WOA 3

 

World Of The Aberrant: Harvesting Apparitions Within The Nightmare

Chapter 3: Emergency Mission

Baiyu walked over to the heavy metal gate and pressed his phone against a sensor panel on the wall, prompting a biometric scanner to extend smoothly from the casing.

"Beep—Iris authentication in progress..."

"Authentication verified."

"Scanning vital signs—"

"Scan complete."

"Welcome back, Mr. Bai."

A synthesized, mechanical voice echoed through the air as the massive gates slowly groaned open.

"Holy shit! Baiyu? What the hell are you doing here? And who's the one with you?"

Just as the two stepped across the threshold into the metallic city-state, a booming voice bellowed from the guard post. A towering figure burst out at a dead sprint, skidding to a halt right in front of them.

"Aren't you supposed to be on leave? Why are you suddenly back? Did you wrap your vacation early? Who's this... wait, don't tell me you used your time off to go find yourself a girlfriend?"

Mo Fei stood a staggering six-foot-five, towering over the five-foot-four Lu Yueqi in a stark, comical contrast. Lu Yueqi flushed crimson, darting a helpless glance toward Baiyu as if begging him to intervene, only to catch Baiyu raising a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose in deep, weary resignation.

"If I had known today was your shift, I wouldn't have even bothered coming back," Baiyu muttered, glaring at him. "Did you do something stupid again and get yourself thrown into the guardhouse for punishment by Captain An? And for the love of god, stop calling people 'sister-in-law' out of nowhere."

Mo Fei completely ignored the first half of the complaint, plowing ahead with a mischievous grin—whether intentional or completely thick-headed. "Hey, look at the way you two are squirming and blushing—definitely a fresh couple. Okay, fine, maybe it's too early to call her sister-in-law. We'll wait until you guys actually tie the knot..."

WHACK.

"Ow! What the hell, Old Bai, why'd you hit me?" Mo Fei yelped, rubbing the back of his massive head.

"Me? I didn't touch you," Baiyu replied smoothly, hands clasped behind his back with an air of absolute innocence. He leaned in close, his voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper right beside Mo Fei's ear. "Keep running your mouth, and I'll personally ask Captain An to let you rot in this guardhouse for another few weeks."

"Whoa, whoa, wait! Don't do that, bro! You're my real brother! I don't want to spend another second in this miserable wasteland!" Mo Fei whimpered, pulling a face of utter betrayal that looked absurdly ridiculous stretched across a frame a whole head taller than Baiyu.

"Come on, let's head to the registration office. I'll get your identity info sorted out," Baiyu said, turning back to Lu Yueqi, who was struggling desperately to hold back her laughter.

"Coming," she mumbled, fighting down a grin.

"I'm coming too! Wait up!" Mo Fei hollered, before suddenly snapping back to reality and barking at the remaining guards inside the cubicle. "You lot better keep working while I'm gone! I'm heading out!"

"Big Brother Mo..." One of the guards stretched out a hand in a pathetic, frozen gesture of despair, watching Mo Fei bound away like an overexcited puppy trailing behind Baiyu before slowly dropping his arm.

The trio walked down the paved avenues, instantly drawing every eye on the street—mostly because Mo Fei was an absolute walking billboard of chaotic energy. He waved and shouted greetings to random aunties, grabbed the hands of passing uncles, and treated the thoroughfare like a royal parade. It was physically impossible not to stare at him, forcing Baiyu to drag his chin down and keep his head ducked as low as possible.

"Well, well, if it isn't little Bai. Back from your holiday?"

An elderly man named Hai Yin sat behind the registration desk, beaming warmly as he looked up. Hai Yin was a retired veteran investigator who had taken up the desk job to pass the time in his twilight years. Operatives who actually managed to survive long enough to retire cleanly were an extreme rarity within the bureau, and they were granted deep privileges and lifetime security.

"Yeah, ran into a bit of trouble," Baiyu explained, gesturing to the young woman beside him. "This kid's a Dreamweaver. She got targeted by a Demon last night, and I brought her here to keep her safe from getting picked off."

"Dangerous business, that," Hai Yin said, his expression softening as he turned to the frightened girl. "Don't you worry, little miss. Once you're inside these walls, you're safe. Everyone here will look out for you."

Bzzz.

Mo Fei's phone buzzed aggressively in his pocket. Stepping away to take the call, his face hardened within seconds. He hurried back to Baiyu, his playful demeanor completely vanished. "Old Bai, the captain says we have an emergency dispatch. Total assembly right now. I've got to run."

With that, Mo Fei spun on his heel and bolted.

Baiyu called out after him, "I'll come with you. My leave's been long enough anyway—time to stretch my limbs."

He turned back to the old clerk. "Uncle Hai, I'll leave her registration paperwork in your hands."

"Got it, go on then," Hai Yin waved him off with a gentle flick of his wrist.

Deep inside the command center of the bureau's central tower, First Squad Captain An牧 was already running an emergency briefing.

"D-grade investigators have locked down the perimeter," An Mu stated, his voice ringing crisp and cold around the heavy round table as a bespectacled man tapped away at his laptop. "The anomaly hasn't expanded past its containment zone yet. Aside from the civilians trapped inside the Dream Café when it manifested, there are zero casualties so far."

"We've confirmed the active entity is a Rule-Distortion Demon," the man with the black-rimmed glasses continued, pushing his frames up his nose. "Preliminary transcripts of the localized horror rules have already been transmitted back by the field team."

The massive holographic display flickered to life, projecting a cold list of text:

Customer Regulations:

1. Only coffee is served inside the café. If any other food or beverage appears on your table, do not touch it.
   
   
2. The staff wearing black suits inside the café are trustworthy. You may purchase coffee from them.
   
   
3. There are no staff members wearing red uniforms inside the café. Do not purchase anything from them.
   
   
4. Children are strictly prohibited from entering the café.
   
   
5. If you see a child, ignore them entirely. Do not answer any of their requests.
   
   
6. If a child begins following closely behind you, seek help immediately from a café employee in a red uniform.
   
   
7. The café plays no background music. If you hear music, seek help immediately from a red-uniformed employee.
   
   
8. There are no restrooms inside the café.
   
   
9. If you happen to see a doorway marked as a restroom, do not enter it.
   
   

As the nine absolute rules hung chillingly in the air, the glasses-wearing analyst added, "That's all the intel we have so far. There might be deeper rules hidden inside, but our field operatives can't push any further without risking immediate assimilation into the cognitive trap."

"How the hell are these rules supposed to make sense when they contradict each other?" A blonde-haired, blue-eyed man leaned back in his chair, folding his arms with an expression of sharp skepticism. "Lance, are you sure you didn't butcher the translation?"

"Contradictions are standard boilerplate for these anomalies," An Mu explained flatly. "Inside a rule-bound zone, the posted decrees aren't guaranteed to be absolute truths, and their trigger parameters shift depending on context. That's precisely what makes this class of Demon an absolute nightmare to clear."

"If only Baiyu were here," the blonde operative muttered under his breath. "Can't we call him back from his vacation?"

"True, Baiyu's expertise with cognitive anomalies gives us a massive edge," another squad member chimed in. "But..."

An Mu shook his head, cutting the suggestion off instantly. "I've already recalled Mo Fei. This mission is ours to handle alone; we cannot drag Baiyu back into this. You all saw the state he was in after his last operation. I will never authorize him to deploy while he's still hanging by a thread. It's far too dangerous."

The conference room plunged into a heavy, suffocating silence.

Everyone knew Baiyu's combat capability was unmatched, and his inner nightmare's unique resonance was the perfect hard counter to cognitive rules. But An Mu was right—pushing Baiyu back into the field right now wouldn't solve the mission; it would likely implode his fragile existence entirely, or worse, birth a catastrophic new entity from the wreckage of his soul.

A year ago, on a torrential rainy night, First Squad had stood waiting in the courtyard for their strongest, most reliable comrade to return. What they got instead was a mangled, bleeding heap of broken flesh. Baiyu had collapsed right outside the threshold of the central tower, his eyes completely hollow and stripped of light.

According to the chief medical officer who worked desperately to patch him up, Baiyu surviving that night was nothing short of a cosmic miracle. He had flatlined across every biological metric—an empty, rotting husk tossed carelessly onto the pavement.

The nightmare's corrosion had eaten him down to the absolute edge of annihilation. Under normal circumstances, anyone else subjected to that level of psychic rot would have long since decomposed into a pile of dry white bones. If the members of First Squad hadn't wept, begged, and violently refused to accept his death, the medical team wouldn't have even bothered going through the motions.

Going through the motions. That was literally what it was. The bureau brought in the finest trauma specialists available, but even they stood helpless before a corpse. From the day Baiyu was wheeled into the intensive care unit until he miraculously blinked back to life, the doctor hadn't actually done a single thing aside from daily monitoring—because medical science had no protocol for resurrecting a dead man. Baiyu's vital monitors had flatlined completely. Yet, on one ordinary afternoon, all his vitals inexplicably surged back into the green, and he sat up, moving as if nothing had ever happened.

When the doctor interrogated him about how he crossed the threshold of death, Baiyu had kept his mouth welded shut, offering not a single word. Eventually, the medical team stopped asking. He was a living legend of the bureau; if he chose to keep his secrets buried, he had every right to. With the doctor's formal medical backing citing severe neurological overload from nightmare corrosion, Baiyu filed for an extended leave. Though dressed up as a "vacation," everyone knew it was effectively an early medical retirement—no one in their right mind would ever force a man who had narrowly clawed his way out of hell to throw his life back onto the front lines.

That was how Baiyu's long exile began. He packed up his life, moved out of the bureau's secure quarters, and isolated himself in a secluded private villa. Though An Mu had repeatedly warned him about the immense hazard of living alone should his inner nightmare relapse, Baiyu had calmly assured him that he had everything under control. The two stubborn veterans had engaged in a fierce argument over it. Nobody knew the exact details of their clash, only that Baiyu had stubbornly won out in the end, securing special administrative clearance to live in self-imposed isolation.

Since that day, he had practically vanished from the bureau's daily rhythm. While they still kept in touch, First Squad's crushing operational tempo made face-to-face reunions impossible.

The squad continued to execute their missions with ruthless efficiency, but every single one of them knew how heavy the air felt without their anchor holding the center.

Knock, knock, knock.

A sharp rapping on the heavy oak door shattered the room's brooding stillness.

"Come in," An Mu called out, his voice sharp.

The door clicked open, and Mo Fei barged in first with a smug grin. "Look who I dragged back with me!"

Trailing right behind him, Baiyu stepped smoothly into the office, sliding the door shut behind himself as he offered the assembled investigators a warm, relaxed smile.

"Long time no see, everyone."

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