BOOK 2. Zhao Yunlan is a successful detective and has been blind from birth, and is attacked on his way home from a night out but someone steps in and saves him and runs off. Shen Wei is a university lecturer in Architectural Technology and liv...
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Yunlan wasn't sure about whether he should be listening to these recordings or not, because it could be considered as invading someone's privacy, but his curiosity wouldn't let him stop and if Gelan thought of it as an infringement, she wouldn't have given him the tapes. So he settled quietly in the living room, on a comfortable seat and relaxed as much as possible, not knowing what he would hear but Gelan had offered him help if he needed it, all he had to do was call on her, because she was watching from the security room. He sat back and switched on, listening with the headphones. The dreams were separated by Gelan's voice giving a date and time, the first one started from her observations. Unfortunately there were no records of any previous to these. Wei's voice broke his train of thought and he started paying attention to what he was saying.
"No Sir, my name is Shen Wei, I teach here, your cat seems very intelligent, Zhao Yunlan."
Yunlan couldn't believe what he was hearing, this was before he even moved to this area and was still living in Shanghai when Gelan recorded this dream.
"Yunlan ... His name is Yunlan, Slow your thoughts down Yunlan, you're too fast, that's better ...not a soldier ... a scientist, put on the front line to get rid of a problem, to die quietly, no publicity. I can give you power to help you through the night, I'm sorry but it will hurt."
"Chu is well, Daqing seems a lot better, Yunlan, you survived, thank you."
Yunlan was trying to stay calm but had difficulties with every new piece of information. How did he know Chu and Daqing, they had never met as far as he was aware, except for the park today when he saw Chu but never spoke to him. Yunlan was forced to take a break while his mind tried to make sense of what he was hearing and stared towards the fire feeling the heat from the flames and trying to relax before restarting the recording.
"You are the sunshine in my day and the moon to light my nights, there will never be anyone else, whether you are the angel caring for my fevered brow or the Dark Stranger giving me strength to survive the night, stay with me tonight and I'll tell you a story to help you sleep."
Yunlan was unprepared for the amount of emotion shown in Wei's past lives with HIM supposedly, as far as he could tell, there wasn't anyone else.
"Yunlan, hear me, you said that you would always know where I am and that you were strong enough to protect me, well prove it to me. I am not doing so well now, I don't know how much longer I can stay awake and I'm afraid to close my eyes. This mad man keeps talking about history, so this place is linked to the end of the war, it looks battle damaged, old building, out near a forest, he talked about the Second Dimension, so it could be near a gateway or door. Looks as if there were white tiled walls somewhere here, so I'm thinking of a clean room or laboratory. I'm tied to some kind of frame against a wall, the red coils are around my neck, my hands and my ankles, not that I have the strength to run away. The Guards have been given orders to obey you as they would me. I was... ... he's back..."
This was too detailed to be an ordinary dream and he called for Gelan.
"Yes, what do you want to know?" she asked him, knowing that he had questions running around in his head.
"Is there any way of verifying this last piece of recording because if there is, then everything else is true as well?" Yunlan asked hopefully.
"Everything is true but as a policeman you are trained to accept evidence as proof. Therefore I can give you some, and point you in the direction of more, unavailable to me but you can see it. The history books talked about a war which started when they discovered another parallel world, calling it the Second Dimension. Also mentioning some of the heroes who helped stop it and the illegal use of drugs used to establish an elite group of soldiers, but shortened their lives drastically. The names of two of the heroes mentioned were Chu, also known as Doc, and Daqing, These two plus a third person developed the antidote for the illegal drug and helped stop the war by curing the soldiers. The fourth person was never recorded in any book, but if you listen to more of Shen Wei's memories, it's clear to see that he was there, it was him. There was talk of the fourth person coming from the Second Dimension, he was very powerful and had six Guards who obeyed him without question. After the war, this person was rumoured to have stayed here in this world and patrolled the border as a guardian against crime, this is the information that I do not have access to, but you do, in your archives which are sealed and protected, and also handwritten."
Yunlan was stunned, his first instinct was to return to the office immediately and enter the archives to search but he would not be able to do this alone, nothing would be written in Braille. It would mean asking for help to read about a thousand books looking for details of something that might not even be there. Needle in a haystack.
"Can I keep the recordings and let one other person hear them, I trust him completely, no one else has to know, if I can search the archives, it would be him helping and if we find out anything, I can bring back the information to you and Wei?"
Gelan asked him one question before she answered his.
"Would this one person be Chu?"
"Yes" he answered and she said "Yes".
Surprisingly Yunlan did sleep even although his brain was working overtime, and Wei had a quiet night, no nightmares. Gelan came to wake them both in the morning and checked Shen Wei's stitches, redressing the wound, noting that he was improving but still not allowing him to return to work
Yunlan 'stared' at him with more understanding of what he was dealing with, thinking that if it was any one else going through this, they would have been committed to a mental hospital by now, but Wei had shown a mental strength not common among this generation.
Gelan served breakfast and Yunlan explained that he had to return to the office for the day but would come back in the evening for supper and to keep Wei company.
"Yunlan, you don't need to do that, I'm perfectly fine on my own and Gelan is here if I need anything."
"Yes I do, I promised my nurse that I would be here and if she found out that I wasn't, I would never hear the end of it. Plus I would like to spend time with you now that you are feeling better."
Gelan walked Yunlan out to his awaiting car after breakfast and he headed straight to the office, surprising everyone who thought that he was going to be off for the rest of the week, and after a few questions, he made it to his own office calling on Chu to join him, and close the door. Yunlan wasn't sure where to start or how much to tell him, so he asked for a favour instead.
"If I asked you to do some research for me without any explanation, would you do it?"
"I would prefer a reason but yes I suppose so. Why?" Chu asked.
"I need to find out some information about the end of the war in the archive and about an unknown person who acted as a watcher or guardian afterwards."
"The Black Robe Envoy or Black Robe as he was known?"
Chu surprised Yunlan this time,because he didn't know this name.
"Is that what he was called? I've never heard of this , why?"
Chu tried to explain as best he could.
"It was rumoured at the end of the war a figure dressed in black walked the streets in several dangerous areas to prevent crime but either you believed it or you didn't, there were no photographs or evidence that he even existed, he never aged and was around for a very long time. He committed suicide, so they say but who knows. Is that who you're looking for?"
"Yes" Yunlan replied, "Confidentially, tell no one, I mean it, I will explain,... Sometime."
