48 Hours a Day

Zhang Heng gave the number of the college student accommodations to the guard.

“Unit 2, Block 5?” The guard sounded surprised. “Why? What is it?”

“Ah, err... no... nothing.” The guard was about to say something, but in the end, he clamped his mouth shut.

Zhang Heng reckoned that this man must have filmed someone from the building in secret, and although it had left an impression on him, he was afraid to talk about it.

Pretending as if he had not heard the overtone, Zhang Heng watched quietly as the guard picked out yesterday night’s recording. The young man then suddenly hesitated. “Actually, this recording is useless.”

“Now why would you say that?”

“You’ve probably heard about the student who just got discharged from the mental institution, right? Early this morning, they reported that a thief had entered their house, prompting the police to come and check the recording. “Did they find anything?”

“No. The police suspected that the thief circumvented the camera’s blind spots and climbed upstairs from there. Fortunately, nothing was taken, so the police didn’t investigate any further.”

Zhang Heng raised his brows but made no comment. He sped up the video and watched until the end. Save for a couple of folks still entering and exiting the building before midnight, most were already asleep, except for one guy. At around one, he stumbled into the building, drunk. No one else came out of the building until morning.

“Where’s the recording of the entrance?” Zhang Heng asked. “You want to see that too? Whoever found your mobile phone probably kept it in their pockethow could you possibly tell by watching the recording?”

The guard was reluctant, but Zhang Heng had something to use against him now. When he saw Zhang Heng looking at him, he scrambled to locate the gate’s surveillance footage. Zhang Heng spent another ten minutes watching the fast-forwarded surveillance video. The camera at the main entrance wouldn’t have caught wall climbers like Zhang Heng, but whenever a vehicle entered or exited the building, it would be well in the frame.

The college student’s red Honda Fit, nonetheless, did not show up on the recording.

Could three people just vanish into thin air within a span of a night?

Zhang Heng considered all the facts before proceeding to ask the guard, “Did anyone else come to the control room before the police came to see you?” “Erm... probably not,” the young man shook his head.

Zhang Heng could sense the hesitation in the man’s tone. “What do you mean by probably not?” he pressed on, hoping to invoke a more conclusive reply.

“Ah, now that you mention it... before the officers came, I received a phone call from the manager. He told me to bring something to him. I left the room for around ten minutes, and before I left, I made sure to lock the doors. Wait... What does that have anything to do with your missing phone? Are you here to find out about the college or your phone?”

ILL

It then dawned on Zhang Heng that he had been one step behind all along. Chances were, the footage would have probably tampered with, all it would take was a set of passable tampering skills and it would have been impossible to notice any nuances with the naked eye. Since the college student’s family had declared nothing stolen, it was likely the police wouldn’t attempt to verify the footage’s authenticity.

Zhang Heng was well aware that the call he made to the police that morning might have come off a little sloppy. Instead of forcing his family to show their true form, the way the whole thing turned out now made the student look like he was crying wolf. Zhang Heng did not know what happened to the family at that time, and he certainly did not expect a surveillance-footage-tempering-expert to be among them. It was worth noting that there wasn’t much time to do anything before the police arrived at the place to check the video.

Being able to alter the footage in such a short amount of time could only mean that the culprit had to be very skilled at the job.

Even though Zhang Heng’s Hacker skills were at Lv. 2, he had never tried tampering with security footage and knew that he wouldn’t have been able to do it. However, this trip was not completely a waste of time. For now, at least, Zhang Heng knew that the manager that the young guard spoke to should be connected to the student’s entire family getting swapped without anyone’s knowledge.

Zhang Heng asked the guard for his manager’s name, then copied the two tampered footages into a flash drive. Before he left, he warned the guard, “Don’t tell anyone that I came here to the control room.”

“Don’t worry. I happen not to like my job anyway. If anyone finds out about you, the job is mine to lose,” said the guard. Then, with an awkward smile, he added, “...and err, you’ve seen how cooperative I have been. That thing about the videos...”

“I won’t tell anyone about it either. But you better not do it again. Also, remember one thing-keep your mouth shut when you drink,” Zhang Heng said sternly, giving the young guard a final warning.

Even though things did not pan out as planned, Zhang Heng did not feel discouraged. He knew that delving into this was not going to be easy, and through the college student’s incident, he could also tell that ‘they’ had been walking among humans for quite some time and were all too familiar with the rules and regulations of the human world. In fact, they were even more proficient at taking advantage of them than humans-like how they committed the college student into a mental institution.

Zhang Heng could imagine just how devastated the student must have become-his family had been palmed off, and not a single soul believed him. Everyone thought that his mental illness had worsened, and naturally, nobody would ever believe anything he said anymore. Worse of all, from tomorrow, he would have to live under the same roof with creatures who came from god-knows-where for the rest of his life.

Being forced into such a situation, even a normal person would develop severe depression over time.

But Zhang Heng realized somethingwhatever methods these creatures had employed to replace a grown, living person, it was definitely not easy for them. Otherwise, they would have never go through all that trouble to send the student to the mental institute, then wait until now to destroy this threat once and for all.

What more, the news about the three children appeared that the ‘accidental drowning’ might have been related to these things. The question here was-why did they kill the children? If it was simply to avoid their cover getting blown, there was no logical reason that such drastic measures had to be taken. If they had the means to send a college student who was essentially an adult to a mental hospital, they would certainly have the means to control the three children.

From the way they behaved, it was obvious that they were extremely meticulous. After replacing a human with one of theirs, they would work hard to integrate themselves into society, avoiding attracting attention to the best of their abilities.

Henceforth, the riverbank drownings had gone on to become the latest hot topic, something that obviously did not correspond to the behavioral patterns of these creatures. On top of that, if the college student was so afraid of them, why did he take such a huge risk, running from the safety of his home to the dark, hazardous riverbank?

What was he really doing there the night Zhang Heng met him?