Chapter 193: Taken Away
When the bang happened, Cillin, Scarlet Wind, the gray cat and Czedow had all moved their gazes away for a second. It was just a blink of the eye, but Tang Qiuqiu and s...o...b..ll had already disappeared.
The communicator couldn’t be contacted. Not even the signalling device Tang Qiuqiu carried on herself were reacting at all.
It all happened in an instant.
Scarlet Wind suddenly tensed up and s.h.i.+fted into a highly alert state. Claws suddenly jumped out of his hands.
“What’s wrong, Scarlet Wind?”
“There’s a strange thing with a very disgusting smell on it!”
“Czedow!” Cillin said heavily.
Czedow did look away just now, but he had a separate monitoring device that wasn’t his eyes. Czedow opened his palm as a hologram appeared on it. It was a scene of the store that they had missed just now.
Tang Qiuqiu’s figure was still pretty obvious despite it being mixed with many other children’s. This was especially true for the white fat bear following behind her. Then, a black shadow flashed by, and both Tang Qiuqiu and s...o...b..ll disappeared. At the same time, a loud bang resounded from the other side of the store.
When the video was slowed down, Cillin noticed that the thing that wrapped itself around Tang Qiuqiu and s...o...b..ll looked a little like tentacles. He didn’t know what it was, but it should be pretty slippery and swift. The last place it vanished to was one of the exits of this street.
The gray cat took a sniff and said, “I can’t catch Tang Qiuqiu or s...o...b..ll’s scent anywhere. Our opponent is quite crafty. Moreover, that thing that s.n.a.t.c.hed them away had the scent of sweets, allowing it to mingle with its surroundings. But it cannot escape my nose!”
Both Scarlet Wind and the gray cat had caught the scent of the thing that took Tang Qiuqiu and s...o...b..ll away. However, they allowed Scarlet Wind to lead the way instead of the gray cat since his reactions to the scent were stronger. The fact that the other party drew such a reaction from Scarlet Wind meant that they were absolutely not a normal human being.
Scarlet Wind led the way while Cillin and the gray cat followed him behind. Czedow hung at the tail of the group.
They tracked down the scent very quickly. While pursuing, Czedow also copied the security footages captured by every security monitor in the area without being discovered.
Looking at the footages, it would seem that Tang Qiuqiu and s...o...b..ll were taken into a normal-looking flying car after they were s.n.a.t.c.hed from the street. Without these footages, it would’ve been difficult for them to track down their enemy even though they noticed its scent since the beginning.
Cillin rented a flying car from the automatic car rental center and chased after them immediately. Their opponent drove very quickly. Since there was a speed limit, they had been driving at the highest allowed speed limit with incredible skill. This alone showed that their opponents were no small fries.
Those people had switched flying cars midway. Tang Qiuqiu and s...o...b..ll were carried into a building, but a different flying car had flown out of another exit of the building afterwards. It was likely that Tang Qiuqiu and s...o...b..ll were inside that flying car.
Under Cillin and the gray cat’s combined efforts, they finally tracked the kidnappers into a port. The port was one of the five biggest ports of the City of Trade.
It was obvious that their opponent had noticed that Cillin was tracking them too. They had made many efforts to conceal themselves after they arriving at this place. Right now, it was very difficult for them to keep track of the kidnappers based on the security monitors and scent alone.
Why on earth had the kidnappers taken Tang Qiuqiu? Did they belong to a certain force?
These were the questions that puzzled Cillin greatly.
“What do we do, Cillin? Should we split up and search around?” the gray cat asked.
Cillin didn’t answer it immediately. Now that he had calmed down, he quickly figured out some critical points of the kidnapping.
After arriving at a quiet corner of the port and falling silent for a dozen or so seconds, Cillin said, “No, we should stay together. It’s possible that we were targeted since the beginning. Our opponents had made a meticulous plan, and we would not find anything even if we were to investigate that sweet store or balloon. Czedow, remember to inform Cary and the commander about our situation. Scarlet Wind and I will chase them directly, or we will not be able to catch up to them anymore.”
“Scarlet Wind, follow me. Don’t take even a step away from me.” Cillin said to Scarlet Wind.
“Mm.” Scarlet Wind’s eyes were filled with anger and murderous intent. The long claws on his hands extended a little more without him noticing. However, he forcefully withdrew them after Cillin patted them softly. After all, there were a lot of people at this place.
“Czedow, go find the commander together with Wheeze.”
Cillin led Scarlet Wind into the port. Meanwhile, the gray cat and Czedow went inside their flying car and drove away.
Scarlet Wind followed Cillin closely, but he didn’t understand Cillin’s arrangement. Both Wheeze and Czedow were invaluable if they wanted to track down their opponent. But if that was the case, then why had he sent Wheeze and Czedow away?
Scarlet Wind didn’t voice his opinions, however. He trusted in Cillin’s judgment, so he obeyed his decisions even though he was puzzled by the arrangement.
“This is the direction, right Scarlet Wind?” Cillin asked.
Scarlet Wind nodded. He was very familiar with this smell; it was a disgusting smell that couldn’t be removed even if it was washed with disinfectants. Although the opponent had made efforts to conceal it, Scarlet Wind only needed a bit more time to identify the direction where the scent was coming from.
The duo chased the scent all the way to a s.p.a.ceplane parking lot. There weren’t many people at this place. Scarlet Wind was just about to say something when every hair on his body suddenly stood on its end. His animal instincts informed him that there were danger, but his vigilance was quickly carried away by a powerful sedative. He wobbled once, twice, and collapsed onto the ground.
Cillin was also lying down on the ground beside Scarlet Wind in the same manner. Both of them were shot by an extremely thin needle. This type of needle made almost no sound at all when it was fired, and it travelled at a tremendous speed. Moreover, the thin needle contained a surprisingly powerful sedative that could knock out even a Rank A genotype human.
A number of people came out of the surrounding s.p.a.ceplanes after they’d collapsed. No one could’ve imagined that the surrounding s.p.a.ceplanes that looked like they came from different places and forces parked in this area were in fact all under the same boss.
This area was cut off from the rest of the world before anyone realized it. No one here was an outsider, and although there were a few guards in the area they completely ignored whatever those people were doing. Instead, they left the area after exchanging brief glances with each other. The people that came out of the s.p.a.ceplane confirmed that both Cillin and Scarlet Wind were knocked out after an inspection and carried them both into a s.p.a.ceplane.
When the s.p.a.ceplane took off into the air, no one noticed the two b.u.mps that looked almost identical to their surroundings sticking at the bottom of the s.p.a.ceplane.
They didn’t notice that these two b.u.mps were communicating with each other through a certain method that was completely undetectable by the s.p.a.ceplane’s security system.
It didn’t take long before the s.p.a.ceplane left the port and entered into s.p.a.ce. There was a stars.h.i.+p parked at a giant s.p.a.ce station, and its logo was a number ‘6’ that had been rotated 255 degrees clockwise. It was also designed to have a bigger curve and longer tail.
Cillin would’ve been surprised to see this logo. This was because the people with this logo were the kind of people whom Shawton wanted to stay away from the most.
In a room on the stars.h.i.+p, two people were conversing with each other.
“How dare you mobilize a test subject to capture people without permission!” a man dressed in black formal attire looking like he had just finished attending a party said with undisguised anger.
A middle-aged man sat across him. Right now this middle-aged man was looking at the data recorded in his electronic notebook. He showed no fear towards the black suited man’s harsh words.
When he raised his head, the excitement in his eyes hadn’t faded away completely, “Kedwell, I’m absolutely sure you cannot imagine what kind of life form we just got.” the middle-aged man brought up a number of data and pa.s.sed over the electronic notebook to Kedwell, who had just finished attending a large-scale auction.
Kedwell might be dissatisfied with the middle-aged man’s methods, but his face instantly lit up the moment he saw the listed data. That being said, it was necessary for him to maintain a certain att.i.tude as a part of the management staff. He straightened his expression and pa.s.sed the electronic notebook back to the middle-aged man, “Shelt, the higher-ups had said this many times already. This is not the time to create any noise. Someone has already informed the military about this, and certain political organizations are voicing dissenting opinions too. We must watch out and control our actions!”
“Of course I know. But since we coincidentally ran into such a rare and perfect specimen, I can’t possibly give up on it, can I? This specimen is several times better than the last batch of test subjects.” Shelt retrained his gaze onto the electronic notebook once more, skimming through the test data transmitted back to his device one after another.
“Which force do they belong to?” Kedwell loosened his collar and asked.
“I checked, they’re from Vanguard’s Sixth B Squadron.”
When Kedwell heard the name ‘Vanguard’, his eyebrows quickly became wrinkled. But when he heard the words ‘B Squadron’, they became relaxed again. It was just a B Squadron. The loss of a few personnel wouldn’t draw the ire of the A Squadrons.
“I’ll forget this this one time, but don’t you start another kidnapping as you like during this time. If this affects the whole ‘Miracle’, then all of your experiments will be obliterated!”
“Of course, I do know where my priorities lie.”
Shelt only mentioned Cillin and Scarlet Wind’s capture briefly. Moreover, Scarlet Wind was another rare specimen to Shelt, so he had no intentions of telling too much and have his prize taken away from him. Luckily for him, Kedwell was rather busy today since the higher ups had instructed him to whitewash certain things. Therefore, he couldn’t spare any more attention to the things Shelt had done today.
At the same time, inside a prison room on the stars.h.i.+p. Cillin could feel the restraints placed around his limbs, but he neither moved nor opened his eyes. In fact, his body was maintained at the biological state of an unconscious person. The instrument beside him displayed the words ‘Subject Unconscious’.
In reality, Cillin could’ve avoided that needle if he wanted to. He didn’t because he had a plan in his mind. His opponent’s appet.i.te was very huge, since not only had they kidnapped Tang Qiuqiu, they seemed to have set their eyes on Scarlet Wind as well.
Although Cillin had outlined his plans back at the corner, that wasn’t his real goal at all. Verbal communication was hardly the only channel of communication between him and the gray cat. The gray cat was sitting right on top of Cillin’s shoulders, and their interaction neither needed words nor feared eavesdroppers at all. Moreover, the gray cat could communicate with Czedow through another method.
Before Scarlet Wind was knocked out, Cillin had already injected a kind of medicine into his body in secret. It was something Rikulab researched, and it could partially resist powerful stimulant drugs. Moreover, Cillin added a different kind of medicine into the mix that would make Scarlet Wind emit a different kind of scent. As long as this scent existed, Cillin would be able to find Scarlet Wind no matter where he was.
Scarlet Wind and Cillin were separated after the s.p.a.ceplane had entered the stars.h.i.+p. Obviously, Scarlet Wind was given heavy attention, while Cillin was abandoned at another room alone and surrounded with monitoring devices.