35: The scumbag deserves death

Vijaya, with several lipstick marks on his face, left the bar's back entrance with Anna holding his arm. When they reached a black sedan, Anna suddenly exerted force, pushing Vijaya into the back seat of the black sedan.

"Tell me about your friend." Anna's red lips curved into a cruel arc, her fingers tracing the inside of Vijaya's thigh. "For every useful name you give me, I'll take off one item of clothing."

Vijaya swallowed nervously, trembling: "His name is Andrei Ilich... he works in the Bio-R&D Department. Last week, when he was drunk, he let slip something about a substance called 'Youth Serum'..."

Anna's eyes lit up. She pulled down the first zipper: "Keep going."

"They use... they use some kind of ore as raw material." Vijaya stammered, his eyes fixed on Anna's unbuttoned clothes. "Andrei is the project leader, but he's only refining it based on the data his teacher left him. He said... he said they can only produce a few milligrams each time..."

When Anna started unbuttoning, Vijaya's face was already flushed crimson: "Tomorrow at 3 AM! I'll secretly bring out a sample! At the waste disposal station on the west side of Titan Industrial City!"

Anna was very satisfied with Vijaya's reaction. She flipped over and sat on his lap, cupping his face with her left hand and placing her right hand on the last button.

Slowly, she leaned close to Vijaya's face, her red lips slightly parted: "Want to raise the stakes a bit more?"

Vijaya's heart pounded, and he completely broke down: "Andrei and I are drinking buddies, I can get a copy of that data from him... Mmph mmph."

Anna decided to give Vijaya a little 'reward'; after all, he wouldn't be seeing her again very soon.

Late the next night, Titan Industrial City, Central Hospital.

Vijaya supported a drunken Andrei as they walked through the empty corridor, fluorescent lights casting a pale glow above their heads. Andrei's lab coat was stained with vodka, and he mumbled incoherently, "Just... just one more drink... my dear friend..."

"Watch your step." Vijaya helped him turn into the B-section corridor, where the surveillance cameras, which should have provided full coverage, conveniently had blind spots.

Andrei's office door access control made a "beep" sound, and the iris recognition light turned green. Vijaya's lips curled into an almost imperceptible sneer as he helped his unconscious colleague into the office.

"Bang!"

Andrei collapsed onto the sofa like a pile of mud, and soon began to snore loudly. Vijaya quietly closed the door and took out a pair of gloves from his pocket, putting them on.

"Let me see where you've hidden your treasures..." Vijaya rubbed his fingers together and walked towards Andrei's office computer.

The display lit up at his touch, requesting a 32-digit dynamic password. Vijaya calmly pulled a seemingly ordinary pendant from Andrei's neck and placed it on the card reader. A faint "click" came from inside the pendant, and a complex password was automatically entered.

[Permission granted, welcome back, Dr. Andrei Ilich]

Vijaya let out a silent whistle, his fingers dancing across the virtual keyboard. The system interface quickly switched to a folder labeled "Mount Sheng Project (Top Secret)". He clicked on the subdirectories inside, and two encrypted files lay there silently:

"Research on the Characteristics of Special Ores in the Caves of Mount Sheng National Forest Park (1986-1988 Top Secret Experiment Records)"

"Reverse Growth Factor Extraction Technology from Biomineral Ores in Mount Sheng National Forest Park (1988-1991 Top Secret Experiment Records)"

"Found you..." Vijaya licked his dry lips, took a thumb-sized USB drive from his pocket, and inserted it into the computer's transfer port. The progress bar immediately began to move rapidly, while the corner of his eye remained fixed on the snoring Andrei on the sofa.

Suddenly, Andrei rolled over, almost falling off the sofa. Vijaya's fingers froze in mid-air, his heart pounding like a drum. But his drunken colleague only smacked his lips and fell back into a deep sleep.

"Ding!"

With a soft sound, the transfer was complete. Vijaya quickly pulled out the device, closed the files, and restored everything to its original state. He took one last glance at the office, his gaze falling on a photo frame on the wall. It was a photo of Andrei with a white-haired old man, with what looked like an old laboratory in the background, and two portraits hanging on the wall.

"So that's it..." Vijaya thoughtfully stroked his chin, "Data left over from the Cold War..."

He quietly backed away to the door, then suddenly remembered something and turned back, pulling out a small cooler from Andrei's drawer. Opening it, he saw three test tubes glowing with a faint yellow light, neatly arranged inside.

"Bonus..." Vijaya grinned, stuffing the cooler into his lab coat.

The emergency light in the corridor suddenly flickered, and Vijaya stopped, alert. Footsteps and voices of security guards came from a distance:

"B-section checked, all normal."

"Received, continue patrol."

Vijaya took a deep breath, then turned and entered a small path marked 'Equipment Room'. He skillfully opened an inconspicuous side door and slipped into the hospital's ventilation system.

The ventilation ducts were dark and damp, but Vijaya crawled through them as skillfully as if he were at home. Ten minutes later, he emerged from an exit, already at the hospital's west-side waste disposal station.

Under the moonlight, Anna's figure leaned against the black sedan, a slender cigarette held between her fingers. Seeing Vijaya appear, her red lips curved slightly: "Seven minutes late, my dear pharmacist."

"Good things are always worth waiting for." Vijaya patted his bulging lab coat, revealing an ambiguous smile, "My... reward?"

Anna chuckled and walked closer, her fingers sliding into his collar: "Let's inspect the goods first."

Vijaya presented the cooler and USB drive like a treasure. Anna's eyes visibly lit up when she saw the three yellow test tubes, and she eagerly opened the cooler.

"The color is the same as the boss said," she murmured softly, then took the USB drive and plugged it into a prepared laptop. "The data? Is it all in there?"

Vijaya opened a hidden folder, revealing the two top-secret files. Anna quickly browsed the content, and when she saw the text, "The ore in three caves of Mount Sheng contains reverse growth factors, and the concentration in Cave No. 3 is the highest," her breathing noticeably quickened.

"Perfect." She closed the projection, then suddenly pulled a silenced pistol from her thigh holster. "It's too perfect!"

Vijaya's smile froze on his face: "W-wait! We agreed--"

"Bang!"

With a muffled thud, a bullet hole appeared in Vijaya's forehead. He stared wide-eyed in disbelief, his body slowly falling backward. Anna calmly fired two more shots, ensuring he was completely dead, then squatted down and began to search his body.

"Idiot." She contemptuously tore off Vijaya's work badge. "Did you really think I'd sleep with a traitor?"

She pulled out her phone from her pocket and took a picture of Vijaya, who had become a dead dog. Then she took out gasoline from the car's trunk and poured it over Vijaya's body. Anna sneered, put away her phone and work badge; these were the "insurance" to be given to Kozlovsky.

Three minutes later, a black sedan silently drove away from the waste disposal station, its tires rolling over a puddle, reflecting a small pile of burning flammable trash.

On the rooftop of Titan Industrial City Central Hospital, the night wind carried the scent of disinfectant. The Web Weaver member, 'Mantis' Susie, was crouching in the shadow of the signal tower, her high-magnification binoculars in her tactical helmet tracking the receding black sedan. Moonlight cast a cold, silver glow on her tactical gloves.

"Target has departed, license plate MN-7474, heading west." Susie pressed her ear-mic, her voice as calm as if discussing the weather. "Confirm Natasha Ivanova is carrying samples and data."

The sound of a talk show came through the ear-mic, followed by a voice-modulated electronic voice: "Status of body disposal?"

Susie adjusted the binoculars' focus, the fire at the waste disposal station flickering in her pupils: "It's burning, expected to be completely carbonized within 15 minutes. Do we need to intervene?"

"Proceed as planned. Ensure there's ample evidence of Vijaya's betrayal. Although it was a sting, this guy did betray the company." The electronic voice paused. "Have arrangements been made for his girlfriend?"

"Location locked." Susie took out a tablet from her tactical waist pack and pulled up a surveillance video. Inside a teacher's apartment at Yangguang University, a young woman wearing glasses was grading papers. "Susanna Wu, 28 years old, lecturer in the literature department. Gentle personality, simple social circle."

"Execute Plan B, but don't be too cruel." The electronic voice commanded. "Let her 'accidentally' discover records of her boyfriend's infidelity, but do not expose our existence."

Susie's lips curled into a cold smile: "Understood."

She put away her equipment, and as she stood up, her black combat uniform blended with the night.

Ten minutes later, Susie appeared at the waste disposal station. The flames had died down, leaving only a charred skeleton and a few unburnt fragments of clothing. She put on rubber gloves and found a burnt and deformed phone in the ashes next to the skeleton.

"Lucky." Susie murmured softly, placing the phone in an evidence bag. Then she took out a prepared envelope containing replicas of intimate photos of Anna—no, Natasha—and Vijaya at the bar, as well as an edited audio recording.

In the recording, Vijaya's drunken voice was clearly audible: "...Susanna? That bookworm? Ha! If it weren't for the prestige of saying I'm with her, why would I... Do you know she can't even put on lipstick? Compared to a stunner like you..."

Susie stuffed the envelope into the pocket of the skeleton's remaining jacket, then pressed her communicator: "Cleanup crew, you can enter."

The roar of an engine came from a distance, and a garbage truck marked "Titan Environmental Services" slowly approached. Susie retreated into the shadows, watching two men in work uniforms skillfully load the remains into biohazard disposal bags, while spraying a chemical agent to eliminate traces.

"Remember to report the 'discovery' to security." Susie reminded through the communicator. "Handle it as 'employee accidentally stealing company property and encountering an accident'."

The garbage truck driver gave an OK gesture, and then the vehicle, carrying Vijaya's last traces, drove away from the scene. Susie looked at her watch: 2:17 AM. There were still over two hours until sunrise, enough time for her to complete her final task.

Jinta University Teacher's Apartment, 6:30 AM

Susanna Wu was awakened by urgent knocking. She rubbed her sleepy eyes and grabbed her glasses from beside the bed, putting them on. Outside the door stood two uniformed police officers, their expressions serious.

"Ms. Wu?" The older officer showed his identification. "We apologize for disturbing you so early. We have some news regarding Mr. Vijaya..."

Susanna's heart sank. She had sent her boyfriend a dozen messages last night but received no reply, which was unprecedented in their passionate relationship.

"He... what happened to him?" Her fingers unconsciously tightened the sash of her bathrobe.