Chapter 6: Silence in the Dark

  That night, the sky sank into a dull gray, with thick clouds looming as if trying to conceal everything beneath them. Wind howled through the roadside trees, creating an eerie sound—like mournful sighs echoing from a distant place. Victor pushed open the door and stepped into the small house nestled within a quiet neighborhood, his face unchanged, still bearing his usual wry smile. Ms. Elly was busy dusting off the bookshelf. Helen, the eldest daughter, sat cross-legged on the sofa, eyes glued to her phone screen watching entertainment videos. The youngest, little Tom, was dashing around the living room with a toy car clattering in his hand.

  Everything seemed perfectly normal. But beneath the heavy wooden table in the center of the living room, a tiny palm-sized device was quietly operating—a high-tech recorder, nearly invisible to the naked eye. The police had secretly installed it during a recent power grid inspection, following a series of suspicions about this seemingly ordinary home.

  Every laugh, every familiar household sound was transmitted back to the monitoring room of the special investigation unit. From 6 PM to 9 PM, the recordings were nothing but fragments of casual conversations, footsteps, laughter, and affectionate scolding. A young officer muttered, “Are we wasting our time again?” The team leader merely shrugged, eyes never leaving the audio signal monitor. He was the only one who hadn’t fully trusted the house’s peaceful facade.

  9 PM. The moment the second hand hit twelve, the sound abruptly stopped. It wasn’t a malfunction. It wasn’t a disconnection. It was... that there was nothing left to record.

  The silence stretched on—so deep it was suffocating.

  Victor no longer rambled on with his sarcastic anecdotes. Elly stopped scrubbing every nook and cranny. Helen no longer giggled at her online videos. And Tom—the most energetic in the family—made no sound at all. The house seemed frozen in a deathly stillness.

  The officers held their breath, eyes widening as the recorder began picking up a new conversation.

  "Alright, let’s get to the point."

  A voice, ice-cold, echoed through the recorder, piercing straight into the ears of the officers in the monitoring room. No sooner had the sentence ended than a shrill sound tore through the air—like metal slicing wind—followed by a dry, sickening thud. For a moment, no one spoke. The atmosphere froze solid.

  "The key to taking action is to leave no trace, Unpredictable. Your lack of professionalism is the reason the police are now suspecting us."

  Elly's voice. Unmistakable. Cold and composed to the point of horror—a voice from someone utterly indifferent to consequences.

  "How can it be perfect when you take down twenty targets at once? The fact they found no evidence already proves I did well."

  Helen responded, the same voice, but now sharp as a blade, full of confidence and a touch of arrogance. The girl once absorbed in her virtual world... was a participant in a bloody scheme?

  "Regardless, incompetence always drags down the overall effectiveness of the group. Remember that."

  Another voice cut in—cold, youthful, and clearly not one of the three before. The officers exchanged glances: Tom? The 15-year-old boy? Impossible...

  "Don’t say that. She didn’t violate the ‘common consensus’ principle. Among the elite, the least outstanding one is always seen as weak."

  Victor spoke next, still with that trademark humor—but now it rang like a cruel joke in a tragic play.

  "But if the machine keeps tolerating the weak, trouble is inevitable."

  Elly interrupted coldly.

  "Tolerating newcomers is also a core principle of a strong organization."Helen shot back, her voice icy as if trying to stabilize the simmering tension among these dangerous minds.

  "Alright then, what’s your plan for the twenty targets, Two-Faced?"

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  Elly shifted the focus to Victor.

  "If the police are already suspicious, we have two options. Either escalate the situation drastically, or normalize everything to reduce the perceived threat."

  Victor spoke, each word deliberate and calm. The entire police unit held its breath.

  "Those twenty idiots don’t know how to stick to principles. Some of them are bound to talk."This time, Tom's voice came again—cold, pragmatic, sending a chill down everyone’s spine.

  "Madness, you mean to say... I get it."Elly nodded, each word firm as nails.

  "Then let’s make things as serious as possible."

  "But won’t that draw even more attention to us?"Helen interjected.

  "Without evidence, what can they do? Let’s play with them for a while."Victor chuckled. The same laugh—but now it sounded like nails sealing a coffin shut.

  Right after those words, another knife-like swoosh ripped through the air—sharper this time, slicing the silence in two. Then thud — the recording signal cut out. The screen went pitch black. The speakers fell silent.

  That night, in the special coordination room of the Metropolitan Police Department, the clock on the wall had just ticked past 9:03 PM when the eerie silence from the audio recorder sent chills down the spines of everyone in the command center. All the ambient family sounds from the Victor household abruptly vanished—like someone had pressed a button to "turn off the world."

  Captain Lam, a seasoned officer hardened by dozens of difficult cases, shot up from his swivel chair, eyes locked onto the audio signal monitor.

  Then came the first sound of a knife. Thud! — metal striking something solid, with such precision that a young officer holding a cup of coffee fumbled and spilled it all over the desk. But his trembling hands weren’t from the burn — they were from the single thought that gripped him:"Someone just got killed."

  The command center erupted like a hornet’s nest struck by a bat. Everyone sprang into action — no one waited for orders.

  — “Stop it! Stop the recording! Rewind it!”— “No! Keep recording! Don’t miss a second!”— “Deploy the rapid response team! Surround that house now!”— “We don’t have a night search warrant! We need the prosecutor’s approval first!”

  Voices overlapped like machine gun fire. Investigators, audio technicians, legal staff — all plunged into chaos. Warning lights blinked across the control panel. Tense eyes scanned screens. Fingers flew over keyboards. The room itself felt like a wounded beast, howling in confusion.

  A female coordinator, usually calm as stone, now pale and trembling, shouted into the radio:

  — “Requesting confirmation from the perimeter surveillance team! Any movement from the house?”— “Nothing. Still silent. All windows shut. Curtains drawn. No one’s gone out. No unusual lights.”

  Outside, it was as still as a corpse’s sleep — inside, it was a storm shredding every nerve.

  When the conversation inside the house resumed — the room fell into stunned silence. Everyone knew they had just stumbled upon something far beyond the reach of the law.

  — …Those twenty idiots don’t even know how to follow principles…

  — …make everything as serious as possible…

  — …play with them for a while just for fun…”

  Each word was like a bullet tearing through reason. The seasoned officers sat there, helpless, because those voices didn’t belong to a family. This was an internal meeting of an underground organization — systematic, ruthless, principled, and most terrifyingly… fearless.

  Then Thud! — the second knife. Sharp. Precise. A ceiling light in the command room flickered, then died, like part of some sinister effect. The main screen turned black. No signal. No sound. Nothing.

  A technician yelled:

  — “Signal’s gone! Primary recording has stopped!”

  — “Doesn’t matter! We still have the memory backup!”The police chief roared, clinging to the last lifeline.

  But then… the young female officer stood up, face ashen like a corpse, and stammered:

  — “No... it's gone... the backup's gone too…”

  — “How is that possible?”— “It was... the first knife… it destroyed the memory core… pinpoint accuracy…”

  The entire room fell into a silence so complete it felt like a moment of mourning for their own intelligence. The Police Department — the central brain, equipped with advanced tech and seasoned personnel — had just been outmatched by a single knife and a conversation.

  An officer murmured, almost delirious:

  — “No one could throw with that precision… unless they knew exactly where the memory unit was…”

  Another whispered, voice dry as brittle paper:

  — “They’re not amateurs. These are assassins. A syndicate. The kind of criminals we’ve never even begun to understand.”

  At that moment, the internal phone rang. A message from higher-ups:

  “Cease intervention. Remote surveillance only. Do not approach.”

  The air in the room thickened — everyone felt like they had just fallen into a bottomless pit, with no idea who was holding the rope.

  That night, no one slept. No one left their station.Only the pale blue glow of screens, the soft clatter of keyboards, and red-rimmed eyes watching the night — where those “people” moved like a family, but spoke like architects of the apocalypse.