Investigation

A few more days passed.

Saturday.

4:00 AM.

East Port.

The darkness of night had not yet fully dispersed.

Heavy clouds pressed down on the sea.

The sea breeze, carrying a damp, salty tang, blew continuously into the port district.

In the distance, the lighthouse slowly rotated.

Its pale beam swept over several quarantined docks, warehouses, and anchored cargo ships, illuminating one weary face after another.

East Port had been in chaos for several consecutive days, and the situation was only getting worse.

At first, it was just the illness, followed by disappearances.

Then, it turned into worker panic, and eventually escalated into a large-scale strike.

Now, an oppressive atmosphere hung over the entire port district.

The Fifth Cargo Dock.

Crowds of workers gathered in the open space.

Some smoked, others conversed in low voices, and some simply sat on wooden crates, staring blankly.

The warehouse doors stood wide open.

Inside, goods waiting to be loaded onto ships were piled high, yet no one was willing to go inside.

The foreman stood on a wooden crate, screaming at the top of his lungs:

“Night shift subsidies are doubled!”

“Base wages are up by two pence!”

“Effective starting today!”

He was helpless too, caught in the middle. The workers cursed him, while his financial backers pressured him from behind.

Hearing the foreman's words, some thought it sounded decent, while a small portion sneered.

A bearded dockworker sneered.

“What's the use even if you raise it by four pence?”

“Tom hadn't even spent last month's wages before he had to give it all to the hospital.”

Someone nearby immediately chimed in.

“Jack too.”

“He said he was going to the night-shift warehouse.”

“The next day, he vanished.”

“The police still haven't found him.”

More and more people began to chime in, and the voices gradually grew louder.

Sweat began to bead on the foreman's forehead.

More and more people in East Port were running into trouble.

Porters, sailors, warehouse guards, and railway workers.

Even a few customs brokers had disappeared.

At first, everyone thought a few people had just cracked under the pressure and run off.

But later, they realized something was wrong.

Many had vanished into thin air without even collecting their wages or taking their belongings from home.

There was no sign of them alive, nor any corpse if they were dead.

Meanwhile, the Port Authority was practically going insane.

The office building was brightly lit.

Figures were running everywhere in the corridors.

Telegraph machines clicked incessantly.

Merchant associations urged for shipments, insurance companies demanded explanations, shipping lines sent complaints, and City Hall demanded answers.

The files on the desks piled higher and higher.

The director hadn't gone home in two days.

Dark circles ringed his eyes, his hair was disheveled, and he looked as if he had aged ten years.

East Port was one of London's most vital ports, with countless goods moving in and out daily, but now its cargo throughput was starting to plummet.

Warehouses were backlogged, ships were delayed, and railways were gridlocked.

Every single day was a financial loss.

And worst of all, no one knew exactly where the problem lay.

The hospital was overwhelmed.

Tons of potassium permanganate solution washed over the docks.

The smell of sulfur and bleaching powder was everywhere.

The illness was somewhat contained, but patrols had increased, warehouses were searched, and the police had even started patrolling around the clock.

Yet, the disappearances did not stop; instead, they grew increasingly severe.

The Port Authority director stood by the window, gazing down at the gathered crowd.

After a long while, he sat back down in his chair, utterly exhausted.

Elsewhere, in the police station's temporary command center, the atmosphere was equally heavy.

A massive map of East Port hung on the wall, densely dotted with red pushpins.

Every single pin represented a missing person.

The sheer number was enough to make one's skin crawl.

Jonathan stood before the map.

His uniform was visibly wrinkled, and his eyes were bloodshot.

He had been working continuously for over forty hours.

Beside him, a detective was delivering a report.

“Five more went missing last night.”

“Three of them were railway workers, and two were dockworkers.”

Jonathan remained silent.

His gaze lingered on the map.

These red dots had initially been concentrated in the warehouse district, but had gradually spread outward.

Now, they covered almost the entirety of East Port.

This meant things were spiraling out of control.

At this thought, he instinctively touched the revolver at his waist.

The scene in the warehouse that day surfaced in his mind once more, along with Ryan, the young archive clerk who had led the police there.

And everything that had transpired afterward.

Instinct told him there had to be a connection between these events, but lacking key clues, he still couldn't see the whole picture.

Just then, hurried footsteps echoed from outside.

An officer rushed into the office.

“Sir!”

“Something's happened at the South Docks again!”

Jonathan snapped his head up.

“What is it this time?”

“The workers and the patrolmen are fighting!”

The room fell dead silent.

A second later, Jonathan grabbed his coat and strode toward the door.

“Assemble everyone.”

“All of you are coming with me.”

The moment the order was given, the entire police station bustled into action once more.

And nobody knew that less than two miles from East Port, inside a certain ordinary apartment, someone else had also stayed up all night.

It was a room that couldn't be more mundane.

The curtains were drawn tightly shut.

Newspapers lay on the desk, alongside a list of missing persons, a map of the port, and several files gathered from various channels.

A gas lamp cast a dim, yellow glow, illuminating the figure at the desk.

It was a middle-aged man who looked thoroughly ordinary.

Wearing round spectacles and an old coat, he resembled a teacher one might see anywhere.

No one would spare him a second glance.

Yet on the desk, the map of East Port was densely covered in notes.

The time and location of the first case, as well as the times, locations, ages, and occupations of the missing.

All this information was connected by thin red lines, ultimately converging near the warehouse district.

The man stared quietly at the map, a faint light gleaming in his eyes.

He didn't speak for a long time.

Only when the gas lamp flickered slightly did he slowly write a line on the paper.

“Abnormal numbers.”

The tip of his pen paused for a moment, and then he wrote a second line.

“Abnormal rate of spread.”

Finally, the third line:

“Suspected multi-aspect activity of a massive cult.”

After writing this, he put down his fountain pen.

He closed his notebook and extinguished the gas lamp.

The room plunged back into darkness.

At the same time, at the South End hotel, dawn was just beginning to break.

The corridor was extremely quiet.

A door slowly creaked open.

Simon was the first to step out.

His shoulder was still wrapped in bandages, and his face was somewhat pale, but he had mostly recovered.

Behind him, Ryan followed.

His spectacles were perched back on the bridge of his nose.

His high fever had broken, and though his body was still a bit weak, he could at least move about normally.

The two stood by the window, looking toward the distant port.

They listened to the faint, bustling clamor drifting from the streets.

Street vendors and hotel guests alike were all talking about East Port.

Even from this distance, the chaos over there was palpable.

Simon fell silent for a moment, then lit a cigarette.

“Seems like things are getting out of hand.”

Ryan nodded.

“Yeah.”

Simon exhaled a plume of smoke, his gaze turning somewhat grim.

“I have a bad feeling.”

“What kind of feeling?”

“We might have to work overtime again.”

Ryan's lips twitched, and then he couldn't help but laugh.

Because those words sounded so typical of the Archive.

The world outside was on the brink of a major crisis, yet their greatest concern was still working overtime.

Simon smiled as well, then turned and headed toward the stairs.

“Let's go.”

“Where to?”

“Back to East Port first.”

“East Port is practically about to blow up.”

“If we don't head back now, the director might actually hang us up at the entrance as an example.”

Ryan followed him helplessly.

Their footsteps echoed in the stairwell.