At the end of the staircase, there was a dark-colored escape door. Xia You walked towards the door and pulled it, but it was locked.
Feeling relieved, Xia You breathed a sigh of relief. That so-called escape door chilled her to the bone; it was not an escape door, but rather bore resemblance to a door of a hospital morgue that separates life and death.
Xia You prepared to head back when she had just stepped on the first stair. The lock of the door "clicked" and opened. Her body shivered, and she anxiously looked at the door. The unlocking sound was not loud, easy for one to mishear.
The door was slightly ajar, and a stream of stale, hot air, different from the cold, damp air of the underground prison, began to seep through into the fire escape.
"Lieutenant Colonel, the elevator has arrived, and I don’t have the youthful vigor to climb so many stairs," a robust middle-aged man called out to the person who opened the door.
The door was left slightly open, but the sound of it being locked did not follow.
It seemed as if that door was deliberately left open by an unknown Lieutenant Colonel.
The bottom floor, which is the third layer of the Military District Prison, was not devoid of people as previously mentioned by the Lieutenant. Otherwise, that Lieutenant Colonel and the unidentified higher-ranking middle-aged man would not abandon their sun-filled, air-fresh administrative offices to come to the darkest, perennially sunless underground prison where light only came from lamps.
"Should I go up or down?" Xia You’s foot stuck to the stair, as if it was intentionally planned. However, her sudden deployment as a clerical worker and the decision to use the fire escape were not something that could be pre-calculated. It only suggested that the Lieutenant Colonel who opened the door had a spontaneous thought of taking the stairs as exercise and just happened to be stopped by a higher-ranked officer.
It was now lunch break, and the high-tech defense-equipped Military District Prison should have few guards on duty. All she needed was to open that door and she could slip into the bottom prison floor unnoticed like a breath of air.
"Go up, if someone finds me, that will be troublesome. I must hurry and find Major Lin, to clarify things about Li Zhen," Xia You felt her legs weaken, her fingers chilling on the icy handrail as her body temperature began to drop.
(Zero, I want to go in and take a look,) Little Eight’s trembling voice came through her mind.
Little Eight, who usually argued with Xia You, surprisingly took the initiative to venture into danger this time.
(I know this request is unusual, but I want to go in and see. When that door opened, I had a very familiar feeling,) Little Eight pleaded.
Since being forcefully linked to Xia You, besides making Xia You furious several times, Little Eight rarely showed personal emotional fluctuations. She understood history and geography, but all her advantages were applied within "Military Road," serving as a standard "tattoo butterfly" when with Xia You in real life.
The door was eventually opened. That stuffy air was generated by a large central drying machine.
If functioning normally, the third layer of Rand Military District should hold criminals more severe than those on the second floor, including major cases and traitors.
Unlike the first floor, the third layer lacks interrogation rooms. Possibly due to it being lunch break, it was empty.
(Wait a moment, let me alter the monitoring network,) Little Eight signaled Xia You to pause. Indeed, every corner of the third floor was equipped with infrared thermal sensors, and any foreign personnel, apart from regular soldiers, would trigger an alarm directly to the military district’s guard room.
"Little Eight, do you know how to deactivate the alarm?" Xia You saw the indicator light of the nearest infrared thermal sensor turn off.
(It’s just about plugging our network together. I am a virtual intelligent entity; networks for me are like water to fish,) Little Eight spoke without her usual boastful tone this time.
If Mo Xixi met Little Eight, who knew what kind of sparks might fly, but watching the indicator lights of the monitors darken one by one, Xia You could tell that Little Eight was more capable than Mo Xixi and was very familiar with the military district’s defense network.
(We can move now. I did not cut off the infrared sensor’s signal but just froze it. About an hour later, the military district’s network will initiate an auto-repair function, we must leave before that,) Little Eight’s voice was no longer as crisp as usual, sounding somewhat hoarse as if interfered with by radio waves.
"It looks like the prisons here are empty," Xia You didn’t directly see the military district’s prisons on the first layer, although it was said that the three interrogation rooms were renovated from several old prisons.
Judging by the structure, each prison cell was about six or seven square meters. Each cell had a door, and at the height of a normal person’s knees, there was a small pass-through window for meal trays. Since the prisons were empty, all those small windows were closed.
"No one here," Xia You shook her head, checked the time, and twenty-five minutes had passed since she entered.
"Bang...bang...bang," the sound of banging came from a nearby cell.(To be continued. If you enjoy this novel, please vote with recommendations and monthly tickets on qidian.com, your support is my greatest motivation.)