American comics: I am full of martial virtues and I love to be kind to others.

"I have other things to do."

Breakfast was served—fried eggs, bacon, toast, and a pile of golden hash browns. The three ate in silence while the restaurant radio played an old country song, the singer singing in a nasal voice about the highway and something far away.

After breakfast, they set off again. Utah's Highway 70 winds its way through red canyons, its towering cliffs casting deep shadows in the midday sun. The highway, like a gray serpent, meanders through these geological scars carved by rivers millions of years ago.

They maintained a regular shift rotation—one person drove for three to four hours, and the other rested. Kevin spent most of his time sitting silently in the back seat, occasionally asking a question or two, but mostly staring out the window in a daze.

In the afternoon, they entered Colorado.

The Rocky Mountains rose sharply on the western horizon like the spine of the earth. They drove along Highway 70, traversing Glenwood Canyon, the road winding along the Colorado River through the steep canyon, the water churning hundreds of feet below with a faint roar. The canyon walls were greyish-brown limestone, sparsely covered with sparse spruce and aspen trees, their golden leaves rustling in the autumn wind.

Everything seemed to be going according to plan.

Then, in the plains of eastern Colorado, things started to go wrong.

They had just passed through the Denver suburbs and entered Highway 76 heading northeast. It was a little past six in the evening, and the sun was slowly sinking below the western horizon, painting the entire sky a deep blood orange. The wheat fields on the plains took on a deep golden hue in the twilight, and the silhouettes of several barns in the distance looked like black cubes rising from the earth.

Diana was driving. Lynn was leaning back in the passenger seat, her phone connected to the car charger, displaying an offline map on the screen.

Suddenly, he noticed something in the rearview mirror.

A dark gray Dodge Challenger had been following them for at least fifteen minutes, about two hundred meters behind. The car maintained perfect synchronization with their speed—it accelerated when they accelerated, and slowed down when they slowed down, always keeping a respectful but not too close distance.

“The Dodge in the back,” Lynn said.

Diana's eyes flashed to the rearview mirror, and she looked for two seconds. "The gray one? I noticed it; it's been behind us ever since we left Denver."

Have you tried changing gears?

"I've tried it. When I reduced it to sixty, it also reduced; when I increased it to eighty, it caught up. It's not a coincidence."

Lynn's stomach clenched. "Our whereabouts have been compromised."

"How could that be? I haven't contacted anyone, and my phone was switched off as soon as I left Renault."

Lynn was silent for a few seconds. His mind raced through every possible leak—the hotel reception? The gas station's surveillance footage? Or was there a problem with Frank?
No. He suddenly thought of a simpler, yet more terrifying, possibility.

“Kevin,” he turned to look at the back seat, “where’s your phone?”

Kevin, who was dozing in the back seat, was startled awake by his voice. "What?"

"Is your phone turned off?"

Kevin's expression changed. He pulled his phone out of his pocket—the screen was lit, the signal was full, and various applications were running in the background.

"I...I forgot."

“Oh my God,” Diana uttered through gritted teeth.

Lynn snatched Kevin's phone, pressed the power button to force it to shut down, then rolled down the car window and threw the phone out. The small black cube drew an arc in the twilight, bounced twice in the roadside grass, and disappeared from sight.

“Couldn’t you have reminded him?” Diana glanced at Lynn.

“It was my oversight,” Lynn admitted. He turned back to look in the rearview mirror. The gray Dodge Challenger was still following at a leisurely pace, even appearing to have gotten slightly closer.

“Speed ​​up,” Lynn said.

Diana stepped on the gas, and the Ford Taurus's engine roared to life, the speed climbing from seventy miles per hour to ninety. The highway on the plain was as straight as a ruler, and the wheat fields on either side rushed past.

The Dodge behind reacted immediately. Its front end dipped sharply, and its engine let out a deep roar, like an enraged beast, its speed surging as it closed the distance between the two vehicles with an unsettling ease.

150 meters. 100 meters. 80 meters.

“It’s getting closer.” Diana’s voice remained steady, but her knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel too tightly.

“It won’t do it on the highway,” Lynn said. “Too many witnesses. It’s waiting for us to get to a secluded spot.”

"Then we won't go to remote places."

"This road continues for another twenty miles or so into Nebraska, and that stretch is basically no man's land."

Diana's lips pressed into a thin line. "What should we do?"

Lynn glanced at the gray Dodge in the rearview mirror. The glare from the windshield obscured his view of the interior, but he had a gut feeling—an intuition honed from fourteen years of law enforcement experience and countless brushes with death.

The things in that car were not ordinary people.

“Stop the car,” he said.

"What?"

"Find an open space and park."

Diana glared at him. "Are you crazy?"

“Listen to me,” Lynn’s voice was low, but with an undeniable firmness, “if we keep running, it will choose the time and place that is in its favor. But if we stop, we seize the initiative. We choose the battlefield.”

"You think the two of us plus a Glock can take down a mutant?"

"I don't know. But it's better than being forced into a ditch at 100 miles per hour."

Diana was silent for a few seconds. A fork in the road appeared ahead, an unpaved dirt road leading to a farm that looked like it had been abandoned for many years. Several dilapidated wooden buildings—barns, windmills, fences—stood as crumbling silhouettes in the twilight.

“There,” Lynn pointed.

Diana jerked the steering wheel, and the Ford Taurus roared off the highway, kicking up a cloud of dust, and lurched onto the dirt road. The Dodge behind followed without hesitation, turning off as well.

They stopped in front of the barn at the abandoned farm. Lynn pushed open the car door, grabbed a Glock and two spare magazines from the trunk, and put on his bulletproof vest. Before the buckle was fully fastened, he turned around to face the dirt road.

Diana got out of the driver's seat, her sidearm—a SIG P320—in her hand. She walked around to the front of the car and crouched behind the hood for cover.

“Kevin, stay in the car and don’t come out,” Lynn shouted.

Kevin huddled in the back seat, his face pale, his hands gripping the straps of his backpack so tightly that his fingernails were almost digging into the nylon fabric.

The gray Dodge Challenger slowly drove into the farm's open space. The engine shut off, the headlights went out, and everything fell into a brief silence.

Dusk was deepening. The western sky still held a last vestige of orange-red, but the east had already been shrouded in an indigo veil. The wheat fields around the abandoned farm rustled softly in the evening breeze, and a few crows took flight from the roof of the barn, cawing as they disappeared into the dark sky.

The Dodge's door opened.

A tall, thin man stepped out of the driver's seat, or rather, a figure roughly humanoid. He wore a long black trench coat, but the silhouette beneath it was odd—his shoulders were too broad, his arms too long, and his proportions were subtly and unsettlingly off-center from the human form. His skin took on an unnatural grayish-white hue in the twilight, as if coated with a thin layer of lime.

But what's most unsettling is his eyes.

Those eyes had no irises, no pupils—the entire eyeball was a uniform, flowing silver, like two drops of mercury embedded in the eye sockets, reflecting everything around them, yet revealing no emotion.

He stood next to Dodge, tilting his head and scrutinizing Lynn and Diana with his silver eyes, a half-smile playing on his lips.

“Detective Lynn.” His voice had a strange echo, as if two people were speaking simultaneously, their tones overlapping. “My name is Argo. The Brotherhood sent me to reclaim what is rightfully theirs.”

“You can’t get it.” Lynn raised his gun and aimed it at the man’s chest.

Argo ignored the threat of the gun. He took a step forward, the hem of his trench coat fluttering gently in the evening breeze.

"The data on that USB drive might just be a bunch of encrypted files to you, but it's a matter of life and death for the Brotherhood. You should understand that they won't stop hunting you. No matter where you run—New York, Washington, or the ends of the earth—they will find you."

"Then let them come."

Argo tilted his head, his silver eyes flashing. “I could have handled this on the highway. Flip your car, retrieve the USB drive from the wreckage, and dump the three of your bodies in a Nebraska cornfield. Simple and efficient. But I was told to keep a low profile as much as possible,” he made a grabbing gesture, “so I’m giving you a choice: hand over the USB drive, and you and your companion can leave alive.”

"You know I won't agree."

“I know. But politeness is always necessary.”

Argo moved as soon as his voice faded.

That speed far exceeded human limits. One moment he was standing next to Dodge, the next he had covered nearly ten meters and appeared in front of Lynn. A short, cracking sound echoed in the air—he had grazed the edge of the sound barrier.

Lynn's finger pulled the trigger.

The gunshot rang out crisply and loudly across the empty farm. A nine-millimeter bullet flew from the Glock's barrel, heading straight for Argo's chest.

But the bullet missed its target.

The instant the bullet struck, Argo's body underwent a bizarre transformation—his torso split open like liquid, creating a gap just large enough for the bullet to pass through. The bullet pierced the gap, struck the Dodge behind him, leaving a bullet hole. Then his body closed up again, as if nothing had happened.

“Shapeshifting ability!” Diana shouted from behind the hood of the car, her voice filled with suppressed shock. “He can change his body shape!”

Argo's right arm began to change. His fingers fused together, his forearm lengthened, thickened, and hardened, its surface gleaming with a metallic sheen, eventually transforming into a cone-shaped spike about two feet long—a living weapon made of bone and hardened tissue.

He swung the spike at Lynn.

Lynn staggered back a step, the tip of the spike slicing across his chest and tearing the outer fabric of his bulletproof vest. Had he reacted even half a second slower, the spike would have pierced his chest cavity.

"Quickly—" Lynn shouted to Diana.

Two gunshots rang out almost simultaneously. Diana fired two bullets from the side, striking Argo in the left shoulder and left rib. This time the bullets did hit—blood splattered, but the blood was an odd color, a dark gray, as if mixed with some metallic powder.

Argo's body lurched to the side from the impact, letting out a low growl. His silver eyes turned to Diana, a flicker of genuine rage in them.

“That shouldn’t be the case,” he said.

His left arm also began to deform, transforming into another spike in a fraction of a second. He spun around, attacking in two directions simultaneously—his right arm stabbing at Lynn, his left arm sweeping towards Diana.

Lynn rolled to his left, tumbling across the muddy ground, his shoulder slamming into a rotten fence post. Pain shot through half his body from his shoulder, but he gritted his teeth, raised his gun, and fired three shots.

Two shots missed—Argo’s body twisted and dodged in that incredible way—but the third shot hit his right thigh.

Argo staggered, his right knee nearly hitting the ground. Dark gray blood gushed from the bullet hole, leaving a strange trail on the dry earth.

Taking advantage of the opening, Diana rushed out from behind cover, firing as she ran. Her shooting posture was impeccable—two-handed grip, slightly forward-leaning, with just enough interval between each shot to control recoil. Three bullets were fired within a second and a half, all hitting Argo's torso.

Argo was knocked back two steps by the force of the impact. Three bullet holes appeared in his chest, and dark gray blood flowed down his body like a stream, soaking the front of his trench coat.

But he did not fall.

He lowered his head to look at the wound on his chest, then raised his head again, a cold light burning in his silver eyes.

“Interesting,” he said, his voice tinged with heavy breathing, “it seems bullets can indeed hurt me. But—”

His wound began to heal at a visible rate. Not like the instantaneous repair in the movies, but a slow and continuous contraction—the edges of the bullet hole were writhing, and the gray tissue was squeezing towards the center like a living thing, trying to push the bullet out.

“He has regenerative abilities,” Lynn said in a low voice. “But not fast, and not unlimited. Keep the firepower coming, don’t give him a chance to breathe.”

Diana retreated behind the side wall of the barn and quickly changed magazines. Her fingers were remarkably steady, considering she was facing a shapeshifting and regenerating mutant. (End of Chapter)