At the entrance to the performance building, about ten ters away from the main gate, the mont Everly saw the masked man shoot the security guard, she imdiately sensed sothing was wrong. Taking Misha and Old John with her, she cautiously retreated into the crowd, pushing through the spectators as they headed toward the east side of the lobby.
“Move, quickly—we’re leaving through another door!”
As they walked, she kept scanning the situation outside over the heads of the crowd.
It was obvious that the masked n at the theater entrance and the hooded figures inside the performance hall were working together. The danger they were facing wasn’t a lone individual, but an organized group of killers.
Eight people were stationed at the theater’s main entrance. Judging by the bulges at the backs of their waists beneath their clothing, it was likely that all eight of them—not just the one in the rabbit mask—were ard. In this situation, there was no way Everly and Old John could break through on their own, let alone while bringing Misha with them.
If the main gate wouldn’t work, then they would have to use another exit.
The ergency evacuation map of the performance building quickly surfaced in Everly’s mind.
The building was divided into three large sections: front, middle, and rear. The front section was the waiting lobby where the three of them were currently standing, packed tightly with audience mbers waiting to enter. This area had two exits: the main entrance and a side door. The main entrance faced the theater’s front gate, while the side door was located on the east side of the building. Once outside, crossing an internal roadway would lead directly to the parking lot. That was how Everly and Old John had entered earlier that morning.
Everly’s goal was to leave through the east side door and get into Old John’s Shepherd Jeep. The townspeople of Lemot had pooled their money six years ago to buy that vehicle for him. Old John loved it dearly. Over the past six years, he had modified it whenever he had spare ti—replacing the tires, chassis, and engine, and even upgrading the windows to bulletproof glass.
Once the three of them got inside, they could power through gunfire and crash straight out through the theater’s rear exit. That passage was reserved for staff and not open to the public. Even if masked n were guarding it, the defensive force there likely wouldn’t be strong. The Shepherd’s sturdy body would be more than enough to handle it.
However, plans never move faster than change.
The lobby was far too crowded. Everly and the other two struggled to push their way past the people in line before finally reaching the east side door. Just then, a heart-rending scream suddenly erupted from the direction of the theater’s main entrance—it was the couple, who had witnessed the middle-aged man’s death with their own eyes and broken down in terror.
That single scream was like a signal, flinging open a tightly sealed Pandora’s box.
The audience mbers in the waiting hall still didn’t know what had happened outside. Many turned their heads curiously toward the back. But the lobby was packed shoulder to shoulder; only those closest to the doors saw the corpse lying outside and began screaming one after another. Those farther inside could see nothing but rows upon rows of the backs of heads. Quite a few still wore blank, curious expressions.
At that mont, the hooded figures hidden among the crowd suddenly pulled back their hoods in unison, revealing animal masks beneath.
“Quiet! Everyone squat down!”
A man dressed in black with a pig mask, standing at the very center of the crowd, shouted. He pulled out a pistol without a silencer from behind him and fired a shot into the air.
As if responding to the pig mask’s command, the other hooded figures followed in perfect coordination, drawing their pistols and raising them to fire into the air as well.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
The deafening gunshots echoed through the lobby for a long mont. The ceiling was struck, and sand and debris cascaded down in showers.
When the gunfire stopped, the entire hall seed as if soone had pressed pause. A brief silence fell. People stared wide-eyed at the masked figures in disbelief. So stood with their mouths hanging open, stunned, foolishly craning their necks to look upward.
One second. Two seconds…
When those who had long lived in comfort finally processed what was happening and the frozen clock of ti began to move again, questions, screams, cries, and the sounds of frantic flight erupted all at once. Husbands supported their wives, mothers clutched their children. Panicked crowds surged and shoved, people running in terror in every direction. In an instant, the entire waiting hall dissolved into complete chaos.
“Outside—soone’s dead outside!”
“They’re real guns!”
“No—help! Run!”
People crashed into one another like headless flies.
Everly and the other two were right by the side door and, by sheer luck, weren’t swept into a stampede. But in those short dozen seconds, several more black-clad figures wearing masks and carrying guns advanced into the lobby simultaneously from both the main entrance and the side door.
Three ca in from outside the side door. The number wasn’t large, but considering there were at least six or seven accomplices inside the hall already, if Everly and Old John engaged them, they would likely be attacked from both front and rear.
“Inside!” Everly locked eyes with Old John and tugged Misha. While the hall was still in chaos and no one was paying attention to them, the three bent low and, using the surrounding cover, swiftly turned into the eastern corridor leading backstage.
A retractable barrier separated the corridor from the main lobby. Combined with the dim lighting in that direction—clearly not an exit—very few fleeing spectators chose to cross the barrier and head down the hallway.
People’s first instinct was to rush toward the nearer main and side doors.
Unfortunately, they forgot that the masked n were lying in wait.
It was obvious the attackers had planned this operation for a long ti. How could they possibly allow anyone to escape? The fleeing crowd had barely burst out the doors when they were t by more masked gunn flanking the building from outside. These n held black submachine guns and opened fire on the running crowd without hesitation.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat—
As bullets tore through the air, people at the entrance were riddled with gunfire and collapsed one after another, blood spraying from their bodies. Beneath them, thick pools of blood gathered and flowed down the steps, staining the roadway in front of the performance hall red.
At the sa ti, a bloody massacre was unfolding inside the waiting hall.
The masked figures standing within the lobby strolled calmly through the screaming, fleeing crowd with pistols in hand, like hawks sweeping over a flock of chickens. With a casual grab, they would seize soone by the hair, drag the pleading victim in front of them, lower the muzzle—
Bang!
After the thunderous shot, the victim’s head burst apart. The masked attacker tossed the body aside like garbage—already reaching for the next target.
Bang!
Bang, bang!
One. Then another. And another…
The number of dead kept rising. Blood splattered across the floor and walls throughout the hall. Overwheld by the horrifying spectacle, the panicked crowd finally rembered the words of the man in the pig mask.
He had said, “Quiet. Everyone squat down.”
If they did that… would they be allowed to live?
When the first person in the crowd crouched down with hands clasped over their head, it triggered a chain reaction. One by one, more people followed suit. In utter terror, they dropped where they stood, clutching their heads, praying for rcy from the masked killers.
As the dense gunfire and screams outside gradually subsided and the waiting hall fell into an eerie quiet, Everly was standing on Misha’s shoulders, stretching her arm upward to unscrew the vent cover on the ceiling with a screwdriver.
Monts earlier, after running into the eastern corridor, the three had intended to follow it all the way to the backstage area, where fewer people and more complex terrain might offer better hiding spots. Unfortunately, the door at the end of the corridor leading backstage was locked—likely to prevent audience mbers from wandering in by mistake.
So, at Everly’s suggestion, they had ducked into the nearby n’s restroom instead.
The mont they entered, Old John locked the door from the inside and wedged a mop diagonally behind it, creating a makeshift barricade.
One side of the restroom had a frosted-glass window that could be pushed outward at an angle. If they climbed out through the window, crossed the internal roadway, and ran about a dozen ters, they would reach the parking lot.
While Old John was bracing the door, Everly rushed to the window. Carefully, she pushed it open a crack, then slipped her compact mirror through the gap and adjusted the angle to observe outside.
“There’s soone out there!” Misha saw the reflection first and whispered a warning.
Everly moved into position and took a look. Sure enough, in the theater’s parking lot outside, there was one masked gunman stationed to the left, one in the center, and one to the right. Their triangular formation maximized their surveillance of the surroundings. Though there were only three of them, the path from the restroom window to the parking lot was entirely open ground. If they rushed out recklessly, they would be nothing more than moving targets.
After securing the door, Old John stepped over to assess the gunn’s positions. He shook his head at Everly.
He had a habit of carrying a weapon whenever he went out. But today, they were in the relatively safe city to watch a musical—not heading into the wilderness or anywhere especially dangerous—so for convenience he had brought only a Glock 19 for self-defense. The pistol’s magazine held fifteen rounds, with an effective range of about 25 to 50 ters. Taking down one of the n outside wouldn’t be a problem. However, he hadn’t brought a suppressor. The mont he fired, the other two would imdiately pinpoint their location. That would turn into a one-versus-two situation—and that was without counting the large group of masked attackers still in the waiting hall. Unless absolutely necessary, opening fire was not a wise option.
As if to confirm that very thought, a dense burst of rat-tat-tat gunfire suddenly echoed from the direction of the waiting hall.
“That’s a submachine gun. Sounds like a UMP45,” Old John said grimly after listening for a mont.
Everly had studied firearms with Old John for a while. She knew the UMP45 was known for its high rate of fire, low recoil, and strong shooting accuracy, with decent armor-piercing capability. It was often used by special forces in the United States.
A group of enemies ard with pistols was already terrifying enough. She hadn’t expected them to be equipped with weapons like that as well.
That made forcing their way out through the window even less of an option.
The gunfire and screams outside continued, growing louder and more intense. Before long, waves of shrieking also erupted from the auditorium across the corridor. There were simply too many masked attackers, and they were heavily ard. Going out now was absolutely not an option. Old John had already called the police—perhaps they would arrive soon. Until then, they needed to find sowhere safe to hide.
Everly took a deep breath and scanned their surroundings. Her gaze quickly fixed on the ventilation duct above the restroom ceiling.
In her previous life, she had seen explanations stating that real-life ventilation ducts were usually only about 32 cm by 20 cm—far smaller than the minimum space required for a human body to pass through, and unable to bear a person’s weight. But in this world, the ducts were much larger. Even an adult like Old John could squeeze inside. Everly strongly suspected this was so kind of “world adjustnt” to make certain movie plots possible.
Since escape wasn’t feasible for now, then they would hide in the ventilation system.
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