99: Chapter 99 The Mutant Demonstration in Midtown

"Note: After someone else pays the bill, I will come to pick up the goods."

This procurement entry had been quietly sitting at the bottom of the list for three weeks, the ink fully dried, the paper slightly yellowed.

October 15th, 2:27 PM.

Yan Zheng sat on the terrace cafe on the 23rd floor of an office building on 6th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. A latte with thick milk foam sat before him; the latte art had already dissipated, and the coffee was half cold.

He was not here to drink coffee.

The terrace faced the intersection of 48th Street and 6th Avenue, offering a wide view that took in the street surface of three city blocks.

On his left lay a pair of civilian binoculars—the 8x Zeiss pair that had been gathering dust in the Antique Shop's Underground Room. The lens barrels were worn, but the optical quality was fine.

Yan Zheng picked up the latte and took a sip. Milk foam stuck to his upper lip, which he wiped away with the corner of a napkin.

There were 20% fewer pedestrians on the street than usual.

Since October, the density of people in Midtown Manhattan had been dropping. It was not because of the weather; with six weeks left until the registration act vote, the media's intensive bombardment had caused ordinary citizens to instinctively avoid the streets near Mutant residential areas.

Yan Zheng: (ꐦ ˘ ͈ ꒳ ˘ ͈)

"Everyone, is it quiet over in The Bronx today?"

In the Mental Link, the No. 8 Skeleton Soldier sent back a faint pulse from the Antique Shop's Underground Room. The frequency was stable, with no abnormalities.

"Quiet is good."

He raised the binoculars to his eyes and turned the focus wheel half a turn; the texture of the 48th Street road surface became clear in the lens.

He was not in Midtown today to drink coffee or go shopping.

Old Jack had only said one sentence in his call last night.

"Boss Yan, something might happen in Midtown tomorrow afternoon. The people from The Brotherhood are making moves."

Yan Zheng did not ask for details. Old Jack's intelligence network did not cover the core of The Brotherhood; being able to smell the wind changing in advance was already his limit.

2:31 PM.

In the binocular lens, the storefront sign of a six-story commercial building in the middle of 48th Street came into view.

WNBC News New York branch.

This TV station had done a special program last month with a very blunt title—'Mutant Threat: Your Neighbor Might Be a Bomb.' After the program aired, their ratings tripled, and it also resulted in over seventy broken windows and twelve attempted arson cases in Mutant communities in The Bronx and Flushing.

Yan Zheng moved the binoculars down half a degree. The sidewalk in front of the WNBC building was normal; two delivery riders were parking on the side of the road, and a woman in a gray trench coat was on the phone.

2:35 PM.

The sound of metal friction came from the west end of 48th Street.

It was not a normal sound; the frequency was low, carrying a resonance that penetrated the airflow layer between the office building's glass curtain wall and the terrace railing, drilling directly into his eardrums.

Yan Zheng put down his coffee cup.

The binoculars turned toward the source of the sound.

Three cars parked on the side of the road were moving.

It was not that someone was driving them away; the car bodies themselves were moving.

A silver Toyota Camry slid sideways out of its parking space, its chassis thirty centimeters off the ground, its four wheels spinning in mid-air. The entire car drifted slowly along the 48th Street road surface toward the WNBC building.

The second was a black Ford Explorer, rising from the opposite lane, its doors crumpled by an invisible force in mid-air, caving inward.

The third was a white delivery van with a dry cleaner's logo on the side. It flipped upside down and flew horizontally at a height of two meters.

The three cars landed one after another on the sidewalk in front of the WNBC building, stacking into a two-meter-high metal roadblock.

The silver Camry was crushed at the very bottom, its hood folded into a V-shape, and coolant flowed out from the broken radiator, pooling into a green puddle on the sidewalk.

Yan Zheng: (ꐦ ✧ ⌓ ✧)

Screams began on the street.

Pedestrians scattered to both sides, the delivery riders abandoned their electric bikes and ran, and the woman in the gray trench coat dropped her phone, shattering the screen.

Three people walked out from the west end of 48th Street.

Walking at the front was a short, stocky man in his early twenties with explosive red-brown hair, wearing a dark green leather jacket. His hands were in his pockets, and his pace was very slow, but with every step he took, the fire hydrant on the side of the road shook, the manhole cover trembled, and all metal objects within twenty meters emitted a faint humming sound.

Metal Manipulation.

Yan Zheng's binoculars lingered on this person for two extra seconds.

"Chromium."

He searched the list of peripheral members of The Brotherhood that Old Jack had given him in his mind.

Todd, nicknamed Chromium. A mid-level Metal Manipulation Mutant, a low-ranking follower of Magneto. He had a violent temper and handled things crudely. He ranked low within The Brotherhood, but his raw talent for magnetic field manipulation was not low.

Behind Chromium to the left was a tall, thin woman with short silver-white hair. A large white patch covered half her face. She wore a black tactical bodysuit and walked without making a sound.

To the right was a younger boy, looking about eighteen or nineteen, with bare hands. His fingertips glowed with a dark red light, and the skin around his nails was charred as if it had been burned.

The three people walked to the front of the roadblock and stopped.

Chromium pulled his right hand out of his pocket, his palm facing the main entrance of the WNBC building.

The building's metal revolving door began to deform, the door shaft twisted into a twist, the glass shattered, and shards fell to the ground with a clatter.

"Ladies and gentlemen!"

Chromium's voice was loud, carrying a deliberate sense of drama, shouting at the pedestrians dodging on both sides of the street and the media reporters who had already started setting up their equipment.

"WNBC said last month that Mutants are bombs? Well, today we're going to ask you to your faces—who exactly is the bomb!"

The silver-white haired woman did not speak, just raised one hand, pointing at the second-floor window of the building. The metal blinds inside the window frame split as if cut by a chainsaw, and fragments flew out and landed on the street.

The fire alarm began to ring inside the WNBC building.

Employees started running out from the side doors and fire escapes.

Yan Zheng put down the binoculars and rubbed the red mark on the bridge of his nose left by the lens barrel.

He put the binoculars into his canvas bag and picked up the latte to take another sip.

It was ice cold, and the bitterness overpowered the milky taste.

"Metal Manipulation."

He rolled the three words over his tongue again.

Yan Zheng: (˵ ꐦ ✧ ᗜ ✧ ˵)

The sound of sirens began to intensify on the street in the distance. Three NYPD patrol cars turned from 6th Avenue onto 48th Street, but were forced to stop in front of the roadblock.

The Police got out of the cars and drew their guns, shouting at Chromium.

Chromium did not even look at them. He waved his left hand, and the doors of the three patrol cars popped open simultaneously. The onboard computers and dashboards sparked, and the engines stalled.

The standoff lasted for fifteen minutes.

A SWAT armored vehicle circled around from the direction of 7th Avenue, and the sniper on the roof aimed at Chromium's head.

But the bullets could not reach him.

There was an invisible magnetic field barrier three meters in front of Chromium. SWAT test-fired two rounds, and the bullets deflected ninety degrees in mid-air, embedding themselves into the road surface.

Two hours.

The standoff lasted for two hours.

Yan Zheng changed his sitting posture twice on the terrace, refilled his cup with hot water to mix with the cold coffee, and saw the entire situation on 48th Street clearly.

At 4:30 PM, a team of personnel in black uniforms appeared from the south end of 6th Avenue.

Two dark gray tactical vans stopped outside the cordon, and twelve people got out.

Uniform black tactical gear, masks, goggles, tactical boots.

The weapons in their hands were not conventional.

Yan Zheng raised the binoculars again.

The first group of four was holding short-barreled devices with dish antenna arrays at the end of the barrels. They were all gray and had no sights—EMP emitters, no aiming required, area-of-effect damage.

The second group of four carried pneumatic injection guns, with translucent blue ampoules loaded in the tubular magazines.

The third group of four deployed portable signal jamming devices on the perimeter.

Yan Zheng: (ꐦ ≖ ‸ ≖)

"Not SWAT. Not FBI."

After the twelve-man tactical team entered 48th Street, there was no shouting, no warning. The first group opened fire directly.

The sound of the dish antennas emitting pulses did not sound like gunfire; it was a dull hum, and one could see heat-wave-like distorted ripples in the air.

The pulses hit the magnetic field barrier around Chromium.

The effect was very direct.

Chromium's body jerked violently, his red-brown hair exploded as if from static electricity, and he fell to his knees, clutching his head with both hands. The magnetic field barrier collapsed under the pulse interference, and the three floating cars on the roadblock lost control, crashing back to the ground with a bang.

The second group's pneumatic injection guns fired simultaneously.

The blue ampoules struck the silver-white haired woman's neck and the young boy's thigh.

Both collapsed to the ground in the same second, and the light at their fingertips extinguished.

Inhibitor.

From the pulse firing to all three being subdued, it took a total of eleven seconds.

Yan Zheng moved the binoculars from his left eye to his right, turned the focus wheel to maximum magnification, and locked onto the emblem on the chests of the twelve people's uniforms.

A hexagon with an open eye embedded in the center, the pupil part having a silver-gray metallic texture.

He had never seen this emblem before.

It was not the eagle emblem of S.H.I.E.L.D., not the star shield of the FBI, not the compass of the CIA.

Yan Zheng's fingertips paused on the binocular's focus wheel for three seconds.

In the lens, the three Mutants were dragged into an armored transport vehicle. The doors closed, and the electromagnetic locks clicked shut.

The armored vehicle started up and did not head north—the nearest Police station and federal detention center were to the north.

The vehicle headed south, drove down 6th Avenue toward downtown, turned right at the 34th Street intersection, and disappeared into the entrance of the tunnel heading west.

Heading out of the city.

Yan Zheng put away the binoculars, shoved them into his canvas bag, stood up, and zipped up his jacket.

He was the only one left on the terrace; the other customers had run away after the sirens started, and the cafe waiter was huddled behind the indoor counter, scrolling through his phone.

Yan Zheng: (˵ ꐦ ≖ ⌓ ≖ ˵)

"Mr. Chromium, your Metal Manipulation was suppressed in eleven seconds."

He walked into the elevator and pressed the button for the first floor.

"The quality is above average, but it's still several orders of magnitude away from true magnetic field control."

The elevator doors closed, and the floor numbers jumped downward.

"However, that unit's EMP weapons are more targeted than E.S.S.'s blue-light rifles."

"Specifically designed to counter Metal Manipulation."

"Specifically designed to counter Mutants."

The elevator reached the first floor, and the doors opened.

Before stepping out, Yan Zheng tapped his finger lightly on the elevator door frame.

"And that emblem."

"A hexagon, an eye."

"Those three people were taken out of the city, not to the Police station, not to the court."

He walked out of the office building lobby and merged into the crowd still rioting on 6th Avenue.

"Where did they go?"