The early morning sun filtered through the school bus windows, spilling across Julian’s face.
He was half-asleep, his head bobbing with every bump in the road.
After staying up until three in the morning digesting the torrent of Canned Knowledge in his brain, all he wanted to do was catch a quick nap before they reached school.
However, a frantic, muffled shout suddenly pierced through the glass.
“J—!
Julian—!!”
The desperate screaming rapidly closed the distance, accompanied by the frantic slapping of footsteps against the pavement.
“Tch!” Julian clicked his tongue in deep annoyance.
Lazily peeling his eyes open, he looked out the window to find the source of the noise.
Outside, under the completely horrified gazes of the pedestrians on the sidewalk, Peter Parker was sprinting alongside the school bus at a terrifying speed.
His brown hair whipped wildly in the wind, his backpack bounced violently against his spine, and his face was twisted into an expression caught somewhere between pure outrage and sheer desperation.
Even crazier, he was effortlessly keeping pace with the bus, which was already cruising at twenty-five miles per hour!
“Tell the driver to stop!
I’m not on the bus!
I missed the bus—!” Peter screamed at the top of his lungs, his voice completely muffled by the glass.
Julian’s lips twitched into an incredibly punchable smirk.
He casually slid the window open, cupped a hand to his ear, and yelled back, “What was that?
You said you can keep up with the bus?!”
“I said, tell the driver to stop!!”
“What?!
You said you want to outrun the bus?!”
Staring at Julian’s obnoxiously smug face, Peter gritted his teeth in sheer, unadulterated fury.
‘Dammit!
Everything in this world is getting more expensive, except for human decency, which is getting cheaper by the second!’
Hearing the shouting match, the students inside the bus eagerly crowded against the windows, staring out at the spectacle in absolute disbelief.
“Holy crap, since when could Parker run that fast?
He’s basically breaking track records right now!” a burly football player exclaimed, vigorously rubbing his eyes.
Pedestrians along the street were stopping in their tracks.
An elderly man out for a morning jog pulled out his earbuds, looked down at his smartwatch, and then stared at the blurring figure of Peter Parker.
He looked like he had just seen a ghost.
“Julian!
If you don’t make this bus stop right now, I swear I am going to take your personal information and register you on every single gay dating site on the internet!
I’ll make sure you have to sleep with your back against the wall for the rest of your life!”
Hearing that, Julian just shook his head and scoffed.
He was completely unfazed by a threat with zero actual lethality.
Still, he turned his head and shouted toward the front.
“Hey!
Mr. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
Driver, could you stop the bus?!
That maniac running outside is my friend.”
With a harsh screech of air brakes, the yellow bus slowly pulled over to the curb.
Peter practically vaulted up the steps.
He bent over, resting his hands on his knees as he gasped wildly for air.
Well, more accurately, he was just making the physical motion of panting out of sheer habit.
His face wasn’t even flushed, and he hadn’t broken a single drop of sweat.
Pushing his way down the aisle, Peter collapsed into the empty seat next to Julian.
His eyes were perfectly round and bursting with desperate excitement.
His hands flew everywhere as he babbled at a million miles an hour.
“J, you have absolutely no idea what happened last night!
When I woke up this morning, I was on the ceiling!
Not lying down, but literally hanging upside down!
And my terrible eyesight?
Completely cured!
I could clearly see the exact color of the bra the neighbor across the street hung out to dry!
“Then I tried to do a little jump, and I slammed straight into the living room chandelier!
Aunt May thought it was an earthquake and almost called the fire department!
And then, I found out I could bend a steel spoon with my bare hands—no, not just bend it, I crushed it into a solid ball!
And—”
“Hold up!” Julian held a hand up, cutting the rapid-fire word vomit short.
“What kind of incoherent word salad are you babbling about?
Think before you speak.”
Peter took a deep breath, the frantic tension in his face easing slightly.
He held his hands up in midair, opening and closing his fingers as if desperately trying to grasp the right words to explain his impossible situation.
But after a few agonizing seconds of silence, Peter dropped his hands with a heavy sigh of defeat.
“Never mind.
It’s nothing.”
A dead silence fell over the surrounding seats.
Then, the bus erupted.
“Tch~ Way to waste our time!” “You can’t just hype us up and leave the story hanging like that!
You suck!” “Parker is such a loser…”
Amidst the chorus of boos and jeers, Peter immediately ducked his head, completely unwilling to meet anyone’s mocking gaze.
Julian gave him a thoughtful, sidelong glance, his eyes briefly landing on the fading red bite mark on the back of Peter’s neck.
Before long, the bus rumbled back to life and merged onto the road.
Julian leaned his head against the window, ready to finally get some sleep.
Rumble, rumble, rumble…
Frowning in annoyance, he opened his eyes and looked out the window.
He instantly froze.
A massive, armored dragon of military steel was rolling methodically down the adjacent lane.
Leading the convoy were three M1151 Enhanced Humvees, their woodland camouflage catching the morning light, heavy M2 machine guns mounted menacingly on their roofs.
Closely trailing them were four massive M1126 Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicles, their eight-wheeled chassis leaving heavy tire tracks on the asphalt.
Slat armor was welded firmly to their sides—a field modification explicitly designed to counter RPGs.
Even more shocking was the infantry element bringing up the rear.
Nearly a hundred heavily armed soldiers were advancing down the avenue in a tight tactical formation.
They wore Advanced Combat Helmets (ACH) and Improved Outer Tactical Vests (IOTV).
Several of them carried AN/PRC-152 squad radios, the long antennas bobbing slightly with their synchronized march.
“Holy shit…”
The entire school bus fell into a stunned, breathless silence.
Pedestrians on the sidewalks rapidly pulled out their phones, terrified murmurs rippling through the crowd.
Suddenly, a boy in a baseball cap pointed out the window and yelled, “That’s…
that’s the 69th Infantry Regiment!
Look at their shoulder patches!”
Julian narrowed his eyes.
The boy was right.
The letters 69th IR were stenciled sharply onto the Humvee doors, and the soldiers proudly wore the red-and-blue insignia of the New York Army National Guard on their right shoulders.
“It looks like they’re heading straight for Manhattan!” another student shouted, pressing his face against the glass.
Julian’s gaze meticulously tracked the convoy.
The 69th Infantry Regiment was a highly renowned mechanized unit stationed near New York, boasting equipment that vastly outclassed standard National Guard units.
Earlier this year, they had just been outfitted with the latest M109A7 Paladin howitzers and a brand-new tactical communications network.
Logically speaking, a heavy mechanized force like this had absolutely no business deploying in the middle of the city.
Near the very end of the column, two soldiers jogged past, pushing the mobile control terminal for a Puma UAV system.
The RQ-20A Puma only had a 2.8-meter wingspan, but it could provide seventy minutes of uninterrupted battlefield surveillance.
It was the ultimate ‘eye in the sky’ for platoon-level operations.
“Was there a terrorist attack in Hell’s Kitchen or something?” “Did another gang war break out at the docks?” “I don’t know, my cousin works for the NYPD and he said the mafia has been trafficking military hardware lately!”
Julian completely ignored the wild gossip.
His sharp eyes had already locked onto two highly concerning details.
First, every single soldier had a live magazine inserted into their rifle, but their safeties were still engaged.
Second, seamlessly mixed into the center of the convoy were three unmarked Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTVs), their windows completely blacked out with anti-peep privacy film.
This didn’t look anything like a routine training exercise, nor did it fit the profile of a rapid anti-terrorism response.
It looked exactly like a search-and-capture operation.
As the school bus slowly pulled away from the chaotic scene, Julian stared into the side-view mirror, watching the imposing military silhouettes gradually shrink in the distance.
His fingers began a slow, unconscious, calculated tapping against his seat.