914 Stairs (1/2)
While Sheyan was busy making arrangements, our dear king of the bugs, Mr. Jones, who had just obtained some first-hand information, did not remain idle. He compressed himself further and made his body smaller, and finally squeezed into another set of human skin. He could barely pass as a burly, normal person on the streets of New York City.
Due to the fact that there were a lot of performance artists here, Jones arrived at No. 54, 54th Street without much trouble, even though he looked very abnormal. Of course, his stench, his burly body, and his retarded appearance kept others at bay, and that helped.
But our dear Mr. Jones' trip did not start off well. He heard that Rosenburg was out for morning tea with his cat, so he rushed towards the Hong Kong-style cafe. There, he found his target and gave Rosenburg a fatal blow with his sharp tail, then snatched away the prince's handbag.
Unfortunately, there was no Galaxy in the handbag. Under the deliberate guidance of Sheyan, the event that unfolded at the moment almost perfectly followed the plot in the Man in Black movie, with two differences:
The first: the protagonist, J was probably still in a Los Angeles police station, enduring the cynicism and boycotting of his peers.
The second: Prince Rosenburg's lanky bodyguard captain was not killed. The moment he noticed that the person he was supposed to be protecting had died, he immediately notified the Arquilian Empire.
It must be known that the average height of the Arquilians was about 17.....centimeters, while the size of the bugs who were at war with them was pretty impressive. Enlarge a cockroach to the size of a horse, and you would have the standard figure of a bugman. In a melee fight between the two sides, well....
The reason the Arquilian Empire could suppress the bugs in the long war was because their core technology of the ”Galaxy” - the Cosmic Subatomic Energy - held the absolute advantage. Therefore, the murder of the prince was not just a simple death; if this technology fell into the hands of the bugs, the Arquilians faced the risk of extinction.....
************
Two hours later, Sheyan arrived at the headquarters of the Men in Black.
From the outside, it looked more like a huge distribution warehouse rather than a special institution that had authority higher than organizations such as the FBI. It had a gray exterior, a green wooden door, and no outer wall. The building looked clean, neat and majestic.
Sheyan walked to the door, knocked on it, and then raised his hand in a surrender pose because in just the blink of an eye he could feel at least a dozen weapons with destructive power pointing at him.
Sheyan put his hands behind his head and shouted:
”I'm here to turn myself in. And I have important information about the ”Galaxy”.”
This was a free country after all, plus Sheyan's act of surrendering gave him some brownie points, so after being handcuffed, he was escorted inside by two expressionless men in black clothes.
Behind the door was a neat, old-fashioned corridor. A bald black man was reading a book on a chair.He did not even bat an eyelid at Sheyan.
Rotating exhaust fans lined up on both sides of the wall, each of them more than three meters in diameter. The only thing special about this place were the many pictures on the ground of satellites rotating around a planet. In the eyes of unsuspecting people, they were merely abstract art.
At the end of the corridor was an elevator. This elevator inexplicably had no floor buttons, only buttons for opening and closing the door. After the elevator came to a halt, Sheyan was directly escorted to a place that seemed to be an interrogation room, where the floor and walls had large oval patterns.
The Man in Black who escorted him in let him sit down on an egg-shaped chair, then left. Soon after, a middle-aged man sporting a Marx-like beard came in. He wore a gray striped suit and had the slightly overweight body of a man in his forties.
Although this was the first time Sheyan met this man, he already knew who he was: Z, the most special one among the Men in Black senior agents. Z may be last in terms of alphabetical order, but he was actually the person in charge of presiding over the work here.
Z sat down opposite Sheyan with a deep frown:
”Tell me all the important information you know.”
Sheyan very cooperatively replied:
”The Arquilian prince was killed. It was done by a powerful Bug. He should have obtained the Galaxy.”
Z stared at Sheyan as if he wanted to pierce through Sheyan's thoughts:
”What is this Galaxy you speak of? And how did you hear about this?”
Sheyan smiled and said:
”I think we should talk about the misunderstanding between us first. I will need a cup of hot coffee with cocoa and sugar. I like it sweet.”
Z slammed the table in anger:
”I don't have time to talk about misunderstandings. Did you talk about misunderstandings when you broke G's neck with your hands?”
Sheyan shrugged and said:
”I was framed. I have first-hand video evidence here to prove that I acted in self-defense.... Please let me finish. Before I came in, I saw a faint rose-coloured flash in the sky. That was probably the warning shot fired from the main cannon of the Arquilian spaceship. As soon as I saw that, I knew you must need me, so I came here to turn myself in.”