Doomsday Wonderland c1-855

by N. Heller

  She knew the man was getting closer and closer. The hair on the nape of her neck bristled, and her breathing became heavier.

  Lin Sanjiu did not know whether she was getting slower or if the man was getting faster. She made a sharp turn and swerved into an alley next to her. Her heart pumped more blood into her muscles so that she could move faster. Nevertheless, the man was still a tad faster than her. She heard the man giggle behind her, and the next thing she knew, he stretched his arm forward, aiming for her shoulder.

  Lin Sanjiu was both fast and agile. By right, she should be able to dodge the strike, but the man somehow managed to clamp his hand onto her shoulder. Then, he yanked his arm backward, causing her to lose her balance and fell to the ground. Her head hit the ground, and for a second, she saw stars.

  When her vision cleared, she was pinned to the ground. The shadowy figure was standing next to her. He looked even taller and more massive from a worm's-eye view. His blade flashed silver in the dull light, but there was no blood on it as it had been washed off by the rain.

  The shadowy figure said something, but Lin Sanjiu could not hear him well. The man hunkered down, applying more force through his palm on her shoulder and pushed her face into a puddle.

  Lin Sanjiu turned her neck as hard as she could to look at the man's face through her side-eye, but her strain had minimal effect. The murderer was wearing the same hat that was now sodden with rain. It drooped over his eyes and shrouded his face in its shadow, preventing anyone from seeing his features.

  "Fifth." His voice came out in ragged heaves, knife held high. But before he could thrust it down, Lin Sanjiu jerked up and rammed her head as hard as she could into his chin. He yelped in pain and staggered back, loosening his grip in the process. Seizing the chance, Lin Sanjiu pushed herself up from the ground.

  She had used all the strength she had into the headbutt, but it seemed like she could inflict nothing more than a little pain to the man.

  Not only that, the shadowy figure effortlessly neutralized all her attacks. Her kicks were weak, and her punches powerless. It was as if she had become a normal woman that did not have much strength.

  The rain continued to fall, and everything was drowned in darkness. There were no people around, and all the buildings were gone. Lin Sanjiu was trapped in this dark corner, facing the tall and ruthless killer alone. Nobody would come to her aid.

  Right after she received a mighty punch in her stomach, Lin Sanjiu felt her blood rush up to her head, and her eyes bulged.

  'This is what those poor girls had experienced before they died, isn't it? Am I going to die in the same way too?'

  Just as the thought surfaced in her mind, a faint glow appeared before her. It gradually grew stronger with every passing second. Lin Sanjiu squinted her eyes to adjust her eyes to the dazzling light. As the sound of an engine tore through the air, the shadowy figure gave a start and leaped back.

  "Quick! Hop in!"

  The young man's desperate scream came from behind the two beams of light. Through her narrowed eyes, Lin Sanjiu could vaguely see two blinding headlights and the slightly slanting, tiny threads of rain.

  "So, it's not an illusion. This guy is driving the car…"

  "Hurry up! He is coming!" the young man yelled again, pulling Lin Sanjiu out from her thoughts.

  She darted a glance at the shadowy figure, and when she saw him charging at her once more, she forced herself up from the ground and bolted headlong in the direction of the light. She yanked the door open and went into the vintage vehicle.

  The engine screeched loudly like a beast as the young man reversed the car out from the alley. He yanked the steering wheel hard and performed a 90-degree turn with the vehicle, positioning the driver seat right at the alley. Then, he did not drive away instantly. Instead, he stared blankly at the shadowy figure in the alley.

  "Go! What are you waiting for?" Lin Sanjiu was in a lot of agonies. Her muscles were shaking while her body was trembling. She felt so weak as if her body had regressed to before the apocalypse arrived. No, her physical fitness at that time might have been even better than now.

  "Ah, oh yeah." The young man finally came around to his senses. He stepped on the accelerator hard and the car shot forward like an arrow leaving its bowstring. As he drove the car, he kept shouting in a voice that was thick with excitement, "I saw him! I saw him! I finally know who Jack the Ripper is!"

  "Who is he?" The moment she relaxed, only then did she realize that she had shouted her throat hoarse. "Is he somebody we know?"

  The young man paid no mind to her question. Lin Sanjiu asked again, but the young man did not give any response either. Suddenly, something came up in her mind, and she asked, "Where did you find this car? Did the automobile exists in the 19th-century?"

  "Yeah, it did," the young man replied this time. His voice was trembling with joy. "Cars were invented in the 19th century."

  Lin Sanjiu had given all the knowledge she learned during her schooling days back to her teacher, so she could not tell if the young man telling her the truth or if he was giving her a shallow answer. She bit her lower lip and remained silent for a few seconds. After that, she sighed. "It seems like finding out the true identity of the murderer isn't enough to end the game. Where are we heading now?"

  While they talked, the car continued to move forward. The darkness was ebbing away, and the buildings began to appear. While Lin Sanjiu was observing their surroundings, the young man replied, "We are now heading to the intersection of Chatham Road and Princess Margaret Road."

  Lin Sanjiu froze. Although she had never heard of these two places before, her fingers began to tremble.

  It was not well-lit in the car, so she squinted her eyes to see better in the dim light, and when she slowly adjusted to the low lighting, the thing that met her glance was something very familiar to her: oil gauges, odometers, the handbrake...

  A Buddha idol and a charm were swinging in front of the dashboard. She sat in the co-driver's seat and stared at the taxi driver's identity card in front of her. The words on the card were blurred, but she could still vaguely see the facial features of the man in the black-and-white photo. The man had a pair of phoenix eyes with double eyelids just like the young man sitting next to her.

  Lin Sanjiu turned her head around and met the glance of a similar pair of phoenix eyes in the photo.

  "We've known each other for so long, but I never told you my name." The young man gave Lin Sanjiu a toothy grin. "I'm Lin, and my full name is Lin Guoyu. Nice to meet you."

  The car doors were locked with a click.

  "But then, I changed my name. I now go by the name Lin Guoyun. As the saying goes, life is as transient and ephemeral as a fleeting cloud." The young man paused, but his smile did not go away. "In Hong Kong, they call me 'The Rainy Night Butcher'."

  Chapter 546 - A Portion Of Answer

  "Do you hear it?"

  It was silent in the car. The engine continued to whirl, and the pitter-patter of rain was loud to the ears.

  Lin Guoyun smacked the steering wheel and laughed uncontrollably. "I know it! I know you could hear it! I don't know how God communicates with other people, but He always tells me which person to kill through the rain."

  Lin Sanjiu turned her head, staring palely at the young man. The door was locked; outside of the window, more and more buildings were emerging from the darkness, each one looking less like a building of 19-century London than the last. There were a few signboards, such as "Tin Bo Restaurant" and "Chen Clinics", that appeared amongst the densely packed complexes, their bright neon lighting painting the rainy night with kaleidoscopic colors.

  The thing that gradually became clearer along with the 1980s Hong Kong's street scene was Lin Guoyun's Cantonese accent.

  "Don't worry, we will arrive at our destination soon." He didn't look at Lin Sanjiu in the eye as he spoke, "Hong Kong's terrain is hilly and mountainous. Right now, we only need to find a suitable mountain pass…"

  Before
he could finish his sentence, Lin Sanjiu pounced on him, bringing her fist up and aiming straight for his temple. She had not received any formal martial arts training, having only been taught by Hei Zeji a few times. Thus, although her movements were raw and unpolished, her attacks were deadly, and she always went for the vital spot. However, this time, the second she threw out her punch, she felt that something was wrong.

  She felt so weak, like a girl who did not exercise much.

  Lin Guoyun shifted his head to the side, lifted his arm, and effortlessly intercepted the punch. Then, as if playing with a ragged doll, he pushed and threw Lin Sanjiu back into the shotgun seat. The car swayed right, then left, then right again, releasing an ear-piercing shrill as the tires rubbed against the asphalt.

  "Can't you just sit tight?" Lin Guoyun's face turned grim, and he shouted, filling the car with his angry roar, "Do you want me to kill you right now?!"

  Lin Sanjiu was suffering from a concussion after having knocked her head hard against the window of the vehicle. She could not come to her senses for quite some time. As she fought back the pulsing pain, she blurted out the question on the tip of her tongue, "You always kill people in a vehicle?"

  The rain continued to fall. Lin Guoyun did not reply to her question instantly, focusing on driving instead. Just when Lin Sanjiu thought he was going to ignore her until they arrived at their destination, she saw him look at her through the corner of his eye.

  "Yes," he answered softly, "Initially, I thought a carriage was where Jack the Ripper usually murdered his targets, but now it seems like it's in the alley."

  Upon hearing this, Lin Sanjiu gave a little start as the scale fell before her eyes.

  After entering this simulation, although her strength had drastically weakened, she could still protect herself during her first two encounters with Jack the Ripper. It was only in two places that her power had suddenly regressed to the level of a normal woman: the alley where she met Jack the Ripper and Rainy Night Butcher's cab.

  Coincidentally, both locations were their "crime scenes."

  This Notorious Serial Killers simulation restored every detail of a serial homicide case: the crime scene, the identity of the murderer, the historical context, even the weather. Similarly, the "victim" role would follow the same pattern as well. Simply put, regardless of who was assigned the "victim" role, that unlucky fellow had to die to conform to the historical facts.

  "Why do you want to kill me?" Lin Sanjiu asked as she rummaged through the vehicle for something she could use to defend herself. "Also, where did you learn about this Pocket Dimension?"

  Lin Guoyun smacked his lips together and said mirthfully, "I have always wanted to ask you, why do you guys keep talking about some Pocket Dimension? What is a Pocket Dimension?

  Lin Sanjiu raised her head abruptly, startled and disoriented for a moment. "You don't know what a Pocket Dimension is? Didn't you say that in this 'game'—"

  "Yeah, I only said that because I heard you guys continuously mention that word," Lin Guoyun shrugged, "Did you all think that this is a role-playing game?"

  The car moved smoothly on the road. Lin Sanjiu gulped a mouthful of saliva down her throat as she suddenly realized that she had never heard Lin Guoyun mention anything about "Evolving Abilities" or "Pocket Dimensions" before. Whenever they talked, he would lower his head and refuse to join in.

  "The world will be a better place without women like you," Lin Guoyun hissed, his words dripping with venom, and Lin Sanjiu could feel the barely suppressed excitement bubbling beneath the man's heart. "Let me tell you, this is not a role-playing game, nor is it a Pocket Dimension. Where can you find such a realistic game like this? This was the arrangement of God. The reason He took all of us through history was that He wanted to tell me that I'm Jack the Ripper of the modern era—no, I have to be better than him—and that women like you were meant to be killed by me."

  "Women like me?" Lin Sanjiu pressed down the anxiety that welled in her heart. She angled herself closer to the door and asked, "What do you mean by a woman like me?"

  "P.r.o.s.t.i.t.u.t.e, of course!" He snarled impatiently.

  "That was just a role assigned to me! You know that! You're the same!"

  The car came to an abrupt stop, and Lin Sanjiu was nearly flung from her seat due to the inertia. The tires screeched on the pavement but didn't lose traction. Stepping hard on the brake's pedal, Lin Guoyun slowly turned his body.

  "I'm not like you," replied Lin Guoyun. He looked at Lin Sanjiu with a hard, cold stare filled with aversion; his eyes were slit to the thickness of a dime. "When I realized I could walk freely into London, I knew this must be the will of God. I had been observing from the side for a long time, and I found out that aside from me, there were several more outsiders. This shows that other people can go in as well. The brothers were here long ago, and then another man came in after me."

  That's right, Lin Guoyun was just a Pocket Dimension being. The third man that came after him was the real posthuman!

  In other words, Jack the Ripper had only killed one person when Lin Sanjiu joined the game.

  "But had the game already begun before the fourth posthuman entered?"

  Before Lin Sanjiu could voice out her concern, Lin Guoyun continued speaking again.

  "He was clearly a young man, so I don't understand why everybody said he was a fifty-year-old tailor. Anyway, he was annoying, and he kept asking me a lot of questions, so I killed him," Lin Guoyun giggled, a grin spreading across his face, "You don't know how hard it was for me to suppress my d.e.s.i.r.e to kill people while walking on the street. I talked to those hookers, telling them that I'm also a rent-boy, otherwise, what makes you think that they would speak to an Asian?

  "To be honest, I was confused about why God brought me to London. Did He want me to see how Jack the Ripper got his job done? I didn't know, but then when I saw you," Lin Guoyun paused, and Lin Sanjiu could see the manic light sparkling behind his eyes, "I understood everything."

  The car was small. The atmosphere outside was dark and the night inclement. The headlights could not travel far, and the only things that were visible in the light were the road and the rain. It was quiet inside the vehicle. Lin Sanjiu could hear nothing but the heavy breathing of the man sitting in the driver's seat.

  "What did you understand?"

  "Understand why I'm here. Of all outsiders, you are the only woman. You must be a target God arranged especially for me," said Lin Guoyun, his intoxicating tone sending a chill down Lin Sanjiu's spine. "While Jack the Ripper is busy killing those p.r.o.s.t.i.t.u.t.es, God sent me to you as your executioner. With both Jack the Ripper and Rainy Night Butcher in play, we're going to light up the city tonight!

  "Also, I know you are a real hooker."

  "You are the one that murdered Annie, right?" Lin Sanjiu asked. She had had everything figured out. The corpse she saw was actually the second victim, but she had mistaken it as the third victim. If Lin Guoyun had not killed Annie, then when Jack the Ripper murdered her according to history, a loophole would appear. The woman who should have been the third victim had become the fourth, which would certainly raise suspicions. And if Lin Sanjiu were to investigate all the way back, she would find that one of the victims was not a p.r.o.s.t.i.t.u.t.e, and the way the victim was murdered was different from Jack the Ripper's modus operandi. When that happened, Lin Guoyun was confident that it would not take long before Lin Sanjiu would start suspecting him. He did not want that to happen.

  Hearing her question, Lin Guoyun smiled and turned back to face the front. Lin Sanjiu's muscles stiffened tightly.

  He delved into his pocket, seemingly rummaging for something as he said, "Yeah, you are right, I'm the one who killed Annie. Being a fan of Jack the Ripper, I could not help but say the old p.r.o.s.t.i.t.u.t.e's name when I saw her in person. Had I not said her name aloud at that time, things would have happened differently…"

  Before his sentence was finished, he turned around and lashed at Lin San
jiu, a rope held in between his hands. Luckily, Lin Sanjiu had been looking at him all this time, so he did not get to wrap the rope around her neck. Nevertheless, since they were in Lin Guoyun's crime scene, there was no way Lin Sanjiu could best him in a melee struggle. Very soon, she was pinned against the door.

  With one quick motion, Lin Guoyun coiled the rope around her neck and strangled her as hard as he could, cutting off all the airflow she had left. Tears fell from her eyes, and she kicked her legs out. She used both her hands to try and free herself but to no avail. After one last attempt, her body went limp, as if she had died from strangulation.

  Lin Guoyun did not expect that she would die so fast. To make sure that she was indeed dead, he strangled her further for a good measure. After ascertaining that she was a goner, he threw himself back against the seat, heaving heavily. He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of the rain. As his heartbeat was calming down, he suddenly jerked up.

  From the halo of yellow light came two figures, one tall and one short. They both looked similar, and they had the same bewildered expression on their faces. They walked and looked. When they saw Lin Guoyun and his car, they ran towards him.

  After a short moment of contemplation, Lin Guoyun rolled down the window. "They will not be able to see the woman from this angle," he told himself.

  "Hey, what the hell happened?" Rain poured into the car the moment the window was down. Standing under the shower, the younger brother said, "Did you not tell us that we're in London? Why has everything changed?"

  Lin Guoyun lowered his gaze. He still did not like looking people in the eyes. "I—I don't know."

  Scoffing, the younger brother looked unconvinced. Just when he opened his mouth to say something, he froze. His two abnormally large eyes stared past Lin Guoyun and fell to the back. The young man's heart gave a little start as he turned his head around. Then, in the next second, a heart-wrenching shrill erupted from the car.