Chapter 2141 The Ultimate New World (Twenty-Two)
SHIELD, the full name of the Strategic Homeland Defense Attack and Logistics Support Agency, is an international agency directly under the United Nations Security Council that specializes in dealing with supernatural events. It has dual law enforcement powers within and outside the United States, and its jurisdiction is very wide, but there is a hard requirement for the events under its jurisdiction, that is, they must be supernatural events.
It takes cooperation from multiple parties to determine supernatural events. First, when a case occurs in a certain area, the order of investigation by law enforcement agencies within the state is the local community police, the higher-level police station, and the state investigation bureau. If the law enforcement agencies within the state cannot find out the cause, they will continue to request support from above, and the case will be sent to the FBI.
The FBI will collect information more widely, communicate with local police officers, and even directly participate in the investigation. If they think that the case is beyond the scope of ordinary people's crimes at this time, the case will be submitted to the supernatural event management department.
However, the department that manages supernatural events is not only SHIELD, almost every state has a special security management bureau, referred to as Special Security, to deal with many seemingly supernatural cases in the state.
The reason why there are such departments is that many supernatural cases are difficult to define. A very clever serial killer uses religious arrangements in his murder cases. Before he is caught, it is easy for people to regard it as a supernatural event. Such events need to be handled by the special security bureaus of each state.
After all, Marvel is a universe with superheroes. There are also many people in the folk who are not superheroes, but have special abilities. Most of them work in the special security bureau. When this group of people investigate the scene of the accident and find that it is not a supernatural event, the case will be transferred back to the FBI.
If the FBI conducts another investigation and still cannot find any human traces, the case will not be sent to the state department, but will be submitted directly to SHIELD.
In other words, most of the cases that can be handed over to SHIELD are that the FBI and the special security bureau each have their own opinions, and even the local police, local people and law enforcement agencies find it difficult to reach a consensus, and often they are divided into two factions, one is human or the other is haunted.
At this time, SHIELD needs to come forward to conduct a more detailed and professional investigation to determine whether this is a supernatural event.
It is difficult to say how many of the cases that SHIELD has taken over over the years are truly supernatural events and how many are man-made.
Most cases have both supernatural factors and are difficult to get rid of man-made factors. It is possible that the disaster was indeed affected by supernatural factors at the beginning, but in the end, it was either humans who fanned the flames behind the scenes, or someone took advantage of the fire to rob and kill fellow citizens.
In the end, whether it is a supernatural event or the evil of human nature, it is definitely impossible to announce it to the public, and the public will think that SHIELD is maliciously concealing it, and it is always thankless. Therefore, unless the impact is extremely wide and the public opinion is very strong, SHIELD will accept fewer and fewer cases within the country.
Today is an exception. On the last day of autumn, it rained heavily in the suburbs of New York again. The rotor of the helicopter cut through the rain curtain. When it fell, the airflow stirred up the accumulated water under the lawn soil, splashing the hatch with mud.
"I don't know how to describe it, it was horrible."
A thin voice came from the crack of the door, accompanied by the crackling of firewood in the fireplace. Coulson, who came down from the helicopter and approached the door, motioned the agent holding an umbrella to step back a little, and he pushed the door and walked in alone.
An Asian female agent was sitting on the sofa beside her, listening attentively to a girl talking opposite her. Coulson walked in quietly, which scared the girl.
"Please don't be afraid, he is my boss." The Asian female agent stood up, Coulson nodded to her, motioned her to sit down and said: "You all don't have to feel restrained, Mei, have you got any useful clues?"
"We are talking about this." The Asian female agent named Mei looked at the notebook in her hand and pressed the button on the recording device. The blonde girl opposite her, who was wearing a floral skirt and a knitted shawl, looked particularly tired. She turned her head and stared at Coulson who walked to the dining table and said.
"Mr. Agent, I have repeated what I saw dozens of times in these days, and no one is willing to believe me. If you don't believe me, don't ask me again."
"Please believe that we are here for this." Coulson turned around and leaned on the bar, saying: "We are different from the agents who interrogated you before. We are from the organization S.H.I.E.L.D. that specializes in supernatural events. Have you heard of it?"
"They told me this name." The girl in the skirt sighed and said: "I don't care what bureau you are from, but please ask those agents not to harass me again."
"Sorry, Adela, this is the responsibility of FBI agents, please understand."
"I know you are very tired, and as the last witness of the incident, you only need to tell us what you saw again, and I promise that no one will bother you again after this."
The girl called Adela sighed softly.
"Four days ago at dusk, I set out from Manhattan and drove to Buffalo. I want to return to this small house left by my grandparents on the US-Canada border."
"Sorry, but I want to ask..."
"I broke up with my boyfriend. Two weeks after he proposed to me, I found out that he had been in a long-term relationship with another woman, and this woman was my boss. Obviously, I couldn't make it in New York."
"I feel very sorry."
"No need." Adela sighed and said, "My grandmother always said that if you miss something, maybe your good luck will come. I think it's time to come back and accompany my grandmother."
"Is she Canadian?"
"Yes, she married to the United States, but that's all in the past. Buffalo is a pretty deserted city. I wanted to come back and relax, but I felt it was too remote when I first arrived here. Maybe I am more used to the hustle and bustle of New York. "
"I came back and tidied the house for a short time, and then fell asleep. The next morning, I drove across Canada to see Niagara Falls. On the way, I felt something was wrong. "
Mei immediately leaned forward and listened carefully to what Adela said. Coulson also showed a focused attitude, which made Adela feel a little nervous. She closed her arms and rubbed her hands constantly, and then said.
"The fog was very heavy that day. I don't know what happened. When I drove through the toll booth in the morning, I couldn't even see the sign clearly. "
"Can you clearly feel the change in the air?" Coulson asked.
Adela nodded and said, "I felt the surroundings became humid, but I didn't feel any difficulty breathing. I opened the car window, and the air outside the window was as damp and cold as every morning, with a little forest fragrance."
She turned her head to look at Coulson nervously, as if waiting for him to ask for details, but Coulson nodded and said, "Please continue, ma'am."
"The fog is getting thicker and thicker. I don't know when all the cars that crossed the border with me disappeared. It seems that I am the only one left on the entire highway."
"Do you remember the time?"
"It's more than 7 o'clock in the morning, maybe almost 8 o'clock." Adela pursed her lips and said, "I didn't pay attention to the time, but I remember that the sun was about 7 or 8 o'clock at that time."
"Thank you, please continue."
"I drove all the way forward, but I felt something was wrong. When my grandmother was alive, sometimes our whole family would drive back to Canada to visit relatives. We often I often take this road. If I remember correctly, it is no longer a straight line after about one kilometer, but a right turn. "
"But the car kept going." Adela spread her hands and said very confusedly: "I feel like I have driven at least 10 kilometers, but I didn't see any intersections or bends."
"Then what? Are you still driving forward?"
"Of course not, I thought I took the wrong road, so I stopped in the lane next to me and got out of the car to see what was going on."
"To confirm whether I took the wrong road, I turned on the navigation device, but there was no signal, and there was no signal on my mobile phone. I was completely out of contact with the outside world and couldn't wait for any other car."
"I had no other choice but to keep driving forward, and then I don't know how long it took, I think it was at least 70 or 80 kilometers, my car ran out of gas, and I had to choose to stop."
"Then what?" Coulson knew the key point was coming.
"I thought maybe the signal outside the car would be better, so I got out of the car." Adela shrugged and said, "Then when I got out, I found a figure standing at the end of the fog."
"Can you see him clearly?"
Adela shook her head and said with some embarrassment, "The fog is too thick, visibility is less than 20 meters, and the shadow is standing in the depths of the fog, and only a very vague outline can be seen."
"But I'm sure it's a human shadow, at least a humanoid creature, he stood there straight."
"What about his height?"
"I think it's maybe 1.9 meters, but not particularly tall, nor very strong. It looks like a human male, but I don't think it's a human."
"Why?" Coulson asked.
"Why?"
"What characteristics of him make you think he is not a human?"
"It's hard for me to describe." Adela lowered her head, put her hair on her forehead back with her hands, lifted her lips and said: "His figure was shaking constantly, that is not a movement that a human can make, as if he is really a ball of fog floating in the wind."
"I think it is too... ethereal, it doesn't look like a person standing on the ground at all, just like fog floating in the air."
"Did he do anything?"
"No." Adela shook her head and said: "I think he is looking at me."
"Why? Why do you think he is looking at you?"
"I don't know, but I just feel that he should be staring at me, as if he wants to say something to me, but... No, nothing happened."
"So what did you do?"
"I feel very sad, I don't know why I encountered this kind of thing, I mean everything I experienced before and the accident at that time, I felt that everything was not going well, so I went back to the car and started crying."
Adela took a deep breath, then exhaled, leaned back on the sofa and said, "I don't know how long it took, I felt very sleepy, so I fell asleep."
"When I woke up, I found that the Canadian traffic police were knocking on my car window. They thought my car broke down and asked me if I needed help."
"Where were you at that time?"
"The border checkpoint." Adela frowned, rubbed her eyebrows in pain and said, "The queue in front was very long, and I was waiting. Maybe I fell asleep during this process."
"So this is a dream you had?" Mei asked.
Adela's face immediately showed a suffocating expression, and Coulson hurried forward to add: "What we mean is, do you think this is a dream you had?"
"Of course not." Adela said a little collapsed: "If I thought this was a dream, why would I call the police?"
"When I was about to start the car again, I found that the car was out of gas, just like what I encountered in the fog, but this is impossible. I completed the supply in Buffalo and the gas tank was full."
"Even if the gas was really running low, how could it be possible that it ran out of gas when it arrived at the border checkpoint?"
Adela reached out and took out a mobile phone from her handbag next to her and said: "And if it was a dream, how could the record of my satellite navigation query be there? This is a record that can be queried on the official website of the telecommunications operator! You don't want to say that all the programmers of the telecommunications company are crazy?!"