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

"Da da da!"

High-pressure liquid nitrogen gushed out wildly from the bullet hole, instantly filling the entire core area with white, frigid air, and the ground quickly froze into a thick layer of frost.

The doctor was clearly caught off guard by this move; his movements became sluggish in the extreme cold, and the scales on his arms made a faint cracking sound.

"You... this suicidal behavior..." The doctor's voice showed anger for the first time.

"It's worth it as long as it makes you stop!"

Braving the cold, Lynn used his memory of the terrain to weave through the thick fog. He was like a lone wolf hunting in a blizzard, each flash leaving deep scratches on the doctor's scales.

The high voltage from the short stick conducts even faster in the cold air, and each strike causes the doctor's body to spasm violently.

"enough!"

The doctor let out a roar, and his body began to swell violently. His originally thin body transformed into a terrifying monster more than three meters tall, covered in black scales, and with a pair of huge bone wings growing from his back.

He suddenly flapped his wings, instantly dispelling the chill and revealing Lynn's figure.

"go to hell!"

The doctor's massive claw slammed down on him. Lynn had nowhere to retreat. He took a deep breath and pulled out the last specially made "inhibitor grenade" from his bag.

"This is for Karen. Since you're so eager to evolve, then give this a try!"

Lynn didn't dodge; instead, he charged towards the giant claw. Just as the claw was about to crush his skull, he slid across the ice on the ground, precisely inserting the grenade in his hand into the crease of flesh in the doctor's chest.

"boom!"

A muffled thud. Not an explosion, but a large amount of dark green medicine bursting open inside the doctor's body.

"Ah!! No! My cells! My power!"

The doctor let out a bloodcurdling scream. His enormous body began to shrink rapidly, scales peeled off, and bone wings broke. The inhibitor was forcibly reversing his mutation process, and the pain made him writhe wildly on the ground.

Lynn wasn't much better off. He was caught in the shockwave from the doctor's struggle and rolled more than ten meters away, crashing into the control panel's main unit.

"Countdown... one minute."

Lynn forced himself to crawl to the control panel, despite feeling dizzy. The screen was filled with garbled text and red warnings.

"Damn it, how do I manually turn it off?" He frantically typed on the keyboard.

“Left side… manual lever…” a weak voice came.

Lynn turned her head and saw Mora had climbed down at some point, her face covered in blood, leaning against the door frame, panting. "Although... I hate humans... I don't want to... become a puddle of mud..."

Without a word, Lynn found the red emergency lever, gripped it tightly with both hands, and pulled it down with the last of his strength.

"Squeak-"

The sound of metal breaking.

"Click!"

The reactor's hum abruptly ceased. The eerie, deep purple light slowly faded, and the previously violently shaking engine room returned to a deathly silence.

"The self-destruct procedure has been aborted."

Lynn let out a long sigh and slumped to the ground. He stared at the coolant dripping from the ceiling, realizing for the first time how utterly exhausting it was to have escaped death.

“Harris…bring your men down here, this is over,” he whispered into his headset as the signal was restored.

A dozen minutes later, a large number of special agents stormed into the core area. Harris was so shocked when he saw Lynn covered in blood that he almost dropped his gun.

"Detective! You...you're still alive!"

"Nonsense, call an ambulance immediately." Lynn pointed to the doctor, who had curled up in the corner and had returned to human form. "Take him away and keep a close watch on him. And Mora, although she helped in the end, she also needs to be taken back for questioning."

Medical staff rushed over and put an oxygen mask on Lynn. He was secured to a stretcher and slowly carried out of the underground prison.

The sunlight in Carson City was somewhat blinding as the stretcher was raised to the ground. The wind on the wasteland still carried the scent of sand and gravel, but the purple powder had dissipated with the wind and was no longer a threat.

Lynn touched his pocket; the chocolate had been crushed into a paste during the fight.

He smiled, though his whole body was in excruciating pain, he knew he had won.

“Detective Lynn!” Warden Vaughn strode over, his expression complicated. “The orders from above have come down. Your performance this time… will be recorded as the highest honor. But after that, you’ll probably become even more famous.”

“I don’t need to be famous, I just need a vacation.” Lynn closed her eyes, feeling the stretcher sway. “Book me a ticket back to New York, the fastest one.”

"But your injuries..."

“Resting on the train is still resting,” Lynn interrupted him, her voice weak but firm.

However, just as Lynn tried to get up, the world spun around her, and suddenly everything went black before her eyes, and she fainted.

Much later.

When he finally opened his eyes again, the first thing he smelled was disinfectant.

It wasn't the pungent smell of blood and burnt odor typical of Nevada prisons, but rather the calm, clean, and almost rigidly structured smell of a hospital. The ceiling was snow-white, the overhead lights weren't too glaring, and the light from outside was cut into neat panes of light by the tall buildings, falling into the ward like slowly moving pieces of glass.

Lynn moved his fingers and immediately felt a dull pain, as if someone had pressed a blunt object against his chest, spreading from his ribs down his back. He frowned, turned his head, and found an IV needle inserted into the back of his right hand, his arm re-bandaged, a strap wrapped around his chest, and a monitor standing beside his legs, its green numbers flashing.

"Don't move."

A woman's voice came from beside her, not loud, but steady, with the crispness characteristic of Manhattanites. Lynn looked in the direction of the voice and saw a woman in a light blue nurse's uniform standing at the foot of the bed, flipping through the medical records. She wasn't very tall, and her dark brown hair was tightly pinned up, with only a stray lock of hair hanging down beside her ear. She wore a mask, revealing only her eyes, which were slightly upturned at the corners, giving her a natural focus when she looked at people.

“If you make any more noise now,” she closed the medical record board, walked over and pressed down on his shoulder as he was about to prop himself up, “I’ll just have to increase your pain medication dosage and then wait for the doctor to come and yell at me.”

Lynn's voice was a little hoarse: "Where is this?"

“Manhattan, St. Isabel Hospital, Trauma Care Unit 17.” She glanced down at her watch. “You slept for almost eighteen hours. Strictly speaking, you woke up twice, but neither time for more than thirty seconds.”

Lynn was silent for a moment, then his Adam's apple bobbed. "How did I get back?"

“The federal government coordinated a military transport plane to get you back to New York from Nevada. You had a high fever before landing, signs of infection from a laceration in your left arm, two fractured ribs, a minor lung contusion, soft tissue damage to your shoulder, and temporary loss of consciousness due to a head injury.” As she spoke, she expertly adjusted the IV drip rate. “Oh, and a large bruise on your chest. Were you fighting with the truck?”

Lynn glanced at her, a slight smile playing on her lips: "Pretty much."

The nurse seemed used to such uncooperative answers and didn't press for details, simply scanning his forehead with the thermometer.

"Thirty-seven and six degrees, it's gone down." She noted it down, then reached out and pulled the blanket up a little from his shoulder, which was about to slip off. "Good. At least you're not talking nonsense like you did last night."

What did I say?

“There are many.” A faint smile appeared in her eyes. “Most of them are incoherent. Things like ‘lever on the left,’ ‘don’t get close to the mycelium,’ ‘turn off the main unit,’ ‘your eardrums will break,’ and there’s another name—Gwen.”

Lynn had been trying to sit up, but when she heard the name, she paused.

“My sister,” he said.

“I guessed so.” She put the thermometer back in her pocket. “You called her several times, saying things like ‘Don’t light the fire in the chemistry experiment.’ It sounded like a dangerous kid.” “She just likes to experiment with things.”

“Every older brother says that.”

She turned and went to the treatment cart next to her to get her medication. Watching her retreating figure, Lynn noticed how lightly she walked; her shoes barely made a sound on the floor. Occasionally, someone would push a medical cart past outside the ward, the rolling of metal wheels echoing in the distance, while the distant rumble of traffic from Lower Manhattan drifted in from outside the window. The sounds were faint, yet for the first time, he truly realized that he had returned to New York from that place filled with the smell of red sand and rust.

"What time is it now?" he asked.

“10:27 a.m.,” she replied.

Where's my phone?

“It’s in the bedside drawer. But I suggest you don’t look at it yet.” She twisted open a vial of injection and said without looking up, “In the past twelve hours, at least six people have called you. A gentleman who claimed to be the director had a very bad tone, a guy named Jason called four times, and a young girl sent a lot of voice messages. If you start listening now, I guarantee your heart rate will immediately spike to 130.”

Lynn glanced at the monitor: "How much is it now?"

"Eighty-seven." She walked back and connected the syringe to the indwelling needle. "It's holding up well, don't waste it."

The cool medicine slowly entered my bloodstream, and the sharp, stabbing pain in my chest eased slightly.

"What's your name?" Lynn asked.

The nurse looked up, as if she hadn't expected him to ask that: "Carmela."

"Carmela what?"

“Carmela Ortiz.” She paused, then added, “If the name sounds familiar, it’s not because I’m famous, it’s just that there are three Ortizs in our hospital, and people often call the wrong name in the elevator.”

"Lynn."

“I know.” Carmela tossed the empty syringe into the medical waste bin. “When you were transferred here, it was clearly written on your name tag: Detective Lynn, FBI Special Affairs Division. Last night, security downstairs was as tight as if the president were in the hospital; there were two plainclothes officers standing silently in the hallway. It’s all over the nurses’ station.”

Lynn's expression remained unchanged: "Sorry to bother you."

“They’re the ones who are bothering you, not you.” She tucked the medical record back into the foot of the bed. “You’re only responsible for bleeding.”

Just then, the cell phone in the bedside drawer started vibrating, its dull thud against the wooden board making a buzzing sound.

Carmela glanced at it: "Here we go again."

Lynn reached for it, his movement a little too forceful, causing a sudden tightening of the muscles in his ribs. He gasped, his hand freezing in mid-air. Carmela was already a step ahead, pulling open the drawer and handing the phone to him.

The caller ID displayed "Gwen".

Lynn's brow relaxed for a moment, then she pressed the answer button and held the phone to her ear: "Gwen."

The girl's voice, both anxious and aggrieved, came through the phone immediately, as if she had been holding it in all night: "You finally answered the phone! Lynn, did you scare me to death? Jason only told me you were slightly injured, what do you mean by 'slightly injured'? Why didn't you reply to my messages?"

Lynn tilted her head, trying to make her voice sound normal: "Because I just woke up."

"Where are you?"

"Hospital."

Which hospital?

"Manhattan, Saint Isabel."

"I'm coming over now."

"No." Lynn frowned. "Don't you have class today?"

"I can take the day off."

“You were just criticized by the teacher yesterday for putting the alcohol lamp by the window.”

There was a two-second silence on the other end of the phone, followed by an even greater outburst: "Jason told you even this?"

Lynn glanced out the window and lowered her voice: "Go to class first. Come back after school this afternoon, and I'll have Jason pick you up. If you run out now and forget to check the subway station sign again, I'll have to get out of bed to find you."

Gwen sniffed: "You're really just injured, not dying?"

"No."

"Swear it."

"I swear."

"Swear by your favorite gun."

"Gwen."

"Then I swear on your black coffee, which will always be number one."

Lynn finally smiled, but the smile made her chest ache: "Okay. I swear on black coffee, I'm not dying."

The person on the other end of the phone visibly relaxed, but still wouldn't let it go: "Then you have to let me see you this afternoon, no backing out."

"understood."

"Also, did you eat the chocolate?"

Lynn glanced at his backpack beside the bed, the flattened wrapper still stuffed in the side pocket. He paused for half a second, then said, "I ate it. It's very useful."

“I knew it.” Gwen’s voice finally carried a hint of smugness. “Then you stay put. Don’t run around, don’t be reckless, don’t argue with the doctors, and don’t secretly pull out your needles when the nurses aren’t around.”

Carmela, who was standing nearby, raised an eyebrow when she heard this.

"Who taught you all these phrases?" Lynn asked.

"Jason."

"..."

"Anyway, just remember this." Gwen paused, her voice suddenly softening, "Brother, get well soon."

"Ah."

After the call ended, the ward fell silent, save for the continuous ticking of the medical equipment. Lynn put down his phone and closed his eyes briefly. Carmela stood beside him, not leaving immediately.

“Your sister is very clever,” she said.

"She's just talkative."

"That's because I was worried about you." Carmela handed him a glass of warm water and inserted a straw. "Drink some. Your lips are all chapped."

Lynn lowered his head and took a few sips. The warm water went down his throat, and the dryness in his chest subsided a little.

"Thank you."

“Finally learned to say thank you.” Carmela glanced at his IV bag. “Not bad. I thought federal agents only knew how to say ‘No need to bother,’ ‘I can do it myself,’ and ‘It’s not serious.’” (End of Chapter)