96: Chapter 96 Scanning the Underground Gathering

"The title shall be — The Registration Act Harvest Season."

He had started compiling this list on September 9th, and by September 17th, it was already two and a half pages long.

Yan Zheng set his fountain pen back into the pen slot and picked up the new intelligence Old Jack had delivered yesterday; an address was written on the paper.

The Bronx, west of Henry Hudson Parkway, an abandoned synagogue.

September 17th, 9:40 PM.

Yan Zheng stood in the shadows of an apartment building on the corner opposite the church, his hat brim pulled down to his brow, the zipper of his black jacket pulled up to his chin, his soles treading on fragments of flyers scattered by the wind on the sidewalk.

The night in The Bronx was quieter than in Hells Kitchen, but the way it was quiet was different.

Hells Kitchen was the kind of quiet where knives were hidden in pockets.

Here, it was the kind of quiet where all the curtains were drawn tight.

The church's main entrance was sealed with sheet metal, but the side door was half-open, with people coming and going, their footsteps muffled.

The changes on the street were more visceral than what Old Jack had described.

Walking through three blocks, Yan Zheng saw seven shops with "Closed" signs hanging up, the first-floor windows of two apartment buildings boarded up, and a moving company's box truck parked on the side of the road, its cargo bed stuffed with cardboard boxes and mattresses, the owner sitting in the driver's seat smoking, the red dot of the cigarette ember blinking in the darkness.

Yan Zheng: ( ꐦ ˘ ͈ ꒳ ˘ ͈ )

"Moving business is booming."

"But you can move people, you can't move the X-Gene."

A young man stood at the side entrance of the church, wearing a hoodie with the hood up, the fingertips of his right hand glowing with a faint purple fluorescence in the darkness, verifying the identity of everyone entering.

Yan Zheng did not use the main entrance.

He climbed the fire escape of the apartment building to the third floor, crossed the rooftop, and jumped onto the roof of the abandoned commercial building next to the church.

Most of the church's stained glass was shattered, the remaining pieces covered with newspaper and plastic sheets, but one of the skylights near the roof ridge was still half-open, and sounds leaked out from inside.

Yan Zheng lay on the edge of the commercial building's roof, about eight meters horizontally and two stories vertically from the skylight.

It was hard to hear clearly.

But the system panel could scan.

He placed his palm flat on the concrete surface of the roof, and Undead Energy extended from his fingertips toward the church.

It wasn't an intrusion, just a passive scan.

[Biological signal detection in progress...]

[Mutant X-Gene signals within range: 32.]

[Genetic activation level distribution: 24 Low-level, 5 Mid-level, 0 High-level, 3 Unidentifiable.]

Yan Zheng: ( ˵ ꐦ ≖ ⌓ ≖ ˵ )

"Thirty-two people, five Mid-level."

"The remaining twenty-four are too sparse to even use as filler for a Skeleton Soldier."

"Those three unidentifiable ones are interesting, though."

The voices inside the church grew louder; someone was speaking, their voice loud and carrying an inciting rhythm.

Yan Zheng turned his head to face his right ear toward the skylight.

"...The federal government wants to register us and assign us numbers—what's the difference between that and tagging livestock?"

Applause.

Scattered, but with a hungry intensity.

"Professor Xavier tells us to be patient, to use peaceful means to negotiate with Congress. How many years have we been talking? What has it achieved? It achieved Weapon X! It achieved mandatory registration! It achieved our children being stopped on the street and scanned with instruments!"

This time, the applause was much more uniform.

"Magneto is right—they won't give us our rights unless we take them back ourselves. The Brotherhood is willing to provide sanctuary to all Mutants, but the prerequisite for sanctuary is that you must stand up and resist!"

Yan Zheng tapped his fingers lightly on the concrete surface twice.

"A peripheral representative of The Brotherhood."

"Not a core member; their voice is too loud. Core members don't need to shout slogans in an underground church."

"But this shows that Magneto's recruitment network has already spread to The Bronx."

Someone else spoke up in the church, their voice thin and laced with tears.

"My daughter is eight years old this year. Last month, her skin started changing color. The school teacher called the Police, and after the Police arrived—"

The voice cut off.

Someone was comforting her.

Another voice took over, a middle-aged man with a hoarse throat.

"I've run a grocery store in Flushing for twelve years. Last week, three people in plain clothes came in, scanned me with an instrument, and left without saying a word. The next day, my shop's windows were smashed, and red paint was sprayed on the glass saying 'Get out of New York'."

Yan Zheng didn't continue listening to this.

His attention returned to the system panel, marking the location and wave characteristics of those five Mid-level signals one by one.

"Five Mid-level."

"Two are energy-based, one is physical enhancement-based, one is sensory expansion-based, and one has a very mixed wave pattern, like a composite type."

Yan Zheng: ( ꐦ ˘ ᗜ ˘ )

"The quality is above average. If I can collect them intact, it's enough to make the main material for two sets of elite-level filler layers."

"But not now."

He withdrew his Undead Energy, sat up, leaned his back against the low wall of the roof, and looked up at the night sky of The Bronx.

The cloud layer was low, the orange light of the street lamps reflected back to the ground, and the sky was pressed under a layer of murky, warm color.

The gathering in the church continued, the voices becoming noisier; some were arguing, some were crying.

Yan Zheng stood up, brushed the dust off his pant legs, and prepared to return the way he came.

When he reached the edge of the roof, he paused.

His gaze turned to the street directly opposite the church.

Two dark sedans.

Parked where the streetlights couldn't reach, their car bodies gleaming with a dark grey luster in the faint reflection—not black, but that government-procured color shade deliberately designed to avoid excessive reflection.

The passenger window of the front car was cracked open, and something was sticking out from the gap.

A telephoto lens.

It was quite large in diameter, with an anti-reflective honeycomb hood on the rim of the lens, pointing toward the church's side door, the angle perfectly covering the faces of everyone entering and exiting.

The person in the driver's seat of the rear car was holding binoculars, with a tablet computer resting on their knee in their other hand, the blue light of the screen reflecting onto their chin.

Yan Zheng: ( ꐦ ✧ ‸ ✧ )

"Not Weapon X people."

Old Jack had described the characteristics of the remaining Weapon X cleanup personnel—military boots, encrypted headsets, groups of three to five, black SUVs.

These two cars were standard government official vehicles, four-door sedans, with no antenna arrays on the roof but signs of modifications in the trunk, larger-than-average exhaust pipes, and reinforced chassis.

The number of people was also wrong.

There were only two people in each car, their movements quiet, with no traces of tactical formation, more like intelligence gathering than an arrest.

Yan Zheng crouched back behind the low wall, pulled his phone from his jacket pocket, switched to camera mode, turned off the flash, and poked the lens out through a gap in the low wall.

He took a picture of the front car's license plate, and then the rear car's license plate.

There were no markings on the car doors, but when the front passenger was changing lenses, half a cuff was exposed, with a reflection on the cufflinks—metallic, not the luster of an ornament.

No. 8 Skeleton Soldier received the command via Mental Link and started the data terminal in the Antique Shop's Underground Room.

Yan Zheng sent the license plate numbers through the Mental Link, and No. 8 began the comparison.

"Mr. Jack said these people have been active frequently in the last three weeks."

"Weapon X's cleanup teams use military equipment; this group uses intelligence equipment."

"Two groups of people, two lines, two purposes."

The gathering broke up.

People came out of the church's side door one after another, hurrying, most of them walking fast with their heads down.

The young man with the purple light who was verifying identities at the door came out last, looked back at the empty interior of the church, and pulled the side door shut.

The telephoto lenses and binoculars in the two sedans were never put away.

Yan Zheng waited on the roof for twenty minutes, until the last Mutant disappeared around the street corner, before the two sedans started up one after another, without turning on their headlights, and drove south along Henry Hudson Parkway.

The sound of the engines blended into the night wind of The Bronx, and three seconds later, it was gone.

In the Mental Link, No. 8's pulse jumped twice.

The comparison results were back.

Yan Zheng looked at the information forwarded by the system panel, his thumb rubbing along the edge of his phone screen twice.

"Sentinel Program preliminary assessment team."

He rolled these words over his tongue.

"Sentinel."

Yan Zheng: ( ꐦ ≖ ‸ ≖ )

The light from the phone screen shone on his gold-rimmed glasses, the lenses reflecting a cold, blue-white light.

"Sentinel."

"Giant robots specifically designed to hunt down Mutants."

"The federal government isn't just wanting to register Mutants; they are already evaluating the mass production of hunting tools."

"The Registration Act is the fishhook, the Sentinel Program is the fishing net."

The wind on the roof grew stronger, blowing open his jacket collar, and cold air poured into the back of his neck.

Yan Zheng put his phone into his pocket, zipped his jacket all the way up, and climbed down the fire escape to the street level.

The streets of The Bronx were empty, save for the orange light of the street lamps and the scattered fragments of flyers all over the ground.

He bent down to pick one up; the surface of the paper had been stepped on by a shoe sole, leaving half a mud print.

Magneto's signature was half-obscured by mud.

Yan Zheng folded the flyer, stuffed it into his pocket, and walked toward the subway station.

"Sentinel Program."

"If this thing goes into production, the first batch of hunted Mutant corpses will appear in large numbers on the streets of New York."

"The federal government does the preliminary screening for me."

"The Brotherhood does the gathering for me."

"The Sentinel does the harvesting for me."

His pace did not quicken, his soles making a rhythmic, short sound as they stepped over the sidewalk seams.

Yan Zheng: ( ˵ ꐦ ≖ ᗜ ≖ ˵ )

"But before that, I need to confirm one thing."

"When exactly will the Sentinel be released?"

"And whether its alloy shell is worth collecting."