Los Angeles International Airport. A large number of passengers shuffled out of a plane arriving from Namibia.
After passing the customs, some of the passengers exited the airport right away while some appeared to be waiting for their partners. These people merrily chatted with one another. The mood in the airport was the same as it had always been.
An immigration officer named Johnny was operating in his post. He tirelessly searched each person’s body, pockets, cuffs, and luggage. This was a part of his daily job.
For some unspeakable reason, he suddenly felt an extremely discomforting feeling when he searched a large man standing six feet tall.
He was uncertain what sort of feeling he was experiencing. He stole several glances at the other person and what he saw was what appeared to be a pool of still, dead water taking on the form of a face. It looked like there was nothing in the world that may serve to interest the man in the slightest.
This man before him gave off a depressing, gloomy aura. Johnny had a false impression that he was not facing a living person.
It was for this reason that Johnny silently raised his alarm. This would not be the first time that degenerate robbers tried to sneak past the customs and try to attack the officer when caught.
Fortunately, Johnny did not find anything suspicious about the man. It may appear that despite this person’s suspicious appearance, he was an ideal citizen.
So, Johnny let the man pass.
Shortly after that, Johnny met yet another passenger who was as gloomy as the grave.
Johnny felt a little confused as this passenger carried the same air around him as the previous passenger did. If not for one of them being black and the other being Caucasian, he may have taken them to be siblings.
“Maybe I’m seeing things because I’m too tired…”
Johnny muttered to himself and cast it off his mind.
Unbeknownst to him, his colleague in the adjacent customs portal was thinking the same thing as he did.
There were ten of these gloomy passengers in total. They blended into the tens of thousands of people walking in and out of Los Angeles airport and finally blended into the city…
“And that’s how it went down.”
Inside a conference room in the FBI branch in Los Angeles, a group consisting of over ten high-up officials were in their seats, listening to the explanation of a bald elderly man, “Our team was caught off guard by the attack. The disappearance of the statue is only a minor issue, I’m sure every one of you here is eager to know about the implications behind this attack on the FBI?”
“Is it a secret operation team from the Mainland? Or North Sea Continent?”
“There’s no way for us to make an educated guess, but one thing is clear, this was the work of an extremely well-put-together organization. It may even appear that the opposition possesses soldier cloaking devices…”
“Is this reported yet?” one of them asked.
“Not yet, the entire North American communication systems were besieged by hackers. I have a feeling that this organization may be behind these attacks as well…”
“Are you kidding me?”
Everyone began to raise their voices and cause a commotion.
However, it was at this very moment when the door of the conference room suddenly creaked open silently…
They all instinctively turned to look when they heard the sound but they did not see anything.
“Wind?”
The elderly man leading the meeting expressed vivid confusion and appeared to have thought of something. His expression suddenly changed. “Careful…”
Before he could finish, the door of the conference room was slammed shut violently. The sturdy sound-proof installations in the conference room completely muffled the horrific screams and cries for help coming from inside the conference room…
“Wah!”
Geraldson abruptly snapped his eyes open and shot up from the bed.
His vision was initially a blur until he gathered his senses over the next few seconds.
“Oh, so it’s just a dream?”
He wiped the cold sweat off his forehead. It was only by this point that he realized he just had a terrible nightmare.
At this moment, Geraldson was laid across a sickbed. Due to his colleague receiving a wound from a gunshot, he did not leave the hospital but instead stayed with his colleague by the sickbed. He ended up spending the entire day there.
Geraldson looked at his phone and saw that it was past midnight again. The room was drowned in darkness. His colleague who had just come out of the operation was sleeping in front of him.
Even Geraldson’s shriek failed to wake him up.
“Phew!”
Geraldson slowly got up. After getting several hours of sleep, he was in slightly better spirits. Only he could feel his throat swelling up in what may be the early symptoms of a fever.
So, he reached for the jug of water by the bed and poured himself a cut of water which he enthusiastically gulped down.
After Geraldson finished his drink, he tried to call home again but the line on the other end was still busy.
“Just what is happening?”
Geraldson frowned, he had never encountered such a situation before. Initially, he thought it was only this area’s communication network that was cut off. It was not until later on when he discovered that the entire Los Angeles was similarly affected.
According to the government announcements, the entire Los Angeles communication network was invaded by some sort of virus. Even the communication satellite systems had failed.
It was just one trouble after the other…
Geraldson hung up the phone helplessly and reached for his pack of cigarettes almost instinctively. When he took out a cigarette and stuck it between his lip to light it, he remembered that he was in a patient ward. He decided to get up and head over to the corridor.
It was the early hours of the dawn, there was a pin-dropping silence in the corridor. A stretch of lights followed down toward the other end of the corridor with patient wards lined up along both sides. The darkness-filled mouth on the other end of the door bared its fangs, seemingly attempting to devour everything in the corridor.
For some reason, Geraldson suddenly felt an overbearing mood weighing on him.
Shaking his head, Geraldson approached the window at the end of the corridor. He quietly lit the cigarette and drew in a large puff with all he had.
A large portion on the tip of the cigarette immediately smoldered and emitted a fierce light.
“Huff!”
When Geraldson breathed out again, a thick puff of cigarette smoke came out together with his breath. He felt his tightening heart relax slightly.
It was at that moment when Geraldson suddenly heard faint footsteps coming from behind him.
The sound of the footsteps came from the stairway on the other end of the corridor. Usually, the sound of the footsteps would not be audible from such a distance, but in the dead of the night, the sound was greatly amplified, causing Geraldson to hear the subtle sound of footsteps.
There was something off with these footsteps…
Geraldson slowly turned around. As an investigator who had gone through rigorous training, he could distinguish the difference between the footsteps of an average person and trained professionals.
On the first impression, there may be little separating the sound of footsteps of an average person and trained professionals, but it was proven that the footsteps of a trained professional were more subtle.
The subtlety here referenced to a more balanced span in between footsteps and the volume of the footsteps should be largely similar as well. This exercise was a result of improved coordination in body control.
Could this person be a special forces veteran like himself?
As one of the elites in Cobra Special Forces, despite his long years of retirement, Geraldson still maintained his extremely disciplined practices. Even his body was kept in perfect condition. The only blip was that he was long past his peak.
However, he still had his accumulated experience with him. He could sense something special in the extremely practiced footsteps.
An ominous premonition…