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

Except he looks much thinner than in the photos.

“Hey, kid.” Lynn crouched down, holstered his gun, and placed his hands on his knees. The sound of torrential rain poured down from above, rapid and intense, like a thousand fingers simultaneously pounding on a tin roof. “My name is Lynn. I’m here to take you away.”

The boy didn't speak. His gaze slid from Lynn's face to Logan and Taylor behind him—two people who didn't look like friendly guests—and then back to Lynn's face.

"May I have your name?"

There was a silence for several seconds. Then a small voice squeezed out from the body that was hugging its knees.

Noah.

"Noah, you're safe. We've come to rescue you."

Jane crouched down next to Lynn. She didn't touch the boy, but just looked at him, in a way softer than words—perhaps her intuition was conveying a sense of security to the boy in a restrained and respectful manner.

Noah's arm loosened its grip slightly. Just a little bit.

“Thirty-seven people.” Lynn stood up, his voice low. “About twelve to thirteen in each building. We need to open each door, verify identities, and check for injuries. Jane, you're in this building responsible for comforting and initial psychological stabilization. Logan, Taylor, go open the other two buildings. Diana—”

“Lynn.” Jane’s telepathic communication suddenly interrupted him. There was something in her voice that he hadn’t heard before—a taut, metallic urgency.

"What's wrong?"

“I detected an unusual signal while scanning the subjects. Not from the island—it was coming from the direction of the sea. Southeast, approximately—” She paused for a second, focusing her senses to widen the range, “…about 170 miles away. There’s a group of consciousness signals moving rapidly in that direction.”

Lynn felt a chill on the back of her neck.

How many people?

“It’s hard to count precisely. The distance is too great. But there are at least fifteen to twenty consciousness signals. And—” her voice tightened, “at least two of them are mutant-signature signals. Strong signals. Much stronger than the Prism.”

"Reinforcements," Lynn blurted out.

Diana was already beside him. "What reinforcements?"

"Jane detected a group of people moving towards this location 170 miles southeast. Fifteen to twenty people, at least two of them mutants."

Diana's face changed. "How did they know—"

“Routine communication.” Lynn’s mind raced. “We cut the communication antennas, didn’t we? The Brotherhood’s mainland command makes routine contact with Midway every few hours—if there’s a sudden loss of response on the island, they won’t wait five hours to check. They’ll send someone immediately.”

"One hundred and seventy miles—what mode of transportation?"

"If it's by boat, it will take at least six or seven hours. But if it's by helicopter or speedboat—"

“Jane, what is the estimated speed of those signals?”

"Very fast. Extremely fast. If my calculations are accurate—around two hundred knots."

“Two hundred knots.” Mike ran in from the main building entrance, his glasses soaked with rain. “That’s the speed of a high-speed patrol boat or military speedboat. One hundred and seventy miles divided by two hundred knots—”

“About fifty minutes.” Lynn glanced at his watch. “Starting from now.”

Pedro peeked out from around the corner of the building. "Fifty minutes to get everything done and then run?"

"It's not about taking care of everything. It's about transferring all thirty-seven subjects to the Blackbird, plus the mercenaries and Prism units we control—"

“Wait a minute.” Jason’s voice came through the radio—he was still on the first floor of the main building guarding the men who were bound with cable ties. “You’re planning to take the mercenaries with you?”

“They must be taken away. They are key witnesses—without their testimony, it will be difficult to bring the Brotherhood’s top brass to justice based solely on the data on the USB drive. And if we leave them here, reinforcements will immediately release them, destroy all the evidence, and overturn everything.”

"Thirty-seven test subjects plus fourteen mercenaries plus one mutant plus the ten of us—sixty-two people in total—can your supersonic jet hold them all?"

Lynn looked up at the sky. The storm was subsiding—Auroro's energy was waning—the clouds were thinning, the rain had gone from a downpour to a light drizzle, and a bright white slit was even visible on the distant horizon.

"Scott, what is the Blackbird's maximum passenger capacity?"

Scott's voice came from the second-floor window—he was in the monitoring center making final preparations for evidence preservation. "Designed for a capacity of fourteen people. In extreme cases, it can hold twenty. Sixty-two is absolutely out of the question."

"In two trips."

"It will take nearly eight hours to make two round trips. Reinforcements will arrive in fifty minutes."

Lynn clenched his teeth. His gaze swept over the complex—the main building, the strip of residential buildings, the burned-out communications facilities, and the two helicopters on the runway in the distance—

Helicopter.

"Are those two helicopters on the runway able to fly?"

"I'll go check it out." Mike had already run towards the runway.

Two minutes later—a long, heart-pounding two minutes—Mike's voice came back.

"One was a Bell 206, a single-engine aircraft that seats four people plus the pilot. The other was a Sikorsky S-76, a twin-engine aircraft that seats twelve. The Bell's engine cover was half open; the technician had probably been doing maintenance—it couldn't fly for the time being. But the Sikorsky looked to be in good condition, with its fuel tanks at least half full."

"Who can fly it?" "I have a helicopter pilot's license. I got it in Los Angeles, and I've flown an S-76 twice."

“Twelve people.” Lynn’s mind raced, listing the numbers. “Blackbird with twenty people—maximum payload—Sikorsky with twelve people plus the pilot—and Jason driving that ground vehicle the kidnapped technicians use to maintain the helicopter—no, this isn’t a car problem, we’re in the middle of the Pacific—”

“Categorize.” Diana’s voice cut through his confusion like a knife. “Don’t try to do it all at once. Categorize first.”

She was right. Lynn took a deep breath, forcing her thoughts back to normal.

"First priority: Subjects. Thirty-seven people. They are victims and should be evacuated first. Minors and the injured should be evacuated first on the Blackbird—the fastest and safest. Adult subjects and those with normal mobility should be evacuated on the Sikorsky."

"Second priority: the controlled mercenaries and Prism. They are witnesses and suspects; tie them up and leave them for the last group to evacuate."

"Third: Our own personnel."

"Is there enough time?" Jason's voice carried an undisguised anxiety.

"It must be enough."

The next thirty-five minutes were the most intense thirty-five minutes of Lynn's career.

He divided everyone into three working groups.

Jane and Taylor were responsible for opening all the cubicle doors in the three residential buildings, calming the participants, and quickly categorizing them by age and physical condition. Jane's telepathic abilities played an almost irreplaceable role in this process—she could assess the physical and mental state of each frightened child without engaging in lengthy verbal communication, and then relay the information to others in real time.

Taylor's behavior surprised everyone. His mutated, stone-like fingers moved with an odd gentleness as he opened the compartment door—he used his thumb and forefinger to hold the bolt on the iron door, prying it open with extreme restraint rather than tearing it apart with brute force. When he entered one of the compartments and saw a fifteen-year-old girl huddled in the corner, he crouched down, hiding his mutated, giant hands behind his back.

“Hey. My name is Taylor. I’m like you.” He held out a hand—a gray, rough, inhuman hand—palm up. “See? I’m a mutant too. Before yesterday, I didn’t know how to control it. But someone helped me. Now I’ll help you.”

The girl stared at his hands for a long time. Then she reached out her own hand—a hand with fingertips covered in a layer of translucent frost—and placed it on his stone palm.

Logan and Pedro were in charge of moving the controlled mercenaries. Logan's method was simple and efficient—he grabbed one in each hand and dragged them like sacks from the lounge to the open space outside the main building, lining them up and securing them with ropes and extra cable ties found inside the building. Pedro stood by, shotgun in hand, monitoring the situation, occasionally casting a "are you sure?" look at any mercenary who tried to struggle.

No one struggled anymore.

Scott did two things in the monitoring center on the second floor: First, he removed all the hard drives from the control console—containing all the surveillance videos, communication logs, and data backups since the base began operating—and put them into a waterproof metal box. Second, he found a paper file in the room, locked in a safe that had been knocked askew by a prism—he precisely cut open the safe's locking mechanism with a laser and pried open the door like opening a can. He glanced at the contents of the file and closed it, his face ashen, like solidified steel.

“This must be given to Professor Xavier.” He stuffed the file into the metal box.

Jason and Diana were in charge of loading the Blackbird. They radioed Scott to move the Blackbird from the northwest beach to the runway—the paved surface there was more suitable for bearing the weight of repeated takeoffs and landings. Twenty-three minors and injured test subjects were prioritized for loading onto the Blackbird—the youngest being only eleven years old, a thin Latino boy who was carried into the cabin by Logan like a kitten.

Mike started the Sikorsky S-76 at the other end of the runway. The rotors turned slowly in the increasingly weak wind and rain, and the engine's whine gradually climbed from a low rumble to a normal operating frequency. He leaned out of the cockpit window and gave Lynn a thumbs-up.

Fourteen adult subjects and two less seriously injured young people were loaded onto the Sikorsky. There weren't enough seats (twelve in total), so some had to sit on the cabin floor—but no one complained. A twenty-three-year-old African American woman—the subject with bio-electric abilities recorded in the files—stopped as she stepped out of the strip and looked up at the sky. The downpour had completely stopped, the clouds were rapidly dissipating, and a patch of blue sky peeked through the gaps.

“I haven’t seen a blue sky in nine months,” she said. Her voice was almost emotionless, but something glintd in the corner of her eye.

“Jane, where are the reinforcements?” Lynn called out in his mind as he helped the last test subject onto the Sikorsky.

"Sixty miles per hour. No decrease in speed. About fifteen minutes."

Fifteen minutes.

"Hurry up! Everyone get on the plane!"

What remained were fourteen bound mercenaries and a comatose Prism.

This was the biggest problem. Both the Blackbird and Sikorsky were already fully loaded—there was no extra space to squeeze in fifteen additional adult males.

“I have an idea.” Jason ran over, holding a key he’d found in the weapons storage room. “There’s an underground storage room in the yard behind the main building—the one with the barbed wire. I just saw the entrance—a reinforced concrete structure, well-ventilated, and lit. Lock them in, lock the door, and then we’ll contact the Coast Guard to report the location before we leave. It’ll take the Coast Guard about five or six hours to get here from Honolulu, but these guys have water, air, and light in the underground storage room; they can last two days.”

"They will be released when reinforcements arrive."

“No.” Jason pulled something from his pocket—a small but complex lock. “A high-security padlock I found in the weapons storage room. A product of Nashville Locksmiths. Six-digit combination, no keyhole, resistant to hydraulic shears. Unless they brought a cutting torch or explosives, it can’t be opened from the outside. Even if they did, those dozen or so mercenaries would come out of the storage room all bound hand and foot with duct tape over their mouths, dead meat.”

"The reinforcements include mutants."

"Even mutants need to know where the person is to be rescued. The entrance to the storage room is beneath the ground in the northwest corner of the yard; from the outside, it looks like a concrete slab—people who don't know it wouldn't even glance at it."

Lynn hesitated for three seconds.

“Jewelry?”

"Forty-five miles. Eleven minutes."

"Dry."

Pedro and Logan crammed the fourteen mercenaries and the unconscious Prism into the underground storage room in less than four minutes. The space was just right—fifteen people would be cramped, but not oxygen-deprived. Jason fastened the high-security padlock to the lock ring on the cover, turned the combination dial to set a six-digit combination known only to him, and then kicked off a layer of loose soil on the cover.

"Walk."

Everyone rushed towards the runway. The storm had completely subsided, and the skies above Midway Island regained their characteristic bright, clear skies of the tropical Pacific. Sunlight streamed down from the east, reflecting a blinding glare onto the white sand beaches on either side of the runway. The air was filled with the distinctive, fresh scent of the rain—a mingled aroma of ozone, sea salt, and damp earth that invigorated the spirit. (End of Chapter)