Chapter 23 Chapter Twenty-Three
Juliette did not go upstairs to her office the next morning.She went straight down five floors to attend Manais's funeral in the plowing area on the upper floors.The death of the deputy security officer did not require filing a case or further investigation.All they need to do is bury his old and tired body in the deep soil, let him decompose it into nutrients, and moisten the roots of the crops.At this moment, standing in the crowd, what I think in my heart is whether I need to help him create a file.She wondered why she had such an idea.She hadn't been a security officer for a week, and she had begun to think of the file folder as a kind of haunted place, with names and numbers on it, life reduced to twenty or so sheets of recycled paper, and the mottled Text written in black ink on rough paper tells the sad story of the dead.
The funeral went on for a long time, but it didn't feel lengthy.There is also a slightly raised small mound next to it, and Janss is buried in it.The two of them will soon be able to fuse together in the soil, and then turn into plants of fruits and vegetables, and the people in the bunker can continue to live on these fruits and vegetables.
The priest and his apprentice then weave through the crowd, distributing tomatoes.Juliet also got a plump tomato.She seemed to see the two of them, wrapped in red cloth, walking farther and farther away, singing heartily along the way to soothe each other's souls.Juliet took a bite of the tomato, and the red juice splashed on her clothes.She chewed a few times and swallowed.She could taste the sweetness of tomatoes, but it was just a taste reaction, in fact, she couldn't really feel the sweetness.
The funeral was nearing its end and they had to start shoveling dirt into the grave.At this time, Juliet turned her head to look at the crowd around her, and suddenly thought that in less than a week, two people died on the upper floor of the bunker, and two other people died on the lower floor.It was truly the scariest week of her life.
However, it can also be said to be very beautiful, depending on how you look at it.She noticed that those couples who have not yet had children, they are particularly energetic when they bite tomatoes, and hold hands, thinking silently.After the funeral, the lottery will be drawn soon, but Juliet is very disapproving.She always thought it felt more natural that the lottery should take place on the same day every year, no matter if anyone died or not.
However, the ritual of funerals is a symbol of defending the homeland: while the dead are buried, fruits are picked from the soil, which means that life continues here.It is an inevitable course of life, and everyone should understand, respect and cherish it.When people die, they leave the power of life in the soil to create new life, and leave the space they once occupied to the next generation.We are born, we learn, we pass on what we have learned to the next generation, and we die.The inheritance of life is endless, but a trace of life will soon disappear with death. Maybe, the only one who will remember you is the person who inherits your knowledge and skills, or his successor.
Before the tomb was filled with soil, everyone started walking to the edge of the plowing area and throwing the leftover cores into a pit.Juliet leaned over too, throwing the leftover tomato into the pit full of colorful peeling residue.The pastor's assistant stood watching, his huge shovel propped in the dirt.After all the people were thrown away, he started to bury the pit.There were some inaccurate fruit cores scattered outside the pit, so he shoveled them into the pit together with the soil, leaving a mound on the ground.After a few days and several times of watering, the dark and fertile mound will slowly lower and become flat ground.
After the funeral, she started climbing the stairs back to her office.Although she thought she had good physical strength and was quite proud of it, after climbing a few flights of stairs, her legs began to struggle.The problem is that climbing stairs is not like other sports.Once upon a time, she was able to turn rusty bolts with a giant wrench and endure long hours of overtime and late nights, but climbing stairs was clearly another matter.She thought that was against nature.Humans are not designed to climb stairs.She even wondered why the bunker had so many floors.With human nature, you should be more used to activities on the same floor.But not long after, she saw a courier rushing down the stairs, brushing past her, and greeting her with a smile.Looking at his young face and his powerful legs leaping on the iron ladder, she suddenly became a little suspicious, maybe she lacked training herself.
Later, when she finally returned to the big dining room, it was already time for lunch, and there was a lot of noise in the dining room, as well as the clanging of iron forks and iron plates.When she came to the front of the office, she found that the pile of documents at the door was even higher. In addition, there were many more things beside it.A small potted plant in a plastic pot, a pair of shoes, and a small statue made of wires of different colors.She stood at the door and looked at those things carefully.Since she has no family by her side, she has to think carefully about what to give to whom.Things must go to those who need it most.There were several cards on the ground, and she bent down to pick up one of them, only to find that the words were written in crayon, a bit scribbled.She guessed that it must be during the craft class at school, the teacher taught the children to make condolence cards for Deputy Security Officer Manais.Seeing a card like this made her sadder than attending a funeral.She wiped away the tears from the corners of her eyes, and secretly cursed those teachers, why did they let the children experience the pain of death so early.
"Leave those children alone." She murmured.
She put the card back on the ground and tried to regain her composure.It suddenly occurred to her that maybe Deputy Security Officer Manais would like these cards.He is a very innocent person. Although he is old, he still has a pure heart.The heart is the only organ in his body that has not aged with the years, because his heart has been hidden all his life.
Then, she walked into the office and suddenly found someone inside.It was a man she had never seen before, sitting at the desk of deputy security officer Manais, staring at the computer.As soon as she entered the door, the man immediately looked up at her and smiled at her.She was about to ask who he was when she suddenly saw Bernard coming out of the detention room with a folder in his hand and a smile on his face.Deep down, Juliet had been refusing to acknowledge him as Acting Chief.
"How did the funeral go?" he asked.
As soon as Juliet walked to the office, she snatched the folder from his hand. "Please don't take anything casually," she said.
"Whatever?" Bernard laughed loudly, pushing his glasses on the bridge of his nose, "Isn't this case already closed? I'm planning to take it back to my office for filing."
Juliet looked down at the file and found that it was Halston's file.
"You should understand that I'm in charge of you, right? When Janss came to you, didn't you read the 'Convention' first?"
"I will always remind myself that you are my immediate boss, so as not to forget. Thank you."
After speaking, Juliet left him and turned away, returning to the desk.He was still standing at the door of the detention room, and the iron gate was not closed.She put the folder in the top drawer, then glanced at the computer to see that the pen drive was still plugged into the front of the computer.Then she looked up at the man across the desk.
"May I ask who you are?"
The man stood up immediately, and the chair legs made a "creak" sound as they rubbed against the tiled floor.It was a very familiar voice, and Juliet subconsciously felt that it was Maneth's chair.
"Hello, I'm Peter Berning." He held out his hand to her, and Juliet had to shake his hand. "I've just been sworn in." He took off the police badge from his chest and held it up to Juliet for her to see.
"Peter was supposed to take over as the security officer, not you," Bernard said.
Juliet could not guess what he meant and what he meant by saying this. "Is there anything I need to take care of?" She pointed to her desk and asked Bernard.The pile of files on her desk has not been moved since last night, because she has been busy with Manais. "If there is any, then give it to me. I will put it at the bottom of the pile of files and wait for a while before processing."
"Whatever I give you, no matter what it is, you have to deal with it first." He patted the pile of files while speaking.The top file is Janss' file, "Also, I didn't ask you to come to my office, but I came up to meet you in person for a meeting. This is a great way to save face, understand?"
"A meeting? What kind of meeting?" Juliet asked him without raising her head as she was busy arranging the documents on the table.She secretly hoped that, seeing that she was so busy, he might walk away in a sensible way.She wished he would leave so she could dump all the files she had left untouched on Peter.
"Well, in the last few weeks, quite a few people have been...'replaced'. Never seen this happen, at least not since the last riot. If we can't work together I'm afraid it's dangerous to go on like this..." At this point, he saw that Juliet was about to take a folder on the table, and immediately stretched out a finger to hold it down, preventing her from taking it.Juliet looked up at him immediately.
"People want stability. People want to wake up tomorrow and it's going to be the same as yesterday. They crave that security. Right now, we've just cleaned the lens and we've lost a lot of people, so everybody's going to be a little bit out of control " Having said that, he pointed to the files on Manes's desk, and then pointed to the files on Juliet's desk.The young man across from her kept staring at the files with a suspicious and wary look on his face, as if worried that she would cram more files into him and keep him busy. "And that's why I plan to announce an amnesty and no longer pursue all current criminal cases. This is to boost the morale of all the residents of the bunker on the one hand, but on the other hand, I also want to clear up old cases and help you two reduce the burden. , so that the pressure on you to handle the case will not be too great."
"Clear the old case?" Juliet asked him.
"That's right. Look, isn't this pile of files all about drinking and rioting? Come on, let's see who this is?" He picked up a file folder and looked at the name tag on it, "Oh, it turns out It's Beacons, what's wrong with him this time?"
"He ate the neighbor's mouse," said Juliet. "It was a pet."
Peter Berning chuckled.Juliet glanced at him, and suddenly thought that his name seemed familiar.Then she remembered.Not long ago she had written a memo in one of the files in which the name was mentioned.The young man was really only a grown boy, the Inquisitor's apprentice.Looking at his appearance, it was really hard for her to imagine that he would be the judge's apprentice.He looks more like the type of information area.
"If I recall correctly, it seemed illegal to keep rats," Bernard said.
"That's right. The file in your hand, he is the plaintiff, and he accused the family of breaking the law—" She rummaged through the file folder on the table, "Here is the case of his defendant."
"Let me take a look." Bernard reached for the file, then threw the two file folders into her trash can, and the documents inside were scattered and mixed with other waste paper in the trash can.The paper in the trash can is ready to be sent for recycling.
"Forgive sins, forget hate." He rubbed his hands and dusted them off. "I'm going to use this as a campaign slogan. It's what the bunkerers need. In this chaotic time, let's forget the past, Start over and look to the future!" He patted her on the back hard, nodded to Peter, and turned to walk towards the door.
"Campaign slogan?" She stopped him suddenly before he walked out.At that moment, she suddenly thought that among all the files, there was a case in which he himself was the main suspect.
"That's right." Bernard said without looking back.Then he grabbed the door frame and turned to stare at her. "After careful consideration, I decided to run for the chief because there is no one more suitable than me. Moreover, when I am the chief, I can continue to serve as the head of the information area. There is no hindrance at all. In fact, the current This situation!" He winked at her, "This is called stability, understand?" He left after finishing speaking.
All that afternoon, and even into the evening, Juliet had been giving work to Peter Berning.At present, her most urgent need is to find someone to deal with people's reports and answer the radio.Once upon a time, this would have been Halston's job.His area of responsibility was the forty-eighth floor on the upper level of the bunker. As long as he heard a report from the radio that there was a conflict, he must rush to the scene immediately.Deputy Marnesse had approached Juliet for this role because she was younger and had stronger legs.In addition, he once mentioned that young and beautiful women may "be more in line with the expectations of the public."However, Juliet thinks he has another purpose.She suspected that Manais wanted her to go out often, because in this way he would have time to be alone in the office holding the file and thinking about the person in the file.She could feel his longing very well.So, she slipped a list to Peter Berning and sent him home.There were several addresses of houses and shops on the list, and he had to see them tomorrow.This way, she would have time to turn on the computer and look at the information she had searched with the program the night before. The spell checker came up with very strange results.There weren't many names in it that she expected to see, but a lot of text that looked like a password—strange punctuation, strange spaces, and a strange caret.Those were words she knew, but they were in the wrong place.These large amounts of texts were all retrieved from the computer at Halston's home, and the archives were concentrated in the last three years.The timing fits, because Halston's wife died three years ago.However, what really caught Juliet's attention was that those materials were stored in very deep subdirectories, some even as deep as ten layers.It felt like someone was trying to hide those materials, but they were afraid of losing them, so they copied several copies and hid them in different files. Juliet guessed that the information was probably written in code and was very important, although she still couldn't figure out what it was.She tore a few small pieces of bread, dipped them in a bit of corn sauce, compiled the information into a file, and emailed it to the mechanical and electrical department.Maybe someone out there is smart enough to decipher the data.Like Old Walker.For the next hour, she bit her bread and continued to think about the clue she had just found.That's all filtered through the last three years of Halston's archives.The problem is, it's currently difficult to narrow down and lock certain files.She still can't tell which ones are important and which ones are irrelevant.However, people who have a psychological breakdown can sum up a certain pattern in what they do.She could follow this pattern, because she decided that Halston was a broken man.The process was gradual and long, but almost inevitable.His wife died, and it was as if the gaskets and gaskets of the generator had burst, and Halston's whole being had disintegrated like a machine.All this, in the final analysis, can be traced back to her death. The first thing she noticed was that the computer in Halston's office couldn't see the strange data at all.So, Halston was clearly a night owl, often staying at home until midnight, just like she was.She discovered another common ground between her and him, so she became more curious and obsessed with exploring this person.In addition, now she only needs to check the information on the computer at his home, which means that more than half of the information can be ignored.Apparently, he spends most of his time investigating his wife's death, which is the same as Juliet's current situation.Now, Juliet is also devoting all her energy to investigating the cause of his death.And this seems to be an indescribable and deep tacit understanding between her and Halston, which closely links them together.At this moment, she is investigating the person who voluntarily went out to clean the lens last time, and the person Hoston investigated back then also deliberately violated the taboo and voluntarily went outside to face death. At this time, Juliet discovered that there was a strange thing in these commonalities.She has a clue.Halston's wife, Alison, seems to be the one who discovered the secret.Alison saw something and found that some unspeakable secrets were hidden in the old server, and Horston also found Alison's secrets in the same way, and now, Juliet is also because of seeing To the same thing only to find a clue.Those were some deleted emails.She pored over the e-mails between the husband and wife and found that almost all of them started to proliferate at some point.At that time, Alison had just published a document that taught everyone how to recover deleted files.Juliet thinks this is the most powerful clue.She is more and more sure that Alison has found something in the old server, but the problem is that she still doesn't know what it is, and maybe that thing is in the files in front of her, however, even if She saw it, but she might not recognize it. That was what she was looking for. Numerous possibilities flashed through Juliet's mind, and one of them was even absurd: Did Alison go out voluntarily to die because she found out that Halston had been unfaithful to her?However, based on what Juliet knew about Holden, she knew that was impossible.Juliette looked at one email after another, and found that they all ended up pointing to those code-like texts.Juliet didn't want that to be the final answer, because she couldn't read those files at all.Why are Horston and Allison looking at those files all the time?Especially Alison.Juliet noticed the dynamic records of those files, and found that it took several hours for Alison to open the files every time, as if she could understand the code-like symbolic text.To Juliet, it seemed like words from another planet. So why on earth did Halston and his wife volunteer to go out and clean the lenses?The popular story in the bunker is that Alison suddenly became inexplicably impulsive and wanted to go out.However, Juliet never believed in such speculation.She doesn't believe that there is such a thing as a coincidence in the world.When she was still at the bottom, she once dismantled the machine, repaired it and put it back together, but a new problem appeared after a few days.Every time she encounters this kind of situation, she usually dismantles the machine and repeats the steps of the last repair, and she will definitely find out where the problem is in the process.But now, facing the mystery in front of her, her method of solving it is still the same, a simple and clear inference: the two of them voluntarily went out for the same reason. It's just that she couldn't figure out what the reason was for a while.Deep in her heart, she was a little worried. What if she went crazy and wanted to go out after finding out the truth? Juliet rubbed her eyes and looked down at the table. At this moment, she noticed a document in Janss' file, which was the autopsy report of Manais that the doctor gave her.She put the report aside and picked up a sheet of notes underneath.The note was written by Manes, and it had been on his bedside table at home.It says: It should have been me. Juliet thought to herself, why did she only write such a short sentence?Also, who is he writing for?He has no relatives or reason in the bunker, so he should be there for her to see, otherwise who else would it be?She repeatedly looked at that short line of words, but really couldn't figure out what it meant.It wasn't Jens's kettle that was poisoned, it was "his".In this way, her death became a "manslaughter" case.It was a word Juliet had only recently learned.Manes had explained some of the legal details to her.If they want the murderer to receive the heaviest punishment, then they must focus on his intention to kill Manes and charge him with "attempted murder". murder" case.In other words, if they can catch the murderer and convict him, then if the charge is "attempted to kill Manais", then he is likely to be sent out to clean the lens.Conversely, if the charge is "negligent killing of Janss", then he only needs to serve five years of hard labor at most.Juliet suddenly thought that maybe Manais's heart was swallowed and distorted by this desire for revenge, and finally collapsed completely.He found that there was no chance of blood debts and complete justice.With this kind of inexplicable law, there is no hope of revenge at all, and he knows that the poison has been carried by him all the time, the guilt, the pain, the heartache, he really can't bear it.They walked hand in hand, along the way he was considerate to her and gave her water to drink, but unexpectedly the poison passed through his hands and killed her.Thinking of all this, he could no longer live. Juliet stared blankly at the suicide note in her hand, and couldn't help cursing herself for not being vigilant at all.She should have expected that he would not be able to bear it, and should have paid special attention to him.She could have made a difference and prevented tragedy from happening.She could have talked to him more and figured out a way to reach out sooner.However, in the first few days when she first came up, she was so busy studying and trying to adapt to the environment that she didn't notice that the man was breaking down bit by bit right in front of her eyes.And she was brought up by him. Thoughts raced through her mind.At this moment, an icon suddenly lit up on the screen, notifying her that there was a new email in her mailbox.She reached for the mouse, cursing herself.A few hours ago, she sent a huge file to the mechanical and electrical department, and it must have been returned because the mail file was too large.However, a closer look revealed that it was from her good friend Scott.He is working in the information area now, and he gave her the flash drive full of data. The email contained only one line: "Come down immediately." Why did he suddenly ask her to go down?This is really a bit weird.It was unpredictable, but it seemed urgent, especially at this late hour.Juliette turned off the computer screen and pulled the pen drive out of the computer slot so that no one could see her in her absence.Then, a thought flashed through her, that she should carry Manes' gun with her.So she stood up, went to the key cabinet, and reached for the soft holster belt.The belt had been used for decades, and the old leather surface was dented by the belt head.Then she thought of the sentence that Manais had written before he died, and she turned to look at his empty chair.In the end, she decided not to carry a gun.She nodded towards his desk, then fumbled in her pocket to see if she had the keys, and hurried out the door.
All that afternoon, and even into the evening, Juliet had been giving work to Peter Berning.At present, her most urgent need is to find someone to deal with people's reports and answer the radio.Once upon a time, this would have been Halston's job.His area of responsibility was the forty-eighth floor on the upper level of the bunker. As long as he heard a report from the radio that there was a conflict, he must rush to the scene immediately.Deputy Marnesse had approached Juliet for this role because she was younger and had stronger legs.In addition, he once mentioned that young and beautiful women may "be more in line with the expectations of the public."However, Juliet thinks he has another purpose.She suspected that Manais wanted her to go out often, because in this way he would have time to be alone in the office holding the file and thinking about the person in the file.She could feel his longing very well.So, she slipped a list to Peter Berning and sent him home.There were several addresses of houses and shops on the list, and he had to see them tomorrow.This way, she would have time to turn on the computer and look at the information she had searched with the program the night before. The spell checker came up with very strange results.There weren't many names in it that she expected to see, but a lot of text that looked like a password—strange punctuation, strange spaces, and a strange caret.Those were words she knew, but they were in the wrong place.These large amounts of texts were all retrieved from the computer at Halston's home, and the archives were concentrated in the last three years.The timing fits, because Halston's wife died three years ago.However, what really caught Juliet's attention was that those materials were stored in very deep subdirectories, some even as deep as ten layers.It felt like someone was trying to hide those materials, but they were afraid of losing them, so they copied several copies and hid them in different files. Juliet guessed that the information was probably written in code and was very important, although she still couldn't figure out what it was.She tore a few small pieces of bread, dipped them in a bit of corn sauce, compiled the information into a file, and emailed it to the mechanical and electrical department.Maybe someone out there is smart enough to decipher the data.Like Old Walker.For the next hour, she bit her bread and continued to think about the clue she had just found.That's all filtered through the last three years of Halston's archives.The problem is, it's currently difficult to narrow down and lock certain files.She still can't tell which ones are important and which ones are irrelevant.However, people who have a psychological breakdown can sum up a certain pattern in what they do.She could follow this pattern, because she decided that Halston was a broken man.The process was gradual and long, but almost inevitable.His wife died, and it was as if the gaskets and gaskets of the generator had burst, and Halston's whole being had disintegrated like a machine.All this, in the final analysis, can be traced back to her death. The first thing she noticed was that the computer in Halston's office couldn't see the strange data at all.So, Halston was clearly a night owl, often staying at home until midnight, just like she was.She discovered another common ground between her and him, so she became more curious and obsessed with exploring this person.In addition, now she only needs to check the information on the computer at his home, which means that more than half of the information can be ignored.Apparently, he spends most of his time investigating his wife's death, which is the same as Juliet's current situation.Now, Juliet is also devoting all her energy to investigating the cause of his death.And this seems to be an indescribable and deep tacit understanding between her and Halston, which closely links them together.At this moment, she is investigating the person who voluntarily went out to clean the lens last time, and the person Hoston investigated back then also deliberately violated the taboo and voluntarily went outside to face death. At this time, Juliet discovered that there was a strange thing in these commonalities.She has a clue.Halston's wife, Alison, seems to be the one who discovered the secret.Alison saw something and found that some unspeakable secrets were hidden in the old server, and Horston also found Alison's secrets in the same way, and now, Juliet is also because of seeing To the same thing only to find a clue.Those were some deleted emails.She pored over the e-mails between the husband and wife and found that almost all of them started to proliferate at some point.At that time, Alison had just published a document that taught everyone how to recover deleted files.Juliet thinks this is the most powerful clue.She is more and more sure that Alison has found something in the old server, but the problem is that she still doesn't know what it is, and maybe that thing is in the files in front of her, however, even if She saw it, but she might not recognize it. That was what she was looking for. Numerous possibilities flashed through Juliet's mind, and one of them was even absurd: Did Alison go out voluntarily to die because she found out that Halston had been unfaithful to her?However, based on what Juliet knew about Holden, she knew that was impossible.Juliette looked at one email after another, and found that they all ended up pointing to those code-like texts.Juliet didn't want that to be the final answer, because she couldn't read those files at all.Why are Horston and Allison looking at those files all the time?Especially Alison.Juliet noticed the dynamic records of those files, and found that it took several hours for Alison to open the files every time, as if she could understand the code-like symbolic text.To Juliet, it seemed like words from another planet. So why on earth did Halston and his wife volunteer to go out and clean the lenses?The popular story in the bunker is that Alison suddenly became inexplicably impulsive and wanted to go out.However, Juliet never believed in such speculation.She doesn't believe that there is such a thing as a coincidence in the world.When she was still at the bottom, she once dismantled the machine, repaired it and put it back together, but a new problem appeared after a few days.Every time she encounters this kind of situation, she usually dismantles the machine and repeats the steps of the last repair, and she will definitely find out where the problem is in the process.But now, facing the mystery in front of her, her method of solving it is still the same, a simple and clear inference: the two of them voluntarily went out for the same reason. It's just that she couldn't figure out what the reason was for a while.Deep in her heart, she was a little worried. What if she went crazy and wanted to go out after finding out the truth? Juliet rubbed her eyes and looked down at the table. At this moment, she noticed a document in Janss' file, which was the autopsy report of Manais that the doctor gave her.She put the report aside and picked up a sheet of notes underneath.The note was written by Manes, and it had been on his bedside table at home.It says: It should have been me. Juliet thought to herself, why did she only write such a short sentence?Also, who is he writing for?He has no relatives or reason in the bunker, so he should be there for her to see, otherwise who else would it be?She repeatedly looked at that short line of words, but really couldn't figure out what it meant.It wasn't Jens's kettle that was poisoned, it was "his".In this way, her death became a "manslaughter" case.It was a word Juliet had only recently learned.Manes had explained some of the legal details to her.If they want the murderer to receive the heaviest punishment, then they must focus on his intention to kill Manes and charge him with "attempted murder". murder" case.In other words, if they can catch the murderer and convict him, then if the charge is "attempted to kill Manais", then he is likely to be sent out to clean the lens.Conversely, if the charge is "negligent killing of Janss", then he only needs to serve five years of hard labor at most.Juliet suddenly thought that maybe Manais's heart was swallowed and distorted by this desire for revenge, and finally collapsed completely.He found that there was no chance of blood debts and complete justice.With this kind of inexplicable law, there is no hope of revenge at all, and he knows that the poison has been carried by him all the time, the guilt, the pain, the heartache, he really can't bear it.They walked hand in hand, along the way he was considerate to her and gave her water to drink, but unexpectedly the poison passed through his hands and killed her.Thinking of all this, he could no longer live. Juliet stared blankly at the suicide note in her hand, and couldn't help cursing herself for not being vigilant at all.She should have expected that he would not be able to bear it, and should have paid special attention to him.She could have made a difference and prevented tragedy from happening.She could have talked to him more and figured out a way to reach out sooner.However, in the first few days when she first came up, she was so busy studying and trying to adapt to the environment that she didn't notice that the man was breaking down bit by bit right in front of her eyes.And she was brought up by him. Thoughts raced through her mind.At this moment, an icon suddenly lit up on the screen, notifying her that there was a new email in her mailbox.She reached for the mouse, cursing herself.A few hours ago, she sent a huge file to the mechanical and electrical department, and it must have been returned because the mail file was too large.However, a closer look revealed that it was from her good friend Scott.He is working in the information area now, and he gave her the flash drive full of data. The email contained only one line: "Come down immediately." Why did he suddenly ask her to go down?This is really a bit weird.It was unpredictable, but it seemed urgent, especially at this late hour.Juliette turned off the computer screen and pulled the pen drive out of the computer slot so that no one could see her in her absence.Then, a thought flashed through her, that she should carry Manes' gun with her.So she stood up, went to the key cabinet, and reached for the soft holster belt.The belt had been used for decades, and the old leather surface was dented by the belt head.Then she thought of the sentence that Manais had written before he died, and she turned to look at his empty chair.In the end, she decided not to carry a gun.She nodded towards his desk, then fumbled in her pocket to see if she had the keys, and hurried out the door.