123: Chapter 123 is full of doubts

Li Li did not head straight to the third floor.

Thick smoke billowed up the stairwell, reducing visibility to less than two meters. The sound of the airflow from the breathing apparatus overlapped with his own breathing, muffled inside the mask; the entire world shrank down to this steady rhythm of intake and exhale.

The fire was fiercest on the first floor, and the smoke in the stairwell was the densest there, but the structure hadn't collapsed. It was a seven-story reinforced concrete self-built building with six to eight rooms per floor. On a weekend evening, it was hard to say if anyone was inside.

If you can't be sure, you clear it floor by floor.

The second floor.

There were two corridors to the left and right of the stairwell. The window at the end of the left corridor glowed with an orange-red light—the fire side. The right side was dark, with less smoke.

Right side first.

Li Li walked to the first door, turned sideways, and raised his leg.

One kick.

The lock shattered, and the door panel swung open, slamming against the wall.

A ten-square-meter rental unit: one bed, one table, an unwashed bowl of instant noodles on the table. Empty.

The second room. Another kick.

Even smaller, with bunk beds, three pairs of slippers on the floor, and a work schedule posted on the wall. Empty.

The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth rooms.

Six kicks, six rooms, no one. Good.

He turned around and walked to the left corridor.

He removed his glove first and pressed his right hand against the door panel.

It was warm, not hot enough to ignite the wood; the hose streams outside were working.

He put his glove back on.

One kick.

The door here was sturdier than the ones on the right.

No, it wasn't; there was a stool wedged behind the door. He kicked the stool over, and the door swung open.

The corridor was longer than the one on the right, with more rooms around the corner at the end. Seven? Eight? By the time he kicked open the fifth door, Li Li began to suspect the landlord of this building was playing some kind of escape room game.

There was still fire toward the windowsill, but the water from Ji Shen and his team was hitting the balcony ceiling, dripping down. The sparks hissed and emitted white smoke as they died out.

Seven rooms, all empty.

Li Li turned to head back to the stairs, but after two steps, he realized something was wrong: the stool behind the door couldn't have been placed there after someone had already left!

His peripheral vision caught a narrow door around the corner of the corridor.

He hadn't checked the bathroom yet.

He pulled the door open.

Well, well.

A young man in his early twenties was squatting in the gap between the toilet and the wall, soaked to the bone, his hair plastered to his forehead. He was holding a wet towel tightly over his nose with both hands, shaking like a leaf.

The young man's eyes nearly popped out when he saw Li Li.

"Firefighter?!"

Li Li looked at him for two seconds.

"If you had the time to soak yourself like a drowned rat, why didn't you just go downstairs?"

"I... I didn't know what the situation was downstairs! What if the stairs collapsed? It's safer here with the water..."

Li Li almost blurted out: If the fire reaches you, your bathroom fortress will be your tomb.

He held it back.

"Come with me."

He dragged the man out from the gap by the toilet, grabbed his arm, and hauled him to the stairwell. The stairs were clear; the smoke was rising, so it was actually clearer going down.

"Hold your breath!"

Li Li pulled the man down, quickly reaching the ground floor from the second floor.

"Run to the left, get outside the crowd."

The young man nodded tremblingly, leaning against the wall, stumbling as he scrambled off to the left.

The feeling of surviving a disaster was palpable.

The third floor.

The smoke had thinned out considerably by the time he went up the stairs.

The first door on the right was wide open, a pair of slippers lying askew on the floor in the doorway. The lights were on inside, and the TV was playing a program no one was watching. The person had fled without even closing the door.

The left side. The door was closed.

Li Li knocked on the door.

Knock, knock, knock.

No response.

He knocked again. Knock, knock, knock.

Still no response.

He stepped back half a pace, shifting his weight to his back leg.

The door opened.

Half a face peeked through the crack in the door.

A four- or five-year-old boy, his hair a bird's nest, eyes swollen like walnuts, his face smeared with snot and tears.

He froze for a second when he saw Li Li behind the mask.

The next second, two small arms clamped tightly around Li Li's thigh.

"Uncle, save me!!! Uncle, save me!!!"

His voice cracked, and he hung onto Li Li's leg, refusing to let go.

Li Li bent down, supporting the boy's bottom with one hand and protecting the back of his head with the other, then lifted him up.

He was light. Maybe twenty or thirty pounds.

Small fingers dug into the collar of his turnout gear, refusing to let go. The boy buried his face in Li Li's shoulder, his body shuddering with sobs.

Li Li patted his back.

"It's okay now."

At these three words, the little boy cried even harder, but his hands stopped shaking.

He put the mask of his breathing apparatus onto the little boy's face and carried him downstairs.

The fire on the first floor was still burning, but the temperature on this side of the stairwell had dropped. As he exited the building, the crowd across the street saw Li Li carrying the child and erupted in shouts.

No one came forward to claim him.

He looked around; the onlookers exchanged glances. The child's parents weren't there. It was the weekend; the adults were at work, and the child was home alone.

The standard life of a working-class family.

Qi Wanyin was already standing in the safety zone. She was wearing her fire-resistant gear, her helmet off, her long hair tied in a high ponytail.

"Sister Qi, watch this child for a moment until his parents come to claim him."

Qi Wanyin took the child, one hand supporting his waist and the other cradling his head, her movements even more adept than Li Li's. The little boy hesitated for a second, then moved his fingers from Li Li's collar to Qi Wanyin's, continuing to cry.

Qi Wanyin patted his back without saying a word.

Li Li turned around and re-entered the building.

From the fourth to the seventh floor, with two to three rooms per floor, he kicked open the doors one by one.

All empty.

The beds were made, power banks and half-packs of cigarettes sat on the tables, and the kettles were still warm; the occupants hadn't left long ago. The rental units were all occupied by laborers; on the weekends, they were either working overtime or out having fun.

All seven floors were cleared.

As he headed down, at the stair landing between the fourth and fifth floors, someone was rushing up.

A man in his thirties, his gray T-shirt soaked with sweat, gasping for breath.

Li Li reached out and stopped him.

"Don't go up. Every room has been cleared; there's no one."

The man bent over, panting for a few breaths, then let out a long sigh of relief.

"That's great... I live nearby. I saw the fire and came up to knock on every door, afraid someone hadn't gotten out."

"They're all empty."

"That's good, that's good."

The two walked down side by side.

Li Li's peripheral vision caught his left hand. A large burn scar stretched from the back of his hand to his wrist, the skin shriveled and shiny—an old scar, at least five years old.

He didn't ask.

Once out of the building, Li Li told him to retreat behind the safety line. The man nodded, turned, and jogged into the crowd.

At the side of the road.

Shen Jue was squatting on the ground, his arms supporting the fire hose. The nozzle was shaking, the water jet spraying erratically; he looked like he was about to fall apart.

But the fire was basically under control.

It was mainly because the battery had finished burning; until the battery burned out, it couldn't be extinguished no matter how much water they used.

Li Li walked over and pressed down on the nozzle.

"Let me take over."

Shen Jue looked up, his face covered in sweat and ash, his lips pale.

"Li... Brother Li... I can still..."

"If you hold it for another thirty seconds, your arms will start dancing on their own. Move aside."

The moment Shen Jue let go, he fell backward, landing on his butt on the curb, his arms hanging limp like noodles.

Li Li took the hose, lowered the nozzle, and directed the water jet steadily at the wreckage of the SUV on the first floor.

The fire was controlled, the open flames were mostly extinguished, though there were still scattered sparks and thick smoke around the wreckage.

Gu Zeyan ran over from the side.

"I'm going in with you."

"Go back."

"I can do it too!"

"It's not that you can't."

Li Li tilted his head.

"It's that I'm afraid you haven't seen a corpse before."

Gu Zeyan's footsteps froze in place.

"The person in the driver's seat, the battery pack exploded, the door deformed, trapped inside and burning for so long..."

He didn't finish his sentence; there was no need.

Gu Zeyan opened his mouth, then closed it, and took a step back.

His hose began to spray around Li Li to help cool him down.

Li Li held the hose, spraying as he advanced toward the rolling shutter door.

The remaining flames were suppressed, white steam billowed, and the acrid smell of burning plastic and charred material flooded in.

Half of the rolling shutter door had been blown away, the twisted metal frame hanging from the door frame, the rear of the SUV embedded in the wreckage.

He squeezed in sideways, sweeping the nozzle; a string of sparks at the base of the left wall—extinguished; a cluster of embers under an overturned table and chair on the right—extinguished; wires in the corner of the ceiling sizzling and smoking—one blast, and they were out.

He turned his head.

The driver's seat.

The door had been torn halfway open by the shockwave, and the driver's seat was clearly visible.

Li Li stopped.

"What the..."

There was no one in the driver's seat.

None in the passenger seat.

None in the back row.

The whole car, empty.

There were no signs of seatbelts being worn, and the seat adjustment lever was in the forward-most position.

But where was the person?

He crouched down and looked under the car; the gap was less than ten centimeters, littered with shattered glass and metal fragments.

Nothing.

He swept the rest of the first-floor restaurant area with the water jet: overturned tables and chairs, shattered kitchen partitions, freezers twisted by the heat wave.

No people, no corpses.

Not even ashes.

Could it be that the driver wasn't in the car when it rammed in?

Li Li stood in the middle of the smoking wreckage, the hose hanging down, water still dripping.

Who drove the car?

The doors were locked from the inside; they would only have deformed and popped open due to the impact.

Jumped out? Impossible.

The front windshield shattered from the outside in. Thrown out? That would still require someone to be inside.

Then there was only one explanation.

There was no one in the car to begin with.

Fires broke out simultaneously in four different locations within the Fire Station area, and the entire Luohu Station was deployed.

The Fire Station had just been cleared when the place across the street exploded.

An unmanned SUV, and it was a luxury car at that.

The ultimate form of autonomous driving?

Li Li looked up, through the blown-out rolling shutter door frame, toward the gate of the Fire Station across the street.

This was no accident.

Behind him, the sirens of reinforcement fire trucks approached from the distance.

Whose SUV was that, and who made it ram into the building?