"All the bullets match the sa modified Glock," Jennifer circled the microscopic striations on the projection screen with a laser pen, "But what’s more eerie..." She switched slides, showing the neck wounds of five bodies under the morgue’s cold lights, all cut at the exact sa angle, "The trauma inflicted by the cold weapon had an error margin of no more than 0.3 milliters."
The conference room fell into dead silence, as everyone watched the 3D reconstruction of the cri scene—each one had a Hell’s Angels Gang’s skull badge left behind, but the surveillance footage would always fail ten minutes before the cris. No one noticed the vent opening at the edge of the model, where half of a tactical boot print identical to those found in the police academy’s training ground remained.
In the bunker, Lin Mo stubbed out his cigar in a bullet hole in the concrete wall. This bullet hole from a gang shootout in 1998 had beco his ashtray. As he opened Jason’s encrypted notebook, a symbol drawn with blood caused his pupils to dilate suddenly—it was the sa pattern his dying sister had drawn on the car window with her blood.
Inside the office of the New York City FBI Special Operations Group, the digital clock showed the red digits of February 19, 2025, 18:42. The torrential rain hamred against the bulletproof glass windows, cutting Lin Mo’s slender silhouette into a chiaroscuro of light and shadows. He held a burning Marlboro cigarette, ash flaking off onto his dark grey wool coat while he spoke.
"Starting with the body thrown off the Brooklyn Bridge, all our profiling is wrong," Lin Mo’s voice was soaked with the night fog of Manhattan, his breath frosty, "Including the size 42 hiking boot footprint found in Central Park—that was a Christmas gift specially left for us by the Dark Night Judge."
Before he had finished speaking, the office erupted with sounds of gasps. Criminal Investigation Division Detective Kevin Lee suddenly pushed away his chair, its tal legs screeching across the reinforced floor. "We located the third cri scene through live streaming less than forty minutes after the cri! When the SWAT team broke in, the bloody water in the bathtub was still flowing!"
Eric Ren of the technical support departnt took off his AR glasses, his fingers of the Chinese genius programr unconsciously tapping on the holographic projection keyboard: "From a data tracking perspective, although the live broadcast signal went through twenty-seven layers of encrypted routing, the physical location..."
"The physical location shows the signal source is in that apartnt in Queens," Forensic Analyst Brian Qin interrupted the conversation with surgical precision while cleaning his wire-fra glasses, "The victim’s body temperature is 32.7 degrees, corneal cloudiness of level two, rectal temperature matches the cooling curve within the indoor constant temperature of 22 degrees."
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Lin Mo stubbed out his cigarette and walked towards the tactical whiteboard, his marker drawing a grisly red circle under the words "Dark Night Judge." "Let’s reassess this artist—a dual genius in chanical engineering and network infiltration, yet he made three amateur mistakes in the two live broadcasts." His pen suddenly stopped mid-air, "Why would a complete footprint appear at the second cri scene?"
The office plunged into silence again, only the distorted paths of raindrops weaving on the bulletproof glass could be seen. Cri Psychologist Analyst Emily Zhang suddenly pushed open the sensor door, her chestnut curls still wet with rain: "We’ve traced a new lead! On the day of the Brooklyn Bridge incident, a 2008 Ford E350 van stayed next to the victim’s car for 83 minutes." She flung the holographic projection onto the central screen, "Although the body of the vehicle obscured the surveillance, the license plate number 6TRX548 was recorded in full."
Lin Mo’s grey-blue pupils narrowed slightly, an instinctive reaction of an FBI agent when spotting prey. "Notify the Traffic Monitoring Center to cross-reference the statewide vehicle registration database." He suddenly turned to Emily, "Your thesis was ’The Spatio-Temporal Matrix in Ritualized Cri’, wasn’t it?"
As Lin Mo finished recounting all the doubts, Emily’s holographic pen traced a three-dinsional mind map in the air: "A typical paranoid personality criminal will form a specific ritual during their cri cycle. The Dark Night Judge’s choice to execute via live stream indicates his need for instant feedback to fill a psychological void." She pulled up fra-by-fra analyses of the two live streams, "Pay attention to the pupil reflection—the first victim Richard King’s irides had no cara reflection at all 0.3 seconds before his death."
Everyone leaned forward in unison. In the holographic image, a close-up of the second victim Lucy Yang’s abdominal wound played on loop. "What’s even stranger is this 28-milliter wide-angle lens." Emily zood into Lucy’s dilated pupils, "According to the principles of perspective, the cara should be no more than 40 centiters away from the face, but no traces of any supports were found at the scene."
Lin Mo suddenly grabbed a tactical vest and headed towards the equipnt cabinet: "Notify the counter-terrorism team to launch the ’Mousetrap’ plan, leak the footprint clues to the New York Tis. The Network Security Departnt should monitor dark web live broadcasting platforms closely, I want all discussion forums involving vigilante justice to be fitted with electronic lures."
"Boss, we’ve pulled the van owner’s information!" Eric suddenly shouted, the holographic screen bursting with dense data streams, "Registered under the ’Perfect Ti’ funeral parlor in Brooklyn District, but GPS records show this vehicle in the last three months..."
Through the torrential rain, the Special Operations Group’s black Chevrolet Suburban convoy carved through the curtain of rain. Lin Mo wiped down the barrel of his Glock 19M, the vehicle’s computer continuously refreshing the layout of the funeral parlor. As Emily prepared to report the progress of the profiling, Lin Mo suddenly pressed his earpiece: "Wait! There’s sothing wrong with the temperature curve of the funeral ho’s freezer—"
Tis Square, Manhattan District, New York City, February 19, 2025, 18:54 Wednesday
The cellphone screen lit up in the twilight, three consecutive news alerts slicing through the neon-lit night sky. Lin Mo leaned against the glass curtain wall of a building on Fifth Avenue, his black overcoat collar spotted with fine snowflakes, his fingertips hovering over the virtual keyboard for a mont before finally opening the New York Post’s special report.
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