When they were out of the dark and reeking tunnel, Gloria finally had a good look at the man and what he looked like - it was someone she knew. Detective Marcus Cai, from the 17th Precinct of the PCPD.

It was surprising, to say the least. Firstly for all she knew about the city’s law enforcement agencies, none of them would be willing to set foot in the South Eastern District at this time of the day, unless they really needed to, or were actually doing something unseemly. Secondly the dock areas were overrun by local gang operations, and the local vendors all had to pay them protection fees in order to operate here, yet gang matters in this district were no way under the jurisdiction of the PCPD.

“Sitch - where are - you?” Detective Cai mumbled under his breath: “Run - run and call someone!”

“Okay, cop, let me bring you somewhere safer.” Gloria checked her phone, and saw that her queued messages to Sue and Gyuu Park were both successfully sent. She quickly followed up with a message telling them that she was safe. She then pushed her Qi to increase her muscle power, and hastened her footsteps lest she was seen by anyone.

The option to send the man to a care center flashed in her mind. But she decided to push it down. For one, it would bring a lot of trouble to the district when a city police officer was injured, presumably in the line of duty, under circumstances involving the paranormal; for two, for someone who had survived in an area affected by Blood Rainbow, this man would have very likely contracted omens as well. And she did not want to bring that to the care centers among other patients.

With a bit of stumbling and dragging, she brought the detective to her temporary hiding place near the docks area. She had some emergency supplies stocked, some blessed artifacts and talismans, incense burners and even some scriptures that watchers and clergymen use to perform exorcism. They should be enough to stabilize the detective’s condition for now.

The detective’s jacket and shirt was torn, so she just tore those off him. There was a pretty grievous wound on his waist, which had luckily almost stopped bleeding. Gloria checked the areas around this wound, then the pulses and breathing - it seemed that he would not be in any kind of real life danger soon. But his conditions would definitely get worse if not addressed right away.

Gauze, bandage, rubbing alcohol and gloves, it was not the first time Gloria had to address some wounds on others, but this would definitely be on the top ten list in terms of seriousness. This man was a mystic martial arts practitioner, so it could pose some potential challenges to her as well. Before proceeding, she sent another two quick texts to Sue and Gyuu Park, telling them the address of this hiding place and the fact that she brought an injured PCPD detective over.

She tied the detective’s arms to the bedposts when she was cleaning up the wound and the surrounding area. The detective twitched and flinched slightly, but did not struggle as hard as she imagined. He just kept mumbling something, telling someone named “Sitch” to run and hide. Though she had no idea who that was, it sounded like some kind of street name used by punks or gang members. It would be quite curious, if this PCPD police officer was somehow working with a street gang member.

“No… no… dad, where is mom?” After mumbling for a while, Detective Marcus Cai seemed to have gone into another dream and started saying something differently: “No! No! Where is she … where is she? This ship is sinking, we must find her!”

This almost sent a bolt of lightning through Gloria’s body, and she unintentionally stopped unrolling the gauze and bandage and started staring at the detective’s face.

“No… no… she was in the room with us…. why is the ship sinking! Why is it sinking!?” The detective turned his head left and right, seemingly under stress: “Why is everything burning down!? No… no dad! Grab something! Get away!”

It was still not very clear, but the idea that the detective was also a passenger on that fateful cruise ship had already arisen in Gloria’s mind. And if that was indeed the case, it meant that he might be here for a related, if not similar purpose - to investigate what was going on in the city, and what was happening with the 15 year cycle.

“No - no - dad - I don’t care if they don’t want us to look. They are not gonna stop us. Please - don’t you - don’t you want to know what happened exactly? … The ship did not just sink. It was tampered with! Somebody got to have …” Detective Cai continued to talk while not in any state of consciousness. He started sweating on his face and his chest.

Gloria sighed and turned to find some tissues so she could wipe the sweat off the detective’s body. It looked like the detective indeed had more in common with her than she previously expected. She herself had once looked into the circumstances of the sunken cruise ship. Her attempts did not go very far partially because she was still very young and did not know anyone when she was stranded at this part of the city, and partially because she was in no position to investigate anything in depth because her pseudo-adoptive family led by Luoshan Zi and consisting of the neighbors of her older residence were having a hard time with their lives as well and she needed to earn her keep.

And with the 15 year anniversary coming up, it seemed like people who survived the incident were also starting to look into things again. Though Gloria was uncertain what the detective was looking for right now, her guts said they probably share similar goals.

Just this moment, her phone rang - it was Sue.

“What the hell?! Where are you?” Sue sounded worried and agitated at the same time.

“Calm down. I just texted you the address.” Gloria lowered her voice: “The cop’s still out. He’s talking in his sleep. I think he’s looking into the 15 year cycle like us. ”

“Yes, but he’s still a fucking cop! Are you out of your mind?!” Sue’s voice became higher pitched: “What are you thinking?”

“Just come here, okay? I’ll need to watch over him a little. ” Gloria sighed: “Just come here and we can discuss this.”

“Alright! I’m on my way!”

Not a second past since Gloria had put down her phone, someone was knocking at her door. She looked through the peephole, and found it was her landlord - a tall, slightly chubby man with a limp on his left leg.

“What do you want?” Gloria opened the door by a small crack.

“What is all this blood on the floor?” The landlord asked.

“I don’t know, I just came from a butcher shop.” Gloria shrugged.

“Stop with the bullshit. I saw you carrying an injured man in there - and I know he’s not from around here.” The landlord narrowed his eyes and tried to push the door: “What’s going on?!”