Haunted by the Toxic Curtain Chapter 5

At 8:32 that night, the Special Criminal Team Office on the second floor of the Public Security Department of Province J was filled with smoke.

Liam Xia sat on the swivel chair behind his desk with a frown on his face, holding a cigarette in one hand and tapping the wooden tabletop with his knuckles in the other, staring at the thin curls of smoke in a trance. Dozens of people sat or leaned on a small conference table nearby, fully armed and wearing uniform black protective clothing, most of them holding cigarettes in their mouths and looking solemn.

A short-haired man with a baby face sitting cross-legged on a chair took the cigarette between his pouting upper lip and nose and said, "Boss, you invited us here tonight, are you going to spend the whole night smoking?"

"Tsk!" Liam Xia stopped tapping his fingers and said impatiently, "Why are you so anxious?!"

The baby-faced man leaned forward with his eyes wide open and pointed at the wall clock: "What time is it now? In the previous emergency operations, the starting team could only hold out for two hours at most! Besides, boss, aren't you in a hurry? Why are you banging on the table if you're not in a hurry?"

Knocking on the table when he was impatient was an unconscious habit of Liam Xia, and these B@st@ards knew it very well. Liam Xia glared and shrank his neck backwards.

"Something is a little off, boss..." A man next to him put out his cigarette and threw it into the ashtray full of cigarette B*tts, nodding in agreement, "It's time to change shifts."

Many people responded in agreement.

The baby-faced boy got excited and tried to move forward a little more: "Boss, I'm telling you, my right eyelid has been twitching all day today - ah!" Before he could finish his words, he almost fell forward due to imbalance.

The tall man standing behind him leaning against the table reached out with a wooden face and quickly grabbed the collar of the baby-faced man and pulled him back, thus preventing him from knocking out his front teeth.

The baby-faced boy smiled awkwardly at the wood that was leaning against him, and was hit on the forehead by the wood.

In fact, what Baby Face said was right. Liam Xia was distracted just now because he was thinking about this matter.

In the past, when special poisonous fogs came, the government would immediately take emergency measures.

On the one hand, emergency air forces were dispatched to spray medicines mixed with water in proportional proportions from high altitudes. These medicines came into contact with the fog in the air, wrapped it up, and then fell down as relatively harmless rain. On the other hand, various land troops, public security systems and medical teams were dispatched to evacuate the people outside and provide emergency rescue for the injured.

Although the protective clothing worn by these personnel has been tested, its actual effectiveness against toxic fog is still not completely certain, so this type of emergency operation generally adopts a rotation system to prevent the protective clothing from being corroded by prolonged contact with toxic fog and failing to provide protection.

In the past, we usually had to replace a new group of people every one and a half hours or at most two hours, but today it has been more than three hours, which is really too long.

Liam Xia took a deep puff of his cigarette, then put out the rest in the ashtray beside him and reached for the phone next to the computer.

Just as his fingertips were about to touch the phone, it suddenly rang, startling everyone so much that they immediately stood up, threw away their cigarettes, put on their protective masks, and looked ready to go. Liam Xia didn't wait for the second ring as he picked up the receiver: "Hello! Is it our turn?"

"Don't... Hoo" the person on the other end spoke in a hoarse voice, and it seemed that he was struggling to speak, almost in a breath, "Don't come out... Hoo!... Please..."

"Hey?!" Liam Xia stood up suddenly, "What's going on?! What happened to you?!"

"Don't come out...something went wrong. Those chemicals...we thought that they could dispel the fog like before, cough cough...the fog disappeared quickly at first, and everyone was very...happy, thinking that the new chemicals were...effective...we decided to delay, cough, to save more people. But, suddenly, a bigger fog arose, and it was completely...useless...even the helicopter was...destroyed...cough cough cough, cough cough." The man seemed to have run out of strength after he finished speaking. He gasped twice, his breath was weak, "Don't come out...dead...all...dead--"

Before he finished speaking, he was no longer able to breathe.

"Boss!" Everyone knew something was wrong when they saw Liam Xia's expression, and asked in unison, "What's wrong?" "Something went wrong?" "What's going on over there?"

Liam Xia rushed out without saying a word, crossed the corridor, strode down the stairs, passed the lobby on the first floor, but stopped in front of the glass door leading to the outside.

Behind him, there were the sounds of footsteps going down the stairs. The latecomers who were left behind in the Public Security Bureau gathered around when they heard the noise. There were probably hundreds of people there.

They gathered around and asked about the situation, but the moment they saw the scene outside the gate through the glass, they all fell silent.

White, all white

Can't see anything, except fog...

The milky white fog, so thick that visibility was almost completely eliminated, enveloped the world with a momentum that seemed to swallow up everything, like a huge, boundless, and inescapable cocoon.

"Sizzle -"

A tiny sound broke the deathly silence. Liam Xia froze and listened for a while. He was standing at the front of the crowd and could hear it most clearly.

Following the sound, Liam Xia took two steps forward, squatted down close to the side of the glass door, and stared at the place where the sound came from for a few seconds.

I saw extremely fine bubbles on the edge of the glass where it met the wall, with occasional "sizzling" sounds and a little smoke rising, just like oil dripping into boiling water.

After Liam Xia understood, his eyes widened and he staggered backwards.

"Go back!" Liam Xia jumped up and turned around, waving his arms to disperse the crowd behind him. "Go back quickly. Where's the captain?! Where are the captains of each team? Take them all back to the office! This fog is so Fcuking weird that it can melt glass! Damn it!"

Liam Xia took two or three steps up to the third floor and rushed straight into an office. He rushed in without even knocking on the door: "Something happened!"

A man who looked to be in his forties but had a good temperament sat behind his desk, crossed his arms, squinted his eyes and looked at Liam Xia calmly: "I thought you were trying to start a riot with the noise you made just now. Before I get the notice, don't even think about rushing out with any excuse you use. How many times have you played this trick--"

Before he could finish his words, he was interrupted by Liam Xia. He slammed his hands on the desk, leaned forward, and said anxiously: "This time it's really an accident! I don't know why you didn't receive the notification, but a call just now came to me. Maybe they wanted to call you but dialed the wrong number. Anyway, this is an emergency!"

Liam Xia said in a few words what was said on the phone and what he had just seen downstairs. He spoke quickly and loudly. After he finished speaking, he looked at the man with heavy breathing.

The man spread his hands calmly and said, "There is no other way except waiting."

"you!"

He patted Liam Xia's shoulder in a soothing manner: "I am just stating the facts. I have not received any notification of new operations, which means that even the higher-ups haven't figured out a plan yet. We can only wait. You are not the only one who is anxious, but no matter how anxious you are, what can you do? Are you going out to die again?"

Liam Xia couldn't help but grab the man's collar and said through gritted teeth: "It wouldn't be like this! I told you there would be fog! I told you before that you said you would report it through procedures! What happened? Huh? If you had believed me when I said to issue an emergency notice, it wouldn't have been like this! There wouldn't be so many people out there dying!"

The man sighed, pried open Liam Xia's hand that was grabbing his collar, and straightened his collar: "Some things are not as simple as you think, and they are not something I can control."