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

Kevin slept well in the back seat. The youthful energy of recovery showed its advantage at this time—his complexion had returned to normal color from last night's deathly pallor, although there were still two dark purple shadows under his eyes.

“There’s a road sign ahead.” Diana gestured with her chin towards the outside of the windshield.

Lynn squinted as he looked over. A green highway sign appeared on the right side of the road, the white letters clearly visible in the morning light—

"Sue Falls 87 Miles"

Sioux Falls. The largest city in South Dakota, with a population of approximately 200,000. To someone from San Francisco or New York, this number is almost negligible, but in this land surrounded by endless prairie lands, a city of 200,000 people is a true metropolis.

“Soufurs,” Lynn uttered the name, then fell silent for a moment. His mind raced, recalling every known detail about the city.

"What's wrong?" Diana glanced at him.

How much do you know about South Dakota's law enforcement system?

"Not many. This isn't my jurisdiction."

"South Dakota is a very special state. It has a small population, a large area, and few cities, resulting in a very limited presence of federal law enforcement. The FBI has only one permanent office in South Dakota, located in Sioux Falls, with fewer than ten staff members, primarily handling crimes on reservations and interstate fraud. Day-to-day law enforcement and policing are almost entirely handled by the state police and county sheriffs' offices."

"what does that mean?"

"This means the Brotherhood's infiltration capabilities here are much weaker. Their model is to gather intelligence and exert influence through informants within the federal law enforcement system, but if law enforcement power in a region is primarily held at the state level, their federal reach won't extend there. The state police system is a completely independent system—a different chain of command, a different communications network, and a different personnel system. For the Brotherhood to infiltrate a state's state police system, they would need to build a completely new network of contacts from scratch, which is not something that can be done in a short time."

Diana's fingers paused on the steering wheel. "So you mean, Sue Falls might be safe for us?"

"It's safer than anywhere else we've been. Not absolutely safe—there's no absolutely safe place in the world—but if I'm not mistaken, the Brotherhood should have very few, if not none, informants in South Dakota."

"This is a huge gamble."

"The whole thing was a gamble from beginning to end. The only difference was the odds."

Diana hesitated for a few seconds. "So you want to stop in Sue Falls?"

“It’s not just about stopping. I want to connect with Manhattan from there.”

This made Diana turn and look at him. "Didn't you say before that we couldn't use any electronic channels—"

“I’m saying not through insecure channels. Logging into the FBI system on public Wi-Fi in a hotel is insecure, but if we can find a clean communication environment outside of the Brotherhood’s surveillance, the risk is much lower. South Dakota’s federal law enforcement resources are not under the jurisdiction of the San Francisco or Denver regional command; they belong to the Minneapolis Division. And the Minneapolis Division is half a continent away from the Brotherhood’s sphere of influence on the East Coast.”

"Who in Manhattan do you want to contact?"

"A man named Jason Rodriguez. Deputy Director of the Organized Crime Division at the FBI's New York office. I've worked with him for almost nine years, and he's one of the least likely people I know to be bought off by the fraternity."

How can you be so sure?

Lynn was silent for a moment. The grassland outside the window flowed slowly in the morning light, like a golden-green river passing by the car windows on both sides.

Three years ago, Jason's sixteen-year-old son was hit by a stray bullet from a street gang in Brooklyn and spent eight months in a wheelchair. The gang leader was later proven to have financial ties to the Brotherhood. Jason spent two years personally putting that leader in federal prison. That case exhausted all his annual leave, vacation time, and most of his savings. A man who nearly ruined his life pursuing Brotherhood associates wouldn't turn around and become their informant.

Diana did not raise any further questions.

“But we need a secure way to communicate,” she said. “We can’t use public networks anymore.”

"I'll figure something out once we get to Suefors. Let's get into the city first."

They continued driving southeast.

The landscape along the Nebraska-South Dakota border is subtly changing. The monotonous meadow-dune combination of the Sandhills is fading, replaced by more fertile farmland and denser forests. Corn and soybean fields begin to appear along the roadsides, and shallow puddles fill the drainage ditches between the fields, reflecting the slowly drifting white clouds. Occasionally, a farmhouse—white walls, a red barn, a rusty pickup truck parked in front—flashes past the window, exuding a peaceful and tranquil atmosphere.

The traffic on the road gradually picked up. A flatbed trailer loaded with hay bales slowly drove past from the opposite direction, and the driver waved to them in a friendly manner. Two boys on quad bikes chased and laughed by the ranch fence on the side of the road, kicking up a small cloud of dust. A yellow school bus stopped at an intersection, dropped off a few children with backpacks, and then rumbled away.

These scenes possess a strange healing power. After more than forty hours of continuous escape, fighting, and high alert, these ordinary, almost tedious everyday scenes made Lynn feel as if he were crawling inch by inch back to the surface of the real world from some twisted nightmare.

Just after 10 a.m., the outline of the city of Suefors appeared on the horizon.

Unlike San Francisco, which spreads dramatically across hills and bays, or New York, which rises to the skyline with an oppressive density, Sioux Falls emerged gradually and gently—starting with scattered suburban homes and shopping centers, followed by a denser concentration of commercial buildings and office towers, and finally a few “high-rises” of no more than twenty stories clustered in the city center, forming the city’s most prominent landmark.

The city felt clean, spacious, and flat. The streets were wide enough for four trucks to drive side by side. Pedestrians walked at a pace at least a notch slower than on the East Coast. Restaurants and shops along the roadside had various handwritten promotional signs in a simple and unpretentious font.

The air was fresh—the Dasu River flowed through the heart of the city, bringing a cool, moist air mixed with the scent of freshly mowed lawns in the riverside park. The sky overhead was a dazzling azure, with a few cotton-candy-like cumulus clouds drifting slowly, casting shifting shadows that wandered aimlessly across the city's rooftops and streets.

Diana drove the car into the city.

"Where should we find a place to stay?" she asked.

"Let's find a place to eat first. We need to sit down and have a proper talk, then I'll think about the communications issue."

They found a restaurant called "Mama Alma's Kitchen" on a commercial street called Phillips Avenue. The storefront was small, with a faded sign on the window that read "We use South Dakota beef." Stepping inside, they were greeted by the rich aroma of freshly ground coffee and buttered pancakes.

About half the seats in the restaurant were occupied. A few construction workers in overalls were queuing at the counter buying takeout coffee, an elderly couple was quietly eating waffles in a corner, and two uniformed mail carriers were flipping through newspapers by the window. No one gave them a second glance. They sat down at a four-person table against the inner wall. A waitress with a blonde ponytail came over, carrying a pot of steaming coffee, a bright, unguarded smile on her face.

Good morning! Would you like some coffee?

“Three cups, thank you,” Diana said.

The waitress poured three cups of coffee and handed over three menus. "Just call me when you've decided, no rush."

Lynn held the coffee cup in both hands, letting the heat from the scalding ceramic cup seep into his stiff knuckles. The coffee tasted unexpectedly good—rich and full-bodied, without the bitterness of cheap instant coffee. He took a sip and felt a slow warming sensation spreading from his stomach to his limbs.

Kevin ordered a double-egg bacon set meal and a large glass of orange juice. Diana ordered a pancake with maple syrup. Lynn ordered a steak and egg with toast, plus a bowl of soup.

While waiting for their food, the three of them finally had the chance to sit in a safe environment where they didn't have to be ready to run away at any moment and talk face to face.

“From San Francisco to here,” Diana tore open a packet of sugar, poured it into her coffee, and stirred, “we’ve had a mutant attack and a cop trap. We barely escaped both times, but each time it was by luck and quick thinking; there was no room for error. This can’t continue.”

“I agree,” Lynn said.

"So how do you plan to contact Manhattan?"

“First, I need to confirm one thing.” Lynn put down his coffee cup and lowered his voice. “Since we entered South Dakota, have you noticed any suspicious signs of being followed?”

Diana thought for a moment. "No. All the cars we passed along the way had local license plates; there were no duplicates, and no one showed us any unusual attention. Everything was normal after we entered the city."

"Where's Kevin? Don't you think something's wrong?"

Kevin, who was gulping down his orange juice, looked up and wiped his mouth when he heard this. "No. To be honest, I felt a sense of relief after crossing the state border, but I can't quite put my finger on why. It's just... the air felt different. It was like something that had been pressing down on me suddenly disappeared."

Lynn nodded. "You're right. I feel the same way."

He briefly repeated the analysis he had given Diana in the car to Kevin—South Dakota's law enforcement system is dominated by state police, with a very weak presence of federal agencies, and the fraternity's infiltration tentacles have almost no foothold here.

“But that’s just speculation,” Kevin said.

"Yes. So I need to do a test."

"What test?"

Lynn's gaze swept around the restaurant. His eyes settled on a notice board on the wall next to the counter—it was covered with flyers for various community events, rental ads, lost pet notices, and a recruitment poster for the South Dakota Highway Patrol.

The poster has a phone number and a website address.

“After we finish eating,” Lynn said, “we’ll go find a public library.”

Diana and Kevin exchanged a puzzled look.

"The library?" Kevin asked.

“Public libraries have free computers and internet access, but more importantly, their networks are managed by the local municipality, bypassing any nodes in the federal system. And—” he paused, “the libraries don’t track user identities. You walk in, sit down, use the computer, and don’t need to show any identification; nobody records your IP address or browsing activity. It’s one of the last bastions of internet anonymity.”

"So you're planning to contact Manhattan from the library."

“Not entirely. I’m planning to do something in the library—log into the FBI’s internal system, access a specific file, and then immediately log out. If the Fraternity is really monitoring the FBI’s network traffic, they’ll trace it back to Sue Falls’ IP address within a few hours. If they don’t, it means they don’t actually have a presence in South Dakota.”

“You’re going to use yourself as bait.” Diana’s coffee cup stopped in mid-air.

"It's not about being bait, it's about eliminating risk. If I expose my location after contacting Jason, the outcome would be worse than doing nothing. I need to confirm that the communication line is secure before establishing contact."

How long will this take?

"Login, access, logout—the whole process takes no more than two minutes. Then we leave the library and find somewhere else. If nothing unusual happens within six hours—no suspicious vehicles, no unfamiliar faces, no fraternity-like activity—I can confirm the route is safe, and then contact Jason through the same channels."

Diana put down her coffee cup and tapped her fingers lightly on the table a few times.

"Six hours is a long wait."

"Compared to being ambushed and killed on the road, what's six hours?"

The food was served. The three of them ate quietly for a while. The steak was pan-fried in a cast-iron skillet, crispy on the outside and still juicy pink on the inside, drizzled with a spoonful of black pepper sauce, releasing an appetizing aroma. Lynn devoured the six-ounce sirloin steak with almost hungry devotion, then used toast to clean the last bit of juice from the plate.

"This is the best steak I've ever eaten in my life," he said.

“You’re just too hungry.” Diana smiled slightly.

"No, seriously. South Dakota beef is really good. It's probably because of the water and grass."

Kevin finished his double-egg bacon and even ordered a hash brown. The young man's appetite had returned, which was a good sign. (End of Chapter)