After seeing the line of scribbled and sharp letters, Lawrence and the first mate beside him were stunned.
"Humans have only two eyes... Why is there such a sentence engraved here?" The first mate opened his eyes wide and stared at the words for a long time before turning his head away in confusion, "Isn't this a very normal thing
Except for a few people with congenital deformities, who doesn’t have two eyes?”
Lawrence did not speak immediately, but broke the silence after pondering for a long time: "Who do you think left this line of words?"
"…the native inhabitants of the island?" the first mate asked uncertainly, "Has there ever been people on this island?"
"It's hard to say about this island, but there are definitely people on Dagger Island in the real world," Lawrence said slowly, reaching out to gently touch the marks on the wall. The rough and real touch came from his fingertips, as if conveying the strong emotions and thoughts when this sentence was carved. "Humans have only two eyes. Someone specially carved this sentence on the wall. Maybe it means one thing..."
"What does it mean?"
“There were creatures on this island that looked like humans, but they didn’t have only two eyes.” Lawrence slowly raised his head and looked at the thick fog around him and the shadowy distant scenes in the fog. “And they mixed in with the humans, but they couldn’t be easily detected.”
The first mate took a deep breath and said hesitantly, "So... where did the person who left this message go?"
“I don’t know,” Lawrence shook his head. For some reason, he remembered the black mud he had seen along the way, as well as the empty dock area. But he quickly put these irrelevant associations aside and placed his hand on the door handle of the port office. “Be alert.”
The sound of a gun safety being turned off came from behind. Lawrence calmed himself, exerted a little force with his hands, and pushed the door open.
He quickly dodged to the side to avoid exposing his body to anything that might be hidden in the building. The first mate next to him took a half step forward, half-crouched and pointed the muzzle of his rifle at the door. The sailors who followed him also raised the muzzles of their guns and pointed them at the door from all angles.
There was no movement in the building.
The first mate standing at the door calmed himself down and cautiously looked inside the house.
"No one's in there," he turned around, "It's an empty office with the lights on."
Lawrence waved to the sailors and led the team into the room with the first mate.
This was an empty office. Several tables took up almost half of the space, and several chairs were placed randomly in front of the tables, as if someone had been sitting on them just a second ago. The electric lights on the ceiling and the gas lamps on the walls were on, making the room exceptionally bright, and on the floor... that kind of weird and suspicious black mud could be seen everywhere.
"This is also full of this disgusting stuff..." The first mate frowned as he looked at the black substance in the room, his disgust evident in his expression. He carefully avoided the mud on the floor and came to the desks. He glanced at the messy piles of documents and various office supplies on them, "These things... Captain, do you want to take a look?"
"They are all forms and reports that the port needs to handle daily, including materials entering and leaving, personnel transfers, facility inspections, and equipment inspection reports..." Lawrence came to the desks and looked at the documents on them, frowning. "Date... just a few days ago?"
"It seems like someone was working here not long ago," a sailor swallowed nervously and muttered, "and then everyone evacuated in a hurry, without even having time to pack up their things..."
"Haste of evacuation?" Lawrence muttered in a low voice, his eyes swept across the table. A half-finished cup of coffee was placed on the table, with a thin layer of dust floating on it. Next to the table, a pool of black mud had dried up, with a little black substance still remaining on the seat. His expression gradually became solemn, "Is it really an evacuation..."
The first mate noticed the change in the old captain's tone: "Captain, what have you thought of?"
Lawrence thought for a moment and was about to say something when a piercing noise suddenly came from outside the room.
It seemed like from the direction of the Port Square, there was an electrical noise when the radio speaker suddenly started up!
"Om—"
The piercing noise startled everyone. The sailors hurriedly looked out the window. The next second, a discontinuous, distorted, and interference-filled broadcast sounded throughout the port area. It sounded like a slightly old voice: "Notice... We have been contaminated... The island... cannot be saved... Procedure 22 will be initiated... It is an honor to work with you... We will see you behind the gate of Bartok."
With a piercing noise, the broadcast from the square stopped abruptly. The first mate widened his eyes in astonishment and turned to look at Lawrence: "Captain, what is going on..."
Before he finished speaking, a loud noise like thunder suddenly came from a distance!
And along with that loud thunder, there were more thunders, like the sky falling and the earth collapsing, like the ground collapsing and the mountains destroying!
A series of loud explosions instantly swept across the entire Dagger Island, shocking everyone's mind. Lawrence realized what had happened almost instantly -
This is not thunder, it is explosives, the self-destruct device of some facilities on the island is blowing everything up!
"Get out of the building!" Lawrence suddenly shouted, raised his pistol and fired a shot at the ceiling, "There's explosives!"
The captain's shouts were almost drowned out by the explosion, but the blast from the pistol still managed to wake up the sailors around him, and a group of them immediately rushed out the door.
A dozen people rushed out of the door, down the ramp, and ran towards the open area. The intensive explosions continued to come from all directions, as if the entire island was being torn into pieces in the explosion. However, halfway through the run, Lawrence suddenly felt that something was wrong.
"Stop!" He suddenly stopped, firing into the air and shouting, "Stop!"
The sailors stopped in panic again, and then they realized something was wrong.
There were only explosions all around - but there was no smoke, no flash, and even no tremors in the direction of the explosions.
Only the sound of thunder echoed throughout the island.
Then after a while, the explosion sounded gradually subsided, and the surroundings returned to the silence in the thick fog, as if the previous earth-shattering explosion was just a collective hallucination of everyone.
"Only sounds?" the first mate looked around in confusion and said in disbelief.
"It was a reverberation," Lawrence's heartbeat gradually calmed down, and he quickly made a judgment. Although he didn't know if his judgment was right, as the captain, he had to make a judgment now. "That should just be something that happened on this island before, and it was repeated in our ears in the form of reverberation. It was not a real explosion."
"I was so scared just now," one sailor muttered, "I thought there was a big explosion..."
"The nearest explosion was in that direction," the first mate raised his head to confirm the direction.
Finally, he raised his hand and pointed to the other end of the harbor square, "Do you want to go over there and take a look?"
"Let's go and take a look," Lawrence decided quickly. "If something really happened here, there should still be traces left there."
The exploration team immediately headed towards the thick fog. This time, they advanced more cautiously than before.
After an unknown amount of time, a large collapsed building appeared in front of Lawrence.
This group of buildings was located on the inner edge of a small bay, with its back against a solid rock cliff. Judging from the signs of damage to the building... it was obviously completely destroyed by a huge explosion from the inside out.
The first mate stood on a high place and looked at the ruins in amazement.
"What kind of facility is this... It's amazing..."
"We should be more curious about what terrible things happened here, so that such a facility would be blown up without hesitation," Lawrence said in a deep voice, slowly taking two steps forward, "If the people on this island..."
"Stop."
A voice suddenly came from the side, and Lawrence stopped instantly.
“Martha?!”
He suddenly looked in the direction where the sound came from and called out in surprise and nervousness.
But there was only a slowly rising and falling fog, and the familiar figure could not be seen at all.
"Captain?" The first mate noticed the captain's unusual reaction and immediately jumped down from the rock and came to Lawrence nervously. "What happened?"
"… Auditory hallucination," Lawrence said immediately, his expression extremely serious, "You didn't hear any sound, right?"
"We didn't hear it." The sailors looked at each other and one of them said.
"We probably shouldn't go any deeper," Lawrence frowned. "Let's go back to the port first, and then..."
Martha's voice came to his ears again, this time closer: "Get back to the boat, now."
Lawrence was stunned for a moment, and restrained himself from looking in the direction of the voice. He wanted to continue talking, but the next second, Martha's voice came again, this time almost close to his ear, with a hint of urgency in her tone: "Return to the White Oak, immediately - Lawrence, they are coming!"
Lawrence opened his eyes slightly and asked subconsciously: "Who? Who's here?"
The first mate beside him held Lawrence's arm anxiously and said, "Captain, who are you talking to?"
Lawrence did not speak, but suddenly looked up in the direction where the White Oak was docking.
A feeling of uneasiness came over me.
And the next second, as if to confirm this uneasiness, a dull thunder suddenly came faintly from that direction.
It's the sound of artillery.
"Someone is firing..." The first mate reacted instantly, "There are enemies!"
"Get back to the ship!" Lawrence shouted, and led the team to run towards the port. In the sound of the wind that quickly blew beside his ears, Martha's voice passed by his ears like a whisper: "The Petrel is coming..."