You're a US police officer, what are you thinking about going back to the East for?

At the corner of the Eighth Street block, there is still that donut shop that has long since closed.

Harrison's black Chevrolet plainclothes police car, with the engine still running, sat quietly in the shadow of the puddles.

The windshield wipers made a monotonous "squeak" sound on the windshield.

Harrison sat in the driver's seat, looking through the rain-blurred car window at the flashing red and blue police lights at the intersection in the distance, and at Lyon's Ford Explorer that sped away across the police line.

The ACU deputy team leader, a man in his forties with a stubble beard, rubbed his temples wearily and let out a long sigh.

He turned his head and looked at the two team members sitting in the back seat.

"Matthew, tell me the truth."

Harrison pointed in the direction where the Lyon's taillights disappeared, his tone filled with helplessness.

"He doesn't even need our support anymore."

"Do you think our boss has some kind of cursed constitution? How come wherever he goes, it turns into a mass grave without needing to be dug?"

Matthew is a 25-year-old patrolman with a pair of newborn twins at home. He always has severe dark circles under his eyes and is extremely short of money.

He huddled in the left side of the back seat, clutching his Remington shotgun tightly, and swallowed hard.

"Sir, I don't know. All I know is that the sound of automatic weapons exchanging fire for the past ten minutes sounded like the Normandy landings that my grandfather described to me."

"Yes, Normandy."

Harrison leaned back in his chair, took a flattened cigarette from his pocket, put it in his mouth, but didn't light it.

"Go in and shoot for ten minutes, then come out, dust yourself off, and leave."

Harrison complained.

"Don't think positively."

He reached out and patted Matthew on the shoulder.

"Tonight's all-night overtime pay and anti-terrorism allowance are practically guaranteed. And the boss just promised us a few days ago that our bonuses would be doubled."

Harrison took out a lighter and lit the cigarette.

"It's good that you can get paid without going to the front lines and getting shot. Let him do whatever he wants."

"It's almost time; we should head back to the branch office to prepare for the end of the workday."

Meanwhile, inside the Pink Swan Club.

After exhausting himself trying to calm the group of reporters who resembled hyenas outside the police cordon, Inspector Bradley steeled himself and led several patrol officers with powerful flashlights into the first floor of the club.

"Crunch."

Bradley's shoes stepped onto a carpet soaked in blood.

When the cold white beam of the flashlight swept across the dance floor on the first floor and the stairwell on the second floor, the piled-up corpses, the bits of flesh and limbs scattered all over the floor, and the red and white mixture splattered on the walls instantly blinded him.

"vomit--"

Bradley felt a wave of nausea wash over him, and he almost threw up the hamburger he had for dinner.

He quickly pulled out a handkerchief and covered his mouth and nose tightly.

Faced with this hellish scene, the first thought that popped into the mind of this mid-level bureaucrat from the Western District Police Station was neither the dignity of the law nor a just trial.

Instead, it was the annual budget report of the West District Branch.

"Sir, should we notify the forensic department to transport all these bodies back for autopsies?" a young patrolman asked, barely suppressing his nausea.

"Forensic lab? Are you crazy?!"

Bradley shouted through his handkerchief, his voice becoming shrill with excitement.

"More than thirty corpses! Have you even done the math? Just the overtime pay for the forensic pathologists queuing up for autopsies and writing those lousy autopsy reports could drain our entire branch's budget for this quarter!"

Bradley waved his arms in frustration.

"Although Chief Sterling has recently brought in a lot of money, and the branch office is now flush with cash, that doesn't mean you can squander it like this!"

"If I dare sign this expense report, Chief Sterling will flip my desk over tomorrow morning and fire me!"

He turned his head and began to give instructions.

"Listen! Go into that pile of flesh and find two or three corpses that look like the leader! You know, the kind who wear gold watches and flashy suits!"

Bradley pointed to the stairwell.

"Put them in body bags, send them to the forensic lab as a formality to prove they're indeed dead, and the case will be closed!"

"And what about the rest?" The patrolman pointed to the ground floor, which was littered with street thugs whose names he couldn't even recall.

"What about the rest of this garbage? They don't even have tax records. Why waste taxpayers' money dissecting them?"

Bradley waved his hand dismissively.

"Go! Contact that outsourced body collection company immediately! There's no need to call a regular municipal hearse; those hourly-rate vampires are just wasting the police department's money."

"Get the people from Ren'ai Biotechnology over here to clean up the mess! Their package deal is the cheapest, and they might even pay us back!"

……

2:45 a.m.

Student apartments near the University of Seattle.

Alex was sitting cross-legged in his computer chair, wearing a pair of oversized shorts printed with SpongeBob SquarePants.

With huge dark circles under his eyes, he mechanically stuffed a cold pizza into his mouth while miserably staring at the editing software on the screen, preparing to update his Bilibili live stream recording of his recent rant about everyday shootings in America.

With huge dark circles under his eyes, he mechanically stuffed a cold pizza into his mouth while miserably staring at the editing software on the screen, preparing to update his Bilibili live stream recording of his recent rant about everyday shootings in America.

The cell phone next to the table suddenly rang shrilly.

Caller ID: Seattle Police Department Dispatch Center.

Alex groggily pressed the answer button, his tone filled with impatience at being disturbed.

"Feeding? Ren'ai Biotechnology Body Recycling. In the middle of the night, which street is someone getting high again?"

The dispatcher's casual voice came from the other end of the phone.

"Hey Alex, big job. The Pink Swan Club on Eighth Street, bring your company's biggest van over for a floor cleaning."

Alex lazily chewed on his pizza, then casually picked up the notebook and pen from the table.

"Alright, I've noted down the address. How many bodies? Two or three? I need to calculate the cost of fuel and body bags first."

"Not just two or three."

The dispatcher tapped on his keyboard. "Detective Bradley conservatively estimates the number to be over thirty. Hurry up, I need to deliver your year-end performance report."

"Pfft—cough cough cough!"

Alex nearly spat out the pizza he hadn't swallowed all over his newly bought Alienware monitor.

"Taking away the young master?!"

"Thirty objects?!"

Alex jumped up from his chair and screamed into the phone.

"What the hell are you talking about?! Thirty corpses?! Did Bin Laden ram Seattle with a plane too?!"

"Pfft...cough cough..."

When the dispatcher on the other end of the phone heard Alex complaining about 911, he was not angry at all; in fact, he almost lost his temper.

"If that's really the case, I can only say: it's not that little," he retorted.

Hearing his response, Alex became even more frustrated. He grabbed his hair and paced wildly around the cramped dormitory room.

"The shock absorbers on my truck have been leaking oil lately, and I haven't had a chance to get them fixed yet!"

"Thirty corpses, how many trips do you expect me to make?! Am I going to collect bodies, or is the restaurant going to get supplies?!"

"Never mind, this is the inspector's direct order. You have one hour, or we'll move on to another place. Bye."

The phone went dead without a response.

……

3:15 a.m.

A black refrigerated van, belching grayish-white exhaust fumes, bumped its way into Eighth Street and finally came to a stop outside the Pink Swan Club's cordon.

Alex, wearing a reflective yellow rubber raincoat, jumped out of the driver's seat.

He carried several heavy, black body bags rolled up in a ball, trudging through the puddles and dragging his heavy steps toward Inspector Bradley, who was smoking beside the patrol car.

"Sir."

Alex drew out his words and sighed habitually.

His condition was no different from when he went to collect the bodies of homeless people under the bridge; he still looked half-dead.

This time, however, he didn't feel any heavy moral burden.

Those lying inside were all gangsters. In the United States, the things these gangs like to do to seize territory or establish their authority are stuffing their competitors into gasoline drums and setting them on fire, or shooting people in the street until they are riddled with bullets, not even sparing passing children.

It would be better if they all died; that would be doing a service to the people.

"Have you counted them? More than thirty?"

While Alex complained, he casually pulled a thick envelope from the large pocket of his raincoat.

He walked over to Bradley and, under the guise of offering him a cigarette, casually slipped the envelope into the pocket of the inspector's waterproof jacket.

"My old car can't carry all the cargo at once; I'll have to make several trips."

Bradley subtly squeezed the envelope through his pocket, his previously anxious expression immediately softening.

"You're too slow, Alex," Bradley complained, exhaling a smoke ring.

"Brother, it's three in the morning."

Alex rolled his eyes.

"The fact that I was able to get out of my dorm and remember to put on my pants and come over is already a huge favor to the West District."

Bradley waved his hand, not wanting to hear any more of his complaints.

"Alright, alright, hurry up and go inside to clean the floor, stop talking nonsense."

The police inspector threw away his cigarette butt, stubbed it out with his shoe, and muttered curses under his breath.

"Tonight was the worst night ever. I ran into that crazy group leader from ACU, who caused such a commotion. I don't even know how I'm going to write my report for tomorrow."

"The insane team leader from ACU?"

Alex paused for a moment, his hand holding the body bag still.

Leon's face flashed through his mind instantly.

He didn't ask any more questions, just nodded to Bradley, and turned to walk into the club's first-floor entrance.

When Alex actually stepped onto the dance floor on the first floor, he was still taken aback by the sight before him.

Although I'm used to seeing dead people, the visual impact of seeing limbs and bloodstains everywhere, with the carpet soaked through and making a "splattering" sound when you walk on it, is still too strong.

He threw the body bag on the ground, squatted down, and began to examine the corpse closest to him.

It was a burly black man whose chest cavity had been completely smashed open; he looked like a leader.

Although Alex was a terrible student in biology, his daily work with corpses had forced him to develop his professional skills.

He turned the body over and, by the flickering light overhead, carefully examined the bullet holes.

"Tsk."

Apart from some random grazes from stray bullets, the fatal wounds on the body were all located in the center of the chest.

The three 5.56mm rifle bullets struck each other very closely, creating a large hole in almost the same spot.

Alex stood up and scanned the entire battlefield on the first floor.

He looked at the honeycomb-like bullet holes on the wall and the scattered shell casings on the ground.

He quickly deduced the circumstances of the firefight at that time.

"hiss……"

Alex gasped.

Judging from the trajectory of the bullet, Leon clearly led his team to force their way in through the back door during the most intense gunfight among the gangs.

"What's the point of this?"

Alex scratched his messy hair, completely baffled by Leon's thought process.

Why not wait until these gangsters have finished fighting each other and run out of supplies before breaking in and reaping the rewards? Why choose to launch a fierce attack at the most hardcore time?

However, judging from the distribution of the corpses on the ground, Leon seemed to feel no pressure at all, as if he were shooting at a moving target in a shooting range.

Alex shook his head, picked up the body bag, and headed towards the stairwell.

When he stepped onto the second-floor corridor and saw the corpses lying in pools of blood, all of them with precise headshots, he completely lost his composure.

Holy crap.

He looked at the corpse of the leader lying outside the private room, with a bloody hole piercing through his forehead, and sighed helplessly.

"Fellow villager, isn't that a bit too cruel?"

But then Alex thought again that he didn't really have any right to comment on Leon.

Leon was in charge of the physical exorcism, while I was in charge of disposing of the body and erasing the evidence.

One is a ruthless corrupt cop who kills without blinking an eye, and the other is a biology student who collects corpses for gangsters and sells them for money.

Doing this kind of work every day, it's hard not to have a warped mindset.

"well……"

"That's how it was in the industrial zone last time."

Alex muttered under his breath as he pulled rubber gloves from his raincoat and put them on.

"Is this guy here to be a cop, or to buy goods in Seattle? I feel like I'm about to become his personal post-war cleanup worker?"

He lifted a corpse by the legs and stuffed it into a body bag.

"Do I still have to give him a share?"

Alex chuckled self-deprecatingly.

However, the Eastern side has now taken over Lyon's operational funds, so money is probably just a number to Lyon now.

He yawned widely and zipped up the body bag.

"Accept your fate."

Alex patted the bulging body bag and began to calculate rapidly in his mind.

Thirty fresh young and middle-aged corpses.

They can be sold to medical school anatomy labs for slide preparation, or packaged and sold to other companies' crash test labs...

"I'll make a thousand per body... minus the bonus I give Bradley, no, this can be reimbursed to the company accounts..."

Alex muttered as he dragged the body out.

"This extra income is enough for me to set up a shop to do charity work."