From Gang Boss to Sewer Cleaner

Pier 17 on the north side of the Port of Newark.

A taxi and a Dodge Challenger rattled to a stop beneath a gantry crane.

The car door opened, and Slug pulled his trench coat tight around himself, sniffling furiously as he peeked out and looked around.

Sing Sing pushed his door open and got out too. One hand held the white wool hat on his head, while the other clutched the inside pocket over his chest. His expression was pained.

"Nine thousand eight hundred... nine thousand nine hundred... ten thousand..." Sing Sing muttered, a faint glimmer of tears in the corners of his eyes.

Riptide got out with Anton, who still couldn't walk normally, on his back.

Lorna and Amy followed close behind.

"Stop fretting over the money. You're lucky you can leave at all."

Slug sniffled and pointed to a Panamanian-flagged freighter ahead.

"See it? That's the one. The captain's called Black Shark. He's a ruthless Latino with a gang of desperadoes under him. Don't say anything you shouldn't when we get there. Hand over the money and get aboard."

No sooner had he finished than a group of people came down the freighter's gangway.

Leading them was a burly bald man with a tattoo of a black shark baring its fangs and claws on his neck. He toyed with a large-caliber revolver in his hand.

More than a dozen heavily armed thugs followed him, every one of them fierce-looking.

"Slug, these are the 'special guests' you mentioned?" Black Shark walked up to the group, his gaze roaming brazenly over Sing Sing and the others.

"Boss Shark, yes, it's them." Slug plastered a fawning smile on his face and turned to signal frantically to Sing Sing.

"Where's the money? Hurry up and give it to Boss Shark."

Sing Sing took a deep breath and made the hardest decision of his life.

With a trembling hand, he took a rubber-banded stack of US dollars from inside his coat and reluctantly held it out.

"Ten thousand dollars. The bills aren't in sequence, none of them are counterfeit, and I counted them three times." Sing Sing clenched his back teeth. "Take it. Sorry for the trouble, but please give me a receipt. Make it out to 'Seventh Urban and Rural Infrastructure Engineering Team overseas commuting expenses.' If you don't have an invoice, an IOU stamped with your personal seal will do."

Black Shark didn't take the money. Instead, he looked at Sing Sing as if he were crazy.

"Ten thousand? That was the old price."

Sing Sing's outstretched hand froze in midair. "What do you mean?"

"The coast guard's checking everything today. Things are tense, and the risk is high."

Black Shark tapped a nearby metal drum with his gun barrel.

"Five thousand a person. That unconscious invalid is a huge hassle, so he's ten thousand. Thirty thousand total."

The moment he said that, the atmosphere turned icy.

"Boss Shark, that's not what we agreed on over the phone..."

"Shut up! Who said you could speak?"

Black Shark kicked Slug to the ground, then looked past Sing Sing and fixed his gaze brazenly on Lorna and Amy.

"Then again..."

Black Shark grinned, exposing a mouthful of yellow teeth. "I don't think you can come up with thirty thousand in cash. How about this? Leave these two chicks here, and we'll call your passage paid for. I guarantee they'll be a lot more comfortable in New York than out at sea. Right, boys?"

The dozen-odd thugs behind him burst into lewd laughter.

Amy was a little flustered. Accustomed to being treated as merchandise, a monster, or a burden, she instinctively took half a step back and hid behind Sing Sing.

Lorna sneered, green light already glowing at her fingertips.

Just before the fighting broke out, Sing Sing whipped the ten thousand dollars back inside his coat. Then, deeply aggrieved, he pointed at Black Shark's nose and launched into a furious tirade.

"Do you have a business license?! Do you have approval from the price bureau?! Ever heard of clearly marked prices?! Ever heard of honoring a contract?!"

Black Shark was somewhat taken aback.

This isn't how it's supposed to go, is it?

Shouldn't he be begging for mercy or fighting for his life? Who asks for price bureau approval on a gang-controlled dock?

"Do you understand what you're doing?"

Sing Sing grew angrier as he spoke, his finger almost poking Black Shark on the tip of his nose. "You're unilaterally tearing up a business contract! You're price gouging! You're running a monopoly! You're disrupting the market economy! Back where we come from, the market supervision bureau would revoke your license and fine you until you had to pawn your pants!"

Black Shark's head rang from the barrage of abuse, and he reflexively asked, "What bureau?"

"I'm not finished!" Sing Sing shouted, spittle flying.

"You actually dare set your sights on the female employees of our work unit? They're advanced productive forces that China has made a priority of bringing in! If you hold them here and delay the project, can you afford to pay for it? If you affect the nation's grand infrastructure plans, can a gang boss like you bear that historical responsibility?!"

The sea breeze blew past, and even the dozen-odd thugs looked at one another.

They wondered if they had run into someone with severe delusions who had escaped from a psychiatric hospital.

"Fuck! Fill this yellow monkey who talks nothing but shit full of holes! Kill the men and throw them in the sea. Take the women!"

Black Shark finally realized he'd been played and roared in fury.

"Bang, bang, bang—"

The underlings pulled their triggers at once, tongues of flame spitting from their guns.

Lorna snorted, and dazzling green magnetic light burst from her fingertips.

The bullets that had left the barrels abruptly stopped in midair.

Immediately afterward, the assault rifles, shotguns, and revolvers in the thugs' hands all slipped out of their control. Their barrels bent upward at an eerie ninety-degree angle, twisting into scrap.

"Clatter, clatter—"

The suspended bullets lost their momentum and fell to the ground.

The thugs stared dumbfounded at the weapons that had turned to scrap in their hands.

Sing Sing didn't crouch down immediately and picked up two bullets.

"Xiao Luo, could you be a little gentler when you control the magnetic field next time? You squeezed the bullets flat. They'll dock the weight when we sell them for scrap!"

Lorna rolled her eyes. "They were trying to kill you, and you're worried about the scrap price?"

"Killing me is one thing. Damaging recyclable resources is another. One thing at a time." Sing Sing pocketed the bullets, stood up, and looked at Black Shark.

The flesh on Black Shark's face twitched a couple of times. He slammed his revolver to the ground.

"A Mutant, huh? I'm one too!"

Black Shark tore open his shirt, revealing his solid chest and the tattoo of a black shark baring its fangs and claws on his neck.

With an angry roar, he bent his legs and plunged straight down toward the hard concrete dock.

The expected split skull and bloodshed never came.

The instant Black Shark's body touched the ground, the hard concrete rippled in circles like the surface of water. With a plop, he disappeared beneath it!

A sharp black ridge rose from the ground immediately afterward.

A closer look revealed a shark's dorsal fin.

Riptide stared in a daze. "He's... swimming through concrete?!"

"What the fuck kind of ability is that?!"

As everyone stood shocked by Black Shark's bizarre, outlandish mutant ability, an unprecedentedly fervent light burst into Sing Sing's eyes.

"A talent!!!"

Sing Sing pointed at the dorsal fin speeding toward them and turned to shout at Lorna, "Xiao Luo! Do you see that?! He's a trenchless underground pipe-clearing expert you only find once in a century!"

Lorna forcibly held back the magnetic shock wave she had already prepared, nearly losing her breath.

"...Huh?"

"Back home, they're renovating old residential neighborhoods, and the biggest headaches are clogged underground sewage pipes and aging cables! Dig up the roads to fix them, and you disrupt traffic and have to spend a fortune filling them back in! Don't dig, and you can't get in at all!"

Sing Sing pointed at Black Shark in anguish. "But he's different! He can swim right through the ground! If a sewer gets blocked, he can dive in and swim around a couple of times to clear it!"

Underground, Black Shark, who had been preparing to deliver a fatal blow, heard those words and nearly ran out of breath and choked to death in the concrete.

I'm a gang boss!

I'm the Deep-Sea Mad Shark, whose name strikes fear into everyone who hears it!

"I'll tear you to pieces!"