I bought a prison in the United States.

Wade crouched down and looked at the scratches.

Inside the circle are several fan-shaped radiating lines, resembling a rudimentary sun symbol.

The three sides of a triangle are of unequal length, with the base being the longest and the vertex being the sharpest, resembling an abstract representation of a knife.

The numbers are: 4-2-7.

F-4-2-7!

Wade stood up, and in his brain, countless fragments of information were being rearranged and recombined at an extremely high speed.

Folger Adam 78 series.

Metal sheet.

He did not resist; he entered the solitary confinement room as if it were his own living room.

F-4-2-7.

4-2-7 is not a number, but a room number.

Section D, Cell No. 27.

That's the Blue Snake's cell!

Wade turned and walked out of the detention room.

His pace quickened compared to when he came in; although he wasn't running yet, he was close to it.

In the corridor, he encountered Coffey and Jackson who had rushed over.

Both of them wore the expression of someone woken up in the middle of the night to carry out a mission: alert, but not quite shaken off the sticky feeling of sleepiness.

Wade said with a cold face:

"Ghost Fang escaped."

Kofi's drowsiness vanished instantly:

"When?"

"Uncertain, but it won't take more than an hour."

Wade is already heading towards the prison area:

"He must have entered the cell block through the passageway door, and then..."

He stopped.

Because he saw that the door to cell number twenty-seven was half-open.

Moonlight streamed through the small window of the cell, casting a slanted parallelogram-shaped patch of light on the floor.

The edge of the light spot resembles an outstretched hand.

Wade pushed open the door.

Hector Saldiva, a prisoner once nicknamed "Blue Snake," lay on the ground, his body curled up in an unnatural position.

A metal wire was inserted into his neck, the tip of which was embedded in his skin, leaving only a small section of the handle wrapped in cloth sticking out.

Blood flowed from his neck, forming a dark puddle on the ground, its edges already partially congealed.

Kofi gasped behind Wade.

Wade crouched down and placed two fingers on the blue snake's carotid artery.

The skin was still warm, but there was no pulse.

Judging from his body temperature and the degree of blood clotting, he died approximately half an hour ago.

He stood up and glanced across the cell.

There were signs of a struggle on the ground, the paint on the walls was scraped off, and the bed was overturned.

Blue Snake's blanket was crumpled up and had traces of blood on it.

A sharp knife, made from a toothbrush handle, fell to the side of the bed.

Wade shone his flashlight on it, but didn't pick it up.

That is important evidence.

"Jackson".

Wade's voice was unusually calm, as calm as the eye of a storm without wind.

"Yes."

"Go to the duty room and call the county police station."

"Tell them that a murder has occurred at McLean County Correctional Center, one inmate was killed in his cell, and another inmate escaped."

"The escaped prisoner's name is Hector Rivera, codename Ghost Fang, 23 years old, Latino male, approximately 5 feet 9 inches tall, weighing around 160 pounds, with black hair, brown eyes, and tattoos on his neck and arms."

"He may be carrying a weapon; he is extremely dangerous!"

Jackson turned and ran. This time he escaped; the rules didn't apply in this situation.

"Coffee, come with me."

Wade walks out of the cell:

"Ghost Fang cannot leave the prison. Although there are a few damaged sections of the outer barbed wire fence, it is still patrolled."

"There are sentries at the gate; he's probably still hiding somewhere inside the prison."

Kofi followed behind him:

"Can we find him?"

Wade remained silent, but his gaze swept across the cells on both sides of the corridor, observing any suspicious blind spots.

His brain was processing information at a much faster pace than usual, retrieving all the “abnormal” details from the past few hours and searching for connections between them.

Ghost Fang had spent a day in solitary confinement, giving him ample time to plan.

He killed Blue Serpent, which was the core objective of the plan.

But he won't surrender after killing people.

He must have left himself a way out.

Where is the way out?

Running away requires climbing over barbed wire or passing through a gate, both of which require external support or opportune timing.

Ghost Fang's escape from solitary confinement was a spur-of-the-moment decision... no, perhaps it wasn't.

He started planning the moment he was locked in solitary confinement.

But he couldn't possibly know the sentry arrangements for tonight in advance, nor could he arrange external support in advance.

Therefore, his escape route must be inside the prison.

A place where one can hide and wait for the chaos to subside, and then look for a real chance to escape!

Wade said to Coffey:

"Go to area D and check the maintenance access. We'll meet in the duty room in twenty minutes."

"There's a maintenance ladder at the end of the cell block corridor that leads to the roof. I checked that location."

"Okay, be careful."

After saying that, Kofi ran off in another direction.

A few minutes later, Wade arrived near the fire escape ladder, where the metal plate supporting the ladder had been pushed aside and was leaning to one side.

The padlock fell to the ground, the clasp and the lock body separated, and there were pry marks on the broken surface.

Wade crouched down and shone his flashlight on the padlock.

The pry marks were fresh, and the broken metal surface had not yet oxidized, showing a bright silver luster under the flashlight.

Wade stood up and looked at the dark, gaping entrance to the maintenance tunnel above him.

There was no light in the passage. When the flashlight shone in, you could only see the bottom few steps of the ladder; after that, you were swallowed up by darkness.

"Could it be up there?"

Wade put the flashlight in his mouth, grabbed the horizontal bar of the ladder with both hands, and began to climb upwards.

There was a thin layer of dust and rust on the crossbar, and it had a rough, frosted feel when you gripped it.

His boots struck the crossbar, producing a slight metallic vibration that traveled up the passageway and was reflected back, becoming an echoing hum.

The passageway is about ten meters high, vertically upwards, leading to an equipment platform on the roof.

The platform is about 20 square meters in size and is piled with some old ventilation duct parts and discarded air conditioning filters.

Moonlight streamed in through the ventilation blinds at the edge of the platform, bathing the entire space in a deep gray hue.

Wade poked his head out of the passageway, the beam of his flashlight sweeping across the entire platform.

nobody.

But there were footprints on the ground.

The footprints in the dust were fresh, stretching from the entrance of the passageway all the way to an iron gate on the other side of the platform.

There was a rusty push handle on the iron gate, and a sliver of moonlight shone through the crack in the door.

That door leads to the roof of the main building.

Wade walked over and pushed open the door.

The rooftop unfolded before him.

A flat cement surface of about 500 square meters is covered with various equipment.

The old air conditioning unit, ventilation ducts, a huge cooling tower, and several exhaust pipes whose origins are unclear.

The moonlight cast long shadows of all these things onto the concrete floor, creating a fragmented, dark pattern.