That was just how things worked in America.
Law enforcement making deals with criminal suspects was hardly a rare occurrence.
When Locke heard from Debbie that the informant was trying to secure a deal with the DA’s office by turning in a mutant, he hadn’t been particularly surprised.
He was only here to confirm whether the mutant was real.
Locke nodded, then turned his attention back to the peeling apartment building before him.
His eyes drifted to his currently empty Extraordinary Card slots.
Copying Colossus’s steel body wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.
Still, this ability—whether immortality or rapid healing—seemed pretty good too.
Locke looked thoughtful.
Just then—
The sound of a door being breached thundered from the tenth floor, followed immediately by a booming roar.
“Open up!”
“SSS!”
Like a tiger charging down a mountain, Brown—standing 195 centimeters tall, built even bigger than Jack, and looking for all the world like a black bear—led the breach.
He burst through the apartment door, his crimson eyes flashing with hatred and revenge as he swept his gaze across the pitch-black interior.
Even though it was broad daylight, for some reason every single window in the one-bedroom apartment was completely covered.
Most bizarrely, right in the center of the living room sat a coffin.
Wait.
A coffin?
Just as Brown realized what he was looking at, a loud *boom* erupted.
The lid of the coffin blew apart, and a dark shadow shot out, darting toward the bedroom.
Without a second’s hesitation, Brown drew his weapon and fired.
*Bang!
Bang!
Bang!*
*Puff!
Puff!
Puff!*
Bullets spewed from the barrel, riddling the wooden door and turning it into honeycomb in an instant.
During Sentinel Secret Service training, Team Leader Brown held the record for emptying a magazine in under a second.
In live combat operations against mutants, he could push past even that limit.
Yet the shadow had already vanished into the pitch-black bedroom.
As the gunsmoke cleared, Brown spat out a low curse.
“Fuck!”
Seeing no sign of the damned mutant falling, he cursed under his breath and signaled to the two agents flanking him.
Catching his drift, the two agents moved into tactical formation, raising weapons specifically designed to neutralize mutant powers as they advanced rapidly on the bullet-riddled bedroom doorway.
Suddenly!
Just as they were about to breach the room, a pair of arms with gleaming, razor-sharp claws thrust out from the shadows, grabbing at them.
The two agents’ pupils shrank, but before they could react, an overwhelming force yanked them violently into the dark bedroom.
In under a second, two bloodcurdling screams followed by the sound of tearing flesh echoed from the pitch-black room, then cut off abruptly.
A second later—
*Thud!*
Two dark shapes were thrown out of the bedroom.
Brown scrambled back.
“Fall back!”
*Thud!*
When the figures hit the floor, Brown’s face contorted with even greater rage.
The two shapes were the agents who had just been pulled inside.
By now, they barely resembled human beings, looking as though a wild beast had gutted them alive.
The gruesome sight was almost unbearable to look at.
“SSS?”
“Sentinel Secret Service?”
“I’m no mutant.
Get the hell out and I won’t kill you.”
A raspy voice echoed from the dark bedroom, followed by a bloody object flying out and landing on the floor with a crisp clatter.
It was the metallic badge of the Sentinel Secret Service.
Brown glared at the bloodstained badge, his eyes flaring with murderous fury as he raised his rifle at the bedroom.
“Fire!”
*Rat-tat-tat!*
*Bang!
Bang!
Bang!*
*Boom!
Boom!
Boom!*
At Brown’s shout, the remaining agents pulled their triggers in unison, pouring a relentless hail of lead into the bedroom.
Muzzle flashes illuminated the dark apartment, and the heavy stench of cordite instantly saturated the air.
Standing below the apartment building, Locke looked up, his mouth slightly agape as he watched the tenth-floor windows strobe like camera flashes.
Beside him, Debbie was directing fleeing residents away from the building while staring up in disbelief.
“Chief?”
“Yeah?”
“Did Brown’s condition get worse again?”
“Who knows.”
Locke shrugged, reserving judgment.
Brown being ruthless toward mutants worked out fine for him.
In fact, he preferred it if Brown left no mutant alive.
So…
Locke wasn’t afraid of Brown going crazy; he was only afraid of Brown showing mercy.
It went back to the same old rule: if a target was captured alive, he couldn’t get any Extraordinary Points.
Still…
with that much firepower raining down, the mutant suspect had to be turned to mincemeat by now.
Why hadn’t the Extraordinary Points been credited yet?
Locke mused.
Just then—
*Crack!*
The tenth-floor window shattered, and with a scream, a body plummeted like a sandbag.
*Boom!*
The body slammed violently onto the concrete pavement in front of the building, splitting open like a dropped watermelon under the impact.
Locke raised an eyebrow at the squashed corpse.
Debbie gasped.
“Chief, that’s an ag—”
*Boom!*
Before she could finish, an explosion blew out the exterior wall of the tenth floor.
A shockwave surged outward, hurling another dark figure into the air.
The second figure hit the ground hard, but didn’t die immediately.
Yet as it struggled to get up, it suddenly let out a horrific shriek as plumes of white smoke began pouring from its body.
In the blink of an eye, the figure began rapidly combusting as if coated in white phosphorus.
Without hesitation, Locke grabbed Debbie and pulled her back, widening the distance between them and the thrashing, burning figure.
A wise man never stands under a precarious wall.
He valued his life above all else.
Once at a safe distance, Locke quickly looked back up at the building.
Up above, Brown—his tactical uniform shredded, looking drenched in blood—braced himself against the damaged wall at the breach, glaring down furiously at the unidentified creature.
Five of his twelve agents had been slaughtered by this damned mutant bastard.
If one of his men hadn’t tackled the creature while pulling a grenade pin, his entire unit might have been wiped out today.
This was precisely why Locke never fought on the front lines.
As long as he stayed alive, he would eventually become unbeatable.
At least until he obtained a life-saving skill, there was no need to take unnecessary risks.
Locke looked at the injured Brown upstairs, silently reiterating his self-preservation rule, then turned a puzzled gaze back toward the dark figure slowly collapsing into ashes.
Did the X-Gene suppressant rod fail?
Or was this guy a mutant above Gamma-level?
That seemed unlikely.
Even if he were above Gamma-level, the anti-mutant weaponry Brown and his team carried was more than enough to turn him back into an ordinary human.
Besides, wasn’t his power supposed to be immortality or rapid healing?
What was with the spontaneous combustion?
Was this guy not a mutant at all?
Locke felt a sudden realization stir in his heart.
Just then—
After a few feeble twitches, the figure on the ground went limp.
A puff of black smoke drifted from its open mouth, and it fell completely still.
At that moment, a prompt chudded in Locke’s mind.
[Ding!]