Emma Hayes had vanished, leaving no trace in the city.
Compared to the over 80,000 women who disappear each year, she was just a tiny, insignificant drop in the ocean.
The only difference was that during the two months since Emma went missing, her parents never stopped searching.
Every streetlight pole was plastered with heartbreaking missing person flyers.
Until one day, that eerie note appeared again.
In a cold, cruel tone, it left a single sentence: "Your daughter is at North Street, Fairy Tale Lane, Building 3—dancing happily."
North Street, Fairy Tale Lane, Building 3 used to be an old bomb shelter from wartime, abandoned in peacetime and turned into a rundown underground storage facility.
Luckily, the police pinpointed the location quickly.
But when the fully armed officers breached the door, they found the place transformed into a chilling freezer room, with an ice machine churning out cubes nonstop, making everyone feel like they'd stepped into an arctic tomb.
In the center of the freezer, under a massive glass enclosure, a girl in a black Lolita dress was twirling gracefully.
Her movements were so fluid, her steps so refined, like a princess straight out of a fairy tale.
Her skin was ghostly pale, her face painted with exquisite makeup, styled like a youthful, adorable Lolita doll.
A faint, enigmatic smile played on her lips, curved in an unnatural arc, her sapphire eyes gleaming with an odd light, staring unblinkingly at the doorway.
"Boss, she looks just like that missing girl, Emma Hayes!"
One officer said, shining his flashlight.
"Good—Team One, move in for rescue; Team Two, stay alert."
"No—oh God!"
A young female officer halted three or four feet from Emma, then screamed: "She's dead—she's been dead for a while."
The young cop was named Lily Hopper; she was the first to rush forward to save her.
But as she got closer, Lily caught a whiff of a bizarre, heavy scent—like rotten meat doused in perfume.
Emma's limbs were tied with countless transparent fishing lines;
her hands dangled from the top of the enclosure, her feet anchored to the lines' other ends at the corners.
As the ice floated, it tugged the lines, creating the illusion of her limbs dancing.
And her eyes weren't contacts—they'd been gouged out entirely, replaced with two pricey sapphires.
To the hum of the ice machine, the Lolita-dressed Emma moved like a ballerina in a music box: on tiptoes, spinning, leaping...
The sight made everyone suck in a sharp breath. They rushed to lower her, but at the same moment, they couldn't help shrieking: "Her arms!"
"Her legs!"
Under the thick layers of powder, worm-like shapes wriggled along her joints.
"These are stitch marks—she's been... pieced together..."
The officers could barely get the words out, their eyes bulging with rage.
But as the examination deepened, their faces grew even paler.
Emma's organs had all been hollowed out; she was just a skin shell, draped over a spice-filled metal frame and sewn shut...
Faced with this horror, even the veteran detectives with over twenty years on the job turned away, grimacing.
Young officer Lily Hopper couldn't hold it in—she hurled right there...
Emma was lucky in a way; unlike the other girls who vanished without a body, she was found. But she was also unlucky,
because she'd been turned into a living specimen while still alive.
This was Riverside's first Level S major case: the Lolita Corpse Puppet!
Word was, the officers on the Fairy Tale Lane raid all had nightmares for days.
In the dead of night, they'd dream of being trapped in a freezing dark chamber.
Old medieval tunes floated through the room.
Across from them sat a long-haired, pale, naked girl on a black Gothic iron chair, her back turned.
Hearing strangers, she'd crack—twist her head 180 degrees.
Her eyes were dug out, her vocal cords slashed, her jaw hanging limp, as if pleading: "Please, I want to go home!"
In that instant, the pitch-black chamber lit up, red lights revealing identical naked girls on both sides, tears streaming from empty, bloody sockets—like being stuck in an endless hell.
"Ah!" With a gasp, young officer Lily Hopper jolted awake from the nightmare.
Drenched in sweat, she looked up to see she was in the Riverside PD conference room, brightly lit, with colleagues sitting straight-backed on either side. She let out a long sigh of relief.
They were in the middle of a case briefing meeting, led by Detective Captain Marcus Lane.
Captain Lane was in his early fifties, dressed in a dark uniform, looking a bit like that actor from the movies—tough but stressed out right now.
"Team members, we're down to one month on the deadline to crack this! And you haven't even got a hair off the killer's head! So many girls missing, and the one we found was turned into a twisted doll in the most brutal way possible. You think that badge on your shoulder means nothing?"
The case dragging on had Captain Lane at his wit's end!
As the capital of H State, Riverside had been named "Safest City" for three years running.
But in recent months, a string of baffling disappearances had hit—targeting young women.
Some were on the phone with their boyfriends one second, gone the next.
Others just went for a night jog and never came back.
Some vanished after picking up a package.
A few even disappeared at home, right after opening the door...
It wasn't just Riverside—the nearby Peach Grove and Green Hills were hit too.
So far, nineteen cases had been linked.
Who knew how many more unreported vanishings there were...
With no leads, the state office pulled detectives from several cities to form Task Force 150, but things weren't looking good.
Seeing no one speak up, Captain Lane jabbed at the thick stack of files on the table:
"You've been at this for ages, gathered all this intel—anyone gonna update me on progress?"
A middle-aged detective stood: "Captain, we've given it our all.
The killer's operating across five cities, targeting pretty, single young women with no clear pattern—nothing like the serial cases we've cracked before..."
"We've checked surveillance—either it's glitchy or shows zilch suspicious. We can't babysit every woman out there."
Captain Lane slammed the table: "Excuses! You all strutted in here like hotshot experts—now you're all clammed up?"
He pointed at a young female officer nearby: "And you, Lily Hopper! Snoozing during a briefing? Bold move! You gonna claim you were chasing leads in your dreams?"
Lily snapped to attention with a salute: "Reporting, Captain—I suspect the killer's using a rare 'surrogate killing mode' to pick victims."
"Surrogate killing mode?" The room buzzed with interest.
Lily explained: "It's a term from the FBI— in some serial murders, the killer targets people with specific traits to fulfill their twisted needs.
Like that infamous killer Ted; his victims all had long hair, part in the middle, white, pretty—because his ex dumped him and she fit that profile."
"In our cases, the missing girls are all young, single, living alone, fair-skinned, attractive.
Those must be the killer's surrogate criteria.
But we've only recovered Emma's body so far, and the perp's methods are so elusive, we've got slim leads..."
Over this time, Lily and Task Force 150 had tried everything.
Learning that the girl turned into the 'Lolita Corpse Puppet,'
Emma Hayes, had once reported being spied on from the opposite building with binoculars while showering, Lily immediately led a team to her old apartment and the facing floors for a full sweep—but no suspicious prints, hairs, footprints, or any traces.
"We also reviewed the Whisper Lane cams—everything normal, just her running scared at night, glancing back constantly, but the lane was empty.
In the end, it doesn't feel like a human did this..."
"Not human? You mean a ghost?"
Captain Lane burst out laughing, half-amused, half-exasperated: "We're solid materialists here—hit a tough case and jump to ghosts? Might as well pray to the big guy upstairs."
Days of nonstop work had worn him down; blisters ringed his mouth.
"But Riverside's got its own living legend, right? More effective than any prayer."
"If we can get him on board, this case cracks wide open," young officer Lily Hopper piped up suddenly.
Everyone nodded in sync, eyes lighting up.
Captain Lane blanked for a second: "Who?"
But the next moment, he muttered: "Him?"
Murmurs rippled below as an image formed in Lane's mind: a man with an antique red umbrella, handsome and poised.
This guy had been Riverside's unbeatable myth—helping crack bizarre cases back in college, like the 'Piano Phantom Murders,' 'Human Dumpling Case,' 'Vampire Killings,' 'Lucky Cat Curse,' and more.
It was him who'd built the strongest task force ever, making Riverside the safest spot around.
But then, some accident hit, and in his prime, he announced retirement—ignoring pleas, he disbanded the team himself.
Now, he was tucked away in a quiet corner of Riverside. With Lane's pull, could he really drag him back?
Suddenly, a call came in.
Another girl had gone missing!
The golden window for missing persons is just 48 hours—after that, cops might find a cold body... or nothing at all.
"No way—we gotta bring that legend out of hiding! Even if it costs my pride."
"Only he can solve this in time." Captain Lane calculated silently in his head.