Oklahoma City.
Outside the casino hotel.
A slovenly old woman walked silently toward the casino, one hand clutching a few pills and the other tucked into her pocket.
Her right hand inside her pocket gripped a gun.
She had originally planned to use it on herself, but when the moment came, she found she lacked the courage.
So she changed her mind at the last minute, deciding to head into the casino and take a few people down with her before ending it all.
Her oldest son had died in that casino, and her second son had developed a drug addiction there, snorting himself to death just a few days ago.
So she believed that the casino was the cause of all her suffering.
“Hey, Joe, Team C seems to have been out of touch for a while…”
“Could they have been killed by those mutants?”
Passing by the command vehicle, the old woman paused.
She suddenly remembered that her husband had apparently been killed by mutants as well.
Only after that had her tragic life unfolded.
*Oh, that’s right…*
*So it was those mutants who ruined my life.*
…
Twelfth floor corridor of the casino.
“Ahhh!!!”
“Damn mutants…”
Before the remaining Reaver soldiers could recover from the deafening roar of the grenade, two reapers of death stole quietly out of the darkness.
With their night-vision goggles malfunctioning, their eyes unable to adapt to the dark, piercing alarms blaring, and the floor soaked with water after enduring a round of explosions, locating the enemy—or even raising their guns to aim—was an overwhelming challenge.
Under these conditions, the battle turned into a one-sided slaughter.
Logan and Laura only needed to mechanically drive their claws into the enemies’ chests over and over again.
Even if a dangerous situation arose, Miles quickly disabled the Reavers’ cybernetic limbs.
Compared to controlling the chaotic and inefficient thought signals of the human brain, Miles clearly found the electronic signals of technology far more concise and efficient.
Both the strain on his power and the control intensity were on an entirely different level than before.
Perhaps this was the true form of Miles’ “telepathy”—his own unique “electronic perception,” or rather, “electronic signal manipulation.”
…
Soon, in less than a minute, the sounds in the corridor died down completely, leaving only the fire sprinklers showering water down, washing away the thick slurry of blood on the floor.
Panting heavily, Logan yanked his claws from the head of the final corpse and flicked away the blood and grime.
Leaning against the wall, he felt sharp pangs of pain from his gunshot wounds as exhaustion washed over him like a tidal wave.
Laura stepped out of the darkness, equally covered in blood, staring expressionlessly at Logan.
“Let’s head back,” Logan said with a nod, limping toward the room.
With that, the group reunited.
They obviously couldn’t stay in the hotel any longer.
The place was wrecked with signs of battle, and now that their location was exposed, all they could do was leave as quickly as possible.
“Professor Charles, we have to go…”
“Dammit…
Logan, do you know how long it’s been since I slept in a proper bed?
I haven’t even had a good night’s sleep here!”
Ignoring Professor Charles’ complaints, Logan bent down and awkwardly hoisted Professor Charles onto his back.
Meanwhile, Caliban rushed over and carefully lifted Miles, whose body was weakened to its absolute limit, onto his own back.
Laura folded up Professor Charles’ and Miles’ wheelchairs and slung them over her back.
The group stepped out of the room and into the corridor.
By now, the fire alarms and sprinklers had gone quiet, and the emergency lights flickered back on with dim illumination, painting a clearer picture of the carnage.
The walls were riddled with bullet holes and claw marks, and over a dozen corpses lay strewn across pools of blood.
The stench of iron hanging in the air was sickening.
Leaning against Logan’s broad but no longer firm back, Professor Charles looked at the scene, a thread of sadness in his aged eyes.
“Logan,” he murmured, his voice trembling slightly.
“I thought…
all this was behind us…”
Logan walked across the floor where the diluted blood splashed squelchingly beneath his feet.
Hearing Professor Charles, old Logan fell silent for a moment before replying in a raspy voice, “Professor Charles, you know as well as I do that most of the time, we don’t have a choice…”
“It’s alright, I know…
I know…” Professor Charles sighed.
“The world has never changed.
Only we have.”
The five of them passed through the hellish corridor and reached the elevator, riding it slowly down to the main floor casino lobby.
With Miles present, they didn’t need to worry about the power to the elevator being cut, and they knew for sure there were no enemies ambushing them below.
According to Miles, the Reaver squad left behind had fallen back to the command vehicle after their command network collapsed.
They were guarding against possible attacks while trying to help Dr.
Zander open the emergency exit, though with little success so far.
The vehicle hadn’t been designed with the idea of opening the emergency latch from the outside in mind, and Dr.
Zander and Antony inside were clearly going to need considerable effort to push open the iron hatch themselves.
“Good…” Miles endured the agonizing pain in his brain, staring fixedly toward the command vehicle.
“You won’t get away, Dr.
Zander…”
The lobby was still brightly lit, though the crowd had thinned out significantly due to the brief panic earlier.
Resting on Caliban’s back, every breath Miles took stoked a blinding migraine deep in his brain, as if tens of thousands of red-hot needles were twisting inside his skull.
Yet he forced himself to stay awake.
He wanted to watch Zander Rice die with his own eyes!
“They’re out!”
The remaining Reavers on standby spotted Miles’ group and raised their guns without hesitation.
Seeing this, Logan and Laura halted instinctively, their claws sliding out with a metallic schwing.
“It’s mutants!”
Seeing Logan and Laura, the crowd scattered in terror.
To many of them, mutants were no different from terrorists—their appearance brought nothing but disaster and bloodshed.
Logan cast an indifferent glance at the panicked crowd, unfazed.
As one of the oldest living mutants, he had experienced scenes like this countlessly before.
Miles didn’t care either.
From the beginning, he had only one target.
“Laura…” Miles rasped weakly from Caliban’s back.
“Zander is in that vehicle…
and those guys in black nearby?
That’s his guard squad…
I’ll disable their cybernetic arms.
Take the chance to finish them quickly…
then wait for Dr.
Zander to come out…”
*Bang!*
Before Miles could finish speaking, a sharp gunshot rang out without warning inside the noisy casino lobby!
Everyone flinched.
Logan spun around, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks.
Old Professor Charles’ eyes went blank, his mouth parting slightly.
A flower of blood bloomed quietly on his back, rapidly staining his neat suit red.
Logan followed the sound of the gunshot and saw a gray-haired old woman trembling as she held a smoking pistol, her eyes filled with terror and deep-seated hatred.
“I know what you are!
Damn mutants!” the woman shrieked hysterically.
“You made me lose my husband and my sons!
You made me like this…”
However, before she could finish her accusation, an unexpected event occurred.
*Snap!*
In an instant, every light in the casino went dark!
LCD screens, billboards, chandeliers…
every light source vanished at the exact same moment.
Even though it was daytime outside, an unspoken oppression and invisible terror settled over everyone.
*Riiiiing…*
Ear-splitting alarms blared, and slot machines frantically spat out coins and tokens, showering the floor with clatter.
The giant screen on the high-rise flickered with a harsh static noise and turned into pure snow.
At the same time, everyone’s phone screen went black, failing completely.
Even without seeing, everyone gradually sensed that something horrifying was happening.
“Nnh…”
The woman who fired the shot discovered in horror that her body no longer obeyed her.
Her arm trembled violently, moving uncontrollably, inch by inch, shifting the cold barrel away from the mutants she hated and slowly pointing it under her own chin.
Before her, Miles had turned his head at some point, his fingers pressed hard against his temple.
His face was as pale as paper, but his eyes were colder than ever.
Miles was going to kill her.
Not just the old woman—inside the command vehicle, Dr.
Zander and Antony, who were pulling on the lever together, suddenly realized their bodies were beyond their control!
Both of them stiffly reached for each other, trembling as their hands clamped around each other’s throats, slowly tightening…
“Mind…
control?!” Dr.
Zander choked out in pain.
“Is it…
him?” Antony croaked out.
“Don’t…
Doctor…”
In that moment, the old woman, Dr.
Zander, and Antony all felt death descending upon them.
Driven by survival instincts, they began desperately resisting with everything they had.
At the same time, everyone’s gaze instinctively converged on the paraplegic teenager, including the remaining members of Reaver Squad D who had been preparing to charge.
Yet after witnessing this terrifying, godlike display, not a single person dared to make a move.
“…Don’t.”
The woman whimpered in despair, her finger slowly applying pressure to the trigger.
However, right before the trigger could be pulled, a raspy voice shattered the dead-silent standoff.
“Don’t, Miles…” wounded Professor Charles, lying on Logan’s back, spoke with difficulty.
“Don’t…
She’s just a…
poor soul…”
Miles didn’t answer, but he grit his teeth tightly.
He still wanted to kill them…
but he was reaching his limit.
Controlling three people at once was already the upper limit of his ability, especially given his poor physical condition and the excruciating headache racking his brain…
Unable to see inside the command vehicle and only possessing a rough sense of Dr.
Zander and Antony’s positions, relying solely on his power made it difficult to kill them outright in a short time—especially with a Reaver squad still guarding the vehicle.
“He’s been shot!
He needs treatment immediately!” Caliban shouted anxiously, looking at Professor Charles.
“We have to find a doctor right now!”
“Fuck!”
Logan turned his head, glaring fiercely at the woman with furious eyes, then growled at the others, “Let’s go!”
Miles was deathly pale, sweat pouring down his forehead like a stream.
Leave now?
Or kill Dr.
Zander at all costs?
If he saved Professor Charles, he wouldn’t have time to kill Dr.
Zander…
but if he killed Dr.
Zander now, Professor Charles would die…
With these thoughts racing through his head, Miles finally shifted his gaze away from the woman and looked past the crowd, fixing one last glare at the silent command vehicle in the distance, as if carving its outline into his mind.
Then he slowly turned back, looking at Professor Charles, who was bleeding on Logan’s back.
Framed by the blossoming bloodstain, the old man looked more frail and helpless than ever.
Miles opened his trembling mouth, recalling what old Professor Charles had told him earlier.
*”We’re family, Miles…
Family means understanding each other, helping each other…”*
He didn’t fully comprehend Professor Charles’ words, but the fact remained…
he didn’t want Professor Charles to die like this either.
Because…
Professor Charles was one of the few people who genuinely cared about him since he came to this world.
Last time, he failed to save Gabriela…
This time…
At the thought, Miles’ eyes turned bloodshot.
He felt like his head had never been in such turmoil.
Dammit!!!!
*Bang!*
The gun went off.
A bloody hole blasted through the old woman’s shoulder, blood spurting out.
The gun dropped to the ground with a clatter, and she collapsed.
“Huu…
huu…”
Miles panted, squeezing out a few words through gritted teeth.
“…Let’s go.”
As Miles’ voice fell, the old woman let out a hysterical scream as blood poured continuously from her shoulder wound.
Miles hadn’t killed her, but he didn’t intend to let her off easy either.
A bullet to the shoulder wasn’t fatal, but whether she survived would be up to her.
Just like what she had done to Professor Charles.
…
As the group departed, the lights and alarms in the lobby returned to normal.
“Miles…” Professor Charles looked at Miles, opening his mouth worryingly as if to say something, but lacked the strength to speak.
Slowly, he closed his eyes.
“Hurry!” Logan roared in panic.
Under the terrified gazes of the casino security guards and bystanders, he led the group past the barrier, hijacking a pickup truck left behind on the road by a panicked driver.
*Vroom vroom…*
Logan slammed his foot on the accelerator.
The pickup truck’s engine roared to life, carrying the battered group away until they vanished at the end of the road.
…
Two minutes later.
“One, two, three!”
“One, two, three!!!”
Antony and Dr.
Zander finally pushed open the heavy bottom emergency exit of the command vehicle together, crawling out of that iron coffin.
“What happened?” Antony grabbed a member of Squad D as soon as he pulled himself up.
“Was that X-0 acting just now?!”
“Report, sir…
we…
we…” The soldier babbled incoherently, clearly not yet recovered from the terror.
“The mutants left…”
“We didn’t dare stop them…
something terrifying happened…”
“What?”
Through talking with the others, Dr.
Zander and Antony finally pieced together the full picture of what had transpired.
While they were trapped in the vehicle, an unfathomable electronic rampage had erupted inside the casino.
They had almost been torn limb from limb by those enraged mutants!
“How could something like this happen?” Antony muttered under his breath.
Dr.
Zander paid no mind to the panic.
He simply stared blankly in the direction where the mutants had vanished, his eyes shining with a mix of fanaticism and disbelief.
“Manipulating all electronic equipment…
paralyzing the command network, causing large-scale chaos…
Is this the true potential of ‘X-0’?” he muttered, his voice trembling with excitement.
“Unbelievable…
A mutant who can awaken an ability like this actually exists!”
…
Meanwhile, a police officer who had been watching from the sidelines immediately dialed his superior’s number as soon as his phone resumed normal function.
“This is Oklahoma City, Queens District, casino hotel…
Yes, sir, an incident just occurred here…
an extremely severe incident of a mutant losing control of their power…”