“Here!”
Axel pulled a toy water gun out of nowhere and handed it to Yuri.
Turning around, Yuri saw the other four thugs holding identical props.
“These might look like toys, but they’re actually extremely lethal weapons.” Axel grinned maliciously, showing a bloodthirsty smirk.
“Just pull the trigger, and they fire brilliant, colorful lasers.
Gorgeous colors—but how does the saying go?
The prettier something is, the deadlier it gets!
These lasers can pierce even The Flash’s suit.
I’d say they’re better than Rainbow Raider’s goggles.
But—”
“Don’t go killing an FBI agent out of nowhere unless he fires at you first.”
The thugs had no objections to their leader’s command.
They were just a gang of low-level punks without grand ambitions, not cold-blooded murderers, and they were up against the FBI, no less.
Only Yuri subtly sensed something off, falling into deep thought.
No one noticed Yuri’s suspicion as Axel continued explaining to himself.
“You don’t need to break inside the FBI building.
You just need to hold off the patrolling guards outside for me.”
“Tangrui, Busk, Patch,” Axel began calling names.
“You three take the left side.
Jem and Yuri, take the right.”
“I’ll use my air-walking shoes to slip into the seventh-floor evidence room.
When the alarm sounds, you move.”
“Got it?”
Yuri and the four thugs nodded solemnly.
“Great.
Now, let’s split up.”
As soon as he spoke, Axel activated his air-walking shoes, stepping into thin air and running straight up into the sky.
The Rustbucket was parked down below the steep slope behind the FBI branch building.
The slope was high and steep; a normal person couldn’t scale it.
So Axel ran up first and threw down a few ropes for the rest to climb up.
The FBI branch building had a courtyard structure with entrances and exits on both sides.
Yuri and Jem ran along the wall toward the right side of the FBI building.
When they could faintly see the entrance, they stopped and hid behind the nearest pillar.
“Do you really believe what the boss said?” Yuri asked casually, standing behind Jem.
“About what?” Jem didn’t turn around, peering out from behind the pillar toward the entrance.
“The Network.” Yuri stroked his chin, pondering.
“How can you be sure the Network actually exists?
How do you know what The Trickster has to do with them?”
Jem turned back with a confused look, seemingly unable to comprehend Yuri’s doubt.
“He gave us intel on the superheroes—The Flash, Jesse Quick, the old Flash, Kid Flash…
He knows all the superheroes in Central City and Keystone City.
Someone who knows all that has to be a big shot.”
“The second Trickster is about our age.
I don’t buy that he investigated all that info himself.
Besides the Network telling him, what other explanation is there?”
“Fine, let’s say you’re right.
But why would the Network steal from the FBI?
What could the FBI have that’s worth the Network risking its existence to have amateurs like us help?
Aren’t they worried we’ll mess up?”
Jem froze upon hearing this.
He had never considered these questions.
Seeing Jem’s expression, Yuri knew he wasn’t going to get any big revelations.
He was now one hundred percent certain that Jem and the others were being used by the second Trickster.
If Jem had known some secret, that would be one thing, but he knew nothing—which meant this was a huge problem.
Drawing the guards’ attention and stalling them was essentially acting as cannon fodder to cover for Axel.
Telling them not to kill indiscriminately, yet handing them lethal weapons.
Yuri didn’t believe for a second that a bunch of untrained punks knew how to exercise restraint with lethal weapons.
And given the FBI’s protocols, there was no way they wouldn’t shoot back—a firefight was inevitable.
Even with super-weapons in hand, these unlucky fools like Jem were no match for elite FBI agents.
If the fight dragged on and James Jesse led a team over from Central City, they’d be forced to surrender.
As for Axel himself, he had his air-walking shoes.
Once he got what he wanted, he could just fly away, leaving the firefight on the ground behind him.
Even if Jem and the others were captured alive, the FBI would at best get the word “Network” out of them.
They knew nothing about where Network headquarters was, who its members were, or what its plans were.
And the “Network” had never been a secret in the Twin Cities; it had circulated as an urban legend for over a decade. Get faster updates on novelping.com.
Almost everyone had heard of it, though few believed it was real.
It was even likely the FBI had uncovered clues about the Network, and today’s mission was probably to steal investigative files that posed a real threat to them.
Otherwise, Axel’s actions made no sense.
If Jem and the rest weren’t taken alive but shot dead on the spot, the Network wouldn’t have to worry about exposure at all.
Yuri estimated that all five of them were meant to be discarded from the very start.
He had no intention of dying alongside idiots like Jem.
“Hey, Jem, look over there.
Did the guards spot us?” Yuri suddenly pointed toward the gate and whispered.
Jem gasped in alarm and turned around abruptly, but the guards at the door remained in position, their eyes nowhere near them.
The moment Jem turned away, Yuri rolled up his sleeve, revealing the small beat-up watch on his wrist, and pressed the activation button as fast as he could.
Only one alien hero was suited for this moment.
“Ghostfreak!”
A flash of green light flickered and died.
Sensing something strange behind him, Jem turned back around.
However…
There was nothing behind him.
No person, no object—even Yuri, who had been right behind him, was gone.
“Yuri?
Where are you?”
An eerie sense of dread rose from deep within Jem.
He even had the illusion that the surrounding temperature had dropped by dozens of degrees.
In truth, it was no illusion.
Yuri was still in his original position, less than two steps away from Jem.
But Jem couldn’t see him at all.
Ghostfreak—an Ectonurite, a species remarkably similar to ghosts in both appearance and abilities.
Having an intangible body was a wondrous feeling; Yuri instinctively felt he could pass through any solid object.
“Stop messing around, man!
Come out!
The alarm could go off any second, we gotta work!” Jem swallowed hard and gave a forced laugh.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t considered Yuri running away, but the window of time had been too short—so short that even Usain Bolt couldn’t have sprinted out of his line of sight.
Unless Yuri was The Flash.
“Okay, since you miss me so much, I’m back.”
Controlling his body, Yuri slipped straight into Jem’s physical frame.