Moonlight spilled across the rooftop.
Gwen woke from her coma to see the masked man in the black-and-red armor sitting on the edge of the roof.
She recognized that silhouette—the hooded man who had devoured Thompson in a dark alley on a rainy night.
“It’s you,” Gwen’s voice came from behind her mask, hoarse and dry.
“You’re the murderer who killed Thompson.” Ryan Quinn didn’t turn around.
One leg dangled off the ledge, his back slightly hunched as he sat slumped against the edge of the roof, looking completely relaxed.
The night breeze ruffled his hood, and a dark red glow flickered within his goggles.
“Ah…
that matter.” His voice drifted out from behind the mask, drawn out and casual to the point of being irritating.
“If I hadn’t killed Thompson, all of New York might be dead by now.” Gwen was stunned—mostly by his tone.
“What do you mean?
Was Thompson that powerful?” Her voice was filled with disbelief.
“I didn’t feel anything from him that I couldn’t handle.” Ryan Quinn slowly reached up and scratched the back of his head—an awkward, nonchalant gesture through his hood and mask.
“Do you know what the Blacklight Virus is?” “What virus?” “DX-1118C Strain.” Ryan Quinn let out a yawn, his voice muffled by the mask.
“A retrovirus capable of crossing species barriers…
Such a long name, I’m tired just saying it.
Anyway, it’s something that makes the host stronger.
Intelligence, strength, speed, self-healing…
and other things.” He paused, stopping there for a long moment.
“…Never mind, too much trouble.
I won’t list them all.” Gwen’s expression turned serious.
The word “virus,” combined with Ryan Quinn’s tone—which didn’t sound like he was making it up—made her body instinctively tense.
“1963,” Ryan Quinn’s gaze drifted toward the Manhattan skyline.
His tone was loose and careless.
“The United States government started a project called ‘Blacklight.’ They built a town in Idaho called…
what was it…
right, ‘Hope Springs.’ They moved a bunch of soldiers’ families there, claiming it was an experimental site to simulate human settlements after a nuclear war.” Ryan Quinn tilted his head, seemingly thinking of the next sentence.
“And then they injected those people with the virus.” “Wait,” Gwen interrupted.
“You’re saying—the U.S.
government experimented on its own citizens?” Ryan Quinn slowly turned his head, the dark red glow of his goggles settling on her.
It was a flat look, devoid of any emotion.
Then he turned back.
“So tired.
I don’t want to answer such troublesome questions.” Gwen fell silent.
She knew the track record of the United States government all too well.
The Tuskegee Experiment, Project MKUltra, Gulf War Syndrome—she could list a long string of names.
If there was a Project Blacklight, she wouldn’t be surprised.
“That virus,” Ryan Quinn continued, his voice dropping lower, almost trailing off.
“It can enhance the host’s physical attributes through DNA fusion.
It was validated in primates.
So they gave it a super-annoying name, DX-1118C.
Who came up with that?
It’s not catchy at all.” Gwen frowned.
“So Thompson was infected with this virus?” “No,” Ryan Quinn said.
His tone was still lazy, but this time the pause was shorter.
“Thompson wasn’t just infected.
Thompson was a carrier.
He didn’t know when he was infected; the virus was in its incubation period.
If he hadn’t been eliminated, it would have spread, and then…
well, all of New York would be finished.” When Ryan Quinn said “finished,” there wasn’t the slightest fluctuation in his tone.
“How do you know?” Gwen pressed.
“How do you know the virus would spread?
How do you know Thompson was a carrier?
What right do you have to—” “That town,” Ryan Quinn interrupted, his voice finally rising slightly.
“Do you want to know how it ended?” Gwen’s words caught in her throat.
Ryan Quinn waited two seconds to ensure she wouldn’t interrupt again before slowly speaking.
“Years later, the virus broke out.
Nearly seven hundred people were infected, and the rest were trapped inside waiting…
well, to die, I guess.” His voice was very light, very slow.
“A year later, the military moved in.
It was like a purgatory; every single resident of the town was dead.” The wind blew past Ryan Quinn, the edge of his hood fluttering slightly before settling.
“The only survivor was a pregnant girl.” Gwen’s breath hitched.
Surviving for a year in a viral outbreak that was a literal purgatory.
After every resident had died, the only person to walk out was a pregnant girl?
She looked at the black silhouette, watching the moonlight glint off his armor.
“How do you know all this so clearly?” her voice dropped, carrying a note of caution she didn’t even realize was there.
Ryan Quinn let out a long sigh.
It escaped his mask in a slow, weary drag.
“Because…” Ryan Quinn slowly pulled one leg back from the ledge and let the other one dangle instead.
He moved so slowly that Gwen suspected he had dozed off in the middle of it.
Then he sighed again.
“I might be the only surviving Blacklight Virus host in this world.
That’s it.
I’m too lazy to go into the details.” Gwen’s pupils dilated instantly.
The only surviving Blacklight Virus host.
The only survivor of that town was a pregnant girl.
Her mind raced.
The virus could be transmitted from mother to child.
If that girl survived, and if her child survived…
She suddenly felt like she understood something.
That pregnant girl had survived a year in the purgatory of the outbreak.
Her child was born in that dead town, or perhaps in some laboratory, born in a place she didn’t know.
That child inherited the mother’s virus.
That child was the unique, true existence that had coexisted with the Blacklight Virus since birth.
That child was the person sitting on the edge of the roof right now, soaking in the sun—no, the moon.
He seemed completely lethargic, as if he were just zoning out on a park bench.
Gwen didn’t speak.
She sat down against a ventilation duct.
She sensed a bone-deep detachment in Ryan Quinn.
It was something branded there since birth, a sense of being completely out of sync with the world.
He expressed this detachment through laziness—since things were already like this, then so be it.
A relaxation that went all the way to the marrow.
Gwen opened her mouth to say something, but in the end, she only let out a breath.
That breath turned into a puff of white mist in the night air, slowly rising and dissipating in the moonlight.
She had many questions.
What happened to his mother?
Where did he grow up?
Why did he save her?
Why did he kill Karl King?
Why did he wear this armor?
Why did he suddenly appear?
But she didn’t ask a single one.
She suddenly felt it would be a bit cruel to hurl complex questions at someone who found everything so troublesome.
The night wind continued to blow.
The moon emerged fully from the gaps in the clouds, coating the roof in silver-white light.
The buildings of Queens stood quietly in the moonlight, with the occasional sound of sirens and the flowing river in the distance.
Ryan Quinn yawned.
“So sleepy.
It’s about time to head back.” Ryan Quinn slowly stood up from the ledge, his movements agonizingly lethargic.
He brushed off non-existent dust from his armor and pulled his hood down a bit more.
“By the way.” He half-turned his head, the peripheral vision of his goggles sweeping over Gwen.
“You’re still alive.
It’s a bit of a hassle, but it’s not a bad thing.” Then he walked toward the other end of the roof, his pace steady and unhurried.
Gwen leaned against the ventilation duct, watching the black silhouette slowly walk away.
She didn’t know if she should believe him.
But she knew she hadn’t been killed.
He had saved her.
That was enough.
At least for tonight.
For the next week, Ryan Quinn spent almost every day at odds with his own body.
The residual genetic fragments from Karl King were more stubborn than expected.
On Tuesday morning, when Ryan Quinn got up to brush his teeth, he accidentally squeezed the entire tube of toothpaste until it exploded.
Ryan Quinn stared at the white glob splattered on the mirror for about five seconds with total indifference, then tossed the tube into the trash and went back to sleep.
“Taking the day off,” was the only thing his four-word email to his homeroom teacher said.
On Wednesday, he went to an abandoned factory to try and integrate the newly acquired spider abilities into his combat system.
Wall-crawling was fine, but the organic synthesis of spider silk took three full days to stabilize.
The silk secreted from his fingertips in small amounts, just enough to snag a beer bottle.
Ryan Quinn suspended the bottle from a factory beam and lay on the ground staring at it for a long time.
“Good enough,” he said, too lazy to get up and untie it.
Gwen wasn’t idle this week, either.
She went to class by day and patrolled by night, occasionally climbing a building near Ryan Quinn’s residence in the dead of night to see if the lights in his room were still on.
Countless times she wanted to send a message, only to type it out and delete it.
The last time was at one in the morning, when she sent: “Are you still awake?” After a long delay, the other side replied: “No, I’m up.
You aren’t asleep either.” “Can’t sleep.” “Oh.
Me neither.” Then the conversation died.
But Gwen read those few lines over and over, though she didn’t know why.
In the second week, Ryan Quinn finally gained stable control over his spider abilities.
The price was over a dozen claw marks of varying depths on the factory walls, and one support beam that he nearly pulled down.
Ryan Quinn stood in the center of the factory, his right hand splayed.
Black silk shot from his fingertips, accurately snagging an empty soda can three meters away and pulling it back into his hand.
“Yeah.
That’s about right.” He let out a yawn, retracted the spider powers into his body, and leaned against the wall to close his eyes for a bit.
When he opened them again, it was already dark.
That same night, Gwen encountered the first wave of people connected to the masked man during her patrol—two men in black suits standing next to an unmarked SUV, showing a blurry photo to passersby and asking if they’d seen him.
Gwen crouched on a fire escape across the street, her heart pounding, not daring to move until the car drove away.
She called Ryan Quinn that night, but it rang for a long time with no answer.
Ryan Quinn had fallen asleep in the abandoned factory with his phone on silent.
He didn’t see Gwen’s two missed calls until the next morning.
He wanted to call back but didn’t know what to say.
In the end, he didn’t.
In the third week, the two of them went to a dessert shop.
Gwen finally couldn’t help but ask why he hadn’t returned her call.
Ryan Quinn bit his straw and thought for a long time before saying, “I fell asleep.” Gwen stared at him for three seconds before giving up on being angry.
She found that her anger toward this man never lasted more than five seconds—partly because he had no idea how to coax her, and partly because he would just stare at her with those sleepy eyes as if he fully understood why she was mad, yet also didn’t understand at all.
This attitude made it impossible to stay angry, but the inability to get angry was even more agonizing than the anger itself.
That night, she wrote in her diary: *I went to get dessert with him today.
The milk tea was alright—I asked him what he meant by that word, and he said it just meant it was drinkable.
I wonder, if I were gone one day, would he also just say I was “alright”?* When she closed the diary, the question circled in her mind, and for the life of her, she couldn’t figure it out.