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

"She's not going there with a machine gun."

"They're technical workers now. They sit in bulletproof command vehicles, enjoying air conditioning and hot milk, glancing at who has black lines on their clothes, and reporting their location via walkie-talkie."

"Dozens of SWAT officers are out there with real weapons to arrest people; that's called a technological barrier. People like you who rely solely on muscle power can't understand that."

"What if there's danger? Criminals don't care whether you're a skilled worker or not!"

"Danger? She's surrounded by plainclothes officers. Ling Lingliu is also in the Ministry of Public Security. If she loses even a single hair, Lao Liu will have to stand outside Director Wang's door as punishment with a written self-criticism. Why are you meddling in this?"

Zhang Tiehan opened his mouth, but couldn't say anything.

"We'll see."

Old Zhou patted him on the shoulder, "This is a collaboration between ministries, a temporary assignment for training. When she returns, her resume will have one more piece of experience in handling cases at the ministry level."

Seeing his still bitter face, Stephen Chow clicked his tongue in exasperation.

"Instead of lamenting here, why don't you go to the finance department and ask how the relocation allowance and high-temperature allowance for this trip will be paid! Don't let the task force swallow up our unit's benefits."

The carefree girl also walked over at this moment, still holding a cup of milk tea in her hand.

"I suspect your mouth has been blessed."

Stephen Chow straightened his suit and tie. "Tch, you call this grassroots ideological work!"

"Let's go see Luke and pick up two boxes of genuine fragrant pears while we're at it. Old Wang is such a cheapskate; he never approves any fruit allowances for business trips. We'll have to fend for ourselves."

The carefree girl didn't reply, but put her hand on Zhou Xingxing's arm.

A flash of purple light, and both feet landed on the ground.

Stephen Chow habitually took a deep breath, preparing to be greeted by the rugged, sandy smell of Northwest China.

What hit my nostrils was a strong smell of disinfectant.

He opened his eyes and saw a sign on the wall: The Fourth Medical Center of the Capital Military General Hospital.

Next to it are four red characters: Severe Burns.

Stephen Chow had never been to this hospital, but he knew exactly where it was—the top place in the country for treating burns, basically only admitting critically ill patients whose lives were hanging by a thread.

He turned to look at the carefree young woman.

"Are Korla's fragrant pears growing in hospital wards?"

The carefree girl sighed: "People from the Academy of Agricultural Sciences brought him here by special plane a few days ago. Director Wang personally went to pick him up, and he was quite angry at the time."

Old Zhou was a little down; he had a pretty good idea of ​​what had happened.

That shouldn't be the case, Luke can fly!

explode?

Enclosed space?

The two walked toward the 749 Bureau's special area, passing three checkpoints along the way.

"That afternoon, on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin, in the Seventh Windbreak Forest Area, a fire broke out."

The young woman walked slowly, her voice a little hoarse. "The fire was huge. He was taking soil samples, more than 20 kilometers away from the main force. His phone was dead. There was no one around."

The two stopped in front of a large glass window, inside which lay a person on a hospital bed.

Luke Shaw.

"By the time the crew arrived, the fire was already out. It hadn't burned the firebreak. Three acres of windbreak forest were burned."

I revisited Korla myself last time.

His old wounds have almost healed, and the wings on his back can be more than two meters long when spread out.

They even poured Stephen Chow a cup of local brick tea and called him "Director Chow" in Mandarin with a mixed accent from the American South and Xinjiang.

Now, a human-shaped charred body lies on the bed.

His eyes were wrapped in thick gauze, but his right arm was not bandaged from the elbow down.

The arm was a dark brown, like dead wood, with cracks all over its surface.

Its back is padded with a special soft pad, and its original insect wings are gone.

Stephen Chow stood motionless in front of the glass.

After a long time, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a cigarette case, took one out, and put it in his mouth.

He just kept chewing on his cigarette.

"How did the fire start?"

The carefree girl shook her head.

"I don't know. The local fire department inspected it, and it wasn't a spontaneous combustion. They found traces of a high concentration of accelerant in the soil. People from the Academy of Agricultural Sciences said that there's usually not a soul in that grove."

"He didn't run away." Zhou Xingxing looked at the person in the glass.

The carefree girl hummed in agreement, looking down at her toes. "He can escape. His wings haven't fully recovered, but he should be able to fly out of the fire."

She sniffed: "The old professor was crying so hard in the corridor yesterday that he couldn't stand up. He said that the chemical plant's chemical reagent storage station was right behind the Seventh Windbreak Forest Area. The wind was blowing in that direction that day."

"If the fire gets past the firebreak, half the county will be gone."

Stephen Chow didn't ask any more questions, and took the cigarette out of his mouth and held it between his fingers.

He walked to the doctor's office at the end of the corridor and pushed the door open.

Inside sat a middle-aged doctor in a white coat.

His surname was Qiu, he was in his early fifties, had a round face, and his temples were completely white.

He visited the station a few months ago when Stephen Chow brought Wolverine back to the station. At that time, Dr. Chiu even said with a smile, "The physiques of the people in your station are really interesting."

He wasn't smiling now; his eyes were bloodshot from staying up all night.

A stack of CT scans and post-operative records were spread out on the table. Dr. Qiu poured a glass of water and pushed it over.

"Just say it."

Dr. Qiu clipped a film onto the lightbox.

In the black and white image, the orbital bone is intact, but the structure of the two eyeballs is no longer distinguishable as normal.

"The corneas of both eyes suffered full-thickness thermal damage, the lenses became cloudy, and the retina detached. In the simplest terms, they are blind."

"Irreversible?"

"With current medical methods, it is irreversible."

Dr. Qiu hesitated for a moment, "Unless Da Vinci has some technology beyond my understanding, otherwise... the sense of light cannot be restored."

He changed the film.

"Right forearm. From the middle of the ulna to the fingertips, the muscles and nerves are completely carbonized. We have performed three debridement procedures, but the area of ​​tissue necrosis is still expanding. The conservative option is amputation up to four fingers below the elbow joint, otherwise the infection will spread upwards."

Dr. Qiu took the film off the lightbox and put it back in the folder.

"The wings."

He stopped using the X-ray and started gesturing with his hands.

"Those wing membranes are not skeletal structures, but rather more like specialized epidermal products. After being burned at high temperatures, the entire basal stem cell layer died, and the remaining ends were sealed by fibrosis."

"In layman's terms?"

"It's like it's been uprooted. It won't grow back."

"Will he survive?"

Dr. Qiu nodded.

"His life has been saved. He suffered burns over 87% of his body, but his basal metabolic rate is much faster than that of an average person, and his recovery speed exceeded expectations after the infection was brought under control. During his coma, all his vital signs were improving."

"When can you get out of bed?"

"Optimistically, two months. But psychologically..."

Dr. Qiu took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"You need to be mentally prepared. Going from being able to fly in the sky to becoming like this is not something everyone can handle."

Stephen Chow left the office, and the carefree girl leaned against the wall, seeing his expression but saying nothing.

He walked up to the glass and stood there.

Luke Shaw lay quietly in his hospital bed.

His chest rose and fell slightly, yet with extraordinary resilience.