“Nothing. None of your business.” Gloria held the door exactly where it stood: “Don’t you have some water valve to fix?”

“I’ll ask again. What is going on?” The landlord sniffed the air: “Sounds like you’ve just used quite a bit of rubbing alcohol and iodine alcohol. You are dealing with someone injured, huh? Someone unsavory you don’t want the others to know?”

Gloria stared at her landlord’s eyes. The landlord stared back at her. After a few seconds, Gloria sighed, turned back and picked up the detective’s wallet she placed on a small table behind the door, lifted a few big bills from it and handed it to the landlord: “Cleaning fee, and you better shut it about this.”

“Gladly.” The landlord’s eyes lit up when he saw the bills: “This is a - a guy with a fat wallet huh? An old flirt or a customer?”

“No, no and no - and one more word from you, I will dump him in the fucking water tank.” Gloria narrowed her eyes.

“Alright, alright missy. It’s your guest.” The landlord raised his hands while clutching the bills tightly with his fingers: “Just make sure he doesn’t die in my building. Bad for business.”

“You better tell this to the fuckers at the end of this hall as well.” Gloria shut the door.

After sending the landlord off, Gloria found her phone charger and plugged her phone in, while she turned on the recording software to record what Marcus was saying.

“No - no! No! You can’t do that!” Before long, it seemed Detective Marcus Cai had fallen into a different dream, which caused him to struggle harder. The wooden bedposts to which he was tied started squeaking. “We worked on those! NOOOO!”

Gloria jumped up and quickly tapped the detective on several of his pressure points on his chest and shoulders. This forced him to lay back down and let out a long exhale. With this, Gloria put her right index and middle fingers on the side of the detective’s neck, and left index and middle fingers on the detective’s heart position. Slowly and steadily, she pushed her Qi into the detective’s body to help him calm down and stabilize his breathing and flow of Qi. There was a little resistance at first and the detective tensed at her action, but soon he settled back down and started breathing slowly. His sweating seemed to have slowed as well, and judging from the low mumble he spoke, his overall condition was stabilized, for now at least.

There was also a strange sensation coming through the tips of Gloria’s fingers when she tried to push her Qi into the detective’s meridians. It was the Qi of the detective, blending in with hers and reverse flowing into her fingers, not in an aggressive way but in a gentle and almost nourishing manner. With her admittedly limited prior experience, this kind of thing rarely happened. It would only work this way, according to what she learned from Luoshan Zi and some of her unnamed mentors, their Qi had good compatibility with each other.

Someone knocked on the door, and she stopped with her thoughts and rushed to the door. It was Gyuu Park and Sue, somehow arriving at almost the same time.

“Okay, this apartment is not gonna be big enough, so let’s either squeeze a little, talk in lowered voices or talk out here.” Gloria whispered to her friends.

“In your apartment, it’s safer since we need to keep it down anyways.” Gyuu Park whispered back.

“Agreed.” Sue nodded.

Three of them had to stand around the bed, as there was almost no more room in this tiny apartment.

“Okay, so this is your secret stashing place.” Sue looked around: “So - so small!”

“It’s not like I can afford a bigger place.” Gloria shrugged.

“Which makes it a worse idea to bring the cop here! ” Gyuu Park rubbed his temples: “If the coppers came to find him, you’d be shit outta luck and no room to escape.”

“That’s not gonna happen, he has no phone. And I have mine with me. Plus he’s injured.”

“We can’t be sure!” Sue raised her voice slightly: “For all we know the city might have put trackers in his badge! Or somewhere way more invasive!”

“I don’t think that’s possible.” Gloria shook her head: “But the most important thing is, he’s also looking into something related to the 15 year cycle. I just don’t know what yet. And - I am pretty sure he was on that ship as well.”

“... yes I can see that you’d feel for him.” Gyuu Park nodded with his arms crossed: “But that doesn’t mean anything - we have at least a few dozen survivors of that incident.”

“Most of whom are dead, or laying low, or have left the city already.” Gloria shrugged: “Last time I heard of some of them, they were involved in a suicide.”

“No - no - no! They - ” Detective Marcus Cai mumbled again: “They didn’t kill themselves! They - they were poisoned! They - Captain, please!”

“Well, that was - interesting.” Gyuu Park frowned as he looked at the detective turning his head on the bed.

“Like I said, he has a lot more interesting things to say.” Gloria nodded: “And - he just survived a Blood Rainbow, without actually locking himself in or escaping. I am not sure how many could have done that. ”

“Last I heard only a few people.” Gyuu Park nodded.

“And he was injured as fuck. If I didn’t bring him over he would have died in that tunnel.” Gloria sighed: “And - guess what, if he brought that bad omen to a care center of a hospital, that’d be kinda - kinda horrible.”

“But you are not worried about you or us at all?” Gyuu Park chuckled.

“Hey, we already know how to deal with it.” Gloria shrugged.

“Okay, okay, let’s not dwell on it.” Sue immediately waved her hands: “So - how are we going to deal with this? I mean, of course we’re going to have to deal with the omens.”

“I’ve already done the basics.” Gloria sighed: “You know, as commonly advised. And I am prepared to do a puke test. I don’t think he is in a condition to do that though.”

“It’s fine. It’s fine. We’ll deal with it later. I mean, if we’re going to do something soon, we will need the information.” Gyuu Park shook his head: “And what has he said so far? Anything that could help us?”

“Not yet. Aside from the fact that he was also on that ship. And he was looking into what happened but got his investigation taken down by force.” Gloria scratched her head: “I will keep listening - hopefully he will reveal something useful. If not while he’s out, then awake.”

“No - no - they are organized … what are you saying!?” Right this moment, the detective mumbled again: “I don’t know - I don’t know why they tried to get children…”