31: Chapter 31 The Devil's Pact in the Morgue

At 3:00 AM, the rain in New York felt like countless cold steel needles, stabbing fiercely into the concrete skin of this massive metropolis.

A black Ford sedan tore through the curtain of rain and screeched to a halt in the police station's back alley.

The car door opened, and a foot clad in a custom leather shoe stepped into the stagnant water, splashing up murky droplets.

Chen Mo tightened his trench coat collar, his right hand subconsciously pressing against a hard object at his waist—it was a glock 17 equipped with an extended magazine.

Climbing out of a warm mansion in Queens and into this cold, rainy night was certainly not a pleasant experience.

But the tone Old George had used on the phone left him no choice but to come.

That tone was uncannily like an old dog that had caught the scent of an impending earthquake.

Pushing open the heavy metal door of the coroner's office, a familiar scent—a mixture of disinfectant, mildew, and cheap tobacco—rushed to meet him.

"If you had been five minutes later, I was planning to flush this corpse down the sewer and buy a plane ticket to Mexico."

Old George sat beside an autopsy table. Instead of his usual flask of cheap whiskey, he held an unlit cigar. Under the dim, shadowless lamp, the old man's face looked like a crumpled piece of parchment that had been smoothed out, every wrinkle filled with gloom.

Chen Mo didn't respond; his gaze moved past George and landed on the corpse, which had already been opened up.

It was a white male with high muscle density, his palms calloused from years of gripping firearms.

Even as a corpse, it still radiated an unsettling sense of danger.

"Is this the unlucky bastard who made me work overtime in the middle of the night?" Chen Mo walked over and put on latex gloves.

"Not an unlucky bastard, but trouble. Big trouble." George tapped the corpse's pried-open chest cavity with a pair of hemostatic forceps. "Look here."

Chen Mo leaned in to look.

Between the fourth and fifth ribs of the deceased, behind the heart, a black metal plate the size of a thumb was embedded.

It hadn't been shoved in violently; it had been perfectly "planted" into the gap between the bone and muscle through some kind of extremely precise surgery, even forming a symbiosis with the surrounding blood vessels.

Chen Mo's pupils constricted slightly.

Engraved on the metal plate was a complex serial number: Unit-734.

And below the serial number was a pattern that was still fresh in his memory—a snake devouring its own tail, forming a perfect, deathly silent circle.

Ouroboros.

It was identical to the logo on the shell of the USB drive where Marcus had hidden the black gold ledger.

"This isn't a gang shootout, nor is it a regular mercenary."

George finally lit the cigar and took a deep drag, the smoke swirling under the lights.

"I've seen this type of implant technology in the Middle East and in Berlin during the Cold War. It's to prevent the corpse from being identified, and also for… positioning."

"Positioning?" Chen Mo keenly seized on the keyword.

"If I were his superior, the moment his heartbeat stopped, this metal plate would send one last signal."

George pointed at the flickering fluorescent light overhead. "Telling the Clean-up Worker where the trash is."

Chen Mo narrowed his eyes, looking at that deathly silent metal circle.

If the previous police corruption case was just fishing in shallow waters, then this logo meant he had already stepped one foot into the bottomless Mariana Trench.

Deep State. That malignant tumor hidden beneath the massive body of America.

"So, this is a trap?" Chen Mo's voice was terrifyingly calm, even carrying a trace of imperceptible excitement.

"Or some kind of standardized procedure."

George pulled a Remington M870 shotgun from under the autopsy table, skillfully racking the bolt with a crisp "click."

"Kid, even though you have a police badge, in the eyes of some people, we're no different from the meat on this table."

Chen Mo looked at the obviously illegally modified shotgun in George's hands, the corners of his mouth curling into an amused arc.

This old man really was hiding something deep.

How could a regular morgue caretaker just pull out a piece of hardware like that and be so knowledgeable about military implants?

"Bzzt—"

The fluorescent light overhead suddenly emitted a harsh electrical sound, flickered violently a few times, and the light instantly dimmed by half.

In the air, the burnt smell that had originally been masked by the disinfectant suddenly became distinct.

It was the ozone smell characteristic of high-power electronic equipment burning out.

Chen Mo's nostrils flared.

His Primary Investigative Intuition did not sound a frantic alarm in his mind; instead, it fell into a deathly silence.

But that was exactly what made it terrifying.

Because it meant that the danger had moved past the realm of potential and become a blade already held to his throat.

"Looks like you won't be going to Mexico after all." Chen Mo unbuttoned his trench coat, revealing the shoulder holster underneath.

George exhaled a thick cloud of smoke, his eyes becoming as sharp as a hawk's. "Neither will you, Agent. Welcome to the entrance of hell."

In the darkness, it seemed as if something was silently crawling toward them through the ventilation ducts.