Eggs for a Blood Draw?

"Hey, you with the green hair in the back, our new coworker. We're going to be working together, and you won't even give me your name?"

She snorted.

"Why should I tell you?"

"How am I supposed to create your employee file, get you a bank card, and pay your wages without a name?"

"When payday comes, am I supposed to shout into thin air for the green-haired one to come get her money?"

Sing Sing sounded perfectly reasonable, as if they weren't escaping from an underground base at all.

Was there something wrong with this guy's head?

They were running for their lives!

If Stryker found out someone was recruiting on the spot in his heavily guarded underground military base, with nothing but attendance records and wages on his mind, he'd probably bite his dentures to pieces.

She had spent a year in her cell.

For 365 days, no one had spoken to her in a normal tone.

The experimenters called her number X-07, the guards called her green hair, and Stryker called her a specimen.

"Lorna. My name's Lorna Dane." In the end, for some inexplicable reason, she gave him her real name.

Sing Sing searched through the intelligence list in his head.

No match.

But he didn't particularly care. Employers had countless new recruits; perhaps the list he had just hadn't been updated yet.

As long as she could do the job, that was enough.

"So what can you do? Tell me more. Even a résumé needs a relevant specialty, right?"

"Magnetic control, metal manipulation. I don't know exactly how far I can take it myself. No one ever taught me when I was growing up."

"Whoa, a wild giant panda. With a skill that impressive, how did you end up locked in this godforsaken place, never seeing the light of day, being used as a consumable?"

"I grew up in foster homes."

"My foster father in the third home got drunk and hit me. I broke down, and everything with iron in it in the house went flying."

"Knives and forks, iron pans, doorknobs—my foster father's belt buckle smacked him right in the face."

"Nice work! What happened next?" Sing Sing was thoroughly engrossed.

"There was no next. The police were called, I was transferred, registered, and locked up here."

"That old bastard drew my blood, hooked me up to machines, and tested my maximum threshold."

Riptide sighed repeatedly as he listened. Mutant lives were worth nothing anywhere.

"A whole year. How much work did that delay, and how much overtime pay did you miss out on?" Sing Sing sounded utterly heartbroken.

Lorna nearly choked on her breath at his sudden remark.

What the hell was wrong with this man's priorities?

I'm telling you the tragic, blood-and-tears story of my life, and you're upset about my lost wages?!

Sing Sing, however, saw nothing wrong with what he had said. He looked back at Lorna. "Don't worry. Come back to China with me, and I'll arrange a good position for you."

"How about precision calibration technician for high-speed rail tracks?"

"You won't have to work out in the wind and sun. You can sit in an air-conditioned room and drink milk tea."

"Just move your fingers and calibrate the rails to within 0.01 millimeters."

Sing Sing began making extravagant promises.

"With your skills, being a lab rat in the United States is a complete waste. Where we're from, you'd be a master craftsman of a great nation."

"Work hard and give it your all, and at the end of the year, we'll make sure you're named a March Eighth Red-Banner Pacesetter, plus you'll get a year-end bonus blind box for a shot at the grand prize!"

The more Sing Sing talked, the more enthusiastic he became.

"And our work-unit cafeterias serve at least four dishes and a soup!"

"Not like this lousy laboratory, where all they have is tasteless nutrient solution and expired slices of bread hard enough to kill a dog."

"Back home, even if they just draw two vials of blood for a routine physical, they'll give you two free-range eggs and a whole case of pure milk afterward to settle your nerves! That's humanistic care to the max!"

You can get eggs for having your blood drawn? They've been drawing mine for a year, and all I've gotten are needle marks.

Lorna listened in a daze, her guard easing considerably over the course of their conversation.

Riptide couldn't listen anymore.

"Stephen, you won't even leave this young woman alone? Just how short-staffed are you people?"

"What the hell do you know?" Sing Sing glared back at him. "It's called making the best use of everyone's talents."

"This is a matter of national strategy. You're a wanted man who gets chased and hacked at every day and doesn't even have health insurance. What gives you the right to question my hiring philosophy?"

After they crawled another few dozen meters, scraping sounds came from the duct ahead.

A strange smell suddenly filled the air.

"Fuck, tear gas mixed with nerve gas! These bastards are playing dirty!"

Sing Sing's nose twitched twice as he identified the components of the fumes.

The smell was intensely overpowering.

Riptide began coughing violently.

Unconscious, Anton knitted his brows tightly. It looked like he was about to suffer another rejection reaction.

Lorna covered her nose and mouth, breathing rapidly.

Was she going to be captured again after finally getting out?

She would rather die in the duct than return to that cell where she was monitored even while taking a shit.

"Move aside and let a professional handle this." Sing Sing reached behind his waist with his right hand. "A great wind rises and the clouds fly high; where can I find brave warriors to guard the four corners? Open up!"

Sing Sing shouted, swinging his long saber and hacking a hole in the sheet-metal duct in several strokes before leaping down.

He turned over in midair and landed in a half-crouch, clutching Anton by the waistband.

Riptide and Lorna landed one after the other.

They were in a hall, its lights glaring.

Two full rows of tactical squad members stood around them, guns pointed their way.

A man in a white lab coat stood beneath the surveillance screen directly ahead, holding a cup of coffee.

"I knew you'd take the ventilation duct. Rats always like crawling through holes."

The man in the lab coat took a sip of coffee and looked at them.

"Stryker!"

Riptide stared at him, cyclones gathering in his palms.

Lorna trembled, an instinctive fear born of years of torment.

But she still stubbornly stood straight, her hands clenched into fists.

Sing Sing looked at their expressions and slapped his forehead.

"Oh, so you're Stryker, the one who likes experimenting on people."

"I've heard so much about you, but you don't quite match your file photo. Your forehead's a whole size bigger."

"Has your hairline been receding because you've been under a lot of pressure lately?"

"I know an old traditional Chinese medicine practitioner who specializes in hair loss. Want me to bring you a couple of bottles of hair-growth tonic?"

Stryker's face darkened. He hated it most when people made jokes about his appearance.

"And that lab coat of yours."

Sing Sing continued, his expression serious.

"There's a coffee stain on the collar, the third button's in the wrong hole, and there's a used cotton swab stuffed in the left pocket."

"Is this a laboratory or your kitchen?"

"Pay attention to your professional appearance. Even the directors of our township health centers in China look more respectable than you."

"A Chinese man. Interesting." Stryker's gaze settled on Anton.

"You broke into my base, injured fourteen of my men, and stole two of my test subjects. Just to critique my clothes?"

"Three."

Sing Sing held up three fingers.

"Riptide counts as one. Hey, you chased him for two months without catching him, and how long did it take me to land him? Your HR is way behind mine!"

Stryker's smile vanished, and he roared through gritted teeth:

"Open fire!"

More than twenty assault rifles had their bolts pulled at once, the sound of rounds being chambered echoing through the hall.