American comic book: I, with my abundant martial virtue, love to do good to others.

"The Boston side sent over the list of mentors for the research assistants," Jason said vaguely. "There are seven people in total. Three of them later went to private companies, one went to the state research institute, and two other names were on the blacklist of underground clinics two years ago."

Which two?

"One was named Hobson, the other Eli Mello. Hobson died of a heart attack last winter, seemingly without a history. Eli appeared in New Haven three months ago, using a shell identity." Jason pulled out the page and handed it over. "We've already got people following his trail."

Lynn took it, his gaze lingering on the names: "What about Rachel's fake identity?"

"They're still digging," Jason said. "The video from the clinic's side camera has been enhanced, but the frontal view still isn't clear enough; at most, they can make the outline a little clearer. Do you really want to recognize people based on that stuff?"

"It's not about recognizing people," Lynn said. "It's about recognizing habits."

Jason glanced up: "You're doing it again."

"Carry the file bag with your right hand, wear a glove on your left, take even strides, and when you enter, first look at the reflection in the glass on your right, then look at the end of the corridor." Lynn put the tablet back on the table. "This kind of person isn't an ordinary underground real estate agent. He's not afraid of surveillance, but he'll also make sure to leave himself a vantage point."

Jason clicked his tongue: "Now that you mention it, even I find this guy annoying."

On the other end of the analysis area, someone was making a low-key phone call: "Yes, merge all of them into the anomaly screening records, don't just treat it as a regular kidnapping... no, not similarity, but risk from the same blockchain..."

Just as Lynn was about to say something more, the intercom on the table rang.

The ringtone wasn't loud, but it startled several people nearby, causing them to instinctively look up.

Jason glanced at the number: "On-call front desk."

Lynn answered, "Go on."

The person on the other end was speaking very quickly, and the background noise was clearly chaotic.

"Agent Lynn? The underground vault of the Morningbridge Union Reserve Bank in the Downtown Financial District has been burglarized. The local police department has cordoned off the scene, and the bank has requested federal anomaly assistance."

Lynn's eyes darkened slightly: "The scale of the theft?"

"Our initial assessment is that this isn't a typical counter theft; it's a vault-level operation. The strangest thing is—" there was a pause on the other end, """ there's a hole in the vault floor."

Jason took a bite out of the sandwich and looked over here.

Lynn picked up a pen and quickly wrote down the address on a blank notepad: "How big is it?"

"It's about 1.7 to 2 meters in diameter, an irregular circle with very clean edges, as if it was cut directly by some kind of high heat or high frequency. The problem is, the bank is on the second basement level, and according to the blueprints, the area below the vault should be a structural layer and an old pipework layer. When the staff looked down through the opening, all four sides below were sealed off."

"Seal off?"

"Yes, there are no obvious passages, no excavated cavities, and no traces of traditional blasting. So now everyone suspects it involves mutant capabilities."

Lynn glanced at Jason: "How long ago was this discovered?"

"It was discovered at 7:12 this morning during the warehouse inspection. The night shift guard said he heard a very faint structural noise between 2:30 and 3:00 a.m., but the monitoring and alarms did not activate at that time."

Are there any gaps in the surveillance system?

"There was a segment," the person on the other end of the phone said, "from 2:47 a.m. to 2:51 a.m., where snowflakes interfered with the footage on the second basement level for four minutes."

Lynn tossed his pen aside: "Let's go over there. Don't move anything at the scene. Don't clean up any fallen objects, metal shavings, or dust around the opening. Especially don't let the bank people go down to investigate on their own."

"clear."

Jason hung up the phone and pulled his coat off the back of the chair.

"Raphael hasn't even been pulled out of his whiteboard yet, and now there's a hole in the vault." He bent down to fasten his cuffs. "They really know how to pick their timing today."

"You leave half the men to keep an eye on the Raphael line." Lynn picked up his sidearm and identification folder. "You're coming with me to the scene."

"I knew you wouldn't let me catch up on sleep."

"It's no use fixing your face now."

"You're starting to talk like a bad boss."

The two walked one after the other through the analysis area. Someone looked up and asked, "A new case?"

Jason didn't even turn his head: "The bank vault has been breached. If any of you have any old cases involving suspects with abilities like controlling metal, thermal cutting, phase penetration, or geological formations, send them to my email within ten minutes."

A young analyst immediately responded, "Understood!"

Another person looked up from behind the screen: "Which bank?"

"Mornbridge United Reserve, Lower Manhattan Financial District."

"The underground structure is very old," the analyst said quickly. "The earliest part was a renovation of a pre-war building, so the structural diagrams below may not be complete."

"First, retrieve all the publicly available filings and urban redevelopment documents," Lynn said. "I need all the old maps of the three underground levels, even those from fifty years ago."

"receive."

When they left, the sky was grayer than when it had just dawned. A thin layer of dampness clung to the streets, as if a light rain had fallen the night before; streaks of water still clung to the car windows. Jason got into the passenger seat, leaned back, closed his eyes for a couple of seconds, then opened them again: "So, this time, are we going to get cash, precious metals, or the safe deposit box?"

"Don't guess yet."

"I feel uncomfortable if I don't guess."

"Then just suffer."

"You have absolutely no camaraderie."

"You don't have any either."

As the car pulled out of the branch parking area, the morning rush hour traffic was just beginning to crowd into the city center. A morning traffic report was playing on the radio, the presenter's overly energetic tone a stark contrast to the two people in the car who seemed to be sustained only by coffee.

Jason turned on his tablet and started reading the initial report that had just been synced: "The person who reported the incident is the bank vault manager, named Amanda Floyd. She opened the second-floor vault door at seven o'clock this morning and found a hole in the center of the floor, slightly to the west. There was no body, no gunshot wound, and no damage from traditional lock picking. The exact amount stolen is still being verified."

How many people work the night shift?

"Four. One on duty, two on underground patrols, and one in the monitoring room. They're all on site."

"Separate them all."

"I know," Jason said as he looked at the document. "Also, the bank didn't call the police immediately; they called their legal department at headquarters first. The legal department then delayed for another nine minutes before agreeing to report it to the local police station."

Lynn gave a cold laugh: "Very bank-like."

"See, I love the look on your face like this." Jason glanced at him sideways. "It means you get annoyed by human institutional procedures too."

"I'm always annoyed."

"Then you usually pretend to be a normal person too much."

"Shut up and watch."

When they arrived at the downtown financial district, half of the street was already cordoned off with blue and white police tape.

The Central Bank of America building sits on a street corner, its stone facade somewhat worn, its copper door frames polished to a high shine, and the pair of engraved pillars at the entrance exuding an old-money feel. But now, all semblance of decorum has vanished. Police cars, technical vehicles, bank legal staff, pale-faced executives, and reporters kept outside are all huddled together. Several uniformed officers are pushing the crowd away, while reporters, microphones in hand, shout through the wires: "Is this a case of crime involving superhuman abilities?" "Was there internal collusion within the bank?" "Is the theft over ten million?"

A female legal counsel stood in the doorway, her lips pressed into a tight line, repeatedly saying into the phone, "We cannot provide figures before the investigation is complete..."

Lynn and Jason showed their identification, and the officers on the perimeter immediately made way for them.

The officer in charge of the scene was a detective named Blake from the NYPD's Special Crimes Unit. He was in his forties, had graying hair, and a sour expression. Upon seeing them, he immediately approached them and said, "You've finally arrived."

Jason said as he walked inside, "Your welcoming tone makes it sound like we're three hours late."

"If you're any later, the bank's board of directors will start discussing how to frame the hole as a renovation accident," Blake said in a low voice. "Those people in there are driving me crazy."

"Have you got everyone under control?" Lynn asked.

"Four from the night shift, two from the first day shift, the vault supervisor, the security supervisor, and the surveillance supervisor—they're all here. The bank wanted a lawyer with them, and I said that was fine; they can come one by one." Blake glanced at Lynn. "Shall we check the scene first?"

"Let's look at the cave first."

As they walked through the lobby, the bank's previously pristine and tranquil atmosphere was shattered. The marble floor still gleamed, the reception area was empty, and a few employees stood far apart, speaking in hushed tones, their expressions a mixture of shock and panic. There was a strange smell in the air, unlike the acrid smell of a fire or the smoke of an explosion; it was more like the dry odor left after high temperatures had cut metal and stone, with a hint of damp mineral dust.

Jason sniffed. "Can you smell it?"

"Um."

"It's like a welding room, but a bit colder."

"Don't jump to conclusions."

"You really know how to ruin a chat experience."

They passed through two internal security checkpoints, swiped their ID cards, signed temporary entry forms, and put on shoe covers before finally descending to the second basement level.

The underground corridor was very quiet.

Unlike the chaotic atmosphere outside, here the only sounds were the low hum of equipment and people speaking in hushed tones. The heavy doors to the vault were fully open, and two technicians in full sampling gear stood by the door, setting up the site markers one by one. There were white chalk lines, footprint protection paper, and a dust collector on the ground. Not far from the vault door, two bank executives and a lawyer were being held back behind a security cordon, their faces increasingly grim.

Blake raised his hand to indicate, "Inside."

The vault is much larger than most people imagine.

This wasn't one of those exaggerated rooms in movies that just held a few stacks of gold bars; it was an entire reinforced underground storage space. Neatly arranged metal storage boxes surrounded the walls, with a large storage module in the center specifically for transshipment. Both the floor and walls had been reinforced. The interior lighting was on full blast, almost blindingly white, making the hole in the center of the floor stand out starkly.

It's like someone suddenly digging away a piece from a flat table with an extremely steady hand.

The opening wasn't perfectly regular, nearly circular, but its edges were remarkably clean. It wasn't a jagged, burst-open section, but rather a layer that had been completely cut open, revealing the upper layer of stone flooring, the lower layer of reinforced concrete, and even deeper layers of old load-bearing slabs—all cleanly and decisively severed from the same cross-section. There were very few scattered fragments around the opening; most resembled fine, grayish-black powder, clinging to the edges and near a few nearby signboards.

As Lynn approached, even the technicians who had been speaking in the library paused involuntarily.

The opening was surrounded by a safety frame to prevent anyone from slipping and falling. A site engineer wearing a fall arrest rope was crouching down beside it, shining a powerful flashlight down.

Jason stood at the edge, looked down, and immediately frowned: "This is fucking..."

There really was no passage below.

About three meters below the opening, there's a vertically cut-out space with exposed structural layers and cut-out old pipe shells on the walls. Below that is a deeper layer of concrete. Strangely, the structural surfaces that should have continued underground are all seemingly "sealed" off within this opening. There are no outward-opening passages, no excavated gaps in the strata, and not even any signs of soil loosening.

It's as if someone didn't come up from below, nor did they dig down from here, but simply took this "space" out of the solid structure.

Jason crouched down and swept the light across the left wall: "Dead on all four sides."

Blake stood behind: "Our men didn't believe it at first either. They went down with ropes to look around, but they couldn't find any horizontal openings to get in or out."

"And the bottom?" Lynn asked.

"It's hard. Completely sealed off," Blake said. "The engineers say there should be an old maintenance compartment underneath, but you can't see it now."

Lynn didn't say anything, but simply reached out and took the spare light from the technician, shining it down as well.

When light falls on the cave walls, very fine erosion lines can be seen, not so much like flames burning, but more like shallow lines left by extremely dense energy vibrations sweeping along the boundaries. In some places, there are also broken steel bar sections, dark in color, but without the splash beads of traditional cutting.

Jason whispered, "Not like your average zealot."

"Um."

"Like what?"

"Take a sample first."

A technician in protective clothing immediately chimed in, "We've already collected samples of edge powder, rebar cross-section residue, and microparticles from the bottom of the hole. At first glance, there are no explosive residues or common industrial cutting agents."

"Where are the temperature traces?" Lynn asked.

"There are signs of short-term high temperatures at the edge of the hole, but they are uneven." The technician turned a page in the clamping plate in his hand. "Strangely, there are several sections inside where the temperature is not high, and it looks like the material has collapsed on its own after a brief period of instability. We are hesitant to make a definitive diagnosis."

Lynn handed the lamp back and looked around: "What was confirmed in the theft report?"

Blake pointed to the storage module on the right: "Those three high-security storage lockers over there have been opened. Not by traditional prying, but by the lock cylinders and the internal structure of the doors seemingly failing simultaneously. Two bags of high-purity gold industrial reserves, a box of uncut industrial diamonds, and two sealed bonds are missing from the lockers. Five private boxes in the safe deposit box area have also been emptied, but the bank is still verifying the exact list."

Jason raised an eyebrow: "You're quite professional in your selection. You don't just grab whatever comes to mind."

"So I suspected a mole from the beginning," Blake said. "But now that I see this hole, I suspect the mole was at most just telling him what to get."

Lynn turned to look at the several open cabinets.

They were located not far from the entrance, the doors were all open, and the empty spaces inside were more conspicuous than the surrounding areas. The locks and internal mechanical structures were indeed strange; they didn't seem to have been forcibly damaged, but rather as if the entire lock's coordination had been disrupted at some point. A technician was taking close-up photos of the latch with a camera, and there was also a magnetic scanning device nearby. (End of Chapter)