00:11:22

"You don’t understand a single thing! So what if I haven’t met him? He showed me how he is protecting Yan Xiang in prison! They are not empty words!"

Protect her in prison? Jia blinked.

He sneered. "So nice try, but get ready to accept your death, Inspector Song. You see the time here? Tick tok, tick tok."

She breathed out in silence. With less than ten minutes remaining, her mind raced to think of alternatives. Conspiring against his benefactor, though was working, he was hell bent on taking his revenge.

The sound of static then echoed through the room, and Tang Haitao’s voice came through the intercom.

"Qiu Dai. I think there is something you should see."

"Hey!" He lashed out, looking at the one-sided tinted glass window. "I told you nobody will come in or talk in any way! It will be only Inspector Song and me!"

"Even if it’s about the very woman you are here for?"

"Huh? What?"

"Let me come in and I will show you."

"Do you think I am an idiot? You will just bring more forces in to subdue me, but don’t forget that I am wearing the bomb."

"Oh I know about that very well. But I just thought that you would like to know what’s happening with Yan Xiang at the moment, which is anything but good."

"You cannot threaten me using her..." he gritted his teeth.

"Then I will leave her fate up to the Gods. You continue talking here with Inspector Song while she..."

Qiu Dai was at a crossroads. But with barely less than ten minutes to go, he couldn’t decide if this was just a trap as a last-minute desperation attempt. He looked at Jia but there was no trace of an expression across her face as if she wouldn’t allow any information to leak from her side.

"I am not bringing any platoon with me. It’s just me. I simply have to show you something."

"...Fine."

He pointed at Jia and said, "You. Open the door. Don’t want you ambushing me from behind."

So Jia got up and opened the door but her heart was in her throat all this time. Looking into Tang Haitao’s eyes, she desperately looked for an answer - had everyone evacuated from the building? Why was he still here? With barely a few minutes remaining, they didn’t have much time.

Tang Haitao simply smiled at her. "It will be okay. Let’s hope for the best."

Tang Haitao stepped in with a laptop and placed it on the table, such that it faced both Jia and Qiu Dai.

"What the hell is this?"

"Something that you should see before you fare goodbye to the world."

Tang Haitao glanced at the timer.

00:07:17

He pressed the button and the pause turned to play.

At first the screen was dark. Then a dim light suddenly shone upon a bed with a woman lying in it, hands tied at the side to the bed’s railing. One look and all the color from Qiu Dai’s face drained away like sand slipping away in the sand glass.

"Xi-Xiang...!"

In the video, Yan Xiang lay groggy, barely able to focus anywhere. Surrounding her was a room where monitors flickered and beeped with a soft hissing sound. A tray of medical tools was kept on a trolley near the bed.

"Wh-What is happening...!"

"We are being threatened and by ’we’, I mean both of us - you and the cops."

"Excuse me?"

Tang Haitao clasped his hands behind his back. "What luck. First a suicide bomber threatens us and then...a devil doctor."

As if right on cue, a tall man from the dark stepped into the dim light. A mask covered his mouth and gloves neatly pressed against his hands. He picked a metallic tool from the tray, shining under the bare luminescence.

"Do you know what this is?"

Qiu Dai looked at Tang Haitao. "What’s going on?"

"Like I said, we are being threatened. In real-time. This is not pre-recorded. It’s an ongoing call."

Mingshen’s voice echoed in the interrogation room again.

"Since you are not interested in giving an answer, let me give you a practical demo of this beauty."

The tip of the scalpel pointed at Yan Xiang’s forehead, turning his face whiter and whiter with every passing moment.

"What the hell are you doing!!!"

He jumped off the chair, violently knocking it out on the floor.

"Demo of this beauty. Do you not hear right? We don’t have much time, you know - thanks to you. So let’s make this as quick and as painful as possible, shall we? Let’s start with an incision here."

What is he doing...

Jia felt her throat go dry, her heart thudding like violent drumbeats.

How did he get Yan Xiang out of prison?

Qiu Dai’s hands trembled from the sight on the screen.

"Stop! Don’t touch her!" he roared, voice cracking into something fearful.

On the laptop, Mingshen tilted his head slightly, almost amused. "Oh? You finally sound honest. I was beginning to think you didn’t care."

The scalpel traced lightly along Yan Xiang’s temple. Not cutting - not yet. But it was a promise.

Qiu Dai’s breathing grew erratic. "Who the hell are you! If you hurt her-"

"You will what?" Mingshen cut in smoothly. "Blow yourself up? That helps me."

Silence slammed into the room.

Mingshen hummed merrily, almost conversational. "Let’s align our priorities. You have a bomb. I have your reason to live - or die in this case."

The scalpel pressed just enough to puncture a small opening in her skin.

Yan Xiang whimpered weakly.

"NO!" He lunged forward, only to freeze mid-step, realizing he was miles away from where he was.

"Good," Mingshen murmured. "Stay exactly like that. You are learning."

Tang Haitao watched quietly, saying nothing. Jia’s chest tightened as well. It was as if she remembered his true origins. Behind his humor and sarcasm, there was a devil who stopped at nothing to get what he wanted. A man whose black eyes shone terrifyingly in the darkness of the underworld.

"You are learning that you picked the fight with the wrong guy," a soft but eerie chuckle escaped from his lips, the glint in his eyes as menacing as the onset of a silent tsunami.

On screen, his gaze lifted, peering into Jia’s tense eyes.

"Seven minutes," he said. "Here’s how this works."

The scalpel went half a centimetre deep, then another half.

"You remove your hand from that trigger...and I remove this from her."

Then came a pause - colder, inhuman with complete apathy.

"Or we both start counting bodies."