101: Chapter 101 The Green-Light Girl in the Community

"I hope Mr. Stryker doesn't tear you apart too thoroughly."

This sentence had been stored in an independent file for eleven days.

October 26th, 1:09 AM, The Bronx.

Five weeks until the Mutant Registration Act vote.

Yan Zheng did not go to The Bronx in person. He sat at the workbench in the Antique Shop's Underground Room, with a half-finished draft of a stitching plan spread out before him; the pen in his hand hovered at the end of the third line, not yet touching the paper.

His attention was not on the paper.

It was on the second command line of the Mental Link.

The vision of the No. 8 Skeleton Soldier was transmitted back in real-time through the Mental Link. The image carried the grayish-green filter characteristic of Undead Energy; the resolution wasn't high, but it was sufficient.

Three streetlights on Willis Avenue in The Bronx were broken, leaving over a hundred meters of sidewalk plunged in darkness, with only the headlights of passing cars occasionally stretching and shrinking shadows.

No. 8 moved against the outer wall of an apartment building, its skeleton retracted into a stealth form, nearly blending into the wall behind the rusty railings of the fire escape.

Over the past five days, No. 8 had patrolled the edge of The Bronx community for four hours every night, covering three blocks between Willis Avenue and Bruckner Avenue.

The harvest was not great.

To be precise, the harvest was very fragmented.

On the first day, a corpse of a low-level Mutant was found beside a trash heap on the south side of the park. The skin was discolored a purplish-gray; the cause of death was multiple blunt force injuries, a caved-in skull, and a broken baseball bat lay nearby.

The system collected the results: skin discoloration gene, inferior quality.

"The work of anti-Mutant mobs."

Yan Zheng said only this when verifying the results.

On the third day, under a bridge on Bruckner Avenue, No. 8 found the second one. An intermediate-level Mutant, female, in her twenties. There were two circular burn marks on her neck, the spacing of which matched the caliber of the pneumatic injection gun warheads used by Project Purity Agents. But the cause of death wasn't the injection; it was falling from the bridge, landing on the back of her head, with three vertebrae broken.

Suspected of being hunted by Project Purity and falling from the bridge while fleeing.

The system collected: sonic scream gene, good quality.

Yan Zheng: ( ꐦ ˘ ᗜ ˘ )

"Sonic type. It has synergistic potential with Mr. Shooter's resonance module."

The fifth day, the sixth day. Zero harvest. There were fewer and fewer Mutants in the community; those who could run had already run, and those remaining were either hiding underground, not leaving their homes, or had already joined the protection network of The Brotherhood.

The changes on the streets were faster than Yan Zheng had expected.

Of the apartment buildings No. 8 passed on its patrol route, sixty percent of the windows had lights on last week; today, only thirty percent remained.

More and more roll-up doors of ground-floor shops were pulled down, with words spray-painted in red on the door panels.

FREAKS GO HOME.

REGISTER OR DIE.

On another wall, a crude skull was drawn, with "NOT HUMAN" written crookedly underneath.

Yan Zheng saw these graffiti through No. 8's vision and offered no opinion.

He wrote the daily patrol notes on the white paper on his workbench, his handwriting very small.

October 26th. Day six. Community shrinkage rate exceeds one-third. Mutant flight accelerating. Project Purity inspection frequency increased from twice a week to four times a week. Mob incidents frequent but casualty scale controllable. Material output enters a low period.

He put down the pen and stretched, his cervical spine cracking audibly.

"A harvest season cannot be waited for by sitting by a stump."

"The Mutants in the community have all run away; there's nothing left to pick up."

He was just preparing to issue a withdrawal order to No. 8.

In the Mental Link, No. 8's pulse frequency suddenly jumped from a stable 0.5 Hz to 1.2 Hz.

Yan Zheng's fingers paused on the pen.

The view from No. 8's vision shifted angles; the Skeleton Soldier looked down from above the fire escape into a narrow east-west alley. The alley was sandwiched between the walls of apartment buildings, less than two meters wide, with broken bricks and stagnant water on the ground.

At the west end of the alley, four figures moved rapidly.

Running in front was a girl.

She wasn't old, maybe fifteen or sixteen, with black curly hair tied into a ponytail. She was wearing an obviously oversized hoodie, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, revealing slender forearms.

Her hands were glowing.

Green. Not a cold fluorescent green, but a highly saturated vegetative green. The light overflowed from her palms, flickering with the rhythm of her running.

Wherever her feet stepped, weeds in the cracks of the broken bricks grew wildly. Clusters of green shot out from the cracks, the speed visible to the naked eye, as if someone had pressed the fast-forward button.

The three people chasing her behind wore uniform attire.

Black tactical suits, masks, goggles.

Project Purity Agents.

Yan Zheng: ( ꐦ ✧ ‸ ✧ )

The leader held a pneumatic injection gun, the blue ampoule at the muzzle shining with a cold light in the darkness. The two behind carried stun batons, the blue-white electric arcs at the tips crackling.

The girl ran to the middle of the alley and turned back to flick her hand.

The green light left her palm and slammed into the alley floor.

The weeds in the brick cracks instantly surged, growing over a meter high within three seconds, tangling into a dense plant wall that stood between her and the pursuers.

Yan Zheng saw this scene through No. 8's vision, the pen turning half a circle in his fingers.

"Plant manipulation."

"Quality..."

The system panel popped up a line of small gray text in the corner of his vision.

[Long-range passive scan: Mutant X-Gene signal detected. Gene activation level: Upper-intermediate. Ability type: Biological manipulation (Plant subclass). Precise quality requires close-range contact to confirm.]

"Upper-intermediate?"

Yan Zheng's eyes narrowed.

The plant wall only blocked them for five seconds.

The lead Agent raised the pneumatic gun and fired three shots at the thinnest part of the plant wall. The blue ampoules burst against the vines, the inhibitor liquid inside splashing out, causing the parts of the plants it touched to wither and turn black rapidly.

A gap opened.

The three passed through the withered plant wall and continued the chase.

The girl's stamina had reached its limit; the back of her hoodie was soaked with sweat, her steps becoming unsteady. Her right foot stepped into a puddle, causing her to stumble, and her knee hit the broken bricks.

She braced herself against the ground to stand up, the green light on her hands much dimmer than before.

In the Mental Link, Yan Zheng's consciousness hovered above No. 8's perspective, like a camera mounted high up.

Yan Zheng: ( ˵ ꐦ ≖ ⌓ ≖ ˵ )

In the image, the lead Agent raised his gun and aimed at the back of the girl's neck.

Fifteen meters.

Silence for three seconds.

"Mr. No. 8."

Yan Zheng's voice was very soft, audible only to the walls of the Underground Room.

"Stop them."

"Do not kill anyone."

"Just knock those three Agents unconscious."

"Then search them."

"Communication equipment, identification documents, instruments—I want it all."

The Mental Link command traversed the eight-kilometer distance, arriving at No. 8's inscription core after a 0.3-second delay.

No. 8 jumped down from the fire escape.

The sound of the skeleton unfolding echoed in the narrow alley, like a broken chair falling onto the concrete floor.

The moment the lead Agent turned his head, No. 8's bone fist had already smashed into his mask.

The goggles shattered, the mask caved in, and the man slid down against the wall, the pneumatic gun slipping from his hand.

The second Agent's stun baton struck at No. 8's ribs; the blue-white electric arc surged around the skeleton with no effect—the Skeleton Soldier had no nervous system.

No. 8 knocked the stun baton away with its left elbow bone, hooked the fingers of its right hand into the Agent's goggle strap to pull it down, and simultaneously drove its knee into the opponent's abdomen.

The third Agent turned to run.

No. 8's coccyx bone fragments ejected; three rotating bone throwing blades grazed the Agent's scalp and nailed into the wall ahead.

The Agent stopped, his hands shaking so much he couldn't hold the stun baton steady.

No. 8 walked over and punched him in the back of the head, quick and clean.

Twelve seconds, all three people on the ground.

The alley went quiet.

The girl crouched by the puddle, the green light on her hands completely extinguished, her eyes wide as she stared at the bone skeleton in front of her, devoid of any flesh.

Yan Zheng watched her through No. 8's vision.

Yan Zheng: ( ˵ ꐦ ≖ ᗜ ≖ ˵ )

"Mr. No. 8, search them."

"Communication headsets, identification pockets, leg tactical pouches—take it all off."

"Take that injection gun too."

"Don't break the remaining ampoules in the gun; I need to analyze the ingredients."

No. 8 crouched and began to check the three Agents' equipment one by one.

The girl remained crouched in place, not moving, her lips trembling, the scrape on her knee oozing blood.

Yan Zheng watched her reaction and glanced at that line of gray text on the system panel again.

Upper-intermediate. Biological manipulation.

His fingers tapped twice on the workbench surface.

"Mr. No. 8."

"Leave once you're done searching."

"Do not speak to that lady."

"You don't have a mouth, so you can't speak, but I'm afraid you might use your phosphorus fire to wink or make faces at her."

"We are just passing through today."

In the Mental Link, No. 8's green pulse flickered, but its movements didn't stop. It stripped the equipment off the three Agents cleanly: four communication headsets, one of which was a backup. Three tactical pouches. One pneumatic injection gun, with four blue ampoules left in the magazine. A folded, laminated card slid out from the ID pocket on the lead Agent's chest, with a hexagonal eye logo printed on the front.

No. 8 stuffed everything into a tactical waist bag stripped from an Agent, zipped it up, retracted its skeleton back into the stealth form, and retreated along the wall toward the east end of the alley.

The girl's voice came from behind, hoarse and breathless.

"Wait... wait, who are you?"

No. 8 did not look back.

The bone fragments slid along the wall and out of the alley, disappearing into the 2:00 AM darkness of The Bronx.

In the Underground Room, Yan Zheng picked up the cold black tea; only a sip remained at the bottom, the bitterness concentrated to the point of astringency.

"Mr. No. 8, come home."

"The harvest tonight wasn't much, but every single item is worth it."

He finished the tea in one gulp and set down the empty cup.

Yan Zheng: ( ˵ ꐦ ✧ ⌓ ✧ ˵ )

"The equipment from three Project Purity Agents is enough for me to decrypt their communication frequencies and operational codes."

"Once the ingredients of the blue inhibitor in that injection gun are analyzed, I'll be able to know which ability types the current formula is effective against."

"The information on the credentials can help deduce the distribution of their stations."

He picked up the pen and added two new lines to the bottom of the harvest season list.

New entry: Project Purity communication frequencies, pending decryption.

New entry: Mutant inhibitor formula, pending analysis.

Before putting the pen down, he hesitated for half a second and added a line of very, very small text in the blank space at the very bottom of the page.

Note: The Bronx alleyway, female Mutant with plant manipulation ability, upper-intermediate. No contact. Continued observation.

"I cannot actively approach the person."

"But if the Project Purity people chase her again next time."

"On the day she can't escape, whose hands her genes fall into will only depend on whether she gets tied to Mr. Stryker's experimental table or invited to my stitching table."

Yan Zheng closed the list, stood up, and reached out to turn off the desk lamp.

Only the faint glow of the various colored phosphorus fires of his creations remained in the Underground Room.

"I don't care about appearance, only quality."

"Upper-intermediate biological manipulation type."

"This flower is worth waiting a couple more days to see."