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墨書 Inktalez
Three months ago, that night shift was nothing out of the ordinary.
As usual, I took over my shift at eight o'clock in the evening, managing the vast surveillance system with its 986 cameras at Renji Hospital. As the supervisor of the monitoring room, I had long grown accustomed to the monotony and tedium of this job.
The monitoring room is located on the Underground Second Floor of the hospital, a closed space of about forty square meters. A massive LCD video wall on the front wall can display 128 surveillance feeds simultaneously. My workstation is equipped with three high-performance monitors for viewing more detailed footage and processing backend data.
"Old Chen, there might be something special in the ICU today," said Xiao Wang, who was handing over the shift in a hushed voice. "A special patient was brought in this afternoon; apparently, he’s the son of a city leader, and the hospital is taking it very seriously."
I nodded; such situations were not uncommon. Renji Hospital is the largest tertiary hospital in the city and often receives "special" patients. Usually, this meant I had to pay extra attention to the relevant areas on the monitors to ensure nothing unusual occurred.
"By the way," Xiao Wang added, "the new Doctor Zhang is on night duty today. If she needs anything, lend her a hand."
"Doctor Zhang?"
"The one who started last week, the Cardiac Surgery Director, Zhang Yingxue." Xiao Wang winked. "I heard she’s an expert who was transferred from the capital; the director values her highly."
I pulled up the surveillance footage from Cardiac Surgery on my computer. A tall female doctor was making her rounds, a pen tucked into her white coat pocket and a minimalist watch adorning her right wrist. These details were clearly captured by the high-definition cameras.
Night shifts always begin with calmness. I routinely checked various key areas: the emergency room, ICU, operating room, morgue, pharmacy, and all entrances and exits. Everything appeared normal.
At two in the morning, the hospital entered its quietest period. Most patient rooms were darkened, with only the nurse stations and duty rooms still lit. I opened a pack of gum, preparing to endure these few hours of drowsiness.
It was then that I noticed a small anomaly.
In the ICU's monitoring screen, the data refresh rate of the Cardiac Monitor seemed off. According to regulations, the data should update once per second, but there was a moment when the updates appeared to lag.
Such subtle anomalies might go unnoticed by an ordinary person. However, as someone who has worked in monitoring for twelve years, I am particularly sensitive to any unusual changes on the screen.
I pulled up the backup monitor for the ICU and enlarged the image for a closer look. Strangely, everything appeared normal on the backup feed.
This discrepancy caught my attention. I habitually noted the time: 02:47:35.
Just as I was about to conduct a deeper investigation, I suddenly received a message. It was from the hospital's internal communication system, sent by Dr. Zhang Yingxue.
"Captain Chen, could you please check the monitoring records for Room 1728 in Cardiac Surgery? The patient's family reported that someone may have visited the ward between eight and nine o'clock last night, and I need to verify this."
It was a perfectly ordinary request. I immediately pulled up the relevant time frame's records and discovered an interesting detail: at 20:33, there was indeed a shadow of someone in a white coat passing by, but due to the angle, their face was not visible.
As I was about to reply with this finding, I suddenly noticed an anomaly: the file size of this segment of video was 0.1% smaller than normal. For a high-definition monitoring system, such a discrepancy should not exist.
Unless—this video had been manually edited.
At that moment, I heard footsteps in the corridor. The rhythm was peculiar, as if someone was gliding gently across the floor in surgical shoes. The monitor displayed Dr. Zhang Yingxue entering.
When she stepped into the monitoring room, it was my first close-up encounter with this new director. She looked younger than her appearance on screen, probably around thirty-five years old, wearing a pair of gold-rimmed glasses with sharp yet calm eyes.
"Captain Chen, thank you for checking the records so quickly," she said softly. "But I wanted to confirm—did you notice anything unusual just now?"
I looked at her and suddenly realized something: how did she know I had discovered the anomaly? I hadn’t even had the chance to reply to her message.
In that moment, I noticed the pen in the pocket of her white lab coat. It looked familiar because I had just seen it on the surveillance footage. But now I noticed that there was a tiny crack on the cap of the pen, which hadn’t been present in the footage.
What did this mean?
My mind raced, but before I could figure it out, the lights in the surveillance room flickered suddenly.
When the lights stabilized again, I instinctively glanced at the time:
03:33:00
This was the beginning of everything.
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