Chapter 16

Because he had lain there for a hundred years, that slender figure was somewhat too emaciated. The owner of that gaze thought. He would have to have the chef send up some more nutritious meals later.

When the eight people gathered on the street again, Gao Qie and Victor were angry. When they saw Horne bringing Ains over, Victor said impatiently, “Any new stuff?”

Perhaps because they had waited a bit too long, they sat in a circle on the street.

“There is,” Ains said softly. “There’s a bouquet of flowers in my room, and a letter underneath it that says ‘For you.’ The date is November 30, 2050, signed Moroz.”

As soon as the words fell, Moroz denied it outright. “I don’t know anything about this.” As he spoke, he glanced at Horne, then quickly looked away.

Han Ya let out a “Wow,” his gaze ambiguous as he winked at Moroz and asked, “Kids’ romance game. Why’d you send her flowers? What’s your relationship?”

Moroz looked at Han Ya coldly and explained seriously, “No relationship at all. I don’t know about any plot where I send flowers. It’s not in my diary either, which means it wasn’t important to me. No special meaning whatsoever.”

He paused for two seconds, then suddenly chuckled and added, “Sending flowers and a letter means love? Is your head full of nothing but romance games? You don’t look like you’ve ever been in love either. Oh, no wonder. The more you crave it, the less you get.”

Han Ya was inexplicably shut down, his expression suddenly changing. He hadn’t said whether he’d been in love or not. He just opened his mouth to retort, then swallowed it back down. He glared fiercely at Moroz, who scoffed and leaned back fully, shifting from sitting to lying on the cold ground.

He didn’t care at all if his pure white tracksuit got dirty. His left leg bent, his right calf resting on his left knee, hands crossed behind his head—a lazy pose as if sunbathing under the starry sky.

Something about Moroz’s demeanor felt familiar to Horne, but he couldn’t pinpoint why. He just thought this young man was too calm. Was he really here on vacation?

In contrast to this youth, the man called Victor, whose role was engineer, always spoke with his head tilted up, like someone accustomed to controlling or looking down on others. He was quite irritable.

His friend Gao Qie, on the other hand, tended to look up from lowered eyes, a way of sizing people up that reminded Horne of a rat. Neither of them was probably a first-timer in the holographic game, and they likely often took command roles in games.

Victor didn’t want to hear them bickering. He tilted his head up at Horne, irritation in his eyes. “Sit down already. What, you standing just so we have to look up at you?”

Horne hadn’t thought that much about it. Stung by the jab, he said nothing and sat down directly with Ains.

“I hate you types the most—playing a game and still putting on airs. We’re all here in the Red Light District risking our lives. Don’t you have any self-awareness about what kind of people you are in real life?” Victor muttered. Though he called it a mutter, every word reached everyone’s ears clearly.

“Mmm,” Horne didn’t speak, but Moroz, lying on the ground with his eyes closed, nodded in strong agreement, his tone laced with sarcasm as he repeated Victor’s words. “We’re all here in the Red Light District risking our lives. Don’t you have any self-awareness about what kind of people you are in real life?”

Victor’s face changed instantly at the insinuation. He shot to his feet. “You punk, who are you shading!”

Moroz didn’t bother opening his eyes, a hint of amusement in his voice. “What’s wrong, old man? I just repeated your words.”

“You!”

Seeing another fight about to break out, Wen Yu stopped them in time. She kept herself in a rational state and calmly got to the point. “This is a co-op game. Let me summarize. Our whole story is this: The higher-ups ordered the formation of an experimental team to conduct particle and cell fusion experiments on the lab rat Algernon, to check the fusion rate with living organisms. We don’t know what that fusion rate is for.”

Wen Yu’s voice echoed down the empty street, soothing the tempers on the verge of exploding. Everyone looked at her.

“The higher-ups first contracted Moroz for investment, then assigned engineer Victor from the physics lab to lead the experiment. Victor had two capable assistants, Horne and Han Ya, probably along with some other personnel. Victor submitted the experiment activation report to the review department, which happened to land in my hands. I approved it, and the experimental team was officially formed.

“But the computation and recording workload was too heavy, so they brought in AI expert Gao Qie to custom-build an AI system to share the burden and predict results. Besides that, there was a psychologist in the lab. Daily life was normal for everyone, and the experiments proceeded as usual. Also, our current time is November 2050. We’ve already gone through three experiments, the last one on November 25.”

After she finished, she paused for a moment, then asked, “Any other missing info?”

Everyone looked at her quietly. After a moment, Horne added, “The experiment site is at the European Nuclear Research Center.”

Xu Hua raised her hand. “Will there be info in personal tasks?”

Victor was extremely impatient. He pounded the ground with his fist several times, making dull thuds. “Didn’t we say personal tasks are private? You can’t talk about them?”

Xu Hua silently lowered her hand. “Okay, I was just asking.”

Wen Yu thought for a moment, then spoke. “The last recorded time is November 30. Moroz sending Ains flowers was also the 30th.”

Moroz, who had been lounging leisurely, finally sounded annoyed. “Stop harping on that!”

As he said this, Horne felt Moroz’s gaze flicking toward him repeatedly, so he turned his head and met Moroz’s eyes just as they looked over again. In that instant, Moroz pretended to look elsewhere.

Horne frowned slightly.

Why did this young man keep looking at him when answering about the “bouquet”? Was he that concerned about Horne’s opinion on it?

But Horne had no thoughts on the matter. He just took it as some plot point.

For Moroz’s attention, Horne quickly found an explanation: Moroz’s personal task probably involved him.

Horne pondered the game silently. They knew each other’s identities and what roles they had played in the experimental team, but that wasn’t enough to call it an “event.” Their tasks might be to find an “accident” from everyone’s experiences.

With that in mind, Horne looked up at the surroundings.

A hundred years before his time—aside from the war with the Aliens—his personal hobby had been holing up in the attic reading books. He vaguely recalled something about the European Nuclear Research Center: They had built a Large Hadron Collider underground in Geneva, a high-energy physics device where particles collided at speeds nearing light speed to study the new particles produced.

Before the Alien invasion, physicists had discovered the Higgs boson and parts of strange quark matter. Now, combined with their environment… the universe and starry sky.

The research center might have discovered some substance beyond human understanding, causing environmental changes—perhaps related to space travel or leaving Earth? But there was one baffling issue: Why was the location this street connecting Loch City’s gate?

The clue-sharing was done, but no special story emerged. Victor had been sitting, but soon he suddenly stood up and paced anxiously back and forth. After a few steps, he stopped.

“I think I got it.”

His voice was like a bomb in the silence, drawing everyone’s eyes to him.

He suddenly grew excited, darting to the center of the circle, his tongue twisting in excitement, volume rising unconsciously. “I got it, I got it!” The thick excitement and tremor in his voice. “This is another of Mr. Hels’s tricks! We might have pieced together the whole story already. Now, we just need to exit the city gate, and the game ends!”

After he spoke, no one moved. It hung there like a joke, the echo quickly fading into the floating starry sky.

After a long while, Han Ya clapped symbolically, face expressionless. “Nice reasoning.”

Wen Yu had taken off her sunglasses, now toying with them in her hand, a few strands of hair falling to block her eyes. She was a woman with a refined air. She reminded Victor, “The rules say not to exit the city gate no matter what.”

As she said this, the sunglasses in her hand spun in a quick circle, which she caught steadily. Horne noticed it almost immediately. Her mask hid her features, but her fingers were long and nimble, with calluses on the pads and tips, slightly deformed joints, and extremely rough skin. The path her fingers took playing with the sunglasses was fixed and steady.

A woman’s face, a man’s hands. Combined with her facial habits and handling of matters just observed, in Horne’s mind, only one type fit: sniper.

At Victor’s words, Gao Qie understood instantly. His perpetually half-lidded eyes suddenly widened. “I get it! This game rewards in victory order—it’s individual competition. The first to complete their task exits the gate. If our piecing together is right, I’ve finished both my co-op and personal tasks. Exiting now would do it. As for that bullshit rule about not exiting, it’s just psychological warfare, betting we’ll fear the rule!”

Moroz scoffed. He shook his crossed leg idly a few times and said offhandedly, “If it ended like that, what fun would the game be? Something must’ve happened after, but no one’s diary mentions it. Or else…”

“Someone’s hiding key info,” Horne finished for him.

Moroz smiled at him, seeming pleased that Horne had picked up his rhythm.

But Gao Qie wasn’t having it. He sneered coldly, “How many games have you played? Don’t hold it against me—we, Victor and I, have won this holographic game no less than three times. We know Mr. Hels too well. He loves throwing in these weird rules, nasty jump scares, childish riddles, building tension just to mess with you, screw with your head. The most ridiculous win for us was a contest to see who could finish a bottle of milk first. The hint said to check the milk carefully. We all feared it was poisoned, deadlocked for two days. Finally, someone grabbed a random bottle, chugged it, and won outright. Staff explained after: pure mind game. All the milk was fine. First to drink wins.”

As he spoke of it, resentment filled his face, brows twisted together, clearly hating his past cowardly self.

Horne said flatly, “So you’re saying we’ve run into one of Hels’s pranks?”

Before Gao Qie could answer, Moroz shrugged and cut in. “Who knows?” Then, shaking his crossed leg the other way, he asked curiously, “I haven’t played many games. Are some really that nasty and childish?”

No one answered. Gao Qie and Victor ignored the seemingly innocent youth. The others might not know if it was their first time. Moroz just tilted his head to himself, then hooked the corner of his mouth in an inscrutable way.

In the silence, a figure sneaked from the outskirts behind Horne and lightly patted his shoulder.

Horne turned to see Xu Hua.

Xu Hua’s expression was hesitant. After thinking for a long time, she spoke softly, “Um, I just… just wanted to give you a friendly heads-up. If I remember right, Mr. Hels occasionally checks the game status, so it’s best not to call him by name directly or speak ill of him. He can kill players right in the game.” Then, lowering her voice so only they could hear, “I don’t like this Gao Qie much, so I didn’t warn him.”

Horne: “…”

No way. Was Hels that idle?

Horne answered honestly based on his impression. “He doesn’t seem that unreasonable.”

After saying it, he frowned to himself, recalling the night before when Hels had barged into his room and quibbled unreasonably.

Okay, he really wasn’t that reasonable.