11 071. The Forgotten Past
It was silent in the barracks, and Gu Jun watched the TV screen, feeling that the patient in the video was also looking at him.
"It's a simple identification procedure." Captain Wang Ke explained, "The identifiers are all 1,024 patients in the camp who have experienced a delirious state."
A recognition procedure? Gu Jun knew that this was a criminal investigation method, which usually involved the identification of suspects by victims and witnesses....
"We mixed up thirty pictures of people with different body shapes, facial features and hairstyles, and the psychological side of the team determined that there were no hints of features in there. We also don't make any hints to which patient before making the identification."
Wang Ke added, "The identification process is to play the thirty photos back to the person in random order, without identifying them first, and only ask the person on the second random play if any of them look like someone you've seen in a delirious state. If you were to choose one photo, which one would it be?"
Inside the screen image, the patient's eyes suddenly widened slightly and raised his finger, "It's this person, I've seen this person before."
The image then switched to a machine, and only then did Gu Jun see that there was a computer placed in front of the patient, and the photo that stopped on the computer screen was a photo of a Phicda Bureau intern ID. It was him, Gu Jun.
".... "Gu Jun silently inhaled deeply, but couldn't stretch the gripping heart, he didn't know this patient, and had never seen him before.
Without waiting for him to think, the image changed to the next patient, then the next...but the pictures that stopped were all the same, Gu Jun.
All the people standing around the investigation team are looking at him with cold, sharp and questioning eyes, as if they are demanding an explanation from him.
Or maybe it's their psychological offense, putting pressure on him to confess and be honest.
"Dr. Gu, out of 1,024 identifiers, 751 of them identified you." Captain Wang Ke might have been the one playing the shamefaced one, but his tone was still calm and objective: "The remaining 206 did not make a choice, and 67 chose someone else. And of those 751 identifiers who chose you, more than half of the 397 said they remembered seeing you in the delirium illusion, but couldn't recall anything specific."
Cao Yicheng, Tang Zizhuan, and the others were already practically glaring at Gu Jun.
They don't know Gu Jun on a personal level, and after a while they still find him pleasant to look at.
However, the 73% consistency is very high even in a normal criminal identification - there might only be a few witnesses and a dozen or so photos.
But now it's 1024 identifications, 30 photos, and 73% unanimity in selecting the same person.
Gu Jun is not a public figure, nor has he ever been exposed in the news, he has never even posted his own photo on the internet.
The investigation team had already looked into all of these cases, so why was this the result? It could only be because of the abnormal power.
"Doctor Gu, we suspect..." Wang Ke's broad national face was only serious at the moment, "that you are the 'thing in the banyan tree' that the different banyan patients talk about!"
"Captain Wang, everyone." Gu Jun whispered, his heart's trustworthiness completely doused by the pot of cold water, the bone-chilling cold causing utter bewilderment, "I don't know what's going on, I hope you guys can give me the truth..."
He looked at this and that, but found that except for Captain Wang Ke, the eyes of the crowd were still stern and still pressuring him.
This made him suddenly burst into some anger, I'm not like those murderers of the Afterlife Cult!
He remembered Wang Ruoxiang, Zixuan and the rest, Chief Surgeon Zhu and the others, Brother Qiang, Professor Gu....
When he recalled the desperation in the laboratory, the hard work in the training room, the struggle in the operating room, the laughter and the tears that fell.
Those re-established feelings of belonging, and the determination to finally get down to the business of medicine.
"I'm a doctor." Gu Jun gazed into the eyes and spoke the words calmly and forcefully, "I was just involved in completing an operation before I came here to remove the subterranean giant worm parasite one by one from the wound of the injured person's right upper limb, and all the nuisances, bag cysts, and egg cysts had to be cleaned out, and everyone did it for thirteen hours."
He had seen the brutality of the Afterlife Cult from his nightmares, and had picked up some clues from visions and memories, and didn't doubt that the Afterlife Cult or even himself had a connection behind the incident.
But... Gu Jun swept over Wang Ke, Cao Yicheng and the others' faces, "Officers, I hate the culprits behind the foreigner banyan disease as much as you do, and I would love to help you catch them clean tonight, but I'm in charge of healing the sick and saving lives, and that's all I can do."
The eyes of the crowd softened as they listened to Gu Jun's solemn words.
He has been operating for more than ten hours without drinking a drop of water, he is indeed a man.
"Doctor Gu." Wang Ke also gentled a bit, "We don't suspect that you caused them to get sick, there is a connection. These suspicions are based on clues and evidence, and this matter is just one of the circumstances we have."
"What other circumstances are there?" Gu Jun questioned.
"Let's do an experiment first, time is tight, Doctor Gu, you'll be on the night shift."
Presently, Wang Ke led the way with a few subordinates and moved with Gu Jun to another small barracks next to it, this was an identification room, there was a clear glass wall separating the front and back rooms, Gu Jun was placed in a chair in the back room facing the front room.
"Doctor Gu, next we'll have those 1,024 patients, in groups of ten, come in to see you and try to see what happens."
Wang Ke gave him that, and took the team out of the front room, closing the soundproof door between the two rooms.
"..." Gu Jun could notice the cameras in the upper corners of the surroundings, looking through the glass window and watching outside as Wang Ke and the others stood to one side.
Soon, Tang Zizhuang and another investigator brought in a group of ten patients to identify them, patients of both sexes and all ages, including an old man in a wheelchair, a middle-aged woman supporting herself with a cane, a young man who was already skilled in using prosthetic limbs, and a girl with an empty side of her cuff.
As soon as they saw him, they were all agitated, panicked and confused, how could the figure in the delirium illusion really be sitting there?
The girl, on the other hand, was white with fear and hid behind the adults in panic, but just like that, she still cried out and was taken away early by Tang Zizhuang.
Gu Jun didn't move, and his demeanor didn't change, so he just sat quietly, faintly hearing the whispers of the patients buzzing the investigators outside....
A group of patients went out, and another group came in, and the faces of panic and fear grew, and that buzzing sound kept going on and on....
Those faces and the whispering voices were also hitting Gu Jun. His head began to ache, hazy and wild lights and shadows loomed before his eyes, this feeling was no longer unfamiliar to him, was it the illusion of that black and white photo... was it going to be triggered out....
"Why is this happening?" Gu Jun's aching brain couldn't figure out that this wasn't even a photo.
And now...he was right in the middle of the camera footage and right under the investigators' noses, and no deviation could escape these people's eyes.
Not now, not now! He resisted the illusion with gritted teeth, only for the chaotic lights to become more and more real as one batch of patients appeared after another... It was as if a whisper was ringing in his ears, getting louder and louder....
Gu Jun couldn't help but press his hands against his head, but he saw that the faces of each and every one of those patients seemed to have become the same face.
The face of the man with the weathered face.
What if...this is what Captain Wang Ge and the others wanted? Is that the only way to trigger the illusion of that photo?
"I need the truth, I need answers...look at it..."
As soon as his mind painfully shifted, Gu Jun fell into a vision, but it was that nightmare all over again.
The sky was grotesquely dark, and a huge banyan tree stood there with thick, curved branches and messy fibrous roots that seemed to distort the world.
Right there on the muddy ground, hundreds of black-clad men and a dozen red-clad men all knelt down, their heads deep against the rotting mud. They were worshiping the great banyan tree, murmuring unnameable whispers that seemed delirious delirium, like fanatical praise.
In the main trunk of the big banyan tree, there was a huge cavity formed by the decay of the banyan tree.
Inside the cave, a figure sits majestically, a little boy only a few years old, dressed in a strange costume, with a crown on his head made of twisted and woven banyan tree branches, leaves and fibrous roots, like a king, like a god.
The little boy looked down at the kneelers, his young face expressionless, his eyes an abyssal color, all darkness.
"I am the son of doom, thou shalt know that you are filthy, thou shalt be foolish, thou shalt be lowly..."
Gu Jun recognized the little boy as himself.
Gu Jun, he was the thing in the banyan tree.
