Hide and Seek: The Mad Girl Sees All novel Chapter 103

Chapter 103

Chapter 103

At 2 PM, the Command Center’s conference room was packed.

Both sides of the long conference table were packed with people.

Lana sat at one end, with Ms. Reed to her right and Lyra to her left. In front of Lyra, ten black-and-gold Soul Deck cards were lined up neatly on the table.

Intelligence analysts and the rest of the Think Tank were present, while the Foreign Ministry’s interpreters were wearing headphones and adjusting their microphones.

“Everyone’s here,” Lana said, glancing at Lyra. “Lyra, let’s begin.”

Lyra picked up the leftmost card, holding it by the edge with two fingers.

“Soul Deck, release,” she said.

A white light flashed from the card, and the ghostly outline of a middle-aged man floated into the air. The soul looked lost. circling beneath the ceiling and babbling nonsense.

“Spanish translation.” Lana said. The second interpreter quickly grabbed the microphone and summarized the situation in Spanish.

The soul of the middle-aged man paused in midair for a few seconds after hearing the translation.

“I’m Pierre, a fourth-round player from Turania.” The man’s voice was hoarse and uneven, and the interpreter’s voice echoed through the conference room.

“I don’t know where I went after I died. All I remember is being in a dark place, with something pulling my soul into the wall. Inside, it was all sticky and gross,” he said.

Ms. Reed drew a line on her paper. “Did you see any other Wraiths?” she asked.

The man shook his head. “No, just the wall. That was it.”

“Next, Lana said, jotting down notes.

Lyra flipped her wrist, the white-gold light faded, and she picked up the second card.

Lyra kept flipping the cards, one after another.

“Maine Titan, a player from White Moon, lost in the seventh round. His soul got sucked toward the wall, everything was pitch black,” the interpreter said.

“Silver Whisper, a player from Sandstone, lost in the eleventh round. His soul got dragged away,” the interpreter continued.

And so it went.

It wasn’t until Lyra flipped the seventh card, the Cowcat card, that the soul appeared.

As the white light faded, the spirit of a young woman drifted in midair. She had shoulder-length hair and delicate, refined features.

“Sunhwa Kim from North Dawn, sacrificed in the thirteenth round,” the interpreter announced, reading out the background info as usual.

Lana looked at her. “Before and after you became a cat, did you notice anything weird in the game?”

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The woman’s soul trembled, her hair drifting in the air. “There was this force… I kept feeling something pulling at me. like it wouldn’t let go.”

“Was there anything else besides that pulling feeling?” Lyra asked, fixing her with a steady gaze

She looked down, thinking hard.

“Once, the pulling force suddenly got stronger, and my soul got pulled toward the wall, it felt like everything was coming apart,” she said, her voice trembling. “Right then, I caught a glimpse of a door.”

“A door?” Lyra asked, rubbing her chin. “What kind of door?”

“It was tall and black, with dark red cracks running along the edges,” the woman’s soul said, struggling to remember. “I couldn’t see what was behind it. The door was shut tight, but there were some words right in the center of the doorframe.

“What did it say?” Lana asked, her pen pausing mid-sentence.

“R-17, Sunhwa said, tracing a horizontal line in the air with two fingers. “It was a capital R, then a hyphen, then the number 17. R-17.”

“Was it just numbers, or was there a letter? Was the R in English or your native language?” the intelligence analyst fired off questions.

“It was the English letter R and the number 17,” Sunhwa replied, sounding sure.

Lyra rubbed her chin, thinking, ‘What did that even mean?’

Lana signaled for the interpreter to keep asking questions.

Five minutes later, the questioning ended. Lyra sealed the last two cards, and the ten cards were lined up neatly again.

The atmosphere at the conference table grew heavy, and no one spoke.

The large screen lit up with a whiteboard, and Ms. Reed walked up to the front, picking up a special marker and writing a few words on it.

[She wrote: Wall, R-17, Wraiths.]

“All ten souls felt the wall’s pull. That matches the intel we got earlier,” Ms. Reed said, circling the word ‘Wall’ heavily.

“The game collects the souls of dead players, not just to create Wraiths, but maybe to keep the missions running,” she added.

She moved her pen down to R-17, tapping it twice.

“The door, now that’s a new clue. What could R-17 mean?” Ms. Reed asked.

The room instantly buzzed with speculation.

“Could it be some kind of prison cell number? Maybe the game locks their souls in room 17?” someone chimed in.

“Or maybe it’s a portal? The game’s all about numbers, so R-17 could be a node code for a specific channel. sending souls to different missions, or even different planets,” another person suggested.

“I don’t buy that logic,” someone else countered. “Sunhwa said the door was locked. If it was just a fixed transport, there’d be no reason to lock it. With that number, it feels more like an ID plate you’d find on a real-world building.”

There are special channels for materializing resources, so maybe Wraiths have their own channel for manifestation or invasion. That door could be it,” someone else chimed in.

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Chapter 103

The room buzzed with debate, everyone arguing over the three clues.

Lyra sat back in her chair, reached for her cup, and took a big gulp of water.

“RMs. Reed said, tapping the letter on the screen. “As an acronym, it could mean Random. Room, or Rule Each option would give this door a different function.”

She turned to Lana. “Chief Advisor, what do you think?”

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