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

“Because the people who truly know the core situation won’t personally carry plastic bags back to my sister’s house, nor will they argue with me in the living room to expose their whereabouts.” Lynn’s tone was very calm. “They would be more composed and more adept at lying.”

Matteo lowered his hand and looked at him with a complicated expression: "So you thought from the beginning that I wasn't part of the core group?"

“You don’t seem like it,” Lynn said. “You’re more like someone who was fed a little bit of information and then forced into thinking they had the upper hand.”

That's a really harsh thing to say.

But it's true.

This time, Matteo didn't refute; he just twitched the corner of his mouth, as if admitting it.

Light footsteps sounded outside the door; the detective on duty passed by and quickly disappeared. The oppressive silence of the night returned. Lynn glanced at the time; it was almost two o'clock. He didn't press further about the case itself, but instead asked a seemingly unrelated question: "Did you often wait for Carmela to get off work when you were little?"

Matteo was taken aback: "What?"

“You just said that she would look back before going home in the middle of the night,” Lynn said. “You’re very observant. That means you’ve seen it more than once or twice.”

Matteo paused for a moment, then said in a low voice, “She used to work the night shift at a convenience store. My mother passed away early, and there was no one else at home. Back then, I would say I wouldn't wait for her, but actually, I couldn't sit still after 9:30 and would always go to the window to look downstairs.” As he said this, the redness in his eyes became more obvious. “Then one time, it was raining heavily, and she came back completely soaked, with one of her shoelaces broken, but she was carrying a bag of nearly spoiled bread, saying that the manager told her to take it home. She was sneezing and asked me first if I had eaten dinner. I thought to myself, how could anyone do that?”

"You think she's stupid."

“A little,” Matteo said honestly. “I also found her annoying. But whenever I wanted to cause trouble, her image would pop into my head first. …I didn’t want her to keep bearing that burden alone.”

Lynn didn't say anything, just looked at him. Matteo, however, seemed to have opened a crack and couldn't stop; his voice grew softer and softer, and more and more real.

“When I was little, I didn’t like people saying I was ‘Carmela’s brother.’” He stared at the table. “Because it always made me feel like I was nothing, just a tail following her. She was good at her studies, had a good temper, and all the neighbors liked her. Whenever someone saw me, they would either say I looked like her or tell me to learn from her. I was really annoyed back then, thinking, why should I be like that?”

"and after?"

“As I grew older, I was still annoyed, but I also knew that if it weren’t for her, I would probably have rotted out there long ago.” Matteo smiled, but the smile was bitter. “She paid my registration fee, shielded me from the landlord, and secretly stuffed her night shift allowance into the kitchen jar, saying it was ‘the family’s savings.’ Her tricks were so bad that I could tell at a glance.”

"So you don't want her to know what you're doing."

“Yes,” Matteo said. “I don’t want to see that look in her eyes.”

What kind of look is that?

“Disappointment.” He said the word very softly, as if he was afraid that he couldn’t bear to say it any louder. “It’s not that she scolds me or argues with me, it’s that kind of thing… she would look at me first, as if thinking about what she did wrong, and then ask ‘why’. That’s what I can’t stand the most.”

Lynn remained silent, watching the man at the table who had been so stubbornly defiant, yet was now practically laying bare his true self. Matteo took a breath, as if finally revealing the last layer of his secret.

“So I’ve always acted,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if I act like me, because acting like me is terrible. I like hanging out with those people and being afraid of them. That way, she can call me a bastard or call me brainless, but at least she won’t know… I actually stand by the window and wait for her to turn the corner every time I see her off.”

The room suddenly became so quiet that even the sound of the air conditioner seemed to be suppressed.

Lynn looked at him, and after a few seconds said, "She probably knows a little bit."

Matteo looked up: "What?"

“She may not know all that. But she knows you’re not completely indifferent,” Lynn said. “There’s a very faint ballpoint pen dot next to Carmela’s column on the duty roster on your kitchen refrigerator. It wasn’t a mark she made herself.”

Matteo froze, as if he hadn't reacted at all.

“You keep an eye on her shifts,” Lynn said. “And the fact that she’s been waiting outside your door all night isn’t because she thinks you’re a hopeless case.”

Matteo opened his mouth, and after a long pause, he muttered under his breath, "...Fuck."

There wasn't much anger in that curse; it was more like the embarrassment of being exposed. Lynn didn't say anything more, but simply took the coat Carmela had given him off the back of the chair and threw it on the bedside.

“Get some sleep,” he said. “After dawn, you’ll have to explain everything you know about people, places, routes, and habits. I won’t ask you fewer questions just because you confessed tonight.”

"You really know how to pick your moments to bring people back to reality."

"This is my job."

Matteo stared at the coat, his gaze freezing for a few seconds. After recognizing whose it was, his expression subtly changed: "She gave it to you?"

"Ah."

"Why doesn't she dress herself?"

"Because she thinks I'm more like the kind of person who would sit still in the hallway in the middle of the night."

Matteo let out a soft hum, as if to say, "She really knows you," but in the end he just whispered, "She used to do that too. In winter, even though her hands were cold, she would stuff her scarf around my neck."

“So you’d better cooperate sooner rather than later, and stop her from worrying about you here.” Lynn stood up.

Matteo watched him stand up and subconsciously straightened his back as well: "Wait."

"Is there anything else?"

Matteo's lips moved slightly, as if he had difficulty speaking, but he finally squeezed out an awkward sentence: "...Don't tell her what happened just now."

"Which?"

“Everything.” Matteo frowned, as if struggling with an extremely troublesome problem. “The gang, the sample, why I went in, the needle… all of that. At least don’t just throw everything at me.”

"You want to tell me yourself?"

“I don’t know,” Matteo said softly. “I just haven’t figured out how to get her to listen yet.”

Lynn looked at him for a few seconds: "I'm not going to make this sound good for you."

"I know."

"But the part you should tell her, you'll have to tell her sooner or later."

“I know,” Matteo replied quickly this time, as if he didn’t want to be reminded repeatedly. “I just…give me a little time.”

Lynn nodded: "I won't discuss these details with her before dawn."

Matteo's shoulders seemed to relax a little, but he immediately asked, "And then what about after dawn?"

"We'll see," Lynn said.

Your answer is the same as not answering at all.

"Correct."

Matteo glared at him, but in the end he didn't argue back, only muttering under his breath, "Annoying."

Lynn reached the door and had just placed her hand on the handle when Matteo's voice came from behind her, even lower than before. "There's one more thing."

Lynn turned around.

Matteo didn't look at him, only staring at his own wrist with a faint mark: "Thank you for pulling her down tonight."

This sentence was very short, as if it were forced out from between his teeth. After he finished speaking, his face tightened, clearly feeling very uncomfortable saying such a thing.

Lynn looked at him, paused for half a second, and then said, "You were involved too. You were the one who lifted the manhole cover."

"That's different."

“Nothing’s different,” Lynn said. “Go to sleep.”

He finished speaking, opened the door, and left, closing it gently behind him. The corridor outside remained quiet, the lamplight casting a thin layer of cold water on the floor. Carmela's door remained closed, and the officer on duty, standing a short distance away, nodded silently when he came out.

Lynn didn't go back to her office; she went to the monitoring room first.

There were few people on the night shift in the monitoring room, and the few screens cast a pale blue light. The dormitory corridor monitors were still up, but Matteo's room door remained closed. There was no new activity in Carmela's room either. Lynn sat down at the control panel, and the on-duty analyst immediately pulled up another set of monitors—real-time transmissions from the perimeter of the East River.

“No large-scale activity has been detected outside the warehouse yet,” the analyst said in a low voice. “Both teams are in position. There are old signs of a refrigerated truck parked on the north side of the embankment, but no trucks are parked there tonight. The breach in the western fence has been repaired; the wire is a new color.”

On the screen, the night vision camera illuminated the semi-demolished area as a gray wasteland. The abandoned cold chain warehouse was black, like an old bone sunk on the riverbank. The surrounding wind rustled the plastic sheeting and warning tape, and everything looked too quiet, too quiet to be truly abandoned.

Lynn tapped his finger on the table: "Is the underground circuit load still working?"

“Yes.” The analyst pulled up another curve. “It’s intermittent, but not zero. It’s like someone is very restrained in maintaining some kind of low-power device.”

"Refrigeration, or experimental equipment?" Lynn asked.

“It’s not legally defined yet,” the analyst said. “However, the technical department just sent some supplementary information. The access card contains a one-time sub-access package. After unpacking it, a very old device code appears. The prefix overlaps with the identifier in a batch of prohibited gene-based drugs cases from three years ago.”

Jason happened to push the door open and came in. Upon hearing the last half of the sentence, his expression immediately changed: "To what extent do they overlap?"

The analyst quickly brought up the window: "Not exactly the same, but the prefix structure is the same. They both have GX-R subclass codes. Back then, that batch of stuff appeared to be going through overseas nutritional drug channels, but in reality, it was unregistered gene modulators. It was intercepted twice, once in Nevada and once in New Jersey."

Lynn looked up: "The sample and the gene drug chain may be connected."

“Damn it.” Jason slammed a stack of newly printed photos onto the table. “I just got back from the technical department. The human protein in the sample has been preliminarily cross-signatured. Although the DNA is incomplete, some of the modification marks are very similar to a batch of failed injection samples from the old case.”

“So they’re not working on a single crystallization mutation.” Lynn looked at the warehouse image on the screen, his voice growing deeper. “They’re testing gene-based agents and crystallization samples in combination.”

Jason clicked his tongue: "No wonder even someone like Matteo, who works as a errand boy, gets dragged into getting injections."

“He is not the target itself,” Lynn said. “He is just cheap, easy to take, and his disappearance won’t easily alert the system.”

Jason nodded with a grim expression, then turned to the analyst and said, "Move the perimeter another twenty meters to see if there's a second heat source."

"It's already in progress."

The thermal image on the screen switched over, revealing that the first floor of the warehouse was mostly cool-toned, but a tiny, very faint temperature difference flashed in a corner of a sealed-off old office area on the second floor, more like a brief start-up or shutdown of equipment than a person lingering there. A few seconds later, a faint heat mark also appeared in an area underground.

“Something’s working,” the analyst said.

“Then it’s not just an empty shell.” Jason immediately grabbed his headset. “All teams, proceed as planned, fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. Seal off the east and north dikes on the outside, and keep a close watch on the waterways. Do not break down the gates without my permission.”

The orders were relayed down the chain of command. The atmosphere in the monitoring room instantly tensed. Lynn stared at the screen, his fingers pressing against the edge of the table, the dull ache in his chest seeming to intensify with the tension of impending action.

Jason turned to look at him: "You know what, you're going too."

Lynn did not answer.

“I knew it,” Jason cursed, his voice low. “If you go now, the doctor will want to kill me.”

"The doctor is not in the chain of command now."

“But you’re here.” Jason stared at him. “If you really want to go, at least go with the car to the outer perimeter, don’t go into the first wave.”

Lynn looked at the warehouse on the screen, paused for a few seconds, and nodded: "You lead the first wave. I'll go into the evidence area with the second wave."

You'd better keep your word.

“I usually keep my promises better than you do.”

"fart."

As the two men spoke, the convoy had already converged on the East River along different routes. The surveillance footage was divided into four frames: one showing the riverbank intersection, another the west gate of the warehouse, another the area around the old drainage outlet, and the third the outline view from a drone overhead. The wind blew the mist along the East River into small fragments, and the warehouse roof seemed to be weighed down by a layer of damp, cold night.

After 3 a.m., the entire area was completely sealed off.

Jason led the first wave, approaching silently from the west gate. Two technical breachers first pressed against the side seam of the gate; a flash of light from their equipment indicated that there were two mechanical locks inside. On the other side, the team at the breach in the north fence reported finding fresh tire tracks and drag marks, indicating that heavy objects had indeed been moving in and out recently.

“What about the old drain?” Lynn asked into the headset.

“There have been modifications,” the agent on duty replied. “Anti-backflow grilles have been added to the outside, but the bolts are newly replaced and can be removed. There is continuous airflow inside; it’s not a dead end.”

"Leave someone to keep watch. Don't let them sneak up from below."

"receive."

Before Ximen broke in, the warehouse suddenly lit up briefly—not by the main lights, but by some kind of internal sensor light flashing white light. Immediately afterward, a very faint figure flashed past behind a window on the second floor that was boarded up.

"There's someone inside!" a voice whispered from the front line.

Jason didn't wait any longer: "Break down the goal!"

The next second, a dull thud of demolition exploded in the headset. The west door of the warehouse was forced open, and the first wave of team members rushed in. In the monitoring room, urgent and professional instructions could be heard through the headset, interspersed with the sound of boots stomping through dust and metal doors slamming against the wall.

"The west floor was empty; a freezer was found."

"There's new wiring in the office on the right!"

Two sets of abandoned protective suits were found at the stairwell!

"There's movement on the second floor, let's continue up!"

Lynn had already stood up. Jason's group had just rushed to the second floor when a not-so-close impact came from inside, as if someone was trying to escape from the other side.

"Beware of blocking the north flank! The target may be heading east!" someone shouted into the earpiece. (End of Chapter)