Chapter 360: It Must Be Him!
The atmosphere in the Command Center froze instantly.
The walkie-talkie in Henry's hand nearly slipped; he stood up abruptly from his chair, causing the chair to slide backward and strike the wall with a dull thud.
"Say that again?"
Liu Xuemin's urgent voice came through the walkie-talkie; the old expert was clearly rattled as well: "The transport case is gone!"
"How could this happen!" Hank picked up the walkie-talkie and roared: "The elevator is completely sealed. You grown adults were watching the case, how could it just disappear?"
"We don't know either!" Zhuang Yan's hurried voice came through the walkie-talkie. The female captain's tone was still relatively calm, but anyone could hear the horror hidden beneath that composure: "The case was right at our feet before the lights went out, but after the lights came back on... it was gone. The whole process took less than a minute and a half. The elevator didn't shake, the doors didn't open, there was no anomaly whatsoever. I can guarantee you that!"
Inside the monitoring room of the Command Center.
Henry's hands began to tremble, but he forced himself to calm down.
"Harry!" He turned his head to look at Harry, who was in charge of technology: "The surveillance in the elevator, I want the elevator surveillance!"
Harry had already begun retrieving the footage, his fingers tapping rapidly on the keyboard, but after a few seconds, his face turned deathly pale.
"Sir... the camera in the elevator lost its signal the moment the lights went out." Harry swallowed hard: "There is no video record for the entire duration of the power outage."
"What about the ones outside the elevator?" Henry walked over to his side, his voice carrying suppressed rage, "The ones in the hallway, the corridors, all the exit surveillance, pull them up immediately!"
Harry pulled up the surveillance footage for the B3 floor corridor.
The footage showed the elevator remaining on B3 for one minute and twenty-eight seconds, the doors remained closed the entire time, and no one entered or exited.
The surveillance at both ends of the corridor also failed to capture any abnormal activity—no one approached the elevator doors, no tools were lowered from the ceiling, there was nothing abnormal at all.
It was as if that transport case had evaporated into thin air while inside a completely sealed space.
"This is fucking hell!" Hank muttered to the walkie-talkie.
Henry turned around abruptly and picked up the walkie-talkie: "Attention everyone, seal all entrances and exits of the Metropolitan Museum immediately, no one is allowed to leave! Matthew, take A Group to the B4 elevator lobby and search it for me inch by inch! Hank, wait where you are, I'm coming to the scene right now!"
As he walked out, he continued to issue orders: "Contact the museum, pull up all structural blueprints for the elevator shafts between B3 and B4. I want to know if there are any hidden spaces, passages, or maintenance hatches between these two floors!"
After saying this, he paused, as if he had suddenly remembered something, and his voice lowered: "Also, notify all agents inside the museum to heighten their vigilance. That transport case is one hundred and twenty centimeters long, sixty centimeters wide, and thirty centimeters high. Something that big cannot possibly just disappear into thin air. It must still be in the museum; we just haven't found it yet."
A chorus of "Received" came from the other end of the walkie-talkies.
As Henry walked out of the Command Center, he glanced back at the massive floor plan of the museum on the wall.
That map was densely marked with red dots, each one representing an agent, a camera, or a blockade line.
Theoretically speaking, such a deployment could truly be described as watertight.
But in practical operation, Chu Chen had already told them in his own way—your theories are worthless.
At this very moment, the internet had exploded!
In the livestream room, the comments rolled by like a waterfall, moving so fast it was almost impossible to see any complete message, only an overwhelming sea of exclamation marks and various shocked emojis.
【Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit! Did Chu Chen really steal that painting???】
【One and a half minutes, a sealed elevator, three people watching, and the case just vanished like that??? Is this magic?】
【This isn't magic, this is sorcery!】
【Wait, wait, wait, I don't get it. The elevator doors didn't open, no one went out, how did the case disappear? Can someone explain this to me?】
【Can't explain it, next.】
【Chu Chen is the GOAT! The FBI set up a massive dragnet, and they couldn't even guard a case, hahahaha!】
【No, don't you guys find this terrifying? This person stole the item right under the noses of hundreds of agents, in the place where their security was tightest, and to this day, no one knows how he did it!】
【The key is the power outage! That definitely wasn't a coincidence; Chu Chen must have controlled the elevator's power system!】
【Control the power system? That's easy to say, but the Metropolitan Museum's power system is independent and high-security; how could it be controlled just like that?】
【To the person above, did you forget what Lin Xu said? Chu Chen's technical ability far exceeds their estimates. If he can even hack into the FBI's system, what's a museum's power supply?】
【I'm just curious where he is now. He has to go somewhere after stealing the item, right? The museum must be locked down by now; how is he going to escape?】
【Escape? He doesn't need to escape at all. Do you think with his IQ, he wouldn't have an exit strategy?】
【Damn, I'm impressed. This guy isn't just high-IQ, he's bold too. Last time he snuck into FBI headquarters to deliver a challenge letter, this time he steals something under the noses of hundreds of agents—is he going to go straight to the White House next?】
On social media platforms, the trending topics were also skyrocketing.
The four words "Chu Chen Returns" surged to the number one global trend in just over ten minutes, with over thirty million discussions!
News notifications from major media outlets flew in like snowflakes, each headline more exaggerated than the last—
"Dragnet Becomes a Laughingstock: FBI's Defense Line at the Metropolitan Museum Easily Dismantled by Oriental Genius Criminal Youth"
"The Disappearing Act in a Sealed Elevator"
"
Of course, many people were also questioning the authenticity of the event.
【Wait, this doesn't make sense. In such a small space in the elevator with three people watching, how could the case just disappear? Could it be that the FBI staged this themselves and the painting was actually moved long ago?】
【Agree with the person above, this is too much like a magic trick, and magic is only magic because there are plants. Maybe there's a mole among those three Pursuit Captains?】
【Stop arguing, stop arguing, just wait for follow-up news. The museum side must be in total chaos right now, there should be more information soon.】
And that was indeed the case.
Inside the Metropolitan Museum, the atmosphere was tense to the extreme.
All exits had been sealed, agents in dark suits stood guard in front of every door that could enter or exit the building, and calls over walkie-talkies were incessant.
The museum staff had been gathered in the lobby, each one looking terrified, not knowing what had happened.
Liu Xuemin stood at the entrance of the B4 elevator lobby, his face livid.
Today, a painting worth hundreds of millions of dollars had actually been stolen right under his nose.
What he found even more unacceptable was that he didn't even know how the other party had managed it.
"Liu Lao." Zhou Yun and the other two walked out of the elevator, their expressions also grim: "We've checked, the elevator car has no damage, the maintenance hatches at the top and bottom are intact, with no signs of having been opened. The case did indeed disappear in a completely sealed environment."
Liu Xuemin turned his head to look at him, his eyes filled with complex emotions: "Team Captain Zhou, did you really not notice anything abnormal at the time?"
Zhou Yun was silent for a few seconds, then shook his head.
"There really isn't one." Zhou Yun frowned and continued, "The elevator from B3 to B4 takes no more than fifteen seconds to run, and from the lights going out to them coming back on, it was only a minute and a half. During this time, the elevator doors remained tightly shut. By the time the malfunction ended, the box was already gone..."
"The only anomaly was... our mobile phones. During the elevator malfunction, they all failed. Even the screens wouldn't light up until the malfunction ended. Could this be his doing?"
Zhuang Yan nodded and interjected, "At the time, we thought it was a unique security measure of the elevator, but we just asked the maintenance staff. They explicitly told us that an elevator malfunction would not cause mobile phones to fail. This must be Chu Chen's doing."
Chen Xiong immediately added, "It must be him!"
Liu Xuemin frowned deeply and said nothing.
The next second, Zhuang Yan took out her phone.
The phone had now returned to normal.
She opened an engineering drawing app and pulled up the structural diagram of the Metropolitan Museum's elevator shaft.
"The distance between B3 and B4 is 6.8 meters, and the elevator takes fifteen seconds to run normally. But if Chu Chen controlled the elevator's control system, he could completely make the elevator stop at other positions during this time."
She zoomed in on an inconspicuous spot on the drawing: "Look here. There is a maintenance passage between B3 and B4, left over from when it was built. It is now abandoned, but the space still exists. If the elevator stopped at a position level with this passage, one could exit through the maintenance hatch and enter the building's piping system without passing through any surveillance."
Liu Xuemin stared at the drawing, silent for a long time.
"Are you saying that in the one minute and twenty-eight seconds of the power outage, Chu Chen opened the maintenance hatch at the top of the elevator, moved the 120-centimeter-long transport box out through that passage, and then restored the hatch to its original state, letting the elevator continue to descend to B4?"
His tone was skeptical as he said this, but Zhuang Yan's expression made him slowly fall silent.
"I know it sounds crazy," Zhuang Yan said, "but other than this, I can't think of a second possibility."
Not far away, Henry and Hank walked over quickly.
"Everyone, how is it going?" Henry asked directly.
Liu Xuemin briefly explained Zhuang Yan's speculation. After listening, Henry did not immediately express his stance, but instead looked at Hank beside him.
Hank frowned and thought for a moment, then said, "If this speculation holds, then Chu Chen's understanding of this building far exceeds our estimates. That maintenance passage was left over from the construction thirty years ago; even the museum's ordinary staff don't know about it, let alone ordinary people. That he could utilize this passage shows he did extremely detailed homework."
"Or..." Henry added, his voice low, "he has an intelligence source we don't know about."
These words made everyone present fall silent for a moment.
Everyone understood what Henry meant—if Chu Chen could get the original architectural drawings of the museum, what else could he not get? The structure of the elevator shaft, the location of the maintenance passage, the weaknesses of the security system... these things are top secret in the eyes of the FBI and the museum, but to someone who could even infiltrate the FBI headquarters, perhaps they don't count as secrets at all.
"The problem now is," Hank broke the silence, "if Team Leader Zhuang's speculation is correct and Chu Chen has already left the elevator shaft via the piping system, then where is he now? Is he inside the museum, or has he already gotten out?"
Henry glanced at his watch.
Less than fifteen minutes had passed since the elevator malfunction.
"If he entered the interior of the building through the piping system fifteen minutes ago, then the furthest distance he could have reached by now is no more than two hundred meters," Henry analyzed. "Although the museum's piping system is complex, limited by space and speed, it is impossible for him to have moved very far in such a short time. He should still be inside the museum."
"But I suggest expanding the blockade area," Hank said, "just in case."
Henry nodded and picked up his walkie-talkie to begin issuing a series of orders.
In an instant, the entire museum was in an uproar once again!
Meanwhile!
On Chu Chen's side.
Just as all the agents were searching frantically inside and outside the museum, no one noticed that three blocks away from the Metropolitan Museum, inside the cargo hold of a van parked on the side of the road, Chu Chen was sitting in the driver's seat, hands on the steering wheel, with the transport box lying in the passenger seat!
He raised his wrist to look at his digital watch, then unhurriedly took a key from his pocket and opened the padlocks on the four corners of the transport box.
The lid was lifted, and inside the acid-free foam lining, *Famine* by Samaria lay quietly.
Under the light, Doré's brushstrokes were clearly visible; those gaunt figures, the grayish-yellow tones, and the expressions of despair had not changed in the slightest over the course of several hundred years.
Chu Chen looked at the painting for a while, then closed the lid.
He took a black encrypted mobile phone from his pocket and sent a message to someone.
The content of the message was very brief, only one sentence—"Next step, follow the original plan."
After sending the message, Chu Chen threw the phone directly into the trash can below, and then drove away from the scene.
On the streets outside, several police cars whizzed toward the Metropolitan Museum, the sound of sirens coming from afar and then fading into the distance.
No one noticed this ordinary van parked on the side of the road.
And no one knew that the Chu Chen they were searching for so frantically was less than a thousand meters away from their blockade circle.
At this moment, the popularity in the live broadcast room had already exceeded fifty million!
The rhythm of the bullet comments gradually shifted from initial shock and skepticism to discussion and speculation.
People began to analyze how Chu Chen had managed to do it, and every detail was brought out to be scrutinized repeatedly.
Someone noticed the few seconds before the elevator lights went out.
【Wait, did you guys notice that the position where the elevator stopped at B3 is exactly the only place in the elevator shaft with a maintenance passage? This is no coincidence; Chu Chen calculated it!】
【Yes, yes, yes, I noticed it too. There is a maintenance hatch on the side of the elevator shaft on the B3 level. It's usually locked, but if opened in advance, one could move things out from the side when the elevator stops!】
【But how to open that maintenance hatch? The hatch is inside the elevator shaft; an ordinary person couldn't get in at all.】
【Did you forget that Chu Chen infiltrated the FBI before? If he could get the FBI's internal data, how could he not get the museum's architectural drawings? He must have gone in beforehand and unlocked the maintenance hatch in advance.】
【Holy crap, that means Chu Chen had everything arranged before the FBI even set up their defense? He knew the FBI would move the painting from the exhibition hall to the underground vault, knew the elevator would pass that position, knew all surveillance would fail after the power outage, and then he acted at that exact moment?】
【So this wasn't improvisation at all; this was a game of chess played long ago. The FBI thought they were playing chess, but in reality, they were just pieces on Chu Chen's chessboard.】
【I only care about one question now—who exactly is Chu Chen? He couldn't just be an ordinary hacker or master thief; this person's planning and execution capabilities have already exceeded the scope of a normal person.】
【To the person above, that question is also what the FBI wants to know most right now.】
End of Chapter
