me a favor?" Mr. Zou said, but he immediately realized that asking Chen Xiao for help was a poor choice of words, so he corrected himself, "No, let's make a deal!"
"A deal?" Chen Xiao seemed slightly interested and moved closer to the camera, "What kind of deal?"
...
"I want you to go to the room marked 'D-391' and wake up that old man you messed up to the point he can only smile stupidly. Dunk his head in a sink or knock him out, whatever you want, just make him lose consciousness!" Mr. Zou said, pausing, before continuing, "And I will promise you your release."
Chen Xiao listened without any immediate reaction, as if unsure if he had heard correctly, and then he started to chuckle, "Heh heh heh heh."
"A promise?" he repeated, "Hahaha, that's hilarious! To think you would use the word 'promise'."
"Hahahaha———" His laughter seemed uncontrollable, the sound distressing and chaotic.
"Okay! I can really make you a promise!" Mr. Zou shouted.
Chen Xiao was too busy laughing to pay any attention to Mr. Zou.
"Then how will you help me?" Mr. Zou barked sternly.
Finally, Chen Xiao had laughed enough. Rubbing his slightly aching stomach, he said, "Well, let's start with a song, shall we?"
Mr. Zou was taken aback, believing he had misheard, "Are you talking about singing a song?" he asked incredulously.
"Right, right, let me think," Chen Xiao put on a thinking face, "Oh! How about the birthday song? Today might be my birthday."
Mr. Zou frowned deeply, finding himself completely unable to understand the madman's reasoning.
"Is that your request?" he asked.
With an expression that read 'don't be silly, how could that be it?', Chen Xiao replied, "Of course not, but I can only think about my real request while listening to a song!"
"Hurry up and say it, you're wasting time!" Mr. Zou roared, truly enraged. Partly, he felt angry because he thought Chen Xiao was deliberately antagonizing him, and partly because he felt completely powerless against this madman!
After hearing Mr. Zou's angry shout, Chen Xiao wore a regretful look, "Oh, what a pity, it seems like this trade won't be possible after all!"
Saying this, he glanced at his wrist as if checking a watch he didn't have.
"Though I'm not sure what you're in such a hurry for, but you said there were only 18 minutes earlier... so now, maybe there are only 13... hmm, or perhaps 12 minutes left."
Having said this, he reached up to adjust the goggles on his helmet.
"Fine! I'll sing!" Mr. Zou roared through the intercom.
On the other side of the intercom, Mr. Zou was quivering with rage. However, he could only steady his breathing and begin to sing.
"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you...
...happy birthday to you!"
About ten seconds or so later, with no indication of the expressions or feelings of the staff on the other side of the intercom, Mr. Zou, suppressing his anger, indeed finished the song.
"That's terrible!" Chen Xiao muttered with a frown.
Mr. Zou did not shout but anyone could tell that his fury had reached its limits, "So... have you thought of your request yet?"
He asked.
At this moment, Mr. Zou's mind was telling him to agree to whatever Chen Xiao's request was, and as soon as this issue was handled, to execute Chen Xiao right away, and he had even imagined the execution scene over and over.
Frankly, deception was as commonplace to them as a daily meal.
Chen Xiao, too, seemed to have finally come up with something, even appearing somewhat excited as he spoke.
"I want... to hear you tell a story!"
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