The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 646: The Belfast Daily Gazette

Traces of the recent storm still lingered within the gloomy newspaper office.

Left untended, the windows had been shattered by winds carrying dry branches and stones. Rain and wind now freely swept through the production floor and the second-story offices. Desks, chairs, and machinery lay overturned, surrounded by torn, waterlogged scraps of paper, the letters upon them barely legible.

The monotonous sound of dripping water was the only thing that broke the building's silence.

Drip... drip...

Water fell from the ceiling into a puddle near the entrance, the ripples distorting the reflection of the grim sky and a pair of pale, not-quite-solid bare feet.

Anna surveyed the production area on the first floor. Dozens of identical, hulking machines stood in disarray, with clear signs of damage near the windows.

A sinister aura radiated from her, probing every dark corner of the office like tentacles, but Anna kept it contained within the building.

She felt no presence of any anomalies.

In fact, their numbers seemed to decrease the closer she got to the industrial district. Perhaps they avoided the spacious factory buildings filled with machinery, or perhaps a single "major" entity lurked deep within the district, scaring the others away.

They didn't dare approach.The water on the workshop floor looked filthy. Anna floated over it as she moved deeper inside.

She examined the printing presses on either side. Their damp metal surfaces faintly reflected the light from the windows and the open door. The water probably didn't affect their operation, but something else caught Anna's attention: a black, rubber-coated wire was fixed to the same spot on every machine.

It was an electrical cable.

The machines required electricity to run.

Although the Belfast power station was deep in the industrial zone, only a couple of kilometers from the newspaper office, Anna couldn't possibly restore its function after nearly a month of disuse. It would draw far too much attention.

Maybe there's a manual printing press upstairs?

Anna considered this and went to search the office area, but her search was fruitless. The second floor had no printing presses, nor anything that resembled one.

Manual presses would more likely be found in places with smaller printing volumes than a newspaper. Places like banks or large corporations.

Anna picked up an intact oil lamp that had rolled under a desk, found a box of matches in a drawer, lit the wick, and unfolded a map in the faint light. She began searching for banks and large firms.

They were clustered around the business district, easy enough to locate—sometimes several on a single street. She could surely find a printing press there.

But that had been the most bustling part of Belfast in the past, and it remained so now—its population had simply changed.

Going there was risky, but that wasn't the main problem. What worried Anna more was the possibility that some unnoticed anomaly might follow her or leave a mark, which could then lead it back to Lu Li.

The mere thought of it was enough to make her aura begin to spiral out of control.

Lost in thought, she noticed that the lamp was pinning down a map.

More accurately, it was a floor plan of the newspaper office building.

Anna moved the lamp. The plan was framed, with "The Belfast Daily Gazette" written in the bottom-right corner. Besides the first-floor workshop and the second-floor offices, it also showed a backyard, a storage room, and a basement.

Perhaps there's a manual press in the basement or the storeroom.

Anna checked the storeroom in the backyard first. Stacks of clean newsprint, wrapped in oiled cloth, were piled neatly, but there were no machines.

The basement entrance was under the staircase between the floors. Anna's incorporeal hand pushed against the tin door, but it didn't budge.

The door wasn't locked, but rather bolted from the inside.

Anna froze for a moment, her aura seeping like a tendril into the space behind the door.

Still no sign of an anomaly... That usually meant one of two things: either it was an anomaly with a physical body, like Jimmy, or it was a human.

The first possibility seemed unlikely—an anomaly would hardly lock itself in a basement...

Could it be a survivor?

Anna raised a translucent hand and rapped her knuckles against the tin door, producing a sound far sharper than a dull knock on wood.

Knock... knock... knock.

Anna slowed her pace, listening for any sound from behind the door.

When she knocked a second time, a faint rustle came from within, the sound of movement.

"A survivor?" Anna asked the door, but received no reply.

Convinced that someone was hiding in the basement, Anna spoke directly. "I'm an exorcist's assistant... I came here to print something. If you help me, we'll help you."

As soon as she finished, another sound came from behind the door, closer this time.

Creak...

The grating shriek of a bolt being drawn from its latch was enough to make one shudder. The door slowly cracked open, and a wrinkled, skeletal head poked through the gap.

The old man was a survivor, but he looked far more like an anomaly than Anna did. The hands gripping the doorframe resembled desiccated claws. It was impossible to know how long he had spent in the basement—perhaps since the catastrophe began.

His murky eyes stared out of the shadows at Anna as he croaked, "Is it true...? The exorcists... they've come to save us?"

Anna opened her mouth to answer, but the old man's expression suddenly twisted in horror. He had noticed her translucent form. He slammed the door in terror and shot the bolt back into place.

"I'm a ghost, but I really am an exorcist's assistant," Anna said with a frown, her voice directed at the sound of footsteps retreating behind the door. "If I wanted to harm you, I would have just come right in."

Several minutes passed, but the old man didn't emerge, no matter what Anna said.

Unwilling to waste any more time on the survivor, she passed through the tin door.

A staircase led down into the darkness. The walls glistened with dampness, and a faint light emanated from the basement below.

In the basement, the old man was trembling, huddled under a blanket with his head covered. A small fire smoldered before him, its flames barely a few centimeters high, looking more like a large oil lamp. Beside it stood a nearly full can of printing ink.

Anna ignored the trembling man and surveyed the basement. In a corner, she saw a waist-high machine covered in a thick layer of dust. It resembled the printing presses upstairs, only smaller and older.

"Is this machine in working order?" Anna asked the old man. He might have worked here.

He shuddered but remained silent.

"Do you know how to use it?" Anna asked again.

Once again, there was no reply.

Anna's expression grew colder. She remembered something.

A feeling of impatience surged from the depths of her consciousness, like ink spreading through clear water, quickly staining the space around her.

Drip... drip...

The old man knew something. But he wasn't going to cooperate. She could make him talk.

A distorted, trembling shadow slowly materialized behind Anna. It grew denser, as if becoming solid, then detached itself from her feet. Moving with the grace of a young woman, it approached the old man and merged with his quivering shadow.

The old man suddenly stopped trembling. Then, slowly, very slowly, he pushed the blanket off his head.

In the firelight, his murky eyes were filled with indifference, but also with other emotions—pain, contemplation, and even... excitement.

His name was Robbie Rudnev, and he was almost sixty. He was an employee of the newspaper.