“We must go, now!” The female Taoist raised her voice: “Go! This is - this is horrific!”

“Go.” Chef Tang held his cleaver tightly and said to his men: “Take Detective Cai with you. Take care of him.”

“Chef, you must go as well.” The short male Taoist wielding a chained scythe urged.

“I will, give me a moment.” Chef Tang reached into his jacket and took out a string of beads. These beads were crimson in color, and chained together by a strand of thin but sturdy golden strings. Without speaking another word, he put the beads on his right wrist, knelt on the ground on one knee and started praying.

While being held and pulled away, Marcus could not help but look back. The water around the platform was rumbling. In no more than a handful of seconds, it was not just the pale faces under the water that were revealed, but hands, arms and legs that were somehow amalgamated together like batches of aqua weeds. Both Taoist were guarding him from the sides.

Waves of water brushed against the platform, the pale faces surfaced, along with some kind of pale, fleshy underlying structure to which they stuck to like stickers on a white wooden stump. Hands and arms creeped up onto the platform and crawled towards Chef Tang and his two followers. Golden light exploded from their clash, and high pitched, almost deafening screams could be heard all over the docks.

A thin but still visible bolt of light shot up into the sky. This was Chef Tang swinging his cleaver shrouded in golden energy down at the lake. The golden rays turned into an energy blade and shot into the water. Before long a pillar of water arose from the surface of the lake. The amalgamation of faces cried and bled from their eyes, noses and mouths at the same time and retreated back into the water. Hands, arms and legs fell off from their meaty flesh clusters, and turned to pools of tar and foul rot on the platform and the water.

The water seemed to calm for a brief moment. But Chef Tang and his two followers did not remain on the platform a moment longer. Right after they hopped onto a car and drove away following the rest of the men, the entire platform was consumed by oily and tarry water, crumbling into pieces.

Having witness most of this before getting into the getaway car, Marcus let out a long sigh and picked up his phone: there are a few response to his emergency message, he needed to update all of them, the most important of which would be Kevin and to let him know he was safe, then Mick and Captain Ko, to let them in on the basics. Captain Ko might be grumpy about it, but he would be wise to set up some kind of communication between the precinct and the local branches of the community collective.

“Hey, good to hear that you’re okay, where should I come meet you? ” Kevin replied almost instantly: “I think Captain Ko might not want me there, so I’ll just go before he says anything.”

“Where are you taking me?” Marcus asked as the followers of Chef Tang driving him away from the area surrounding the docks.

“To the closest community care center.” The driver answered: “We have men stationed there just in case we have situations like this and take care of people that suffered injuries from these groups and entities.”

“Thanks Kevin, I’m heading off to the closest community care center from the docks. Marucs sent a message out as fast as he could, while still maintaining his calm: “So, you already know about things like this? That there are people kidnapping children like this?”

“Only the chef can provide you with the answers.” The thin and bespectacled man sitting beside Marcus, helping to clean his wounds shook his head: “As you can imagine, detective, this is beyond a tricky situation.”

“Tricky?”

“Yes.” The bespectacled man sighed: “Haven’t you noticed the clothing on those children?”

Marcus became silent, his attention was mostly on those men when everything happened. But he could still remember the clothes worn by the children roughly: most of them were simple, brandless, mono-colored and even a bit dirty, these were the typical styles of children attire in the South-Eastern District; a few of the children were wearing bright multi-color shirts with logos on them, obviously from the South-Western District; and one of them was wearing a mini-suit, something that almost no parents would put on their children aside from those that lived in the Northern District.

“I see...” Marcus nodded. The quiet part about this whole situation was that because these children were kidnapped from all three of the districts, any investigation would require some kind of cross-district coordination, which would mean that the city would have a reason to send their blood hound investigators into this district. Something the locals would never want to see happen. The last time something like this happened, the tension between the South-Eastern District and the other two districts broke and the exact casualty number was still a point of academic and political contention.

“The city would not understand.” The man cleaning Marcus’ wounds said: “They won’t even try.”

“Even if the community collective provides evidence to them about what was happening?” Marcus hissed from the twitching and throbbing of his muscles as the man dabbed the chain embedded in his shoulder with sterilizing rub and gauze.

“They benefit from the bliss of ignorance.” The driver scoffed: “Our district has always been plagued the most by the paranormal. And the absolute majority of them, those suits and those flashy shirts have never experienced what we have experienced. They don’t care. They won’t.”

The community care center was not far, but not close either. Marcus’ wounds had already been thoroughly cleaned and prepared before they got off, and the medical staff waiting at the center were able to immediately put Marcus into one of the operating rooms.

While the metal chain was being removed from his shoulder, Marcus took the moment to look around, and spotted at least a dozen newly and meticulously made talismans hanging around the room as well as outside. There was an incense burner placed at one corner of the room, with a thick red incense stick slowly burning inside.

“Hold still, I’m gonna pull it out.” The healer and his assistant held Marcus’ shoulder at the same time after injecting him some local anesthesia, muscle relaxant and cutting some small incisions along his wound: “You will feel some pressure and sore, but don’t worry, it’ll be fine.”

“Just do it.” Marcus nodded and looked at the chain that had sunken into his body.

He could feel his muscles twitch when the chain was pulled out of his body, out of the clench of his muscles. Blood poured out, the healer and his assistant applied pressure on his wound to stop the bleeding the moment the chain left. Then, they stitched up the wound and applied gauze and bandages on his chest and other places of injury.

“Detective. Chef would like a word.” When Marcus came out of the operating room, the short man that wielded a chained scythe came to him.

“Thanks, after you.” Marcus nodded.

Chef Tang was waiting for Marcus in the empty hallway, guarded by one tall bodyguard in full black clothing and another individual in a Taoist robe. Even from afar Marcus could see his weary looks and the sweat stains on his clothes.

“Chef, you wanna speak with me?” Marcus walked over and asked.

“Detective.” Chef Tang stood up and looked Marcus up and down: “Glad to see you’re doing well.”

“And you look like you need rest, chef.”

“No matter, priorities.” Chef Tang waved his hand: “I would like to have a word with you, because I have but one very important question I wanna ask. And let me preface this: I am not looking for an immediate answer, but I want you to think long and hard about it and keep your answer in the back of your head and make choices that honor it.”

“... I understand. You are wondering when the time comes, which side will I be on?”

“...yes, and I would like to make a plea to you, that you make a different choice than your father did.”