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

Lynn wanted to retort, but his eyelids drooped down on their own in that instant, as heavy as if they were filled with lead.

“Listen to the professor.” Logan nudged him with his elbow as he walked past him from behind. “If you don’t sleep, you won’t even be able to hold a gun steady tomorrow, let alone investigate a case.”

He surrendered.

That night, he slept for nearly nine hours in the guest room bed—a continuous, dreamless sleep, like sinking into deep water. When he woke up, the white midday light shone through the gaps in the curtains, and the air was filled with the warm, fresh scent of manicured lawn evaporating in the sunlight. Birdsong came from outside the window—perhaps robins—the crisp syllables sounding like someone tapping a silver spoon against the rim of a crystal glass.

When he sat up, he found a cup of cold coffee and a sandwich on the bedside table—he didn't know who had put them there or when. He ate the sandwich, drank half a cup of coffee (which, though cold, still tasted good), then washed his face, changed his clothes, and left the room.

I ran into Jason in the hallway.

Jason was wearing a clean gray T-shirt and sweatpants—obviously borrowed from one of the college's lockers—and was holding a steaming cup of something.

“Mike and the others have arrived safely in Honolulu,” Jason said. “They landed at four in the morning on a private helipad next to Honolulu International Airport. Pedro yelled at me on the phone for three minutes—mostly about how hard the helicopter seats were and how his ass was numb. Diana said everything went well, all sixteen subjects were in stable condition, and she had contacted the local FBI office in Honolulu to arrange temporary accommodation.”

"She contacted the local FBI? Is she safe?"

"The Honolulu branch is separated from Brooks by half the Pacific Ocean and three command levels. She was cautious—revealing nothing about the fraternity or the USB drive, only saying it was a follow-up to a cross-state human trafficking rescue operation."

"A smart approach."

The two walked together to a conference room on the basement level—much smaller than the war room, but fully equipped. There was a long table, eight chairs, two large screens on the wall, and a projector. On the table were Lynn's laptop and several printed documents.

Xavier was already there. Jane and Hank were also there—Jane looked much better than last night, and the dark circles under her eyes had mostly faded. A thick stack of medical reports lay before Hank.

“Good morning,” Xavier said. “Have you had enough sleep?”

"That's enough. Thank you."

"Let's begin. Hank, start with the results of the medical evaluation."

Hank adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses and opened the report to the first page. "Twenty-three subjects have completed their full medical examinations—this is the group that stayed at the academy last night. The sixteen in Honolulu are still awaiting data from Agent Diana. The overall situation is slightly better than I expected, but not by much."

He slid a blue finger along the rows and columns of the table. “Malnutrition is widespread; seven people have BMIs below the lower limit of the normal range, with two minors in more serious condition—requiring at least three to four weeks of nutritional recovery programs. Skin infections are mainly concentrated in the wrists and ankles—caused by prolonged friction from metal monitoring rings and a damp environment. Two people show signs of old fractures; X-rays show callus formation but poor alignment—indicating a lack of proper medical treatment after the injuries.”

“Is there a more serious problem?” Lynn asked.

“One.” Hank flipped to the middle of the report, his voice dropping a half-octave. “Subject MX-014—a seventeen-year-old girl with the ability type of tissue regeneration—has severely abnormal liver function indicators. Her transaminase levels are more than six times the upper limit of normal. My initial assessment is drug-induced liver injury caused by long-term injections of some kind of inhibitory drug. This cannot be explained by malnutrition—they are giving her medication.”

The meeting room fell silent for a few seconds. The birdsong outside the window sounded exceptionally clear, almost jarring, in the quiet.

"Is it within the treatment range?" Xavier's voice was as steady as a polished stone.

"Yes. The liver can repair itself after stopping the medication, but it takes time—three to six months. I have already started a liver-protective treatment program."

"continue."

“There’s another one—not a medical issue, but I feel I need to bring it up.” Hank pulled a separate sheet of paper from the back of the report. “It’s about identity verification.”

Lynn's attention immediately focused.

“During the physical examination of each participant, I simultaneously performed DNA sampling and fingerprinting, then cross-referenced the data with the participant information in the USB drive file.” Hank pushed the paper to the center of the table. “Of the twenty-three people, the biometrics of twenty-two matched the records in the file perfectly—the error was within the normal range of instrument accuracy. But one person's result was off.”

"What kind of deviation?"

"Number MX-031. The file identifies him as a 1-year-old white male named Derek Holt, with his ability type listed as 'weak kinetic energy absorption.' He was recruited from Flint, Michigan through a community outreach program and entered the base in January 2024."

Hank took off his glasses, wiped the lenses with the cuff of his lab coat, and then put them back on. This small gesture created a strange, almost pedantic seriousness on his blue face.

"His fingerprints match the samples in the file 98.7%."

“98.7%? Isn’t that very high?” Jason asked from the side.

"For ordinary people, yes. But the FBI's fingerprint database—I have access, Professor Xavier helped me establish a secure backdoor years ago—has a 99.2% or higher accuracy rate for distinguishing twins. 98.7% falls into a gray area—it can be explained by sampling errors, changes in fingerprint patterns due to damage to the finger surface, or even just a problem with device calibration. But when combined with DNA data—"

He turned to the next page.

"DNA is a deterministic indicator. A person's DNA does not change due to any external factors. I performed a whole-genome comparison between the DNA sample from MX-031 and the gene sequence of Derek Holt recorded in the archives. The result was—no match."

The air around the table seemed to freeze for a moment.

“Incompatible?” Lynn’s voice tightened.

“There are four inconsistencies at the key STR loci. The biological implications are clear: the person sitting in room 203 of our medical wing is not Derek Holt.” Lynn slowly leaned back in his chair. His mind raced, extracting every possible inference from Hank’s data.

"Then who is he?"

"This is the part I can't find. His actual DNA doesn't match in the FBI's fingerprint and genetic databases. His fingerprints—actual fingerprints, not Derek Holt's—also don't appear in any law enforcement databases. This means he was never arrested, never applied for a federal permit requiring fingerprint registration, and may never even have entered any official identification system."

“A ghost,” Jason said.

“Or someone who is very careful to protect their identity,” Lynn said.

He stood up and paced slowly around the conference room. Sunlight streamed in through the gaps in the blinds, casting equidistant golden stripes on the carpet. His boots moved back and forth across those stripes, as if silently playing something on an invisible piano keyboard.

“Jane.” He stopped.

Jane slightly raised her head from the chair.

"When you conducted the mind scan at Midway Island yesterday, were there any abnormalities in the thirty-seven consciousness signals in the subject's area?"

Jane frowned slightly—she was recalling. “Thirty-six out of thirty-seven signals shared a highly consistent emotional tone—fear, exhaustion, repression. Typical psychological states of someone long-term captivity. But there was one signal—” She paused, “one signal whose underlying spectrum was slightly different from the others. At the time, I wasn't paying close attention and didn't discern it carefully, but now, thinking back—that signal contained fear, yes, but beneath that fear lay something else. Not despair, not numbness, but—”

“Be alert,” Lynn said for her.

Jane looked at him. "Yes. A kind of alertness that maintains judgment and calculation. Like an actor waiting to go on stage behind the curtain."

"Which room in which building did that signal originate from?"

"The second building. Near the end of the corridor."

Lynn returned to the table, opened his laptop, and pulled up the subject's cubicle assignment sheet from the USB drive. The cubicle at the end of the corridor in the second building—numbered 2-11—was registered to MX-031, Derek Holt.

Everything fits together.

“He wasn’t a test subject.” Lynn closed his laptop, his voice low and firm. “He’s a Brotherhood member. Someone of such high rank that he’s not even listed in any law enforcement database. He was in the base—not locked up, just sitting there—but when we raided, he blended in with the test subjects, pretending to be a victim. He knew that if we found the test subject list, we’d treat the people on it as rescued hostages. He just had to make himself look like one of them.”

“But his DNA doesn’t match Derek Holt,” Jason pointed out.

"Because he probably didn't expect us to do a whole-genome sequencing. The fingerprints—a 98.7% match—indicated he'd tampered with them. It's possible he surgically altered the surface pattern of his fingerprints to mimic Holt's. This technique exists; there are underground plastic surgeons within criminal organizations who specialize in it. But DNA can't be changed; it's the identity code etched into the nucleus of every cell."

“What about the real Derek Holt?” Xavier asked.

There was a three-second silence in the room. The answer was on everyone's lips, but no one wanted to say it aloud.

“He might not be here anymore,” Lynn finally said. “They need a ‘vacancy’ to fill. The cleanest way would be to make the real Holt disappear—die or be moved to another location—and then have this person take his place. The photo in the file has probably been replaced, and the physical description has been altered.”

“A high-ranking member of the Brotherhood—at least a mid-to-high-ranking one—was hiding among a group of kidnapped mutants.” Jason’s fingers tapped unconsciously on the table. “If this guy was one of the base’s administrators or supervisors, then he made a very rational decision when the base was breached—rather than being captured with the mercenaries, he chose to infiltrate the group of victims. The latter meant he would be treated as a rescued hostage, taken to safety, and then disappear at the opportune moment.”

“If we hadn’t discovered the DNA mismatch, he would already be plotting how to slip out of the academy,” Lynn said.

"So what do we do now?" Hank asked. "Go straight to room 203 and handcuff him?"

"No."

Lynn's answer was so quick that it surprised everyone.

He sat back down in his chair, his hands clasped on the table, his thumbs slowly rubbing back and forth on the back of his hands—an unconscious gesture of thinking. His gaze lingered on a certain point on the table, but the focus wasn't on that point—but on a place that existed only in his deductions.

"What would we get if we arrested him now? An unidentified man not in any database—we wouldn't even know his name. He'd shut up. Someone who's reached that level within the Brotherhood wouldn't open up just because he's handcuffed. He'd need a lawyer, refuse to answer any questions, and freeze in place in jail. In the end, we'd have a silent suspect and a bunch of circumstantial evidence that's impossible to trace—the data on the USB drive could prove the base exists, but it couldn't prove this man's role and position within it."

“But what if we pretend we didn’t see him—” Jason’s eyes lit up.

“If we pretend we didn’t find him,” Lynn continued, “he’ll proceed according to his plan. He’ll be ‘released’ after we’ve completed the legal procedures and medical evaluations of the subject—as a rescued victim, without any criminal suspicion, we have no legal basis to continue detaining him. Then the first thing he’ll do is—go back to his organization.”

"Then we followed him."

"Then we followed him. The first destination for a mid-to-high-ranking member of the Brotherhood after being 'rescued' wouldn't be his apartment or a supermarket—it would be the Brotherhood's contact point. He would need to report to his superiors about the situation on Midway, our numbers and capabilities, and everything he knew about Xavier's School of the Rising Sun. That contact point—"

“This is what we’re looking for.” Jason slammed his hand on the table, making a soft, crisp sound.

“But what about the risks?” Xavier’s voice cut through their excitement like a precise scalpel. “If he contacts the Brotherhood the moment he’s released, they’ll know we’ve found Midway, rescued the subjects, and taken control of the mercenaries. They’ll start destroying evidence at other locations, relocating personnel, and even launching retaliatory attacks on my school. You put a rat back in its hole, and the whole burrow is alerted.”

“The professor is right,” Jane echoed softly. “This isn’t just a tactical decision; it involves the safety of the college and the students.” (End of Chapter)