Several minutes earlier, as the shutter door slowly dropped down, Feng Bujue also stood up from behind the counter. By then, he had already set up the system to divert the call. Once Clapton called the number of the phone on the counter again, it would be forwarded to the cell phone that he was holding. Of course, the answering mechanism of the phone had been changed to the vibration mode, and Feng Bujue confirmed many times that the phone did not have a loud ringtone.
Since he was standing in the bank lobby, he could check the time using the clock in the lobby. Feng Bujue scanned the electronic clock that hung on the wall and mumbled to himself, “It will take them at least seven to eight minutes to get the truth of the situation from the hostages…”
He held the key card and the key that he had gotten back from the bank manager, walked through the door that was behind the counter, and entered the surveillance room. He used the control panel to switch all the surveillance cameras off.
Earlier, when all the hostages’ heads were covered by the money bags and before the police had made the call, in those few minutes, Feng Bujue had used that opportunity to take a stroll around the bank, to get to know the basic layout of the bank building. He was thus familiar with the fact that there were only three ways to leave this building. One was through the front door, the second was through the ventilation vent, and the third was through the windows of the four or five offices that were adjacent to the street. Feng Bujue was not familiar with the positioning of the police force outside the building, so he could only make some educated guesses.
First, there had to be people positioned at the front door. Even if the influence of the money bombs had not run out, he would not have walked out from the front door. Secondly, the streets adjacent to the windows would have people watching over them. Even the police force there would not be as intense as the force gathered at the front door. However, to escape, he would need to use the wrench to destroy the iron bars that blocked the windows. Be it from the perspective of time or visibility, escaping from there would be very difficult.
The last remaining option was to escape from the vent. Feng Bujue believed that with his luck and the intelligence of the Gotham City Police, there would be people watching the exit of the vent. After he crawled out, there would be two situations that he might face. One, he would be apprehended by the police who had been positioned there to ambush him; or two, he would fall into the line of sight of at least one sniper.
“After a series of interrogation, Clapton will find out soon enough that I am the only one inside the bank and there are no other hostages. In that case, he will either send people in to storm the building or try to convince me to surrender over the phone.”
Feng Bujue predicted how the situation might develop.
“If he decides to storm the building, things should be easier to deal with. As long as I use Death Poker and Body Enhancement Spell at the same time, I can have some minor conflict with the police officers that come in, and then I can escape from the windows that they have used as entry into the building. But… facing just one person, the chance of them negotiating with me should be much higher. He has no reason for his people to take the unnecessary risk and expand the physical losses that have already gathered so far.
“Assuming that there is communication and negotiation, I will resist on the phone, and then it will not be too late for him to send in his people. In that situation, he can still talk to me on the phone to distract me, to create a better condition for his people to reach me. Therefore, as long as I remain on the phone, the first batch of officers that come in will naturally have their attention focused on the space behind the counter.
“That will make it easy for me to lead them into a trap…”
He returned to the bank lobby and removed the ski mask from the criminal with the machine gun. Then he leaped through the counter to inside it. He used this relatively new ski mask and put it over the head of the other criminal whose face was made unrecognizable by the gunshots. Then he dragged the dead body of the criminal all the way back into the surveillance room. Inside the surveillance room, there were two amenities that Feng Bujue needed to make his escape. First, it was the entrance to the air ventilation system. Other than the safety vault, this could be found in any other room, so it was not that surprising. The second thing was only available at the counter and the surveillance room, and that was the button to raise and lower the bank’s shutter door. Feng Bujue placed the dead body on one of the office chairs in the surveillance room, and then he started to design his trap.
He pushed the chair to the corner of the room and had it facing away from the wall. He then took out the second grenade from the endless grenade box. He tied a metallic wire that he had found inside the storage room to the safety pin and shoved the grenade into the criminal’s ruined face.
Actually, he could have easily fixed the explosive somewhere else, but… the man wanted to see the metallic wire poke out from the man’s eye socket. Perhaps Feng Bujue found this to be humorous or enjoyable. In any case, the grenade was tied to the face, and the metallic wire that attached to the safety pin began from the face and travelled all the way downward passing the dead body, crossing through the space between the two legs, and was finally attached to the wheel on the bottom of the chair.
This was a good office chair; it had a high back support and was adjustable. The wheel underneath the chair was working fine, and it could be turned left and right without using too much force. The axle showed no sign of being stuck as well. Feng Bujue confirmed that as long as someone tried to move or turn the chair from behind, in another four seconds, there would be a few more bodies within about a ten-meter range.
After he did all that, he walked to the wall. With both of his hands grabbing the top of the storage locker, he pulled up himself up to the top. The entrance to the vent was right there. He removed the pane of iron and looked into the vent. He noticed that the vent was quite spacious, and he could move through it relatively easily with his body maintaining a crouching position. He had enough space to even turn around.
At that moment, the phone at the counter rang. Two seconds later, the phone in Feng Bujue’s pocket rang as well. He said with a smile, “The timing is just perfect…”
He jumped back down to the ground and removed the Bluetooth earpiece from the phone and pressed the answer button. “How can I help you, Inspector?”
As he spoke, he carefully placed the phone itself into the shirt pocket of the dead body that was lying on the office chair.
Feng Bujue walked to the control panel. After a brief conversation with Clapton, he opened the bank’s shutter door.
“Raise your hands and come back out from behind the counter,” Clapton roared at the other end of the phone.
“Haha… I am afraid I will have to refuse, Inspector.” Feng Bujue wore the Bluetooth earpiece, and his actions were not influenced at all. He leaped onto the storage locker easily. With his legs reaching into the vent first, he started to crawl into the vent.
“Is your game not finished yet? I do not wish to see another death for the rest of the day,” Clapton said, and at the same time, a few police officers charged into the bank. As Feng Bujue expected, the first thing they did was surround the counter in the lobby. Feng Bujue took his time to pick up the pane from the top of the locker and put it back where it was. Then he slowly moved backward into the vent and purposely told Clapton about the call forwarding system.
Clapton paused to think for about ten seconds before he suddenly whipped his head around and ran toward the group of hostages. He found a balding man among them and asked in an urgent and aggressive tone, “Hey, where can you control those metallic shutters?”
The bank manager was startled before he came to himself and replied, “The button to control them… is behind the counter in the lobby.”
“Where else can you do the same function?” Clapton asked again.
“Er… You can… do that from the surveillance room as well,” the bank manager answered. “You go in from behind the counter. The door has a sign that says employees only. The corridor behind it leads to the storage room, the employee’s toilet, and…”
Before he could finish rambling, Clapton grabbed the walkie-talkie at his shoulder and shouted, “Did you catch all that?”
“Yes, sir, we are heading into the room now,” one of the officers answered. He shared a look with his other colleagues who charged into the bank, and they all neared the door. When they realized that the door would only open with the key and a key card, he pulled out his gun and shot at the door before kicking it down. They were able to adapt to the situation easily. One of them was left behind in the lobby to guard the perimeter while the other three rushed into the corridor while covering each other.
“No matter what game you are playing, it’s about to come to an end.” Clapton picked up the phone again and told Feng Bujue in a harsh and angry tone, “I know you are inside the surveillance room. It is my advice that you put down your weapon, place your hands behind your head, and find a place to stand quietly so that my people will not shoot you in self-defense.”
“Haha… You can think whatever you wish to think, Inspector. I cannot control your mind. However, I can tell you clearly that I am no longer in that building,” Feng Bujue said with a smile. “I trust that if you have a reliable sense of rational thinking, you should have realized that I would have escaped from the vent the last time the shutters were closed.”
“Humph… Is that so? You cunning little liar… Then, can you explain to me how you escaped from a roof that does not even have an emergency ladder? And even before that, how did you manage to crawl out from the vent while escaping the observation of my snipers?” Clapton said with a cold smirk.
Feng Bujue was smirking internally because he had successfully drawn out these two pieces of information from Clapton. “Naturally, I have my own method. You can go and ask the hostages about how I managed to kill the criminal with the machine gun. Perhaps then you will understand why.
“Alright, it is about time we end this boring game, Inspector. I know our conversation will be recorded. Then I would like you to record the following that I am going to say—six supervillains from another dimension will come to Gotham City to send several big gifts. The several dozen thousand dollars that were shot out today is just the beginning.”
With that Feng Bujue ended the call and used the wrench to squeeze the Bluetooth earpiece until it broke.
Under normal circumstances, the Bluetooth earpiece had to be within ten meters of the phone to work. If there was something in between, the working distance might be less than ten meters. Therefore, Feng Bujue did not crawl too far into the vent. After all, the place that he was at was already far enough that he would not be affected by the explosion. The three officers took some time before they arrived at the surveillance room. This was because they had run into other rooms along the way; they had to confirm the situation behind the other doors before they were able to move on. The door of the surveillance room was not locked. When the police officers burst into the room, their eyes instantly turned to the same thing.
In the corner of the room that was furthest away from the door, there was an office chair facing away from them that was adjusted to its maximum height. There was someone sitting on the chair. The man’s head was poking out from behind. He was apparently wearing a black mask. His arms were placed quietly on the chair’s armrest, and he did not budge at all.
“Don’t move, this is the police. Raise your hands!”
“Put up your hands slowly and turn around!”
“Turn around now. Let me see your hands!”
The person did not reply.
The three officers were extremely experienced. After simple, silent communication with their eyes, one of them stood at the door and kept his gun raised at the chair while the other two slowly approached from the left and right. The surveillance room was only so big, and the chair was placed in a corner of the room. They would have to turn or move the chair to see the face of the man who was sitting in it, so…
…
One minute after the explosion, Clapton personally led eight officers to charge into the bank. The remaining people all stayed on the street to maintain the order and hold their post. He had two people guard the bank’s front door. Two of the officers stood at the two corridors that led away from the bank lobby, and the remaining four and himself charged into the employee’s area that was behind the counter. When they came to the surveillance room, Clapton saw the fourth officer who was supposed to guard beside the lobby counter. He was the first to hear the explosion. At this moment, he was kneeling on the ground, and there was a dying officer in his arms. He yelled into the sky, “Oh, God! West… No…”
The wounded officer, called West, had one last breath in him. He was the officer that was closest to the door and furthest from the source of explosion. His face was bloodied, and he was moaning in pain. The other two were unrecognizable piles of meat and guts in the surveillance room. They had died instantly.
“Get the doctor over here now! Quick!” Clapton instantly turned to yell at the officer next to him. “Quick! Go to the street and have them come in here with the stretcher…”
Even though he yelled the order at the top of his voice, he knew deep down that there was no cure for West. He probably would not survive until he was carried into the ambulance, much less survive the ride to the hospital. Furthermore… the chaos on the street had not stopped, and the ambulance would have trouble reaching them.
“West! West!” The officer that hugged him called his name twice. Then, his emotions took over him, and he started to cry. “Oh, God! Why did this happen…”
“Damn it!” Clapton kicked heavily and angrily at the wall. “That b*stard!”
He rushed into the surveillance room and made a beeline toward the blast point. There was fire blasting out from his eyes. “What happened here?”
The talkie walkies of the officers were kept open for communication, so Clapton could hear their movement. He knew that a few seconds before the explosion consumed everything, the three officers had already made contact with the target and had the situation under control. But he had no idea what happened next…
“Could the b*stard have strapped explosives to himself and blown himself up?” Clapton bent over to look at the charred body. “No, wait… the outfit of this person does not match the description the hostages gave me!”
He stood up with his brows heavily creased.
“He made an explosive trap on another person’s dead body? Then where is he now?” Actually, during Clapton’s first interrogation, there was already people among the hostages that mentioned the ’strange golden glow’ and how Feng Bujue managed to pull weapon out from thin air. But it was just that Clapton was too focused on other information at the time, and he did not pay much attention to these details that sounded like illusions seen during panic. It was not until minutes before the explosion and with the reminder from Feng Bujue that he focused the questioning on the details when the criminal with the machine gun was killed that he realized things were not as simple as they seemed.
“Is this John Doe some kind of supervillain that has just arrived on the scene?” Clapton grabbed his already thinning hair and hissed through gritted teeth, “Could he have already escaped?”
With that in mind, he took up the walkie talkie and asked the sniper who was positioned at the nearby rooftop to observe the bank building from above, “Newman, are you sure no one has come out from the ventilation exit?”
“Er… Yes, sir.”
“I mean, can you be one hundred percent certain that from your viewpoint, no one has appeared from the exit of the ventilation system at the top of the roof?”
The other person slowed down to think for several seconds. “Erm… Sir, it is impossible for me to stare at the same spot every single second. Every ten seconds or so, I change my scope to focus at the streets and also the front door.”
“Damn it!” Clapton cursed loudly and then gave out an angry sigh before adjusting his tone to say, “Alright, you can come down now, Newman.”
He adjusted the frequency of the walkie talkie. “You other snipers can also retreat from your posts. Place your weapons in the equipment van and go help out on the street.”
He switched to another frequency to contact the tactical team. “Team two and team three, leave three people at the back street, and the rest of you are to move to the front of the bank to help out with the chaos.”
After all, Clapton was the highest commander at the situation. Even though he was angrier and more depressed than anyone else, he had to make sure that his responsibility was completed. He moved his people around to clean up the mess.
“Inform the station and tell him to send over a team to collect evidence at the crime scene. The rest of you, come with me. Search every corner of every room here. Try to see if there are any other criminals or hostage,” he said into the walkie talkie as he walked back down the corridor. At this stage, Clapton had basically confirmed that he had run into a supervillain.
Feng Bujue’s series of actions and the calm demeanor that he had shown throughout the process proved that this John Doe was not a simple character. His actions were hard to predict, and there was no sense of rhythm to them at all. He killed the bank robbers and then took over the hostages, toyed with the police, dumped several dozen thousand dollars worth of bills on the streets, released all the hostages safely, and killed three police officers…
Hero? Vigilante? Robin Hood? Terrorist? Serial killer? Murderer?
He was like a metronome that switched between kindness and evil every few seconds. There was madness about the man, but he also possessed a clear mind and excellent ability to put his madness into action. If not for the hostages’ physical description of Feng Bujue, Clapton would have thought that this was the doing of a certain mental patient currently kept at Arkham Asylum.
“Sir, perhaps he is still hiding inside the vent?” one of the young officers asked Clapton in the corridor.
“You have a point. Go and take a look,” Clapton replied with a bitter smile. From how he saw it, Feng Bujue had definitely already escaped. He would never realize that the man was actually just several meters away from him…
“Er… I’m doing this alone? Where should I start?” the young officer asked.
“Sigh… Listen to me, newbie. When you have clocked in enough time at Gotham City, you will understand that certain criminals cannot be dealt with in the conventional way.” Clapton talked to the young officer like a teacher lecturing his class. “Give them several seconds, and they will be able to slip away from the scope of the sniper and disappear into the city forever. These people can walk on water and run through walls; some can release nerve gas with their body, and others can snap your body into half with a bite from their mouth. Do you think the Joker would hide in the vent? Do you think people like Two Face or the Riddler would hide in the vents?”
Clapton shook his head.
“I have seen too many things like what happened today… If you wish to do the investigation, go ahead. I won’t stop you. The rest of you, come with me.”
Clapton’s thoughts reflected the thoughts of most of the officers in Gotham City. Even Captain Gordon would be unable to deny that. When facing this kind of supervillain, only Batman would be able to save this city, and the role of the police was merely to help him clean up the battlefield.
The young officer adjusted the cap that sat on his head and still replied seriously, “Yes sir.”
His eyes wandered around before soon stopping at the ventilation system that was inside the surveillance room. The ventilation entrance was at the top of the room, and it was close to the ceiling. Even though the explosion had destroyed the lockers until they had lost their shape, it still provided enough purchase for the young officer to climb upon them to reach the top.
With a pull of his hands, his upper body reached the top of the locker. After the center of his weight was adjusted to the top, he swung both of his legs onto the locker as well. Then he reached out his hands to grab at the pane that blocked the entrance to the air vent…