Awakening the Daily Intelligence System

"All the bullets match the same modified Glock," Jennifer circled the microscopic striations on the projection screen with a laser pen, "But what’s more eerie..." She switched slides, showing the neck wounds of five bodies under the morgue’s cold lights, all cut at the exact same angle, "The trauma inflicted by the cold weapon had an error margin of no more than 0.3 millimeters."

The conference room fell into dead silence, as everyone watched the 3D reconstruction of the crime scene—each one had a Hell’s Angels Gang’s skull badge left behind, but the surveillance footage would always fail ten minutes before the crimes. No one noticed the vent opening at the edge of the model, where half of a tactical boot print identical to those found in the police academy’s training ground remained.

In the bunker, Lin Mo stubbed out his cigar in a bullet hole in the concrete wall. This bullet hole from a gang shootout in 1998 had become his ashtray. As he opened Jason’s encrypted notebook, a symbol drawn with blood caused his pupils to dilate suddenly—it was the same pattern his dying sister had drawn on the car window with her blood.

Inside the office of the New York City FBI Special Operations Group, the digital clock showed the red digits of February 19, 2025, 18:42. The torrential rain hammered against the bulletproof glass windows, cutting Lin Mo’s slender silhouette into a chiaroscuro of light and shadows. He held a burning Marlboro cigarette, ash flaking off onto his dark grey wool coat while he spoke.

"Starting with the body thrown off the Brooklyn Bridge, all our profiling is wrong," Lin Mo’s voice was soaked with the night fog of Manhattan, his breath frosty, "Including the size 42 hiking boot footprint found in Central Park—that was a Christmas gift specially left for us by the Dark Night Judge."

Before he had finished speaking, the office erupted with sounds of gasps. Criminal Investigation Division Detective Kevin Lee suddenly pushed away his chair, its metal legs screeching across the reinforced floor. "We located the third crime scene through live streaming less than forty minutes after the crime! When the SWAT team broke in, the bloody water in the bathtub was still flowing!"

Eric Ren of the technical support department took off his AR glasses, his fingers of the Chinese genius programmer unconsciously tapping on the holographic projection keyboard: "From a data tracking perspective, although the live broadcast signal went through twenty-seven layers of encrypted routing, the physical location..."

"The physical location shows the signal source is in that apartment in Queens," Forensic Analyst Brian Qin interrupted the conversation with surgical precision while cleaning his wire-frame glasses, "The victim’s body temperature is 32.7 degrees, corneal cloudiness of level two, rectal temperature matches the cooling curve within the indoor constant temperature of 22 degrees."

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Lin Mo stubbed out his cigarette and walked towards the tactical whiteboard, his marker drawing a grisly red circle under the words "Dark Night Judge." "Let’s reassess this artist—a dual genius in mechanical engineering and network infiltration, yet he made three amateur mistakes in the two live broadcasts." His pen suddenly stopped mid-air, "Why would a complete footprint appear at the second crime scene?"

The office plunged into silence again, only the distorted paths of raindrops weaving on the bulletproof glass could be seen. Crime Psychologist Analyst Emily Zhang suddenly pushed open the sensor door, her chestnut curls still wet with rain: "We’ve traced a new lead! On the day of the Brooklyn Bridge incident, a 2008 Ford E350 van stayed next to the victim’s car for 83 minutes." She flung the holographic projection onto the central screen, "Although the body of the vehicle obscured the surveillance, the license plate number 6TRX548 was recorded in full."

Lin Mo’s grey-blue pupils narrowed slightly, an instinctive reaction of an FBI agent when spotting prey. "Notify the Traffic Monitoring Center to cross-reference the statewide vehicle registration database." He suddenly turned to Emily, "Your thesis was ’The Spatio-Temporal Matrix in Ritualized Crime’, wasn’t it?"

As Lin Mo finished recounting all the doubts, Emily’s holographic pen traced a three-dimensional mind map in the air: "A typical paranoid personality criminal will form a specific ritual during their crime cycle. The Dark Night Judge’s choice to execute via live stream indicates his need for instant feedback to fill a psychological void." She pulled up frame-by-frame analyses of the two live streams, "Pay attention to the pupil reflection—the first victim Richard King’s irides had no camera reflection at all 0.3 seconds before his death."

Everyone leaned forward in unison. In the holographic image, a close-up of the second victim Lucy Yang’s abdominal wound played on loop. "What’s even stranger is this 28-millimeter wide-angle lens." Emily zoomed into Lucy’s dilated pupils, "According to the principles of perspective, the camera should be no more than 40 centimeters away from the face, but no traces of any supports were found at the scene."

Lin Mo suddenly grabbed a tactical vest and headed towards the equipment cabinet: "Notify the counter-terrorism team to launch the ’Mousetrap’ plan, leak the footprint clues to the New York Times. The Network Security Department should monitor dark web live broadcasting platforms closely, I want all discussion forums involving vigilante justice to be fitted with electronic lures."

"Boss, we’ve pulled the van owner’s information!" Eric suddenly shouted, the holographic screen bursting with dense data streams, "Registered under the ’Perfect Time’ funeral parlor in Brooklyn District, but GPS records show this vehicle in the last three months..."

Through the torrential rain, the Special Operations Group’s black Chevrolet Suburban convoy carved through the curtain of rain. Lin Mo wiped down the barrel of his Glock 19M, the vehicle’s computer continuously refreshing the layout of the funeral parlor. As Emily prepared to report the progress of the profiling, Lin Mo suddenly pressed his earpiece: "Wait! There’s something wrong with the temperature curve of the funeral home’s freezer—"

Times Square, Manhattan District, New York City, February 19, 2025, 18:54 Wednesday

The cellphone screen lit up in the twilight, three consecutive news alerts slicing through the neon-lit night sky. Lin Mo leaned against the glass curtain wall of a building on Fifth Avenue, his black overcoat collar spotted with fine snowflakes, his fingertips hovering over the virtual keyboard for a moment before finally opening the New York Post’s special report.