Chapter 322: You killed my Dependents

The rain poured down on Hawkins South Suburb Road, turning it into flowing ink, the asphalt surface shimmering with a dark, oily sheen in the curtain of rain. Ye Ge Luo Wa's Glock 17 barrel was sunk deep into Dan's nape, rainwater streaming down the folds of her khaki trench coat and pooling murkily on the passenger seat.

In the rearview mirror, Professor Ailin's pale face flickered between light and dark, the dashboard's glow refracting in her pupils into broken specks; the hands clutching the hem of her linen skirt trembled, the folds soaked with cold sweat mixed with rain, salty and fishy.

As the rusted "Hawkins Machinery Factory" sign flashed past the window, Ye Ge Luo Wa suddenly yanked the car radio's wiring apart; the metallic snap and the abnormal electromagnetic noise from Ailin's watch formed a subtle resonance.

"How… how is this?" Ailin jumped, her broken tremolo shattered by raindrops.

The agent glanced from the rearview mirror, golden‑dark lashes lowering, pupils contracting like blades. In her view, the two people before her were merely civilians—if not for her own injury.

She touched her abdomen, where shrapnel from the refrigerated truck explosion had pierced; the through‑and‑through wound kept oozing warm blood with each heartbeat, soaking the hemostatic bandage, the blood already congealed into dark‑red ice crystals on the inside of her coat. She had concealed her weakness, but her ashen, blood‑less cheeks had already alerted the keen Dan.

Ye Ge Luo Wa's eyes darkened; from massive blood loss she felt dizzy and needed someone to take her to the Crimson Traveler's hideout—namely, the Hawkins Machinery Factory before her.

But she knew well that her ruthless colleagues would open fire on these two United States persons the moment they saw them.

So she had to destroy the car radio to prevent colleagues inside the factory from detecting any electronic signal. Afterwards, as long as she let the two leave and then she herself entered the factory…

…they and she would all survive.

"Pull up to the gate, then leave immediately." Ye Ge Luo Wa said coldly.

"Yes, yes." Dan replied weakly.

The car slowly stopped; Ye Ge Luo Wa had just opened the door and stepped out when she suddenly sensed something wrong.

In the rain carrying an earthy stench, a faint whiff of strong Tie Xiu smell drifted through.

Ye Ge Luo Wa's pupils contracted; she knew something had happened.

She stumbled and shoved open the creaking freight iron door; a thick stench of blood assailed her. Twelve corpses lay in a radial pattern on the hoisting platform, bullet holes showing they had once formed a ring‑shaped defense back‑to‑back.

Ye Ge Luo Wa's boot heel crushed the blood‑soaked "Truth Newspaper," discovering that every victim's temples bore double bullet holes—the KGB's standard method of executing captured spies. She kicked over an overturned chemical drum; pale blue liquid pooled on the floor into the shape of the Russian word "traitor."

"How… how is this possible!"

Ye Ge Luo Wa stared blankly; the consequences of massive blood loss made it almost impossible for her to stand, and the shock of the scene caused her to collapse with a soft "pa" onto the ground.

The Crimson Traveler's hideout should be a secret within a secret; besides these few colleagues, only she and Oleg knew of it.

Wait

She looked around, but Oleg's figure was nowhere among the corpses.

She hurried to the upstairs monitoring room, only to find it already reduced to rubble. The screen was smashed, the memory core taken away.

"That is"

She picked up a string of silver pocket watch from under the console, engraved with "a·k." She breathed heavily, disbelief in her eyes.

Amid the ruins of the monitoring room, Ye Ge Luo Wa staggered into the swivel chair. The moment her fingertips touched the silver pocket watch, memory tore through her nerves like shrapnel—three years ago, on a snowy night in Kyiv, Oleg Kalugin pressed this watch engraved with "a·k" into her palm; Ye Ge Luo Wa trembled as she opened the watch, the Slavic youth on the inner lid smiling under warm yellow lamplight, snowflakes settling on his lashes into fine glittering stars.

a·k—standing for Oleg Kalugin, this is his watch. Why was the hideout known only to her and Oleg attacked? Why was Oleg's corpse absent yet his watch found? Why did the killer execute those agents with the KGB's familiar method?

Though Ye Ge Luo Wa dared not believe it, a terrible guess faintly formed in her mind.

"Oleg Kalugin."

At this moment the watch chain coiled around her fingers, cold as a poisonous snake; the shattered screen reflected the quake of her pupils. As distant thunder cracked, a metallic scraping sound suddenly came from deep within the factory, like someone dragging a rusted sickle through hell's corridors.

Ye Ge Luo Wa stumbled out of the room, yet in the hallway she saw a black shadow in the distance.

"Is that you?" Ye Ge Luo Wa asked, incredulous.

As she staggered back, the monitoring room's fluorescent tube suddenly burst. Glass shards hung suspended in the rain like slow‑motion, each fragment reflecting the twisted silhouette at the hallway's end—Oleg Kalugin.

His left hand's cleaver dripped chemical blue liquid; his right hand's Makarov pistol muzzle still curled with gunpowder smoke; his eyes, devoid of whites, seemed to swallow all light in the factory.

As the bullet grazed her ear, Ye Ge Luo Wa smelled the burnt‑protein stench of her own hair. She rolled, slamming open the fire door; the screech of rusted hinges and the steady approach of military boots behind her wove into a death‑chant. The years‑old grease on the stair rail clung to her palm like blood; each breath made her through‑and‑through wound burst fresh, scarlet warmth.

When Dan saw the Slavic woman fall like a wounded night owl onto the workshop floor, he was crouched behind a rusted gantry crane's operating table. Ailin's nails dug into his arm; the professor's light‑colored iris burned with a faint light mixing fear and excitement.

They had secretly followed Ye Ge Luo Wa after she entered, witnessing everything. The corpses littering the ground, and the strange man hunting that female agent.

Ailin clearly saw the man's eyes—pitch‑black, lacking whites—either he wore colored contacts or was under some supernatural influence.

!

"This is His will."

Oleg's whisper carried an electronic interference‑like emphasis; as he raised the cleaver, the blade's back refracted the shattered Soviet emblem on the workshop ceiling. In Ye Ge Luo Wa's scattered pupils, the outline of her former colleague overlapped with the memory of the Kyiv snowy night; the lips that once breathed warm air onto her hands now uttered mechanical, icy judgment.

The iron bar's whoosh tore through the blood‑stained stagnation.

Dan stared at his trembling hands; the vibration left in the galvanized steel pipe ran along his arm bone straight to his heart. Oleg, struck on the back of the head, lay on the ground, alive or dead unknown; only Ye Ge Luo Wa, still lost in grief, stared blankly at him.

". Why," Ye Ge Luo Wa's blood‑stained fingers gouged five bloody lines into the ground as she watched Ailin, speaking Italian, tear open her coat to bandage her, the professor's silver cross‑pendant swinging upside‑down before her eyes, "You clearly could have…"

"Moscow Grand Theatre 1991 tour program," Ailin suddenly whispered in pure Russian, the surgical knot in her fingertips snapping into place, "That yellowed page peeking from your coat pocket—it's the commemorative program for Giselle's final performance in Leningrad." The professor's lenses, like an archaeologist's brush, swept away historical dust, "And my father was the principal violinist that very night."

"No matter where you come from, you just let us go; we will naturally repay kindness with kindness." Ailin smiled.

Beside her, Dan scratched his head; he actually didn't want to rescue this agent, but if not for Ailin's constant pleading, he truly wouldn't dare to lay a hand on that frightening‑looking man.

"You killed my Dependents."

Suddenly, amidst the pattering rain, a faint, ethereal voice drifted through.

(End of chapter)