The first one to deal with was the “Nest Keeper.” As the chief, he was powerful, cunning, and the trickiest of the three. If they didn’t pin him down, and he noticed sothing off, he could spin a story with his silver tongue, co up with so excuse, and mobilize his officers against Everly and the others, which would be disastrous.
Dealing with the “Nest Keeper” was both difficult and simple at the sa ti.
As the saying goes, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Misha, a small social butterfly, had previously exchanged contact info with a few female officers during the school shooting incident. Everly asked Misha to check which officers didn’t get along with “Nest Keeper” Charlie. Soon, Misha gave her a na: Chief Sawitt.
The city police chief planned to retire next year, and both Sawitt and the “Nest Keeper” were strong contenders for the next chief position, so their relationship had been tense recently.
“Chief Sawitt thinks Chief Charlie talks well but doesn’t get things done, so he looks down on him. But everyone in the departnt still prefers Chief Charlie because Sawitt is too strict and rigid…” one of the female officers complained to Misha.
Okay, good—Sawitt seed fairly upright.
Of course, Everly knew not to take things at face value. She had Orff check online and found that Sawitt, though not very famous, was indeed one of the rare officers in the city bureau who actually got things done. She decided to make Sawitt the target for recruitnt.
She had Orff find Sawitt’s contact info and then called him using a virtual number, telling him that she had dirt on “Nest Keeper” Charlie—enough to take him down—and asked Sawitt to find a way to tie Charlie up today.
“As long as you can keep him busy before midnight today, all that dirt will be yours… I can give you so information upfront as a ‘deposit.’”
After speaking, Everly turned off the voice changer and had Orff organize all the information he had copied from the dark web, placing the “Nest Keeper”’s details in the most prominent position. She included news that he was planning a murder, then sent it anonymously to Sawitt.
—That’s right. Though they said they would only provide partial dirt at first and deliver the rest after things were done, in practice, the two of them gave Sawitt everything they had, no reservations.
Ti was tight, and Everly didn’t have the bandwidth to decide which information would best help Sawitt restrain Charlie. After all, the people who understand you best are your opponents, so the data could only achieve its maximum effect in Sawitt’s hands.
Sawitt had no idea what other valuable intelligence the two of them held. To keep the enemy pinned down as much as possible, he would likely go all out to et their expectations.
In this way, without Everly and her team stepping in directly, the threat of the “Nest Keeper” was already neutralized.
Although information about the “execution” activities had already been sent to the police via the dark web, considering the impressive speed of U.S. law enforcent, Everly couldn’t guarantee that the officers would catch the remaining operators before today’s execution activities concluded.
So the other two operators still needed the intervention of a proactive citizen—Everly herself.
Of the two, Everly considered “Butcher” Michael the more dangerous. Michael had Hyper-Male Syndro, giving him physical abilities far beyond the average person, but his intelligence was limited; he had so cognitive impairnts.
An opponent like that couldn’t be fought hand-to-hand; modern firearms needed to be used flexibly.
Everly drove Misha and Orff to the birch forest indicated in the intelligence. Once they were close enough, she told the other two to stay in the car and not wander off. She draped herself in camouflage that blended perfectly with the snow and, following the remote-sensing map, made her way on foot to the ranger cabin located in the woods.
At this point, both Abel and the chief were already under control, and no one had sent Michael, who kept to himself, any ssages. So even when Everly drove to the edge of the birch forest, Michael still didn’t know that their prey had escaped the school.
He was standing at the entrance of the ranger cabin, bored out of his mind, wearing the leather apron he always wore in the videos, swinging a machete at a half-dead deer hanging from a tree.
From his physique to the scars on his hands, he matched the muscular man in the torture videos—it was definitely him.
Having confird her target, Everly found a spot a few hundred ters up a hillside with a clear view, lay prone, and slowly aid her sniper rifle.
Unlike the school shooting incident, this ti she had ample preparation. So when the gun fired, a spray of blood erupted from Michael’s left eye, and he fell straight back, face up.
A perfect shot.
However, Horror Movie Survival Rule #15: rember to follow up.
“Bang!”
“Bang bang!”
Although she had already hit the vital area in his head, Everly continued firing at his head, chest, and limbs several more tis, ensuring he was beyond any chance of survival before moving in.
This was Everly’s first real kill—Gary didn’t count, because he couldn’t die—but because the torture videos were so cruel, facing the corpse didn’t cause her any psychological hesitation. On the contrary, she felt exhilarated, thinking that this inhuman executioner deserved to experience the fate of his victims.
After checking the body, she carefully made her way into the ranger cabin while keeping an eye out for traps. She disard several bear traps and crossbow arrow traps along the path, then successfully found the entrance to the basent—the site where the torture videos were fild—and stepped inside.
The setup here was simple: a wooden board hamred full of nails served as the backdrop, each nail holding knives, saws, hamrs, scissors, and other tools of various sizes and purposes—“props” for filming—all stained with blood. So still had bone fragnts and pieces of flesh attached, giving off a strong, putrid stench.
In front of the board stood a heavy tal chair. Clamped onto its armrest was a broken fingernail decorated with stars and tiny rhinestones. Everly recognized it: when Misha had started her job, she once took Barbara out for pizza, and Barbara had shown them her custom nail art. This nail was identical to Barbara’s custom design.
It was proof that Barbara had been t*rtured here.
From the ceiling above the chair hung a large, gleaming iron hook. The chair and the floor beneath were sared with blood. Just looking at it, Everly could imagine how Barbara had been strapped to the chair, suspended from the hook, treated like a plaything, like a powerless animal, subjected to inhuman abuse.
A black cara was mounted in front of the board, aid squarely at it, currently turned off. Next to the cara was a table holding an old laptop.
Everly stepped forward and placed the cara’s mory card and the old laptop into her backpack.
Beside the filming area was an iron cage used to confine the kidnapped girls. The cage’s conditions were miserable: a filthy blanket whose original color was unrecognizable, a dog bowl filled with dirty water, and so rotting food—everything they had ever owned.
In the corner of the room right next to the cage, the personal belongings of the missing girls were piled high: backpacks, jewelry, clothes, shoes, damaged electronic devices… They lay there like trash, stacked in the corner, slowly being forgotten by the city along with their owners.
The cage was currently empty, with no one inside. Everly suspected that the recent website crash had made live broadcasts impossible, so no new victims had been captured. Sadly, Barbara—the girl who had been tortured nearly to death in the earlier videos—was nowhere to be seen either.
Everly had a strong, grim feeling: Barbara was probably dead, and her body had already been disposed of. There was no doubt that these ruthless, cold-blooded executioners would never have treated her injuries.
Everly felt a heavy weight in her chest.
But ti did not allow her to linger.
It was already 4:30 p.m., and only one operator remained: the “Undertaker,” Mark Callaway.
After cleaning up so traces at the scene, Everly returned to the Jeep Cherokee parked outside the forest, bringing her loot along. By now, Orff had successfully hacked into the funeral ho’s internal network and figured out Mark’s work schedule.
“He’s unmarried and lives alone. The schedule shows he’s off today. Here’s a navigation map to his house.” Only the final step remained before success, and Orff was visibly excited.
Everly took the navigation from Orff and drove toward Mark’s house.
Mark lived at 25 Tombstone Lane. True to its na, the lane was right next to an old, long-standing cetery.
Because it was on the outskirts and adjacent to graveyards, few people lived here. Most residents were elderly or cash-strapped renters.
Mark’s house was at the very end of the lane. Just a few ters beyond his house, past an iron fence, lay the deserted cetery.
Mark’s ho itself was… peculiar.
The gate at the entrance to the yard was locked from the inside. Through the bars, Everly could see the dog kennel in complete disarray. A black-furred dog had been torn to pieces by soone—or sothing—its flesh, fur, and innards scattered across the ground. The stench of blood was so strong that it stained the snow beneath a vivid crimson.
What was strange was that, despite the carnage, the snow around the kennel was perfectly undisturbed—no footprints, nothing. This was unusual because the blood around the corpse was still flowing outward, indicating the dog had been killed very recently. It definitely hadn’t died before the snow fell.
Moving past the kennel toward the house, Mark’s front door was tightly shut. Yet on closer inspection, fresh blood was seeping through the doorfra.
Seeing this bizarre scene, Everly’s heart began to pound.
Her crisis alert system was screaming at her, warning that coming here at this exact mont was a thoroughly terrible mistake!
But her warning had co too late.
As Everly spun around to run back to the Jeep, ready to drive away, a sound of anxious barking from Buddy heralded the arrival of that thing.
“W-what is that…”
Misha’s hands trembled as she pointed toward the front of the vehicle.
Had you ever seen an anatomical human model in a lab? One where one half is normal, and the other half has its skin peeled away to reveal the underlying muscles, tendons, bones, and even organs?
What appeared in front of Everly and the others was exactly like the skinned half of such a model. It had no epidermis, no hair; from head to toe, its entire body was exposed, bright red, stripped of skin.
But unlike a skinned human, if one looked closely, its body wasn’t a single, intact form—it was made up of countless tiny red chunks of flesh stitched together.
At the seams where the chunks t, threads of varying colors ran crookedly, sewing the pieces together. On the outside of the flesh was a thin layer of pale yellow gelatinous substance, sothing like jelly, yet also like glue.
Even its eyes were unusual. The left eye had a blue iris, the right one brown. They looked like two haphazardly placed buttons set deep in hollow sockets—one tilted upward, the other slanted to the left, unable to focus.
Beneath the eyes were two dark holes representing nostrils. Below them was the part Orff found most horrifying: the mouth.
It had no lips, only bare white gums, upon which teeth grew. All of the teeth were molars, making it impossible for them to have co from the sa person. Dozens of molars, each a different color and shape, crowded together on the yellow-and-white gums like cockroach larvae hatching from broken eggs, or like wriggling maggots on a rotting corpse. As the thing moved closer, the teeth scraped and clicked together with a chilling clack-clack.
The first second: it appeared in front of the three in the car.
The second second: white, snowflake-like stripes appeared across its body, and like a ghost it passed through intact window glass, suddenly materializing before Orff’s eyes.
The third second: blood exploded in Orff’s vision.
In a flash of excruciating pain, Orff jerked his eyes open.
The bedside clock clearly showed the ti: December 18, 20X4, 8:25 a.m.
Amid the agonized wails, Orff entered his twenty-third ti loop.
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