122: Chapter 122 Harvesting in the Melee

"The show has begun."

The opening act was the Plasma Mutant.

The tall, thin man leading them pushed his arms forward. Purple arcs of light between his fingers detached from his fingertips, spreading out in a fan shape and sweeping toward the main entrance of the registration office.

Cyclops's visor beam cut out first. The red focused ray obliquely intercepted the right wing of the plasma fan. The two energy sources collided in mid-air, and the shockwave overturned two metal fence posts at the registration office entrance.

Storm's eyes turned white. The clouds over the plaza gathered and tightened within three seconds. A bolt of lightning struck the ground between the Plasma Mutant and the van behind him, sending gravel flying over a dozen meters.

The Plasma Mutant rolled to the left to dodge, and a second wave of purple light arcs had already gathered at his fingertips.

The Brotherhood's super-strength type gave up on long-range combat entirely. His two thick legs shattered the concrete pavement beneath him, and he charged toward the main entrance of the registration office.

Colossus jumped down from the steps and blocked the center of the entrance.

The sound of their collision echoed back and forth across the plaza. Colossus's heels plowed two half-meter-long grooves into the concrete, but he did not budge an inch.

The super-strength type's fists slammed into Colossus's chest, producing a deep metallic resonance from his armored skin. Colossus grunted, locked his arms around the opponent's wrists, and pressed down.

Yan Zheng stood at the second-floor window, watching the melee unfold. He used his fingertips to spin a scalpel half a turn inside his pocket.

The Project Purity Agents did not side with anyone.

The sixteen figures in deep blue tactical gear split into three groups. A group of six opened fire on the remaining three members of The Brotherhood, the trajectories of the inhibitor ampoules trailing white smoke in the air. A group of four circled to the flanks of the X-Men to provide containment and vigilance, and another group of six began driving away the civilian Mutants in the plaza.

Driving them away was not protection.

Yan Zheng saw it clearly: those six Agents were herding the Mutants toward the armored vans, and the rear doors of the armored vans had long been open.

Yan Zheng: (ꐦ≖‸≖)

"Herding sheep."

The melee lasted for eleven minutes.

The Brotherhood's dynamic barrier type lost his shield sustain during Storm's third lightning strike, and an inhibitor ampoule hit his thigh two seconds later.

The super-speed type ran back and forth seven times under Cyclops's beam tracking but couldn't find a breakthrough. On the eighth lap, he was slapped to the ground from the side by Colossus and took a dose of inhibitor to the neck.

The Metal Manipulation type was the weakest of the five. He tried to pull a lamppost to smash into the registration office, but his weakened Metal Manipulation couldn't even budge the Base bolts of the lamppost, and he was tackled from behind by two Project Purity Agents.

The Plasma Mutant and the super-strength type were the last to fall.

At the fourteenth minute, the Plasma Mutant unleashed a full-power blast. The purple beam of light melted a two-meter-diameter hole through the registration office's main entrance and half of the exterior wall.

The price was that the skin on his own arms from fingertips to elbows was completely charred and cracked. Relying on his final momentum, he ran twenty meters toward the perimeter of the plaza, his knees gave out, and he collapsed next to a scrapped SUV.

The super-strength type gained the upper hand once in his hand-to-hand combat with Colossus, throwing Colossus into a Project Purity armored van, denting half of the vehicle's body.

But Colossus stood up again.

By the end of the second round of hand-to-hand combat, the super-strength type's right knee joint had been kicked into a reverse bend by Colossus. After falling to the ground, he was immobilized by a low-power beam from Cyclops.

Yan Zheng: (˵ꐦ≖ᗜ≖˵)

"It's over."

He put down the phone he had been holding. The screen had recorded fourteen minutes of video; the quality wasn't great, but the angle allowed him to see the whole scene clearly.

The state of the plaza: the registration office's main entrance was ruined, and a corner of the outer wall had collapsed. Of the three Project Purity vans, one was dented, and another had its roof antenna struck by lightning and was smoking. The ground was littered with gravel and scorch marks, scattered with empty inhibitor bottles and several pools of mysterious blood.

The X-Men had secured three of the five Brotherhood members, and Cyclops was handling the handover with the Police who had arrived at the scene.

Colossus sat on the steps, a fist-sized dent in the armored skin of his left forearm, while Storm crouched nearby, contacting someone on her communicator.

But Yan Zheng was not paying attention to them.

He was paying attention to two other people.

The Plasma Mutant, collapsed next to the SUV on the perimeter of the plaza; no one was bothering with him.

The X-Men's attention was on the civilians inside the building, and the Project Purity Agents were clearing the area. The Brotherhood member lying on the ground twenty meters away with charred arms was not on anyone's priority list for the moment.

And the super-strength type, left in the south-central part of the plaza by Colossus after his right knee was bent backward, seven meters away from the nearest Project Purity armored van.

Yan Zheng's Mental Link pulsed three times.

The green dots of three Skeleton Soldiers began to move from their standby positions.

"Mr. No. 8, target: the Plasma Mutant next to the SUV in the southeast corner of the plaza. Emerge from the B-zone maintenance shaft, approach along the shadowed side of the building, four-minute window."

"Mr. No. 9, stand by on the perimeter for support."

"Mr. No. 10, target: the super-strength type Mutant on the south side of the plaza. Take the main sewer pipe to the C-zone exit, fifteen meters from the target, wait for my signal."

The green pulses flashed three times simultaneously.

Yan Zheng walked down the café stairs, pushed open the side door, and entered the adjacent alley.

There were no cameras in the alley; he had scouted the location three weeks ago.

The image in the Mental Link split into two screens.

No. 8's perspective: The iron cover of the maintenance shaft was pushed open a crack, and the Skeleton Soldier's upper body tilted out from the gap to observe the target's position. The Plasma Mutant was lying next to the SUV's chassis, face down, the charred skin on his arms emitting white steam in the cold air. His chest was still heaving, but the movement was very shallow.

Yan Zheng: (ꐦ✧ᗜ✧)

Still alive, but he wouldn't last long.

No. 10's perspective: Behind the drainage grate of the C-zone exit, the target was lying on the ground fifteen meters away, his right leg bent at an uncomfortable angle. Two Project Purity Agents were walking toward him, holding metal restraints.

Yan Zheng's footsteps stopped.

"Mr. No. 10, wait."

The two Agents walked up to the super-strength type. One of them knelt down, checked his carotid artery, and then looked up and said something to his companion.

The companion shook his head.

The one kneeling pulled out a communicator and said a string of words.

Thirty seconds later, a Project Purity armored van backed up, the rear hatch opened, and the two Agents, each taking an arm, dragged and hauled the super-strength type into the vehicle.

The door closed.

The van's engine sound revved from idle to driving range, and it slowly drove out of the plaza.

Yan Zheng stood in the alley, the scalpel stopping between his fingers.

"They didn't kill him."

"A combatant of The Brotherhood who has lost the ability to act, with a shattered knee joint—they could have easily executed him on the spot and reported it as a battlefield kill."

"But they chose to capture him alive."

The system panel popped up a tracking notification.

[Super-strength type Mutant X-Gene signal is moving away. Current direction: Northwest. Moving speed: 35 km/h. Method of transport: Vehicle.]

Yan Zheng: (˵ꐦ≖⌓≖˵)

"Mr. System, mark this vehicle's movement trajectory and track it until the signal disappears."

[Marked. Tracking.]

"Mr. No. 8, status of the target."

In No. 8's perspective, the Plasma Mutant's chest movement stopped.

The corresponding signal on the panel jumped directly from dark red to gray.

[Target deceased. Plasma release gene signal confirmed terminated. Material quality assessment: High-level. Collectible.]

"Do it."

It took only two seconds for No. 8's skeleton frame to fully crawl out of the maintenance shaft. It crawled along the ground to the SUV, locked its petrified arms around the corpse's torso, and dragged and rolled it back into the maintenance shaft.

From exiting the shaft to re-entering, a total of nineteen seconds.

Yan Zheng glanced toward the plaza; no one noticed this side.

Everyone's eyes were on the semi-collapsed registration office and the X-Men's jet.

"Mr. No. 9, are there any other collectible targets on the perimeter?"

No. 9's scan feedback came through the Mental Link: there was a gray signal point behind the fence ruins on the west side of the plaza, located among a pile of overturned municipal trash cans.

The panel added a line.

[New deceased target: one Project Purity Agent. Cause of death: Plasma shockwave, chest burns. No X-Gene. Quality: Common. Applicable direction: Grunt-level expansion.]

"Mr. No. 9, collect that one too."

The green pulse acknowledged.

Yan Zheng leaned against the brick wall of the alley and put the scalpel back into his pocket.

The temperature of the wall transferred from the bricks into his back, uniformly cold.

"Fourteen minutes of melee, one Plasma Mutant corpse in hand, one Project Purity Agent corpse in hand."

"The super-strength type was captured alive and taken away by Project Purity."

He chewed on this fact in his mind three times.

"Project Purity is collecting living people."

"Not killing them and disposing of the bodies, but taking them away alive."

"Where are they taking them? What for?"

Yan Zheng's fingers found his old phone in his coat pocket. He pulled it out and sent a message to Liu Kun.

"Help me check if Project Purity has any facilities in the northwest direction of New York. Military Base, research institute, converted warehouse, anything works. Today, one of their vans transported a living Mutant in that direction."

After sending it, he put the phone back into his pocket.

Yan Zheng: (˵ꐦ✧ᗜ✧˵)

He walked out of the alley, circled two blocks back to the main road, and blended into the crowd evacuating from the plaza.

Fire trucks driving against the flow drove past him, their sirens bouncing back and forth between the buildings.

In the Mental Link, No. 8 and No. 9 had already retreated into the sewer system with their two hauls.

The final harvest list popped up on the panel.

[Harvest from this operation.]

[Material 1: Plasma release gene, quality High-level. Extremely high material value.]

[Material 2: Project Purity Agent remains, no X-Gene, quality Common. Grunt-level expansion.]

[Not collected (taken away alive): super-strength type Mutant, quality Medium-High level. Transport direction marked and tracking.]

One high-level, one common, one stolen.

Yan Zheng walked among the crowd, his gold-rimmed glasses refracting a white arc in the low-angle sunlight of the winter afternoon.

Stolen.

This word made the corners of his mouth curl, not much, but it held for five seconds.

"Mr. Stryker's people are snatching living captives on the battlefield."

"Yan is collecting corpses on the battlefield."

"One snatches the living, one collects the dead."

The scalpel bumped against the outside of his thigh in his pocket, the metal felt solid and cold.

"This is an interesting competitive landscape."

"But Mr. Stryker, your van drove to the northwest."

"What kind of place in the northwest can hold all the Mutants you've snatched from all over New York?"

His footsteps stepped over the edge of a puddle, his soles didn't get wet, and his stride remained stable at seventy centimeters per step.

"Mr. System, perform a preliminary analysis of the plasma gene tonight."

"I have been waiting a long time for high-level energy release material."

The panel acknowledged.

Yan Zheng cut through the crowd and walked into the subway station entrance.

As the steps extended downward, the sunlight overhead was cut off inch by inch by the concrete ceiling.

"Also, create a separate file for the tracking data of that van."

"No matter how many living Mutants Mr. Stryker has taken in, sooner or later, they will have to come out in another form."

"At that time, the quality of those things won't just be stopping at Medium-High level."