American comic: From Beijing with Love, starting with a mutant.

A girl with grayish-blue skin stood by the table, slurping her milk tea through a straw.

Stephen Chow stood up and circled around her.

"Your diet has improved dramatically lately," Stephen Chow gestured with his hands. "Look at your cheeks, and look at your waist, the fat is practically overflowing."

"Ouch!" The carefree girl patted her stomach. "Don't talk nonsense! This is called collagen! I'm out doing fieldwork every day, gaining weight is a work-related injury!"

Stephen Chow grabbed the empty plate, picked up the largest piece of roasted venison, and handed it over.

"Okay, okay, consider it a work injury. Go back and get reimbursed by Director Wang. But what are you doing here in the middle of the night? You can't be here to mooch a midnight snack from the cafeteria, can you?"

The carefree young girl tore off a large chunk of venison and stuffed it into her mouth, mumbling a complaint:

"It's all because of Director Wang!"

"You dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night and made me come find you right away. I was having a dream where the fried chicken leg was as big as a washbasin, and I had just taken a bite of the crispy crust when I found myself here!"

Darwin, sitting opposite, twitched at the corner of his eye, his mind rewinding rapidly.

The events of the past few days are still vivid in my mind: being chased and bombed by armed helicopters in Alaska, fighting desperately with the Silver Peak Consortium in snowdrifts at sub-zero temperatures, being swept into the sky by a gale, and finally speeding across the snowfield on a wheelless, broken wooden raft.

These people clearly have mutants in their hands who can travel across borders in a second!

Darwin grabbed a handful of fries and slammed them onto his plate, then stood up and glared at Stephen Chow. "Why are you keeping a space-age ability user as a pet and forcing me to drive this beat-up campervan in the snow?!"

"We're being hunted down by the Silver Peak Consortium! Missiles are whizzing past us! Instead of using a method that could get us there in a second, you insist on dragging me into wilderness survival! Are you out of your mind?!"

Stephen Chow wasn't annoyed; he pulled out two tissues and wiped away the spittle that had splashed onto his face.

"Xiao Da, young man, don't get so worked up. Sit down and talk."

Zhou Xingxing cleared his throat, adopting the air of a director, "When dealing with matters, you must adhere to rules and regulations and have a broad perspective. Do you think teleportation is like a shared bicycle on the street, where you can just scan a code and roam freely all over the world?"

"Xiao Yi signed a formal labor contract with Bureau 749, and her position is listed under the breaking news photojournalist department. Do you even know the law of conservation of energy? This skill consumes an extreme amount of calories! Taking someone across borders once burns a huge amount of calories, and afterwards you have to eat a ton of high-sugar, high-calorie foods to recover."

Edith nodded repeatedly, biting on the straw.

Stephen Chow walked over to Darwin and patted him on the shoulder.

"We emphasize scientific employment practices and protect the legitimate rights and interests of workers. Arbitrarily exploiting employees' special abilities is the behavior of capitalist thugs. If I were to use Xiao Yi as a free international courier, the labor bureau would fine me until I had nothing left!"

Treating mutants like ordinary laborers and then bringing up labor laws?

Stephen Chow ignored his stunned expression and continued speaking.

"Even putting aside the system and looking at reality, if Xiao Yi is hungry, her teleportation point will be off track. Last time she took me back to China on an empty stomach, she teleported me directly into a mud pit at an abandoned drilling site in the Taklamakan Desert!"

At this point, Stephen Chow looked pained.

"My high-quality replica Armani white suit is ruined on the spot! High-risk skills should be used wisely. Assigning you to drive this time is a special test from the organization for a soon-to-be grassroots cadre like you."

"Think about it, in the future, your resume could include something like, 'Leaded a team in a motorhome across Canada's frigid, snowy regions and successfully repelled a transnational armed pursuit force.' That resume would definitely boost your year-end performance reviews and promotions!"

"Don't try to fool me with your job title application!"

"She can run from China to Canada today, and tomorrow she can sneak into a bank vault, or even the president's bedroom! She can kill someone with a knife and come back in less than a second."

"How can you regulate people like this who carry cameras and report the news? Just with an employment contract?"

The carefree young woman put down the roasted venison and glanced at him: "Does the president's bedroom serve full-sugar bubble tea?"

"Is this the point?!" Darwin nearly went crazy.

"How is that not the point? Crossing the Pacific Ocean once, I'd be so hungry I'd be gnawing on a table leg. Why would I risk my life assassinating someone for a pittance?"

Stephen Chow tapped the table with his knuckles. "Xiao Da, don't get excited. This is a technically sophisticated question."

"The contract covers wages, leave, and work-related injuries, while the use of skills is governed by separate procedures. After get off work, I can go downstairs to buy steamed buns; the company doesn't care. As long as I don't trespass into restricted areas, engage in illegal passenger transport for payment, or endanger public safety, I can go wherever I want in my private time."

"However, bringing people or goods into classified areas or across borders is a different matter."

"Cross-border missions are assigned separate numbers and are reviewed by the operations department and the legal department. Who is being brought along, what items are being carried, where they are going, and where they are being left behind must all be registered and reported to the border inspection and customs in advance."

"Everyone is issued an independent recorder when going on a mission. The original records are stored in the monitoring department, and no one can alter them. The equipment is returned to the equipment room after the mission. The recorder does not collect personal travel information, but it will be retrieved according to legal procedures if a case is involved."

Darwin stared wide-eyed. "You actually wrote up regulations for space teleportation?"

"With over a billion people in China, what kind of unusual job don't we have? Divers need to report when they go down into the well, escorts for hazardous materials transport, and space industry employees need to fill out a few more forms when traveling internationally. Is that so hard to understand?"

Stephen Chow pulled out a French fry and tapped Darwin.

"Having teleportation ability is not illegal, but using teleportation to commit murder is still considered intentional homicide. Teleporting into someone's home is illegal trespassing. Crossing a border without declaring it is illegal border crossing. Smuggling contraband will result in arrests by the anti-smuggling bureau."

"The law governs behavior. Whether you walk in through the door, climb in through the window, or jump in out of thin air, if you commit a crime, you have to go inside and work on the sewing machine."

After finishing the last pearl, the carefree girl added:

"That's right. Last time, I was starving and veered off course, ending up in the kitchen of a bubble tea shop. I had to go back and write a four-page report on the unusual landing location, and I even had to pay 32.6 yuan for the bubble tea."

Stephen Chow tilted his head to look at her, "Wait a minute, I remember you filled in fifty-eight yuan on your expense report?"

Edith said without batting an eye: "International exchange rate fluctuations."

"Where did the money you bought in Beijing go?"

Darwin had no interest in listening to their dredging up of the past: "Can a recording device stop her? She can just remove the device and send it to the ends of the earth; who could find it?"

Stephen Chow answered simply: "We can't stop them."

"Rules and regulations are used for prior authorization, task tracking, and post-event accountability; no one intends to lock people up in iron cages. With cameras everywhere, people will still steal electric bikes."

"Once we realized something was wrong with her, her unit suspended all international missions and arranged for a psychological evaluation."

"If there is conclusive evidence of a violation, it falls under the jurisdiction of the public security bureau. To pre-convict and detain someone simply because they have a special ability is lazy governance, and it's a case of saving trouble to the point of breaking the law and violating discipline."

"Besides, if Xiao Yi is in mortal danger and her body teleports out of control, even if you put a bomb collar around her neck, the moment you press the remote control, someone else will already be queuing up in the store with their milk tea, leaving you alone to write an accident report in front of an empty chair."

Darwin was still not giving up.

"What if the person who gave her the order is your bureau chief? They could have her transmit the information to some base to assassinate a target, and then destroy the record. Who would know?"

"It's pointless for anyone to give such an order. She has the right to refuse, and our organization has channels for appeals and reports."

"If this task fails to pass legal review, the leaders who sign and stamp it will be called in for questioning. The words 'classified information' are not a plaster; you can't just stick them on and turn something illegal into legal."

"Discipline inspection and supervision departments aren't just sitting idly by. Their oversight not only involves keeping an eye on those doing the work below, but also preventing those at higher levels from abusing their power for personal gain."

The carefree girl stirred the ice cubes at the bottom of the cup with a straw.

"If anyone dares to ask me to carry out an assassination, I'll slap the mission sheet on their forehead on the spot, turn left at the door, and go to the Discipline Inspection Commission to submit the materials."

She leaned back in her chair, her tone exuding nonchalance.

"I started spreading rumors when I was twelve. Many people tried to arrest me, but none of them succeeded. Even the 749th Bureau couldn't stop me."

"But they gave me an ID card, a work badge, and a dormitory key, and even wrote 'No working on an empty stomach' into the safety rules. After each mission, I was willing to go back and hand in the records, just because they treated me like a human being."

Darwin remained silent for a long time.

Stephen Chow adopted a posture as if he were lecturing young people.

"Did you hear that? The more dangerous the ability, the more we need to integrate people into normal society. Only when they have stable jobs, a secure livelihood, and a place to voice their grievances will they be willing to cooperate with the system."

"They surround her with guns every day, call her an experimental asset the moment they see her, and threaten to dissect her for research. If you were in her shoes, would you be willing to stay and be under their control?"

Darwin fell silent; he couldn't refute the question.

The Moon Boy didn't understand a word. After finishing his turkey, he picked up the empty plate and licked it twice before looking up and asking:

What is regulation?

Edith thought for a moment.

"It means you can't eat the communal plates after you finish eating."

The Moon Boy stared at the plate in his hand for a few seconds, then obediently put it back on the table.