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

Three vehicles are still stuck on the bridge.

A red Toyota pickup truck lay across the western side of the gap, its two front wheels dangling in the air, the entire vehicle tilted at a dangerous angle. A man in the driver's seat was desperately trying to push the door open, but it seemed to be jammed by the deformed frame.

A white van was parked on the eastern side of the bridge, about ten meters from the crack. The van's side door was open, and a middle-aged woman in overalls was lying on the bridge surface, her right leg appearing to be injured. She was trying to crawl towards the eastern end of the bridge.

There was also a dark green SUV parked on the western edge of the crack, with a yellow warning sticker on the rear window that read "Baby in the car".

And right in the middle of the bridge stood the source of all this chaos.

He was a young man, probably in his early twenties, wearing a tattered gray hoodie and mud-caked jeans. He was short and thin, even frail in appearance. But his arms—his arms didn't belong to this thin body.

Below the elbows, his forearms and hands underwent some horrific mutation. His skin turned a dark, iron-gray color, its texture as rough as the surface of rock. His fingers grew to an absurd degree, each as thick as a beer bottle, with fingertips as broad and flat as shovels. The size of his hands was completely disproportionate to his body, as if someone had grafted the hands of a stone giant onto the arms of a teenager.

At that moment, he was using his mutated hands to pry open the cracks in the bridge deck, tearing the concrete and steel bars apart like breaking a loaf of bread. Each tear was accompanied by a piercing snapping sound, and pieces of debris tumbled from the cracks into the river below, splashing up white sprays.

What he was shouting was not words, but a howl that was almost like that of a wild beast, hoarse and desperate, as if some kind of excruciating pain or some uncontrollable emotion was being torn out of his throat.

“He’s breaking down,” Diana whispered.

Lynn observed for a few seconds. She was right. The young man's behavior didn't seem like a planned attack or terrorist act; it was more like a complete mental breakdown—his movements were chaotic and disjointed, the destruction had no tactical purpose, and he wasn't even paying attention to the people trapped on the bridge. He was just frantically destroying everything in front of him, as if the bridge, the road, the world had done something unforgivable to him.

But whatever his motives, the bridge is collapsing and people are in danger.

“Split into two groups,” Lynn quickly decided. “Jason, Pedro, you go to the west side of the bridge and rescue the people in the pickup truck and the SUV. Diana, Mike, come with me to the east side and move the injured woman to a safe place first.”

“Where’s that mutant?” Pedro raised the shotgun in his hand.

"Save the people first, then deal with him. If he attacks you, you can return fire, but aim to subdue him, not kill him. He seems to be out of control, not intentionally trying to kill."

"receive."

The five people split into two groups and moved towards the center from both ends of the bridge simultaneously.

Lynn led Diana and Mike up the bridge from the east end. The bridge deck trembled slightly beneath their feet, and they could feel that the entire structure was in a dangerously unstable state—every time the mutant tore a hole in the middle, the vibrations were transmitted through the concrete and steel bars to every corner of the bridge deck, as if the whole bridge was groaning in pain.

The middle-aged woman in overalls lay face down on the bridge, a long gash on her left calf, blood flowing freely. Her face was deathly pale. Tears welled in her eyes as she saw Lynn and the others running towards her.

Help me—my leg—

“We’re federal agents,” Diana knelt beside her, quickly checking the wound. “The bone isn’t broken, but the bleeding needs to be stopped. Mike!”

Mike had already pulled a tourniquet from his pocket. His movements were almost mechanical—untying, wrapping, tightening, and securing—all within ten seconds.

"Can you walk?" Diana asked, supporting the woman's arm.

"I'll try—ah!"

"Hold on. Mike, help me support her."

The two men, one on each side, lifted the woman and half-dragged, half-pulled her toward the east end of the bridge.

Lynn continued toward the middle of the bridge.

He was now less than twenty meters away from the mutant. At this distance, he could see the man's condition more clearly—the young man's face was streaked with tears, his eyes were swollen and red as if he had been crying for a long time, and there were bloody marks on his lips from biting them. His hoodie had a university emblem printed on it, which Lynn recognized as the logo of Michigan State University.

A college student. A college student who has mutated and gone out of control.

“Hey!” Lynn called out, trying to keep his voice steady. “Can you hear me?”

The young man did not react. His enormous stone hands continued to tear at the bridge surface, the frequency of the movements slowing slightly, but the force remained undiminished.

"My name is Lynn! I'm not here to hurt you!"

This time, the young man paused. He turned his head and looked at Lynn with bloodshot eyes.

“Get away.” His voice was hoarse and dry, like a dull saw cutting wood.

“I’ll leave, but there are still people trapped on the bridge. Let me take them with me, okay?”

The young man looked down at the tilted red pickup truck on the west side of the chasm. His lips trembled slightly.

“I didn’t mean to,” he said.

"I know."

“I couldn’t control it. These hands—I couldn’t control them—they were like this when I woke up this morning—” He raised the massive, stone-like hands and shook them helplessly in the air, the knuckles striking each other with a heavy, stone-like clatter. “My mom saw them and screamed—she told me to get out—I didn’t know where to go—I drove here and then—and then—”

His voice trailed off. Tears welled up in his swollen eyes and dripped down his cheeks onto the bridge.

“Listen to me,” Lynn took a step forward, opening her arms to her sides, palms facing forward, “What’s your name?”

The young man sobbed. "Taylor."

"Taylor, how old are you this year?"

"Twenty-one."

"You attend Michigan State University?"

Taylor looked down at the school badge on his hoodie, then raised his mutated hands, his face contorted with a mixture of disgust and fear. "I was preparing for my midterms yesterday, and this morning—"

“Taylor, I understand you’re scared right now. But there are injured people on the bridge, and people are trapped in their cars. You don’t want to hurt them, right?”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone!” Taylor’s voice suddenly rose, and his massive hands slammed onto the bridge, causing the entire bridge to tremble violently. A basketball-sized chunk of concrete broke off from the crack and tumbled into the river. Lynn steadied himself and didn’t back down.

“I know you don’t want to. So now take your hands off the bridge and let my friends get those people out. It’s that simple. Can you do it?”

Taylor stared at him for a few seconds, his tear-blurred eyes flickering with hesitation and struggle. Then he slowly—inch by inch—moved the massive stone hands away from the edge of the crack in the bridge.

Lynn caught a glimpse of Jason and Pedro at the western end of the bridge, where they had reached the red pickup truck. Pedro used the butt of his shotgun to smash open the deformed, jammed door, and Jason reached in and pulled the man out of the driver's seat. The man collapsed to the ground, trembling uncontrollably, as soon as he was freed.

“Where’s the SUV?” Lynn shouted.

Jason ran toward the dark green SUV with a "Baby in the Car" sticker and opened the back door. A few seconds later, he turned around and gave Lynn a thumbs up.

"Two adults and one child, none of them were injured! They're being moved westward!"

Lynn let out a breath.

He turned back to Taylor. The young man was now crouching on the bridge, his mutated giant hands hanging limply at his sides like two heavy stones. His shoulders were trembling violently, and his face was covered in snot and tears.

Lynn walked up to him and squatted down.

“Taylor, I need you to come with me off this bridge. The bridge's structure is severely damaged, and we don't know when it will collapse.”

"Where to?"

“Go somewhere safe. I won’t hand you over to the police, at least not now. But you need help, not the kind of help I can provide—you need a professional to help you learn to control these hands.”

Taylor looked up, his young face, streaked with tears, filled with confusion. "Can anyone help me?"

“Yes.” Lynn considered how to phrase it. “There are some organizations in this country—not government-affiliated—that specifically help people like you. They have experience, they know how.”

"You mean mutants? Mutants like me?"

Yes. You're not the only one.

Taylor lowered his head, looking at his massive, gray, rock-textured hands. After a long silence, he awkwardly wiped the tears from his face with his disproportionate stone fingers, then slowly stood up.

Lynn helped him up—when his forearm touched Taylor's mutated arm, it felt like touching a warm granite, rough and hard on the surface, but he could feel the warmth of flesh and blood and the beating of a pulse underneath.

The two walked down to the east end of the bridge together.

Diana and Mike had moved the injured woman to a safe distance. Jason and Pedro also came over with the people they had rescued from the west end. The family of three from the SUV—a young couple and a toddler of about two years old—were standing on the side of the road, the mother holding the child tightly, the father's hand on his wife's shoulder, both of them still looking shaken.

The sound of sirens could be heard in the distance. Many sirens. And the wail of ambulances.

“We have to go,” Jason whispered to Lynn.

Lynn glanced at Taylor, then looked in the direction of the approaching sirens.

“Taylor, the police will be here soon. They'll help you contact the people you need. Until then—” He pulled the napkins he'd gotten at the restaurant in Sioux Falls from his pocket, wrote a few words on them with a pen, and handed them to Taylor. “Here's a name and a phone number. If the police cause you any trouble, call this number and tell the person on the other end that Lynn Carter sent you.”

Taylor carefully picked up the tissue with his clumsy, stone-like fingers. "Thank you, Lynn."

"Take care of yourself, child."

The five men quickly returned to Saboban. Jason started the engine, turned around, drove onto the shoulder, and exited Highway 94 via a side ramp, turning onto a parallel local road.

In his rearview mirror, Lynn saw more and more red and blue police lights flashing in the direction of Battle Creek, like a cluster of electronic stars twinkling on the city's skyline. The sound of helicopter rotors came from high above—whether from a news station or the police, he wasn't sure.

Everything grew smaller and smaller, farther and farther away, until it finally disappeared behind a bend.

The carriage remained quiet for a long time.

Pedro spoke first. “Okay, I take back what I said earlier. You’re not just stubborn, you’re insane. Six of us, guns in hand, ran to a collapsing bridge to rescue people, and there was a mutant on that bridge who could demolish concrete. Only a madman would do something like that.”

“You ran up there too,” Jason said.

"I told you, I'm crazy too. The whole bus is full of crazy people. Great, at least we're all well-matched."

Mike handed over a bottle of water from the third row. "Detective, whose contact information did you leave for that child?"

Lynn unscrewed the cap and took a sip. The cool water traveled from his throat to his stomach, making him feel more awake.

“Professor Charles Xavier’s school. I contacted people from them a few years ago when I was working on a case; it’s by far the most reliable mutant assistance organization. Taylor doesn’t need a prison or a laboratory; he needs someone to teach him to control his abilities.”

Diana turned to look at him from the passenger seat. There was something in her eyes that Lynn had never seen before—not admiration, nor agreement, but more like a newfound scrutiny.

“The way you spoke to him on that bridge,” she said, “didn’t sound like an FBI agent on a mission.”

Lynn looked out the window at the autumn colors of Michigan flashing by—fiery red, golden yellow, and copper green, layer upon layer covering every hillside.

“Because that wasn’t a mission,” he said. “It was just a frightened child who needed someone to tell him there was still hope.”

Subban returned to Highway 69, continuing towards Detroit. The afternoon sun streamed through the windshield, filling the car with a warm, golden light. Pedro, in the second row, was dozing again against the window, a faint, enigmatic smile playing on his lips. Mike quietly polished the bolt of his M4 carbine, his movements precise and focused. Jason gripped the steering wheel, the radio tuned to a classic rock station; guitar chords flowed from the speakers, blending with the engine's deep hum to create a peculiar harmony.

Kevin leaned over from the third row. "Are all the people on the bridge alright?"

"They've all been rescued."

"Where's that college student, Taylor?"

"He'll be alright." (End of Chapter)