Getting Called a Good Person and the Ticket Refund Scheme

Seeing that no one would help, Sing Sing had no choice but to support Edith and lay her on the wooden boards.

"Keep an eye on her, Lorna. This little blue-skinned comrade drools in her sleep."

"Weren't you enjoying carrying her? You seemed pretty particular about where you put your hands."

Sing Sing shook out his arms and loudly protested his innocence.

"Your mind's filthy! I was keeping her center of gravity stable. If I hadn't supported her, she would've hit the floor! Besides, I, Stephen Chow, am a true gentleman!"

Lorna snorted and couldn't be bothered to answer him.

Sing Sing patted his belly, and it obligingly rumbled.

"I'm going up to find some carbohydrates. Don't go wandering off."

He slipped out of the cargo hold and climbed the iron ladder.

The deck below the main deck was the crew area.

Sing Sing had just reached the corner when he heard Black Shark's raspy voice coming through a half-open cabin door.

"Once we're in international waters, throw that yellow-skinned monkey in the white suit straight into the meat grinder! Fucking bastard dared threaten me with a knife!"

One of his underlings chimed in.

"Boss, what should we do with the two women?"

Black Shark gave a series of cold laughs.

"Lock them in my room. Those two chicks have incredible bodies. The green-haired one's hot as hell, and the other one looks fresh and pretty. Once I'm tired of them, sell them to the Eastern European traffickers. Mutant female slaves fetch a high price on the black market these days."

Sing Sing leaned against the bulkhead, his face expressionless.

This gang boss was a hopeless case, his head full of the exploitative thinking of outdated production capacity.

He didn't have an entrepreneur's vision at all.

He was even after the surplus value of his female employees!

It was bad enough that he didn't issue invoices, but now he wanted to rob and murder people too.

With such a terrible business environment, the United States was bound to be finished sooner or later.

Sing Sing couldn't be bothered to act now. Alerting the enemy went against an agent's principles of staying undercover.

He turned and slipped into the kitchen next door.

The food on the ship was pretty impressive.

Half a roast turkey sat on the counter, with two unopened bottles of whiskey beside it, along with a pile of canned beef and several large bags of sliced bread.

Sing Sing didn't stand on ceremony. He grabbed a clean rice sack and stuffed the turkey, canned food, liquor, and other things into it.

After taking those, he spotted two bottles of Lao Gan Ma chili sauce in the corner.

"Well, look at that, imported goods." Sing Sing grinned and stuffed them straight into his pockets.

With his haul in hand, he swaggered back to the cargo hold the way he had come.

"Dinner's served, comrades!"

Sing Sing tossed the rice sack onto the floor. "It'd be a waste not to fleece the capitalists."

Edith woke up just then, her stomach rumbling in thunderous protest.

Lorna tore off a turkey leg and held it to Edith's mouth.

Edith took a huge bite, her cheeks bulging as she ate, grease running all over her mouth.

She ate so fast that she choked and coughed repeatedly.

She hurriedly grabbed the bottle of whiskey and took a big swig. The burn made her stick out her tongue, and a hint of red showed through the blue of her face.

"Eat slowly. No one's going to take it from you."

For once, Lorna softened her voice. "Where's your family? Why were you wandering the streets alone?"

Edith swallowed the turkey, her voice muffled.

"After my power awakened when I was twelve, I woke up in a different place every morning, and my skin turned blue. My dad didn't like me, and I used to think it was because I wasn't good enough..."

Edith looked up and smiled. "Then one day I saw a report. My dad couldn't have children at all. My mom had an affair too. She slept with a man passing through town, and that's how I was born."

"After that, I left home and sometimes used my teleportation power to steal bread from convenience stores."

She lowered her head, her red hair falling over her face.

Amy listened nearby, wiping away tears.

It's all their families' fault!

Sing Sing opened a bottle of whiskey and took a swig.

"Someone with your talent would have all the major delivery companies fighting over you back where we're from. They'd count on you to save the world when the Singles' Day orders pile up."

Sing Sing pulled a phone from his pocket, brought up a photo, and held it out to Edith.

"Look at this place. Can you teleport there?"

Edith leaned over to look.

The screen showed an aerial photo of a major infrastructure construction site in China.

Rebar bristled across the site, tower cranes rose high above it, and a red banner with white lettering hung nearby: "Work hard for a hundred days and complete the Yangtze River Bridge."

"I can." Edith nodded.

Sing Sing slapped his thigh and leaned toward her excitedly. "Great! Then can you teleport me, Lorna, Amy, Riptide, Anton lying over there, and yourself—all six of us—over there together?"

Edith counted on her fingers.

"It would be a bit of a stretch. But if you let me finish this whole turkey and have something sweet to boost my sugar, I should be able to do it."

"No problem! You can have this bottle of whiskey too! There's lots of sugar in it!" Sing Sing declared grandly.

He suddenly leaned close to Edith, staring at her blue face.

"But let's get this straight upfront. We only met today. Aren't you afraid I'll sell you off?"

Edith shrank back and blinked her big eyes twice.

"You're good people."

Sing Sing grinned.

"How did you decide that?"

"I saw it while I was hiding in the barrel just now."

Edith pointed toward the cabin door. "That bad guy wanted to touch these two big sisters, and you drew your knife to stop him."

She took another bite of turkey.

"Bad people don't care whether others live or die. You cared, so you're a good person. And you gave me food too."

Sing Sing clutched his chest, wearing an expression of profound grief.

"It's over. I, Stephen Chow, have spent half my life being wise and mighty, only to get slapped with a blatant 'good person' card by a little blue-skinned girl."

Lorna sneered.

"Really? You're a good person who just happens to have a nasty mouth, be a little stingy, and be a little crazy. Oh, and lecherous."

"That's slander!"

"I was assessing her lung capacity from a medical perspective! Teleportation must require strong heart and lung function!"

His sudden change in demeanor startled Amy.

"Comrades, the situation has changed."

Sing Sing lowered his voice. "Our smuggling voyage is ending early."

"I went to the kitchen for a late-night snack and happened to overhear something."

"That bastard Black Shark plans to chop me and Riptide up and feed us to the fish as soon as we reach international waters. He'll throw Anton into the sea as chum. As for you female comrades, he plans to sell you to black-market traffickers."

A wind blade formed in Riptide's palm, and he bristled with killing intent.

"I'll go kill him."

Lorna raised both hands, and the surrounding sheet metal creaked. "I'll tear the steel plates off this ship and send them all into the sea to feed the sharks!"

"Don't be impulsive! Sit down!" Sing Sing hurriedly motioned for them to settle down.

"We're civilized people. How can we go around committing massacres at the drop of a hat? Think how bad that would look!"

Lorna laughed in anger. "He's going to kill us, and you're worried about how it looks?"

"It's not that I don't care. I'm thinking about strategy."

Sing Sing stroked his chin. "Little Yi needs some time to eat and drink her fill. We can't turn on them now."

He turned to Lorna and looked her up and down.

"Lorna, how familiar are you with mechanical structures?"

Lorna frowned. "As long as it's metal, I can sense its internal structure."

"That's great."

Sing Sing grinned, showing his gleaming white teeth.

"Before Little Yi's ready to teleport, use your magnetic power to reach into the ship's engine room. Twist the crankshaft, pistons, and gears inside the engine into knots."

Riptide froze.

"Take apart the engine?"

"Of course! He took five thousand dollars from me for our passage, and he dares tear up the contract on his own! I, Stephen Chow, live by my word! If he won't keep his, I'll bankrupt him!"

Sing Sing grew angrier as he spoke.

"Take it apart! Tear it to pieces! Better yet, snap the propeller too! I'll leave those bastards drifting in international waters, paddling all the way back to New York!"

After hearing the plan to dismantle the engine, Lorna snorted.

"You're just upset about the five thousand dollars, aren't you?"

Sing Sing spoke with righteous indignation.

"Nonsense! I'm doing this to uphold fairness and justice in the international shipping market! Five thousand dollars is just a number. What pains me is that they've abandoned the basic standards of human decency!"

Amy asked quietly, "But will they starve to death at sea?"

"If they starve, they deserve it! That's nature's punishment for dishonest merchants!"

Sing Sing patted Edith on the shoulder.

"Comrade Little Yi, hurry up and eat. Once you're finished, we're going to China. When we get there, you'll get lollipops by the box!"

At that, Edith doubled the speed at which she was gnawing on the turkey.

Sing Sing stood up and straightened the collar of his white suit.

"Oh, Black Shark, Black Shark, you picked the wrong man to mess with. Today I'll show you how a Chinese agent stands up for his rights!"