Chapter 63 Theater: She Had to Take Action

Chapter 63: The Theater - She Must Act

Rebecca moved fast. After asking around in the Exorcist group chat, she quickly sent over a screenshot of the replies from the group's big shots.

[The inverted pentagram formation falls under black magic and has to be disrupted with something carrying holy power. Holy water blessed by one or more bishops or higher-ranking clergy, sap from olive trees over 100 years old, white crystal powder that's soaked up moonlight for 7 straight full moon nights, the blood of a pure virgin, unicorn tears... any of these can be used to interfere with the normal operation of the formation.]

Everly: [Is this person reliable?]

Rebecca: [Of course. With this many people in the group, if he were wrong, someone would have called him out by now.]

Everly: [OK, got it. Thanks!]

Too busy to chat, Everly forwarded the image to the Mikan Police.

After the Megan Clinic case and the witch case, Everly had picked up on a pattern: the police force in this world could be divided into two types. One type was the hardcore materialists who scoffed at anything supernatural—usually fresh recruits or useless cops who'd never cracked a big murder case. Any cop who'd been on the force a while or had handled a case involving the supernatural tended to believe in the occult at least a little.

Thanks to Kelly's revenge strike during the witch case, the whole Mikan PD—except for the new hires from the last two years—was now fully convinced the supernatural was real. So when Everly sent the message, the Mikan PD quickly replied that they were already reaching out to the psychics they worked with and getting the materials together.

Seeing their reply, Everly breathed a sigh of relief.

The stuff on the list—except for the blood—was all pretty rare and way beyond what she could get. It'd be great if the cops could round it all up fast... but if they couldn't—ugh, they absolutely had to. She did NOT want to do *that* in public. That would be mortifying!

Seeing the two ahead pulling away, Everly shoved her stray thoughts aside, pocketed her phone, and hurried to catch up.

The farther they crawled, the more masked people they spotted below. They'd apparently finished collecting the bodies from the auditorium and moved their operation backstage. From what they were saying, the masked guys' evil god loved fear, absurdity, chaos, slaughter, and death. So the masked guys planned to collect the troupe members' bodies, dress them up in costumes, put makeup on them, and pose them in all kinds of twisted positions on the corpse pile, making it "more glorious and grand" to please their "lord."

To avoid the people below, Old John had to lead the group weaving through the connected ducts, constantly stopping to freeze and wait for whoever was down there to move on.

That way, a stretch of just over a dozen meters took them seven or eight minutes to cover before they finally made it.

According to the evacuation map, the prop room was a big warehouse, maybe sixty or seventy square meters. The vent exit was at the back of the room. Everly handed the mirror to Old John, who used it to scope the place out. The prop room door was wide open, blood splattered all over the place inside. Clearly, someone had run in here to hide during the chaos and gotten killed by the masked guys.

The body collectors must have already come through—only blood on the floor, no bodies. Between the vent exit and the door sat several rows of shelves, crammed with all kinds of random props. So as long as they could get down fast enough, they could use the shelves for cover once they hit the ground.

Of course, first they had to actually get down.

The vent grate's bars were too tightly spaced—even Misha, who had the smallest fingers of the three, couldn't pull off the whole "stick fingers through → unscrew bolts → open the cover" routine. Using the hacksaw blade on a Swiss Army knife would make too much noise and risk bringing the masked guys running.

With no other option, Old John lay flat at the exit, pressing his thumbs against the welds of each metal bar, pushing down hard until he found a loose spot, then grabbing the bar and wrenching it inward with everything he had. It wasn't easy—the bars were thin strips of metal, and his fingers barely had any surface to grip. Old John strained with everything he had, veins bulging in his arms, teeth clenched against the pain, until he finally pried a bar loose—at the cost of bleeding fingers.

With one bar gone, a gap of less than 3 centimeters opened up between the rest. Old John's hands were too big for the next step, so he crawled forward into the opposite duct and let Misha—who had the smallest hands—take over.

Misha nodded, her face serious as she lay flat on the cover plate. Holding a compact mirror in one hand, she reached through the gap with the other, using the screwdriver bit on her knife to carefully work the screws loose, guided by the mirror's reflection.

As she worked, she kept her ears perked, listening for any sound from outside the door. Every time footsteps came near, Misha would freeze like a scared rabbit, yanking her mirror and knife back in and lying perfectly still until the footsteps faded. It was more nerve-wracking than being a thief—after all, a caught thief just goes to jail, but getting caught unscrewing this cover meant meeting her great-grandma in heaven.

Luckily, the prop room wasn't as damp as the men's restroom, so all four screws around the cover plate were in good shape. As long as she got the angle right and used the right amount of force, the screws came out way faster than in the men's bathroom. Five minutes later, with a soft click, Misha got the last screw out.

"Done."

She whispered excitedly, pulling the cover plate into the duct and backing up to give Old John space. He grabbed the edges of the vent opening and dropped to the ground as nimble as a cat.

Once all three were down, following the plan they'd made in the duct, Misha crouched low and crept to the prop room door, tucking herself into the corner behind it to keep watch. She clutched the compact mirror—if anything happened, she'd flash a signal to the other two inside.

Meanwhile, Everly and Old John fanned out, hunting for the sewer entrance in the prop room.

According to the officer's message, the sewer had originally been in the open lot behind the theater's back door. Later, due to urban planning changes, the sewer got abandoned. Thirty years ago, when the Xincalan Theater expanded because it was too small, the abandoned sewer got folded into the building, and the old open lot became the prop room.

Of course, they couldn't just leave a big sewer entrance sitting out in the open. The prop room had a wooden floor installed to cover the manhole cover and keep out ground moisture. The police had already made it down into the sewer. According to them, there must be something heavy on the wooden floor above, because no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't lift the manhole cover.

Everly and Old John needed to locate the manhole cover hidden beneath the floorboards in the vast prop room, using the imprecise map as a guide. It wasn't an easy task, but fortunately, they weren't the only ones working on it—the Mikan PD was helping too.

Separated by the manhole cover and floorboards, the people below could faintly hear footsteps above. They relayed the distance, volume, and frequency of the sounds to the officers via radio set up in the sewer, who then called Everly with the information. Through this roundabout method, the two of them narrowed down a search area on the floor.

The good news was that this area was at the very back of the prop room—no one outside would see Old John and Everly unless they specifically came into the room.

The bad news was that after tremendous effort, when Everly and Old John finally moved the shelving unit off the spot and pried up the floorboards with a crowbar (don't ask why there was a real crowbar on the shelf), they found the manhole cover—but it was fitted with a sturdy grate and a combination lock!

The grate was welded from steel bars as thick as a finger, and the combination lock on it was the size of an adult's fist. Neither was something easily broken. Whoever installed this must have had some purpose—were they trying to guard against DIO Brando or something?

Everly sent a photo of the situation to the officer, who was equally baffled. Clearly, they hadn't known about this either.

"..."

Well, the American police being unreliable wasn't anything new. Better to get used to it.

Old John knew a bit about lockpicking. He crouched down, examined the combination lock, then tugged at the surrounding grate and shook his head at Everly. "No good. This type of lock can only be opened by trying combinations one by one. There's no way to force it. Maybe a gunshot could break the lock, but I can't guarantee it—I only have a handgun, and its stopping power is limited."

While TV shows often depict a single gunshot destroying a lock, in real life, it doesn't work that well. A high-powered rifle might punch through an ordinary lock, but with a handgun, it's a gamble—bullet velocity, shooting angle, lock construction, and other factors all affect the success rate.

So firing a gun was out of the question unless absolutely necessary. After the initial massacre, the theater had fallen into silence, broken only by the occasional gunshot as hostages were executed. Suddenly firing in the backstage area would be like announcing their position to the masked guys. If they managed to destroy the lock, fine—but if they failed, they'd lose their lives along with the lock.

The best solution, of course, was to get the password.

The theater's management had all been taken captive, so there was no one to ask. The police could only try to track down the construction supervisor from the theater's expansion and see if they could get the password from him. But the expansion was thirty years ago—whether that supervisor was even still alive was a question. Even if they found him, he might not know or remember the password... It was a long shot.

The glimmer of hope they'd found had suddenly dimmed again.

The two of them waited anxiously by the spot for the police to call back. But before the phone rang, heavy footsteps echoed from the corridor outside. Misha, hidden at the door, raised her mirror and flashed it at Everly and Old John. They exchanged a glance and reluctantly replaced the floorboards, then grabbed a dust cloth and draped it over the areas where they'd pried and moved things.

Once concealed, they crouched low, held their breath, and hid motionless behind the shelves.

Fortunately, the person outside was just passing by and soon moved on.

Once the footsteps faded, they didn't dare take any more risks. They quickly waved Misha back over. The three climbed onto the moved shelving unit, grabbed the duct opening, and one by one slipped back into the relative safety of the ventilation duct.

Now, all they could do was wait.

Wait for the police to find the password. Wait for a miracle.

But would a miracle really come? What if the construction supervisor was dead? What if he'd forgotten the password long ago? What if he didn't even know about the combination lock? What if...

Time stretched endlessly in the waiting. The longer they waited, the heavier the unease grew. Anxiety and dread crept through her like black vines, inch by inch, strand by strand, coiling around Everly's heart and dragging her into a bottomless pit of despair.

Just then, from the far front of the theater, a series of bloodcurdling screams rang out.

Based on the conversation she'd overheard in the corridor, Everly knew—the masked guys' second round of "executions" had begun. After slaughtering the second batch of hostages and posting the video online, the crowd outside the theater would inevitably grow larger.

The theater was too large, and Mikan was only a small city—the police simply didn't have enough manpower to evacuate the crowd. Once enough people had gathered outside, the masked guys would activate the ritual formation. At that point, the remaining hundreds of hostages in the theater, herself, Old John, Misha, and all the police and civilians outside—everyone would become sacrifices to feed the evil god, stepping stones for the masked guys to reach greater heights.

She couldn't just wait any longer. Maybe this movie didn't have a hero and heroine who could save everyone.

While there was still time, she had to act. She had to stop this!